Tools for the Coming Chaos

Michael Copeland of Wired interviewed Joi Ito of the MIT Media Lab. Ito told what it’s going to take to maneuver through the next phase of disruption brought by technology. The interview ends with a set of principles that help to build more resilient systems. I guess that it is really difficult to argument more clearly, why our hierarchical, command and control organizations are not relevant in current complex, ambiguous and unpredictable environment.

Ito: What you need to do is understand these changes are happening, and build systems and governments and ways of thinking that are resilient to this kind of destructive change that is going to happen. It’s a kind of change that is really hard to predict, it’s really hard to control, so how do you as a human being, or as an organization, survive in this chaotic, unpredictable system where planning is almost impossible?

Wired: Please tell me you have an answer.
Ito: There are nine or so principles to work in a world like this:

  1. Resilience instead of strength, which means you want to yield and allow failure and you bounce back instead of trying to resist failure.
  2. You pull instead of push. That means you pull the resources from the network as you need them, as opposed to centrally stocking them and controlling them.
  3. [pullquote]You don’t get a Nobel Prize for doing what you are told.[/pullquote]You want to take risk instead of focusing on safety.
  4. You want to focus on the system instead of objects.
  5. You want to have good compasses not maps.
  6. You want to work on practice instead of theory. Because sometimes you don’t why it works, but what is important is that it is working, not that you have some theory around it.
  7. It disobedience instead of compliance. You don’t get a Nobel Prize for doing what you are told. Too much of school is about obedience, we should really be celebrating disobedience.
  8. It’s the crowd instead of experts.
  9. It’s a focus on learning instead of education.

If you want people to share their knowledge

We ask this question a lot: “How do we incentivise people to share their knowledge?” The question is asked because when managers look around their organizations they don’t see much knowledge sharing going on. This is a serious concern, but I think it is the wrong question. The question is based on the assumption that people don’t want to share what they know and therefore require an incentive to get them to do it. And that assumption is inaccurate. A much more useful question is, “What causes people to be willing to share their knowledge with others?”

Nancy Dixon, The Incentive Question or Why People Share Knowledge

Great Ideas and the Ideas Industry

Umair Haque has put together some brilliant observations about the current situation in Ideas Industry. Umair summarises it with a phrase “TED thinking”. According to him “TED thinking” is a shorthand for the way we’ve come to think about ideas and how we share them, be it an 18-minute talk, an 800-word blog post, or the latest business “best-seller”. Below is a selection of Umair’s thoughts, but I urge you to read the full piece.

“TED thinking” is just a symptom: and the underlying syndrome is our broken relationship with Great Ideas.

TED thinking assumes complex social problems are essentially engineering challenges, and that short nuggets of Technology, Edutainment, and Design can fix everything, fast and cheap. TED thinking’s got a hard determinism to it; a kind of technological hyperrationalism. It ignores institutions and society almost completely. We’ve come to look at these quick, easy “solutions” as the very point of “ideas worth spreading.”

When ideas are reduced to engineering challenges, the focus naturally becomes near-term utility in the so-called real world. We focus on implementation without ever stopping to question our assumptions. But Great Ideas don’t resound because they have “utility” in the real world — they are Great for the very reason that they challenge us to redefine the reality of our worlds; and hence, the “utility” of our lives.

Great Ideas aren’t just “solutions”. Indeed, many of the Greatest Ideas are problems. Picasso would never have been invited to deliver a TED talk about Guernica because it offers no quick, easy, palatable solution.

TED is like an Orgasm Machine for the human mind. It gives us the climax of epiphany, without the challenge and tension of thought. And in that way, I think TED thinking cheats us. Not just the “audience,” but all of us. By putting climactic epiphany before experience, education, and elevation.

Great ideas, then, demand something from us — something more than pleasure. They demand our minds don’t just “accept” — but, as critical thinkers, object, protest, question. In this way, Great Ideas demand precisely the opposite of TED thinking.

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Related post: TED konverentsid – kas üheselt hea? (TED – good in every sense? – in mixed English/Estonian)
Somewhat different, but alarming post about TEDx talks: Rupert Sheldrake speaks, argues that speed of light is dropping!

Photo from blog.ted.com