Brian Frank » think21st

How has the Internet changed the way you think?

brian@brianfrank.ca (Brian Frank) — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 09:28:16 +0000

For 2010′s Edge Annual Question, John Brockman asked 165 of the smartest people he knows “How has the Internet changed the way you think? ”

[It's a familiar topic around here... and I actually answered the question when I wrote about last year's.]

A surprising number of answers are about sex. More than a few antagonize or avoid the question, humourously and intelligently… There are too many disappointing clichés about distractions and short attention spans… And I haven’t seen the prefix “cyber” and the word “virtual” so much in a long time.

Most importantly, there are many brilliant gems in the bunch.

I picked out some of the entries that are most relevant what I normally cover (and I tried to curate them into some kind of sensible order, resulting in some really good ones being left off my list):

Douglas Rushkoff – The Internet Makes Me Think in the Present Tense
Clay Shirky – The Shock of Inclusion
Tim O’Reilly – Pattern Recognition
Eric Drexler – The Web Helps Us See What Isn’t There
Marissa Mayer – It’s Not What You Know, It’s What You Can Find Out
Jason Calacanis – Trust Nothing, Debate Everything
Sean Carroll – Calling You on Your Crap
George Dyson – Kayaks vs Canoes
Paul Saffo – A Third Kind of Knowledge
William Calvin – Internet Enhancement of the Thought Process
Nick Isaac – The Evolving Giant
Fred Tomaselli – Cut and Paste
Gloria Origgi - The Power of Conversation
Dave Morin – Context is King
Paul Kedrosky – The Large Information Collider, BDTs, and Gravity Holidays on Tuesdays
Nassim Taleb – The Degradation of Predictability — And Knowledge
Howard Rheingold – Attention is the Fundamental Literacy
Douglas Coupland – Transience is Now Permanence and the Fate of the Middle Classes (Doomed)
Chris Anderson – The Rediscovery of Fire
Andrian Kreye – The Greatest of All Traits: The Internet Has Become Inherently Boring
Emily Pronin – An Impenetrable Machine

And there’s still way too much left on the cutting room floor. You canperuse the index of 165 entries, or you can just go ahead and read all 130,000 words.

Effects of Ideas, Stories, and Theories

brian@brianfrank.ca (Brian Frank) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:29:00 +0000

Picking up the Thinking in the 21st Century thread again… I’m nearing the end of the most philosophical stuff. It all turns on this one… Just a reminder to read this as a proposal — a basis for refinement and elaboration (not to mention citations and evidence), not presuming finality.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how we’re motivated by a feeling of efficacy, a sense that we’re accomplishing something. That can occur via challenging yet doable activities that inspire a feeling of “flow,” but it can also occur on a bigger scale and over a longer term, generating a sense of identity and crystalizing in the form of personal and professional goals.

To understand the bigger picture we have to look at an even smaller one.

We don’t just experience efficacy and relevance in the physical world, we experience it in the mental world as well, in the way we interpret events and attribute cause, purpose, and intentionality where it may or may not have actually occurred.

At the very least this is simply a result of the fact we must always be thinking something. Validity is secondary.

The stream of thought does not stop flowing as long as we’re awake (and hardly slows down when we’re asleep). When a single idea seems to stick in our mind, it isn’t just sitting there like an inert stone; persistent and “stable” ideas are actually refreshed and held in place by thoughts streaming around it. Even meditating “on nothing” is not a cessation of thinking but rather a channelling of consciousness into recurrent and regulated patterns (e.g. by focusing on the breath).

In itself, thinking can be a way to experience efficacy and relevance — specifically when opportunities in the physical environment aren’t as accessible or fruitful, i.e. when there is nothing around, or when circumstances are too difficult to engage in, or when some insight has just occurred that generates an interesting sequence of thoughts.

On another level, there seems to be a natural tendency for people to interpret events as being more relevant to oneself than what might actually be the case (especially if outcomes are positive, not so much if they’re negative).

Such “self-centredness” is perfectly understandable, given that we’re each irremovably placed, essentially at the centre of one’s own unique world (or frame, or horizon, or whatever you want to call it). Most of what you experience does have something to do with you because you’re the one factor that’s constantly there.

You’re the “usual suspect” who’s always at the scene.

But we learn to appreciate that even though we’re always at the centre of what we experience, our world doesn’t revolve around us. We understand that things happen for other reasons that don’t necessarily relate to us, but that doesn’t necessarily mean our explanations become completely accurate.

Subjective factors like availability, salience and vividness are what determine our immediate explanations (at least until we’ve learned to make more objective thinking more available, salient, and vivid).

(See Jonathan Haidt’s on how “moral reasoning is usually a post-hoc construction, generated after a judgment has been reached” in “The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment.” Pages 10 and 11 specifically describe “relatedness and coherence motives” that roughly corroborate my general thesis. Also, I’m fairly indebted to Haidt’s Happiness Hypothesis as a kind of bibliographical hub.)

Here’s where the concept of “will to relevance” gets even more useful (and where my claims become more original, speculative, and controversial).

At any given moment, you aren’t the only factor motivated by relevance; your ideas are all trying to make themselves more relevant too (note I’m anthropomorphizing as a provisional heuristic).

The way your long-term explanations, beliefs, and intentions take shape is largely determined by which ideas manage to achieve the most efficacy and relevance in your mind — the ones that consistently manage to “fit” circumstances and sustain themselves by making themselves useful (most basically by helping you survive and succeed).

[Note: I use efficacy and relevance somewhat interchangeably. In some cases it's more useful and accurate to say "relevance"; in others it's better to say "efficacy" or "effect." I think I'm moving towards a concept that synthesizes both but I don't have the means (or the need) to make it precise yet... Another thing, because I rely on the concept of effectiveness so heavily, note that where I use "affect" it is not in the technical psychological sense but in the more mainstream sense, "to have an effect upon."]

It’s as if our ideas are literally “attracted” to the kinds of causal roles they’re qualified for. When we observe things happening in the world, specific ideas step forward to nominate themselves for attribution.

Think about some of the theories and stories you habitually invoke when you see things you like or don’t like. Pay attention to what comes to mind when you see these headlines:

Maybe all of those resonated with you in some way; at least a few must have naturally accommodated themselves into some narratives you have going on in your mind.

For example, a left winger reading the first headline might naturally start thinking about how Obama is getting tangled up in “Bush’s mess,” a right winger might read it and naturally think here’s yet another example of the Obama’s shine wearing off, and a frequent traveller might read it and think of miserable airport experiences in the past and how they’re going to become worse.

Or maybe your reaction is simply “I don’t care” or “this is over my head,” etc.

Even those kinds of reactions are still largely determined by theories and stories that have been developed through past experience, inherited, or absorbed from social influences.

(See Dan McAdams on “The Psychology of Life Stories“; shorter article here.)

Other ideas on that level are stories and theories about truth, God, good and bad karma, peace, evil, love, justice, honour, corruption, greed, work ethic, “meaninglessness,” personal competence, blessedness… among many others.

(See the idea of “world view” or Weltanshauung.)

We each allow concepts like those to address the most general, complex, and ambiguous events and aspects of life.

Even to say “I don’t trust theories” is itself a kind of theory — a very superficial and evasive one that people use to cope with complexity by diverting attention to more familiar activities (by doing so it can actually be a very effective idea most of the time; in some situations it can be ruinous).

But it isn’t just that people invoke ideas to explain events; the motivation goes both ways: it’s as if ideas want to be relevant and useful.

Our ideas even affect what we notice and what we ignore — as if they’re working covertly to increase their chances of being called-upon.

Keep in mind that no special motivation (or definite end) is required. Ideas, like everything else, are temporal and so must happen.

Consciousness streams forward and makes use of whatever perceptions and concepts are available for specific direction, but direction is secondary to the necessity of action.

It isn’t easy to describe this process because of how fluid and complex it is. We haven’t had good models or metaphors to use.

Here is where we can learn a lot from the web — specifically the way systems organize according to relevance — the way they’re always changing, merging together, and splitting off into new threads.

We can learn to manage this process more or less effectively. It means first of all becoming more aware of what stories and theories we use.

Second, it means assessing which way the favours flow from particular explanations: i.e. Did your response to the Obama headline merely exercise and reinforce your pre-existing ideas? Or did it help you look at new facts more honestly and customize your conclusions to fit the particular circumstances?

It also means routinely reflecting on the ways in which our past experiences have informed our stories and theories. Where did your ideas come from? Do you remember when you articulated them or do they just seem to have been “there” all along? When have your ideas changed — if at all? Which of your ideas and beliefs are most in need of improvement? If you had to change your ideas, how would you do it?…

Finally, what are your thoughts about all of this? What do you think of what I’ve written here? What ideas and experiences from your past informed your response? Have they helped or hindered your ability to make sense of it (or point out mistakes, or improve it), apply it, and build on it?

The most important question is, how will it affect your thinking for next time? Will it make you more or less effective — more or less relevant?

Making It a Great Year

brian@brianfrank.ca (Brian Frank) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 11:20:10 +0000

Literally!

Out of all the things buzzing in my head for a “new decade” post, the idea I want to highlight most is the increasing importance of making stuff.

It’s been germinating in my mind via MakerCulture in the Making by UWO + Ryerson’s online journalism classes. Last week it was crystalized by Umair Haque’s “Builders’ Manifesto” for HBR:

Today’s builders are igniting the distant grandchild of yesterday’s industrial revolution: an institutional revolution for a post-industrial world. They are forging the new building blocks — from ethical investment, to deep journalism, to socially useful finance, to universally accessible communication — that a rusting economy, society, and polity so urgently demand.

The 21st century doesn’t need more leaders – nor more leadership. Only Builders can kickstart the chain reaction of a better, more authentic kind of prosperity.

Our culture has already become very goal-driven in a pernicious way: the numbers and titles are often treated as more valuable than real value. Look at Enron, look at AIG. Look at the gamesmanship in politics. Look at what people are not learning at school…

But this week I’ve noticed a change in the way people are assessing their past-year performance and setting their New Year goals.

It isn’t just about hitting targets within institutional frameworks, I’m seeing more of us talking about learning and stretching beyond given boundaries… making stuff with the resources at hand — things we can actually own and control — creating bits of value that might be small, but at least we can keep…

It’s another example of the web as our way to understanding. I’m watching people use it as a platform for tinkering and trying things, learning and taking on new challenges, putting their work out in the open for feedback and discoverability, collaborating on projects and sharing knowledge, and growing in the process.

This isn’t new (remember this is one of my earliest public predictions) but the fact it is becoming more deliberate and openly accountable is noteworthy. There seem to be new conventions emerging (i.e. replacing resumés with reputation and digital breadcrumbs).

Eventually organizations will learn to incorporate makership, or constructivism, or whatever you want to call it. Entrepreneurship will eventually be brought within institutional bounds… eventually. For now, they still have a lot of learning to do.

Locally I noticed Scott Webb contrast his creative and entrepreneurial endeavours with the institutional apathy he sees at his “day job”:

within my corporate cubicle life, my job usually requires us to do an annual review and most people don’t care about it. It’s a time they despise and try to avoid.

Compare that attitude with what we see around the blogosphere, especially in everyone’s annual reviews.

Look at Pat Dryburgh’s post written in the wee hours of Christmas morning, outlining how he’s going to work on making his approach to design more purposeful and strategic in the new year.

One of Kevin Van Lierop’s year-end posts is what made all this click for me:

This past year has been a productive one for me in terms of photography. Not only did I purchase my first DSLR, but I started a community group, have had a number of images published and have even made a little bit on money on the side because of my photos.

The number of people whom I have met because of photography has increased within the last few months and I am glad to have met each and everyone of them.

All in all this past year has been, what I will call, an overwhelming success.

The success we make for ourselves is so much more generative and sustainable than the kind that’s merely won and awarded “in recognition.”

And surprise surprise, research shows that making progress is the number one motivator at work. According to an article in the current Harvard Business Review, this part by Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer:

On days when workers have the sense they’re making headway in their jobs, or when they receive support that helps them overcome obstacles, their emotions are most positive and their drive to succeed is at its peak.

Ironically, I’m deeply skeptical about our macro-economic prospects for the next couple of years, yet I’m writing a very positive post.

I’m optimistic because I know that despite the worst that could happen, as long as we’ve adopted the spirit of makership and mastered autonomous creativity, we have the will and means to adapt and endure anything.

So bring it on…

Collaborating Openly on 21st Century Government

brian@brianfrank.ca (Brian Frank) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:09:52 +0000

Some thoughts culminating out of the last post about how open standards emerge… a recent post by fellow Londoner Bill Wittur on some open government basics… the latest post on the Google blog defining their notion of openness… and a book I perused a couple days ago by Beth Noveck on open collaborative government.

There’s no way I can avoid doing another post on openness.

First, here’s a strong excerpt from Google’s post on “the meaning of open“:

Open will win. It will win on the Internet and will then cascade across many walks of life: The future of government is transparency. The future of commerce is information symmetry. The future of culture is freedom. The future of science and medicine is collaboration. The future of entertainment is participation. Each of these futures depends on an open Internet.

Let’s get an amen. That’s a key refrain that’s only going to keep getting louder (though, take note, that isn’t to assume that everyone who says it genuinely believes it).

Google has put a kind of surge on this subject lately, especially (and perhaps not coincidentally) after taking flak and subsequently reversing a decision about their purchase of EtherPad. There’s also Google’s Data Liberation team tasked with making it easy for users to get their data & docs out of Google if they want to go elsewhere. They’ve been spreading the word about that lately. Listen to the first part of the Dec 12 episode of This Week in Google for an overview from Brian Fitzpatrick.

Much of that is along the lines of old news. We’re largely familiar with arguments and narratives about net neutrality, creative commons, digital rights, privacy, and the development of open source projects like Linux, Mozilla, Wikipedia, and so on.

But when we approach the area of government there are some important differences that haven’t been fully explored and charted yet. We’re pretty much still at the stage of brainstorming and prototyping. We can be pretty sure we’ll get some useful applications for transit and trash collection in the near future — but what about the actual process of making policy decisions?

In the 90′s, progressive assumptions were that digitization would facilitate a more “direct democracy,” i.e. voting would become more streamlined and maybe more frequent. That hasn’t been the case (or at least it hasn’t been the case that those developments were obvious improvements).

Trying to improve on that lately I’ve been into the notion of “deliberative democracy,” i.e. it’ll make discussion and deliberation on issues more effective.

But a couple of days ago I realized that won’t work out great either.

I was gratefully able to peruse Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, by Beth Noveck (who leads the Obama Administration’s Open Government Initiative; seen here chatting with Tim O’Reilly). Noveck explains how technology doesn’t make government more effective through deliberation, but rather through collaboration:

Deliberation is focused on opinion formation and the general will (or sometimes on achieving consensus). Consensus is desirable as an end unto itself. Collaboration is a means to an end. Hence the emphasis is not on participation for its own sake but on inviting experts, loosely defined as those with expertise about a problem, to engage in information gathering, information evaluation and measurement, and the development of specific solutions for implementation.

Deliberation focuses on self-expression. Collaboration focuses on participation. To conflate deliberative democracy with participatory democracy is to circumscribe participation by boundaries that technology has already razed.

It doesn’t matter what tools we have, if it’s framed as an attempt to persuade, people will continue to disagree — perhaps even more persistently and disruptively, given the new tools.

[Note I don't think this diminishes the value of transparency and engagement by politicians and bureaucrats. I think any government initiative can benefit from a blog, for starters.]

The distinction between deliberation and collaboration really caught me. It changed my thinking almost instantly. But we’ll have to do a lot to adjust our most basic assumptions and habits about government and political discourse.

How to Build in the 21st Century

brian@brianfrank.ca (Brian Frank) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 01:16:51 +0000

The natural inclination right now for geeks of a certain type is to start dreaming up new standards bodies, or how they can participate in the Open Web Foundation to make a Super Awesome Twitter API Evolution Committee. Here’s my recommendation: Don’t. Don’t do any of that shit, and don’t run off to make membership badges for the Treehouse Club quite yet. Instead, just iterate and ship. Keep making new apps and see what you can do to stretch the limits of the existing methods and structures.

[quoting Anil Dash]

It’s everywhere. It’s natural. I’ve written about it before as “designer’s ego.” I’m not a developer and I don’t understand the full implications of the Twitter API, but the logic applies universally. People just really want to do great things in big, carefully planned and orderly ways — but that’s not how the best stuff gets made.

Conventional wisdom says that open standards are created by endless deliberations among experts and big tech companies, and those do sometimes gain traction.

But this is how it usually happens: Someone goes first. No one thinks of it as an open standard. Then someone clones it. All of a sudden people get ideas. Inspired, someone goes third. At this point it’s inevitable that there will be a fourth and fifth and so on.

[quoting Dave Winer]

Creating new things is all about putting different things together — e.g. WordPress or Tumblr + the Twitter API — but the moments of opportunity don’t last forever. Opportunities don’t stay ripe forever, sometimes if you don’t make something out of them right away, they’re gone before there’s time to ask permission or run it by the committee (assuming you can even explain it without a working model).

Copenhagen might be another example case where the desire for Super Awesome Committees (and Super Awesome Rallies) has got in the way of actual accomplishments — though in that case I think big attention-getting efforts may help the cause, even if they don’t accomplish as much as we’d like in real terms.

In other words, sometimes we need a big lever, sometimes we can just use our hands and the lever just gets in the way.

It depends. It comes down to managing a moving equilibrium between open and closed approaches by applying a kind of Coasean logic.

As long as agents can effectively conduct transactions (or “integrations” in these cases) without some kind of overarching structure, then no formal association is required. But for some cases the cost of finding and facilitating integrations might be high enough to require an organizational structure or plan.

The problem is that once you make it structured, the structure itself consumes maintenance resources and attention, even if nothing is accomplished.

Umair Haque had a great, thought-provoking post on something like this today.

Start from the ground, look at what’s around us and what we really need. Don’t trample what’s already growing in order to plant a new orchard… you might starve before fruition (if there’s any at all).

Metaphors For Work

brian@brianfrank.ca (Brian Frank) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:19:47 +0000

Metaphors aren’t just literary devices, they affect our intuition and reasoning in ways we’re barely aware of.

Which isn’t to say they’re bad; they’re essential — that’s the point.

By calling Metaphors We Live By a “landmark” in the previous post, I wasn’t trying to be dramatic, I was simply trying to provide better information so readers can clearly place it in the bigger realm of ideas.

Same with the phrase “literary devices.”

Even my use of the word clearly uses a conceptual metaphor (UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING), and the notion of placing derives from another (IDEAS ARE SPATIAL OBJECTS).

A lot of these are very deep; a lot rarely change, as in the metaphors representing our common spatial bias. Here are more examples via Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought:

… the pronoun it (A SITUATION IS A THING) and the prepositions in (TIME IS SPACE), to (INTENTION IS MOTION TOWARD A GOAL), and among (AFFILIATION IS PROXIMITY)… of, from a Germanic word related to “off,” and for, from the Indo-European term for “forward.”

Those kinds of metaphors won’t change any time soon, but think of all the industrial and military metaphors people still use that aren’t appropriate in organic situations we face in the networked, open, social economy.

For example, if you find yourself thinking and talking about “innovation engines” you might be missing subtle-yet-essential insights into the emergent, heuristic, generative nature of innovation. Rather than connotations of combustion and automation, it might be more appropriate to think in terms of cultivation and cross-pollination, etc.

Also, is something like a “product launch” (with connotations of one massive, carefully planned thrust) still appropriate in world of rapid-prototyping and beta?

What do people think? Are there others we should think more carefully about?

Personally I wasn’t this aware of the effects of language until I read Metaphors We Live By a few years ago (btw thanks to reader Liz for recently putting it back on my radar).

Now that it’s become habit I’d say awareness of metaphors is definitely one of the keys to thinking in the 21st century.

Web as Our Way to Understanding

brian@brianfrank.ca (Brian Frank) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:17:16 +0000

Continuing the Thinking in the 21st Century series…

Great comment by Phronk on the previous think21st post [excerpt]:

Autonomy, flow, exploration, striving for material (digital) goods, relatedness, competence, they’re all represented, often in explicit numerical form. And they interact in a complex, emergent way that even the game developers can’t anticipate.

See also: Twitter.

I’ve been learning a lot more from the web than merely web-stuff — and so have you, whether you know it or not.

First, our tools, activities and surroundings literally teach us how to think. We constantly absorb metaphors and images that go on to inform our intuition and reason.

If you haven’t read it yet, take a look at Lakoff and Johnson’s landmark, Metaphors We Live By, or Steven Pinker’s more general and up-to-date book, The Stuff of Thought.*

In the past, the most dominant metaphors in civic and commercial spheres were from machines, war, and sports. Now the metaphors are becoming more organic (e.g. concepts like “streams” and “cloud computing”). As life and work gets more networked and dynamic via the web, life and work via the web also supplies the metaphors for making sense of the new structures and systems.

The one that highlights my point the best is the concept of “memes.”

Five years ago, unless you read Richard Dawkins you probably would have raised an eyebrow and walked away from anyone saying that ideas are like genes, selected and reproduced through culture. But then Digg and YouTube came along, and suddenly the idea makes intuitive sense with barely any explanation at all.

Now, not only is “meme” a mainstream concept, but people are using the concept to make more platforms and applications that work on that same principle… and then we’ll gain new metaphors an models from those… and so on.

Further, these applications are fertile ground for research by anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and other social scientists. Phronk pointed this out in his comment as well: the web generates massive amounts of hard data — and it’s already digitized for analysis and visualization.

(Unless Google and Facebook decide to keep it all to themselves.)

Beyond that, as we already know, the knowledge that may result from all that research can be more readily accessed by anybody, as it’s more easily searchable and there’s a corresponding trend towards open access journals, etc.

It isn’t just today’s research we’re gaining more access to; we’re also getting the entire history of human knowledge at our fingertips.

After all, data doesn’t tell the whole story, sometimes it prevents us from seeing the forest for the trees. Taking a step back to see what people thought and wrote about human fundamentals 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 2000 years ago (because some things will never change) can be very fruitful, in my experience.

Combine those developments with the powerful new metaphors and models the web is making for us, and I run out of words (until the web makes better ones) to describe what a freaking exciting opportunity this is to learn and create.

And there’s one more factor we can’t forget: it isn’t just the data and ideas that are connected, we’re connected.

Better ways to converse and collaborate bring the other three developments together even more richly, making the possibilities for learning literally unimaginable.

*Note: there’s already an almost-finished post about metaphors.

Dynamic Motivation

brian@brianfrank.ca (Brian Frank) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 10:13:28 +0000

Continuing the series…

Trying to understand human motivation and behaviour, a few years ago I finally came across this article: Motivation Reconsidered: The Concept of Competence, by Robert White (1959).

According to the current APA abstract:

Theories of motivation built upon primary drives cannot account for playful and exploratory behavior. The new motivational concept of “competence” is introduced indicating the biological significance of such behavior. It furthers the learning process of effective interaction with the environment. While the purpose is not known to animal or child, an intrinsic need to deal with the environment seems to exist and satisfaction (“the feeling of efficacy”) is derived from it.

White’s appreciation of the continuity of experience is what I found especially compelling:

Dealing with the environment means carrying on a continuing transaction which gradually changes one’s relation to the environment. Because there is no consummatory climax, satisfaction has to be seen as lying in a considerable series of transactions, in a trend of behavior rather than a goal that is achieved. It is difficult to make the word “satisfaction” have this connotation, and we shall do well to replace it by “feeling of efficacy” when attempting to indicate the subjective and affective side of effectance [motivation].

A number of theories have extended that insight. Probably the most widely known is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s idea of flow (1990), which means to become fully absorbed in a challenging-yet-doable activity that requires concentration and skill but seems effortless, involves goals, and generates constant feedback and growth.

Complementing flow is the notion of intrinsic motivation, specifically self-determination theory described by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan (1985).

As with the ideas of White and Csikszentmihalyi, the need for competence is key to self-determination theory. Deci and Ryan also emphasized the importance of personal autonomy — i.e. to recognize that outcomes result from personal decisions, not from external interference.

Deci and Ryan also include the need for relatedness, or “organismic integration” — a process of assimilating environmental elements inwards and accommodating oneself back outwards to the environment.

Of course, it almost goes without saying. Any theory of development (i.e. usually focused on childhood) involves a process of interacting with the environment and vice versa — and there is no shortage of variations on theories of cognitive/ego/identity/moral development in which the individual and the environment affect each other — but these theories seem underutilized outside of professional psychology and education.

Look at economics and political theory — or simply day-to-day politics — and the conversations about the “future of media.” A lot of our conversations about motivation are still framed in Freudian and Jungian vocabularies. It might be wanting too much by me to hope to change “folk psychology,” but as the world gets more sophisticated and influence becomes more distributed, I think we could stand to use some more robust insight from this corner.

The trick to fully understanding these concepts (in a way that’s forward-compatible to future challenges) is to overcome the habit of looking for something objective and specific — whether it’s an object that’s supposedly pulling from outside or something pushing from within. As Richard deCharms (whose work influenced Deci & Ryan) argued in Personal Causation (1963):

The notions of motivation and motive are left over from the philosophic notions of will and volition which psychology has banned… There simply is no objective phenomenal reality that can be identified as a motive. You cannot point to a physical object and say that is a motive…

While concrete objects might frame motivation, I don’t think they are motives — at least not in any ultimate or absolute way. A trophy, a cheque, or a bottle of beer might seem to motivate, but only temporarily (i.e. not once you have it); things’ motivational qualities are not stable or sustained.

To really understand motivation we must appreciate that our existence is complex and emergent — something Csikszentmihalyi elaborated on in The Evolving Self, describing flow as an “autotelic” process analogous to biological evolution.

Because flow “fosters the expansion of an individual’s set of enjoyed pursuits,” it’s dynamic and unstable. It’s difficult to define from one moment to the next precisely how compelling an experience will be [quote is from "The Construction of Meaning Through Vital Engagement," Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, in Flourishing, 2002].

Something that’s too easy or too difficult one instant might become interesting enough to engage with a moment later (say, if someone else comes along and starts doing it — it becomes social), then the person might learn to like it enough to do it independently, it might become a regular activity, which might lead to others, etc…

This basic and thorough instability is why I proposed and elaborated a heuristic “uncertainty principle.” We have to navigate a middle way by balancing the two extremes.

On hand there’s a risk that by making accounts too concrete, they’ll be wrong.

On the other hand there’s a risk that by making accounts too ambiguous, we won’t be able to say anything that wasn’t already said thousands of years ago; we’d simply be reiterating what Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism have said for ages, in deliberately vague and often contradictory ways — for exactly this reason: it’s too hard to say anything on the matter with more than a partial degree of certainty.

Which brings us back to philosophy…

Note: this isn’t anything like an adequately general account of motivation; my aim for now is to make a case for understanding the temporal aspect better — I can always come back later for the hedonic treadmill, etc.

Applying Social Uncertainty

brian@brianfrank.ca (Brian Frank) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:58:39 +0000

Continued from the social uncertainty principle post, using the analogy of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.

Like virtually all of the ideas I’m describing in this series, the social uncertainty principle is a heuristic for observing ideas-in-action and overcoming fallacies that affect them.

Specifically it’s a rule of thumb for working out a balance between ideas that are based exclusively on statistics and ideas that are generated exclusively via intuition.

Heisenberg veralised it as “the more precisely the position [of a particle] is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known, and conversely…”

Thanks to Phronk’s comment I recognize an adjustment needs to be made to that — emphasizing what we should do rather than what we don’t know.

Heisenberg would have taken for granted there’s still work to be done, but when it comes to understanding human dynamics, there’s always a temptation to assume we already understand things so we don’t need to look further — which is precisely the opposite of what I meant.

So for my purposes the principle should be stated “the more precisely we’ve determined quantitative factors, the more we must qualitatively consider possibilities, and vice versa.”

Consider the rational choice model in economics, according to which agents are supposed to maximize the utility of their decisions within certain boundary conditions.

It’s an abstract slice of time in which the decision-maker is supposed to be a static object calculating a bunch of static variables.

Life doesn’t happen like that.

In reality a decision-maker’s mind is humming with thoughts and feelings, the circumstances would be undulated by an ever-varying drama of nudges, irritations and stimuli.

But rational choice serves as a baseline of reference. Without it we’d have a much harder time recognizing the variations caused by irrationality; we wouldn’t have an objective framework for assessing and comparing qualitative factors (not to mention our perception of those qualitative factors).

As a partial aside, some things we might assume are irrational can be interpreted as attempts to optimize utility. For example the willingness to pay more for a red car might seem irrational (or “merely” aesthetic) but it can also be interpreted as an investment in future status and bargaining power, signaling virility which can maximize attention, choice of potential mates, etc. Ultimately I don’t think we can reduce and quantify mating decisions (at least not most) but by framing it like that we get a clearer and more usable understanding of the storybook aspect of romance.

There’s another huge difference between applying an uncertainty principle to physics vs applying it to social and economic circumstances (stress the word applying, I’m not necessarily referring to pure academic research): when we apply statistical models we can significantly determine what kind of responses we’ll get.

There’s supposed to be an observer effect in physics too but this goes way beyond that. It’s more like a “designer effect.”

Products are framed to consumers in ways that direct them (often quite aggressively) according to which factors the seller believes are most important. When only given those options, consumers will select accordingly because they can only choose from within the framework that’s offered.

There are always more untested variables than anyone in the market is aware of.

While the basic models might work for a while, eventually a black swan is going to come along and break the framework (do I even have to mention the finance crisis as a still-looming reminder).

Think of how American car manufacturers marketed vehicles a few decades ago, think of how confident they were that they knew the American consumer better than the Japanese or European companies entering the market.

American companies underestimated the value of quality, safety, and fuel efficiency because they were too busy trying to beat each other on other factors.

They weren’t seeing all of the information that was potentially available, they weren’t trying hard enough to think of new questions to ask. It wasn’t even that they weren’t listening; consumers can’t be expected to ask for something that doesn’t exist yet, sometimes someone has to offer them something before they know they want it.

Think of how Southwest Airlines disrupted their industry by reframing how people can choose to fly. Go down the list of disruptive and highly successful companies and you’ll find people using a bit of imagination and trusting their own judgement.

Likewise within organizations.

Your survey feedback is affected by which questions you ask. If you ask employees to rank the relative importance of, say, 6 different measures of job satisfaction, those statistics aren’t going to tell you how to satisfy employees, those statistics should primarily be a tool for making personal-level interactions more informative.

In turn, the information coming out of informal interactions (as it pertains to professional decisions) should be formalized and tested as objectively as possible.

The imaginative folks who started Southwest and all the rest didn’t move forward without a lot of diligent research to corroborate (and correct) their instinct and judgement.

It’s too hard to control the sample and ensure information is coming from an appropriate selection of sources, and second because we can’t see how our attitude and biases are subtly affecting those conversations, and third because our biases and intuitions can further affect our interpretations.

It’s by working with the static slices of time and learning how to interpret them that we learn to understand what’s happening.

Understanding isn’t a thing we hold, it’s an activity we learn and maintain through practice.

It’s also worth considering that putting data and intuitions together isn’t just prescriptive, it’s descriptive; i.e. we never handle facts without affecting them with emotions or intuitions.

Look at politics and conspiracy theories.

Look at how some Republican extremists have taken hold of a few bits of information (if “information” is even the right word) about Obama and his policies, which have interpreted through their existing feelings and biases. Going a step further they’ve arrived at theories about how the “facts” fit together, then converted those theories themselves into supposedly certain facts.

The same thing happens on the left.

What ought to happen is instead of using little bits of information as reasons to be outraged, people should stop for a moment and ask what information might disprove these theories and actively look to see if that information exists.

If and when it becomes clear the theories are false, then everything becomes information for assessing what went wrong, it becomes a platform for improving intuitive judgement for the future.

For example, the idea that Obama was setting up “death panels” is untrue as it pertains to Obama, but as it pertains to people who believed the stories it’s useful information — it’s data for understanding those people’s biases and intuitions.

Specifically, it’s information they should be looking at themselves, using it to try and monitor and ameliorate their irrational impulses.

That’s the ultimate verification or falsification we should be watching for: not just how accurate the ideas themselves are themselves, but how effective we are at managing our ideas.

Social Uncertainty Principle

brian@brianfrank.ca (Brian Frank) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 06:56:49 +0000

Continuing the previous discussion of object bias and conceptions of time…

As a very rough rule of thumb I like to apply a kind of generalized version of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle:

“the more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known, and conversely…” [via SEP]

Applied to social and economic models, replace “momentum” with any type of progress or change.

The more statistically rigorous we think we understand a market or an organization, the less we know about the human factors surging through it.

When it comes to understanding the human side, the best instrument we have is human judgement and intuition (ironically, how the mind works so well is itself subject to considerable uncertainty).

And conversely, personal impressions and intuitions aren’t enough either; we need hard facts to keep biases and errors in check.

Same with individuals.

The more clearly we think we have someone or something defined, the more attentive we should be to unexpected changes.

It’s really an oscillating process between quantification and qualification: we need hard data and definitions, but those should only guide and discipline our judgement, not determine it.

Bottom line: we have to keep thinking.

Notes on Creative Philosophy

brian@brianfrank.ca (Brian Frank) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 07:48:01 +0000

Some readers may have noticed I’ve been getting little deeper and more technical lately. I’m trying to unburden myself of all of the theoretical equipment I’ve been using for the past few years — trying to make it explicit, get it out into the open, into the light of day.

I should stress it’s just a provisional outline — something to get a better sense of where the weak spots are and which questions most need asking (and were to look for answers).

It’s a bit of an experiment, very much in line with blogging and beta-think (to use a term Jeff Jarvis has used a lot)… and I have some other developments in mind as well (developing “knowledge synthesis” as a genuine discipline with a recognized role in information ecosystem).

Specifically, other than Jarvis on beta think and process vs product, I got a recent wake-up call from the vocabulary and tone of the talks given by danah boyd and Kevin Marks at the Web 2.0 Expo. We’re starting to really penetrate into new conceptual territory — not just a few radicals, but much of the mainstream as well.

The conversation is getting to where I’m comfortable: it isn’t an extension of the tech and marketing convos any more. Social science is catching up to the social web discourse and helping it become its own monster.

Which is sort of what I’ve been waiting for, for a while.

My recent experience with EduPunk gave me a huge push too, so did the talks I did, and I can’t forget to mention all the culture of change that I’m recognizing here in London and the urge to contribute something more concrete to it.

I’m not trying to prove or discover anything, just get better at thinking about the challenges in our world.

Unfortunately there aren’t really any schools set up to do that — at least there weren’t back when I started this around 2002 – 2004.

It’s been reassuring and a little gratifying to see the bigger conversation (especially the one going on around the web) gradually adopt the same vocabulary and a lot of the same sorts of ideas I worked out independently.

It’s assuring, but also extremely frustrating that I haven’t been able to convert this understanding into much credibility or recognition yet.

Now I’m getting a little less cautious and focusing on just getting stuff out where it can be found and corrected and developed further.

As a partial aside, it’s now clear that I work a lot more effectively this way: working day-to-day on things as they happen, incrementally moving a lot of projects forward at once by switching between them, rather than dedicating large chunks of the calender to one carefully planned project after the next. We need people who are good at doing things that way — and there are plenty — but given the nature of the world in 2010 we need people who can work this way too.

In other words, instead of doing things “the right way,” I’m trying to do things a better way.

I’m saying “here’s what I’ve got so far, let me know what sounds stupid — or what you know to be completely wrong — or which turns I might have missed… adopt and apply what you like, but don’t just take it or leave it… we all have a responsibility to be skeptical and discerning…”

It’s almost 2010.

We’ll have to get a lot better at doubting what’s handed to us and recognizing value in what’s been neglected.

I’ll be putting ideas out as posts and then setting up static pages to correct and develop the ideas further (at brianfrank.ca/concepts — I’d love to eventually integrate a wiki). I’m hoping I can get all of the ideas out in rough form this month.

The posts will be as atomized as I can make them, but I hope readers will appreciate that this is an ongoing thing (being a blog) and no individual post is going to be perfect.

If I make a mistake or overlook a reference, that’s what comments and future posts are for.

Thanks a ton for the feedback so far. While I was writing this I received a few new comments and suggestions at the same time through different channels. It’s especially encouraging because immediately before that I was feeling a lot of anxiety about this.

I’m feeling really vulnerable — more so than when I first started blogging.

I’ve been tough on myself about being rigorous and thorough, but there’s only so much I can do with my resources. I’ve been very strict about my vocabulary to use, how much research I need to cover in case I missed something, going over things again and again looking for inconsistencies…

And it’s still very far from being airtight — especially since I did most of the research years ago and it’s not as fresh as it once was (before that pesky reality known as “having to earn a living” intervened).

I guess if I’m still worried about it being “airtight” I haven’t fully made the adjustment yet… but nobody’s perfect — right? :)

Things Happen Because Time Exists

brian@brianfrank.ca (Brian Frank) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:47:30 +0000

Diving in even further over my head, here’s further elaboration of the philosophy I use.

To understand why we do things, we have to appreciate why things happen at all.

It’s ridiculously simple: things happen because time exists.

I’ve found this principle to be a useful heuristic for grounding uncertainty and making random occurrences continuous with the rest of experience.

If something weird happens — e.g. someone acts crazily, markets go haywire — rather than guessing wildly at causes or dismissing the event as completely unexplainable, we can start by reminding ourselves that “something had to happen” and organize our thoughts from there.

In many cases there isn’t enough information to know why or how something occurred, sometimes we have to wait for more information or develop some intermediate ideas first.

But some people (like me) can’t wait; we need something to fill that gap while we continue to wait and work for something better.

The principle that “things happen because time exists” looks a lot like vitalism (an old idea, largely discredited), except instead of postulating some kind of “force” that’s impossible to ever prove or disprove, this principle simply recognizes and respects temporal qualities that are undeniable in reality but are very difficult to transcribe into theory.

Refer back to my earlier post on object bias, or reification, and consider how we evolved for survival in a world of concrete objects.

We naturally think in terms of permanent objects; time is something we intuit quite naturally through our actions but we have trouble forming it in our conscious minds without making time analogous to space.

(As discussed by Lakoff and Johnson in Metaphors We Live By and Philosophy in the Flesh, and reiterated by Steven Pinker in The Stuff of Thought.)

Try to visualize the smallest particles of matter. If you’re like me you see little stone-like objects, to which only then am I able to add temporal qualities like motion and change.

Now try doing it the other way, try imagining particles with only temporal qualities first…

If you’re like me you can’t do it — it seems absurd — because I don’t know of anything that’s purely temporal. My brain isn’t equipped for it.

As far as anyone really knows, there are no purely temporal objects, everything must have spatial qualities like location and volume.

But take a closer look at life, everything has temporal qualities too — everything moves and affects other things — nothing is purely spatial.

Yet we routinely allow ourselves the liberty of imagining purely spatial objects with no temporal qualities.

For the sake of balance, what would happen if we allow ourselves to postulate purely temporal objects as well?

That isn’t as weird as it might initially seem, we sort of already do: think of uncertainty and chance.

Science makes use of purely temporal concepts (in the sense I’m using the term) by applying notions of uncertainty and chance in theories of quantum physics and evolution.

The idea that “things happen because time exists” doesn’t really answer anything, it’s a way to admit uncertainty and ambiguity where it belongs, to prevent myself from resting too comfortably on supposedly stable facts and ideas.

Object Bias

brian@brianfrank.ca (Brian Frank) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 06:14:21 +0000

This is part of my attempt to outline my thinking about thinking. Consider it a proposal, open to revision and refinement. Even after years of work, it will never be perfect or final.

The core of my practice of theory is an appreciation of [the "reification fallacy," or] what I call “object bias” — our tendency to conceive experience composed of distinct and permanent objects.

We identify patterns of more or less consistent phenomena over time and turn these into concepts which we talk about as if they’re concrete.

For example we notice the quality of redness appearing on many different things and we conceive there to be a thing called the colour red; we imagine it exists independently, in some pure form.

Likewise for concepts like “freedom” and “truth.”

People say “we found freedom” or “we’re bringing freedom to the people” as if freedom is an object that can be picked up and handed over (or taken away).

Freedom is not a thing in reality; it’s a concept we imagine and use to make life understandable, and in effect more manageable.

Concepts like freedom allow us to tie patterns of experience that are effectively similar into bunches.

These concepts are heuristics that are “close enough” to reality that they tend to work. They may break down in some situations, but most of the time their benefits let us (or compel us) to overlook their shortcomings.

The portions of experience that get associated with these concepts might meet explicit criteria or they might not. Much of the time (and ultimately, if you dig far enough) the terms of a concept can’t be defined; the process is largely tacit and felt — even involuntary.

It’s as natural and constant as breathing — and just as difficult to consciously control.

We think and talk this way because it generates results that have helped us survive and thrive as a species.

There’s no abstract proof to account for it.

In fact, our insistence on making it logically objective is itself evidence of object bias.

There is no logic that compels us to explain everything logically, there is no purely objective account of why or how we can be purely objective; instead we have deep undeniable feelings that we must make ideas objectively explained.

Start with that simple fact and work backwards: instead of obeying the rules of objectivity, account for them.

Evolution is the ultimate explanation for all of our knowledge and beliefs.

It’s about what’s practical — whatever works in the long run, whatever manages to survive and succeed.

We’re the species that happened to acquire imagination and memory capable of transposing the real world into a conceptual world of symbols — abstract objects that aren’t subject to the physical laws of change and motion affecting the rest of reality.

The impulse for manipulating abstract objects and transposing them back into real-world action eventually developed into principles and laws, which in turn provided frameworks for civilizations.

Civilizations themselves are conceived as objects that come into contact with other communities — “the barbarians,” etc.

History indicates that (at least where and when the environment allowed), civilizations which accommodated the most complex systems of abstract objects tended to persevere and succeed over those that used less complex abstractions.

Occasionally there have been exceptional disruptions, but in general the civilizations which dominated have tended to have the most effective systems of ethics and discipline, the most sophisticated mastery of science and engineering, and the most powerful religious symbols.

A hypothetical pre-historic group that wasn’t comfortable with abstractions like “freedom” or “justice” (or “me” or “us” and “them” — or truth itself) may have been more empirically sound but they wouldn’t have been as effective at communicating and collaborating.

Such a group would have found it more difficult to surviving — especially if they lived in the same area as proto-humans better-developed systems for working, living, and fighting together.

But eventually our objective systems reach a point of diminishing returns.

At some point, rather than expanding, the system starts to require more and more energy to merely maintain the integrity of the structures, rules, and information they already have.

Large empires find themselves with infrastructure and other resources that need to be protected. Monuments deteriorate and need to be rebuilt. Institutions acquire their own momentum, making them difficult to steer.

Meanwhile knowledge accumulates and becomes hyper-specialized.

One teacher might have a hundred students, each working in their own narrow sub-specialty. When the teacher passes away there’s nobody left who remembers how all the paths once parted — and anyone who tries to reunify the field will have to contend with ninety-nine accusations of ignorance and meddling.

I’m afraid this is the point we’re at now: earlier generations built amazing things, but as we work with the ideas and institutions they passed onto us, nobody knows how how it all works together.

It’s time we take a close look at all of our ideas and institutions with an evolutionary appreciation.

The ideas and institutions of the past aren’t permanently true and good, they simply worked for some time. Now it’s time to reassess whether they’re still as generative and sustainable as they once were.

But we also need to be careful of new ideas and institutions.

We may recognize a problem but then become attracted to the first new abstraction that occurs to us — and sometimes we might be attracted to a new abstraction even while the old ones still work fine.

We have to assess every idea that occurs to us by reminding ourselves how powerfully attractive abstractions can be to our imaginations — especially the simplest and most obvious ones — and evaluate every idea with the question, “What are the real effects of this idea?”

Even the idea of object bias is subject to object bias, we have to consider this as well.

By turning the idea of object bias on itself you might send yourself in seemingly endless circles.

It might seem meaningless and futile.

It isn’t futile.

It’s possible, with practice, to overcome the discomfort of uncertainty. It’s possible to cultivate the habit of doubting ideas without dismissing them altogether. The hard-earned ability to manage ideas is more valuable than any idea will ever be.

“Teach a man to fish…”

***

To be continued…

Needless to say a lot of citations are conspicuously absent. We can have a discussion about Hume, James, Wittgenstein, and whoever. In the mean time I’ll argue it isn’t wrong to prioritize vigorous thinking over rigorous scholarship [that's what this piece is about]. If you follow my blogging and twittering you’ll know who my influences are [start here]… still a lot more to be written and said.

Also, this post has referred to evolution in two different ways: biological and intellectual. I’ll have to clear that up (and anything else I may have missed) but for now I want to start getting these ideas out.

Social Media, Structure, and the Creative Cycle

brian@brianfrank.ca (Brian Frank) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:57:14 +0000

Reflecting on last weekend’s talk on creativity I worried that probably emphasized the “open” aspect of the creative cycle at the expense of the “closed” aspect. My gist seemed to be, “Don’t worry about anything… try everything, and fantastic creations will magically appear.”

Given the circumstances, I’m happy I erred that way rather than the other. We need free & open experiments now more than ever — and London, especially, is not going to run out of closed-ended thinking any time soon.

Being comfortable with uncertainty is something we need to get better at. This is the 21st century; nobody knows anything anymore…

But I have to backtrack a little.

Ultimately we need a balance

Just as we can think of creative inspiration as a collision between two objects — or, as in the quote I used from Bruce Mau, “the third object” — the process of creativity is a conflagration of two impulses resulting in something new and independent.

These go by different names but the ways they break down are roughly similar:

open & closed
free & disciplined
divergent & convergent
dynamic & static
subjective & objective

Creativity seems to be essentially an effort to resolve an imbalance between the two conditions — the way electricity flows to resolve an imbalance negative and positive charges.

In ambiguous and wildly dynamic circumstances, creators take on a calming role; they’ll create convergent objects — stories and artifacts that bring everything together, concepts that make the world seem simpler than previously feared.

In settled and dormant circumstances, creators take on a more anarchic role; they’ll create divergent objects that challenge old conventions and reveal the world to be more chaotic and complex than previously assumed.

To use the “third object” metaphor, ideas and works of art are intermediaries or objects representing transformation. In times of chaos, creators build bridges to close gaps, drawing lines to show how things relate. In times of stagnancy, creators build wedges to separate things, drawing lines to distinguish differences.

Many creators are better in one mode than another; but as we learn more about the creative mind and how to manage the creative process, I’m promoting a more deliberate effort to use one mode to facilitate the other and vice versa.

The value of constraints & discipline

As George Santayana wrote in (one of the books that most influenced me) Three Metaphysical Poets:

The outer life is for the sake of the inner; discipline is for the sake of freedom, and conquest is for the sake of self-possession.

Poetry demonstrates how structure aids freedom and freedom in turn keeps structures vital.

Whenever I try expressing something poetically, the challenge of fitting rough thoughts into a formal structure leads to fresh insights. It creates a frame in which the imagination can play safely with fewer distractions.

Excess opportunity stifles intellect, dissolves focus and escapes productivity; while via the strict constraints of metre and rhyme, the mind’s freed from an oppressive infinity, it inverts the universe into a new form, like a pore through which inspiration drips forward — concentrated, it penetrates like a laser, through masses and layers of ambiguity — proceeding in increments towards a design, refined through time by poetic dexterity; as if whispered by God, new meaning is expressed.

I very rarely try to write poetry — only when I have a kind of pseudo-profound thought germinating but I’m not quite sure what to do with it. By articulating half of it in a phrase two, then trying to complete the thought within certain constraints (i.e. with something that rhymes and has the same number of syllables) the possibilities are condensed from an amorphous cloud into a coherent, manageable stream of consciousness.

The structure keeps the process moving along rather than getting bogged down by endless possibilities.

Structures are human

Readers, listeners, viewers can more easily grasp the meaning (or use, or value) from creations that accord with familiar templates, patterns, formulas, and models.

Of course, to a substantial (but not un-controversial) degree, these templates and formulas are already given by nature.

Dennis Dutton’s Art Instict is a great recent summary of evidence of how deeply embedded our aesthetic dispositions are within the human genome. For example, people from many different cultures felt the same affinity for savannah-like landscapes featuring scattered trees, short grass, an open vista, and water — even if such an environment was foreign to their experience.

(Also see On the Origin of Stories by Brian Boyd; or more immediately, check out this clip from a recent chat between Steven Pinker and Robert Wright.)

As I discussed in an older (and more thoroughly researched) post on creativity, the process of evolution doesn’t just apply to our genetic dispositions, it applies to our ideas and creations themselves.

Human creativity is a kind of micro-evolutionary process that occurs not just biologically and physically but in our minds as well as in our organizations, industries, and fields.

The most successful creators and innovators don’t just produce more good ideas than everybody else, they produce more bad ideas too. It’s about maximizing the number of “third objects” generated — then aggressively testing, editing, and selecting (i.e. eliminating).

Call it survival of the fittest ideas.

Revolutionary structures

In terms of understanding this process, the stage we’re at now seems analogous to what knowledge of electricity was in the mid-18th century.

Back then “electricians” had developed a lot of tricks for generating sparks, storing charges in jars, and conducting shocks (e.g. through groups of people holding hands) but there was little agreement as to what electricity was — i.e. was it a kind of “fluid”? was lightning electricity too? — nor what to use it for and how to proceed with further investigations.

Then Benjamin Franklin and others after him initiated a paradigm that focused the field of research and turned the study of electricity into a genuine science.

As described by Thomas Kuhn in this Structure of Scientific Revolutions:

… the end of interschool debate ended the constant reiteration of fundamentals and partly because the confidence that they were on the right track encouraged scientists to undertake more precise, esoteric, and consuming sorts of work… Both fact collection and theory articulation became highly directed activities. The effectiveness and efficiency of electrical research increased accordingly, providing evidence for a societal version of Francis Bacon’s acute methodological dictum: “Truth emerges more readily from error than confusion.”

It’s like poetry: even the most arbitrary and artificial constraints serve to narrow and organize the field of options so we can at least start testing and eliminating them and keep moving forward.

Social media’s unsocial paradigm

Kuhn’s phrase “constant reiteration of fundamentals” reminds me of the discussions we see now about the web, creativity, design thinking, open innovation, social media, crowdsourcing, prosumers, the economies of attention and relationship, etc.

Everyone has a slightly different interpretation, with a slightly different vocabulary (that is constantly evolving). Batches of books keep coming out that say essentially the same things in different ways, suited to slightly different needs (which is natural). There’s a lot of corroboration and consistency but it’s mostly tacit and subjective, difficult to get an objective grasp on.

So when we find ourselves in disagreement — like Chris Brogan and Robert Scoble recently have (see here and here) — we have to be nice to each other, agree to disagree, and wait for new features to come along and reframe the disagreement or make it irrelevant. We lack the basis for objectively placing each other’s interpretations in relation to each other.

Most disagreements don’t even matter very much because people inhabit different spaces within the domain. That helps everyone get along, but a lack of friction also indicates a lack of scientific traction. There’s no rigorous, canonical framework for figuring out who’s right and decisively eliminating the bad ideas (other than watching them try and fail).

There’s little in the way of unifying structure — no definitive map, no architecture that shows exactly how everything connects.

We’re well into the digital age but still camped in tents.

That might be acceptable (and probably necessary for a time) but I don’t think it’s optimal or sustainable. It has to change eventually.

A new lightning rod

There’s a lot of electricity in the air.

It’s going to ground itself somehow — whether we wait for sparks to fly or whether we construct some kind of theory, structure, or apparatus for conducting it in the most generative (or least destructive) way.

To be continued…

Brian Frank » think21st

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