Talk – 3 comments
New Complexity, New attitudes, skills and Tools to match
Or how we can speed up awakening to the effect of internet and mobile communications
UPDATE: Slides are shared on www.slideshare.net/TonZijlstra
Internet and mobile communication mean reaching a new level of complexity in society. We are slowly coming to terms with the new dimensions of freedom and responsibilities this brings. In terms of attitudes, skills and tools. Playing with new tools is not enough, we need to take a look at attitudes and skills that come with our newly attained complexity level: our old ones don't scale anymore. This in turn leads to a new look at tools, both technological and organizational.
Historically societies go through different levels of complexity. Whenever a higher level of complexity in society is being reached new infrastructures and skills emerge or become valued, as a mutually dependent process. Whether it is the advent of roads, empire building, writing, shipping lanes, democracy, planes or computers, they are connected to the type of complexity societies can handle. Recent decades have seen the coming of age of two new infrastructures: mobile communications and the internet. They are now triggering effects that ask for and are a symptom of a new level of complexity. With it come corresponding attitudes, skills, and tools, having a profound impact on our notions of knowledge, learning and collaboration.
In my talk I will discuss three quantitative changes (rise in connections, rise in speed of change, rise in volume of information), triggered by these two new infrastructures, that mean a rise in society's complexity. These three quantitative changes cannot be addressed anymore by previous coping strategies, as they do no longer scale. That is why we see the emergence of qualitative answers, in terms of attitudes, skills and tools: pro-active self-directing attitudes, new information skills and strategies, new social tools and networked organisational models. We are only slowly starting to wake up to the consequences.
I wil discuss the attitudes and skills needed for todays knowledge worker to be effective in a world where the mentioned quantitative changes have taken place, and the type of questions one should be asking oneself to build adapted personal and effective routines and scaling information strategies. Novel complexity creates new dimensions of freedom, shaking lose entrenched Taylorite notions, and new responsibilities to match. This results in a discussion of what directions are open for new value adding webservices and tools, as well as the type of questions we should be asking toolsmiths and webdesigners to help them create the tools that fit our newly emerging needs. Whether these tools are technological or not. Thus speeding up our awakening to this new complexity level.
'Information Overload', Wall paper in an exhibit called Genesis, on parallel visions in engineering, biology and art around 'information'
3 comments
New things to learn, other things to unlearn
Thanks Kars, useful suggestion. I'd add to that, that 'waking up' also means unlearning heretofore useful skills and attitudes, and functionalities.
The whole first part is primarily meant to position the mentioned changes on the 'right' level to be able to start talking about relevant attitudes, skills and tools. I think that part of speeding up realizing potential is getting unstuck from the fact that I'm part of the process and therefore have limited view of that process. The need to step back and go up to systems level.
Explaining the Monster Theory
In my talk I used the Monster Theory as a model to look at how we can see the real impact of internet and mobile communications faster and easier, as well as learn how to respond. In this old posting on my blog I explain the Monster Theory by Martijntje Smits in more detail:www.zylstra.org/blog/archives/2003/08/monsters_again.html
Focus on the new attitudes and skills
This sounds interesting Ton, particularly if you focus on the last bit - looking at what new skills, attitudes and tools are necessary to cope with the changes you mention.