The Tipping Point

Also just read Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point, which by comparison with Capra is a crushing bore. Yes, certain small things can have disproportionate non-intuitive effects. Yes ideas spread like contagion. Yes it helps if the idea “sticks” and is transmitted to the next generation of communicators. Yes communication is more than words. Zero-tolerance. Look after the pennies. Intentions matter. Yes it helps if the environment (context) supports the idea. No, really ?

This is memetics – just ask Darwin, Dawkins and Blackmore. (None of whom get even a reference). The fact that Tipping Point is an acclaimed best-seller proves its own point. Sh*t sticks.

I exaggerate of course. It’s not wrong, just unoriginal packaged as groundbreaking – the one thing sure fire to wind me up. Athropology is what humans do. Whether its the fashion business or business fashions. The rules of 7 and 150. Crossing Geoffery Moore’s chasm. It’s 50 / 50 in the genes and in social peer behaviour, and practically nil in rationalised messages, rules and intents of parents, educators, managers, directors, authorities or governments. It’s game theory in practice, and we’re all part of the same athropological game of life. I’d have quoted Pinker’s analysis, Gladwell quotes Judith Harris directly.

Life is the name of the game, and I want to play the game with you (or not as the case may be) – after Brucie.

No denying the evidence of Tipping Point’s success proves its own message. Oh well. Nothing new under the sun – again. Rats!

The Tao of Physics

1976 book by Frijtof Capra (with 1992 updated afterword). Written slightly after, but published slightly before, Michael Talbot’s Mysticism and the New Physics (Blogged earlier and originally read even earlier.)

Excellent books both of them. Capra is a best-seller which has a surprisingly detailed description of state-of-the-art particle physics, together with a summary of the parallels with many threads of Buddhist, Hindu and Tao world views. Compelling parallels even if it remains humanly hard to conceive as to how the sub-atomic scale can really relate to the human scale in anything but metaphors. Like Talbot, the homing in on Holography / Holochory as the technology which brings the same “whole is in the part” quantum information view into the real world. Like many writers in this space (Northrop, Talbot, Dupuy, Pinker), Capra sees world-scale significance this “new” philosophy being overlooked, and greater expression of knowledge in art and literature than in classical science. Human conscioussness must indeed be a part of any true model of the real world and must therefore be linked to quantum information effects.

Henry Stapp and Geoffery Chew get many mentions, along with the heroic Heisenberg and Einstein. (Brian Josephson, my reference for Stapp, does not.) Many references in common with Northrop too, including Mexican(?) Carlos Castaneda / Don Juan.

On the subjects of modern physics, eastern philosphies and the ancient links with pre-Socratic greek philosophy this book is practically a reference work in its own right, before one considers the enormity of the message in the parallels.

Must look out for Turning Point and Uncommon Sense.

Google losing it ?

Had several people make comments recently about Google not being what it was, about how search results are swamped with disguised commercially sponsored links ?

Can’t see it myself. As a blogger, I personally find Google amazing in the speed and depth of indexing, including my own pages – as if by magic, with no commercial input from myself. As far as I can see the sponsored links are pretty obviously advertised as such, so I don’t see these as a big blockage. What do you think ?

Spiral Model for Knowledge Acquisition

Spiral Model for Knowledge Acquisition. “Spiral” metaphor contrasted with “Waterfall” metaphor. Iterative vs Sequential. Right first time is wrong (sets wrong expectation), lots of parallel working and recycle is better. (IBM “Rational” approach for managing S/W development uses this concept if not the same metaphor.) No brainer, common sense. [Here in a psychology context too.] [In knowledge context it comes from Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995]
[Interesting search hit on my blog.]

Logical Positivism is a Meme

And memes are self-reinforcing. Talk about blindingly obvious. It’s my Catch-22. How do you argue rationally against scientific fundamentalism / logical positivism ?

I’ve read Dawkins, though I’ve still never read “The Meme Machine”, but now I’ve just read Susan Blackmore’s “Waking from the Meme Dream“. Stong Zen thread here – clearing the mind of those certainties of memes from the history of humanity – to allow a little doubt in. Waking from the collective dream that scientific rationale is the answer to everything.

I’d only previously seen memes as matter of fact metaphor for how ideas spread – I’d never seen it before as the reason why bad, but easy to understand, ideas become the norm. Again blindingly obvious. A natural selection process tending to conformance and common denominators in the space where ideas compete for airtime – the brain and the web of comms media. Where ideas are concerned good (fitness) equals easy to communicate / understand / fit the web of communication – fit with available schemata – it does not relate to any intrinsic value relationship between the content of the idea and it’s application in the world beyond communication itself, without some postive feedback. If we all hold logical / scientific schemata, and our feedback allways post-rationalises event outcomes against ideas as inputs, then all ideas will tend to be scientific.

BTW the “TAO” site (Hungarian ?!) where I found Susan’s paper has some magic content – lots of links to full texts of many interesting works including Pirsig’s ZMM naturally, only some of them in Hungarian.

Gurteen – Knowledge – Cynefin – Complexity

Where to start – I have 12 pages of notes from David Gurteen’s 3rd Knowledge Management Conference in London yesterday 3rd March 2004. (Matt Mower has blogged notes too.) The main speakers were David Snowden (IBM / Cynefin) and various advocates and users of the Cynefin framework – Martyn Laycock, Bruce Cronin, Les Johnson, Anabelle Mark. Personal impressions …

Overwhelming sense of re-inforcement, of those ill-expressed ideas of my own in this blog and my underlying thesis, by the Dave Snowden / Cynefin consulting framework analysis of modelling organisational complexity. This wave is a “Kondratiev Tsunami”, and Cynefin has given us some surfboards on which to survive when it thunders up the beach of general business management in 3 or 5 years time. Hype ? Actually I hope not, ‘cos we (all) really need this to happen on so many levels.

Not much is actually new. Boston Consulting 2×2 grids, as I’ve opined before, but with a new twist of axes that focus on what really defines the manageability of an organisation – order<>unorder and complexity<>simplicity. The way human behaviour contributes to that order and complexity (as complex-adaptive, post-rationalising agents in complex-adaptive systems”), and the socially and culturally conditioned “schemata” we humans hold to guide our decision making, are thrown into immediate spotlight as the issues to be “managed”. Anthropology, evolutionary psychology, and story-telling are as old as human life, and surprisingly for some, many philosophical writers and management commentators have been pointing out their relevance to what makes the world go round for aeons too. Cynefin get’s this stuff into management powerpoint-land not a day too soon for those of us in businesses riding the Information & Communications Technologies wave. Aren’t we all ?

How many of those presenters and participants yesterday had languages and philosophy as their first degrees ? How many had learned their wisdom in cybernetics and the like ? Most.

The questions are ancient – when you act or plan to act, how do you know what’s true and how do you know what’s right ? Newton / Einstein, Socrates / Pirsig, Rudyard Kipling / Douglas Adams / James Willis – all human life is here.

More coherent report to follow.