Category: complexity

How Algorithms Can Become Weapons of Math Destruction

I very much like the book by Cathy O’Neil title ‘Weapons of Math Destruction‘. The book basically shows that many algorithms used in our surroundings do rather reinforce racism and discrimination, creating huge social disruption and reinforcing social differences.

The book is quite pessimistic at time, still I believe it make a point. And we probably don’t realize how much we are surrounded by algorithms that have a direct impact in real life, like for example software used by police to decide where to be more present, or software used for college and university admission, or software used to filter our resumes.

This books comes as part of a growing trend of concerns about how much software may destroy humanity (such as in this post ‘Technology is Breaking Humanity‘. The positive reaction around this topic will certainly become a mainstream trend in 2018.

Share

How to Direct Your Self-Development: Become a Center of Attraction

Following on our post building on the excellent LinkedIn post  “What I Wish I Knew At 22“, one particular comment has also raised my attention: “Stop chasing the girl, the promotion, and the raise. Become the person who attracts the girl, earns the promotion, is worthy of the raise. Spend your time growing into a more interesting person, and the gravitational force of the universe will shift towards you.”

Beyond the limited list of things to aim for (!) that would certainly need to be extended, I like this hint that we need to seek attracting the good stuff in general, rather than constantly chasing it. It is the ultimate aim of any marketing campaign: get people to come to us rather than having to seek them one by one.

It is also quite true on a personal level, and it is interesting to take this viewpoint or objective when considering possible direction for self development. Let’s evolve into someone that attracts what we want in life, and spend less time chasing for it.

Share

How We Are Not Supposed to Understand Everything

Robin Sharma writes: “It’s human nature to wish for an explanation to everything. We create a mental architecture from the time we’re children and then try to fit the events of our lives into these neat intellectual models. Why? So we feel safe and secure and in control.”. But it does not work that way. We need to understand “we’re not supposed to understand everything“.

This statement is powerful, because we hate positively being in situations where we don’t understand what happens around us. But it happens much more often than we care to admit or even realize.

We need to raise our ability to live with uncertainty and not understanding everything that happens around us. Ancient people invoked gods and demons, we invoke complexity or lack of information, but it is irreducible. It will always be the case. Instead of spending too much time trying to understand what can”t be understood, let’s spend our energy learning to adapt to the unexpected.

Share

How To Reach the Peace Beyond Right or Wrong

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” – Rumi.

I like this quote because of the peacefulness it inspires. It is a respite from the violence of the ideas of right or wrong.

Right or Wrong, Right or Left, Opposites are the marker of the Industrial Age. In the Collaborative Age with the emergence of complexity, we now understand that the world goes beyond opposites. That richness derives from finding the common ground between what appears to be contradictory at first sight. That contradictions are often only apparent.

Let’s meet on this field beyond opposites.

Share

Let’s Launch a ‘Protect My Cognitive Capacity’ Movement!

As mentioned in our previous post ‘How Cognitive Overload Can Influence Our Lives: the Example of Poverty‘, we need to be extra careful when it comes to the usage of our limited cognitive capacity. And this is of course also quite true for well-off people too, in the particular in view of the increasing number of attention grabbing devices that surround us.

Cognitive capacity management may become the biggest hurdle in the Collaborative Age. We are gifted with marvelous mechanisms that decrease quickly cognitive load when we get used to some activities (such as driving or riding bikes for example), but it seems that modern life conspires to add constantly more devices that waste cognitive capacity.

It is almost an epidemics of sort. As it is understood that value lies in attention, more and more devices and gadgets compete for attention and thus cognitive capacity. Issues like accidents when driving and texting are direct illustrations of the problem. The world becomes more complex requiring also more difficult decisions and adaptation.

We all need to learn to protect our limited cognitive capacity; learn to relax and give it time to regenerate; and most importantly not multitask that often, which is a very perverse way of reaching our limits without realizing it.

Let’s launch a ‘protect my cognitive capacity’ movement!

Share

How Co-Dependency and Co-Evolution of Companies Is The Way

Being overly dependent from a customer is considered to be an unacceptable risk for any startup or company. In the excellent book ‘Bootstrapping Complexity‘ by Kevin Kelly, based on a comparison with ecosystems, a slightly different view is offered:

(Dangerous) Symbiosis in action: crocodile teeth brushing!

“Here’s news : half of the living world is codependent ! Business consultants commonly warn their clients against becoming a symbiont company dependent upon a single customer – company , or a single supplier . But many do , and as far as I can tell , live profitable lives , no shorter on average than other companies . The surge of alliance – making in the 1990s among large corporations — particularly among those in the information and network industries — is another facet of an increasing coevolutionary economic world . Rather than eat or compete with a competitor , the two form an alliance — a symbiosis”

While I developed my first company on a stand-alone basis, I find increasingly that partnerships are good ways to develop value for our customers and the world. It can be messy, sometimes disappointing (I hate being taken hostage!) but also rewarding and enriching.

I fully agree that co-evolution is the way. Those entrepreneurs that resist collaboration with other entities and try to do everything themselves will fail. Co-evolution needs to be fostered.

Share

How Modern Innovation Needs Proper Maturing and Evolution

The more I delve into startups and innovation, the more I find the central message of the ‘Lean Startup‘ valid: innovative products need to be confronted to reality soonest, and should not be excessively developed in isolation. The Minimum Viable Product is the way. And multiple, fuzzy iterations are required for maturing the product.

Evolution is the way to achieve success

One reason is developed in the excellent book ‘Bootstrapping Complexity‘ by Kevin Kelly in a parallel with nature’s evolution. “The rule for machines is counter-intuitive but clear : Complex machines must be made incrementally and often indirectly . Don’t try to make a functioning mechanical system all at once , in one glorious act of assembly . You have to first make a working system that serves as a platform for the system you really want . To make a mechanical mind , you need to make the equivalent of a mechanical thumb — a lateral approach that few appreciate . In assembling complexity , the bounty of increasing returns is won by multiple tries over time — a process anyone would call growth . Ecologies and organisms have always been grown.”

“Creating extremely complex machines , such as robots and software programs of the future , will be like restoring prairies or tropical islands . These intricate constructions will have to be assembled over time because that is the only way to make sure they work from top to bottom . Unripe machinery let out before it is fully grown and fully integrated with diversity will be a common complaint.” We ship no hardware before its time” will not sound funny before too long”

It is amazing that this message must be reiterated so often to entrepreneurs, in particular those coming from engineering colleges where they have been bathed in industrial age scientism. Of course the thing is to enable iteration while keeping costs to a minimum so as to allow success within a reasonable financing requirement. And it will take time and effort. Still it is a must.

Share

How Urgent It Is to Ban Autonomous AI Driven Weapons

The campaign to ban autonomous bots that act in swarms and have the ability to decide to kill a human on http://autonomousweapons.org has produced an amazing video that is worth watching.

The question of AI applied to daily objects is put in concrete terms in this simulation, not just as an intellectual discussion. In the video a parallel is made with nuclear deterrence and proliferation control approaches, which is quite worth pondering.

Like all technologies AI will bring a huge number of benefits and also its downside. Will humankind be wise enough?

(if you can’t see the video the Youtube link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA)

Share

How Good Visionary Decisions Are In Fact Reflections of Social Mindset Changes

When automated roadside speed cameras were introduced in France a few years ago, the behavior of drivers with regards to speed was substantially changed and the statistics of rod casualties dropped significantly. This introduction did generate some reactions, but overall it was accepted by the population that was fed up with the dangers of automobile driving – there were no massive demonstrations as it sometimes happen in the country.

The key question here is whether the introduction of speed cameras was the trigger of the change (and a visionary act by a leader), or whether it was rather the concrete result of a change of viewpoint by society.

Today with some hindsight the view is rather the latter: this change was probably more the result of a change of mindset (contrary to what the leader in question – who went on to be President of France- would like us to believe!). It might have taken some courage to transform this change of mindset into an actual concrete change, but that was not the source of the transformation.

It is astonishing to find out that many of the key policy changes in organizations or in society are rather the courageous formalization of an already evolving mindset rather than the visionary decision of a single leader – contrary to what the lore tries to make us believe. Actually purely visionary decisions without a background of mindset change is highly suspicious. Good decisions are the formalization of a pre-existing condition.

Share

How Nature Can Give Us Directions About the Evolution of the Net

A major theme of the book ‘Bootstrapping Complexity‘ by Kevin Kelly is that we should learn from nature’s evolutionary mechanism when trying to understand the dynamics of the modern complexity of the net.

“Nature does this every day: Bootstrapping systems that interact with themselves and produce themselves from themselves. How do you make something from nothing ? Although nature knows this trick, we haven’t learned much just by watching her”

“The new cyberneticians are extracting the logical principle of both life and machines , and applying each to the task of building extremely complex systems , thus conjuring up contraptions that are at once both made and alive. In these efforts to create complex mechanical things , again and again they return to nature for directions. They have learned more by their failures in creating complexity and by combining these lessons with small successes in imitating and understanding natural systems than the original cybernetic group could have hoped for. And in doing so , they are fulfilling the notion first presented in the Whole Earth Catalog , itself inspired by the original cybernetics group : “We are as gods and might as well get good at it“”

Thus nature, a self-evolving system that creates more and more complexity as it evolves, should maybe be studied a bit closer when it comes to understanding how our current setup evolves increasingly towards more complexity, for example with the emergence of Artificial Intelligence from dumber machines and networks.

Share

How Original Books Get Remixed with Success By Followers

When I opened the e-book ‘Bootstrapping Complexity‘ by famous Kevin Kelly, I realized that this was actually a remix of a previous book by the author performed by an admiring follower, Andreas Lloyd.

This remix was initiated by the wish of Andreas Lloyd to make some aspects clearer and to focus the book on complexity.

What’s great in this example is the initial author’s reaction: “Soon after putting this remix online , I sent a note with a link to Kevin Kelly to make him aware of the remix , hoping that he would approve. He did approve. Much more than I expected. And it didn’t take him long to reply : I LOVE the remix ! I wish you had been my editor . There is only one thing missing from this fantastic remix – a better title . I was never happen with the book’s title and now that it is more focused , the need is even greater.”

In the Collaborative Age, more and more original works will be remixed and made into numerous publications to address specific needs. A great example of ‘mutual learning’ leadership!

Share

How Startups Are a Toolbox for Dealing with Uncertainty and Complexity

Eric Ries of Lean Startup fame defines a startup as “a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty“. I find this definition extremely powerful. In reality startups are an organizational model to deal with uncertainty and complexity. And it can be actually seen as a tool in that context.

Eric Ries goes further: “According to this broad definition, anyone—no matter their official job title—can be cast unexpectedly into the waters of entrepreneurship if the context of their work becomes highly uncertain. I argued that entrepreneurs are everywhere—in small businesses, mammoth corporations, health care systems, and schools, even inside government agencies. They are anywhere that people are doing the honorable and often unheralded labor of testing a novel idea, creating a better way to work, or serving new customers by extending a product or service into new markets”.

This is why in his new book ‘The Startup Way‘ he explores the way the startup toolbox can be imported into larger and more institutionalized organizations. I tend to find that he sometimes stretches the concept a bit too much – don’t expect suddenly mammoth corporations to become an agile startup (that would end up like a mammoth in a porcelaine store I presume), still the idea is interesting and fruitful, if properly executed in the right remits.

Share