[SALT] Consilience defeats miasma (Steven Johnson talk) (fwd)

[Richard Lowenberg]

Though the following posting does not deal with technical aspects of
complexity modelling, I thought it might be of interest to some on this
list.   This is the latest review of the monthly Bay Area talks.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 11:44:48 -0700
From: Stewart Brand <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: services at longnow.org
Subject: [SALT] Consilience defeats miasma (Steven Johnson talk)

Steven Johnson began his long zoom survey with the "prior art" of Joyce's
Stephen Daedalus locating himself in himself, his neighborhood, Dublin, on
out to the universe.  The value of a long zoom is in identifying and
employing every scale between the very large and very small, noticing how
they change each other when held in the mind at the same time.
 Johnson's core story (and current book) concerned London in 1854, when it
was the largest city in the world and in history with 2.5 million people.
London famously stank.  Cess pools filled basements, slaughter houses were
anywhere, garbage piled up.

Medicine at the time held that disease was caused by "miasma," foul air,
noxious vapors.  "All smell is disease," declared a Doctor Chadwick.  The
authorities decided that the way to cure the frequent cholera epidemics in
London was to get rid of the bad odor--- pump the sewage into the Thames,
which people drank.  The cholera got worse.

Johnson's goal with his book, THE GHOST MAP, was to figure out why the wrong
theory of disease lingered so long, and what it took to correct it.  The
answer, he proposes, is in the perspective of the long zoom.
 The celebrated story goes that John Snow discovered the polluted-water
cause of cholera by drawing a "ghost map" of the cholera deaths concentrated
around the Broad Street pump in Soho.  What really happened is more
interesting.  Snow had been publishing his theory of water pollution causing
cholera for five years.  In August of 1854, a horrifying 10% of his
neighborhood in Soho perished from the disease.  Then he drew up the map,
drawing on public statistics provided by the city, and on the street savvy
of a popular vicar named Rev. Henry Whitehead.

The map confirmed his theory and persuaded the medical establishment and
city authorities.  In just 12 years, cholera was completely eradicated from
London.

In Johnson's view, one long zoom had displaced another.  The miasma theory
of cholera embraced a nested set of scales ranging, from large to
small:*cultural traditions - urban development - technology -
contemporary politics
- "great men" - human sensory system*.  Bad smell, bad people, bad disease.

With John Snow's map, a different long zoom took over:* cities - data
systems - neighborhood - humans - organs - microbes*.  The combination of
city density and open-source data about the epidemic made the ghost map
possible and persuasive.  Doctor Snow noticed that the bodily symptoms of
cholera looked like they were caused by something swallowed rather than
something inhaled.  The data had to be extremely strong to overcome the bias
of human sensory apparatus--- our alarm system of smell can detect minute
amounts of contagion, but we cannot see them.  It took a neighborhood map to
defeat what the nose thought it knew.

Johnson proposed that another word for the long zoom perspective is
"consilience"--- a fine old word, revived by Edward O. Wilson, that links
multiple disciplines and multiple levels into a whole body of knowledge with
extra benefits the separate disciplines lack.  Science and culture can blend
rigorously.  What is discovered in consilience is not just scales of
distance or time but nested systems.

Johnson moved on to contemporary popular culture, drawing on his research
for his brain book (EMERGENCE) and his book on video games and TV
(EVERYTHING BAD IS GOOD FOR YOU).  Back in the three-network days of
"Gilligan's Island," the guiding principle was "least objectionable
programming."  Now with DVDs and Tivo, the guideline is "most repeatable
programming"--- material that will reward you if you study it again and
again.  Thus a current hit TV series about a very different island, "Lost,"
has a whole horde of characters and purveys many-leveled complexities and
mysteries embracing* geography - economics - technology - sociology -
biology - ontology*.  Viewers are invited to wonder, among a great many
other things, whether the whole damn thing is a dream, and, if so, whose?

Our brain is wired with "seeking circuitry" and relishes exercising "the
regime of competence."  TV shows like "Lost" and video games like "World of
Warcraft" are addictive because they reward exploration.  Instead of
employing narrative arcs, they keep you in a state of being always
challenged but not quite overwhelmed as you ascend from skill level to skill
level.

We are learning to master complexity, to revel in long zooms like Google
Earth or the forthcoming Will Wright game, "Spore."  A few years ago,
Johnson was introducing his 7-year-old nephew to to Wright's early video
game, "Sim City"--- "Ooh, look at the big buildings!"  Shortly, Johnson's
factory district was failing.  His nephew piped up.  "Lower your industrial
tax rate," said the child.

Johnson ended the talk with another line from James Joyce: "It was very big
to think about everything and everywhere."

"It's never been easier," said Johnson.

                                --Stewart Brand

--

Stewart Brand -- sb at gbn.org
The Long Now Foundation - http://www.longnow.org
Seminars & downloads: http://www.longnow.org/projects/seminars/