Parallel Development = Iterative Development

Not long ago, in a post brainstorming about the OODA and 5GW, I remarked,

While trying to grasp the concept of an iterative development process, I ran into this difficulty:  in a parallel development process like those already mentioned, each distinct group of actors, however diverse, may be working toward shared or very similar goals — may recognize useful innovations made by others, as well as the failures of others — and so, in an open-source environment, each group’s operation appears to be one iteration of an iterative process spanning that environment, viewed from afar. In an open-source environment, the distinction between a parallel development process and an iterative development process may blur or fade altogether.

The thought returns to me after reading a new post at Soob, in which Subadei contemplates a recent entry at MountainRunner.


” ‘War is Theater’ and Why 5GW Might Be ‘Redefined’,” Soob.

”War as Theater,” MountainRunner.

At any rate, today in bouncing around the blogs that encompass my suggested daily allowance I came across this post at MountainRunner … and got to thinking that either MR has accidentally presented another sliver of theoretical gold regarding 5GW or I’ve simply erroneously perverted his post to suit my own means.

[Soob]

We should not be surprised if the appearance of newness, which gains its novelty from the reality of an apparently isolated source, promotes the iterative design process in a manner that appears to be parallel.

1. In the first case, this exploration of the role of media in our contemporary world and contemporary conflict [MountainRunner’s focus in his post] will be repeated, as it has been repeated already, by anyone with a personal access to that open-source environment — which means, nearly anyone with an interest in the systemic reality of our present.  This process is related to stigmergy, a concept that will gain wider recognition as the emergence of open-source conditions continues to develop.  Wikipedia: “Stigmergy is a method of indirect communication in a self-organizing emergent system where its individual parts communicate with one another by modifying their local environment.”



2. The breakdown of traditional networking methods will mean that the “indirect communication” mentioned at the Wikipedia article will give the appearance of spontaneous emergence.  MountainRunner will discover a new way of looking at a subject of interest; but that ‘new way’ will have been discovered elsewhere, in a multitude of ways, already, and will continue to be discovered as the environmental conditions promote the emergence of identical or very similar memes in diverse locations.



3. As we see in Soob’s post, individuals catching a particular source (or, noticing it), will go on to innovate from that starting point or using that particularity as one inspirational datum in complex frameworks of their own devising:  “or I’ve simply erroneously perverted his post to suit my own means.”  The appearance of novelty, as an isolation of one particular source within the static while other sources remain indistinct or unknown, will promote a new iteration of the thoughts which are already becoming entrenched in — for lack of a better term — the Global Mind.

Put simply, the appearance of novelty — viewed so by the creators and consumers of information — gives the corresponding appearance of parallel development.  Individuals seem to be working in relative isolation even if we know that they are “connected” in some fashion, because the delineations of that connectivity are not discernible.  A new idea in the Memosphere may only be a new iteration of an old idea; open-source environments promote the illusion of parallel development while creating the reality of iterative development across a wide spectrum of domains.

And so, I recognize the recent suggestion from PurpleSlog on D5GW that “special knowledge of dramatics or story telling (theater/drama, Literature, Film Making) would be a good skill set for a 5GW or 4GW groups,” made May 8, 2007, in MountainRunner’s post dated May 9, 2007, and Soob’s post written on May 14, 2007.  I also recognize elements from my consideration of “Emersonian Circles” as well as “Memes as Nodes in Complex Interactivity,” viz. Soob’s consideration that

To wit, 5GW isn’t necessarily a conglomerative effort but an individual effort.

[Soob]

as well as

5GW transcends even the most dynamic 4GW event in that it can non-kinetically originate, manifest, mature, afflict and intellectually conscript the same culture from which it originates.

[Soob]

In particular, note my consideration of that essay by Emerson while remembering that last Soobian thought:

Emerson saw the OODA, even if he did not call it that.  Our actions are intimately related to 1) our observations and 2) our understanding of what we observe.  Change the understanding, and you change the activity.  Change the observations, and you may (but may not) change the understanding.

Emerson took it further than the individual OODA, however, or would draw a larger circle by considering the entire system of human pursuits.  Culture is something that each person may have; but it is also something that individual persons may share, as individual OODA loops operate together in a system.

[CGW]

Each person has his own understanding of that culture while belonging to a Culture; each person’s OODA will be developed according to a particularized and limited — localized — observation of the system; but because each receives input from that system (through observation) and returns output to that system (through activity), each may alter the overall Culture/System.

Right about this moment, some readers may be wondering at the dual nature of this post, in that 1) I have taken liberties myself with what others have written, 2) I have written this post in a manner suggesting a la John Robb that these ideas were first developed at D5GW, and 3) yet I am cataloging sources in an obsessive manner, even sure to over-note, perhaps, who said what vis-a-vis any quotation.

Let us say that our future will contain two types of individual, broadly speaking:   a) one type who must claim originality and draw a hierarchical path in order to assert that he (or someone else) is the original source of data, and b) one type who cares not so much that he (or someone else) be seen as the origin but that the system he helps to develop may gain ascendancy.

For my part, I could as easily note sources much older than my own writing that have made the important earlier steps — Emerson, for instance, and Plato no doubt; but also sources sprinkled about the Blogosphere.  I could also note that whatever common origins or tangential origins exist for these ideas between PurpleSlog, myself, Subadei, and MountainRunner, may be lost in the static; and that MR may have been inspired by the “general environment” moreso than by ever having read anything at D5GW.  The question of originality is not unimportant, because the open-source nature of the future will create ever more conflict between those wishing to sit at the head of any system; they are those who believe in definitive origin and tend to see a human sitting there, preferably themselves.  But I’ve maintained for some time now that 5GW operators will not be in that group; rather, 5GWers will consider the question of originality, vis-a-vis primacy, to be irrelevant — in fact, distracting.