Category: Social-Technical
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Design, Agency and Pragmatic Imagination
The books “Pragmatic Imagination” and “Design Unbound” from Ann Pandleton-Jullian and JSB ( John Seely Brown) explore to a great detail the need for new creative “imagination” into a practical form. The reasoning builds on the ideas of entanglement, expressed in my previous entry. A great lecture from 2015 is availavle on the video-section of…
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Enlightement or Entanglement?
Two great articles build on this idea of the need to get more attention to the connections and relations in between, compared to the specialised detailed view, or to have the multidisciplenary view of entanglement, compared to tradition we learned rom the enlightement. In the 2020 article “Wisdom of stakeholder crowds in complex social–ecological systems“,…
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Digital Twins: Societies are not machines, & optimization is a too narrow approach
I already did mention the importance of VVUQ when considering operational digital twins. More elaborated is the work from teh ETH Zurich team (Dirk Helbing & Javier Argota Sánchez-Vaquerizo), Digital Twins: Potentials, Limitations, and Ethical Issues. Rather than aiming for perfect digital twins, a predictable future, and total control, one should use computer simulation technology…
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Collective Intelligence & information pooling or aggregation
The review article on “Information aggregation and collective intelligence beyond the wisdom of crowds” describes how collective decision-making is a robust behavioural feature of groups for humans and other gregarious animals. Pooling individual information is also fundamental for modern societies, in which digital technologies have exponentially increased the interdependence of individual group members. Cognitive and…
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A radical realignment between grown and built environments
Neri Oxman is an American–Israeli architect and designer known for pioneering the field of Material Ecology. Formerly a tenured professor at MIT, founder and director of The Mediated Matter Group; she now runs her own lab, called Oxman, in Manhattan. She discussed her manifesto and accompanying film Nature x Humanity in a live interview. “How might we leverage design…
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Avoiding “Fake News” – also at old age – not as hard as one might think.
Ryan C. Moore & Jeffrey T. Hancock just published “A digital media literacy intervention for older adults improves resilience to fake news”. This article gives promising news on the awareness and actions one can to avoid fake news and misconceptions. The intervention was a 1-hour, self-directed series of interactive modules designed to teach concepts and…
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Your spatial navigation ability links with the entropy of your city street networks
I already mentioned the importance of space-time decisions, Individual differences in information seeking, the importance of anology (for AI), The importance of spatial thinking and the Active Inference principle (the brain is an “inference engine” that seeks to minimize “prediction error.”) It all comes togethers in a great article in Nature: “Entropy of city street…
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Beware of the lens you apply on gender
Inspired by Deric’s MindBlog entry of today, I like to make a reference to a avorite quote (also on my home-page): If the map doesn’t agree with the ground the map is wrong” Gordon LivingstonToo Soon Old, Too Late Smart The manly art of self-promotion – or maybe the female alternative, is building a map and…
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Education shapes the structure of semantic memory and impacts creative thinking
Quotes from some a recent article, presenting intersting insights on semantic memory and creative thinking. “Education is central to the acquisition of knowledge, such as when children learn new concepts. It is unknown, however, whether educational differences impact not only what concepts children learn, but how those concepts come to be represented in semantic memory—a…
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Bullshit Jobs – Will it change after the pandemics?
I finished reading the great work of David Graeber: Bullshit Jobs, and especially liked the list of five types of entirely pointless jobs: I does not take a lot of intellectual power to connect all five to the pure essence of what I call “the information lens“, blocking the insight from the reality, or the…
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Have farmers had enough of experts?
A great review on one of the most complex issues in sustainable soil management. Farmers placed most trust in other farmers to learn about new soil practices and were less trusting of traditional ‘experts’, particularly agricultural researchers from academic and government institutions, who they believed were not empathetic towards farmers’ needs. In addition to a perceived…
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Wetenschap of overtuiging?Democratie en kapitalisme – wat is er nu gaande
Prof Koen Schoors gebruikt in zijn lezing bij de Universiteit Vlaanderen, “Kan een democratie bestaan zonder kapitalisme?“ (ook beschikbaar als podcast en in een krantenartikel) een aantal veronderstellingen die hij niet verduidelijkt. Dit is jammer, want meer uitleg had de toehoorder doen begrijpen dat de onderbouw ontbreekt. Ondertussen is in de wetenschap voldoende inzicht om…
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Individual differences in information-seeking
Vast amounts of personalized information are now available to individuals. A vital research challenge is to establish how people decide what information they wish to obtain. People’s decisions about whether to seek or avoid information are related to an integration of the – instrumental value, – hedonic value and – cognitive value of information. Individual…
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The Power Of Us – Group Decisions @ “Behavior Change For Good”
Jay Van Bavel, and Dominic Packer have written a new book titled, The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony. It examines how group affiliations influence behavior and inspire both personal and social change. During the BEHAVIOR CHANGE FOR GOOD INITIATIVE interview, Van Bavel talks about why he and…
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Knowledge Defies Entropy
The SantaFe Institue SFIPress has the great theme of Knowledge defies entropy. Just released is the publication The Complex Alternative: Complexity Scientists on the COVID-19 Pandemic. Most papers in the first (of three) part were available as on-line posts in the “Transmission series“, dedicated to the reflections and research based on the COVID-19 pandemic. Also…
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Use complexity as a weapon … (but you might fail)
From Tunnel Vision to Lateral Vision – In the Media & Elsewhere with Gillian Tett, a very short vido speech shared by the Sante Fe Institute, has a very nice reflection on why society accepts crisises like the financial-2008 Use complexity as a weapon The closing statement of the short fragment tells it all: “If…
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Complicated, Complex, Wicked – All Together to innovate…
Innovation benefits and requires a wicked systems approach, which merges complicated and complex system thinking. Claes Anderssona and Petter Törnberga explain in a very well detailed article the details and reasoning behind, to be summarized as: Some more details I would like to highlight are: Approaches embodying a topdown rather than a bottom-up approach to…
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Wisdom in few quotes
Snoopy (& Charlie Brown) are inspiring. They are on this page, because I just came across an inspiring book from Björn Natthiko Lindeblad, on how to live a happy and meaningful life, even if you start of in a unpleasing direction. Nice about the book is the openness and honesty of the author.Some of the…
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Decision-making Uncertainties.
One Earth has a great article on decision-making for complex systems under uncertainties. “Identifying uncertainties in scenarios and models of socio-ecological systems in support of decision-making“There are many sources of uncertainty in scenarios and models of socio-ecological systems, and understanding these uncertainties is critical in supporting informed decision-making about the management of natural resources. Three…
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Article: Circles of dialogue of wisdom
Another open access article, worth reading for the approach taken to solve complex issues with stakeholders in different disciplines and cultures. Breaking monologues in collaborative research: bridging knowledge systems through a listening-based dialogue of wisdom approachSustainability Science Vol.16(3), 2021 The urgent need to address the sustainability issues of the Anthropocene requires a dialogue capable of…
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Reading: Transforming knowledge systems for life on Earth
I want to share a good reading on a very actual and important (heating to hot) topic. Transforming knowledge systems for life on Earth: Visions of future systems and how to get there, published in “Energy Research & Social Science, Vol.70” and available on open access @ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101724 Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research…
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