Post(s) tagged with "complexity"
-
Batty and Stephen Marshall, The Origins of Complexity Theory in Cities and Planningin Complexity Theories of Cities Have Come of Age (2012) Springer
‘The idea of the planned city as a knowable utopia is a chimera.’
(via gordonr)
Source: gordonr
UN-Habitat Taps Minecraft for Urban Development | Informed Infrastructure
Block by Block is a three-year partnership to support the UN-Habitat’s Sustainable Urban Development Network. The aim is to upgrade 300 public spaces by 2016. The new program grew from a project called Mina Kvarter (My Blocks) that was a collaboration between Mojang and the Swedish Building Services, with similar aims to involve the public in reconstructing neighborhoods.
Why does Minecraft, which also are spreading in schools in Sweden, succeed in getting the attention of people looking for collaboration, simulation and visualization when companies running virtual worlds like Project Entropia or Second Life does not succeed. I think the answer lies in the fact that a tool which bypass the focus on technology and quickly become an invisible tool, an extension to ones mind or limb, have a huge advantage of engaging people. We have seen a similar effect with the explosive adoption rates of the iPhone and the iPad.
The trick of becoming valuable and at the same time invisible, or ubiquituous, seems to be a shortcut to cross Geoffrey Moore’s chasm (Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers
This might be one of the greatest challenges to our species. And unless we are able to play down the urge to constantly increase complexity, we are doomed to build societies and companies that crash due to complexity-induced inabilities to adopt.
Source: informedinfrastructure.com
Work is learning and learning is the work
Harold Jarche, jarche.comWe have come to a point where organizations can no longer leave learning to their HR or training departments. Being able to understand emerging situations, see patterns, and co-solve problems are essential business skills. Learning…
This is a wonderful example of a doctor whose business is reversing the increasing complexity in society, and in this case health care, by using available cheap technology to open a single doctor practice. Just like the old times, but using new tools.
With $1,500, he set up a house-call-only practice in his Brooklyn, New York, neighborhood, serving only two zip codes. He created a website through Apple’s iWeb that featured his resume, and posted his schedule on a Google Calendar so patient’s could enter in an appointment time online.
He also opened a PayPal account for payments, and used Formstack to create forms for gathering patient medical histories and to create specific questionnaires for particular ailments. (Get tips on super-charging your documents suite.)
Whereas most practices deal with significant costs in office management, Parkinson’s start-up costs went to getting his license and buying tools, such as an otoscope and doctor’s bag.
The community’s response was immediate. Within six months, Parkinson had 400 patients, paying him from $100 to $200 per visit. (Read more on mobile payment tools for business.) In addition to old-fashioned face-to-face visits, Parkinson used whatever technology was convenient to keep in touch with his patients: e-mail, video chatting via Skype, or phone.
For young people starting business in different other areas this is nothing new. They are gathering at the coffices in groups formulating business plans, applying for funding or just start with their business immediately using the tools that are available.
What is working against this is just our mental models of “how things should be run properly” - a way of thinking which only seems to lead to increasing sophistication, i e increasing complexity, and further up to a point where everything collapses. Here I usually refer to Joseph Tainter’s theory in The Collapse of Complex Societies (New Studies in Archaeology)
Have you ever been thinking that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way economists view the world? One reason is that Economists apply linear and analytical models which simply don’t take into account e g non-linearity, which is exactly what we see around us today. During certain periods the world seems to behave according to linear models and things seems almost predictable, but between those stable periods non-linear or even chaotic phenomena is dominating and linearly created models becomes totally irrelevant.
This video is an interview with Doyne Farmer, a professor doing research complex systems at the Santa Fe institute. In this video he explains his project of making a bottom-up agent-based simulation of the economy.
The really interesting value with agent-based simulations is that they don’t reduce problems into a linear models. On the other hand they require calibration to reality as well as a lot of computer power to simulate the actions of millions of individuals.
What we also must know is that they are not very good at predicting future outcomes. They rather help is to learn about how certain patterns appears and how these patterns have certain emergent results. It is a tool for learning rather than predicting.
One way to understand this is to see the computer as a “macroscope” which helps us zoom in and out from individual behavior to the emergent patterns in order to understand under which circumstances e g collapses and other phenomena happens.
This emerging understanding and research of non-linearity, complexity and chaos have been interesting for scientist from many field for a couple of decades now, almost nothing of it have seems to have been applied to e g econometry. It is really urgent that this happens now and professor Doyne Farmer seems to be the right person to take the first steps towards a new complexity based theory of economics.
(via Doyne Farmer - Macroeconomics From the Bottom Up | Institute for New Economic Thinking)
Source: ineteconomics.org
A really well written post on a very important topic - how to understand companies as complex adaptive systems rather than a mechanistic entity. Cudos, Dave!
The sad part is that we are a group of people who have tried to get that message through since the 1990:s. Maybe the time has come? Or will it take another 20 years and the dramatic extinction of the dominating dinosaurs before we have changed management paradigm?
Don’t miss this post by Clay Shirky if you are interested in what will happen to your organization in the (maybe not so far) future. Here he use the argument of an anthropologist to explain that (even if doesn’t claim it explicitly) almost all of our “traditional” companies will collapse due to there complexity and the following inability to decrease it.
Source: shirky.com
Loading more posts
P A Martin Börjesson
To be able to see the future emerge we have to throw a wide net to catch the weak signals. In this tumble I collect things I find valuable for my work as scenario planner, strategist and futurist - for more info about me go to www.futuramb.se.
Ask me about my posts
Connect
Stuff I like
-
Time magazine examining Millenials.
-
...
-
Tiny implant can transmit realtime blood data...
-
“The Most Detailed Picture of the Internet Ever”
-
“If you’re caught with an ounce of cocaine, the...”
