Organic computing - on the feasibility of controlled emergence

This work gives an introduction to the research area of organic computing and shows chances, opportunities and problems currently tackled by researchers. First the visions that lead to this research area are discussed briefly. It is shown that the notion of emergence, a central phenomenon in organic computing, is a typical bottom-up effect with the interesting property of generating order from randomness. The classical design, however, is a top-down process. This apparent contradiction can be overcome by introducing so-called observer/controller architectures leading to the possibility to controlled emergence. The paper concludes with a description of current research problems in organic computing.