The FASTForward Blog » Emergence Part 1 – So what is really going on?: Enterprise 2.0 Blog: News, Coverage, and Commentary

Emergence Part 1 – So what is really going on?

by Rob Paterson

October 1, 2009 at 8:58 am · Filed under Culture, Emergence, Social Media, Social Networking

Beyond disrupting organizations and value as we know it, what is going to be the deep result of the use of Social Media? Many of us see it as at least making organizations more effective – faster, more informed etc. But I wonder. My growing feeling is that the widespread use of Social Media might soon enable us to gain the benefit of “Emergence”.

What you might ask is “Emergence”. Here is an example of how each of us as humans acquire the scale free use of language:

languageemergence

Let me explain – I have a one year old grand daughter now so I am re living all of this. At around 9 -12 months, the child starts to make sounds – it is training the muscles. At about 12 – 18 months, it starts to use single words – Dada is usually first – so unfair but easier to say than Mama. It starts to use simple connectors such as “It” “a” “. 18 months – 24, the child adds a few direct verbs and qualifiers such as “more”. Then, as if by magic Emergence!. The child starts speaking in whole sentences – the full acquisition of the structure of language has been achieved. In some cases children are all but silent until this point and one day they can speak full sentences.

How does this happen? The child needs a few simple but essential environmental factors to be in place. I will come to these at the end of this post becuase they are directly related to what may be needed to have Social Media offer us this opportunity for Emergence as well.

One more example.

acorn

An oak tree produces many acorns. Only a very small number grow to become a tree. All the potential of the tree is inside this tiny thing. To have Emergence so that it can become a tree, there has to be a number of environmental factors that offer the acorn, the best shot at reaching this potential. You can imagine with me as to what some of these might be. Not get eaten by a squirrel – falling far enough away from the parent or being dropped by a squirrel – the right soil/moisture – not being eaten by a deer – not being mowed by me etc. If enough of the factors are in place, then the acorn will become a tree.

Now here is a vital insight, once it gets to a certain size, it gets very robust and only man cutting it down with a saw or a big fire will prevent it from growing further and living a long time. It is vulnerable only for a relatively short time at the front end.

There is more. An acorn has more potential than a tree alone.

LiveOakForest

Under the right environmental circumstances, one tree will lead to another until there is a small wood. With a small wood in place, more Emergence! The wood bursts into a complex forest that not only has more trees but a huge supporting other ecosystem that itself depends on and supports the oak first. Such a forest is tremendously complex and long lasting and offers all its normal inhabitants the optimal environment for more scale and less risk.

So Emergence leads to more complexity and to more resiliency. The resiliency is the reinforcement of the environmental factors that support the inhabitants of the system in reaching their full potential.

I am not clear about the ideal factors for Oak Trees. But the ideal factors for allowing children to reach their full potential are now known. My bet is that what works for infants works for all people. If we can be clear about what these few factors are, then we can see how Social Media might be used by us to go way beyond where are are right now.

acornboy

An irony is that this little boy’s name is Acorn.

The link will take you to the research that has captured what Acorn and all of us need as human babies to set off on the pathway to our full potential or not. For if we don’t get the key factors we stall – stall for life.

Here are the key factors for our optimal development in simple form – as I list them, think of how your work place lines up or not to them. For this is what we all need all the time to be at our best as primates and humans.

Culture is the most important environmental factor - The family culture has to offer the child a mix of clear boundaries of what is not allowed and yet also the child must be allowed a lot of room to explore inside these boundaries. It is Boundaries and Freedom. The child must be listened to and must have “conversations” with her parents. Very authoritarian parenting – all orders and all rules and all about the use of power over – is a huge shut down. All permissive – you choose baby is very unsafe and also leads to trouble in development.

Touch Is the main pathway to getting the neurons to line up the right way. Recall – we are Primates. For all Primates Grooming is the essential social bond that not only mediates stress and but mediates power differences. Touch is the first step. Tone of Voice is related to Touch. For humans, gossip has replaced touch in adults. The key to gossip is being listened too! We know from the Romanian orphanages, that babies that are only tidied up and not touched in a loving way not only cannot thrive but often die! Transactional relationships are really really bad for us.

Emergence is all about Patterns connecting to scale free – so how many words a child years by 2 is the last factor - Kids whose development cannot be stopped have heard up to 50 million words by 2. Kids who will never develop fully will only have heard 10 million by the same age. They can never catch up

What we do know about Emergence is that it is Fractal. The key factors that support “Growth” do not change for scale. And also, that the chances of the key factors being in place, rise when there is a critical mass. An Oak forest offers the best shot for all who rely on its factors versus an acorn, a squirrel, a hawk, a truffle and a pig on their own.

When I saw the first slide in this post the other day – a light bulb went off for me. If this is how we acquire language and the optimal path for our own growth as a human, then the power of these connections inside the right social container could lead to something really special. The Netflix Prize story got me even more excited – for this showed how groups of people being connected had a major result as a consequence of the properties of Emergence.

If I am right, then we surely stand on the edge of a great awakening? Something like this happened 60,000 years ago, when humans acquired complex language itself. What might this mean for us? I can’t know. But we do know what happened 60,000 years ago. Human development exploded as did our ability to manipulate our world. Until then we were simply one of the species.

Now I fear that our reductive mindset based I think on our reliance on engineering rather than on Growth as the main process for getting more is putting us at risk as a species. Our only chance I think is to work with nature. If we as humans can find the best social container, we may have a chance.

So what container and how might social software help?

In the next post, I will get more specific about how we might translate these factors and Social Software into ideas about what the opportunity is. In the 3rd post in the series, I will share with you some brilliant supporting work that reveals how we might make better connections between us as a very diverse population. How we might solve the challenge of how to connect the geeks to the bureaucrats and to the business people – all of who have a very different world view.

Part 2 follows here

Share and Enjoy:

Permalink

21 Tweets 1 Other Comment

30 Comments »

Jon HusbandOctober 1st, 2009 at 10:24 am

This is pretty much one of the key points Steven Johnson makes in the book Emergence: the Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software .. a few simple rules and then let the practicing of increasingly complex and dense interaction start the work of building a culture that is adapted to the new environment.

I took a look at this a year or so ago over on the AppGap blog in a post titled “On the Ongoing Emergence of New Forms of Organizational Structure and Governance”.

Rob PatersonOctober 1st, 2009 at 11:09 am

Very helpful Jon – worth a repost here – will help get the broader conversation going

I am planning a new site maybe called the “Emergence project” where those of us interested can contribute to an Emergent Discovery of how best to do this

Bootstrapping to the nth degree

Rob PatersonOctober 1st, 2009 at 11:11 am

Here is the snip that Jon pointed too:

Jan 04
Permalink
Emergence (steven johnson) p222-3
MANAGEMENT AS FEEDBACK FOR ADAPTIVENESS

…”emergent systems can be brilliant innovators, and they tend to be more adaptable to sudden change than more rigid hierarchical models” “

A number of companies…have experimented with neural-net-like organisational structures…building a more cellular, distributed network of small units”

“units can assemble into larger clusters if they need to, and those clusters have the power to set their own objectives. The role of senior management grows less important in these models
-less concerned with establishing a direction for the company, and more involved with encouraging the clusters that generate the best ideas”

“the vision for the company’s future comes from below, out of the ever-shifting alliances of smaller groups. Senior management simply provides a feedback mechanism-in the form of bonuses, options, or increased resources-ensuring that the most productive clusters thrive”

- as long as this does not encourage knowledge hoarding between clusters, as they are competing for resources

- but i feel this will increase coordination between clusters as they are more aware of the happenings in their respective clusters

- this is also more autonomous and optimal use of knowledgeworkers as they will gravitate to the jobs they like and are good at (also good for morale and employee retention)

- if goals between clusters are clashing i guess this is where management step in as the negative feedback mechanism
bit.ly (Short URL)

Jon HusbandOctober 1st, 2009 at 11:16 am

Re: Rob’s last comment pointing to Johnson’s work ….

Bingo !

Gavin HeatonOctober 9th, 2009 at 6:55 am

Makes me think that this is where immersion in a conversational torrent (like Twitter for example) creates, rather than confusion, but a kind of emergent logic. As you point out, it is easy to be susceptible and vulnerable early in the process, but once you have reached a certain level of comfort – where culture + touch/connection + pattern begin to merge – participants are able to thrive in the complexity. Very interesting!

Larry IronsOctober 10th, 2009 at 9:54 am

Emergence happens every day in organizations. Anthony Giddens work as well as that of sociologists/anthropologists studying informal organization began pointing it out as early as the 1950s. In my mind you need to tell us what you mean by a “social container” before even starting a discussion on what the “best” one might look like.

Rob PatersonOctober 10th, 2009 at 9:59 am

I go into some detail about what a social container is in the next 2 parts

Jon HusbandOctober 10th, 2009 at 10:12 am

Emergence happens every day in organizations.

I agree with this …

What I think I and others are responding to is the opportunity(ies) on offer for more rapid emergence and / or a real and observable “state change” in how people do or don’t work together, in the arena of what is coloquially known as Ent2.0.

I am guessing that these opportunities available via an interconnected and interlinked infrastructure for exchanges of information and ideas (and agreed-upon-via link-enabled-communication objectives, tasks and deadlines, for example) are what have any number of analysts, researchers and pundits thinking, writing and talking about ‘emergence’.