Archive for the ‘interconnected’ Category
Things Have Changed
Filed under: interconnected | Tags: change, Kennedy assassination, knowledge, linked world, television
Leave a Comment Like many people of a certain age, I remember exactly where I was and how I learned about President Kennedy’s assassination. However, my experience of the rest of that time was very different from most others.
The Kennedys in Dallas, 11/22/1963
At the time I was in my sixth grade class at Balboa Elementary School in the Panama Canal Zone. It was shortly after lunch, and I was still cooling off after playing outside in the tropical heat. I remember our school principal, a slight, middle-aged woman, came to the door of our classroom. She spoke briefly with our teacher and then announced to our class that President Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas, Texas. I remember the boy in front of me rather dramatically snapped his pencil in two on hearing the news.
For most folks in the U.S., news about Kennedy’s assassination came first from TV and radio reports, like that by Walter Cronkite. Word quickly spread to those who weren’t watching TV or listening to the radio at the time. I don’t know how our principal had learned of the assassination, but I know for sure television was not involved. That is because in 1963 there were no satellite transmissions of TV signals; those of us living in Panama at that time had never seen a live TV broadcast from the States.
Over the next four days everyone in the U.S. was glued to their TV sets for the first-ever continuous live coverage of a major news event. For the rest of that Friday, they learned what the President and First Lady had done before the tragic event and followed news about the search for and capture of a suspect in the crime; on Saturday they watched reports on the investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald and saw preparations for the President’s funeral in Washington; on Sunday they watched in horror as Oswald was gunned down by Jack Ruby in the basement of the Dallas jail; and on Monday they watched the presidential funeral and mourned the country’s loss.
In Panama, we didn’t see those events and reports on TV.
Of the three TV networks in Panama at the time, only one – the Southern Command Network (SCN) – broadcast in English. SCN also had a radio station which did offer live news coverage through some form of cable connection between the U.S. and SCN.
Without live TV coverage, SCN did the next best thing: it broadcast the radio coverage over the TV network. However, without live images to offer, they placed on the screen a static image of what looked like a gravestone: a granite-looking background with President Kennedy’s name on it, underneath which were his dates of birth and death. So we spent three days – Friday through Sunday – watching TV but hearing radio reports while looking at a mock-up of a headstone.
Somehow, on Monday SCN did manage to broadcast a live feed of the funeral procession and services. I don’t know what wizardry was involved for that, but I do know the event felt different – more immediate – when we finally could see what was going on.
Finally seeing what we knew everyone in the States had been seeing all along gave me a feeling that’s hard to describe. I felt as if we had been somehow cut off from this huge event that everyone else had been experiencing directly, and then we’d been allowed to join things at the very end. I realized that my experience was different from people in the States. They shared a bond created by a collective memory of images: the motorcade in Dallas before it reached Dealey Plaza, cars speeding off immediately after the shots rang out, reporters waiting for news outside the hospital, Oswald being gunned down by Jack Ruby, and the First Lady kissing the flag on the casket as it lay in state at the Capitol rotunda. Although our TV had been on and we’d heard them reported, we hadn’t seen those things.
The television coverage of this event was the first of its kind, and it would be years before I would ever hear of the “global village.” But I sensed then that something unique and important had happened, which created a bond among those who had experienced it. And those of us overseas had not been a part of it. We were “out of the loop.”
Fast forward to the present and things are very different.
In today’s world everyone is in the loop. What with the Internet, satellite telecommunications, and cell phone networks (among other things), anyone anywhere can know what’s going on anywhere else in the world. And everyone sees stuff happening at precisely the same time. As I’ve written before, when Barack Obama was declared the winner of the 2008 presidential election, celebrations broke out simultaneously all around the world. Given what I experienced back in 1963, I found that amazing.
So much readily available information has affected many of our political, cultural and economic institutions. Before, they had been the gatekeepers, controlling what people knew and when they knew it. Today, things are often out of their control. Does a company have problems with a defective product? It’s only a matter of time before word gets out. Is the Church having problems with misbehaving priests? Again, it’s only a matter of time before everyone knows about it. The same thing goes for wayward politicians and dysfunctional government programs.
But this change goes beyond just knowing more about what’s going on. In today’s interconnected world, it’s easy for like-minded (or like-outraged) people to get together and act on their awareness. There are many options available, from commenting on a forum or blog to using technology to start a movement either for or against something that’s happening.
President Kennedy once said, “In a time of turbulence and change, it is more true than ever that knowledge is power.” Today, everyone has access to that power.
In many ways this dispersal of power has overwhelmed the world as we have known it. The old world order has collapsed as borders crumble, things spin out of control and many familiar institutions appear incapable of reacting effectively to the problems they face. Today individuals and tiny groups can wreak havoc all out of proportion to their apparent size and influence.
It all feels very unsettling and disturbing.
But it’s important to keep in mind that this is always the way things feel in a time of great change. This was the case in the early days of the Industrial Revolution. And it was the case in the early 20th century, when physics was going through a revolution of its own. As physics pioneer Werner Heisenberg explained at the time:
The violent reaction on the recent development of modern physics can only be understood when one realizes that here the foundations of physics have started moving; and that this motion has caused the feeling that the ground would be cut from science.
The key thing to remember here is that the change and uncertainty we’re experiencing today is not the result of some nefarious plot. It is instead a natural result of the great changes in technology we’ve witnessed over the last fifty years. Those changes in technology, in turn, are the result of great changes in scientific knowledge that developed during the 20th century – and that continue today.
If we are to survive as individuals, businesses and governments, we need to come to terms with the way things are now, rather than the way they were at some point in a warmly-remembered past. We can mourn what we’ve lost by this change, much as we once mourned the loss of an inspirational young president. But we must recognize that the past is gone, and it’s time to live in today’s strange new world.
Is THIS the American Century?
Filed under: interconnected, quanta | Tags: America, future, linked world
Leave a Comment If you read or watch the news these days, it’s hard to avoid the impression that the United States is a nation in decline. The economy is lousy, our military is over extended, our leaders – both in government and in the private sector – all too often seem to be only focused on their own wealth and power, and a portion of the American populace seems hellbent on preventing our government from taking any steps whatsoever to address our many problems.
On the face of it, we seem to be following in the footsteps of other great powers like Great Britain or the Soviet Union. Some have even suggested we’ve already become a banana republic. The world has changed and many of our leaders, either unwilling or unable to adapt and guide us through this change, appear eager to grab whatever they can while they still can.
But maybe, blinded by outmoded ways of understanding the world, we’re not seeing things as they really are. Maybe all the chaos and commotion we’re going through isn’t a sign of decline…maybe it’s a precursor to a potential rebirth.
This thought came to mind after reading David Brooks’ column The Crossroads Nation in today’s NY Times. Starting with the idea that creativity is a wellspring for economic growth, Brooks suggests:
…economic power in the 21st century is not going to look like economic power in the 20th century. The crucial fact about the new epoch is that creativity needs hubs. Information networks need junction points. The nation that can make itself the crossroads to the world will have tremendous economic and political power.
Brooks was apparently inspired in this view by an essay in Foreign Affairs by Anne-Marie Slaughter, now director of policy planning at the State Department. In “America’s Edge” Slaughter describes today’s interconnected world:
We live in a networked world. War is networked: the power of terrorists and the militaries that would defeat them depend on small, mobile groups of warriors connected to one another and to intelligence, communications, and support networks. Diplomacy is networked: managing international crises — from SARS to climate change — requires mobilizing international networks of public and private actors. Business is networked: every CEO advice manual published in the past decade has focused on the shift from the vertical world of hierarchy to the horizontal world of networks. Media are networked: online blogs and other forms of participatory media depend on contributions from readers to create a vast, networked conversation. Society is networked: the world of MySpace is creating a global world of “OurSpace,” linking hundreds of millions of individuals across continents. Even religion is networked: as the pastor Rick Warren has argued, “The only thing big enough to solve the problems of spiritual emptiness, selfish leadership, poverty, disease, and ignorance is the network of millions of churches all around the world.”
As Albert-Laszlo Barabasi observed in his book Linked, in such a world the key is to be a central hub of the network. A web site like Google will be much more important and influential than a tiny site like this blog. As Barabasi puts it, “popularity is attractive.” Those web sites/people/etc. with the most connections are likely to be the most successful.
Brooks suggests this creates an American advantage:
…the U.S. is well situated to be the crossroads nation. It is well situated to be the center of global networks and to nurture the right kinds of networks. Building that America means doing everything possible to thicken connections: finance research to attract scientists; improve infrastructure to ease travel; fix immigration to funnel talent; reform taxes to attract superstars; make study abroad a rite of passage for college students; take advantage of the millions of veterans who have served overseas.
However, I suspect some will be reluctant to join in the chorus of “It’s a small world after all.” As Robert Wright observed in an essay reflecting on our networked world: “Interdependence theory has a reputation on the right for being a namby-pamby doctrine for naive lefties.”
So Brooks may be right about America’s potential advantage in a networked world. But will his opinion have any influence on those of his conservative brethren who seem consumed by a rabid individualism that “refudiates” any suggestion that all of us – even those who may not “look American” – are in this together? And will their actions keep us from cashing in on this advantage?
The fate of America may hang in the balance…
Oh…nuts
Filed under: chaos, interconnected | Tags: Butterfly Effect, linked world
Leave a Comment There was a lot of commotion recently about some nutty pastor in Florida who announced he was going to burn Korans on the 9th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. First he was…then he wasn’t…then he might after all…then finally he didn’t.
There were many reactions to this minister’s announcements. It was opposed by the White House, General Patraeus, and the Vatican, among others around the world. He also wasn’t too popular in his home town. Meanwhile, Muslims in many places were vehemently opposed to his plans, while some right wing wackos thought they were swell.
But not many raised an important question that was asked by a commenter on a Washington Post blog:
This “church” has around 50 members. 50 whackjobs who are now front and center on the world stage with everyone from Hilary Clinton to Angelina Jolie commenting on their proposed lunacy. How did this happen? It’s so discouraging that an ignorant and intolerant few can cause so much trouble. Posted by: calgrl75
This is an important question for the time we live in. After all, it was another small group of “whackjobs” that were behind the 9/11 attacks in the first place. It seems that a by-product from our hyper-connected world is that a tiny group can have an out-sized effect on the world we live in. Andy Warhol’s claim that in the future everyone would have 15 minutes of fame doesn’t seem to do this phenomena justice.
What’s going on here? Robert Wright has suggested that this phenomena is a reflection of our increasingly interlinked, interdependent world. Writing in November 2001, he observed: “…more and more, even fairly small groups with intense grievances will have the power to disrupt the world…”
Michael Gerson also noted our interlinked world when he said:
It is a horrifying wonder of the Internet age that a failed, half-crazed Florida pastor with a Facebook account can cause checkpoints to be thrown up on major roads in New Delhi, provoke violent demonstrations in Logar province south of Kabul, and be rewarded with the attention of America’s four-star commander in Afghanistan and the president of the United States.
That such tiny, nutty groups can have profound impacts on our world appears to reflect a kind of butterfly effect on steroids, in which minor actions in one place can unexpectedly set off major storms someplace else in the world.
Our natural instinct in dealing with these cases is to try to control them; we want to silence them, arrest them, even – in the case of al Qaeda – bomb them back to the Stone Age. However, such actions are often as likely to inflame the situation as anything else, making the wackos victims or even martyrs. In addition, by reacting to their actions, we inadvertently give these nut cases a form of control over our behavior. Rather than acting on the basis of our beliefs and values, we wind up reacting to theirs.
But if we can’t control them, what can we do?
We might start by considering a suggestion made by Margaret Wheatley in her book Leadership and the New Science: “What if we stopped looking for control and began, in earnest, the search for order?”
People have a variety of ideas about where that order may be.
Robert Wright suggested in 2001 that these nut cases would push nations to become even more interdependent: “…more and more, it will be in the interest of nations to perceive and address simmering discontents, not just the discontents of Muslims, even if these discontents are the most pressing right now.”
Geneva Olelhoser has suggested that letting people like Terry Jones be heard can produce public benefits. Referring to Jones’ provocations, she notes:
Gatherings of clergy across all faiths took place. And those conversations got attention they’d never have gotten without the crisis. People have been awakened to prejudices and fears within their own communities, and to the global impact that these seemingly local occurrences can have.
If you think about it, this is pretty much the way we move forward as individuals: crises strike, they seem impossible to understand or accept, yet eventually we grow from them. The new media ecology makes it much more apparent (compared to the old top-down, “only what’s appropriate” method) that we humans tend to behave in unruly and undignified ways. But it also makes it much more likely that we will see the full range of opinion among our fellow human beings, and that we can all learn something together.
Alan Wolfe also suggested that giving extremists some space could be the best defense against extremism:
Publicity may be what extremists crave but it is also the best defense against extremism. No society can rid itself of those who burn with hatred. A wise society will give them the space to burn themselves out. When the ashes cool, we will recognize that although Jones thought he was using the media and commanding the attention of the powerful, they were at the same time using him.
This isn’t to say a forceful response is never called for. Certainly al Qaeda’s terrorism had to be dealt with. But it’s important to understand what the ultimate goal in such a response is.
Lawrence Wright , author of the excellent book on al Qaeda “The Looming Tower,” has argued that Osama bin Laden’s ultimate goal in his terror attacks was to draw the United States into a ground war in Afghanistan. Wright notes that bin Laden felt once that happened, the U.S. would be worn down in a lengthy war of attrition, just as the Soviet Union had been previously. When that plan blew up in his face with the routing of his forces by the Americans, bin Laden and al Qaeda were “repudiated throughout the world.” According to Wright, the U.S. had won its war against al Qaeda. But the American invasion of Iraq and that war’s subsequent chaos had “…given them (al Qaeda) new life.”
As Wheatley notes, the success of a society – like any other organization – in dealing with chaotic influences depends on whether its leaders are up to the task before them:
Anytime we see systems in apparent chaos, our training urges us to interfere, to stabilize and shore things up. But if we can trust the workings of chaos, we will see that the dominant shape of our organizations can be maintained if we retain clarity about the purpose and direction of the organization. If we succeed in maintaining focus, rather than hands-on control, we also create the flexibility and responsiveness that every organization craves. What leaders are called upon to do in a chaotic world is to shape their organizations through concepts, not through elaborate rules or structures.
This assumes that the leaders’ primary focus is on the well-being of their society in the first place. If they instead are consumed by a lust for power and control, or are devoid of firm beliefs rooted in reality rather than ideological delusion, then all bets are off.
In that case, the nut cases will take over the asylum.
Who’s the brains of this outfit? Maybe all of us
Filed under: dual nature, emergent, interconnected | Tags: change, individualism, linked world, technology
Leave a Comment Robert Wright has an interesting piece in the NY Times titled “Building One Big Brain.” In response to concerns that modern technology is affecting the way we think, he has a suggestion:
But maybe the terms of the debate — good for us or bad for us? — are a sign that we’re missing the point. Maybe the essential thing about technological evolution is that it’s not about us. Maybe it’s about something bigger than us — maybe something big and wonderful, maybe something big and spooky, but in any event something really, really big.
He goes on to propose that
…technology is weaving humans into electronic webs that resemble big brains — corporations, online hobby groups, far-flung N.G.O.s. And I personally don’t think it’s outlandish to talk about us being, increasingly, neurons in a giant superorganism; certainly an observer from outer space, watching the emergence of the Internet, could be excused for looking at us that way.
While this may feel to us like a new phenomena, Wright notes that it’s happened before:
If it’s any consolation, we’re not the first humans to go cellular. The telephone (and for that matter the postal system before it) let people increase the number of other brains they linked up with. People spent less time with their few inherited affiliations — kin and neighbors — and more time with affiliations that reflected vocational or avocational choices.
This earlier case, Wright observes, had a major effect on Americans’ social behavior:
In the 1950 sociology classic “The Lonely Crowd,” David Riesman and two colleagues argued that the “inner-directed” American, guided by values shared with a small and stable group of kin and friends, was giving way to an “other-directed” American. Other-directed people had more social contacts, and shallower contacts, and they had more malleable values — a flexibility that let them network with more kinds of people.
In other words, Riesman, like Carr, noted a loss of coherence within the individual. He saw a loss of normative coherence — a weakening of our internal moral gyroscope — and Carr sees a loss of cognitive coherence. But in both cases this fragmenting at the individual level translates, however ironically, into broader and more intricate cohesion at the social level — cohesion of an increasingly organic sort. We’ve been building bigger social brains for some time.
The phenomena of “bigger social brains” stands as an interesting counterpoint to the fervent passion for individualism expressed today by many in politics and the media. Perhaps in some way these passionate individualists are sensing this emerging change and, frightened by the prospect, are fighting it with all they’ve got. Perhaps this is partly at the root of the fierce anger we see expressed at Tea Party gatherings and the like.
Perhaps. But if that is the case, it seems pretty clear their efforts are doomed unless they roll back technology to a time before the internet and television…and probably the telephone.
If change is being created by technology, then the only way to prevent it would be to get rid of that technology. But that’s not going to happen. Advances in technology often give new power to those who have that technology. People tend to not give up such power, especially if they see themselves engaged in a mortal fight for the “good old ways” over what they perceive as “evil new changes.” Sooner or later they’ll decide to keep the power and adapt to the change.
In any event, I think this perceived tension between individualism and the collectivism inherent in “social brains” is another reflection of an outmoded way of thinking. Sooner or later we will come to recognize that the wave/particle duality applies to humans as well as elementary particles: we are always and simultaneously both individuals and members of collective groups.
Now if we could just wrap our brains around that – both individually and socially.
Religious Differences in Our Global Village
Filed under: energy/flow, interconnected | Tags: linked world, religion
Comments (2) When I first learned of the idea of a “global village,” I remember having a mental picture of a New England-style village expanded out to cover the whole world. It sounded kind of warm and cozy, with different people amiably waving to their neighbors as they passed by.
Now that technology has brought us the real version of that global village, my mental image of the place has changed somewhat. With all the conflicts – both verbal and armed – going on between so many different groups, the world seems more like Baghdad circa 2004. So many people seem so angry at those who are different from them.
This seems particularly true where religion is concerned. Many of today’s conflicts are rooted in religious differences. For many, it apparently is not enough to simply believe in their religion; they seem compelled by their beliefs to repel and attack believers in other, different religions.
And the differences aren’t just between the major religions like Islam, Judaism and Christianity. They’re between distinct sects, like Sunnis and Shiites and Catholics and Protestants. The results of these clashes all too often turn bloody. And they raise questions. Is religious strife going to be a permanent part of our global village? If not, how do we get beyond the current conflicts?
In a recent essay in the New York Times, the Dalai Lama addressed this issue. He started by relating his thoughts as a boy, and how they’ve changed over time:
When I was a boy in Tibet, I felt that my own Buddhist religion must be the best — and that other faiths were somehow inferior. Now I see how naïve I was, and how dangerous the extremes of religious intolerance can be today.
He talked about the pressures our global village puts on religions and cultures, as people behave intolerantly towards those different than themselves:
Such tensions are likely to increase as the world becomes more interconnected and cultures, peoples and religions become ever more entwined. The pressure this creates tests more than our tolerance — it demands that we promote peaceful coexistence and understanding across boundaries.
The rest of his essay addressed finding an alternative to intolerance and conflict:
Granted, every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity. Even so, I believe there is genuine potential for mutual understanding. While preserving faith toward one’s own tradition, one can respect, admire and appreciate other traditions.
He concluded by noting the importance of focusing on what we have in common rather than how we differ:
Finding common ground among faiths can help us bridge needless divides at a time when unified action is more crucial than ever. As a species, we must embrace the oneness of humanity as we face global issues like pandemics, economic crises and ecological disaster. At that scale, our response must be as one.
Harmony among the major faiths has become an essential ingredient of peaceful coexistence in our world. From this perspective, mutual understanding among these traditions is not merely the business of religious believers — it matters for the welfare of humanity as a whole.
This essay reminded me of a point made by Walter Truett Anderson in his book “Reality Isn’t What It Used to Be”:
The postmodern condition is not an artistic movement or a cultural fad or an intellectual theory — although it produces all of those and is in some ways defined by them. It is what inevitably happens as people everywhere begin to see that there are many beliefs, many kinds of belief, many ways of believing. Postmodernism is globalism; it is the half-discovered shape of the one unity that transcends all our differences.
Perhaps, in time, we will learn to peacefully coexist with those of different religious beliefs -much as people do in modern New England villages, where they amiably wave to their neighbors as they pass on their way to their respective places of worship.
Failing Institutions
Filed under: emergent, interconnected | Tags: adaptability, Catholic Church, change, corporations, failure, Goldman Sachs, government, institutions, Pew Research Center, success, Tiger Woods, Toyota
Leave a Comment The Pew Research Center recently issued a report saying trust in government is very low, with 22% saying they can trust the government in Washington almost always or most of the time, and 19% saying they are “basically content” with the federal government.
This result got a lot of coverage in the news…and a lot of commentary from anti-government conservatives and libertarians. An example is this blog posting: 80% of Americans don’t trust the federal government; time to dissolve the people and elect another? Such a posting raises a variety of questions, including what does it mean to “dissolve the people” and what kind of math gets you from 22% trusting the government all or most of the time to 80% distrusting the government?
But there’s another, bigger question here: how much trust do people today have in other institutions? In a time when Goldman Sachs, Toyota, the Catholic Church, and Tiger Woods (a sports and business institution in his own right) have been messing up big time in the eyes of the public, is distrust in government an anomaly or just part of a trend?
As it turns out, Pew had something to say about that in the same report:
While anti-government sentiment has its own ideological and partisan basis, the public also expresses discontent with many of the country’s other major institutions. Just 25% say the federal government has a positive effect on the way things are going in the country and about as many (24%) say the same about Congress. Yet the ratings are just as low for the impact of large corporations (25% positive) and banks and other financial institutions (22%). And the marks are only slightly more positive for the national news media (31%), labor unions (32%) and the entertainment industry (33%).
Ironically, that part of the report received considerably less mention in the main stream media. But rather than dwelling on why that might be, the more interesting question is why trust in so many institutions is now so low.
As I’ve noted before, many institutions are failing because they haven’t adapted to the ways our world has changed. One thing that’s striking about many of the big institutions finding themselves in hot water these days is that a big part of their problem appears rooted in a mistaken belief that they are able to tightly manage/control the information about problematic issues. Toyota had problems with car defects; it tried to hide them. The Church had problems with perverted priests; it tried to hide them. Goldman Sachs had problems with very risky investments and very shady dealings to get rid of them; it tried to hide them. Tiger Woods had a thing for cocktail waitresses; he tried to hide it.
In an earlier, less connected time, perhaps these things wouldn’t have become such big deals. Probably past experience in hiding problems had led the leaders of these institutions to try a similar approach in these cases.
However, they apparently didn’t realize that in today’s hyper-connected world it’s almost inevitable that bad things will come to light – whether it’s vehicle flaws, priests behaving badly, devious investment strategies, or adulterous affairs. And now when the news DOES come out, the impact is likely to be much greater than it might have been before the Internet and global communications – especially if it’s apparent there was a cover-up involved.
These cases are all examples of how the world has changed but the people in leadership positions – who generally came to power the old fashioned way – were caught unaware of those changes. They may have achieved success by following the old rules, but times have changed and many of the old rules no longer apply.
Interestingly, I discussed this recently with a friend who used to handle corporate communications for a very large company. This friend had observed the same thing in their work:
(When I was there)…our CEO and other execs still believed you could “control the message.” It was a never ending battle to try to enlighten them to the realities of the wired world. Bottom line, it’s more convenient for them (and they are a proxy for all big business, the Church, etc) to try to perpetuate the command-and-control, one-way approach to communicating than to face up to the fact that there is no control and that “managing” their constituents effectively requires transparency, engagement and a true alignment between rhetoric and behavior. All of that is just too much work, and too threatening, for them to accept. It’s a brotherhood of ostriches — and sadly (ironically?), they’re proud of it.
So what does the future hold?
I think this time is like any other in which great change has taken place. Some people and institutions will adapt to change and thrive; others will fail to adapt and fall by the wayside, deserted by their former supporters and clients.
Some may loudly protest the change and uncertainty of today’s world. They may even gain enough influence to hamper some institutions’ ability to adapt to these changes. But they can’t stop the change itself. In attempting to turn back the clock and to resurrect an illusory past they will be much like a bunch of Americans in the Panama Canal Zone back in 1964: all they are likely to accomplish is a quicker demise of the institutions they had hoped to preserve.
I’ve never been a believer in the so-called “Wisdom of the Market” as the term applied to Wall Street. But I do believe in the idea as it applies to transformational times and ideas. When the times are changing, the ones who understand and adapt to those changes will be the ones who thrive in what comes.
In the end we will be left with a combination of old institutions that adapted and new institutions that saw a better way and followed it. Everything else will just be history.
Money Can’t Buy Me Art
Filed under: energy/flow, interconnected | Tags: business, creativity, money, motivation
Leave a Comment When you see how expensive some works of art are today, it may seem illogical to say that “money can’t buy me art.” After all, a painting by Gustav Klimt sold a few years ago for $135 million.
But according to a recent Paul Solman report on the PBS News Hour, it turns out there’s a big difference between buying a product of art and paying for the artistic process. Apparently, Klimt might have had a harder time creating that painting if he knew he was going to sell it for that much money.
Solman starts out with a puzzle:
The candle, box of tacks, book of matches, an old puzzle with a strangely relevant economic message. Objective? Fix the lit candle to the wall so no wax hits the table.
Economics: The faster you do it, the more money you make. Punchline: Conventional economics is wrong, because the greater the monetary incentive, the longer the solution takes, a solution you will see in a bit.
Relevance? Executive pay and Wall Street bonuses, which might not enhance, but actually retard, high performance, or so says writer Dan Pink, once Al Gore’s chief speechwriter.
Pink explained why this could be the case:
We tend to think that the way you get people to perform at a high level is, you reward what you want and punish what you don’t want, carrot and stick. If you do this, then you get that.
That turns out, the science says, to be an extraordinarily effective way of motivating people for those routine tasks, simple, straightforward, where there’s a right answer. They end up being a terrible form for motivating people to do creative conceptual tasks.
Why? Solman interviewed Maury Weistein, CEO of computer sellers System Source. Weinstein argued that the key reason his company had been successful for three decades – an eternity in the computer business – was that 15 years ago they dropped paying commissions to sales people:
We find that money often disrupts relationships. It disrupts customer efforts. And, sometimes, it makes the customer feel like a piece of meat, where you can’t trust the salesperson’s recommendations. And that’s a very slippery slope at that point.
As in so many other things, the key is where your energy is focused. If your primary motivation is getting a big commission, your concern for the customer’s satisfaction is secondary. And in many cases the customer will sense that.
So if money isn’t your primary motivation, what can be? One possibility is creative fulfillment. As John Yodsnukis, who works with open source software (for which there is no payment), points out:
You know, you need adequate compensation. You have to live. You have to survive, OK? But, if you ask an artist why they became an artist, a lot of them will say, I can’t do anything else. I have to do this.
It’s the same thing here, you know? It’s the fulfillment, the love of doing it is reason enough.
This may all sound a little strange in our current, money-crazed culture. Today’s mass media is overwhelmingly oriented towards selling something, and individuals are commonly defined as consumers. All too often, our focus in this world is on the next purchase; our creativity is channeled into creating the perfect house, having the right car, wearing the right clothes, or just getting the best deal.
This even applies to our personal creative pursuits. As a photographer, I often hear the siren call of a new camera or a new lens that will supposedly enhance my creativity. It can be quite seductive – and expensive!
If we really want to live fulfilling lives – and stay financially solvent – we need to be mindful of where we are focused. Are we focused on the ephemeral – money, possessions, glory and such – or are we focused on that which truly gives us personal fulfillment?
In his book Zen In The Martial Arts, Joe Hyams offers a Zen story that applies here:
A young boy traveled across Japan to the school of a famous martial artist. When he arrived at the dojo he was given an audience by the sensei.
“What do you wish from me?” the master asked.
“I wish to be your student and become the finest karateka in the land,” the boy replied. “How long must I study?”
“Ten years at least,” the master answered.
“Ten years is a long time,” said the boy. “What if I studied twice as hard as all your other students?”
“Twenty years,” replied the master.
“Twenty years! What if I practice day and night with all my effort?”
“Thirty years,” was the master’s reply.
“How is it that each time I say I will work harder, you tell me that it will take longer?” the boy asked.
“The answer is clear. When one eye is focused upon your destination, there is only one eye left with which to find the Way.”
“Pants” on the Web
Filed under: emergent, interconnected, quanta | Tags: linked world
Leave a Comment Over the past week a guy no one had ever heard of burst onto the scene, becoming a national – if not international – celebrity. He vowed to change things, and through his sudden fame he may be doing just that.
I’m talking of course about “General” Larry Platt, who appeared a week ago on American Idol and belted out his song “Pants on the Ground.”
As sometimes happens in today’s hyper-linked world, before you could say “Simon Cowell” Larry’s song became a world-wide phenomenon. People as diverse as Malaysian teenagers and Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings were soon singing “Pants on the Ground.”
It never ceases to amaze me how quickly and easily a performance like Larry’s can become such a big deal in so many different places. It reminded me of that guy Matt and his video Dancing 2008, which became a huge sensation a couple years ago.
These things are clearly a phenomenon of today’s world, and can teach us a couple of things:
1 – People from different walks of life and in different places can quickly find a common bond based on something they see and like, and
2 – This kind of thing often doesn’t last all that long. After all, whatever happened to Matt? And how many people regularly go back and look at that music video? (It’s still pretty cool though; I re-watched it while writing this post.)
So when we see some new phenomenon burst on the scene and become the talk of the nation, we need to maintain some perspective. Something that may seem like a big deal today – like, say, the results of a Massachusetts Senate race – may not be such a big deal tomorrow.
It certainly wouldn’t be wise to overreact to it.
The Linkage Is Blowing In The Wind
Filed under: interconnected, quanta | Tags: nature, yard care
Leave a Comment We had a beautiful November evening here today, so after work I took a walk through some area neighborhoods. After the weekend’s wind and cold, most of the leaves are now off the trees.
As I walked along I saw numerous people out raking and bagging leaves. It was interesting to notice the varying states of peoples’ yards. Some were immaculate – not a leaf was left on the grass. Others had leaves strewn about, but you could tell the yard had been raked at some point over the weekend. And then there were some yards that were covered by every leaf that had grown all season on the overhead branches.
I noticed that the borders between different yards were often clearly defined: it was like there were lines drawn, with neat and cleared grass on one side and leaves in various states of decay on the other. These borders seemed to be a clear example of an American sense of responsibility that is inherently individualistic: “I’m responsible for mine; you’re responsible for yours.”
I understand this perspective, because that’s generally the way I’ve cleared my yard. (I’m lazy though: I use a lawn mower with a bag attachment to pick up the leaves.) The one problem with this perspective is it’s arbitrary; it doesn’t fit with the way nature does things.
And so, on days like this past Saturday, the wind picks up dramatically and gusts blow the uncollected leaves to and fro, down the street and into everyone else’s yard. And then the owners of the neat yards start thinking dark thoughts about the owners of the leafy yards: those lazy bums whose leaves have now blown onto those (until recently) neat yards.
Remember the anger expressed in those August town hall meetings on health care reform? The message was clearly “I am not my brother’s keeper.” And that would go double for people “too lazy” to pick up their leaves. And so the anger builds…
But as I walked this evening I realized those windy days serve another purpose: they remind us that in spite of our arbitrary boundaries we are all linked together in this natural world. While we may get angry at our neighbors for not conforming to our sense of orderliness, they’re not the ones who created the leaves and dictated that they will turn and drop in November. That’s just the way nature does things. Why don’t we get mad at nature? Could it be because that sounds silly – like getting mad at the tide for coming in?
Maybe we need to realize that into each of our lives some leaves will fall…and then maybe blow around for a while. Being linked together, both as neighbors and as humans trying to live in a shared natural world, we might try being considerate of those around us and do something about our leaves. But if for whatever reason some people won’t or can’t, maybe we should just try to find the positive in the situation.
After all, the physical activity associated with leaf collection is probably good for us – especially at a dark and cold time of year when many of us are getting less exercise. And I suspect that wind is really nature’s way of tucking trees and shrubs in for the winter, with a leafy blanket around their roots to hold in moisture and warmth. (Though this blanket can cause other problems.)
So I’ll try to keep all this in mind the next time the winds blow and the uncollected leaves from the house three doors down my street come bounding into my yard. And we’ll see if that changes my perspective on those lazy bums – er, unenlightened individuals.
Flu In The Time Of Globalism
Filed under: complexity, emergent, interconnected | Tags: bottom up, flu, health
Comments (1) The big news item of the moment is the growing threat of a swine flu pandemic. The speed with which this disease has spread is yet another reflection of our interconnected world. In earlier times diseases tended to travel slowly from place to place, often with localized events; the Third Pandemic started in China in 1855 and slowly traveled around the world until the 1950s. With the availability of cheap air travel, things can happen much faster today.
The primary question is what do we do about this risk? The New York Times columnist David Brooks observes:
In these post-cold war days, we don’t face a single concentrated threat. We face a series of decentralized, transnational threats: jihadi terrorism, a global financial crisis, global warming, energy scarcity, nuclear proliferation and, as we’re reminded today, possible health pandemics like swine flu.
He goes on to present two possible approaches:
So how do we deal with these situations? Do we build centralized global institutions that are strong enough to respond to transnational threats? Or do we rely on diverse and decentralized communities and nation-states?
After providing a brief discussion of both options, he comes down in favor of the decentralized, bottom-up approach:
A single global response would produce a uniform approach. A decentralized response fosters experimentation.
The bottom line is that the swine flu crisis is two emergent problems piled on top of one another. At bottom, there is the dynamic network of the outbreak. It is fueled by complex feedback loops consisting of the virus itself, human mobility to spread it and environmental factors to make it potent. On top, there is the psychology of fear caused by the disease. It emerges from rumors, news reports, Tweets and expert warnings.
The correct response to these dynamic, decentralized, emergent problems is to create dynamic, decentralized, emergent authorities: chains of local officials, state agencies, national governments and international bodies that are as flexible as the problem itself.
I’ve written about emergent phenomena before, and I’m generally in favor of approaches that promote it. But it’s important to realize that the outcome of a bottom-up approach is tied to a larger context. Without proper guidance and values, free-wheeling emergence can lead to anarchy.
There’s an excellent article – Command and (Out of) Control: The Military Implications of Complexity Theory – that offers an interesting take on Brooks’ dichotomy. The author John Schmitt starts with a discussion of traditional command and control theory, which he says is based on a mechanical world view inherent in classic Newtonian physics. This approach relies heavily on a top-down approach, with those on top striving to control both their organization and whatever larger situation they’re confronting. The “centralized global institutions that are strong enough to respond to transnational threats” that Brooks talks about reflect this traditional kind of command and control.
However, like Brooks, Schmitt has problems with this approach. He starts by describing traditional command and control:
The natural result is a highly proceduralized or methodical approach to the conduct of military operations—war as an assembly line. Newtonian command and control tends to be highly doctrinaire—heavy on mechanistic and elaborate procedures. The mechanistic view recognizes that war may appear disorderly and confusing but is convinced that with sufficient command and control we can impose order, precision, and certainty. We can eliminate unpleasant surprises and make war go “like clockwork.” Just as the Scientific Revolution sought to tame nature, the Newtonian approach to command and control—especially with the help of the information-technology revolution—seeks to tame the nature of war.
But there’s a problem, as Schmitt notes:
The Newtonian paradigm offers a neat, clean and intellectually satisfying description of the world—and of war. There is only one problem: it does not match most of reality.
Schmitt goes on to describe war – and the world – as an open, dynamic, complex system. As such, it is impossible to control in a traditional, top-down way:
One of the defining features of complex systems is a property known as emergence in which the global behavior of the system is qualitatively different from the behavior of the parts. No amount of knowledge of the behavior of the parts would allow one to predict the behavior of the whole. Emergence can be thought of as a form of control: it allows distributed agents to group together into a meaningful higher-order system. In complex systems, structure and control thus “grow” up from the bottom; they are not imposed from the top. Reductionism simply will not work with complex systems: the very act of decomposing the system—of isolating even one component—changes the dynamics of the system. It is no longer the same system.
All of this is pretty much in line with what Brooks said in his column. However, in viewing our options as either “centralized control” or “decentralized control,” Brooks misses another alternative. Schmitt presents an approach that encompasses input from those at the top and those at the bottom:
Rather than thinking of “command” and “control” both operating from the top of the organization toward the bottom, we should think of command and control as an adaptive process in which “command” is top-down guidance and “control” is bottom-up feedback…All parts of the organization contribute action and feedback—”command” and “control”—in overall cooperation. Command and control is thus fundamentally an activity of reciprocal influence involving give and take among all parts, from top to bottom and side to side.
From this perspective, we might agree with Brooks’ argument to “create dynamic, decentralized, emergent authorities: chains of local officials, state agencies, national governments and international bodies that are as flexible as the problem itself.” However, we should also have in place institutions – like perhaps the World Health Organization in the case of a pandemic – that can serve as resources for relevant information and avenues for collaboration among those decentralized authorities.
Such an arrangement assures that all involved are seeing the whole picture – both the forest and the trees.
