by Rob Paterson
October 31, 2009 at 9:31 am · Filed under
Emergence, Event Announcements, Twitter
What might be a outcome of Twitter Lists? I think it may be a step nearer to “Emergence” in some key areas.
This slide shows what happens to children’s language as they approach Emergence in the 3rd picture on the right.
I think our use of Twitter can track this trajectory. At first it was me and a few friends that I knew from my face to face or blogging life prior to Twitter.
Then in the last 3 years, I have added a few more friends from the Twitterverse. These in my case have come mainly from Pub Media and from the Bryant Park Gang that Morphed into the Planet Money Gang.
I exclude myself from the many who merely add thousands of folks indiscriminately. I have added several hundred of these but I find that only 1 or 2 have been people that I have learned to care about or interacted with in a good way. The Dunbar number is not a nice to have but a Rule!
What I have immediately seen from the new lists that are emerging around the two and related areas of my interest – the PM/BPP Gang and Pub Media – is that I have some real gaps. Those that created the lists whom I like care for and admire have people that I don’t know and who don’t know me.
But it is highly probable that we will get on – your friend is my friend!
So we move toward phase 3. When we get a critical mass of Trust – Affection – Attraction then don’t we get close to “Emergence” being possible?
Andy Carvin’s NPR News List would surely make an incredible starting point for more experiment – now add to it his Pub Camp list and you have the 300 Spartans!
This then is power.
A large, talented and also diverse group that has a large bond of trust.
Such a group can surely take on the “Persians” of our time?
by Rob Paterson
October 2, 2009 at 9:16 am · Filed under
Emergence
First of all – if the concept of Emergence is new for you – that extremely complex outcomes such as life itself, flocking by birds or winning the Netflix Prize – are not the product of a God, a Plan, a CEO but emerge from a Container (An optimal environment for that growth) and a simple Set of Rules – then here is a great short video from Nova that in 4 minutes will give you a sound introduction.
In my first post in this series I proposed that if we use the ideas of Emergence we might find the larger opportunity in Social Software – that it may help us solve many of our intractable problems.
That Social Software – if used properly – might have the same explosive impact on human society and our connection to the rest of the planet that the acquisition of complex language did 60,000 years ago.
If you are still with me – let’s remind ourselves of what drives emergence generally and then see if we can find the model for humans and then how Social Media may fit. What would using Social Software “Properly” mean?
To have Emergence you need 3 elements:
- You need some kind of “Container” - An Environment that is optimal for the Emergence in question. This can be physical such as the ideal environment for an Acorn to reach its potential as a tree Or it can be physical and energetic such as the physical and the social environment needed for a baby to be set on her way to reach her potential.
- You need a lot of “Optimal Contact Points“ – Emergence is all about patterns. To have patterns you need many points of connection. Computers are not able to become conscious because they don’t have enough synaptic connections. They have a few hundred – the human brain has billions. A Human with too small a social world cannot reach her potential. 3 birds cannot make a flock. A few breezes don’t make a hurricane. A few stars do not make a galaxy. No flow in water and you cannot have a vortex. When man had no complex language, he could not communicate widely enough to make much technical progress. He could not create patterns. A father might show his son how to carve a hand ax but an emergent breakthrough like a throwing stick or a bow and arrow would be beyond them. For without complex language enabling abstractions and enabling a large circle of participants the creation of patterns – abstract thinking and design cannot happen. For then, if it could not be seen and copied it could not happen
- You need a few rules that both shape the pattern and also keep it coherent. As we learn more about complexity, we are astounded by how few the rules are and how often they are so simple. With computers it is easy to model bird flocking now. But, to get the pattern, we also need the process of iteration and we need a computer to do the math. But to model, we need to know the rules. Nature always has rules. Nature’s rules always have a mathematical base. We now know the rules of Electro Magnetism. There will be rules for Social Energy as well. They will be few. They will be fractal. They will need to be iterated. This is not Kumbya – there will be a science here.
So can we posit what the essence of these 3 requirements may be to offer us a chance of seeing the true workings and the real potential for Social Software? I think we can. In this remaining part of this post, I will point directionally to where I see the answers. In the next post I am going to speculate about the details.
So stripped back to the essentials I think that we can see the Container and the Connections in the following single picture. This model is from BreakOuttheBox
I see this as a “Sun”. I think that the “Container” is the Circle of Concern. Inside the Container is the “Mass” the boiling energy of the interactions of people that are connected around the Circle of Concern or as I think it is better put – The Intent. Not its mission – its Intent – it should move naturally and energetically to the Intent.
So what then is the energy that shines out of the container and grips the hearts and minds of the people?
There is surely a gradient here. Cubs fans are energized by their team. Employees of a well know brand enjoy being connected to it. But would they die for it?
Many parents will die for their kids. Men in combat will die for their small circle of mates.
So if this is the gradient, is there a sweet spot?
I think that there must be. I suspect that most of us want more than to work for shareholder value or for the abstraction of a bureaucracy. We long for a real cause. I suspect that many of us are sports fans because we long to belong to a cause that is larger than ourselves but cannot find it in our day to day life.
Does our past and our nature offer us a clue for the rule here?
In tribal times there was no separation between work and life and play. There was no separation between family and work. There was no separation between the people involved and the collective reward.
But today we are so splintered. Only parts of us parent, partner, work, play. Our energy is fragmented.
My bet is that the ideal is to re-align most of us back as a whole. For example, in the really depressed cities in America such as Cleveland or Detroit, all could get together to “Re-invent” their city to provide all with a livelihood and a future.
The answer to the ideal Intent or Circle of Concern is that it will include most of our total needs and our identity. It will help us align our energy more fully.
A great sun has also to have Mass. So what might this be in human and social terms? What is the Circle of Influence?
We can see this in two simple examples. A single mum or a single acorn has a very slim chance. They don’t have enough mass. A Tribal Family and an Oak Forest do have the optimal mass. They offer a very good chance of continuing life and expanding complexity – emergence.
But while the container has to have some scale and mass, in human terms, the scale has to be made up in fractal segments that are still small enough to keep the human connections viable. Healthy cities are really collections of villages or neighborhoods. Prison and large high schools are not healthy because they don’t have human scale subsets. Most traditional organizations are not healthy because they are not made up of tribes and or neighborhoods. Departments are not tribes!
Also there must be diversity. An oak forest is made up of many living things – it is the opposite of a monoculture. In Permaculture, no plant is planted on its own. They are planted in “Guilds” – natural diverse groupings that support each other in complex ways – adding nutrients – keeping predators away etc. Permaculture is an intentional way of replicating the optimal design of nature.
So following this rule, a modern family – 2 parents or less and children is not diverse enough to offer the kids a broad enough world view. School is often a monoculture as are most workplaces. Diversity in not about race or disability etc. We have got distracted by our post modern view of the world. Human diversity is about world view and POV. Are you out going or shy? Are you a natural Early Adopter or maybe even a Laggard? Are you an ideas person or a pragmatist? Are you a warrior of a nurturer? This is our true diversity. A healthy group contains all of these types.
For Emergence depends on the synthesis of difference. As we all know, connecting a lot of this kind of difference productively is a major major challenge. I will have a lot to say about how we might do this in the next post for this is an area where we need more than good intentions. We need good process.
So the Mass part of the human ideal container needs an ideal scale for humans and it needs the maximum world view diversity.
Bottom line – the ideal Container has an Intent that can fulfill most of what we need to make us whole as a person. The ideal Mass inside the Container is a network of fractal units of people that are very diverse but united by the Intent and are highly connected. Like a brain!
In the last post in this series, I will share with you work that helps us know what the rules are for the ideal human fractal components will be and also how to make connections that work across the barriers of human diversity.
What is the ideal scale of influence? What will naturally help say the warrior, the geek and the nurturer connect productively?
Part 3 – The Rules and the Emerging Science
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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
by Rob Paterson
September 30, 2009 at 11:35 am · Filed under
Emergence, Emergent
For those that do not know – Netflix held a multi year competition to find a better search and ratings system – many teams competed.
In the final stretch the breakthrough came when many of the teams joined forces – the big difference was made by adding teams that up to then had “got it wrong”. A great story of this competition is on Wired.
The secret sauce for both BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos and The Ensemble was collaboration between diverse ideas, and not in some touchy-feely, unquantifiable, “when people work together things are better” sort of way. The top two teams beat the challenge by combining teams and their algorithms into more complex algorithms incorporating everybody’s work. The more people joined, the more the resulting team’s score would increase.
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“It’s been quite a drama,” said Netflix chief product officer Neil Hunt at Monday’s awards ceremony. “At first, a whole lot of teams got in — and they got 6-percent improvement, 7-percent improvement, 8-percent improvement, and then it started slowing down, and we got into year two. There was this long period where they were barely making progress, and we were thinking, ‘maybe this will never be won.’
“Then there was a great insight among some of the teams — that if they combined their approaches, they actually got better. It was fairly unintuitive to many people [because you generally take the smartest two people and say 'come up with a solution']… when you get this combining of these algorithms in certain ways, it started out this ’second frenzy.’ In combination, the teams could get better and better and better.”
Ironically, the most outlying approaches — the ones farthest away from the mainstream way to solve a given problem — proved most helpful towards the end of the contest, as the teams neared the summit.
For instance, BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos (methodology here) credits some of its success to slicing the data by what they called “frequency.” As it turns out, people who rate a whole slew of movies at one time tend to be rating movies they saw a long time ago. The data showed that people employ different criteria to rate movies they saw a long time ago, as opposed to ones they saw recently — and that in addition, some movies age better than others, skewing either up or down over time. (Finally, someone has explained why Snakes On A Plane seemed more fun at the time than it does now.)
By tracking the number of movies rated on a given day as an indicator of how long it had been since a given viewer had seen a movie, and by tracking how memory affected particular movie ratings, Pragmatic Theory (later part of the winning team) was able to gain a slight edge, even though this particular algorithm isn’t particularly good at predicting which movies people will like when run on its own.
Another example: According to Joe Sill of The Ensemble, Big Chaos (the Austrians who also became part of the winning team) discovered that viewers in general tend to rate movies differently on Fridays versus Mondays, and certain users are in good moods on Sundays, and so on. The team essentially devised a three-dimensional model that incorporated time into the relationship between people and movies.
Taken on its own, the fact that a viewer rated a given movie on a Monday is a horrible indicator of what other movies they’ll want to rent — a crucial part of Netflix’ business (it says its recommendations are better indicators of what people will rent than their “most popular” lists). But combined with hundreds of other algorithms from other minds, each weighted with precision, and combined and recombined, that otherwise inconsequential fact takes on huge importance.
“One of the big lessons was developing diverse models that captured distinct effects,” said Sill, “even if they’re very small effects.”
This approach is the opposite of how we have been taught to solve problems. There has to be a plan and a few smart folks working to the plan.
What I see here is the power of setting in place the conditions that allow for “emergence”.
Science and Research is going to explode by going down this path.
What will be needed are great supporting tools – watch this space!
