Mark Turrell Work-In-Progress

Future Branching & Perspectives Watching a blue truck pull...

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 09:27:32 +0100

Future Branching & Perspectives

Watching a blue truck pull out of a parking space on Breitestrasse. The future is determined by your perspective in an instant.

My immediate thought was to keep looking at the parking space, using that as my unit of analysis. Over the next three minutes I would already see a new smaller truck park, and a garbage truck pull alongside and leave.

And yet, if I’d have adopted the perspective that the system was defined by the original trick, then I would be in a different world, a future where the surroundings keep moving as the truck makes its way through Berlin.

Perspective change is a very simple concept. And yet it is incredibly powerful. Everything is likely to change based on your perspective. The past. The present. And the future.

A handy device to thinking about systems!

PS the space was then empty for the next four minutes… And no idea where the truck went to!

Network Thinking

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 17:17:01 +0200

Use of network science to design programs and select tools to achieve end goals

Also interpretation layer on events that can be used to explain outcomes and steps leading to outcomes.

An inspiration! Batman movie, with Robin asking five kids to alert homes nearby, two blocks each. Way of leveraging the network to achieve an end goal:

- more quickly than linear methods
- more likely to work (more credibility and urge to act in the agents)
- less resources

For network thinking to work need to have network science, a method for end goal program interpretation and design, and a toolbox of techniques.

Dissipation (of news stories)

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 14:16:55 +0200

Dissipation

Why do some stories that are big then dissipate after a few days (or less)?

Iranian hostages in Syria
Bulgarian bombing of Israelis

And yet Teddy Bears in Belarus

Most things dissipate - spread of non-interest? Absence of acceleration factors? Also context that event taking place in
- superseded by other events?

Interesting to understand another dimension of the spread phenomenon - how do things stop?

Is relativity the only universal truth?

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 21:23:43 +0200

Driving at 80kmph on a Berlin freeway, the cars in front and in the rear view mirror look like they are stationary. Inside the car, everything looks stationary. And yet the rest of the world flashes by. And the whole road itself flies at 1000kmph on the big aping ball we call home.

A conversation at a Berlin lounge bar, outside, warm summer’s day. A discussion about reality, and an attempt at finding some common, trustworthy examples of a singular truth. Two people on top of a building I think, dropping things and taking measurements with the same instrument. A universal result, for sure. Well, again, it all is relative to the viewpoint of the observer, and the perspective of the protagonists, even in the thought experiment.

Perhaps, then, it is relativity that is the true constant. Everything depends on the perspective of the observer. Systems change entirely, even physical systems, based on the observed stance.

You look in the sky with a naked eye, you see the moon and stars. Telescope, more detail. Background radiation? Light shifting? You keep looking at the same bit of sky and keep seeing different things. And, in all likelihood, the person sitting next to you may see different things. The data you gather can be interpreted in many ways.

And, sometimes you as an observer get it wrong. For many decades chemists investigated phlogiston in total confidence of its presence. They were wrong. Wrong lens.

More thinking to do on the subject, and not my first dive in either. It’s important for some work I’m doing on how complex systems and networks become configured based on the end goal of any one of the participants (elements in my terms, nodes on network terms). Interesting things to think about on a balmy Wed night.

Concept Fidelity - translating idea concepts into action

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 18:08:04 +0200

Yummy wood pulp

Mon, 28 May 2012 14:19:20 +0200

Yummy wood pulp:

How did we start eating wood pulp / cellulose …

Probabilities are derived

Sun, 27 May 2012 12:24:50 +0200

To work out the likelihood of things happening or not happening, we have several methods. The probabilities that emerge are derivatives of the underlying data / observations / system dynamics.
We put confidence in probabilities as being somehow ‘real’ - but they are derivative artists.

Looking into resonance & waves

Sat, 26 May 2012 13:38:20 +0200

Looking into resonance & waves

Tactics for compliance taking prescription drugs - I take...

Thu, 24 May 2012 07:45:26 +0200

Tactics for compliance taking prescription drugs - I take propecia daily to keep my hair on. Packets have seven pills. I used to forget to take them… And I realized that it was the transition day that killed the routine. I’d finish a pack, throw it away, and I’d no longer have the pills in the normal place.

Easy solution. On the day I finish the pack, I immediately take out a new pack from my supply place. I then take the last pill, and throw the old pack away.

Compliance… Now practically 100%. Easy

Facebook creates a desire to physically meet

Sun, 20 May 2012 15:24:13 +0200

It is not disembodied, it is connecting. We see people having a great time, and we see invites to events.

It is a platform to spread social behaviour, by it’s very nature. So even if individuals might want to be isolated, it has a contrary effect of connecting them, and putting pressure on those individuals to conform with whatever the new social norm is propagating through the overall network, and the individual networks they are connected to.

Moreover, those who are connected to more people will be exposed to more information and social behaviour. Especially if their friends are connected to relatively large friend networks themselves.

It is possible that the observed or reported behaviours of social isolation was an over focus on those who were isolated (the ‘looking for my keys under a street light’ research problem). Also that the network itself was less social.

However these dynamics have changed rapidly, then if the isolation argument was ever a truthful or fair observation of mass behaviour. Now it is social, and it is driving in-person meetings and conversations more than ever.

Breakthrough Science - new community & conference

Sun, 20 May 2012 14:42:00 +0200

Alternative big scientific breakthroughs, meet, connect with breakthrough investors and marketing / business people
Turn into community and conference - series like TEDx brand, design to spread

Our concept of human identity is changing

Sat, 05 May 2012 22:45:46 +0200

Identify - before we had strict rules on our naming, we used to have one telephone number, etc

Now many people below 20 have at least 2 Facebook profiles - one for parents, one for friends.

We have tons of phone numbers (if we travel, swap the SIM cards), e-mail addresses, and accounts for lots of stuff.

Our pictures get uploaded before we are even aware they have been taken (at a club, at a party - and tagged).

And anything can be faked too…

Identity - concept to develop more (and add to other people’s work too)

How Chemicals Change Us (NYTimes.com) + using consumer boycotts to accelerate change

Fri, 04 May 2012 17:28:30 +0200

How Chemicals Change Us (NYTimes.com) + using consumer boycotts to accelerate change:

Consumer boycotts… of targeted food lines, of specific stores. Sure, these substances are in all kinds of things. But, if you want action, actual and threatened boycotts at consumer level is the way to go. Bashing Monsanto will not make a shred of difference. Threatening to stop buying Cambell’s Soup, or Hamburger Helper… that’s how to start things rolling.

"Share Things" - a new encoded rule for humans

Fri, 04 May 2012 16:54:19 +0200

Share Things – how to encode a new rule (and a good rule to apply). For example, using the word ‘things’ rather than ‘stuff’, as stuff would imply physical, but things does not.

Share is very explicit, and has an implied notion of giving and receiving, while not depriving anyone of ownership or transferring ownership.

For use as an example of encoding, plus as a practical challenge to change global behaviors by encoding people with new ‘rules’ (“help others” is another one, etc)

Editing People - how we 'edit' ourselves

Fri, 04 May 2012 08:50:27 +0200

We edit ourselves when we ‘exist” in potentially public setting

- our clothes, where we go, drink and food selection…
- closer, our conversation topics, the words we choose, what we select to reveal (in response to the crowd, or to an individual)
- even closer - what we claim to like, how we express interest, desire, boredom
- on a job interview - our ‘weaknesses’ cunning selected and positioned, etc

When we edit, we deceive from our selves. Kinda. Our edited personalities are likely a facet of ourselves, as rarely can we be transported so far away from ourselves by another person (by a group and group pressure is a different issue)

Parallel to editing, we have keyhole opinions … But that, is a different topic

Possessions and possessiveness

Tue, 01 May 2012 11:10:50 +0200

Desire to own things, have them exclusively, also prevent others from having them or having access to them.

Also absence of desire to possess things (and people).

And sharing - distinct from possession and desire to not possess. Sense of ownership more nuanced, could be communality, could be non-ownership with focus on others

Interesting concept in terms of opening relationships - and working on heuristic rule of ‘Share Things’

Spread is accelerating

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 23:22:00 +0200

The rate of people following or liking things appears to be accelerating by a 10X factor even in the last 12 months. For example, the YGL group to keep track of who is going to Istanbul hit 60 members in an hour or so. Previously, the YGL group for Mexico took 2 months to hit 120 people (albeit a larger conference).

Many examples of how things are scaling faster than before - KONY2012, Likes and Shares on Facebook, etc.

Spread is made easier by technology (simpler, more in our face), and pre-existing networks (can tap in easily). Also the multi-dimensional aspects of the networks - one person is a node in more than one network, so the network graph becomes massively multi-dimensional.

There will be many implications for this - good things and bad things spread very rapidly. Plus initial good news can be followed rapidly by bad news (and so on).

Likely this has changed the fundamental dynamics of the spread of technology - and other things (Diffusion of Technology - Everett Rogers).