http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Sources-of-Innovation-tp4566136p4569208.html
- the birds get crotchety if we forget to clean the cages. :-)
Yes, you'll find fans of Brian Arthur-speak here. In particular, I
> emerging in some places and not others is interesting. I would
--- -. . ..-. .. ... .... - .-- --- ..-. .. ... ....
> 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>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
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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.orgMeets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College