Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Thoughts of Time and Space
Imagine yourself as an observer in a universe but not part of the universe. This universe contains no created objects or even energy that you can sense. No mater which way you turn or move through this universe, you sense no change. In this universe you would have no perception of space. Any place you were would seem like any other place and you would have no reference between places. You would have no perception of time either, because nothing is changing. It’s always the same.
Now imagine objects and energy beginning to emerge from the nothingness. As they became perceptible to you, you would begin to develop the perception of space. This place is different that that place over there. The rate of emergence would then lead to the development of the perception of time. Now is different than before. And, perhaps later will be different than now. Without change there is no perception of time.
Imagine now that you are early man on the created earth. Your perception of time is driven by natural events. Daylight and dark repeat in endless procession. The position and appearance of the moon changes more slowly. Seasons cycle even more slowly. Things come to life and die. Your perception of change is slow and so is your perception of time. Mystery surrounds events that do not follow your perception of time.
Now fast forward to the present time. Imagine now that your mind has developed so that ideas get created in your mind. Some of these ideas get transferred to other minds. And, other minds transfer their ideas to yours. Some of the ideas come into being as objects. The rate of change has increased both inside and outside of your mind, and your perception of time has as well. Add tools to that image and imagine that all the minds of the earth are interconnected almost simultaneously. You and every other person are at the center of the rapidly changing world in time and space. Unexpected events abound and you live in a world of mystery.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
How Is America Going to End?
In August 2009 Slate Magazine conducted a weeklong thought experiment on the United States' demise. Josh Levin was listed as the author. The study was composed of several articles during the week, a survey of readers, and some analysis of the survey data. The survey consisted of 144 scenarios of how America could end drawn from research done by Levin. Participants were asked to read brief descriptions of the 144 scenarios and to select the five scenarios they believe will contribute to the country's dissolution, then find out instantly what kind of death scene they’ve envisioned—a bloodbath or a nonviolent end, an end wrought by man or by nature—and compare their choices with those of other Slate readers.
The articles covered the topics of:
• Climate Change - We could be crushed by a climate strongman. Levin writes, “In a Weekly Standard piece on ‘The Icarus Syndrome,’ Jim Manzi notes the parallels between Britain's 1860s ‘Coal Panic’ and the modern disaster scenarios of peak oil and climate doom.” He continues, “Manzi argues that, given the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimate of a 3-degree increase in global temperature by 2100, ‘the United States is expected to experience no net material economic costs [from anthropogenic global warming] … through the end of this century.’ At the other extreme is the specter of swift weather cataclysm. Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, who wrote a brief on ‘abrupt climate change’ for the Department of Defense, argue that climate chaos will be nonlinear—that ‘clear signs of environmental catastrophe will be evident in a few decades, not centuries’."
• Preservation of Civilization - The Catholic Church helped preserve Roman civilization. Can Mormonism do the same for America? Levin comments, “When America disappears 100 or 500 or 1,000 years from now, it will be gone but not forgotten. As the world's leading military, economic, and cultural power since World War II, the United States will linger in the global gene pool and influence whatever comes next. But how exactly will Americanness get transmitted to the civilizations that replace us?
The physical structures we've built won't be our legacy. Our houses, schools, and stadiums will eventually crumble; in The World Without Us, Alan Weisman even imagines the Statue of Liberty getting knocked into the ocean by a glacier, leaving the real world in a similar state as Planet of the Apes. The ideas, art forms, and inventions that we've transmitted around the world will outlast our monuments' inevitable decay, and not just because our national backlog of McRib sandwiches may never biodegrade. While the current financial crisis has cast doubt on free-market capitalism, I'd wager that American-style economics will outlast this country's run as a political entity. The global rise of basketball, a game surpassed in worldwide popularity only by soccer, ensures that at least one artifact of American leisure will persist. America's native musical forms—jazz, rock 'n' roll, and hip-hop music—also seem like good possibilities to serve as cultural carriers.
But for America's intangible qualities to get preserved—our shared history, our ideals, our passions—someone needs to do the preserving.”
• Totalitarianism - Five steps to totalitarian rule. “As Hitler and Mussolini prepared to storm Europe, fascism began to generate interest in the United States. In Sinclair Lewis' 1935 novel, It Can't Happen Here, an American president uses an economic crisis as a pretense to take over the media, imprison dissenters, and build his own private army (the Minute Men) into an indomitable force,” writes Levin. He enumerates five phases to totalitarianism:
o Phase 1: Create a perpetual enemy.
o Phase 2: Be savvier than George W. Bush.
o Phase 3: Come to power as America slips in stature.
o Phase 4: Beef up the military and the secret police.
• States Rights - Who’s most likely to secede? Levin comments, “In the American end times, our government will take one of two forms. One possibility is that federalism will give way to an all-powerful central government. (In yesterday's global-warming thought experiment, this was the climate strongman scenario.) The other option is decentralization—in the absence of a unifying national interest, the United States of America will fragment and be supplanted by regional governance.”
• Futurists’ Views - The world’s leading futurologists have four theories. “The Global Business Network answers the same question for all its corporate and government clients: What happens next? GBN handles a lot of different whats, and even the occasional what-in-the-hell. In 2003, the group's chairman, Peter Schwartz, and his colleague Doug Randall whipped up a not-so-rosy, 22-page report on "abrupt climate change" for the Department of Defense ("The United States and Australia are likely to build defensive fortresses around their countries"). Last year, the municipality of Amsterdam asked the firm to help figure out how it might deal with immigration. GBN has also loaned out its brainpower to Hollywood, advising Minority Report director Steven Spielberg on whether Congress and the Constitution would still exist in 2054. (The answer: yes, with a few buts.),” writes Levin. Using GBN’s typical methodology, they describe four different scenarios for the end of America (quoting from the article):
o Collapse: In this scenario, the country has devolved after a series of catastrophes: unchecked climate change, a pandemic, nuclear war—the stuff that Jared Diamond books and disaster movies are made of. A catastrophe that breeds internal division, Schwartz argues, is more likely to eradicate America than any kind of external threat. A country is like a family, he theorizes. If you feel threatened from the outside, you band together—rather than tear the United States apart, 9/11 galvanized us against a common enemy. The laggard response to Hurricane Katrina, on the other hand, meant that our own government became the common enemy. A long, uninterrupted series of nationwide Katrinas—and a concomitant series of bungled federal responses—is the recipe for collapse.
o Friendly breakup: In future No. 2, the country dissolves peacefully because the overhead of running a large nation becomes unmanageable. Schwartz likens this to the breakup of the Soviet Union, a case where the cost of holding the country together proved too great and the advantages too small.
o Global governance: In our third future, the national government declines in importance relative to the world community. Barack Obama's recent brief in defense of American exceptionalism is just one indicator among many that the United States is nowhere near willing to cede its position as the greatest of the world's great powers. But Slate contributor Robert Wright argues in his book Nonzero that humankind must come together to head off the challenges of the "non-zero-sum," globalized world: climate change, biological weapons, pandemics. While Wright tells me that "you wouldn't need something so centralized" as a souped-up United Nations, he believes that if in the next 100 years "America's identity has not dissolved into some sort of larger body of global governance, then chaos will reign."
o Global conquest: The final scenario and the grimmest of all: a figure described variously as a "global Napoleon," "a much more empowered Hitler," and "a super-Mao" conquers America and the rest of the world via brute force. This idea, which Schwartz classifies as the least likely of the four, leads us to debate whether it's harder to subjugate the world than it used to be—Schwartz believes it is, as there are "more people with military competence spread across the world." That's followed by a discussion of the best method to exercise dominion over the globe. "I think the way you conquer the world these days is from space," he says. "You can put weapons up there and shut down the world."
As a study of the future the survey was flawed, but nevertheless produced some interesting results. In setting up the survey, Levin writes, “If and when America expires, we probably won't agree on the cause of death. For proof that autopsies of empires are inconclusive, consider the case of Alexander Demandt, the German historian who set out in the 1980s to collect every theory ever given for why Rome fell. The final tally: 210, including attacks by nomads on horseback, blood poisoning, decline of Nordic character, homosexuality, outflow of gold, and vaingloriousness.
In tribute to Demandt, I've gone looking for every possible reason why America could fall. I've paged through the work of scholars who have studied the characteristics of declining and failed societies. I also collected theories from futurists, doomsayers, separatists, economists, political scientists, national security experts, climatologists, geologists, astronomers, and a few miscellaneous crazy people. The result: a collection of 144 potential causes of America's future death.”
The survey itself took advantage of web site capabilities. The 144 scenarios were each assigned an icon and the icons were arranged in a dense 12 by 12 matrix. (I’m not sure why, but the popular song of the 1970s by Paul Simon popped into my head as I read these scenarios – There Are 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.)Mousing over the icon produced the name of the scenario and its brief description. When you found one of your top five, you could either drag the icon to a vote box, or click on a link to cast your vote.
Over 60,000 people participated, many from outside the US. Even though this is a large number of people, the results may not be statistically significant. The problem with an opt in survey of this type is that is is difficult to know whether the respondents are representative or not. It certainly isn’t representative of the US as over 15% of the responses came from Russia alone among other countries. And, we don’t know if this type of survey attracts people who are interested in apocalyptic scenarios. Moreover, it certainly eliminates people who would never take surveys over the Internet and those incapable of comprehending 144 different scenarios and comparing and contrasting them in their minds. I don’t remember reading anywhere that the order of the icons in the matrix were randomly scrambled for each participant to reduce any bias due to order. Also, the scenarios were not distinctly different. There were many overlaps, and sometimes the description of the scenario could bias the response.
The real puzzle for me was trying to interpret the results. On its face, it can’t be interpreted as a futures study. The question presupposed an apocalyptic end. (It’s like the proverbial “When did you stop beating your wife?”) My key to understanding the results was the realization that what the survey elicited was a reflection of the respondents fears, if the respondent was American, and perhaps hopes if an enemy of America.
In attempting to understand potential futures of a system, there are at least four questions that must be answered:
1. What are the present strengths and weaknesses of the system’s capabilities?
2. What are the opportunities and threats faced by the system over the time frame?
3. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the system’s capacity to change over the time frame?
4. What are the hopes and fears of stakeholders of the system?
This survey addressed partially half of the fourth question. However, if we assume that the results of the survey are not biased too badly by respondents who are stakeholders but outside of the US, that we can interpret the results as a mirror of our fears.
The top five scenarios were:
1. Loose Nukes: Taliban fighters wrest nuclear weapons from a destabilized Pakistan. Or al-Qaida acquires a small arsenal of nukes from a disintegrating Russia. The nonstate actors launch against the United States in an attack exponentially worse than 9/11.
2. Peak Oil: Petroleum production reaches terminal decline. Oil becomes too expensive to extract, and alternative energies can't maintain our fossil-fuel-dependent lifestyle. The developed world goes kaput, with gas-happy America leading the way to the gutter.
3. Antibiotic Resistance: As a result of factory farming and spiking sales of antibacterial hand soap, superstrains of bacteria develop that are resistant to medicine. Public health officials can do nothing but throw up their hands.
4. China Unloads U.S. Treasurys: Unwilling to finance any more of America's debt, China dumps its investment in American Treasury securities and buys up gold. With America a lousy investment, there aren't any other buyers out there. The country goes bankrupt.
5. Israel-Arab War: All-out mayhem in the Middle East as Egypt, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and more go to war. The United States moves to protect Israel and gets sucked into a generation-long conflict that saps the national will and treasury.
The most interesting analysis the author did was to create a network map of the 82 scenarios that were chosen together with at least one other scenario. The network map is shown below:
The articles covered the topics of:
• Climate Change - We could be crushed by a climate strongman. Levin writes, “In a Weekly Standard piece on ‘The Icarus Syndrome,’ Jim Manzi notes the parallels between Britain's 1860s ‘Coal Panic’ and the modern disaster scenarios of peak oil and climate doom.” He continues, “Manzi argues that, given the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimate of a 3-degree increase in global temperature by 2100, ‘the United States is expected to experience no net material economic costs [from anthropogenic global warming] … through the end of this century.’ At the other extreme is the specter of swift weather cataclysm. Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, who wrote a brief on ‘abrupt climate change’ for the Department of Defense, argue that climate chaos will be nonlinear—that ‘clear signs of environmental catastrophe will be evident in a few decades, not centuries’."
• Preservation of Civilization - The Catholic Church helped preserve Roman civilization. Can Mormonism do the same for America? Levin comments, “When America disappears 100 or 500 or 1,000 years from now, it will be gone but not forgotten. As the world's leading military, economic, and cultural power since World War II, the United States will linger in the global gene pool and influence whatever comes next. But how exactly will Americanness get transmitted to the civilizations that replace us?
The physical structures we've built won't be our legacy. Our houses, schools, and stadiums will eventually crumble; in The World Without Us, Alan Weisman even imagines the Statue of Liberty getting knocked into the ocean by a glacier, leaving the real world in a similar state as Planet of the Apes. The ideas, art forms, and inventions that we've transmitted around the world will outlast our monuments' inevitable decay, and not just because our national backlog of McRib sandwiches may never biodegrade. While the current financial crisis has cast doubt on free-market capitalism, I'd wager that American-style economics will outlast this country's run as a political entity. The global rise of basketball, a game surpassed in worldwide popularity only by soccer, ensures that at least one artifact of American leisure will persist. America's native musical forms—jazz, rock 'n' roll, and hip-hop music—also seem like good possibilities to serve as cultural carriers.
But for America's intangible qualities to get preserved—our shared history, our ideals, our passions—someone needs to do the preserving.”
• Totalitarianism - Five steps to totalitarian rule. “As Hitler and Mussolini prepared to storm Europe, fascism began to generate interest in the United States. In Sinclair Lewis' 1935 novel, It Can't Happen Here, an American president uses an economic crisis as a pretense to take over the media, imprison dissenters, and build his own private army (the Minute Men) into an indomitable force,” writes Levin. He enumerates five phases to totalitarianism:
o Phase 1: Create a perpetual enemy.
o Phase 2: Be savvier than George W. Bush.
o Phase 3: Come to power as America slips in stature.
o Phase 4: Beef up the military and the secret police.
• States Rights - Who’s most likely to secede? Levin comments, “In the American end times, our government will take one of two forms. One possibility is that federalism will give way to an all-powerful central government. (In yesterday's global-warming thought experiment, this was the climate strongman scenario.) The other option is decentralization—in the absence of a unifying national interest, the United States of America will fragment and be supplanted by regional governance.”
• Futurists’ Views - The world’s leading futurologists have four theories. “The Global Business Network answers the same question for all its corporate and government clients: What happens next? GBN handles a lot of different whats, and even the occasional what-in-the-hell. In 2003, the group's chairman, Peter Schwartz, and his colleague Doug Randall whipped up a not-so-rosy, 22-page report on "abrupt climate change" for the Department of Defense ("The United States and Australia are likely to build defensive fortresses around their countries"). Last year, the municipality of Amsterdam asked the firm to help figure out how it might deal with immigration. GBN has also loaned out its brainpower to Hollywood, advising Minority Report director Steven Spielberg on whether Congress and the Constitution would still exist in 2054. (The answer: yes, with a few buts.),” writes Levin. Using GBN’s typical methodology, they describe four different scenarios for the end of America (quoting from the article):
o Collapse: In this scenario, the country has devolved after a series of catastrophes: unchecked climate change, a pandemic, nuclear war—the stuff that Jared Diamond books and disaster movies are made of. A catastrophe that breeds internal division, Schwartz argues, is more likely to eradicate America than any kind of external threat. A country is like a family, he theorizes. If you feel threatened from the outside, you band together—rather than tear the United States apart, 9/11 galvanized us against a common enemy. The laggard response to Hurricane Katrina, on the other hand, meant that our own government became the common enemy. A long, uninterrupted series of nationwide Katrinas—and a concomitant series of bungled federal responses—is the recipe for collapse.
o Friendly breakup: In future No. 2, the country dissolves peacefully because the overhead of running a large nation becomes unmanageable. Schwartz likens this to the breakup of the Soviet Union, a case where the cost of holding the country together proved too great and the advantages too small.
o Global governance: In our third future, the national government declines in importance relative to the world community. Barack Obama's recent brief in defense of American exceptionalism is just one indicator among many that the United States is nowhere near willing to cede its position as the greatest of the world's great powers. But Slate contributor Robert Wright argues in his book Nonzero that humankind must come together to head off the challenges of the "non-zero-sum," globalized world: climate change, biological weapons, pandemics. While Wright tells me that "you wouldn't need something so centralized" as a souped-up United Nations, he believes that if in the next 100 years "America's identity has not dissolved into some sort of larger body of global governance, then chaos will reign."
o Global conquest: The final scenario and the grimmest of all: a figure described variously as a "global Napoleon," "a much more empowered Hitler," and "a super-Mao" conquers America and the rest of the world via brute force. This idea, which Schwartz classifies as the least likely of the four, leads us to debate whether it's harder to subjugate the world than it used to be—Schwartz believes it is, as there are "more people with military competence spread across the world." That's followed by a discussion of the best method to exercise dominion over the globe. "I think the way you conquer the world these days is from space," he says. "You can put weapons up there and shut down the world."
As a study of the future the survey was flawed, but nevertheless produced some interesting results. In setting up the survey, Levin writes, “If and when America expires, we probably won't agree on the cause of death. For proof that autopsies of empires are inconclusive, consider the case of Alexander Demandt, the German historian who set out in the 1980s to collect every theory ever given for why Rome fell. The final tally: 210, including attacks by nomads on horseback, blood poisoning, decline of Nordic character, homosexuality, outflow of gold, and vaingloriousness.
In tribute to Demandt, I've gone looking for every possible reason why America could fall. I've paged through the work of scholars who have studied the characteristics of declining and failed societies. I also collected theories from futurists, doomsayers, separatists, economists, political scientists, national security experts, climatologists, geologists, astronomers, and a few miscellaneous crazy people. The result: a collection of 144 potential causes of America's future death.”
The survey itself took advantage of web site capabilities. The 144 scenarios were each assigned an icon and the icons were arranged in a dense 12 by 12 matrix. (I’m not sure why, but the popular song of the 1970s by Paul Simon popped into my head as I read these scenarios – There Are 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.)Mousing over the icon produced the name of the scenario and its brief description. When you found one of your top five, you could either drag the icon to a vote box, or click on a link to cast your vote.
Over 60,000 people participated, many from outside the US. Even though this is a large number of people, the results may not be statistically significant. The problem with an opt in survey of this type is that is is difficult to know whether the respondents are representative or not. It certainly isn’t representative of the US as over 15% of the responses came from Russia alone among other countries. And, we don’t know if this type of survey attracts people who are interested in apocalyptic scenarios. Moreover, it certainly eliminates people who would never take surveys over the Internet and those incapable of comprehending 144 different scenarios and comparing and contrasting them in their minds. I don’t remember reading anywhere that the order of the icons in the matrix were randomly scrambled for each participant to reduce any bias due to order. Also, the scenarios were not distinctly different. There were many overlaps, and sometimes the description of the scenario could bias the response.
The real puzzle for me was trying to interpret the results. On its face, it can’t be interpreted as a futures study. The question presupposed an apocalyptic end. (It’s like the proverbial “When did you stop beating your wife?”) My key to understanding the results was the realization that what the survey elicited was a reflection of the respondents fears, if the respondent was American, and perhaps hopes if an enemy of America.
In attempting to understand potential futures of a system, there are at least four questions that must be answered:
1. What are the present strengths and weaknesses of the system’s capabilities?
2. What are the opportunities and threats faced by the system over the time frame?
3. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the system’s capacity to change over the time frame?
4. What are the hopes and fears of stakeholders of the system?
This survey addressed partially half of the fourth question. However, if we assume that the results of the survey are not biased too badly by respondents who are stakeholders but outside of the US, that we can interpret the results as a mirror of our fears.
The top five scenarios were:
1. Loose Nukes: Taliban fighters wrest nuclear weapons from a destabilized Pakistan. Or al-Qaida acquires a small arsenal of nukes from a disintegrating Russia. The nonstate actors launch against the United States in an attack exponentially worse than 9/11.
2. Peak Oil: Petroleum production reaches terminal decline. Oil becomes too expensive to extract, and alternative energies can't maintain our fossil-fuel-dependent lifestyle. The developed world goes kaput, with gas-happy America leading the way to the gutter.
3. Antibiotic Resistance: As a result of factory farming and spiking sales of antibacterial hand soap, superstrains of bacteria develop that are resistant to medicine. Public health officials can do nothing but throw up their hands.
4. China Unloads U.S. Treasurys: Unwilling to finance any more of America's debt, China dumps its investment in American Treasury securities and buys up gold. With America a lousy investment, there aren't any other buyers out there. The country goes bankrupt.
5. Israel-Arab War: All-out mayhem in the Middle East as Egypt, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and more go to war. The United States moves to protect Israel and gets sucked into a generation-long conflict that saps the national will and treasury.
The most interesting analysis the author did was to create a network map of the 82 scenarios that were chosen together with at least one other scenario. The network map is shown below:
Monday, January 11, 2010
The Story of Stuff
The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute film that takes viewers on a provocative and eye-opening tour of the real costs of our consumer driven culture—from resource extraction to iPod incineration.
Annie Leonard, an activist who has spent the past 10 years traveling the globe fighting environmental threats, narrates the Story of Stuff, delivering a rapid-fire, often humorous and always engaging story about “all our stuff—where it comes from and where it goes when we throw it away.”
Leonard examines the real costs of extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal, and she isolates the moment in history where she says the trend of consumption mania began. The Story of Stuff examines how economic policies of the post-World War II era ushered in notions of “planned obsolescence” and “perceived obsolescence” —and how these notions are still driving much of the U.S. and global economies today. Leonard’s inspiration for the film began as a personal musing over the question, “Where does all the stuff we buy come from, and where does it go when we throw it out?” She traveled the world in pursuit of the answer to this seemingly innocent question, and what she found along the way were some very guilty participants and their unfortunate victims.
Written by Leonard, the film was produced by Free Range Studios, the makers of other highly popular web-based films such as “The Meatrix” and “Grocery Store Wars.” Funding for the project came from The Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption and Tides Foundation.
View the Video
Annie Leonard, an activist who has spent the past 10 years traveling the globe fighting environmental threats, narrates the Story of Stuff, delivering a rapid-fire, often humorous and always engaging story about “all our stuff—where it comes from and where it goes when we throw it away.”
Leonard examines the real costs of extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal, and she isolates the moment in history where she says the trend of consumption mania began. The Story of Stuff examines how economic policies of the post-World War II era ushered in notions of “planned obsolescence” and “perceived obsolescence” —and how these notions are still driving much of the U.S. and global economies today. Leonard’s inspiration for the film began as a personal musing over the question, “Where does all the stuff we buy come from, and where does it go when we throw it out?” She traveled the world in pursuit of the answer to this seemingly innocent question, and what she found along the way were some very guilty participants and their unfortunate victims.
Written by Leonard, the film was produced by Free Range Studios, the makers of other highly popular web-based films such as “The Meatrix” and “Grocery Store Wars.” Funding for the project came from The Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption and Tides Foundation.
View the Video
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Science as an Innovation Commons
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants" -- Isaac Newton in: Letter to Robert Hooke, February 5, 1675/1676*
Science has more or less successfully had an innovation commons for years. The development of the "scientific method" is credited to Roger Bacon. At times the commons has been limited to specific countries, or regions or alliances. And, at various times threats like trade imbalances, wars, the Cold War, military threats or terrorism have placed limitations upon who can participate and what types of sharing can occur. However, the trend seems to be to expand the science commons to the whole earth.
I've been thinking about this while working on the idea of an innovation commons. I have not researched this issue, I'm just drawing on past knowledge and experience, but there seems to be several principles that one can derive from science:
* The very strong culture of referencing and footnoting contributions.
* A strong culture against plagiarism
* Mechanisms for contributions to exist for a very long time.
* Mechanisms to index and file contributions
* Libraries with low barriers to entry that provide access
* Cultures and enablers that incent participation
* Reputation systems
* An inherent belief in the system not only by participants but by those who administer participants as well
* Institutions that foster the creation of knowledge
* Professional associations that facilitate the commons and help participants to develop
* In some cases, government funding
* See http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ShouldersOfGiants for more information. This quote, which I've used before, is not nearly as impressive when you understand the context. But, out of context, it makes a good point.
Science has more or less successfully had an innovation commons for years. The development of the "scientific method" is credited to Roger Bacon. At times the commons has been limited to specific countries, or regions or alliances. And, at various times threats like trade imbalances, wars, the Cold War, military threats or terrorism have placed limitations upon who can participate and what types of sharing can occur. However, the trend seems to be to expand the science commons to the whole earth.
I've been thinking about this while working on the idea of an innovation commons. I have not researched this issue, I'm just drawing on past knowledge and experience, but there seems to be several principles that one can derive from science:
* The very strong culture of referencing and footnoting contributions.
* A strong culture against plagiarism
* Mechanisms for contributions to exist for a very long time.
* Mechanisms to index and file contributions
* Libraries with low barriers to entry that provide access
* Cultures and enablers that incent participation
* Reputation systems
* An inherent belief in the system not only by participants but by those who administer participants as well
* Institutions that foster the creation of knowledge
* Professional associations that facilitate the commons and help participants to develop
* In some cases, government funding
* See http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ShouldersOfGiants for more information. This quote, which I've used before, is not nearly as impressive when you understand the context. But, out of context, it makes a good point.
Markets as an Innovation Commons
A market is a type of commons as well, and in some cases may even be considered an "innovation commons".
I have read about mythology, anthropology and history, but I am by no means expert. Over the years I've developed a sense of the development of markets that I want to share. Much of this has been developed through conversations with people, especially my partner, Donna Prestwood. It is not rigorous research, but I do want to share the story I've developed. I've put this Italics, because it is a story, not a history.
During times when our ancient ancestors were hunter/gatherers and lived in tribes, the concept of territory was developed (See I told you it was a story. I started with "once upon a time".) Knowledge of what existed outside the territory was limited. The "other" who lived outside your territory was either enemies or strangers. Both were feared. An incursion into your territory was almost surely to provoke an attack, even if the incursion was not an attack itself.
As the boundaries of the territory became established and known or even marked, the "other" avoided incursion unless intent upon an attack. Paths of travel began to be developed along the boundaries of the territories. The first paths bypassed the territories of the tribes.
Sometime during this development people got the idea of bringing gifts to the boundary of their own territory, to the edge of the known. The gifts were left a s a peace offering. Among some tribes this led to the development of concept of potlatch. The tribes brought gifts to the boundary in a type of asynchronous exchange. Potlatch cultures developed when winning meant giving the better gift. Either as peace offerings or potlatch, the practice did reduce the amount of physical conflicts.
Since strangers passed along these boundaries in transit around the territories, it was only natural that somehow they began to enter into the mix. The resulting development led to the creation of markets along these boundary/paths. And, eventually this led to the concentration of villages around the markets, especially at crossroads.
Early in our development, humans developed the sense of having to bring gifts to the edge of the known. In some cultures this ended up as sacrifices. In others, it was food or precious goods. We carry that tradition on now in the form of gifts brought to the altar of our religion. The altar representing symbolically the boundary between what is known and the unknowable.
As a result, the original concept of a market was that it was held on "sacred" ground; it was safe. The boundary was not a place for war. It was a place of peace. Markets today should be "sacred" in that sense. This may be why we are so incensed when someone violates the trust of the market and cheats, lies, or steals.
In some cultures the concept of exchanging gifts at the borders, (Still celebrated by the way every Friday evening in the fall at Texas high school football games with the students of the two schools exchanging gifts at the 50 yard line before the start of the game. Apparently the gifts don't work to bring peace and hostilities have to be undertaken however ritual the hostilities are.) led to the development of a bartering system. From that came the concept of the development of value for different types of goods. Note that adding strangers into the mix brought different types of goods into the market not indigenous to the tribes.
In what sense is a market an innovation commons? Goods produced or manufactured are the embodiment of knowledge. In the ancient market, an individual skilled in making axes could teach the "other" how to make the ax. But, it's more efficient and rewarding to exchange the ax for other things needed or money. Even if the goods are grown, harvested, hunted or extracted, their presence at the market embodies the application of knowledge. Information was also exchanged at a market as well, in a loose bartering sense.
One of the things that makes a market work is the mechanism of valuing goods and services. Another is the trust and safety. Others? I welcome comments.
Are we now at a point in the development of civilization where an innovation commons would work? If so, what are conditions or principles that would assure its success? What can we learn from successful markets?
What can we learn from e-Bay? I don't know enough about it to comment, so I would welcome other comments. One element of e-Bay I do know about is the rating system. Buyers and sellers rate each other after the transaction. A bad reputation prevents you from further participation in the market.
I have read about mythology, anthropology and history, but I am by no means expert. Over the years I've developed a sense of the development of markets that I want to share. Much of this has been developed through conversations with people, especially my partner, Donna Prestwood. It is not rigorous research, but I do want to share the story I've developed. I've put this Italics, because it is a story, not a history.
During times when our ancient ancestors were hunter/gatherers and lived in tribes, the concept of territory was developed (See I told you it was a story. I started with "once upon a time".) Knowledge of what existed outside the territory was limited. The "other" who lived outside your territory was either enemies or strangers. Both were feared. An incursion into your territory was almost surely to provoke an attack, even if the incursion was not an attack itself.
As the boundaries of the territory became established and known or even marked, the "other" avoided incursion unless intent upon an attack. Paths of travel began to be developed along the boundaries of the territories. The first paths bypassed the territories of the tribes.
Sometime during this development people got the idea of bringing gifts to the boundary of their own territory, to the edge of the known. The gifts were left a s a peace offering. Among some tribes this led to the development of concept of potlatch. The tribes brought gifts to the boundary in a type of asynchronous exchange. Potlatch cultures developed when winning meant giving the better gift. Either as peace offerings or potlatch, the practice did reduce the amount of physical conflicts.
Since strangers passed along these boundaries in transit around the territories, it was only natural that somehow they began to enter into the mix. The resulting development led to the creation of markets along these boundary/paths. And, eventually this led to the concentration of villages around the markets, especially at crossroads.
Early in our development, humans developed the sense of having to bring gifts to the edge of the known. In some cultures this ended up as sacrifices. In others, it was food or precious goods. We carry that tradition on now in the form of gifts brought to the altar of our religion. The altar representing symbolically the boundary between what is known and the unknowable.
As a result, the original concept of a market was that it was held on "sacred" ground; it was safe. The boundary was not a place for war. It was a place of peace. Markets today should be "sacred" in that sense. This may be why we are so incensed when someone violates the trust of the market and cheats, lies, or steals.
In some cultures the concept of exchanging gifts at the borders, (Still celebrated by the way every Friday evening in the fall at Texas high school football games with the students of the two schools exchanging gifts at the 50 yard line before the start of the game. Apparently the gifts don't work to bring peace and hostilities have to be undertaken however ritual the hostilities are.) led to the development of a bartering system. From that came the concept of the development of value for different types of goods. Note that adding strangers into the mix brought different types of goods into the market not indigenous to the tribes.
In what sense is a market an innovation commons? Goods produced or manufactured are the embodiment of knowledge. In the ancient market, an individual skilled in making axes could teach the "other" how to make the ax. But, it's more efficient and rewarding to exchange the ax for other things needed or money. Even if the goods are grown, harvested, hunted or extracted, their presence at the market embodies the application of knowledge. Information was also exchanged at a market as well, in a loose bartering sense.
One of the things that makes a market work is the mechanism of valuing goods and services. Another is the trust and safety. Others? I welcome comments.
Are we now at a point in the development of civilization where an innovation commons would work? If so, what are conditions or principles that would assure its success? What can we learn from successful markets?
What can we learn from e-Bay? I don't know enough about it to comment, so I would welcome other comments. One element of e-Bay I do know about is the rating system. Buyers and sellers rate each other after the transaction. A bad reputation prevents you from further participation in the market.
Communication : Knowledge and Values
Communication between and among people is very complex. There are many channels and nuances. However, for the purpose of innovation, I have found the following simple model useful. It is based on knowledge and values.
If people seeking to communicate have the same knowledge and the same values, communication is very easy. This is what happens between friends. It's comfortable. However, if you really have exactly the same knowledge and values, the transactions carry no real meaning. Nothing new can be created.
If the people have the same knowledge but different values, when communication is attempted, an argument usually results. Operating on the same knowledge with different values results in different interpretation and prioritization of the knowledge. This quite often happens in politics and religion. (And, it may be going on in America right now.)
If people have different knowledge and values, not much communication can take place. If an attempt at communication is made, a lack of understanding results, or at best a misunderstanding occurs.
If people have different knowledge but the same values, a conversation can result. In a conversation, innovation can occur.
What Is an Innovation Commons?
An innovation commons is a space (physical or virtual) that enables innovation through the mutual and interdependent creativity of its members. It has the following characteristics:
* Open system (bounded)
* Everyone contributes
* Everyone can use the results
* Members who don’t contribute are excluded
* Fluid & flexible
* An abundant resource system
Other names that people have used to describe this type of system are open source, open innovation, democratic innovation, inclusive innovation, peer to peer (P2P), smart mobs and free agent collaboration. I think that the innovation commons concept, whatever it ends up being named, is one of the most important developments in how people work together.
Some attempts at creating an innovation commons have been successful, but most have failed. Why? What are principles of a successful innovation commons?
Note: The phone number and e-mail given this recording are wrong. Correct are 512.632.6586 and paschumann2009@gmail.com.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)