Nollind Whachell

Saheli has some thoughts on her website about what she would like to see in Recovery 2.0. I’d like to recap some of the overall attributes I’d like to see as well without trying to get into too many specifics.

Centralized vs Decentralized: It should not be a centralized system but instead a decentralized one. Centralized systems can easily get overloaded and collapse. Decentralized systems however can distribute the load so that if one area overloads, other areas can easily take over the work.

Rigid vs Flexible: It should not be a rigid structured system but instead a flexible loose system that can restructure itself on the fly. It is not so much building a perfect system as one that is flexible and scalable enough to adapt to different situations.

Controlled vs Autonomous: There should be no command and control center directing the operations of the people. Instead people make their own decisions based upon the situational awareness information that everyone relays to the system. A decentralized approach where everyone acts as they see fit means elements can react faster to situations without waiting for a central command to relay decisions. A “Shared Mental Model” (read about situational awareness) is critical to this approach though which means that everyone has to be on the same page with regards to how the system works and how best to deal with different situations. A lot of this is achieved through proactive training BEFORE these disasters occur (which means yes we should be doing mock disaster tests with this system to see how it works but more importantly to see how people react). A perfect way to test the system though would be using it for a real situation which is not disaster-related (since if the system is flexible enough, it should be usable for any collective large scale effort which is why for me, the Recovery 2.0 project is really just a subset of my greater Connected Communities project).

Small vs Big: The fundamental concept of the system should be small groups working on a small local scale instead of massive groups working at a global scale. By focusing just on their sphere of control and abilities, each element of the system is not overloaded by the entire collective effort but is instead able to focus on just their immediate efforts. The end result is that each independent local action connected with each other creates a collective swarm effort that accomplishes much larger goals than they ever could on their own.

Again a lot of the thinking above mirrors how the Internet works. And actually if you start looking at some of the more successful applications that are used by people on the Internet right now (i.e. BitTorrent) and how they work (i.e. small pieces working collectively in a swarm to achieve a massive collective effort) then you’ll see which direction I’m going in. Also another great source for how the Internet works is Chapter Five of The Cluetrain Manifesto which is entitled The Hyperlinked Organization.

Things change, constantly. Because of this fact, what you may know as correct today may be wrong tomorrow. Taking that thought in mind, I’ve been pondering a question that relates to my Collective Thinking post where I said that instead of arguing over a point, people should just each pursue the path that they believe is correct. If multiple people choose the same path, then they can swarm together and work collectively to do so if they wish.

Here’s my conundrum. I’d like to take this same approach with anything I’m currently working on, yet I’m not sure how best to approach this. For example, if I’m looking for information that relates to what I’m working on and I notice a site’s author has viewpoints that differ from mine, what should I do? Should I give them my viewpoint and maybe they might realize something from it or should I just shut up so that I don’t distract them from their work. I know where their work is and if I point to them as an interesting site, then they will know where they can find my work as well. In other words, we can learn from each other if we wish to do so but we aren’t interrupting each other and telling the other how to think. Remember, as I said above, I want to avoid “giving orders” to people which means I want avoid telling them that my way is right (and they should think that way). All that I want to do at most is just relay my situational awareness of what stage I am at in my work.

As I said, I’m perplexed on how to take this approach. Right now, I think the best way for me to do this is to not comment on people’s sites but instead just put down my thoughts on my own site with just a link to their site. That way I can record my own observations based upon their work but without interrupting their work. If they want to read my observations then they can always refer back to me and see what my thoughts were on their work. In this way, it is their choice to read my thoughts without me “invading” their space. The most important thing here though is that we both be aware of each other so that if we wish to review each others work, we can.

While visiting Maarten Visser’s Grid Thinking website yesterday, a couldn’t help but realize how similar my thoughts were to a lot of what he said there. Of particular interest, was a post about collective intelligence. Now why I found this interesting is because while discussing the Recovery 2.0 project, I indicated that whoever worked on the ideas for it should openly and continually relay their research discoveries and findings. By doing so, the collective minds of everyone on the project could come to bear so that if one group got stuck at a point, another group could take over with ideas that the first group hadn’t thought about it. In effect, what you create is a leap frog process for evolution and problem solving with multiple minds collectively working on a single goal, all ready to help push the development forward if it falters at a point.

The potential downside to this approach that I’ve seen in the past, however, is that people often have a difficult time agreeing on the best approach to take. Thus they sit around and argue instead of progressing forward. Well what if you agreed that there would be no arguments in the first place. What if instead you said that whatever approaches are determined ALL would be followed. Every person involved in the process would decide upon which approach they want to go with and then diverse variations in the development would be made and continued upon. Therefore, what you get is a multiprocessing effort that is working on a common goal in many different ways. As the development continues, each variation on the approach continues until it hits a roadblock which leaves the remaining variations to go forward by natural selection. And yet the beauty of sharing is that each variation can learn and utilize the knowledge of other variations even though that other variation didn’t fully succeed. In effect, you get a collective mind that allows each variation to learn and grow collectively from the mistakes of other variations.

As Jeff Jarvis indicated the other day, this creates a swarm effect that shrinks and grows based upon the obstacles before the collective group. Thinking from a natural viewpoint, imagine water flowing down a street. If it reaches an obstacle, it immediately spreads out looking for alternate ways around the obstacle. Even more so, multiple ways could be found around it but once passed the water swarms back together to collectively carry on its way. Therefore, both its diversity and its collectiveness are it’s greatest strengths. The irony here is that this strength can only be utilized because of its ability to break into smaller pieces. If it didn’t have this ability, if it could only act as a whole piece to move forward, then it would continually be blocked by obstacles. Only by working in smaller groups does progress occur. Therefore, small is allowing the collective swarm to act in a very big way.

Now the point of all this rambling is that this is a problem that I’m seeing out there right now. We have a bunch of small groups taking different approachs to solving a problem but they aren’t collectively sharing their knowledge. To me it is almost like a whole bunch of pieces to a puzzle are handed out to different people. They each hold that fragment of the puzzle but unless they work together, sharing the knowledge that they have, then the puzzle will never be solved. Therefore, what can be done to allow people to work on each their own independent approaches or variations, and yet still allow them to share their discoveries and setbacks so that everyone collectively can learn from them? If a way is discovered then hopefully this will allow each group in turn to lay down the small pieces of the puzzle until it is completed and solved. Yes, wikis and blogs are an approach but as David Weinberger apologized to his friends a few weeks past, he doesn’t have the time to visit all of their blogs. We need a way to collectively summarize the research and development of many into very small snippets of rich information so that everyone can scan the collective development but they only need to dig into a specific snippet if it relates to their current development. What could be utilized? A collective RSS/Feed streamlined to only relay the most crucial details of each groups development might work. But whatever solution is taken the obvious trick will be to relay the knowledge without overloading the collective mind.