Diverse behaviors, from the kamikaze behavior of worker bees protecting the hive to the tradition of female praying mantids who dine on their mates, serve not individual survival but the ability of molecular codes (like DNA) to replicate. Now that idea codes can replicate electronically, we should keep an eye out for things that serve the interest of ideas but not the interest of individuals.
For example, consider the idea that we should treat certain folks as subhuman. If someone says that it's OK to treat you in this way, then you might either: (A) echo the idea by saying that folks should treat them as subhuman, or (B) downplay the idea as an ill-informed reaction that we must guard against given our neolithic heritage in this electronic age.
Note that in case A, by imitating those with the bad idea you serve the idea. Moreover, by ignoring the real shortcomings of the promoters (ie. that they offer no solutions) or by treating them as worthy adversaries, you might help distract from the real challenges that we face while lending credibility to those with the bad ideas.
In case B you might illustrate how those who promote the bad idea have no solutions to offer anyone, if indeed that's the case. This helps to put the bad idea and those who promote it in their place. It also puts the onus on you to offer balanced solutions, e.g. which tangibly support public health, individual freedom, family values, informed politics, cultural diversity, and scientific awareness.
Which of these two choices do you like best?
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Scoping ideas
Satellite radio, like national TV, is a platform for non-local content. Thus hidden behind its market attractiveness (and potentially high production values) is a capability for purveying spectacle only on a national scale.
Is this a benign fact, or does it bring with it fundamental changes in what folks spend their time thinking about, and the ways they might interact through communications?
Imagine cells in your body trying to respond in an informed way to the world around. They communicate with one another using a finite set of recognizable molecules.
Hence they represent objects in the world around in those terms: "If that's an adrenaline siren, we had better run to shelter quickly!" "Hello, serotonin, long time no see." "Did testosterone just walk in the door?"
So already it's clear that living things, when they communicate, necessarily reduce things in the world around to molecular (or idea) codes that only silhouette what they're intended to represent.
Now let's complicate things by creating new channels for distribution of those molecules. When you cut your finger, instead of keeping the blood-clotting enzyme released in the area of the wound, imagine that it's instantly made available by "molecule youtube" everywhere in your body. If that enzyme is not somehow tagged as "meant for the cut and not the brain", this could cause some trouble.
In other words, just as our bodies need molecules made for local distribution (e.g. within a cell or within an organ) and other molecules for distribution throughout the body, so do our minds need locally-tuned ideas as well as ideas marked-up for global distribution. If we don't label them accordingly and ask folks to respect the difference, in these days of rapid electronic communication we should not be surprised if locally-targeted broadcasts are having bad effects globally, and vice versa.
Can you think of any recent examples of this in the news?
Is this a benign fact, or does it bring with it fundamental changes in what folks spend their time thinking about, and the ways they might interact through communications?
Imagine cells in your body trying to respond in an informed way to the world around. They communicate with one another using a finite set of recognizable molecules.
Hence they represent objects in the world around in those terms: "If that's an adrenaline siren, we had better run to shelter quickly!" "Hello, serotonin, long time no see." "Did testosterone just walk in the door?"
So already it's clear that living things, when they communicate, necessarily reduce things in the world around to molecular (or idea) codes that only silhouette what they're intended to represent.
Now let's complicate things by creating new channels for distribution of those molecules. When you cut your finger, instead of keeping the blood-clotting enzyme released in the area of the wound, imagine that it's instantly made available by "molecule youtube" everywhere in your body. If that enzyme is not somehow tagged as "meant for the cut and not the brain", this could cause some trouble.
In other words, just as our bodies need molecules made for local distribution (e.g. within a cell or within an organ) and other molecules for distribution throughout the body, so do our minds need locally-tuned ideas as well as ideas marked-up for global distribution. If we don't label them accordingly and ask folks to respect the difference, in these days of rapid electronic communication we should not be surprised if locally-targeted broadcasts are having bad effects globally, and vice versa.
Can you think of any recent examples of this in the news?
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Your nanodecisions
If I thought my insurance provider was managing my risks, I'd be wrong. Every time I decide for or against: (i) eating an apple, (ii) walking through a cloud of smoke, (iii) putting my hand on a newly-encountered surface, (iv) taking a short-cut to work in my car, (v) clicking on a weblink, or perhaps even (vi) reading a book title, I am encountering new excitations and/or codes and therefore taking a physical risk. Hopefully, I'm also taking responsibility for the decision.
Is this a trivial fact that pertains only to me, or to you? Quite the contrary. Our communities are built on our individual ability to observe critically, and make these decisions in an informed way. They count on each of us as professional observers and decision makers, daily choosing a balanced trajectory along paths strewn with a million unavoidable risks.
As these risks become more complex and perhaps more challenging, it's crucial that we leverage our evolving abilities to communicate. In other words, this is an important question: How can we help one another think and communicate about our everyday choices, and how they relate to the risks we (and our communities) encounter on various scales of space, time, and organization?
Here a few ideas that sound good to me:
Is this a trivial fact that pertains only to me, or to you? Quite the contrary. Our communities are built on our individual ability to observe critically, and make these decisions in an informed way. They count on each of us as professional observers and decision makers, daily choosing a balanced trajectory along paths strewn with a million unavoidable risks.
As these risks become more complex and perhaps more challenging, it's crucial that we leverage our evolving abilities to communicate. In other words, this is an important question: How can we help one another think and communicate about our everyday choices, and how they relate to the risks we (and our communities) encounter on various scales of space, time, and organization?
Here a few ideas that sound good to me:
- Budget some extra time for talking with folks who have different perspectives.
- Learn about how the world is different to lifeforms on different size scales, like ants in the milliworld, microbes in the microworld, and viruses in the nanoworld.
- Read about processes that affect our world on different time scales, like solar evolution on the billion year scale, geological change on the million year scale, climate change on the thousand year (and shorter) scale, resource depletion on the hundred year scale, carbon dioxide emission on the ten year scale, and information technology whose global impact changes annually.
- Finally, discuss the impact of these processes on public health, the nature of friendships, family interactions, community participation, cultural involvement, and our understanding of the world around.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
How many levels?
There's input that directs your attention, and then there's input that's useful on more than one level. Which do you find more satisfying?
For example, saying "The new kid in school talks funny" highlights separation between a newcomer to class and the kids you've known for a while. That's about all.
On the other hand, "Oscar said his uncle taught him to dive for pearls" if true is informed about the newcomer on more than one level. Specifically it tells us that he comes from a place that is different, but like us he has a name, a gender, an uncle, an ability to learn, and some cool technical knowledge to boot.
I bring this up, because there may be solid scientific reasons to prefer communications of the second kind over the first. For instance, baby plants and animals today depend on cells biased toward molecular communication of the second kind for their embryonic development.
For example, saying "The new kid in school talks funny" highlights separation between a newcomer to class and the kids you've known for a while. That's about all.
On the other hand, "Oscar said his uncle taught him to dive for pearls" if true is informed about the newcomer on more than one level. Specifically it tells us that he comes from a place that is different, but like us he has a name, a gender, an uncle, an ability to learn, and some cool technical knowledge to boot.
I bring this up, because there may be solid scientific reasons to prefer communications of the second kind over the first. For instance, baby plants and animals today depend on cells biased toward molecular communication of the second kind for their embryonic development.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Group balance?
On this blog we've mentioned the challenge of getting our act together on six layers of organization: looking in/out from skin, family and culture. This isn't easy, at least not for me.
Giving myself the benefit of the doubt, I figure that by and large folks in any organization might come up a bit short. This shouldn't be a problem, as long as we move beyond individuals and focus on making behaviors of the group informed to all six levels instead.
The multiscale awareness discussed here is like political correctness. When folks are un-PC it's often entertaining and easy to empathize, even though it's disastrous when the behavior of institutions ignores due respect for facts, cultural and political diversity, or family and individual rights.
In this sense political correctness poses a similar challenge. Can we respect the innate tendency to speak our mind willy-nilly while ensuring that our institutions as a whole don't degenerate over time?
What does it take, and what situations can YOU list where we've managed to pull this off?
Giving myself the benefit of the doubt, I figure that by and large folks in any organization might come up a bit short. This shouldn't be a problem, as long as we move beyond individuals and focus on making behaviors of the group informed to all six levels instead.
The multiscale awareness discussed here is like political correctness. When folks are un-PC it's often entertaining and easy to empathize, even though it's disastrous when the behavior of institutions ignores due respect for facts, cultural and political diversity, or family and individual rights.
In this sense political correctness poses a similar challenge. Can we respect the innate tendency to speak our mind willy-nilly while ensuring that our institutions as a whole don't degenerate over time?
What does it take, and what situations can YOU list where we've managed to pull this off?
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Media & leader-tales
Early human communities didn't have writing, and the behavior of local leaders was an important and practical topic of everyday talk. Fast-forward to the 20th century. Weekly local newspapers adapted this oral tradition to print, in small towns even as national TV arrived on the scene. It didn't take long for electronic media to pick up on our passion for leader-talk.
It's much cheaper to create one story of interest to 300 million people, than to create a million stories each written for only 300. No surprise then that the focus on local and non-politcal issues is eclipsed (especially during a quarter of every 4 year US national election cycle) by a focus on news about only one of the 300 million jobs that hold the nation together.
Like the world series, the national election is a shared cultural event. However in places struggling to counterbalance discontent (like Kenya most recently), such a national focus can have its downside.
Let's recap. Thanks to their layered structure, communities are immersed in unfolding stories about: (i) public health, (ii) the nature of interactions between individuals, (iii) the state of families, (iv) citizenship (including leadership) in corporate as well as governmental offices, (v) the evolution of culture (sports too) in its many forms, and (vi) reports on systematic study of the world we live in. Each of these stories has neighborhood, village, county, provincial, national and global takes.
If each of these 6 topics were covered on 5 levels (lumping national and global together), this would give each local venue 30 stories to capture audience with per week. For a nation of 300 million people this means national stories in 6 topic areas, a couple of hundred state-level stories on those topics , maybe 6000 county-level stories, more than 100,000 village-level stories, and over 2 million neighborhood stories i.e. say in total 2.6 million stories in these 6 topic areas per week: Lots of stuff to write that is of interest somewhere.
Those fewer national and global stories carry the weight of more interested listeners. With 5 levels to cover (is that too many?) then national stories deserve 20% of total production effort and coverage, with national politics a sixth of that if one allocates time also to national matters of public health, relationships, family, culture, and science. Compare this <4% of time warranted on citizenship at the federal level to what big media venues spend on only the alpha-wolf leadership part of that story e.g. on tales about the job of US president.
Thus time spent pursuing old-style leadership-talk at the national level decreases coverage for the other matters listed above. NBC's "Meet-The-Press" session with pundits, on the day after the Indian Ocean tsunami, stuck out like a sore thumb in this way. It keeps our eyes off the ball, even if we ignore the local stories that individual communities miss out on and the reporters not employed as a result.
When it comes to news, we get what we ask for. If there are better ways, no need to wait for big media. Internet and wireless communications open many new doors for making our information environment multiscale-smart. What can you and I do to help?
It's much cheaper to create one story of interest to 300 million people, than to create a million stories each written for only 300. No surprise then that the focus on local and non-politcal issues is eclipsed (especially during a quarter of every 4 year US national election cycle) by a focus on news about only one of the 300 million jobs that hold the nation together.
Like the world series, the national election is a shared cultural event. However in places struggling to counterbalance discontent (like Kenya most recently), such a national focus can have its downside.
Let's recap. Thanks to their layered structure, communities are immersed in unfolding stories about: (i) public health, (ii) the nature of interactions between individuals, (iii) the state of families, (iv) citizenship (including leadership) in corporate as well as governmental offices, (v) the evolution of culture (sports too) in its many forms, and (vi) reports on systematic study of the world we live in. Each of these stories has neighborhood, village, county, provincial, national and global takes.
If each of these 6 topics were covered on 5 levels (lumping national and global together), this would give each local venue 30 stories to capture audience with per week. For a nation of 300 million people this means national stories in 6 topic areas, a couple of hundred state-level stories on those topics , maybe 6000 county-level stories, more than 100,000 village-level stories, and over 2 million neighborhood stories i.e. say in total 2.6 million stories in these 6 topic areas per week: Lots of stuff to write that is of interest somewhere.
Those fewer national and global stories carry the weight of more interested listeners. With 5 levels to cover (is that too many?) then national stories deserve 20% of total production effort and coverage, with national politics a sixth of that if one allocates time also to national matters of public health, relationships, family, culture, and science. Compare this <4% of time warranted on citizenship at the federal level to what big media venues spend on only the alpha-wolf leadership part of that story e.g. on tales about the job of US president.
Thus time spent pursuing old-style leadership-talk at the national level decreases coverage for the other matters listed above. NBC's "Meet-The-Press" session with pundits, on the day after the Indian Ocean tsunami, stuck out like a sore thumb in this way. It keeps our eyes off the ball, even if we ignore the local stories that individual communities miss out on and the reporters not employed as a result.
When it comes to news, we get what we ask for. If there are better ways, no need to wait for big media. Internet and wireless communications open many new doors for making our information environment multiscale-smart. What can you and I do to help?
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Beyond money?
Money and markets mirror an organic component of the world around, namely ordered energy i.e. energy available to do work. How are they similar?
The first law of thermodynamics guarantees that you can't create ordered energy out of thin air. The second law says you have to spend "thermodynamic availability" to get it. In principle, that's how money works too i.e. somebody has to earn it.
That second law also says that ordered energy is easy to waste. For instance the heat in a cup of hot coffee gradually thermalizes to room temperature, just as does the work available from those ice cubes in your tea if you let it sit out on the table all day. Money's also easy to waste, even without inflation. The successful use of money and markets likely draws strength from these organic roots.
However, money is one-dimensional. It maps everything onto one scale. The communities we live in, by comparison, are multilevel structures like our bodies. Molecules build cells that build organs that build individuals that build families that build cultures.
The question then is this: After monoscale money, multiscale what? Are there idea sets as deeply reflected in nature as that of ordered energy, which can take our concept of earnings and even health beyond money's one dimension?
The answer is yes. They involve the emergence of order in nature on all levels. They have deep roots in cosmic evolution and the natural history of invention. And they are just getting off the ground. Hopefully, this is one place that you can find out more about them in the days ahead...
The first law of thermodynamics guarantees that you can't create ordered energy out of thin air. The second law says you have to spend "thermodynamic availability" to get it. In principle, that's how money works too i.e. somebody has to earn it.
That second law also says that ordered energy is easy to waste. For instance the heat in a cup of hot coffee gradually thermalizes to room temperature, just as does the work available from those ice cubes in your tea if you let it sit out on the table all day. Money's also easy to waste, even without inflation. The successful use of money and markets likely draws strength from these organic roots.
However, money is one-dimensional. It maps everything onto one scale. The communities we live in, by comparison, are multilevel structures like our bodies. Molecules build cells that build organs that build individuals that build families that build cultures.
The question then is this: After monoscale money, multiscale what? Are there idea sets as deeply reflected in nature as that of ordered energy, which can take our concept of earnings and even health beyond money's one dimension?
The answer is yes. They involve the emergence of order in nature on all levels. They have deep roots in cosmic evolution and the natural history of invention. And they are just getting off the ground. Hopefully, this is one place that you can find out more about them in the days ahead...
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