I may be missing the point, but I really wonder
how different "holonic enterprises" might be from what is already going on in
the current corporate world. Might we not already have enterprises
capable of lateral thinking in the multi-national corporations of
today? Take the Hokey Shoe Company for example. The CEO of Hokey
does not know how to make shoes. He spends his time thinking,
mostly linearly, about how to keep the corporation solvent (or make it even
more solvent) and about how to keep his shareholders happy. He does not
know much about branding or marketing, so that is the job of another VP and his
cluster of people, mostly all linear thinkers. Responsible to him would be
the people that design shoes. They would have to know an awful lot about
consumer preferences, materials, etc., but, again, this is mostly linear
stuff.
Perhaps the most important person in the
organization would be the guy who coordinates everything, perhaps the CEO, but
perhaps a VP of, say, coordination. He might be a lateral thinker because
he would have to know something about shoe design, about branding and marketing,
about people who actually make the shoes and about the resources that go into
them. Information about all of the aspects of the enterprise would have to
be accessible to him because the efficiency of the organization as a whole would
greatly depend on the decisions he made. It would be up to him to
put all of the various aspects of the enterprise together in order to produce
the least cost and most satisfying Hokey shoes.
Prior to the era of instant information and
communication exchange (read "Internet"), the shoes would probably have been
made locally. Now they can be made anywhere in the world where the price
is right, perhaps India, where labour is dirt cheap. In India, the VP Coordination would work through a number of
middlemen who would find women willing to work twelve hours a day for peanuts
and under continuous threat of being replaced by someone willing to work
thirteen hours a day for fewer peanuts. While labour in India would be
dirt cheap, the VP would still have to move product to rich world markets, but
improvements in global transportation (and the growing glut in transportation
capacity) would not make this very expensive.
A couple of decades ago, the shoes would have
been made in Seattle or wherever Hokey is located. The labour force would
have been local and unionized, and the shoe makers would only have worked eight
hours a day. Costs would have been relatively high, so, if improving
technology permitted it, it would make a good deal of sense to move
manufacturing to a low cost place like India where there are few labour
standards. As for the people who once made Hokey shoes locally, some might
have found other jobs and some might not have. Tant pis.
Ed Weick
All:
The weaving of ideas and threads about linear and non-linear thinking
resonates with aspects of a paper I'm developing having to do with
(for lack of a better term) emergent ambient intelligence, and so I'd
like to add a bit of my current effort into those threads.
The folks with whom I'm very fortunately working at the moment are
greatly talented and highly gifted electrical and computer engineers.
They're exploring ideas originating with Koestler's notion of the
"holonic enterprise" and, based on this, are beavering away in their
respective crafts to come up with robust and elegant algorithms that
describe, account for and allow calculation, prediction and
simulation in whatever varieties of nested hierarchical computational
networks they study and develop. Their application questions address
enhancing the computational capacities of organizations, especially
in industries of various sorts, to deal more effectively, efficiently
and productively with all the new complex, extended, nested,
electronically-networked emerging virtual organizations we've
recently created, in which we are all embedded, and of which we are
all a part: herewith is 'network thinking' beyond the orchestra pit.
The current discussion threads about linear and non-linear thinking
are addressing far more than what Kolb thought of as learning cycles.
So far in the exchange, I think there's an implicit comparison being
made between the notions of receiving new experiences essentially
through a more or less passive stance (that is, standing on the
shoulders of all that we've learned and, to the best of our
abilities, adding those new experiences to our foundation), versus
actively exploring and seeking new experiences of an entirely
different order (essentially, using those shoulders to raise
ourselves up, and then leave them behind to climb new, unexplored and
previously-unexperienced peaks -- some of which my only be generated
as a result of our extended climbing effort).
Here, I think we can usefully employ some of the interesting concepts
being used by my engineering colleagues in their work discovering
"ins and outs" of new emerging complex virtual networks having to do
with their holonic enterprises. The conceptual models they are
exploring and developing have some isomorphism with the beautiful
mish-mash of connections, nodes, channels, synaptic gaps and
bioelectrochemical mixtures that flicker and swirl among the nested
hierarchies of our neurons, and all the other systems that support
and maintain them.
Here we are not falling into the old metaphoric trap of saying "the
brain is a computer", but instead are usefully applying the more
flexible and helpful comparison of "the computer and our brain are
similar in some ways". Being careful to make this distinction, we
can advance the notion that the brain and the computer have complex
features that suggest they are types of system ecologies. We can
rapidly spread our conceptual fields regarding ecologies to think
about all other such systems: for example, without robust nested
networks and sub-systems of a great many varieties, functions and
descriptions, our bodies (and, presumably, everything likewise
connected to this example) would simply not be. Considering
everything from algae to ponds, to lakes and rivers and thence to
oceans, from alpine meadows to deserts and forests, from fields of
corn to ocean-bottom 'black smokers', to dust storms and thunderheads
to biomes of every description, we see a huge variety of
interconnected networks of nested hierarchical systems and
sub-systems, furiously (and otherwise) engaging each other with
countless energy, materials and information transactions.
Man-made things and systems of things are little different from this.
We can think of what are appearing as our new nanotechnologies, or
our old familiar washing machines and fancy new laptop computers;
automobiles old and new, production lines, supply chains and
spaghetti junctions; the shop floors and quality circles and
inventories and distribution centres and retail outlets, and all the
things that have converged and continue to do so, over and over and
over, to shape our realities; the homes we live in, the skyscrapers,
the cities and our the largest spreading interlinked conurbations;
our phone networks, power systems and infrastructure grids of every
type and description, all the way to the Internet -- every one of
them complex networked nested hierarchical systems and sub-systems,
again engaging each other with countless energy, materials and
information transactions.
All of these networked ecologies are engaged in processes of bounded,
robust, networked computation, all interacting, all dependent on,
steered by and making use of thresholds with varying permeability and
purpose and countless channels of varying size and capacities, all
comprised of vibrant tuned and self-tuning networks carrying and
supporting every conceivable energy, material and information
transaction.
I paint this image because I suspect that our senses of, or what has
been discussed as 'lateral thinking' and 'linear thinking', of
creativity and inventiveness and adaptability, of foundations of deep
robust knowledge permitting our excitement and pleasure of design,
exploration, discovery and achievement, and perhaps of eventually
arriving at what we hope really does turn out to be wisdom -- I
suspect all of these are features of our own emergent ambient
intelligence that resides at all levels of our own holonic enterprise.
My electrical and computer engineering friends are pretty sure they
are on the right track, that their investigative and exploratory
efforts will lead them to develop new and very useful computational
tools applicable to and capable of dealing with the growing levels of
systemic complexity and ever-increasing speed of our aforementioned
transactions; and, of course, being agents in a holonic enterprise,
what they develop will recursively add to that complexity as well as
enhance capacities to understand and deal with it. They are sure we
will understand holonic enterprises better, and as a result will be
able to make improved use of them as they evolve and self-organize
into areas, features, capacities and niches we can't even imagine. I
think my engineering friends will successfully accomplish what
they've set out to do.
I also suspect that our minds are just like that. I think that our
colleagues in many fields are doing the equivalent of what so many of
our greatest trail-breaking explorers have already accomplished --
explorers such as Galileo, Copernicus, Liebniz, Newton, Boole, Frege,
Russell, Einstein, Gödel, and Feynman, to name just a few. With
their variously-focused efforts, they reveal, explore, explicate,
model and apply facets of what our minds already have the potential
to do, and thereby create the spaces where innovation can take place.
As with the development and application of the telescope and
microscope, for example, and the emergence of conceptual models of
non-euclidian geometry, of formalism, intuitionism and logicism, of
chaos and complexity theory and all that has been thereby generated
and continues to flow from them, they provide new scientific,
conceptual and organizational tools that amplify, enhance and combine
anew our already-present capacities, to allow us to reach into
nascent levels of perception and abstraction and worlds with orders
of magnitude far beyond what we ever once thought we could perceive,
think about, or imagine. But now, we do this, we will continue to do
this, and even more so. And we will do it well.
All of this emphasizes that what we think of as 'linear' and
'lateral' thinking are necessary parts of the whole. When we
appreciate really good, first-class jazz, read an article that
reveals a new and powerful insight, or when we gaze down at the
valley from the wonderful vantage point of the peak that may have
taken us the equivalent of our lifetime to first see and finally
scale, every step we have taken is of both varieties. 'twas always
thus, methinks.
Cheers / Bob Este / Ph.D candidate / U of Calgary
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
The weaving of ideas and threads about linear and non-linear thinking
resonates with aspects of a paper I'm developing having to do with
(for lack of a better term) emergent ambient intelligence, and so I'd
like to add a bit of my current effort into those threads.
The folks with whom I'm very fortunately working at the moment are
greatly talented and highly gifted electrical and computer engineers.
They're exploring ideas originating with Koestler's notion of the
"holonic enterprise" and, based on this, are beavering away in their
respective crafts to come up with robust and elegant algorithms that
describe, account for and allow calculation, prediction and
simulation in whatever varieties of nested hierarchical computational
networks they study and develop. Their application questions address
enhancing the computational capacities of organizations, especially
in industries of various sorts, to deal more effectively, efficiently
and productively with all the new complex, extended, nested,
electronically-networked emerging virtual organizations we've
recently created, in which we are all embedded, and of which we are
all a part: herewith is 'network thinking' beyond the orchestra pit.
The current discussion threads about linear and non-linear thinking
are addressing far more than what Kolb thought of as learning cycles.
So far in the exchange, I think there's an implicit comparison being
made between the notions of receiving new experiences essentially
through a more or less passive stance (that is, standing on the
shoulders of all that we've learned and, to the best of our
abilities, adding those new experiences to our foundation), versus
actively exploring and seeking new experiences of an entirely
different order (essentially, using those shoulders to raise
ourselves up, and then leave them behind to climb new, unexplored and
previously-unexperienced peaks -- some of which my only be generated
as a result of our extended climbing effort).
Here, I think we can usefully employ some of the interesting concepts
being used by my engineering colleagues in their work discovering
"ins and outs" of new emerging complex virtual networks having to do
with their holonic enterprises. The conceptual models they are
exploring and developing have some isomorphism with the beautiful
mish-mash of connections, nodes, channels, synaptic gaps and
bioelectrochemical mixtures that flicker and swirl among the nested
hierarchies of our neurons, and all the other systems that support
and maintain them.
Here we are not falling into the old metaphoric trap of saying "the
brain is a computer", but instead are usefully applying the more
flexible and helpful comparison of "the computer and our brain are
similar in some ways". Being careful to make this distinction, we
can advance the notion that the brain and the computer have complex
features that suggest they are types of system ecologies. We can
rapidly spread our conceptual fields regarding ecologies to think
about all other such systems: for example, without robust nested
networks and sub-systems of a great many varieties, functions and
descriptions, our bodies (and, presumably, everything likewise
connected to this example) would simply not be. Considering
everything from algae to ponds, to lakes and rivers and thence to
oceans, from alpine meadows to deserts and forests, from fields of
corn to ocean-bottom 'black smokers', to dust storms and thunderheads
to biomes of every description, we see a huge variety of
interconnected networks of nested hierarchical systems and
sub-systems, furiously (and otherwise) engaging each other with
countless energy, materials and information transactions.
Man-made things and systems of things are little different from this.
We can think of what are appearing as our new nanotechnologies, or
our old familiar washing machines and fancy new laptop computers;
automobiles old and new, production lines, supply chains and
spaghetti junctions; the shop floors and quality circles and
inventories and distribution centres and retail outlets, and all the
things that have converged and continue to do so, over and over and
over, to shape our realities; the homes we live in, the skyscrapers,
the cities and our the largest spreading interlinked conurbations;
our phone networks, power systems and infrastructure grids of every
type and description, all the way to the Internet -- every one of
them complex networked nested hierarchical systems and sub-systems,
again engaging each other with countless energy, materials and
information transactions.
All of these networked ecologies are engaged in processes of bounded,
robust, networked computation, all interacting, all dependent on,
steered by and making use of thresholds with varying permeability and
purpose and countless channels of varying size and capacities, all
comprised of vibrant tuned and self-tuning networks carrying and
supporting every conceivable energy, material and information
transaction.
I paint this image because I suspect that our senses of, or what has
been discussed as 'lateral thinking' and 'linear thinking', of
creativity and inventiveness and adaptability, of foundations of deep
robust knowledge permitting our excitement and pleasure of design,
exploration, discovery and achievement, and perhaps of eventually
arriving at what we hope really does turn out to be wisdom -- I
suspect all of these are features of our own emergent ambient
intelligence that resides at all levels of our own holonic enterprise.
My electrical and computer engineering friends are pretty sure they
are on the right track, that their investigative and exploratory
efforts will lead them to develop new and very useful computational
tools applicable to and capable of dealing with the growing levels of
systemic complexity and ever-increasing speed of our aforementioned
transactions; and, of course, being agents in a holonic enterprise,
what they develop will recursively add to that complexity as well as
enhance capacities to understand and deal with it. They are sure we
will understand holonic enterprises better, and as a result will be
able to make improved use of them as they evolve and self-organize
into areas, features, capacities and niches we can't even imagine. I
think my engineering friends will successfully accomplish what
they've set out to do.
I also suspect that our minds are just like that. I think that our
colleagues in many fields are doing the equivalent of what so many of
our greatest trail-breaking explorers have already accomplished --
explorers such as Galileo, Copernicus, Liebniz, Newton, Boole, Frege,
Russell, Einstein, Gödel, and Feynman, to name just a few. With
their variously-focused efforts, they reveal, explore, explicate,
model and apply facets of what our minds already have the potential
to do, and thereby create the spaces where innovation can take place.
As with the development and application of the telescope and
microscope, for example, and the emergence of conceptual models of
non-euclidian geometry, of formalism, intuitionism and logicism, of
chaos and complexity theory and all that has been thereby generated
and continues to flow from them, they provide new scientific,
conceptual and organizational tools that amplify, enhance and combine
anew our already-present capacities, to allow us to reach into
nascent levels of perception and abstraction and worlds with orders
of magnitude far beyond what we ever once thought we could perceive,
think about, or imagine. But now, we do this, we will continue to do
this, and even more so. And we will do it well.
All of this emphasizes that what we think of as 'linear' and
'lateral' thinking are necessary parts of the whole. When we
appreciate really good, first-class jazz, read an article that
reveals a new and powerful insight, or when we gaze down at the
valley from the wonderful vantage point of the peak that may have
taken us the equivalent of our lifetime to first see and finally
scale, every step we have taken is of both varieties. 'twas always
thus, methinks.
Cheers / Bob Este / Ph.D candidate / U of Calgary
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
