Complexity. The new world between chance and choice
April 10, 2010
Nonlinear dynamics are concerned with complex, messy systems. Examples for these systems are the human brain, the evolution of life itself and the weather. There is not a single science of non-linearity, but there are different streams of research such as chaos theory or the theory of complex adaptive systems. The latter strand takes up an agent- and rules of interaction-based approach to modeling complexity. The first explains the behavior of systems that can be modeled by complex equations where the output of one calculation is taken as the input for the next. These equations are repetitive and iterative.
Chaos theory explains how the parameters in the equations cause patterns in time. These patterns are called attractors. A parameter might be the flow of information or the amount of energy in the system. At low rates the system moves forward displaying a repetitive, stuck behavior. This pattern is called a point attractor. At higher rates the pattern changes. At very high rates of, for example information flow, the system displays a totally random behavior. The pattern is highly unstable. However, there is a level between repetition/stability and randomness/instability. This level is called the edge of chaos. The pattern in time is called a strange attractor. The strange thing with a strange attractor is that the ongoing movement is never the same but always recognizable. The pattern is paradoxically stable and unstable, predictable and unpredictable at the same time. These patterns are spatially called fractals.
Chaos describes a dynamic that is not a synthesis of order and disorder. It is about orderly disorder or disorderly order. The very meaning of these words is transformed.
The weather is normally used as an example of a system that displays this pattern. The overall weather patterns can be (almost) predicted over short periods of time. Over long periods, the behavior cannot be predicted. The long-term behavior of a system like this is determined as much by the smallest changes in the smallest of parts of the system, as it is determined by the laws governing it. The conclusion is very clear. Predictability is always short-term. Long-term predictions would only be possible if absolutely all the variables in the system could be measured with absolutely infinite accuracy. But it is impossible to know all the variables and it is totally impossible to measure all the variables with the accuracy needed.
The smallest overlooked variable or the most minute change can escalate up by non-linear iterations into a major transformative change in the later life of the system. Another conclusion is that from a chaos theory perspective, movement towards equilibrium is always movement towards death. If a system is healthy, successful and alive, it is “at the edge of chaos” where the long-term cannot be seen.
Classical physics took individual entities and their movement (trajectories) as the unit of analysis. Chaos theorists such as Ilya Prigogine, claimed that these trajectories cannot be calculated because of the impossibility of measuring with the precision needed. But there was something even far more exciting going on. Henri Poincaré was the first scientist to identify two distinct kinds of energy. The first was the (kinetic) energy in the movement of the particle itself. The second was the energy arising from the interaction between particles. When this second energy is not there, the system is in a state of non-dynamism. When there is interactive energy, the system is dynamic and capable of novelty and renewal. Interaction creates resonance between the particles. Resonance is the result of coupling the frequencies of particles leading to an increase in the amplitude of motion. Resonance makes it impossible to identify individual movement in interactive environments because the individual’s trajectory depends more on the resonance with others than on the kinetic energy contained by the individual itself.
Every interaction of any particles is thus potentially meaningful and can lead to amplification of the slightest variation. Interactive systems with even the smallest variations take on a life of their own that is under continuous construction. The future form and direction of the system is not visible in the system at any given time. The future is not in the system and it cannot be chosen or planned by anyone.
The scientists at the Santa Fe Institute developed the other strand of research: the complex adaptive systems approach. A CAS consists of a large number of agents. Each agent behaves according to its own intentions and rules for local interaction. Local here means that no agent can interact with the whole population of agents at the same time. No individual agent can determine the pattern of behavior that the system as a whole displays. These adaptive systems display the same dynamics as the chaos theorists found: stable equilibrium at one end of the spectrum, random chaos at the other, and in-between the newly found complex dynamic of stability and instability, predictability and unpredictability, paradoxically at the same time: the edge of chaos.
The conclusions are important for us. Firstly, novelty always emerges in a radically unpredictable way. Secondly, the patterns of healthy behavior are not caused by competitive selection or independent choices made by independent agents. Instead, what is happening, happens in interaction, not by chance or by choice, but as a result of the interaction itself.
The Internet changes the patterns of connectivity and makes possible new enriching variety in interaction. The changed dynamics we experience every day through social media have the very characteristics of the edge of chaos.
The sciences of complexity change our perspective and thinking. Perhaps, as a result we should, especially in management, focus more attention on what we are doing than what we should be doing. Following the thinking presented by the most advanced scientific researchers, the important question to answer is not what should happen in the future, but what is happening now?
Our focus should be on the communicative interaction creating the continuously developing pattern that is our life.
Thank you Stu Kauffman and W Brian Arthur. Based on Ralph Stacey and Doug Griffin.
Learning from Caravaggio
April 2, 2010
We have a curious habit of thinking that what we are accustomed to is the way things should be. We are inclined to accept conventional forms as facts, and as meaningful reference points, when facing novelty.
Artists are often the people who want to see the world afresh. It is not easy to get rid of preconceived ideas, but the artist who best discards accepted notions and prejudices often produces the most remarkable works of art. However, a painting that represents a traditional subject in an unexpected way is often condemned. Normally there is no good reason, apart from the work of art just not following tradition.
There have been a few times in history that a great artist looked carefully at what was visible to everybody, but in fact saw things very different from the way others saw them.
Very few artists have caused as much shock and outrage as Caravaggio. A famous story is told about the commissioning of a painting of Saint Matthew for the altar of a church in Rome. This happened around 1600. The saint was going to be represented writing the gospel that was later going to be named after him. As gospels were the word of God, there was also going to be an angel in the picture, giving guidance to Matthew. Caravaggio read the old texts very carefully and tried to figure out what it must have been like when an old man suddenly had to sit down and do something that he had never done, or never dreamed of doing: writing a book, and being guided by an angel!
Caravaggio painted an elderly workingman, seemingly from a poor background. A man with a bald head and muscular legs, writing awkwardly! Beside him was a child with white wings. A young angel was guiding Matthew’s hand just like a teacher would do to a pupil doing something for the very first time. Caravaggio’s painting was a fantastic portrait of a human being in a very, very special situation. But it was also a completely new way of expressing an old topic. The painting was to be placed on the altar of a church in Rome. This never happened because Caravaggio’s work created a huge scandal. The painting was not accepted because it was claimed that it showed a lack of respect for the topic and the saint! What Caravaggio had done, for the first time in history, was to create a simple expression and give a human face to something that was highly formalized. Caravaggio may have been the first human-centric painter.
People thought that Caravaggio was out to shock them. They also thought that he had no respect for beauty and tradition. In fact, Caravaggio may have been the first artist in known history who was labeled both a rebel and a naturalist at the same time. He was the first painter of the “ugly” true reality. The curious thing is that seeing Caravaggio’s paintings today; one still encounters the same boldness and power that must have shocked people over four hundred years ago.
Caravaggio’s art is very much alive today, although the altar painting described here was never accepted for the altar and was eventually destroyed in Germany during the Second World War.
The question remains whether the human-centric approaches today meet the same kind of opposition as Caravaggio encountered. It is not about challenging the conventions carried forward by the church, or representations of what is holy. Human-centric thinking questions the conventions carried forward by corporate thinking and the idealized representations of leadership/management. The pattern is the same.
Nothing has changed, when it comes to the importance of Caravaggio! Being human-centric is as difficult today as it was in 1602.
Thank you @cshirky
Responsiveness, emergence and self-organization
March 21, 2010
I gave keynote speeches at two conferences this week. The organizers of the events did not suggest a (#) hashtag to be used by the delegates. There wasn’t any backchannel Twitter discussion going on in the audience. I felt strange.
I wasn’t able to listen and respond to real-time feedback. I was missing the self-regulation and self-organizing that social media make possible. This is what I have grown so accustomed to. I started to ponder on two questions: Is it becoming more common for responsiveness to be the missing ingredient in many communities? And can there be rules for responsiveness that help to create viable communities?
I know that there are problems with two-way communication. There are the people with a pre-set interpretative model. We all know the people who are grinding their axe at the back of the room. They are the know-alls and the one-point-of-view evangelists, the people who insist on bringing all conversations round to their particular issue.
I know that there are even bigger issues: All participants are never visible. Any given conversation on the Web may have a few active participants and several silent ones. This creates a fundamental imbalance in the system and gives the oddballs the opportunity to dominate the space in a way that would be much harder to do off-line.
What I felt at the conferences was a crucial disparity: they hear me talking, but I don’t hear them. The audience was both present and absent at the same time. A conference with a Twitter backchannel creates inputs from the official speakers and responses coming from the audience that is present, but also the online audiences elsewhere. The most important thing is that the primary inputs can then be further adjusted on the basis of the responses from the group. There is real-time emergent self-organizing going on.
Information flows are far too often unidirectional. The audience is present but in a passive, invisible way. The tyranny of the hatemonger results from this one-way flow and scarcity of feedback.
The volume is too high for any single individual to filter out the useless or plain repulsive. There are, however, ways to filter out the irrelevant and the obnoxious, but it requires people to respond. If you are a participant, you are also a moderator.
The quality control has to be handed to the community itself without any single individual being in control. The solution is fairly simple in theory. It is about responsiveness and a mix of negative and positive feedback.
You always rate what you see. The ratings coalesce algorithmically into something that is called karma in Slashdot. If your contributions are highly rated you get karma points. The karma you have earned means that your subsequent posts begin life at a higher level than posts by others. Your ratings also have a higher value than ratings given by people with fewer karma points. Dynamic rating is to posts what links are to websites.
The people worth following, the leaders, raise bottom up. Hierarchies in network architectures are natural and dynamic heterarchies. In fact this is the only way that there can be leaders in democratic systems.
One algorithm tracks the value of contributions; the other tracks the value of contributors.
The Web 2.0 gave the audience a voice. What is happening at the moment is much more radical. It is not about representation but gestures and responses leading to emergence and self-organization. It is not about the message or the media any more. It is more about the rules of responsiveness. In a simplified way, you can express those rules as positive and negative feedback moving the whole system towards a particular direction based on the behaviour of the participants.
The definition of what is quality and what is crap is a result of the responsive interaction. It is not groupthink however, because the ratings of people with high karma points weigh more than the assessments of the average members. The huge problem is that the majority viewpoints get amplified, while minority opinions get silenced.
This is why we need a new category to support quality. It is diversity.
Changing the algorithm to reward diversity of opinion means the emergence of a system that looks totally different. Instead of highlighting posts with high average ratings, the system could highlight posts that have triggered a high divergence of ratings. There are many +5 responses, but also many -5 responses. The posts that inspire strong responses either way, both positive and negative, could then rise to higher visibility. The system can thus reward controversial voices, not only popular ones.
A viable system needs to reward perspectives that deviate from the mainstream.
We need perspectives that don’t aim to please everyone. The oddballs would still be marginalized but the thoughtful minorities who attract both admirers and critics would have a visible place in the ongoing process of creating the future in responsive collaboration.
Thank you Steven Johnson
