Sources of Innovation
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In a recent washingtonpost.com article named
"Erasing our innovation deficit" ( http://bit.ly/cG6vGW ) Eric Schmidt said "We have been world leaders in [technological] innovation for generations. It has driven our economy, employment growth and our rising prosperity. [..] We can no longer rely on the top-down approach of the 20th century, when big investments in the military and NASA spun off to the wider economy." Do you agree? What kind of approach does the USA need to return to old strength? -J. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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What an interesting question!
Getting to an answer requires setting aside ALL ideology and doing a comparative study, across history and national boundaries, on the phenomenon of technological leadership. Who knows, for instance, how the internet was developed? By Al Gore over a latte, right! That's top down. Do the following span some dimension of interest: Manhattan project Lanl's work on Energy NSF 's call for proposals on, say, Dynamical Systems. Ordinary NSF Research Grants The human genome project Ordinary professors fooling around in their laboratories. Somebody could make a lot of money writing a book using these as chapter heads. N Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University ([hidden email]) http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe] > [Original Message] > From: Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> > Date: 2/13/2010 8:22:32 AM > Subject: [FRIAM] Sources of Innovation > > In a recent washingtonpost.com article named > "Erasing our innovation deficit" ( http://bit.ly/cG6vGW ) > Eric Schmidt said > > "We have been world leaders in [technological] > innovation for generations. It has driven our > economy, employment growth and our rising prosperity. > [..] We can no longer rely on the top-down approach of > the 20th century, when big investments in the military > and NASA spun off to the wider economy." > > Do you agree? What kind of approach does the > USA need to return to old strength? > > -J. > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by Jochen Fromm-4
There's an economic gorilla in the room no one takes seriously: War.
We're now paying for two wars that are each a greater strain on our economy than the recession and the stimulus bills. Innovation has costs that war denies. We actually need to get back to capitalism, too. What! Yup. To big to fail is not capitalism, otherwise the natural course of bankruptcy would have worked. Consider Eric's comment: "First, start-ups and smaller businesses must be able to compete on equal terms with their larger rivals. They don't need favors, just a level playing field." I think we have reached ungovernability. Neither party is mine and neither is effective. We're in gridlock and its not just the republicans being obstructive. On the positive note, I think we've seen the immense hierarchies discredited. The intelligence services add hierarchy for greater coordination, and they fail. Less hierarchy, more interaction would be far better, as we know by diversity and complexity studies. Another quote: "Second, encouraging risk-taking means tolerating failure -- provided we learn from it." If our government was agile enough, we could explore then pull back from failures. Getting to Eric's comments (he's a past boss of mine, BTW), as usual he's right on: "More than ever, innovation is disruptive and messy. It can't be controlled or predicted. The only way to ensure it can flourish is to create the best possible environment -- and then get out of the way. It's a question of learning to live with a mess." How odd that puts us into the Tea Party! Eric is right on as usual, and will be ignored. -- Owen On Feb 13, 2010, at 6:21 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote: > In a recent washingtonpost.com article named > "Erasing our innovation deficit" ( http://bit.ly/cG6vGW ) > Eric Schmidt said > > "We have been world leaders in [technological] innovation for > generations. It has driven our economy, employment growth and our > rising prosperity. > [..] We can no longer rely on the top-down approach of the 20th > century, when big investments in the military and NASA spun off to > the wider economy." > > Do you agree? What kind of approach does the > USA need to return to old strength? > > -J. > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by Jochen Fromm-4
Yeah, but....
Doesn't War sometimes cut the other way? What about the War on Space? (Soon to become the War on Mars -- there's an irony.) NIck Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University ([hidden email]) http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe] > [Original Message] > From: Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> > Date: 2/13/2010 10:12:16 AM > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Sources of Innovation > > There's an economic gorilla in the room no one takes seriously: War. > > We're now paying for two wars that are each a greater strain on our > economy than the recession and the stimulus bills. Innovation has > costs that war denies. > > We actually need to get back to capitalism, too. What! Yup. To big > to fail is not capitalism, otherwise the natural course of bankruptcy > would have worked. Consider Eric's comment: "First, start-ups and > smaller businesses must be able to compete on equal terms with their > larger rivals. They don't need favors, just a level playing field." > > I think we have reached ungovernability. Neither party is mine and > neither is effective. We're in gridlock and its not just the > republicans being obstructive. > > On the positive note, I think we've seen the immense hierarchies > discredited. The intelligence services add hierarchy for greater > coordination, and they fail. Less hierarchy, more interaction would > be far better, as we know by diversity and complexity studies. > Another quote: "Second, encouraging risk-taking means tolerating > failure -- provided we learn from it." If our government was agile > enough, we could explore then pull back from failures. > > Getting to Eric's comments (he's a past boss of mine, BTW), as usual > he's right on: > "More than ever, innovation is disruptive and messy. It can't be > controlled or predicted. The only way to ensure it can flourish is to > create the best possible environment -- and then get out of the way. > It's a question of learning to live with a mess." > > How odd that puts us into the Tea Party! > > Eric is right on as usual, and will be ignored. > > -- Owen > > > On Feb 13, 2010, at 6:21 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote: > > > In a recent washingtonpost.com article named > > "Erasing our innovation deficit" ( http://bit.ly/cG6vGW ) > > Eric Schmidt said > > > > "We have been world leaders in [technological] innovation for > > generations. It has driven our economy, employment growth and our > > rising prosperity. > > [..] We can no longer rely on the top-down approach of the 20th > > century, when big investments in the military and NASA spun off to > > the wider economy." > > > > Do you agree? What kind of approach does the > > USA need to return to old strength? > > > > -J. > > > > ============================================================ > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by Jochen Fromm-4
It is probably the case that mockery ... particularly self mockery.... is
the enemy of innovation. n Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University ([hidden email]) http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe] > [Original Message] > From: Pamela McCorduck <[hidden email]> > To: <[hidden email]>; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> > Date: 2/13/2010 10:31:55 AM > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Sources of Innovation > > > On Feb 13, 2010, at 12:12 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: > > > What an interesting question! > > > > Getting to an answer requires setting aside ALL ideology and doing a > > comparative study, across history and national boundaries, on the > > phenomenon of technological leadership. > > > > Who knows, for instance, how the internet was developed? By Al > > Gore over > > a latte, right! That's top down. > > By a handful of visionary guys at ARPA in the 1960s who were left > alone to do it or fail. Failure was always a possibility. > > Do the following span some dimension of > > interest: > > > > Manhattan project > > Very much top down as a project, though inspired by a small group of > scientists who worried what might be happening in Germany. > > > Lanl's work on Energy > > NSF 's call for proposals on, say, Dynamical Systems. > > A response to what was originally a very bottom up phenomenon (if you > consider scientists the bottom of anything). > > > Ordinary NSF Research Grants > > Widely thought to be status quo stuff. Peer review by people who've > already tried that and "know" it can't be done. > > > The human genome project > > A topdown event until Craig Venter said, I can do it faster, better, > cheaper. And did. > > > Ordinary professors fooling around in their laboratories. > > Those days are much attenuated, if they're not gone. The amount of > time it takes to raise research money is getting like raising money in > politics. Jobs are fewer, so there's enormous pressure to achieve > tenure. > > In short, I don't think there's any one answer as to what encourages > innovation, but there are several, and some of them are pretty > obvious. A lot of work has been done on human networking--Silicon > Valley thrived on bright people rubbing up together in bars after > work, at PTA meetings, at whatever. Ditto Route 128. A culture that > doesn't frown on risk, which means you can fail, pick yourself up, > dust yourself off, and start all over again. > > We certainly know what discourages innovation, and it's squatting on > our heads right now. > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
On Feb 13, 2010, at 12:12 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: > What an interesting question! > > Getting to an answer requires setting aside ALL ideology and doing a > comparative study, across history and national boundaries, on the > phenomenon of technological leadership. > > Who knows, for instance, how the internet was developed? By Al > Gore over > a latte, right! That's top down. By a handful of visionary guys at ARPA in the 1960s who were left alone to do it or fail. Failure was always a possibility. > Do the following span some dimension of > interest: > > Manhattan project Very much top down as a project, though inspired by a small group of scientists who worried what might be happening in Germany. > Lanl's work on Energy > NSF 's call for proposals on, say, Dynamical Systems. A response to what was originally a very bottom up phenomenon (if you consider scientists the bottom of anything). > Ordinary NSF Research Grants Widely thought to be status quo stuff. Peer review by people who've already tried that and "know" it can't be done. > The human genome project A topdown event until Craig Venter said, I can do it faster, better, cheaper. And did. > Ordinary professors fooling around in their laboratories. Those days are much attenuated, if they're not gone. The amount of time it takes to raise research money is getting like raising money in politics. Jobs are fewer, so there's enormous pressure to achieve tenure. In short, I don't think there's any one answer as to what encourages innovation, but there are several, and some of them are pretty obvious. A lot of work has been done on human networking--Silicon Valley thrived on bright people rubbing up together in bars after work, at PTA meetings, at whatever. Ditto Route 128. A culture that doesn't frown on risk, which means you can fail, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again. We certainly know what discourages innovation, and it's squatting on our heads right now. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by Owen Densmore
We have attempted to solve complex problems with complicated solutions, both in the economy and health care. We seem to have forgotten that both are Complex Adaptive Systems, and imposition of order only works for complicated systems. Consider that the Constitution, in its original form, had only 4,543 words. The two health care bills add up to more 4,543 PAGES!!
Both the economy and health care will not respond to the imposition of order, only capitalization on emergent order. Remember, "amplify positive attractors, dampen negative attractors" works in Complex Adaptive Systems. I agree with "too big to fail is not capitalism". Time for our arrogant politicians (virtually all incumbents in both parties) to learn a little Complexity Theory. They should be forced to view David Snowden's 3 minute video on the difference between complicated and complex: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Miwb92eZaJg and read Paul Plsek's 13 page Appendix B to "Crossing the Quality Chasm" to understand what is needed in health care reform: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10027&page=309 We don't take "starting point" into account in any of the current economic and health care initiatives. What works in Oregon may not work in Mississippi. Failures, especially small failures, are necessary for innovation. The Tea Party Movement is a perfect example of emergence and amplification of attractors. But career politicians, which are what we seem to have exclusively at this point, have no incentive to be creative. We need to begin to demand more of them, and those who understand Complexity need to become more active. Russ#3 On Feb 13, 2010, at 11:12 AM, Owen Densmore wrote: > There's an economic gorilla in the room no one takes seriously: War. > > We're now paying for two wars that are each a greater strain on our economy than the recession and the stimulus bills. Innovation has costs that war denies. > > We actually need to get back to capitalism, too. What! Yup. To big to fail is not capitalism, otherwise the natural course of bankruptcy would have worked. Consider Eric's comment: "First, start-ups and smaller businesses must be able to compete on equal terms with their larger rivals. They don't need favors, just a level playing field." > > I think we have reached ungovernability. Neither party is mine and neither is effective. We're in gridlock and its not just the republicans being obstructive. > > On the positive note, I think we've seen the immense hierarchies discredited. The intelligence services add hierarchy for greater coordination, and they fail. Less hierarchy, more interaction would be far better, as we know by diversity and complexity studies. Another quote: "Second, encouraging risk-taking means tolerating failure -- provided we learn from it." If our government was agile enough, we could explore then pull back from failures. > > Getting to Eric's comments (he's a past boss of mine, BTW), as usual he's right on: > "More than ever, innovation is disruptive and messy. It can't be controlled or predicted. The only way to ensure it can flourish is to create the best possible environment -- and then get out of the way. It's a question of learning to live with a mess." > > How odd that puts us into the Tea Party! > > Eric is right on as usual, and will be ignored. > > -- Owen > > > On Feb 13, 2010, at 6:21 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote: > >> In a recent washingtonpost.com article named >> "Erasing our innovation deficit" ( http://bit.ly/cG6vGW ) >> Eric Schmidt said >> >> "We have been world leaders in [technological] innovation for generations. It has driven our economy, employment growth and our rising prosperity. >> [..] We can no longer rely on the top-down approach of the 20th century, when big investments in the military and NASA spun off to the wider economy." >> >> Do you agree? What kind of approach does the >> USA need to return to old strength? >> >> -J. >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
I think Schmidt is dreaming, that the USA had an innovation policy that worked, that it could have an innovation policy that would work in the future.
We had a population that was willing and eager to try new things, once, and from the consumers to the entrepreneurs they did try new things, and that eagerness made growth and innovation.
The world has some other populations who are willing and eager to try new things these days, and they have a lot more headroom for economic growth than we do. They are going to try new things and grow and innovate.
We're too busy defending ourselves from hedge fund vampires and health care ghouls to worry about growth. Say what you will about the undead, they steal their profits fair and square and invest them in the rule of law.
-- rec --
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by Jochen Fromm-4
On Feb 13, 2010, at 8:21 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote: > In a recent washingtonpost.com article named > "Erasing our innovation deficit" ( http://bit.ly/cG6vGW ) > Eric Schmidt said > > "We have been world leaders in [technological] innovation for generations. It has driven our economy, employment growth and our rising prosperity. > [..] We can no longer rely on the top-down approach of the 20th century, when big investments in the military and NASA spun off to the wider economy." > > Do you agree? What kind of approach does the > USA need to return to old strength? > > -J. I'm surprised that none of the current/former SFIers on the list have mentioned Brian Arthur's recent pitch for "combinatorial evolution" as the engine of innovation. As I read it, Brian's argument is that innovation is an epiphenomenon arising from: -- the functional modularization of many different kinds of technologies*, plus -- the standardization of "open" interfaces enabling those functional components or modules to be combined in different ways, plus -- an environment that enables and incentivizes widespread experimental combination of different technologies, e.g., by occasionally rewarding those who come up with novel, useful combinations. *These could be of the "hard" or "soft" variety, e.g., chip design or double-entry bookkeeping. So, on this account it would seem that both "top-down" as well as "bottom-up" initiative is indispensable. Bottom-up activities are the proximate cause and primary engine driving innovation. However, the size of that engine (e.g., the share of the total population capable of participating constrictively in the combinatorial search) depends substantially on the existence, scope, and openness/interoperability of those modules and the standardized interfaces between them. Unfortunately, by their very definition "standards" are a top-down phenomenon -- both because they are never adopted with unanimous consent (but must be appx. universally binding with a domain in order to work in that domain), and because they must remain relatively stable over time, which means that for everyone that comes along after the moment of standardization, they may feel like an "unjust," arbitrary imposition. In 2002, a quartet of prominent Internet standards developers published a paper called "Tussle in Cyberspace" (link below), which made a broadly similar argument about how the Internet has evolved. However, while mechanisms that the Tussle authors describe are broadly similar, the tone seems quite different, to me at least. The earlier paper seemed to be (obliquely) engaging a topical issues that was just emerging around that time -- i.e., the aspirations of some dominant Internet service providers to subtly alter and/or partially vacate some of the standards that make the Internet "open" and thus had fostered the Internet's rapid growth up to that time (note: today the issue is most commonly called "net neutrality"). In that context, the Tussle paper seems to lean ever so slightly past the domain of observation and Darwinian theory construction, in the general direction of advocating the tussle process and the embrace of whatever outcomes it yields, ala "social darwinism." In any case, I think that any present US deficit in innovation can probably be chalked up, at least in part, to the ongoing progressive deviation from our most recent moment of optimal balance between those "top down" and "bottom up" forces. Some of the biggest recent winners in the innovation game -- i.e., those who benefited most from the latest round of technical standardization -- have started exert their own top-down authority in ways that advance their own private interests, but which collaterally degrade the environment for future/distributed innovation... (The question resonates for me because of the looming inflection point in Internet protocol standards associated with the depletion of the IPv4 address pool, which happens to be the stuff of my day job) My own 0.02, +/- Tom Vest "Tussle in Cyberspace: Defining Tomorrow’s Internet" http://groups.csail.mit.edu/ana/Publications/PubPDFs/Tussle2002.pdf ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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Sheesh, what a bunch of academic phraseology!
IM(Not So)HO, America at large has been sufficiently dumbed down by the brutal combination of a mediocre educational system, an academic peer review system that rigidly refuses to think outside the box, pay-for-play politics, fundamentalist christian & christian wannabe religions, McDonalds lardburgers, and short-sighted Wall Street quants that innovation is now solidly a thing of the past, and will probably remain so for a very long time.
--Doug On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 12:47 PM, Tom Vest <[hidden email]> wrote:
-- Doug Roberts [hidden email] [hidden email] 505-455-7333 - Office 505-670-8195 - Cell ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by Roger Critchlow-2
Where does all this whining about health care
come from? Everyone in Germany has a health insurance, it is obligatory. There is general agreement here that the European (and esp. the German) health care system is better and more social than the one in the US. The USA obviously needs a better health care system. Where is the American optimism and the "i believe we can do it" spirit? I've heard that optimism and positive thinking is a typical American attitude. America is lacking a vision, something like Kennedy's vision to bring a man to the moon and back. Military and NASA won't do it this time. A vision or a common dream which would foster technological innovation. Schmidt mentioned "renewable energy" and green technology. What about a clean L.A. with fresh air? A large scale scientific initiative to create the first AI would be another one. America would have the resources to do it, it has the companies with the largest data centers. It should be proud of Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple. It is difficult to understand why it disputes about health care so long. -J. ----- Original Message ----- From: Roger Critchlow To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Sent: Saturday, February 13, 2010 6:54 PM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Sources of Innovation [...] We're too busy defending ourselves from hedge fund vampires and health care ghouls to worry about growth. Say what you will about the undead, they steal their profits fair and square and invest them in the rule of law. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by Douglas Roberts-2
The unquestioned axiom here seems to be that
innovation is, per se, always and everywhere "good" (for some value of "good" that is itself mostly implicit, I think, though I admit I haven't followed the entire thread carefully), or at least "good" for those in the immediate locale (physical, social, economic, virtual...whatever) of the innovation. If I had to choose an axiom, I'd prefer Paul Goodman's: "Innovate only to simplify, and then sparingly." But that axiom presupposes a lot-- at a minimum, that "innovation" is a choice, that its consequences are transparent, that simplification is good (same caveats as above), that the impact of a given innovation on simplification vs. complication is transparent, and probably much more. Of course, so does the previous axiom presuppose a lot. Lee Rudolph ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by Jochen Fromm-4
Krankenkasse works great in Österreich until you don't want to wait for your knee replacement or hernia repair or cataract extraction without waiting for 12-18 months. Then you'd better have some cash for the "envelope". The Canadian system also works great, until it is YOUR heart surgery, as we recently saw with Danny Williams, the premier of Newfoundland. They found a way to "adapt" in their Complex Adaptive System.
If you want to get something done, you incentivize it. The problem is, we have incentivized the system we have, be it health care, politics, or finance. We actually had a better health care delivery system in the 1980's, before we tinkered with it. Spent less % of GDP, no access problem, health insurance affordable and charity care took care of those who didn't have it. Physicians actually spent time with patients and some even made house calls as late as then. Porter and Teisberg, in "Redefining Health Care: Creating Value Based Competition on Results" described the downward spiral because of destructive zero-sum competition. They also outlined the only sane answer to the problem, but nobody is listening. Russ #3 On Feb 13, 2010, at 2:55 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote: > Where does all this whining about health care > come from? Everyone in Germany has a health > insurance, it is obligatory. There is general > agreement here that the European (and esp. > the German) health care system is better > and more social than the one in the US. > The USA obviously needs a better health care > system. Where is the American optimism and > the "i believe we can do it" spirit? I've heard > that optimism and positive thinking is a typical > American attitude. > > America is lacking a vision, something like > Kennedy's vision to bring a man to the moon > and back. Military and NASA won't do it > this time. A vision or a common dream which > would foster technological innovation. Schmidt > mentioned "renewable energy" and green > technology. What about a clean L.A. with > fresh air? A large scale scientific initiative > to create the first AI would be another one. > America would have the resources to do it, it > has the companies with the largest data centers. > It should be proud of Google, Microsoft, > Amazon, and Apple. It is difficult to understand > why it disputes about health care so long. > > -J. > > ----- Original Message ----- From: Roger Critchlow > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Sent: Saturday, February 13, 2010 6:54 PM > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Sources of Innovation > > [...] We're too busy defending ourselves from hedge fund vampires and health care ghouls to worry about growth. Say what you will about the undead, they steal their profits fair and square and invest them in the rule of law. > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by Douglas Roberts-2
On Feb 13, 2010, at 3:43 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:
> Sheesh, what a bunch of academic phraseology! > • functional modularization > • combinatorial evolution > • both "top-down" as well as "bottom-up" initiative [...] indispensable > IM(Not So)HO, America at large has been sufficiently dumbed down by the brutal combination of a mediocre educational system, an academic peer review system that rigidly refuses to think outside the box, pay-for-play politics, fundamentalist christian & christian wannabe religions, McDonalds lardburgers, and short-sighted Wall Street quants that innovation is now solidly a thing of the past, and will probably remain so for a very long time. > > --Doug Actually, we said approximately the same thing, or rather your list included a small subset of the things I was trying to cover with my academic phraseology. No question that your phraseology is much more colorful! Not so easy to model however. I only chimed in (and subscribed) because I'm trying to model some related problems in my own field. I saw the terms "modeling" and "applied complexity" on the group page -- but perhaps I misinterpreted the sense in which one or more of those terms is being used... In any case, please excuse the intrusion. TV > On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 12:47 PM, Tom Vest <[hidden email]> wrote: > > On Feb 13, 2010, at 8:21 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote: > > > In a recent washingtonpost.com article named > > "Erasing our innovation deficit" ( http://bit.ly/cG6vGW ) > > Eric Schmidt said > > > > "We have been world leaders in [technological] innovation for generations. It has driven our economy, employment growth and our rising prosperity. > > [..] We can no longer rely on the top-down approach of the 20th century, when big investments in the military and NASA spun off to the wider economy." > > > > Do you agree? What kind of approach does the > > USA need to return to old strength? > > > > -J. > > I'm surprised that none of the current/former SFIers on the list have mentioned Brian Arthur's recent pitch for "combinatorial evolution" as the engine of innovation. > As I read it, Brian's argument is that innovation is an epiphenomenon arising from: > > -- the functional modularization of many different kinds of technologies*, plus > -- the standardization of "open" interfaces enabling those functional components or modules to be combined in different ways, plus > -- an environment that enables and incentivizes widespread experimental combination of different technologies, e.g., by occasionally rewarding those who come up with novel, useful combinations. > > *These could be of the "hard" or "soft" variety, e.g., chip design or double-entry bookkeeping. > > So, on this account it would seem that both "top-down" as well as "bottom-up" initiative is indispensable. > Bottom-up activities are the proximate cause and primary engine driving innovation. > However, the size of that engine (e.g., the share of the total population capable of participating constrictively in the combinatorial search) depends substantially on the existence, scope, and openness/interoperability of those modules and the standardized interfaces between them. Unfortunately, by their very definition "standards" are a top-down phenomenon -- both because they are never adopted with unanimous consent (but must be appx. universally binding with a domain in order to work in that domain), and because they must remain relatively stable over time, which means that for everyone that comes along after the moment of standardization, they may feel like an "unjust," arbitrary imposition. > > In 2002, a quartet of prominent Internet standards developers published a paper called "Tussle in Cyberspace" (link below), which made a broadly similar argument about how the Internet has evolved. However, while mechanisms that the Tussle authors describe are broadly similar, the tone seems quite different, to me at least. The earlier paper seemed to be (obliquely) engaging a topical issues that was just emerging around that time -- i.e., the aspirations of some dominant Internet service providers to subtly alter and/or partially vacate some of the standards that make the Internet "open" and thus had fostered the Internet's rapid growth up to that time (note: today the issue is most commonly called "net neutrality"). In that context, the Tussle paper seems to lean ever so slightly past the domain of observation and Darwinian theory construction, in the general direction of advocating the tussle process and the embrace of whatever outcomes it yields, ala "social darwinism." > > In any case, I think that any present US deficit in innovation can probably be chalked up, at least in part, to the ongoing progressive deviation from our most recent moment of optimal balance between those "top down" and "bottom up" forces. Some of the biggest recent winners in the innovation game -- i.e., those who benefited most from the latest round of technical standardization -- have started exert their own top-down authority in ways that advance their own private interests, but which collaterally degrade the environment for future/distributed innovation... > > (The question resonates for me because of the looming inflection point in Internet protocol standards associated with the depletion of the IPv4 address pool, which happens to be the stuff of my day job) > > My own 0.02, +/- > > Tom Vest > > "Tussle in Cyberspace: Defining Tomorrow’s Internet" > http://groups.csail.mit.edu/ana/Publications/PubPDFs/Tussle2002.pdf > > > > > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > > -- > Doug Roberts > [hidden email] > [hidden email] > 505-455-7333 - Office > 505-670-8195 - Cell > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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'Twasn't an intrusion, but let me say that if you can model the propagation of aggregate stupidity in country-sized social networks, I'll happily purchase the rights to your simulation!
--Doug
On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 4:15 PM, Tom Vest <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by Tom Vest
Hello Tom,
Welcome to Friam! Don't mind the occasional squawk from the ParrotFarm - the birds get crotchety if we forget to clean the cages. :-) Yes, you'll find fans of Brian Arthur-speak here. In particular, I think his ideas of "Deep Craft" wrt innovation <http://tinyurl.com/yfud2p3 > emerging in some places and not others is interesting. I would argue Northern New Mexico has a level of deep craft in simulation and related topics like optimization and visualization that allows practitioners to exchange ideas quickly with common vocabularies (though one could argue about how deep it goes). BTW, I enjoy the tools and visualizations coming out of Caida! If you're out in Santa Fe, please consider giving a brownbag talk. -Stephen --- -. . ..-. .. ... .... - .-- --- ..-. .. ... .... [hidden email] (m) 505.577.5828 (o) 505.995.0206 redfish.com _ sfcomplex.org _ simtable.com _ ambientpixel.com On Feb 13, 2010, at 4:15 PM, Tom Vest wrote: > On Feb 13, 2010, at 3:43 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote: > >> Sheesh, what a bunch of academic phraseology! >> • functional modularization >> • combinatorial evolution >> • both "top-down" as well as "bottom-up" initiative [...] >> indispensable >> IM(Not So)HO, America at large has been sufficiently dumbed down >> by the brutal combination of a mediocre educational system, an >> academic peer review system that rigidly refuses to think outside >> the box, pay-for-play politics, fundamentalist christian & >> christian wannabe religions, McDonalds lardburgers, and short- >> sighted Wall Street quants that innovation is now solidly a thing >> of the past, and will probably remain so for a very long time. >> >> --Doug > > Actually, we said approximately the same thing, or rather your list > included a small subset of the things I was trying to cover with my > academic phraseology. > No question that your phraseology is much more colorful! Not so easy > to model however. > > I only chimed in (and subscribed) because I'm trying to model some > related problems in my own field. > I saw the terms "modeling" and "applied complexity" on the group > page -- but perhaps I misinterpreted the sense in which one or more > of those terms is being used... > > In any case, please excuse the intrusion. > > TV > > >> On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 12:47 PM, Tom Vest <[hidden email]> wrote: >> >> On Feb 13, 2010, at 8:21 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote: >> >>> In a recent washingtonpost.com article named >>> "Erasing our innovation deficit" ( http://bit.ly/cG6vGW ) >>> Eric Schmidt said >>> >>> "We have been world leaders in [technological] innovation for >>> generations. It has driven our economy, employment growth and our >>> rising prosperity. >>> [..] We can no longer rely on the top-down approach of the 20th >>> century, when big investments in the military and NASA spun off to >>> the wider economy." >>> >>> Do you agree? What kind of approach does the >>> USA need to return to old strength? >>> >>> -J. >> >> I'm surprised that none of the current/former SFIers on the list >> have mentioned Brian Arthur's recent pitch for "combinatorial >> evolution" as the engine of innovation. >> As I read it, Brian's argument is that innovation is an >> epiphenomenon arising from: >> >> -- the functional modularization of many different kinds of >> technologies*, plus >> -- the standardization of "open" interfaces enabling those >> functional components or modules to be combined in different ways, >> plus >> -- an environment that enables and incentivizes widespread >> experimental combination of different technologies, e.g., by >> occasionally rewarding those who come up with novel, useful >> combinations. >> >> *These could be of the "hard" or "soft" variety, e.g., chip design >> or double-entry bookkeeping. >> >> So, on this account it would seem that both "top-down" as well as >> "bottom-up" initiative is indispensable. >> Bottom-up activities are the proximate cause and primary engine >> driving innovation. >> However, the size of that engine (e.g., the share of the total >> population capable of participating constrictively in the >> combinatorial search) depends substantially on the existence, >> scope, and openness/interoperability of those modules and the >> standardized interfaces between them. Unfortunately, by their very >> definition "standards" are a top-down phenomenon -- both because >> they are never adopted with unanimous consent (but must be appx. >> universally binding with a domain in order to work in that domain), >> and because they must remain relatively stable over time, which >> means that for everyone that comes along after the moment of >> standardization, they may feel like an "unjust," arbitrary >> imposition. >> >> In 2002, a quartet of prominent Internet standards developers >> published a paper called "Tussle in Cyberspace" (link below), which >> made a broadly similar argument about how the Internet has evolved. >> However, while mechanisms that the Tussle authors describe are >> broadly similar, the tone seems quite different, to me at least. >> The earlier paper seemed to be (obliquely) engaging a topical >> issues that was just emerging around that time -- i.e., the >> aspirations of some dominant Internet service providers to subtly >> alter and/or partially vacate some of the standards that make the >> Internet "open" and thus had fostered the Internet's rapid growth >> up to that time (note: today the issue is most commonly called "net >> neutrality"). In that context, the Tussle paper seems to lean ever >> so slightly past the domain of observation and Darwinian theory >> construction, in the general direction of advocating the tussle >> process and the embrace of whatever outcomes it yields, ala "social >> darwinism." >> >> In any case, I think that any present US deficit in innovation can >> probably be chalked up, at least in part, to the ongoing >> progressive deviation from our most recent moment of optimal >> balance between those "top down" and "bottom up" forces. Some of >> the biggest recent winners in the innovation game -- i.e., those >> who benefited most from the latest round of technical >> standardization -- have started exert their own top-down authority >> in ways that advance their own private interests, but which >> collaterally degrade the environment for future/distributed >> innovation... >> >> (The question resonates for me because of the looming inflection >> point in Internet protocol standards associated with the depletion >> of the IPv4 address pool, which happens to be the stuff of my day >> job) >> >> My own 0.02, +/- >> >> Tom Vest >> >> "Tussle in Cyberspace: Defining Tomorrow’s Internet" >> http://groups.csail.mit.edu/ana/Publications/PubPDFs/Tussle2002.pdf >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >> >> >> >> -- >> Doug Roberts >> [hidden email] >> [hidden email] >> 505-455-7333 - Office >> 505-670-8195 - Cell >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by Jochen Fromm-4
When Kennedy envisioned going to the moon, no lobby existed to fight
ferociously for the sole right to take the profits from going to the moon, and the sole right to decide who gets to go. If you read the not-very-deep subtext in this fight, you will see that it's not about giving better healthcare to Americans (which we desperately need) but about protecting the enormous profits of the healthcare insurance industry. It's dressed up in "right to choose," and "privacy between doctor and patient," and "keep the government out of medical care," but it's really about profit protection. From several different and reliable sources (one of them a congressional candidate) I have heard that since early last summer, the insurance and pharmaceuticals industries have been spending over $1 million per day on lobbying. It continues. You can do the arithmetic. The media regularly reports on how much better, cheaper, and more effective medical plans are all around the developed world. It doesn't penetrate $1 million-plus per day. On Feb 13, 2010, at 3:55 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote: > Where does all this whining about health care > come from? Everyone in Germany has a health > insurance, it is obligatory. There is general > agreement here that the European (and esp. > the German) health care system is better > and more social than the one in the US. > The USA obviously needs a better health care > system. Where is the American optimism and > the "i believe we can do it" spirit? I've heard > that optimism and positive thinking is a typical > American attitude. > > America is lacking a vision, something like > Kennedy's vision to bring a man to the moon > and back. Military and NASA won't do it > this time. A vision or a common dream which > would foster technological innovation. Schmidt > mentioned "renewable energy" and green > technology. What about a clean L.A. with > fresh air? A large scale scientific initiative > to create the first AI would be another one. > America would have the resources to do it, it > has the companies with the largest data centers. > It should be proud of Google, Microsoft, > Amazon, and Apple. It is difficult to understand > why it disputes about health care so long. > > -J. > > ----- Original Message ----- From: Roger Critchlow > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Sent: Saturday, February 13, 2010 6:54 PM > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Sources of Innovation > > [...] We're too busy defending ourselves from hedge fund vampires > and health care ghouls to worry about growth. Say what you will > about the undead, they steal their profits fair and square and > invest them in the rule of law. > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by Stephen Guerin
Thanks Stephen. I took no offense -- just wanted to announce my presence on-list, and then to indulge in a little crotchetiness of my own ;-)
That said, but you should be careful what you wish for. I've already visited Santa Fe 3-4x now, the first few times to attend Swarm-related conferences at SFI while I was in grad school (c. 1995-1998). Given the chance, I tend to find excuses to come! Full disclosure: I no longer have any contractual relationship with CAIDA. I was a fellow/advisor on economic and policy matter that affect Internet protocol development, deployment, and usage from 2005~2007, and I continue to work with CAIDA Director/PI KC Claffy less formally but fairly regularly ever since. In fact KC and I were together on my last visit to Santa Fe in October 2007. We were invited up to chat with some of the SFI research staff and fellows who were interested in the possible uses of Internet topology and flow time series measurements to explore/exemplify some broader insights about self-organizing systems that they were working on. I currently work as a consultant, mostly to the technical coordination institutions that administer Internet protocol number resources (i.e., the Regional Internet Registries, or RIRs). I don't think that there was much follow-up between SFI and CAIDA after that meeting, but then at that time my own research of possible relevance was not yet particularly well developed. That has changed in the interim, perhaps to the point that it would merit a talk. I'll follow up with a few details off-list. Regards all, TV http://www.caida.org/home/staff/tvest/ http://www.ripe.net/info/ncc/staff/science_grp.html On Feb 13, 2010, at 11:58 PM, Stephen Guerin wrote: > Hello Tom, > > Welcome to Friam! Don't mind the occasional squawk from the ParrotFarm - the birds get crotchety if we forget to clean the cages. :-) > > Yes, you'll find fans of Brian Arthur-speak here. In particular, I think his ideas of "Deep Craft" wrt innovation <http://tinyurl.com/yfud2p3> emerging in some places and not others is interesting. I would argue Northern New Mexico has a level of deep craft in simulation and related topics like optimization and visualization that allows practitioners to exchange ideas quickly with common vocabularies (though one could argue about how deep it goes). > > BTW, I enjoy the tools and visualizations coming out of Caida! If you're out in Santa Fe, please consider giving a brownbag talk. > > -Stephen > > > --- -. . ..-. .. ... .... - .-- --- ..-. .. ... .... > [hidden email] > (m) 505.577.5828 (o) 505.995.0206 > redfish.com _ sfcomplex.org _ simtable.com _ ambientpixel.com > > > > > > > > > On Feb 13, 2010, at 4:15 PM, Tom Vest wrote: > >> On Feb 13, 2010, at 3:43 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote: >> >>> Sheesh, what a bunch of academic phraseology! >>> • functional modularization >>> • combinatorial evolution >>> • both "top-down" as well as "bottom-up" initiative [...] indispensable >>> IM(Not So)HO, America at large has been sufficiently dumbed down by the brutal combination of a mediocre educational system, an academic peer review system that rigidly refuses to think outside the box, pay-for-play politics, fundamentalist christian & christian wannabe religions, McDonalds lardburgers, and short-sighted Wall Street quants that innovation is now solidly a thing of the past, and will probably remain so for a very long time. >>> >>> --Doug >> >> Actually, we said approximately the same thing, or rather your list included a small subset of the things I was trying to cover with my academic phraseology. >> No question that your phraseology is much more colorful! Not so easy to model however. >> >> I only chimed in (and subscribed) because I'm trying to model some related problems in my own field. >> I saw the terms "modeling" and "applied complexity" on the group page -- but perhaps I misinterpreted the sense in which one or more of those terms is being used... >> >> In any case, please excuse the intrusion. >> >> TV >> >> >>> On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 12:47 PM, Tom Vest <[hidden email]> wrote: >>> >>> On Feb 13, 2010, at 8:21 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote: >>> >>>> In a recent washingtonpost.com article named >>>> "Erasing our innovation deficit" ( http://bit.ly/cG6vGW ) >>>> Eric Schmidt said >>>> >>>> "We have been world leaders in [technological] innovation for generations. It has driven our economy, employment growth and our rising prosperity. >>>> [..] We can no longer rely on the top-down approach of the 20th century, when big investments in the military and NASA spun off to the wider economy." >>>> >>>> Do you agree? What kind of approach does the >>>> USA need to return to old strength? >>>> >>>> -J. >>> >>> I'm surprised that none of the current/former SFIers on the list have mentioned Brian Arthur's recent pitch for "combinatorial evolution" as the engine of innovation. >>> As I read it, Brian's argument is that innovation is an epiphenomenon arising from: >>> >>> -- the functional modularization of many different kinds of technologies*, plus >>> -- the standardization of "open" interfaces enabling those functional components or modules to be combined in different ways, plus >>> -- an environment that enables and incentivizes widespread experimental combination of different technologies, e.g., by occasionally rewarding those who come up with novel, useful combinations. >>> >>> *These could be of the "hard" or "soft" variety, e.g., chip design or double-entry bookkeeping. >>> >>> So, on this account it would seem that both "top-down" as well as "bottom-up" initiative is indispensable. >>> Bottom-up activities are the proximate cause and primary engine driving innovation. >>> However, the size of that engine (e.g., the share of the total population capable of participating constrictively in the combinatorial search) depends substantially on the existence, scope, and openness/interoperability of those modules and the standardized interfaces between them. Unfortunately, by their very definition "standards" are a top-down phenomenon -- both because they are never adopted with unanimous consent (but must be appx. universally binding with a domain in order to work in that domain), and because they must remain relatively stable over time, which means that for everyone that comes along after the moment of standardization, they may feel like an "unjust," arbitrary imposition. >>> >>> In 2002, a quartet of prominent Internet standards developers published a paper called "Tussle in Cyberspace" (link below), which made a broadly similar argument about how the Internet has evolved. However, while mechanisms that the Tussle authors describe are broadly similar, the tone seems quite different, to me at least. The earlier paper seemed to be (obliquely) engaging a topical issues that was just emerging around that time -- i.e., the aspirations of some dominant Internet service providers to subtly alter and/or partially vacate some of the standards that make the Internet "open" and thus had fostered the Internet's rapid growth up to that time (note: today the issue is most commonly called "net neutrality"). In that context, the Tussle paper seems to lean ever so slightly past the domain of observation and Darwinian theory construction, in the general direction of advocating the tussle process and the embrace of whatever outcomes it yields, ala "social darwinism." >>> >>> In any case, I think that any present US deficit in innovation can probably be chalked up, at least in part, to the ongoing progressive deviation from our most recent moment of optimal balance between those "top down" and "bottom up" forces. Some of the biggest recent winners in the innovation game -- i.e., those who benefited most from the latest round of technical standardization -- have started exert their own top-down authority in ways that advance their own private interests, but which collaterally degrade the environment for future/distributed innovation... >>> >>> (The question resonates for me because of the looming inflection point in Internet protocol standards associated with the depletion of the IPv4 address pool, which happens to be the stuff of my day job) >>> >>> My own 0.02, +/- >>> >>> Tom Vest >>> >>> "Tussle in Cyberspace: Defining Tomorrow’s Internet" >>> http://groups.csail.mit.edu/ana/Publications/PubPDFs/Tussle2002.pdf >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> ============================================================ >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Doug Roberts >>> [hidden email] >>> [hidden email] >>> 505-455-7333 - Office >>> 505-670-8195 - Cell >>> ============================================================ >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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I had missed the connection with KC Claffy. I followed her work to
map the internet while I was at Sun and heard a brilliant presentation she gave, I think at the Asilomar Microcomputer Workshop a while back. Very good stuff! Love to hear more about the project(s) especially how you talked anyone into funding it! Very pioneering work. The sfcomplex.org could use a talk on that sort of graph discovery and rendering if you have the time for it. -- Owen On Feb 14, 2010, at 8:25 AM, Tom Vest wrote: > Thanks Stephen. I took no offense -- just wanted to announce my > presence on-list, and then to indulge in a little crotchetiness of > my own ;-) > > That said, but you should be careful what you wish for. > I've already visited Santa Fe 3-4x now, the first few times to > attend Swarm-related conferences at SFI while I was in grad school > (c. 1995-1998). > Given the chance, I tend to find excuses to come! > > Full disclosure: I no longer have any contractual relationship with > CAIDA. I was a fellow/advisor on economic and policy matter that > affect Internet protocol development, deployment, and usage from > 2005~2007, and I continue to work with CAIDA Director/PI KC Claffy > less formally but fairly regularly ever since. In fact KC and I were > together on my last visit to Santa Fe in October 2007. We were > invited up to chat with some of the SFI research staff and fellows > who were interested in the possible uses of Internet topology and > flow time series measurements to explore/exemplify some broader > insights about self-organizing systems that they were working on. I > currently work as a consultant, mostly to the technical coordination > institutions that administer Internet protocol number resources > (i.e., the Regional Internet Registries, or RIRs). > > I don't think that there was much follow-up between SFI and CAIDA > after that meeting, but then at that time my own research of > possible relevance was not yet particularly well developed. > That has changed in the interim, perhaps to the point that it would > merit a talk. I'll follow up with a few details off-list. > > Regards all, > > TV > http://www.caida.org/home/staff/tvest/ > http://www.ripe.net/info/ncc/staff/science_grp.html > > > On Feb 13, 2010, at 11:58 PM, Stephen Guerin wrote: > >> Hello Tom, >> >> Welcome to Friam! Don't mind the occasional squawk from the >> ParrotFarm - the birds get crotchety if we forget to clean the >> cages. :-) >> >> Yes, you'll find fans of Brian Arthur-speak here. In particular, I >> think his ideas of "Deep Craft" wrt innovation <http://tinyurl.com/yfud2p3 >> > emerging in some places and not others is interesting. I would >> argue Northern New Mexico has a level of deep craft in simulation >> and related topics like optimization and visualization that allows >> practitioners to exchange ideas quickly with common vocabularies >> (though one could argue about how deep it goes). >> >> BTW, I enjoy the tools and visualizations coming out of Caida! If >> you're out in Santa Fe, please consider giving a brownbag talk. >> >> -Stephen >> >> >> --- -. . ..-. .. ... .... - .-- --- ..-. .. ... .... >> [hidden email] >> (m) 505.577.5828 (o) 505.995.0206 >> redfish.com _ sfcomplex.org _ simtable.com _ ambientpixel.com >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Feb 13, 2010, at 4:15 PM, Tom Vest wrote: >> >>> On Feb 13, 2010, at 3:43 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote: >>> >>>> Sheesh, what a bunch of academic phraseology! >>>> • functional modularization >>>> • combinatorial evolution >>>> • both "top-down" as well as "bottom-up" initiative [...] >>>> indispensable >>>> IM(Not So)HO, America at large has been sufficiently dumbed down >>>> by the brutal combination of a mediocre educational system, an >>>> academic peer review system that rigidly refuses to think outside >>>> the box, pay-for-play politics, fundamentalist christian & >>>> christian wannabe religions, McDonalds lardburgers, and short- >>>> sighted Wall Street quants that innovation is now solidly a thing >>>> of the past, and will probably remain so for a very long time. >>>> >>>> --Doug >>> >>> Actually, we said approximately the same thing, or rather your >>> list included a small subset of the things I was trying to cover >>> with my academic phraseology. >>> No question that your phraseology is much more colorful! Not so >>> easy to model however. >>> >>> I only chimed in (and subscribed) because I'm trying to model some >>> related problems in my own field. >>> I saw the terms "modeling" and "applied complexity" on the group >>> page -- but perhaps I misinterpreted the sense in which one or >>> more of those terms is being used... >>> >>> In any case, please excuse the intrusion. >>> >>> TV >>> >>> >>>> On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 12:47 PM, Tom Vest <[hidden email]> wrote: >>>> >>>> On Feb 13, 2010, at 8:21 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote: >>>> >>>>> In a recent washingtonpost.com article named >>>>> "Erasing our innovation deficit" ( http://bit.ly/cG6vGW ) >>>>> Eric Schmidt said >>>>> >>>>> "We have been world leaders in [technological] innovation for >>>>> generations. It has driven our economy, employment growth and >>>>> our rising prosperity. >>>>> [..] We can no longer rely on the top-down approach of the 20th >>>>> century, when big investments in the military and NASA spun off >>>>> to the wider economy." >>>>> >>>>> Do you agree? What kind of approach does the >>>>> USA need to return to old strength? >>>>> >>>>> -J. >>>> >>>> I'm surprised that none of the current/former SFIers on the list >>>> have mentioned Brian Arthur's recent pitch for "combinatorial >>>> evolution" as the engine of innovation. >>>> As I read it, Brian's argument is that innovation is an >>>> epiphenomenon arising from: >>>> >>>> -- the functional modularization of many different kinds of >>>> technologies*, plus >>>> -- the standardization of "open" interfaces enabling those >>>> functional components or modules to be combined in different >>>> ways, plus >>>> -- an environment that enables and incentivizes widespread >>>> experimental combination of different technologies, e.g., by >>>> occasionally rewarding those who come up with novel, useful >>>> combinations. >>>> >>>> *These could be of the "hard" or "soft" variety, e.g., chip >>>> design or double-entry bookkeeping. >>>> >>>> So, on this account it would seem that both "top-down" as well as >>>> "bottom-up" initiative is indispensable. >>>> Bottom-up activities are the proximate cause and primary engine >>>> driving innovation. >>>> However, the size of that engine (e.g., the share of the total >>>> population capable of participating constrictively in the >>>> combinatorial search) depends substantially on the existence, >>>> scope, and openness/interoperability of those modules and the >>>> standardized interfaces between them. Unfortunately, by their >>>> very definition "standards" are a top-down phenomenon -- both >>>> because they are never adopted with unanimous consent (but must >>>> be appx. universally binding with a domain in order to work in >>>> that domain), and because they must remain relatively stable over >>>> time, which means that for everyone that comes along after the >>>> moment of standardization, they may feel like an "unjust," >>>> arbitrary imposition. >>>> >>>> In 2002, a quartet of prominent Internet standards developers >>>> published a paper called "Tussle in Cyberspace" (link below), >>>> which made a broadly similar argument about how the Internet has >>>> evolved. However, while mechanisms that the Tussle authors >>>> describe are broadly similar, the tone seems quite different, to >>>> me at least. The earlier paper seemed to be (obliquely) engaging >>>> a topical issues that was just emerging around that time -- i.e., >>>> the aspirations of some dominant Internet service providers to >>>> subtly alter and/or partially vacate some of the standards that >>>> make the Internet "open" and thus had fostered the Internet's >>>> rapid growth up to that time (note: today the issue is most >>>> commonly called "net neutrality"). In that context, the Tussle >>>> paper seems to lean ever so slightly past the domain of >>>> observation and Darwinian theory construction, in the general >>>> direction of advocating the tussle process and the embrace of >>>> whatever outcomes it yields, ala "social darwinism." >>>> >>>> In any case, I think that any present US deficit in innovation >>>> can probably be chalked up, at least in part, to the ongoing >>>> progressive deviation from our most recent moment of optimal >>>> balance between those "top down" and "bottom up" forces. Some of >>>> the biggest recent winners in the innovation game -- i.e., those >>>> who benefited most from the latest round of technical >>>> standardization -- have started exert their own top-down >>>> authority in ways that advance their own private interests, but >>>> which collaterally degrade the environment for future/distributed >>>> innovation... >>>> >>>> (The question resonates for me because of the looming inflection >>>> point in Internet protocol standards associated with the >>>> depletion of the IPv4 address pool, which happens to be the stuff >>>> of my day job) >>>> >>>> My own 0.02, +/- >>>> >>>> Tom Vest >>>> >>>> "Tussle in Cyberspace: Defining Tomorrow’s Internet" >>>> http://groups.csail.mit.edu/ana/Publications/PubPDFs/Tussle2002.pdf >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> ============================================================ >>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> Doug Roberts >>>> [hidden email] >>>> [hidden email] >>>> 505-455-7333 - Office >>>> 505-670-8195 - Cell >>>> ============================================================ >>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >>> >>> >>> ============================================================ >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by Pamela McCorduck
Pamela,
I think the healthcare issue goes way beyond just the usual corporate profit protection, pay for play political game. Look at how polarized the nation has become over just this issue alone. Look at how many people don't believe that the healthcare issue is really about healthcare insurance industry profit protection.
We truly are a nation of idiots. We deserve Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and Pat Robertson. Model that, if you like. The agents in the individual based simulation won't need much sophistication.
--Doug
On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 8:00 AM, Pamela McCorduck <[hidden email]> wrote:
When Kennedy envisioned going to the moon, no lobby existed to fight ferociously for the sole right to take the profits from going to the moon, and the sole right to decide who gets to go. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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