Dreaming 5GW

An addendum/juxtaposition to my last post, on “Tying Loose Ends.”

Toward the end of that post, I suggested what may seem utterly obvious but may often be overlooked.  An explosion of choices for determining the exact outlines of a life one is building for oneself — one effect of globalization — may

• lead to confusion or dread,


• reinforce one’s loyalty to what one already knows (i.e. a tribe or other familiar, local group/milieu),


• or offer escapes from certain existing, stultifying and restrictive environments.

Arherring had already posted an excerpt from Neal Stephenson’s The Big U which seemed to suggest what living in a world with a high degree of static might be like, for some people (even if others would rather call such a milieu an “open source” environment with generally utopian overtones.).

Interestingly, Stephen DeAngelis of Enterprise Resilience Management Blog has included a similar idea in the first part of an overview of the Breakthrough Ideas for 2007 isolated by the Harvard Business Review:

7. Living With Continuous Partial Attention. Linda Stone, who has been a senior executive with both Apple and Microsoft, writes about the new, below-the-table phenomenon of constantly checking cell phones, Blackberries, or PDAs during meetings or conferences…. Stone argues that personal bandwidth is not up to the task and, as a result, a backlash to continuous partial attention has already started. She also worries that information overload will burn people out much more quickly as they strain to keep up with an increasing number of information sources all screaming for attention.  [“HBR 2007 Breakthrough Ideas, Part 1”]

This “continuous partial attention”, which results from an explosion of data sources, is one consequence of increasing levels of static, but may have different results for different people.  Three distinct results, or methods for dealing with static, may parallel what I wrote in my last post:

• Confusion or dread:  Essentially, an inability to act, in the case of confusion, but perhaps in the case of dread as well since the thought of altering one’s environment and modes and methods may increase a sense of great risk, or may threaten a current relative stability (relative to whatever exterior data presents):

  Whereas relatively rigid modes of operating, strict guidelines and well-defined channels for expressing power, may have been stultifying, globalization by offering more choices may be confusing, particularly for those who have spent a lifetime building a life in the Old Ways™.
  
  An OODA process accustomed to a well-defined, rigid environment may not allow comprehension of alternative methods for building a life, may not even be able to see alternative modes and methods; or else, seeing them, may inspire dread at the prospect of the emergence of a system which appears to require alternative methods which have not been learned by the individual. [“Tying Loose Ends”]



• Reinforce one’s loyalty to what one already knows. This relates to what DeAngelis called, “a backlash to continuous partial attention.” The backlash from an increasing, confusing and dreadful sense of chaos, resulting from an increase in data sources and static, is simply a refocusing on a partial environment (a limited milieu, one’s locality and familiar sights) while relegating everything outside that environment to partial observation.  One’s group may be well-defined, thus relatively predictable, dependable; but members outside that group may appear to be demons or wraiths or potential threats:

  So there may be an initial “rush to the [not real] bottom.” This is really “going with what you know”, and to the degree that such a tribal system may support your most basic needs, it may be an attractive place to stay. Identification with a tribe also means being able to predict how other members of that tribe will act and react under particular circumstances, to the degree that common mental constructs have formed; this allows for some contractual assurance in general dealings with members of the tribe, or trust. [ibid.]

• Offer escapes from certain existing, stultifying and restrictive environments.

  Multiple choices may also offer multiple escapes from such an environment, it’s just a matter of being able to do a cost-benefit analysis, which requires being able to see those choices and being able to understand them as well as being able to follow them without too great a risk. [ibid.]

That last reaction is the reaction which Thomas P.M. Barnett expects and makes a cornerstone of his Blueprint; I described the essential assumption of his theory in my last post, “individuals given greater opportunity for mobility will have less reason to act violently:  they’ll be too busy building their own lives to worry about destroying the lives of others.”  I.e., with more potential pathways to personal success, people will not only be empowered — the power of choice not least among the powers — but, presumably, will be preoccupied in running a cost-benefit analysis of those choices, or choosing between the choices.

However, I also gave a criticism of Barnett’s plan:

Missing from the vision and the blueprint is any definitive sight or plan for mitigating the confusion caused by a sudden explosion of choices offered to individuals living on the globe.  I.e., there is the assumption that most people will figure things out on their own, once the choices have been offered to them.  Well, the hypothetical ‘Global Guerrillas’ are figuring it out on their own, if we’re to believe John Robb.  Plus, in a world of static, so many competing visions may easily emerge and may mobilize large groups; people rarely see the Whole Picture visionaries claim to see, but make up whole pictures that just happen to be quite limited but self-serving. [ibid.]

Consider what else is needed for true empowerment: not mere increase of data, not merely a multiplication of potential but vague choices (non-contextualized means), but a method for understanding and utilizing those choices.  Stephen DeAngelis concluded his look at the idea developed by Linda Stone by addressing the need:

One of the things my company, Enterra Solutions, does is work with decision makers to determine exactly what information they need and when they need it. That data is then served up when, where, and in the format that makes it most useful. Stone says this is exactly what resilient companies will learn to do for their employees and customers, provide them with “discriminating choices and quality of life.”

Can you imagine the backlash when the U.S. attempts to deliver ‘democracy’ and ‘capitalism’ to a Gap nation while telling the people of that nation that the U.S. will, “determine exactly what information they need and when they need it”?  Enterra’s solution is something else, however, since Enterra  works “with decision makers”; but I suspect that such a method will not be enough for Barnett’s plan, which appears to require a truly democratic and capitalistic approach:  accelerating the rush to the true “bottom”.   That is, the people may not trust the authority of whatever decision makers have been elevated above them or have squirmed their way upward; rather, people must be able to wade through the static on their local level.  Barnett needs a system for simplifying the static for the individual undergoing the process of integration into the Core.  He needs to tie those loose ends.

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See also:

• Static, Transparency, and Systemic Resilience: Part One
• Interlude: Static Visualized, Conceptualized

Also, a much older post on Phatic Communion:

• Flu(n)x

— particularly for the concept of “ego-casting” first proposed by Christine Rosen in an article published in The New Atlantis, which quite relates; but also for considerations of resilience/consilience and conservative thinking.

Filed in The Vault and tagged Continuous Partial Attention, Enterprise Resilience Management Blog, Static, Stephen DeAngelis, Thomas P. M. Barnett