Carl -
Great link/article... apropos perhaps of our conversations about
cognitive loss with aging and it's prevention/mitigation?
Nick -
I'm reminded of your idea of using Wiki technology (plus some
conventions) for what you called "Noodles" or "Noodling" some time
back. I saw that concept as your attempt to collaboratively impose or
find order in some of the discussions we might hold on various (semi)
formal topics. In this case, it felt almost like creating a deliberate
mess (or an order not conventionally accepted?)
All -
If you haven't already filed my e-mail in your "TLDR" (too long, didn't
read) file, but are about to, I recommend possibly jumping past
Abrahamson's "Conclusion" section to his "Some Final Thoughts in No
Particular Order" section. Oh... and did anyone (else) notice that the
website this came from was titled in honor of the unfortunate character
"Harry Buttle" in Terry Gilliam's movie "Brazil"? Very apropopriate to
the topic IMO.
...
I was immediately struck with the (mis?)appropriation of A) the
common/vernacular term "mess" and B) the information theory and/or
complex systems terms "hierarchy", "complex systems", "agent", and even
"organization" itself.
Given that this is coming from a Business School and Organizational
Theorists, it is probably fair to say that their use of some of the
terms has it's own history and precedent and may not feel like an
"appropriation" to insiders, but I suspect *most* here are not insiders
to that group.
I was also drawn to the title/topic (as usual) by my own anecdotal
experience, in particular my three favorite characters in such: Myself,
my lovely and creative Wife, and Generic Persons Not Close To Me.
My wife and I are both very "disorderly" people when observed from the
outside, but my wife's disorganization/disorderliness is highly
functional (for her, if not those of us who try to function within her
milieu). My own disorder/disorganization is more problematic (to me as
well as others trying to navigate my messes, including these soliloquys
on FRIAM.
One branch of my own technical work relates closely to this. I've
referred to it in the past as "Faceted Ontologies" which has it's own
specific use in Web Page and Web Store Access. In my world, we are
talking roughly about finding and/or imposing order within relatively
disordered collections, or in fact, more to the point, collections which
have complex, multi-relations intrinsic to their creation and/or
subsequent indexing/collecting/analysis.
Colloquially, one might simply say "one person's mess is another's
order"...
*The Paper itself:*
It feels almost disengenuous on the part of the author (Abrahamson) to
use the colloquial term "mess" throughout his description of the
research he did for the paper...
"The rare article that pertains to a theory of messes is usually lost
somewhere in
a gigantic_mess_ of articles..."
I particularly appreciated the references to Bateson's 1972 _Ecology of
Mind_
<http://www.edtechpost.ca/readings/Gregory%20Bateson%20-%20Ecology%20of%20Mind.pdf>
and his 1948 "Why do Things get in a Muddle?" included therein. The
metalog on "Muddles" seem to provide an everyday understanding of
Entropy, and in my terminology "relative entropy" which pivots on the
relative expectations that various people might have about information
(or in this case, organization of things?).
Abrahamson's section on Politics seemed potentially quite relevant to
today's news, whether it be the Arab Spring (now in it's second Autumn
to tweak a non-sequitor?) or the NSA surviellance. His main takeaway
seems to be that the agents of Messiness do so, to disrupt or blunt the
power of the Hierarchical Establishment... effectively hiding resources
from those in power "in plain sight".
In his Socio-cultural section, the takeaway seems to be that hierarchy
provides an iconic or symbolic reminder of the legitimacy and power of
the dominant culture... and messiness (which disrupts the hierarchy?)
therefore suggests anti-social tendencies.
In Psychology, he suggests that much hierarchical order may be simply
perceived by humans since that is (one strong way) that we organize and
apprehend complexity mentally. This point (and counterpoints that
might be made to it?) reminds me of Bart Kosko's book popularizing Fuzzy
Mathematics entitled "Fuzzy Thinking", where he attempted to make a case
at least for using non-crisp set theoretic ideas in everyday life...
I also have a book from my Grandfather's library entitled "Straight and
Crooked Thinking
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_and_Crooked_Thinking>" which
approached the question of "messy thinking" from a somewhat more
colloquial/practical point of view, focused *mostly* on the deliberate
"crooked thinking" of various types of con-men (with a specific focus on
politicians).
Abrahamson also does a bit of chicken-egg consideration of whether the
prevalence of hierarchical systems within the human experience is the
cause or the effect of our hierarchical thinking? I would postulate
that there IS a reinforcing feedback loop.
In his "Types of Messes" section, he categorizes messes by "location
within the system", "causation", and "dimension". This section
strongly reflects (in his description and analysis) that he is focused
primarily (all but exclusively?) on hierarchical order, not surprising
for a Business School and an Organizational Theory perspective.
By the time I waded into his "Theory of Messes" itself, I didn't have
the confidence in his perspective to do more than skim through it. I
get that he's really talking about "Messes" in the context of
Traditional Organizational Hierarchies, so I forgive him all the things
he doesn't take into consideration, but I was in fact disappointed that
he wasn't taking a broader view... "oh well".
One tidbit from his theory involves an "Efficiency" consideration of
what many here would recognize as a "cacheing" strategy. In
particular, don't put things away when you are done with them for a
particular task because you are likely to need them again "soon". It
also gives a nod to the economies of scale involved in "filing"... that
refiling a small pile of documents (or reshelving a pile of books, or
putting a handful of tools away) all at the same time can be
significantly more efficient than going through the same motions one at
a time as their immediate need is past.
Interestingly, near the end of the paper, he finally gives a nod to
creativity. Firstly he acknowledges that some entities will not fit
(well) into a given hierarchy and a "Mess" allows for them to remain in
spite of this. Also he acknowledges that the accidental
juxtapositioning of elements of a "mess" (in his version, specifically
during an effort to clean up the mess?) leads to possible alternative
organizations and/or other "happy accidents".
To his credit, in his conclusion, he does acknowledge that he only
addressed Messes in Hierarchical Systems... and in a nod to the topic
itself, he postscripts his conclusion with a section titled: "Some Final
Thoughts in no Particular Order"
- Steve
PS. The potato-shallot (not Leeks after all) soup turned out very well
after 4 hours steeping on the woodstove (winding up the thermal flywheel
of my solar/wood heated house in anticipation of Dec, Jan...
Link worked here.
-- Owen
On Sun, Oct 27, 2013 at 10:20 AM, Nick Thompson
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Carl,
Great to hear your "voice."
Link did not work for me. I'm probable the only one.
n
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
<http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/>
*From:*Friam [mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>] *On Behalf Of *Carl Diegert
*Sent:* Sunday, October 27, 2013 9:16 AM
*To:* [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
*Subject:* [FRIAM] disorder caused by individual, or collective
human agents, in hierarchically-ordered and complex
systems--systems composed of sub-systems that, in turn, have their
own subsystems, and so on.
"Disorganization Theory and Disorganizational Behavior: Towards an
Etiology of Messes," Eric Abrahamson, Research in Organizational
Behavior, vol. 24, 2002, pp. 139--80. "
http://harry.buttle.free.fr/ebooks/disorganisation.pdf
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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