Change, Technology, Learning and Adaptation

Euan Semple concluded a recent post with an interesting observation:

Comparing the levels of technical competence of my kids with those of my non internet friends and comparing the peaceful majority at the student demonstrations in London to the wistful recollection of more politically engaged times amongst my middle class friends, I find myself wondering if the children are becoming grown ups and the adults are succumbing to voluntary infantilisation.

via – The Obvious? – Parents, children and wikileaks.

More than three years ago I asked another question that somehow seems rather on target:

After all, secrecy is still the currency of power. What are the power gate-keepers to do when secrecy ceases to be a valid currency because what was secret has become common knowledge?

In the face of change, inertia takes you into denial, survival will force you to adapt.

 

Grounded in Structure versus Fictional Veracity

This morning I did the usual very brief scan of the headlines of both local and remote media. This exercise makes me long for the days when radio waves were less used and the internet was something my mother did not know anything about while I was using it to arrange my affairs. On a side note, do recall that I like the word affair. So, let us get back to the bit of public affairs that got me in a bad mood after a delightful morning at the keyboard composing the challenges of my latest love, the character in a novel. It is this gem in the New York Times on the new war between science versus religion.

reboot 9.0: the human and the collective intelligence thing

This weekend, that is, since Friday evening after training, I have had only one thing in mind: getting my talk for reboot ready.

“we are pregnant with the future, when will the child be born?“

My preparation has involved going over what I wrote in announcing the talk, sketching a few questions that I have and that I would like to ask the folks at reboot, give the whole inquiry and logical frameworks, prepare a few illustrations and graphics, visualize a few ideas, and last but not least, it also involved digging up my personal copy of Albert Messiah’s classic two volumes on QM that were in a box in the cellar.

One thought from Albert Messiah’s Quantum Mechanics (on page 116, Wiley edition) that I would like to invite you to consider that it may apply to social systems is that at the quantum level of accuracy, it is impossible to separate the object to be measured from the measuring instrument.

So, what is it that we are doing when we humans are measuring our own? Is there a quantum level to the human? If there is such a level, where is it and what does it look like? If we could answer any of these questions and generate any insight, what conjectures would it permit? Am I insane in advancing such ideas?

I have started a bit of a discourse on complex adaptive systems (CAS) when I tried to jot down my thoughts on both what I prepared and what emerged from the Knowledge Ownership presentation last February. I know that I got myself into a bit of an adventure when I try to span the bridge of quantum mechanics to social adaptive systems, and above all I know that I better go back to both reliable authoritative sources and getting a reality check on the present thinking and wisdom. Still, this is much too fascinating to not enter into the discussion.

However my preparation is being affected by the dialog with other participants having talks slated at reboot. In particular those of Oleg Koefoed on Intuition? and George Por on Boosting our Collective Intelligence. To me, and as is seen by the comments, is a good example of emergent phenomena. Something is happening two weeks ahead of the meeting, and a few of us are interacting. How is that possible? Is it the technology? Was it designed this way?

I am however very puzzled by this thing that I call the evolution of humans. Within the human quantum level of accuracy I will think this one out with you during my talk. Let’s see where we will end up.