Most interesting. However what about religions ? History is partly a cemetery for religions as well as everything else it is. Any neighbors of yours Manichaeans ? Zurvanists ? Followers of Orpheus ? Now and then a religion commits suicide, like the Shakers or, literally, the Peoples Temple cult at Jonestown. I've read various studies about the future of religion ; all that I have read, with one exception, assume the same basic "lineup" in 2100 AD as exists in the present. Seems to me this is Highly Improbable. Also the factor --applicable to business-- of resurrections from the dead, for example a number of Neo Pagan groups where long slumbering deities are revivified, like Osiris and Wotan. Might even be some Orphics out there. I don't foresee any new boom in buggy whip companies but what about analog computers for specialty purposes, or steam cars ? Maybe not, but maybe there is something of this kind lurking in the weeds. Earth Shoes ? Dial-setting razors ? Wooden bats ? Billy message dated 6/1/2011 3:49:57 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
This is the sort of thinking it will take to fix California... Adam Feuer » Blog Archive » Refactoring Civilization (http://adamfeuer.com/blog/2010/04/08/refactoring-civilization/) _http://adamfeuer.com/blog/2010/04/08/refactoring-civilization/_ (http://adamfeuer.com/blog/2010/04/08/refactoring-civilization/) ____________________________________ Adam Feuer » Blog Archive » Refactoring Civilization I recently read Clay Shirky’s eloquent article _The Collapse of Complex Business Models_ (http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex-business-models/) . Shirky summarizes _Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies_ (http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X?_encoding=UTF8&tag=adafeu-20) , relating societies to businesses. According to Tainter, _Jared Diamond_ (http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Choose-Fail-Succeed/dp/0670033375?_encoding=UTF8&tag=adafeu-20) , _Ran Prieur_ (http://www.ranprieur.com/apo.html) , and many dystopian science fiction writers, when societies shed complexity, it happens in a catastrophic fashion. As part of the science fiction book _The Caryatids_ (http://www.amazon.com/Caryatids-Bruce-Sterling/dp/0345460626?_encoding=UTF8&tag=adafeu-2 0) , set in 2060, _Bruce Sterling_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Sterling) tosses off the fact that to reduce its complexity, China killed off 500 million people – mainly its old and infirm. Other writers imagine chaos, war, and burning cities. Software programs have many of the problems Shirky mentions in his post: In such systems, there is no way to make things a little bit simpler – the whole edifice becomes a huge, interlocking system not readily amenable to change. Tainter doesn’t regard the sudden de-coherence of these societies as either a tragedy or a mistake—”[U]nder a situation of declining marginal returns collapse may be the most appropriate response”, to use his pitiless phrase. Furthermore, even when moderate adjustments could be made, they tend to be resisted, because any simplification discomfits elites. When the value of complexity turns negative, a society plagued by an inability to react remains as complex as ever, right up to the moment where it becomes suddenly and dramatically simpler, which is to say right up to the moment of collapse. Collapse is simply the last remaining method of simplification. (via _John Robb_ (http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/04/the-simplification-of-complex-societies.html) ) But there are other ways out of this mess. Software developers have a technique called _refactoring_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_refactoring) that is often used to combat complexity. Left unchecked, each modification of a program moves it toward more complexity. But good programmers keep cleaning house – every so often, you need to go in and purposefully reorganize, eliminate _cruft_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruft) , and simplify. Refactoring reduces complexity of software without adding anything new. Often it feels good, since achieving a new level of understanding lets you do the same task in a much simpler way – or a new perspective lets you combine several similar things into one simpler piece of code. And sometimes it’s painful – understanding a mess of complicated spaghetti code is hard, and finding new solutions is often even harder. But without it, you end up with a _big ball of mud_ (http://www.laputan.org/mud/) that will collapse eventually. Turning a working program that uses the “big ball of mud” design pattern into a something that’s simple, supple, and easy to change – well, that’s an art. It’s especially hard when there’s a lot of money running through your software, like the program I work on at Grameen Foundation, _Mifos_ (http://mifos.org/) . Though Shirky doesn’t say it, business as a whole does have a way of reducing complexity without systemic collapse – via _disruptive innovation_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology) . Disruptive innovation, as detailed in Clayton Christensen’s book _Innovator’s Dilemma_ (http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Business-Essentials/dp/006052199 6?_encoding=UTF8&tag=adafeu-20) is actually a non-violent process. Companies may go out of business, but no one loses their life. The problem with complex societies is that the collapse of civilizations has been violent. We need ways to simplify without causing violence, or starvation, or mass suffering. One way is via business model changes – Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and Hunter Lovins say in their book _Natural Capitalism_ (http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Capitalism-Creating-Industrial-Revolution/dp/ 0316353000) that ecological companies will win out over those that aren’t ecological. Another is via other movements, such as the huge do-it-yourself movement (popularized by _Make magazine_ (http://makezine.com/) and _Cory Doctorow_ (http://craphound.com/) ‘s book _Makers_ (http://craphound.com/makers/) ). When you can _print_ (http://reprap.org/) _out_ (http://www.makerbot.com/) or _machine complex industrial_ (http://lumenlab.com/d/micro) parts in your garage, and _sequence genes_ (http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2010/03/dyi_garage_biot.php) and _make transistors_ (http://www.josepino.com/diy/making-homemade-transistors) at home, you don’t need huge factories anymore. That’s refactoring industries. So how do you avoid war, famine, and chaos? One way is to reduce population. Curiously, a really great way to do that is _educate girls_ (http://www.girleffect.org/) and women, and raise peoples’ standard of living – in other words, eliminate poverty. When people are not poor, they have fewer kids. Fewer kids means fewer people consuming fewer resources. So eliminating poverty is one way of refactoring society. The sooner we can do that, the less risk of a whole-society crash we will have. Another might be another idea from Bruce Sterling’s Caryatids, the rise of global civil societies, organizations that take care of people the way governments do now. Another is Paul Romer’s _Charter Cities_ (http://www.chartercities.org/) , a 21st century version of the _Hanseatic League_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League) – where nations team up to create new city-states that can reimagine the social contract for people in their supply region. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_triangle) These are all innovations. That’s what I think _Ran_ (http://ranprieur.com/) and many “pro-crash” writers miss (such as the _Archdruid_ (http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2010/03/riddles-in-dark.html) )- it is possible to innovate our way out of trouble, if we can see the complexity and reduce it fast enough. Our economy isn’t based on energy anymore – it’s based on information. And with economies based on information, you can change all three sides of the _cost-time-quality triangle_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_triangle) , not just two sides. I get angry when I see us being mediocre – accepting war, violence, starvation, oppression, ecological devastation. As with big-ball-of-mud software, we have to think big – if we don’t think big, people will add complexity faster than we can take it away. So that’s why I’m interested in _greatness_ (http://liveingreatness.com/) – how to get teams of people, and teams of teams, and even larger groups, thinking big, and acting effectively at that scale. We need to ship big, great innovations. We need to think big to refactor our civilization, to reduce its complexity in a non-violent way. _Be awesome!_ (http://www.veryawesomeworld.com/awesomebook/inside.html) ____________________________________ (via _Instapaper_ (http://www.instapaper.com/) ) Sent from my iPad -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: _http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism_ (http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism) Radical Centrism website and blog: _http://RadicalCentrism.org_ (http://radicalcentrism.org/) -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
