Beyond | IT : complexity science

Seth's Blog: The Billion-Dollar T-Shirt

john.mullinax — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 09:37:09 GMT

Ontological uncertainty exists when, even if you perfectly know and understand the environment you're in, you still can't predict the impact of your actions because the system is changing faster than the ripple effects of your actions can play out. This is the situation Seth Godin faced when, back in 1993-94, he wrote a book instead of launching an Internet thing-y (like a search engine) and subsequently suffered an opportunity cost of a $1 Billion or so. (Hey, there's a lot of us in that club. :-) )

What really would've happened is anyone's guess, of course, but it's a nice parable that provides a framework for understanding some things that can constrain us, and also has got me noodling on how best to think about rates of change in different contexts.

Technorati tags: change, complexity science, systems thinking, ontological uncertainty

When information is not scarce, what does it mean to know?

john.mullinax — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 08:10:00 GMT

Another very interesting video here from the folks at Kansas State University that did the Academia 2.0 post and initial response . (BTW, the first video on the linked page IS the Academia 2.0 video, so be sure scroll down to the second video.) Similar...(read more)

Computing Is A Liberal Art, Part 3: Strategies for Reinforcing Loops and the Hive Mind

john.mullinax — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 17:59:05 GMT

Technorati Tags: innovation , systems thinking , complexity science , adaptive , change , learning , Popfly , computing is a liberal art , knowledge , cyborg Here's a conundrum: if knowledge is personal, how do I benefit from what you "know"? ...(read more)

Computing Is A Liberal Art, Part 2: Knowledge is personal

john.mullinax — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 07:34:00 GMT

Technorati Tags: innovation , systems thinking , complexity science , adaptive , change , learning , Popfly , computing is a liberal art , knowledge , cyborg In the natural world, few (if any) things grow without limits. In the case of information...(read more)

Computing Is A Liberal Art, Part 1: Education Inflation

john.mullinax — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 03:59:00 GMT

Technorati Tags: innovation , systems thinking , complexity science , adaptive , change , learning , Popfly , computing is a liberal art , knowledge , cyborg Education Inflation Most of us are familiar with the rising cost of education/tuition...(read more)

Vicarious reputation growing from a virtual economy for reputation system points?

john.mullinax — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 04:03:00 GMT

It's an interesting idea that Josh Ledgard learned is being used in China, and blogged about here . I like that it tries to make the reputation system points more useful/valuable, and encourages people to ask questions they really want answered -- that...(read more)

Ontological Uncertainty and Innovation

john.mullinax — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 01:28:00 GMT

Thought folks might find this 2004 working paper from David A. Lane and Robert Maxfield at the Sante Fe Institute of interest: http://www.santafe.edu/research/publications/workingpapers/04-06-014.pdf. It’s a little dense, to say the least, so I posted this brief summary of which elements caught my attention....

As I read it (I'm simplifying, and the authors don't explicitly reference systems thinking), “ontological uncertainty” is essentially uncertainty actors in a system (as in systems thinking or systems dynamics, see The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge for more) face when the impacts of their actions last beyond the stable structure of a system itself. In other words, whether they know it or not, when a knowledge of the existing system would still not allow them to predict the impacts of their actions.

One of the things I like about this article is that it provides a larger theoretical underpinning to the advice we sometimes give ourselves in times of uncertainty and rapid change – namely, to focus on “enduring” principles. I think the authors of the linked article would argue that these principles are essentially part of a larger story we tell ourselves about the world. In fact, the principles seem to me to be especially connected to the part of our “larger story” of the world that is most *about ourselves*.

The authors argue that actors use a narrative, or series of stories about themselves and the system they are in to keep making decisions during periods of high uncertainty and that this is can inspire a confidence which can increase actor effectiveness. While the narrative can enable “effective” action, it also constrains actors to decisions that make narrative sense at decision-time. The process may not be even be conscious to actors, but by embedding narratives into their perceptions of their world, actors can make sense of context they may literally act out their (somewhat) self-“assigned roles”. In this way, actors may “back in to the future”.

The connection to innovation is summed up here:

“…[A]gents facing ontological uncertainty can enter into and nurture relationships with generative potential; and … generative potential may be realized through the discovery of semantic uncertainty, whose exploration may lead to new attributions that may then be instantiated in new kinds of artifacts or agents…. [O]ntological and semantic uncertainty lead to more ontological and semantic uncertainty, as efforts to resolve them also uncover further entities, relations and concepts that must be interpreted in their turn. The locus of these transformations can shift from one set of actors to another, from one generative relationship to another. The story is long, because the processes it is intended to illustrate are subtle and highly context dependent, but its moral is simple: novelty often arises from relationships and context, not only in flashes of inspiration in individual brains.” (p. 24).

Especially so, when actors have aligned interests but different views that they are capable of exploring with each other.

This theory also offers an interesting lens to view scenario planning, as scenario planning is essentially a mechanism for us to consciously tell ourselves more than one "story" at a time about the world we live in -- thereby giving ourselves a vehicle to individually and collectively explore different views inside our heads.

Not for the faint of heart, but insightful.

The question for you: do you believe this is insight is actionable in your enviroment?