Ramblings and Thoughts from January 5, 1995

Ramblings from January 5, 1995

Well, I was sitting on the airplane coming back from Christmas break, and got an uncontrollable desire to just start writing things out in a vain attempt to sort out my thoughts and what's going on mentally and all that sort of stuff. So I did. And figured I'd upload it here just to keep track of it and toss some ideas around.

Basically I just started writing out various areas of interest to me and some quickie thoughts on each of them - and in particular what I wanted to look at more closely in each area. I'll try to explain my shorthand out so that it's more clear what i'm thinking about but if I don't, EIT!.

Stories/Myths/Self-story/consciousness/epics & not-so-epics

currently reading The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell/Bill Moyers which obviously stresses this area highly and it resonates strongly with me. A lot of good points concerning the lack of a consistent powerful mythology to accompany current culture, which leads to the breakdown of society's handling capabilities
Orson Scott Card's work. Card is big on the power of story-telling. In one of his novellettes (The Originist, in Foundations Friends, ed. Martin Greenberg) he even goes so far as to put forth story-telling and the power of stories to connect people together as _the_ difference between humans and animals. Not just communication, but the ability for stories to unite people together into a community - example quote "I know that my theories of community formation are true. That the vigor of a community depends on the allegiance of its members, and the allegiance can be created and enhanced by the dissemination of epic stories."
The idea of the self-story and consciousness. When you think of who you are - you tell a story about yourself. Most of my most powerful memories are kept in the form of stories - where details relevant to the story are remembered and other details are lost. In fact, I'm hardpressed to come up with memories and images etc that DON'T have a a story accompanying them in my memory.
This entire area is very interesting to me - powerful in what it can do and not studied enough because it doesn't lend itself to "scientific" investigations because it is so personally dependent - i.e. stories/myths etc depend heavily on the observer for meaning and importance - whereas science tries to be observer-independent.

Community/Virtual Community/How to tie together people online?

As noted above, the creation of stories is a powerful way to tie people together online. The most obvious examples from my experience are MUDs where people create a world together, and alt.devilbunnies which writes and continuously creates its own world.
Along that same line, rituals of various sorts tie together communities. Rituals according to Campbell are an overt expression of internal mythology so it's really just re-stating the first point. Entrance rituals are especially powerful - i.e. having to do something, perform some quest, undergo pain or punishment in order to enter the community binds you to the community more strongly - one reason why virtual communities might be weaker than physical ones.
One thing I'd like to do sometimes is try to analyze and identify the different rituals and stories that bind TEP together. Nicknames/ historical stories/initiation/work assignments/rush, etc. But yet, no need for hazing - which is a process many other fraternities use to try and accomplish the same goals, but is curiously ineffective sometimes.

Complexity/Biology of Machines/Out of Control/(Artificial) Evolution

I am currently in the middle of "Out of Control: The Biology of Machines", by Kevin Kelly, which is purty darn cool. In it, he states that the era of total control by humans is past. We don't know enough - CAN'T know enough - to plot out how to do everything ourselves. We need to start using the nature-tested methods of evolution and similar things to do our work for us. Let things go "out of control." or at least to a higher level of control, where we don't control each minute detail, just the broad sweeps of the project.
Complexity in general is a fascinating topic. I just read "Does God Play Dice?" by Ian Stewart which is an overview of the main examples of complexity theory (or nonlinear dynamics or chaos). Simple equations can lead to complex - essentially random - results. Complex equations can lead to simple results. Feedback, stretch and fold, etc etc. Useful for finding deterministic patterns which underly what are thought to be random patterns (turbulence in fluids was a primary example throughout the book). But what if we don't know there are deterministic patterns? Does it still work? Some say yes - those applying it to the stock market for instance. Is it the basis for the future of psychohistory? Hari Seldon, where are you? Can it be used to find the dynamics behind society? Would we want to even if it were possible?

Better organization design? Adhocracy?

Alvin Toffler in "The Third Wave" states (and I agree obviously) that we are seeing the end of bureaucracy's lifetime of usefulness. He suggests the term "adhocracy" for the organizational pattern to succeed it. He also lays out some ideas about adhocracy but doesn't really come to any conclusions.
Basically I'm interested in trying to develop some ideas about what a new organizational design could/should look like. One that will be able to handle the fast-moving, fluid, flexible, changing world of the future, without sacrificing the still-useful benefits of bureaucracy.
The U.S. government - quintessential bureaucracy - but more and more obvious how outdated it is, and unable to cope with modern demands. Can we design a successor and be as prescient as the writers of the Constitution were?
Advantages of bureaucracy: standardization, personnel independent are the big ones. That is, you can pick up a worker in a bureaucracy, and plop him in the same position anywhere in the bureaucracy, and he'll be fine - since things are handled standardly throughout. And also because of this, the precise people you have don't matter as much, since things are done by the book, and not tailored for each person's individual strengths.
Disadvantages of bureaucracy (i.e. things to design to overcome): SLOW-moving, non-flexible, unable to cope with new/unique inputs. Bureaucracy is SLOW. For decisions have to run their way up the ladder of command and then back down, and get approved at each level, etc. The only decisions which don't have to run the chain of command are the ones which are standard, which the 3-ring binders are written for already. However, new/unique inputs often require the telling of the superior for liability reasons (pass the buck etc). Bureaucracy is VERY good at doing what it has done before (hence its dominance in the world of "indust-reality" and the assembly line), but very BAD at handling new things - it is very inflexible. Example: I read that the U.S. Government spent well over a billion dollars in the 1980's on computer equipment that was obsolete _by_its_time_of_purchase_! By the time that the request for new equipment had been approved, and handled, and acted upon, the computer manufacturers had already come out with a new generation of computers. and since the old computers were what were approved, they had to be bought despite their obsolescence.
Adhocracy and any flexible organization of the future will almost definitely have to be highly personnel dependent - taking full advantage of each person in the organization to make decisions, cope with situations, etc. But then, the organization can be hamstrung by the loss of one person - example I'm thinking of: Ender's ships getting nearly destroyed when Petra loses it in a battle near the end of Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. In a bureaucracy, one person's loss is easily handleable - since you just plug another person into that slot - but if each slot is highly individualized to take advantage of the worker's talents, that doesn't work. How can that be overcome?
Also, such organizations will need brilliant leaders to succeed. People who not only can figure out the best thing to do, but who understand other people, and know how to use them best, and be able to deploy them in tasks most suited for them, then giving them a free rein. This is again jumping off from Ender's army setup. But where will such people be found? Will such organizations need trained geniuses in management/leadership such as that done at the Battle School in Ender's Game?
Bureaucracies are process-centered, adhocracies are people-centered. Any idiot can run a bureaucracy once the three-ring binder is written (term stolen from Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson) because it's the process that matters, not the people involved. An adhocracy can't be process centered if it is to be able to cope with the fast pace of change in future society - it will be highly dependent on the people involved, and their skills, and flexibility.
What is leadership anyway? It's something that will need to be better understood if future organizations will utilize it as much as I think they will need to. Is it in-born? Acquired? Can it be taught? Most current leadership programs are baloney. I took quite a few "leadership development seminars" in high school and thought very little of them - didn't learn anything. Charisma is a part of it in gettin people to follow you. But based on personal experience, a leader NEEDS the self-assurance/self-confidence of KNOWING they can pull things off. For instance, after having organized and run Rush for TEP, I felt ready to tackle anything - knowing I had done it before, I knew I could do it again. So training programs which don't include active tasks where you lead others in accomplishing goals, are meaningless, because when it comes time to do things for real, all the book-learning in the world don't mean a thing if you freeze up or lose confidence then.
How do computers fit into all this? They're an essential part I think - certainly in the form of telecommunications - organizations can't react lightning-fast in the way they will need to without instant tele-communications across the world. But what about in the form of actual workers? Computers are the epitome of bureaucracies right now - process-centered to the core. Give them instructions and they follow them to the letter. Perhaps the organization of the future could use computers/robots to fulfill the strictly process-centered jobs that formed the majority of bureaucracy organizations, and free people to do the analysis needed for flexible organizations?

So anyway, I think that designing the future organization will be one of my thought topics for quite a while. It ties together a bunch of my other lines of inquiry quite nicely I realized - the formation of community, story-telling (as used to form communities and for the passing on of instructions/memory), complexity, etc. Obviously, my plan at this point is just to read lots and try to keep fitting things into the jigsaw puzzle that is my mind, but with a goal to work towards maybe things will start fitting together better - it's a thought at least.

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