Updated: 01/09/2003; 1:01:08 PM.
Robert Paterson's Radio Weblog
What is really going on beneath the surface? What is the nature of the bifurcation that is unfolding? That's what interests me.
        

Wednesday, August 06, 2003

Test


4:36:39 PM    comment []

I had lunch with Dan and Steve yesterday and one of the items we talked about was why boys are so turned off by school. Our bottom line that real learning was as much about motivation as any other factor. Becoming expert at something seemed linked to motivation. Is this why boys like games so much? Is there a lesson for so called educators like me?

Jeremy Hiebert has some great stuff on learning and play.

I read last week that boys are starting to turn away from action flicks. The stated reason was that they preferred the interactivity of games and th amount of contro that they had in games.

I am old but here is a question for the young turks out there. Is there something deadingly passive about the instruction method used at school? Is there somthing about the teacher being a "Mom Clone" that pisses boys off?

Is part of the appeal of most good games that they demand real skill and that the skills cannot be learned quickly? Is another part of the attraction that the good games have compelling ladders of challenge? Is another part of the appeal that truly amazing games have all of this and allow you to compete with a large community?

Finally what if we made school more like games? Anyone read Scott Orson Card's books?

 


11:27:06 AM    comment []

I have spent far too much time tonight browsing through Nobody Here. Fascinating stuff. Its pages are like potato chips... I can't stop at just one! [via tangents]

[The Shifted Librarian]

Brilliant!!!!


9:01:03 AM    comment []

Britain sweats on heat record. Weather experts cool off on their predictions of record-beating temperatures, as the heat approaches 30C plus for yet another day. [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]

I post this only to wonder what is happening to the weather. On the East Coast, I live on PEI, we have nothing but rain and we have the heat on right now. On the west coast there is drought and forest fires. In Europe a heat wave!

 


8:54:00 AM    comment []

As the debate about Gay Marriage builds, I wonder what is the "natural state of marriage". Much of what I read in our local paper righteously informs me that Jesus, God and the church determine what marriage is all about. In short in this view, marriage is a union of one man and one woman whose role is to have children.

Just for fun, let's explore the history of the union of adults a bit further than the few thousand year perspective that the CW allows for.

For most of the 4 million years that humans and our predecessors have been around, our primary social unit has not been a union of two adults of opposite sex but a small tribe of between 15 and 25. 25 appears to be the optimal size with the right threshold of complexity for survival. These tribes were in turn linked into their surrounding tribes into "nations" of about 150. These in turn were linked into federations of around 500-600. Why these numbers?

The Math of Genetics - There is also a genetic link to group size and Magic Numbers.

A person living alone has a "half life " of about one year. Set ups of one lose half their number in one year, half in the next and so on. Living alone is a very weak strategy in a natural environment where there are many risks and challenges. Today the power of the state is encouraging us to live this way - the state is the dependency creating family and its not a healthy relationship.

The half life of a group of 5 is a generation or about 20-40 years

The half life of 25 people is 250-500 years. 25 seems to be an ideal blend of comfort and complexity. A company that lasted 250 years would be a remarkable organizations. In a tribe about half a group of 25 would be adults - say about 8 men and women - now we see the core underlying magic number revealed. It is the ideal single sex work group derived from the ideal familial work group, the tribe.

The 500 person group is the ideal "marriage gene pool" Incest taboos prevent breeding in the 25 person tribe. Wives and husbands have to be found outside this group. But not too far outside. After all we don't want our daughter to mary a stranger or worse someone who cannot add wealth by his connections. We also want them to speak the same language and worship the same Gods. So being close means that we can enter your wife's family hunting ground and that it creates the potential to have large scale group hunts on occasion. 475 people = the ideal gene pool of 19 x 25 member bands.

Dave Pollard writes eloquently about how great it would be to live/work in a group whose sole aim would be mutual support - this is what this tribal set up was all about.

The reality is then that for most of human time, we lived not in units of two adults but in social units of 25 that include about 8 adults. The purpose of this tribal unit was obviously to raise the next generation but to do so in the context of doing all of the related work as a large team. This was above all a social and economic unit.

There was no clear line between work, play and society. No Work/Life balance issues here. Belonging to the tribe and having a tribe that functioned well was in every member's survival interests. No individual was safe on their own. No child could depend solely on her natural parents. They needed the power of the larger group. If we are honest with ourselves, this issue of safety and the need for a support group has not changed. The game can disappear - we are fired. Partners and children die. Our kids need a job. We get injured or sick. In our diminished social world, we now look mainly to the state or to insurance companies for the benefits of the protection of the group. The most important unit in our history was not the "family", it did not exist, but the tribe.

Ah but you have left out the best bits you say. So what about men and women and sex? Any study of primal people tells us that there are many arrangements for how sex was accommodated. There are tribes where the big man has most access to most women. There are matriarchal tribes where the power and the choice is in the hands of the women. There are tribes where most of the sex is homosexual and where mating for children is a by product. In most tribes your own gender is where your primary social and affection relationships reside.

My point? The tribe is sacrosanct - sex and sex partner rules are diverse. The point of the tribe is to raise children not simply to produce them. No two parents in a tribe focus on only their own offspring. They look after all the children as do all the other adults. With all property belonging to all members, there is no need to make a strong link of who was the father.

So where does this leave us now?

The reality is that most so called families are now one adult organizations lead by a woman. This is as small and as vulnerable a unit as is possible. Even with two parents, most are so stressed out at work that they have little energy for their children. We see the results in grade 1 when 30% of the kids have behaviour problems that are so overwhelming that they are unlikely to make it through school. Many families are blended but are so hooked into the CW that they blame the other for the breakdown and have little or no contact. So the children can be cut off from Grandparents and are shuttled between warring parents. Many blended families have the potential to be tribes if only the warring parents could see through their anger and see the potential.

Our view of jobs has meant that work and social life have been split apart and we vainly try and find a balance. Our social structures have been destroyed. In desperation we turn to the state or to the company benefits plan or help for those times when we as individuals cannot help ourselves. .

What marriage really means now is a legal construct by which the benefits of the state and from insurance companies, pensions etc, can pass from one party to a related party. This is what most Gay couples want - legal recognition and access to the state and company tribal benefits.

The church is fixated on sex. No surprise that this is its own weakness. The church assumes that we organize around sex which makes the conventional marriage the central organizational unit. BUT the observed fact is that humans do not naturally organize around sex - we organize around work and survival. Human social organizations are not built for procreation but to raise children so that they can take over the leadership of the tribe. Sex is not why my Gay friends want the recognition of their union. They want the protection of the state tribe. Most importantly, they want to be able to raise children so that they too have the ultimate benefit of dying in the knowledge that they have raised good people who will remember them as their ancestors.


8:46:38 AM    comment []

A theme of my posting is to examine why so many people today are so deeply unhappy about their work life. Recently I have been looking at our need to have a higher purpose and at our need to have a more collegial relationship in the hierarchy.

I have posted two great articles by Ross Mayfield below because it seems clear to me that we have another basic flaw in how we organize - except for the military who have never forgotten - we are mainly are ignorant of the inherent numbers and structures that facilitate the optimal human relationships.

I bet also a dinner that there is not a text book on HR that talks about natural networks as opposed to formal departments and which then includes the theory of magic numbers for optimal relationships. My bet is that organizational theory today is an artificial construct just like the Ptolemaic view of the Universe. What is really on the table here is another Copernican revolution for organization based, now as then, on observation of reality that we are humans rather than acceptance of a  doctrine based on the hope that we are machines. .


7:41:14 AM    comment []

"Ross Mayfields" Social Capital of Blogspace

Perhaps we are in the Network Age [Ming], following modernism and post-modernism.  After obsessing about construction, then deconstruction, we now value the links between deconstructed bits.  When those links are between people, they can be valued as social capital.

Robert Putnam, in Bowling Alone, popularlized the role of social capital.  Francis Fukayama, in Trust, principally discusses the correlation between social capital and the prosperity of nations.  He defines social capital as the ease in which people in a culture can form new associations.

Network Layer Unit Size Distribution of Links Social Capital Weblog Mode 
Political Network 1000s Power Law/Scale-free Sarnoff's Law (N) Publishing
Social Network 150 Random/Bell Curve Metcalfe's Law (N2) Communication
Creative Network 12 Even/Flat Reed's Law (2n) Collaboration

As previously described in the Ecosystem of Networks, people use weblogs in different modes: Publishing, Communication and Collaboration.  By dramatically lowering the cost for these modes on the public internet -- they are rapidly increasing the value of social capital.  Each mode provides different valuation methods:

  • Publishing: Sarnoff's law says the value of a network is proportionate to the number of subscribers.
  • Communication: Metcalfe's law says the value of a network is proportionate to the number of links.
  • Collaboration: Reed's Law says the value of a network is proportionate to the number of groups.

Now Sarnoff + Metcalfe + Reed does not equal a valuation methodology, but centering on the value of different kinds of relationships reveals where investment would provide greater return.  Enhancing communication and ties between collaborative groups enables exponential growth of social capital. 

The above image also recasts the Ecosystem of Networks with the individual as the center, as preferred by many...

From Zack Lynch's forthcoming book:

...Unlike many of his contemporaries, the insightful UC Berkeley sociologist Manuel Castells in his ambitious two thousand page trilogy, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture [retitled the Rise of the Network Society] provided a comprehensive assessment of the impact of information technologies have on culture and global society at large. Castells’ extensive analysis of how "our societies are increasingly structured around the bipolar opposition of the Net and the Self” will remain an important perspective for some time to come. Here, the “Net” stands for the new organizational formations, social and cultural, based on the pervasive use of networked communication media...

Perhaps we are living in a Network Age, building a Network Society.  Perhaps Emergent Democracy is as significant as a Second Superpower.  But at the least, we are building new relationships-- a connectedness that we should value."

We have seen this before but it is worth seeing again - I think the best short description of how we fit into a network


7:18:59 AM    comment []

The Network is the People. So I won the little bet, but there is little reason to gloat.

You will recall that the reason I took the bet was the first point. Power laws exist when ties are weak. Say, with Clay's dinner money. We are all fascinated by the search prospects of weak ties, realizing how loosely connected we all are and that the horizon is not that far away. But what is of value is ties that are strong, real relationships.

Private Referral Networks, like LinkedIn, work because they represent our transactional relationships based on social credit that drives relationships -- with discovery beyond our natural limits. This friction limits what is a tie, what is a "friend," because we put ourselves at risk when we seek reward. Friendster works because communal oversight out perform algorythms like Match.com's. LinkedIn makes social credit part of its process, which begets social capital. Relationships are full of friction, which protects us from overload and disrepute.

Graph distribution is shaped by the friction of information flow. As Duncan Watts observed, "when the requirements for connections increase, connections diminish." By nature we all seek preferential attatchment. What keeps us from directly affiliating with the most connected node is the barriers kingpins errect to protect themselves and their natural limits.

There are natural limits. With blogs as publishing, there is no limit for the amount of readers the writer will accept. Write once, runs everywhere. With blogs as communication, the limit (150) is the amount of conversations you can passively participate in. With blogs as collaboration, well, wikis mostly, the limit (12) is the amount of relationships you can actively manage.

We aren't dolphins. If 1/3 of our network was lost, society would crumble. Power laws are indeed fractal, scale-free reaches small scale -- in absence of friction.

The Network is the People. When we network, we have limits. Networkers within LinkedIn reached that magical upper boundary of 150. Sure, Joi and Reid (the two above 150 ties) may be cetacean delphi among us, but more likely they have allowed declarative ties for reasons beyond conversation. If we gave the bet more time, I am confident the rule of 150 would constrain the upper limit to flatten the curve.

So we shall dine at the venue of your choice. Perhaps the splendor of Fiesta del Mar Too!, with mole poblano, habanero chiles, bottom shelf margaritas and a smattering of social software. Or New Bamboo for shaken beef and Singha.

Im not going to gloat, as this was a close one. And there was another bet that it seems I will loose. [Corante: Social Software] Posted by Ross himself on Corante

I really like the concept of "social friction" forcing limits on our network. When you combine this idea with weak and strong ties a clear picture starts to emerge. Very helpful series of posts. Thanks


7:12:18 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Robert Paterson.
 
August 2003
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
          1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31            
Jul   Sep


Blogroll



Click here to visit the Radio UserLand website.

Subscribe to "Robert Paterson's Radio Weblog" in Radio UserLand.

Click to see the XML version of this web page.

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.