Communicatheo

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Is it probable or possible that the volume of information will drown us or save us?

IBM Blue Gene P - 2. "The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) major acquisition, the Blue Gene/P supercomputer, will boost the facility's total computing power to 556 teraflops, representing a fivefold increase in system capability. This advance will help to initiate the coming era of petascale computing and enable experts to answer questions that have confounded America's scientists for years. Photo courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory". Por Argonne National Laboratory, en Flickr.

In the 70’s of last century, a very good professor was drawing a line on the blackboard.  He put a 0 at some distance from it and then a 100%. Looking at the audience, he expressed this simple ratio: in any decision, one can move hypothetically between total uncertainty and total certainty, and that what diminishes the darkness and increases the certainty necessary for decision making is information. This white ray on a dark blackboard was a clear-sighted example in an era when the market research and other executive-level studies were just at their beginnings in Latin America. Even more so in the field of corporations. On the other hand, the professional executives were just making their way in the organizations. Based on interviews conducted in the fifties on the management of that time, positions were filled by candidates with good numeracy skills, and preferably contacted with the existing oligarchy. The first mass produced computers were not yet conquering the management. The limited information, far from being accurate, was handled by some executives in small notebooks they carried in their jacket and which they carefully tended to. To them then, they were like what the iPhones are to us nowadays. Those who were making decisions were acting in a context where the changes were slow, slow-accelerating and had extended life cycles. This occurred only two generations ago and many of those players are still engaged in today’s politics, market and academia with varying degrees of resilience.

Today, the white line and its meaning are still in force – what has changed is the context and the acceleration of change. These two factors are causing a strong obsolescence of the existing methodologies, belonging to the modernity, or, to be more precise, of the capture instruments and socio-economic and environmental measurements of the last fifty years. The lifespan of the information collected suffers a similarly rapid process of obsolesce. The methods and information must be adjusted increasingly more rapidly to change, due to which the certainty-uncertainty ratio in the decision making process pulls quickly and irreversibly towards uncertainty by increasing the acceleration of change in certain key areas of knowledge. We are going to multiply all the acceleration that we can imagine several times a year, due to increasing capacity in teraflops, or billions of operations per second that have been taking place in the world’s major economies.

In the 70’s of last century, a very good professor was drawing a line on the blackboard.  He put a 0 at some distance from it and then a 100%. Looking at the audience, he expressed this simple ratio: in any decision, one can move hypothetically between total uncertainty and total certainty, and that what diminishes the darkness and increases the certainty necessary for decision making is information.

It is important to underline that the traditional data-to-knowledge prediction models, applied to the studies and evaluations of the last fifty years, are based on the probability analysis and that there is always, according to Thomas Bayes, a subjective character to them. Thus the ratio of certainty of a prediction depends, on one hand, on the quality of information and knowledge of the analyst, and, on the other hand, on the variability of the information itself. In this perspective we must remember that the quality of information is inversely proportional to the variability of it. A greater variation means less quality.

In this context, the project studies with a national character and / or involving a large volume of investments can be justified, carried out and become obsolete before being unveiled. Many of them become political problems difficult to justify. This has been easily seen in the current financial (or structural?) crisis called, subprime – I don’t know why since the meaning of the term is only a consequence and not the cause of it. Surely they had to call it somehow for the perception of security of the social group. The important thing is that no expert is sure whether the measures taken all across the world will get us out of the crisis or if this will bounce back. Neither do they know how long reserves will last at the current unsustainable levels of production. Or for how long some of the affected or badly hit economies may sustain their social welfare structures. At micro-economical level this situation increases exponentially.

The important thing for this proposal is to realize and communicate in a correct form that the traditional canons of information and decision making lost a strong relative value when faced with the explosive growth of information, accelerating change and diversity of contexts that arose. Nowadays, we have some good examples where the existent information, even where there is too much of it, does not allow us to make safe choices or socio-economic assessments for the next two years, or maybe even less. It is a great challenge for the entire system. From politicians and corporate executives to micro-enterprises and even consumers today. We must reinvent ourselves in this new context of information and change that brings the post-modern abundance. It is perhaps the beginning of a Big Bang of structures and lifestyles in a world without borders. And in particular how a situation of breakdown and inevitable change of the communications industry has kept, relatively successfully, one way or another, the institutional stability at a global level.

The increasing complexity of the context and the speed of change have led to a sharp drop in the environmental and socio-economic usefulness of the traditional methodologies of data collection and evaluation. If the traditional probabilistic predictions will be increasingly less practical at a social and economical level, the challenge, it seems, is how to build, even though not probable but possible, a future that is unknown but indeed feasible to plan and want.

At the same time, a traumatic technical obsolescence occurs, as well as a loss of interest on the part of many “established” professionals and technicians used to work in traditional markets. Normally educated for yesterday, only few take or can take ongoing training programs to enable them to deal with the new office demands and technical and professional capabilities. In this context, the Web can play an increasing and unexpected role as a means of catching up, but unfortunately its use is extremely low after 25 years of existence, according to European and Latin-American statistics. To support this view, a recent study by the European Union (2009) notes that one in three Europeans have never used the Internet. A situation that shows that it lacks a deep cultural inclusion in the political structure of the world in order to fill the gap of inequality that is emerging.

At the same time, a traumatic technical obsolescence occurs, as well as a loss of interest on the part of many “commoditized” professionals and technicians used to work in traditional markets. Normally educated for yesterday, only few take or can take ongoing training programs to enable them to deal with the new office demands and technical and professional capabilities.

Landing without depth in the organization of public and private corporations that are the cornerstones of national and global GDP, we can sketch a profile of how corporate governments are acting to fill the gap that has developed. One example is those thousands of reports on studies and assessments of two years or more, which were drawn up in the first decade of the third millennium and are soon to be museum pieces. It’s a shame not to keep records or an adequate back up of them. They are generally assessments of similar methodological standards regardless of location in various public or private corporations with strong bureaucratic structures forged in the middle of last century; and in which is likely to read easily imaginable repetitive findings by social analysts and communications specialists: …. the executives and managers have an endogenous direction (inward), conventions and rules (which they erroneously call culture), obedience (deadly) to their superiors, doubt new rules and ideas, and show a strong aversion to risk.

(…) a recent study by the European Union (2009) notes that one in three Europeans have never used the Internet.

There are new things in the world that exist side by side with change and complexity. But there are no proper mechanisms for inclusion, either cultural or technical. They line up in a waiting queue to go through a slow and slowing process of cultural inclusion. Processes that are facing the most incredible and hidden power groups. They adjust to our former speeds and allow the established system to survive until the crisis has passed. I believe there is no truer statement than the one that concludes that every crisis is an opportunity. Two examples among many: the hydrogen buses and renewable energy. Network communications, the vision of a borderless world and work collaboration are enabling more of a perspective vision of the model already in place.

SAGE-AU geeks and project blackbox. "Project Blackbox is essentially Sun's datacentre in a box. Either preloaded with some serious teraflops, or 'empty' it's a good solution for companies with a lack of space, and a need for a datacentre". Por Max_au, en Flickr.

This is a typical phenomenon of postmodern complexity. The prospect as a vision brings face to face the polycontextuality and the intelligent systems, which, among other changes, are breaking the paradigms. Among the new ideas, it would be interesting to further study the OSTO / SYMA del Dr Rieckmann Heijo; and his development of dinaxyty. A concept that unites the increasing complexity of context, that translates directly in the increasingly higher limitations of forecasting and managing, and the accelerated dynamics of change. Perhaps we can better explain part of the financial crisis experienced by the world since 2008, beyond the traditional search for an inherent causal line. Nobody can claim that bank managers and those in the car industry have become incapable overnight. Common sense leads me to think that, on the contrary, they were excellent managers in an era of mutations.

Dr. Reinhard Friedman’s publication, a document of the Faculty of Political Sciences of the Central University, of 2003, making reference to H Rieckmann, reads: the third millennium needs politicians and managers that have the capacity to withstand the complexity and dynamics of change and to show resilience, allowing the organisations to avoid the dangerous gap that threatens their survival as the dinaxyty increases faster than their learning and development.

(…)the third millennium needs politicians and managers that have the capacity to withstand the complexity and dynamics of change and to show resilience(…)

The questions then are: how will the key players be able to adapt the methodologies and the explosive power of teraflops or petaflops available worldwide; and how to communicate proposals and useful insights into a world where dinaxity goes faster than the capacity of response of the species. A claim that arises alone is that we cling to a context where the traditional research and decision-making models lose the increasing effectiveness and strongly slow down methodologies of innovation, media and networks that would allow us to understand, face and build with some success a possible future. Or adapt to the real crisis that large collaborative development studies view as possible in the near future. This is a phenomenon that provides good opportunities for those working from methodologies to products and services that enable a sustainable living for the most diverse communities of the globe. For more information please go to the Web / Project Millennium. See  http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/

Recommended reading:

BROWN, Lester. Plan B.3.0

Public administration in the 21st century. Anticipating the changes that are coming, 2003. Document of the Faculty of Political Sciences of Central University.

Rieckmann, H.: Managing and performing on the edge of the 3rd Millennium. Practical, theoretical, uncertain, 2 Aufl. Frankfurt am Main 2000, 3rd edition, Frankfurt am Main 2000.

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