Representations of the system

My dream Celebrity Boxing match up: Mike Tyson v. Enrique Iglesias

I'm fascinated by how much of DeLillo's Underworld aligns with this definition of reverse engineering from the IEEE taxonomy:

Reverse engineering

- "the process of analyzing a subject system with two goals in mind:
(1) to identify the system's components and their interrelationships; and,
(2) to create representations of the system in another form or at a higher level of abstraction."

In DeLillo's case, the system is not a technology product, but cold-war American culture. (Gravity's Rainbow and Catch 22 also seem to be reverse-engineering novels.) DeLillo also writes about his use of real events in Underworld in the New York Times Magazine article The Power of History.