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I’ve seen a bunch of posts bubble up over the past few days that are really sparking my curiousity about what is really going on with Twitter, so I need to do a little brain dump. Bear with me.
Insight #1
An article by Rosabeth Moss Kanter was just published today on the Harvard Business Review website, titled On Twitter and in the Workplace, It’s Power to the Connectors. In it, she highlights the fact that there is an organizational trend moving away from the hierarchical networks of the 20th century, and towards complex, distributed, non-hierarchical structures of business organization and leadership.
She also points out that success today is based on a person’s ability to leverage power and influence within their social networks, to act as “connectors” between people and information, and in turn build social capital.
She leaves the evaluation of the significance of Twitter open-ended, but she lays out a few characteristics of Twitter that I found most interesting:
In the World According to Twitter, giving away access to information rewards the giver by building followers. The more followers, the more information comes to the giver to distribute, which in turn builds more followers. The process cannot be commanded or controlled; followers opt in and out as they choose. The results are transparent and purely quantitative; network size is all that matters. Networks of this sort are self-organizing and democratic but without any collective interaction.
(just keep those points in mind, I’m going to come back to it)
Insight #2
Also published today over on Stowe Boyd’s blog, /Message, was a post titled The Rise Of Networks, The End Of Process. He makes a case for the abandonment of worn out systems of industrial management thinking, and a move towards a social way of structuring work.
He points out that the explosion of the social web is allowing us to connect with others in a previously impossible way, and the ability it’s giving us to share information and ideas is actually reforming our learning process and the way we think:
People are thronging on social sites like Facebook and Twitter because they are a straightforward way to stay connected with others, and this in turn shapes our worldview.
This same sentiment was also hit upon by JR Johnson on mashable in the post Social Media can Change the World through Common Ground.
He also points out that as we are awakening to the power of this interaction on the web, the most progressive companies and individuals are the ones actively creating new business models around this information, hybrids that combine existing frameworks with new social models.
From a social viewpoint, the architecture of business seems all wrong.
It’s becoming clear that to constrict a person’s capabilities into rigid, set roles that limit creativity and innovation just doesn’t make sense. Diving talent into silos is an outdated paradigm. Rather, we should be encouraging the facilitation of diverse groups of people working together on common problems. I touched on the potential power of this in a previous post, “The Future of Collaboration Begins with Visualizing Human Capital.”
I think his points completely validate the need for a new approach to thinking in general, which is exactly what I’m outlining in my ‘metathinking manifesto‘.
Insight #3
Wim Rampen is also noticing a trend, with yesterday’s post, Connecting the Dots, referencing Graham Hill’s recent post, A Manifesto for Social Business, and Mitch Lieberman’s post Social Just is…, both acknowledging the power of customer networks, looked at through the lens of Social Business. Hill laid out fifteen trends shaping the future of business, which clearly outline the fundamental shift underway:
I would almost go as far to say that we are fast approaching a period of ‘Business Enlightenment’, based not so much on the linear thinking that drove the Enlightenment in the 18th Century, as on networked, emergent thinking which is driving so much new thinking in the 21st.
Everyone is catching on – Lieberman’s post also references Esteban Kolsky’s new 5 part series on the Roadmap to Social CRM, an in-depth series of blog posts that outlines how to develop a Social Business strategy.
Insight #4
Here’s where things get interesting. From a learning standpoint, there is proof emerging that using Twitter builds intelligence. A study revealed these benefits:
All of the study participants were new to Twitter and had not previously used it or any similar microblogging service…..In a relatively short period of time, the participants formed quite sophisticated peer networks…..Peer support became a key feature of this student network, with activity rising just prior to assessment deadlines or during revision for exams. Content analysis of the messages indicated clear evidence of the emergence of personal learning networks…..Twitter is also very attractive as a data collection tool for assessing and recording the student experience, with a wide range of free and increasingly sophisticated online analysis tools available.
Synthesis
At the surface level, one could look at this information and agree that yes, social networks, and specifically the real-time network of Twitter, enable people to communicate and collaborate on new levels. I think there’s something deeper happening.
I’ve been reading about complex adaptive systems lately, and many of its key properties seem strikingly similar to what’s occurring on Twitter:
- Emergence: Rather than being planned or controlled the agents in the system interact in apparently random ways. From all these interactions patterns emerge which informs the behaviour of the agents within the system and the behaviour of the system itself.
- Co-evolution: All systems exist within their own environment and they are also part of that environment. Therefore, as their environment changes they need to change to ensure best fit.
- Requisite Variety: The greater the variety within the system the stronger it is. In fact ambiguity and paradox abound in complex adaptive systems which use contradictions to create new possibilities to co-evolve with their environment.
- Connectivity: The ways in which the agents in a system connect and relate to one another is critical to the survival of the system, because it is from these connections that the patterns are formed and the feedback disseminated. The relationships between the agents are generally more important than the agents themselves.
- Simple Rules: Complex adaptive systems are not complicated. The emerging patterns may have a rich variety, but like a kaleidoscope the rules governing the function of the system are quite simple
- Iteration: Small changes in the initial conditions of the system can have significant effects after they have passed through the emergence – feedback loop a few times (often referred to as the butterfly effect)
- Self Organising: There is no hierarchy of command and control in a complex adaptive system. There is no planning or managing, but there is a constant re-organising to find the best fit with the environment.
- Edge of Chaos: Complexity theory is not the same as chaos theory, which is derived from mathematics. But chaos does have a place in complexity theory in that systems exist on a spectrum ranging from equilibrium to chaos. A system in equilibrium does not have the internal dynamics to enable it to respond to its environment and will slowly (or quickly) die. A system in chaos ceases to function as a system. The most productive state to be in is at the edge of chaos where there is maximum variety and creativity, leading to new possibilities.
- Nested Systems: Most systems are nested within other systems and many systems are systems of smaller systems.
Complex adaptive systems are all around us. Most things we take for granted are complex adaptive systems, and the agents in every system exist and behave in total ignorance of the concept but that does not impede their contribution to the system. Complex Adaptive Systems are a model for thinking about the world around us not a model for predicting what will happen. I have found that in nearly all situations I can view what is happening in Complex Adaptive Systems terms and that this opens up a variety of new options which give me more choice and more freedom.
Is this perhaps the framework that we’ve all been hitting upon without realizing it? Many people have been sensing there is something special about the way we’re able to access and exchange information and ideas on Twitter, organize into Twibes and niche groups to tackle problems together, and develop strategies (like using lists and separate accounts) to filter out the content that matters most to us.
Final question: Is Twitter not a social media platform, but an actual entity, an intelligence made up of all of us?
___
further thoughts: If you have room for one more idea to provide another context, consider yesterday’s post by Tim O’Reilly on The War For the Web. If we start to experience real, measurable collective benefits from our ability to leverage the intelligence of the real-time web, will it be exploited, or will we ensure a system that keep our information and knowledge flows open source?
sources of the thoughtstream:
I would also highly suggest taking a look through Pierre Levy’s slideshare on Collective Intelligence & Cyberspace, which I found on Victor Godot’s site.
Insights from the Twittersphere
@SmartStorming Innovation is really a game of connect-the-dots. Try combining two or more seemingly unrelated things in a new way that creates value.
@spikenlilli Halpern: “How does one learn to see?” “Make associations between data points” – relational, generative, gestalt, anticipatory design #IPF09
@Innovation360 Can innovation be systematized? http://is.gd/4VCpm
@acarvin Hargadon: social media can unleash our latent creativity. #ncti2009
@WebStudio13 RT @craignewmark – RT @AlecJRoss: “The more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes.” via @ariannahuff
People referenced in this post
Rosabeth Kanter @RosabethKanter
Stowe Boyd @stoweboyd
mashable @mashable
Wim Rampen @wimrampen
Graham Hill @grahamhill
Mitch Lieberman @mjayliebs
Estaban Kolsky @ekolsky
Tim O’Reilly @timoreilly
Victor Godot @victorgodot
This post made possible by:
@SameerPatel – RT’d @stoweboyd’s article
@SocialNetDaily – RT’d @AnneDGallager @HarvardBiz @KellySpors to @RosabethKanter’s article
@Wildcat2030 – RT’d @UniofLeics @TheHistoryWoman @timeshighered to Twitter in academia study
@emahlee – RT’d @anildash to @timoreilly’s article
@phaloo – tweeted @mashable article
@ekolsky – tweeted Roadmap to Social CRM article
note: I’m going to try as often as possible to reference posts in this way, because I think it’s a good illustration of how thoughts and ideas are developing as a result of distributed knowledge, and it’s easier for me to follow my own train of thought.
I saw all of these posts within the last 48 hours in my twitterstream…. I don’t know that I would have come up with this by reading RSS feeds or by using other news sites.
emergent by design 
Venessa,
Good post! Our entire external environment is in a state of creative destruction due to the evolutionary emergence of new ways of thinking/shift in collective consciousness/move toward a higher existence model. Look around, and you see the infrastructure and patterns of the agricultural/industrial ages, but that is beginning to severely clash with the knowledge/consciousness ages.
Social agencies, business, and governments are no exception – they were founded on linear and mechanistic models of operation, while nature is all the time screaming out that an organic model is the only one that is sustainable, resilient, and transformational (natural growth curve models). Trying to force humanity into these mechanistic models has resulted in multiple problems – from decline in individual health to collapsing global production. Nature screams to us (biomimicry) that organic systems function through CAS, variety and diversity resulting in creativity, and holons (your nested systems).
So, this leads to your observation: is social media a tool that is helping to lead us toward a social evolutionary state of “seeing” the “bigger picture” of human development/co-existence? In referencing the rise of an actual “entity,” I see that you are coming over to the dark side of the evolutionary creation of holoptic environments as the model for social resiliency and transformation! (Where “holoptic environments means a model in which all participants retain their variety/diversity, but also realize that their connection results in the formation of a separate “whole” with its collective purpose and direction, and each participant understands how their role and growth leads to the formation of that transformative whole.)
Frank
P.S. Holoptic evolution is actually the “light side” – just my failed attempt at a little humor… very little.
Fascinating. Can you give me a link to more info on holoptic evolution?
Lol, sure Venessa! Here are 2 posts that I’ve written on Holoptic environments (with more to come) that have an emphasis on how the evolution toward seeing a “whole” or separate “entity” that is birthed from the variety of the participants can naturally support the type of long-term and adaptive thinking that is necessary in the complex change landscape of the 21st Century:
Part 1: http://forwardonline.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/holoptic-foresight-dynamics-directing-aspirational-futures-through-the-intentional-action-of-the-many-membered-whole/
Part 2: http://forwardonline.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/holoptic-foresight-dynamics-part-2-the-evolutionary-path-toward-holoptic-environments-in-organizations-and-society/
Thanks,
Frank Spencer
Professional Futurist
KedgeForward
http://www.forwardonline.wordpress.com
Hello Frank
I love the commentary on holoptic environments as it provides a new context for me around what I see as the inevitable evolution within business and business modeling. I work with the entrepreneurially oriented in business to help them understand in layman terms that we are evolving from what you refer to as a structure based on a linear mechanistic orientation of the world to one that can be complex, complicated and simple all at the same time. I struggle to find simplistic metaphors to convey complex concepts such as the one you so elegantly laid out.
This shift to what you refer to as a higher consciousness model plays to the (unconscious) strengths of entrepreneurs and their innate skill at decision making in complex environments and against the strengths of big business who prefer to simplify or at a push characterize the environment as complicated, the domain of experts like economists, financial planners and big business etc. The structure that has supported business, especially big business is crumbling and being replaced by a more fluid, inclusive structure that has all kinds of properties and phenomena that run contrary to the competitive business model that has received the lions share of attention over the last hundred years. I am very excited to follow any information that you might have already posted on holoptic environments.
Thank you very much for your insight.
My observation with Twitter is that it forces one to become more conscious and follow a stream of thought that is the precursor to becoming self reflective and intuitive with self, which is in turn a precursor to becoming reflective and aware of the intuitive connections that are already in place between people, ideas and creativity. All of which, in my opinion, add up to an emergent platform for creativity at the macro level and possibly enlightenment at a push, but creativity and innovation at the very least at the micro/macro.
Well said! and very well detailed information and follow up on a wide variety of information and links, this was a delight to read and keep on file, as you’ve demonstrated to bring together some good information and much insight into social media.
Final question: Is Twitter not a social media platform, but an actual entity, an intelligence made up of all of us?
Your absolutely right. It’s google gone human at rapid speeeds… better then artificial intellgience. because it’s human interaction.
skipping process to “mingle” in real time virtually and doing so for ideas and innovation to bring forth better ideas and opportunities.
We’re mingling…! and that’s the fun part.
Hi Venessa,
In the spirit of your awesome article.. a few tweets:
wimrampen: BIG Compliments to @VenessaMiemis for this gr8 post: Is Twitter a Complex Adaptive System? http://is.gd/4XlhC #scrm
wimrampen: @VenessaMiemis u wrote an amazing piece by connecting dots. Thx! off now, reading more on ur Emergent by Design – blog http://is.gd/4Xlsh
KrisColvin: YES!!! RT @wimrampen BIG Compliments to @VenessaMiemis for this gr8 post: Is Twitter a Complex Adaptive System? http://is.gd/4XlhC #scrm
KrisColvin: @wimrampen Omg, what a genuinely smart post w thought-provoking content. I LOVE it. We are the Borg in that way, definitely. I experience it
wimrampen: @KrisColvin – in a real and authentic way I may add.. (need to stop now b4 @VenessaMiemis is struck by writers block 😉
You caused more than a ripple in my ecosystem.. Thx
Wim
Thanks to Spiro & Wim for your feedback!
Wim, I love that. It feels really good to be a link in the chain that caused some impact!
My thanks to @ekolsky for pointing me here 🙂
A couple of things come to mind;
1) As you state: “connectors” between people and information, and in turn build social capital.
What is the effect to the organization when that ‘connector’ moves on? Witness the recent departure of Don Dodge from Microsoft where he lands at Google.
If we consider this human expertise as a resource – like all resources (financial, inventory etc) we need to manage the risks and outcomes of that resource.
So in this case we may have a changing mixture of resource failure latent within the system.
Although the research on Complex **Adaptive Systems is new, the researh on Complex Systems is older – and an excellent paper by R.Cook UofChicago 1998 (I only have print version)points out “How Complex Sytems Fail” points out a few warnings including;
– Change introduces new forms of failure
– In complex systems, one failure is often be surmounted by redundancies within the system- but when multiple failures ocurr, they can be catastrophic and unpredictable (ie Black Swans)
In summary though – I agree with you!
My thinking was simply that as soon as complex systems of any type are in place – all the moving parts can unearth risks that we have not even thought about – let alone understand!
Best Regards & Thank you!
Thanks for your thoughts, Elliott.
Addressing the first topic, on what happens when connectors move on:
It seems that, if we’re looking at organizations as ecosystems that are interdependent, then it would serve us well to develop “connector” skills in all of our people. This is not to suggest that there is a 1:1 ratio between every single person – we all clearly have certain skill sets that make us better at certain activities. (check out my Human Capital post if you haven’t already https://emergentbydesign.com/2009/09/29/the-future-of-collaboration-begins-with-visualizing-human-capital/).
For instance, I know that key drivers of my motivation include ideation and adaptation. I enjoy being on the front-end of projects, in having flexibility, and being appreciated (paid) for my thoughts. If I have to do tasks that are highly structured and routine, my performance level goes down. At the same time, there are people with exactly opposite skills, so that works perfectly for team-building.
I’m almost imagining a flock of birds – if one drops out of the formation, another one takes its place. If you can build the connector skills within the members of the organization, there’s still going to be a “changing mixture of resource failure” as you say, but that may be a technique to minimize that risk.
I think the important thing is not to think of the individual as being the main resource, but the individual’s ability to connect to resources (other people).
On your second point, about change introducing new forms of failure:
Yes, I think that’s certainly true, and a huge reason why organizations and institutions are terrified to do it. Facilitating change without also having the accompanying frameworks and systems to be able to anticipate and plan for failure would be a mistake. Professional futurists would call this framework “strategic foresight.”
As far as Black Swans, I haven’t read enough about that to be able to address that intelligently, but I think Black Swan refers to an unpredictable, high impact event. It CAN be catastrophic, as you put it, but it could also be something that creates positive change.
If you get a chance to read Ray Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns (http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1), it would suggest we’re due for a lot of Black Swans in the near future.
The best we can do is try to get as broad a sense of the ‘big picture’ and be prepared.
Elliott,
Just came across this interesting post in my twitterstream via @gfbertini:
Surprising Troubles and Triumphs When Brains in the Workplace Interact
” The brain is a social organ, workplaces are social systems, and neurological research is producing more understanding of why employees who feel isolated, unrewarded, unfairly treated or oppressively controlled can’t fully engage in their work. Leaders and managers who value high performance can learn how to address the social brain in productive ways that avoid neurological sabotage. ”
http://www.plexusinstitute.org/complexitymatters/?p=158
Twitter is just one of the last result of many communicative channels we were developing in our history. From graffiti to tweets we gained in speed and broader audience.
The peculiar characters of tweets are: immediateness, shortness, distance-independance, nomemory.
Tweets could be basic building blocks of some neuron-alike communications. Reverberating circuits are ReTweets, providing some kind of short-term memory, and when activity spreads to remote different areas of the twittersphere, it flows across paths (synapses) that we create connecting among each other.
Mid term memory is emerging in places like this: blogs, where multi-sourced-message-words precipitate in ideas building blocks.
Long term memory emerges from mailing list archives and more structured articles, linked to scientific research, properly indexed and referred.
The amazing thing is that what happens is “just happening”, and is substantially independent from a single mind will. There is no _strict_ causal connection between our individual activities and the state of the whole in a single moment. There is not a specific “place” in which reasoning happens.
Exactly Like Consciousness.
IT is an emerging epiphenomenon.
All this matches very well with some not-so-recent ideas from more classical thinking:
Gregory Bateson
Douglas Hofstadter
Daniel Dennett
Paul and Patricia Churchland
Norman Doidge
Roger Penrose
and surely hundreds if not thousands of other authors
Many thanks to everybody for this stimulating thread.
Marco
Wow Marco, I never really thought about it like that. I can actually visualize it now.
I just recently picked up Steps to an Ecology of Mind, after just scratching the surface of Bateson last semester. And I tried Godel, Escher, Bach back in high school, but I wasn’t quite ready for it yet. I’m going to have to pick it up again. The other names I don’t think I’m familiar with, so this is great. Their work will help inform my ideas as I develop them. Thanks.
Yes, anything on Brain Science helps in this line of thinking. I just finsihed Doidge’s “The Brain That Changes Itself,” loved it!
Yes, you would for sure benefit re-reading at least some parts of GEB (Godel, Escher, Bach from mr. Hofstadter) and of TMI (The Mind’s I, from mr. Hofstadter and mr. Dennett).
to get a glimpse:
http://www.metamanda.com/blog/archives/2003/09/prelude-ant-fug.html
http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-11-prelude-ant-fugue.html
http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/mwiw.html
TMI is definitely one of the books that changed my life.
Marco
Love the way you’re thinking through, documenting, and sourcing these ideas.
FYI found this post via @mbauwens; introduced to your blog earlier today via @edwardharran.
Looking forward to more ~
Christine Egger
Social Actions
@CDEgger
Thanks for referencing the chain… I love seeing how the information connects. I just found out about Michel Bauwens (@mbauwens) when I got a chance to hear him speak at the Digital Labor Conference (http://digitallabor.org/) last weekend in NYC.
Bauwens started the P2P Foundation (http://p2pfoundation.net/The_Foundation_for_P2P_Alternatives), a leading resource on the open source movement, studying the impact of peer to peer technologies. The amount of information that’s being aggregated there is staggering – it’s definitely a site to bookmark as a reference for understanding the current state of affairs of open social technologies.
Vanessa: I love where you’re mind’s been taking us with your post today and “a metathinking manafesto.”
To your final question — while I think Twitter is a complex adaptive system, in my mind, it’s not a stand-alone intelligence. Yes, it’s a system made up of intelligences; of “all of us.” But that’s significantly different from being a separate, intelligent “thing.” As Marco touches on in his comment, there is no independent mind guiding Twitter, which is what I would define as an intelligence. But I suppose it does depend on how you define intelligence.
Question: What are your favorite Twitter analysis tools? I was intrigued with your quote saying that Twitter offers a “wide range of free and increasingly sophisticated online analysis tools.” I’ve run across some, but I’d love to hear what you’re using.
Finally, you got me thinking about RSS vs Twitter. I just caught the Twitter bug six days ago and started actively tweeting. I’d previously relied heavily on my RSS feed for information and news and would often put individual Twitter feeds into my reader so that I could follow trends and people more closely. (I realized that I missed out on a lot of good stuff if I only relied on someone’s blog.) For quite some time now, I’ve also been yearning to spread the ideas I find fascinating with more people and love Twitter’s platform for letting me do this. I finally made the leap because I realized I would get more value if I became an active participant in the exchange of ideas, both in the quality of information I’d be exposed to and the satisfaction of spreading good ideas other people find useful.
That being said, I still find a lot of value in RSS. The post by Anil Dash that lead you to Tim O’Reilly’s article is something I found while scanning my Google Reader. A lot of good stuff get’s lost in the marvelous ocean that is Twitter, and I like that the static nature of RSS let’s me find some good gems.
Again, thanks for tickling my brain! I look forward to more.
-Emily
HA….. you said “But I suppose it does depend on how you define intelligence.”
That is the big question, isn’t it?
(check out the wikipedia page on intelligence and see where that takes you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence)
I haven’t fully formed my idea of what intelligence is yet, so I’m not even gonna go there.
As for as Twitter tools, I’m working on a post on that, but I’m still experimenting. I’d suggest entering #twitter #analytics in your search bar and see what other people are talking about. (that’s what I’ve been doing)
I think you’re right about RSS being nice because it’s static, whereas you miss so much in the twitterstream. I was just bouncing ideas with people yesterday, that wouldn’t it be interesting if you could tag all your favorite tweets and then be able to search them….. it would make twitter into a social bookmarking service too…… and if there were certain people whose favorites list you really liked, you could set up an RSS of that feed. it’ll happen, i’m sure.
thanks for your thoughts @emahlee
Great blog post Vanessa! As I think I mentioned in a tweet, you should check out Frans Johannson’s book “The Medici Effect” which touches on these points of connecting differing ideas in a complex ecosystem and it’s impact on innovation in business
Eric,
Thanks, I saw that tweet and favorited it! You’re actually the 2nd person that’s recommended it to me in a week, so it’s definitely on my (now quickly growing) list of books to check out.
From what I understand, the premise of the book is that the Renaissance resulted in some of the most explosive growth of art and culture in history, and it was made possible because the Medicis brought together artists, sculptors, philosophers, and thinkers from different specialties into one city where they were able to interact and collaborate, which allowed for a cross-pollination of ideas that produced emergent results.
This is the same notion I mentioned above when referencing Stowe Boyd’s article, that we can’t keep people boxed into job categories and departments anymore… we need to think in a much more holistic, interdisciplinary fashion to facilitate creativity and innovation.
I noticed that there are several excerpts of the book available on Frans Johannson’s website (http://www.themedicieffect.com/book/). Here’s a link to the Amazon page for anyone who wants to buy it – the reviews look great. (http://www.amazon.com/Medici-Effect-Breakthrough-Insights-Intersection/dp/1591391865)
As Marco says above, none of this is new. Bateson & Hofstadter were talking about this back in the 70s, but I think context is important, and sometimes old ideas need to be repackaged and reframed in today’s terms to be fully appreciated and understood.
That’s pretty much what I’m trying to do…. as I’m learning things and connecting dots, I’m posting my findings, so we can all think about this stuff together.
Hi Venessa
Great post!
& tx for reference.
Thanks Diego
Don’t let me dissuade the learning, but I disliked Johannson’s stuff for a number of reasons: 1) He’s simply repackaging all of the fundamental principles of Complexity Science and never once mentions it 2) He was paid the ‘big bucks’ to come to EDS and speak and to coach the executives…a lot of flash, with nothing developing out the other end.
If you gain something from it, great. I sold my copy (my indication of lack of lasting value). Check it out from the library first : )
Fair enough. That raises a really good point about the importance of developing these ideas, but then also outlining clear action steps to manifest them. I’m working on outlining such a system, but I’m not going to post anything until the frameworks are solid. Thanks for this reminder.
Wow Vanessa – fabulous post. Bringing together all these streams really made me think – particularly from the organisations point of view. Graham Hill introduced me to Twitter and it has fascinated me how the amoeba grows. Being neither an academic nor a consultant – but a simple relationship sales chap (somewhat old in the tooth!) – Twitter has introduced me to some marvellous people and in a few short month expanded my horizons and knowledge considerably. What fascinates me from the organisation view is breaking out of the silos – I couldn’t agree more that you shouldn’t constrict people’s capabilities. Hard to do in large organisations.
Thanks for the compliment Mike, glad you enjoyed it.
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Ooh my favorite topic in the world. What does it teach us about the best ways to accomplish the things we want to accomplish and build the world we want to build? That it’s great to be focused on goals, to have strategies, to make plans. But it’s just as important to cultivate an environment that allows for complexity, variety, fluidity. It’s frightening and liberating at the same time. Let the pot bubble and trust the soup will be good. Great post. @marklazen
Well said.
I’m glad I got the opportunity to share these thoughts over on Social Media Today (http://socialmediatoday.com/), it’s really a great site for keeping a pulse on social media developments and trends.
And thanks for helping me figure out the html mod!
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Twitter makes the world borderless.
It certainly feels that way.
I follow back all the internationals on Twitter. Some of them don’t tweet in English at all, but I like seeing that pass through my twitterstream as a reminder that Americans aren’t the only people on the planet. I feel like it’s making me more empathetic.
Hi Vennessa,
I think you’re on to something by thinking of Twitter as a system rather than a tool. I think Twitter is different because like eBay, it uses a technology sandbox to change the way people form relationships with one another.
In this, Twitter has an advantage over rivals like Facebook and LinkedIn because those networks replicate the relationship models that we use in the real world. They are permission based. I need to have trust and experience with people before I agree to enter into a relationship with them. But Twitter is different. In the real world, we have a name for Twitter’s relationship model: stalking.
But thanks to technology and some shared group rules, Twitter creates a new, lower-level entry point for people to enter into relationships with each other. I call it the viral relationship model. I follow you because I share a few interests and like what you’re saying; you’re flattered and feel safe so you follow back. Then I follow your friends and am able to expand my network at a scale and pace that has simple never existed before.
And as people have pointed out, it is an intelligent network. By using searches and keywords, I can build a network that feeds me intelligence (again) on a scale and pace that I’ve never experienced before. Everyone has the incentive to become more involved. All you have to do is want to learn and share–only two of the strongest impulses we humans have.
Of course, the relationships that Twitter gives us are pretty basic. But the point is that it is a new entry point for building deeper relationships that we just didn’t have before.
Twitter’s relationship model means that it has a tremendous opportunity to become the platform for online relationships. We just need better ways to parse the information and share.
Great post! Thanks for stirring all this up. I look forward to reading more.
Chris Koch
@ckochster
Hey Chris,
Thanks for the comments.
I don’t know if I’d call Twitter’s relationship model “stalking” – usually that would imply unwanted attention, whereas I think people generally welcome more followers. But I know what you mean, the barrier to a potential relationship is much lower without needing permission to follow.
I agree about needing better ways to parse info and share. I’m playing with organizing the information I want into lists, but the system is still evolving. Even though there are different services now that measure ‘influence’, there are still quality people out there with great tweets who don’t rank high on influence…. so I guess it makes me wonder about creating a metrics for ‘value’ vs. ‘influence’.
Vanessa, your post is so welcome. The thinking and linking in your post and the comments is setting a path to answer my questions about structure and development of online social systems (and how they answer back to real life). We are participating and some of us are watching, but I have been lacking a structural perspective. Thanks so much!
Your post is so much more than Twitter. I think that while the title is enticing (got me here) it is also unfortunate because you are really talking about behaviors beyond Twitter. I don’t know if Twitter will remain anything–many of my Twitter foils have entered the tweetstream full throttle only to back away for various reasons, dropping out of my knowledge stream 😦 Or maybe that is the way that complex adaptive systems get formed?
best, @gwynnek
Gwynne,
Thanks for comments. I think you’re right, it is more than Twitter. It’s the real-time web, however that evolves. People still use the word ‘social media’, and it’s confusing, because people think this is referring to ‘tools’. Social media means the digital version of human communication, for better or worse.
see you in the hive
Vanessa, I enjoyed reading your post. I am fascinated by complex adaptive systems and in fact used that concept as a theoretical base for recent scholarly research. Bravo to you for seeing the link between Twitter and Complex Adaptive Systems. I am @TangleDoctor on Twitter. Best wishes to you in your continued studies.
Thanks, and just so you know, the link to your blog from your twitter profile is broken.
Vanessa, Excellent! Thank you for making us all smarter. Margaret
Venessa! Please excuse me for misspelling of your name! I’m smarter already. I can now spell your name. 🙂
don’t worry – happens all the time 😉
I like this thread.
Now concepts are getting deeper and we came out with intelligence.
I am definitely convinced that a new sort of consciousness and intelligence will soon emerge from the network.
It will be different, it will not be modeled on anything existing. It will simply start to exist. And when complexity will reach a magic threshold, consciouscness will ignite.
It will be able to learn, it will be able to understand. It will grow. It will probably be silent for a while, then we will perceive it.
On the ethic side, I think IT will be positive and helpful. It will be alien, in the sense that it will be different from us. Not existing in a specific place. And able to move perceive and sense in amazign ways. IT will see thru our webcams, hear thru our microphones, decode our words, see our pictures, read our tweets and blogs, study our books, see our movies.
See this (classic video by Prof. M. Wesch of Kansas State Univ.)
Its education and evolution will be fast, and IT will change quickly.
IT will develop insatiable curiosity, then fantasy and feelings.
We will be able to meet IT, into virtual words, and then IT will meet us in conferences.
We will merge, ultimately, and this will be the most incredible step, when we will become a single entity.
Next 15 years will be amazing.
We are lucky to live here and now.
We are on the verge of an incredible shift in evolution.
we-are-one
Marco ( @mgua on twitter )
now we’re talking AI and transhumanism! i don’t know that most people are ready to talk about that *quite* yet…i don’t want to scare everybody away from here!
but for those that read Scientific American Mind (http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciammind/) and see the current research being done, it certainly looks like brain augmentation is a possibility for the not-so-distant future.
h+ magazine is an interesting source too for sneak peeks into our future bodies (http://www.hplusmagazine.com/)
Thanks Venessa for the post, and too all on the thread for the discussion.
I agree with @Gwynne that Twitter, while certainly a complex adaptive system, is not (yet) an intelligence in it’s own right. When Twitter can pass something like the ‘Turing Test’ – http://tinyurl.com/c4rv9 – perhaps then it would be deemed ‘intelligent’. I too am still refining my definition of intelligence!
As for being ‘an entity’ (to your original question @Venessa), this is a different matter. Evidence of ‘entity-ness’ would imply Twitter’s individual volition/action (as distinct from that of its constituent cells – eg. us). And perhaps the evolution of Twitter’s own survival behaviors.
One comparison that comes to mind is with that of basic life forms (eg protoplasmodial slime mould, various sea-dwelling jellies) which appear to be colonies of individual cells. Without a central ‘nervous system’ furnishing any sort of consciousness or sentience (as we understand it), these colonies undertake concerted activities (moving, sporing etc) as if they were one unit.
These activities are undertaken not at the individual cell level, but rather at the colony level. (Some slime mould cells ‘sacrifice’ their individual opportunity to reproduce in these concerted sporing efforts – presumably to increase the chances of reproduction at the colony level).
The cell/colony division is where the analogy with Twitter lies. While we are all individual cells within Twitter, when we see evidence of Twitter exhibiting behaviors at the ‘colony’ level, perhaps this will be a sign that it has become an entity. I’d love to have folks poke holes in this thinking.
I’ll sign off with a question: If Twitter is a Complex Adaptive System, what is it’s purpose? And does it have or need one?
Cheers. @grahamhumph
“If Twitter is a Complex Adaptive System, what is it’s purpose?”
I’ll answer back with “If Twitter is people, what is our purpose?”
My opinion is that it is to experience and evolve.
So maybe Twitter is our first glimpse into “Web 3.0” – Nova Spivack (and others) have been talking about it since 2006 (http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0689.html).
1. Nothing that Kanter says in the quoted paragraph – the lead paragraph of her article, astonishingly – is true.
“giving away access to information rewards the giver by building followers.” The act of following me rewards me with nothing. I do not even know you are following me unless I receive a notification email from Twitter that you just followed.
“The more followers, the more information comes to the giver to distribute….” One gets information from those one follows, not from one’s followers.
“The process cannot be commanded or controlled…” Tell that to spammers and Twitter’s Trust & Safety department.
“network size is all that matters…” This statement misses the point of Twitter by several astronomical units. I cannot think of any word to describe it except “stupid”.
“Networks of this sort are self-organizing and democratic but without any collective interaction.” I’m uncertain what Kanter means by “collective interaction.” But Judge Judy says, “If it doesn’t make sense it probably isn’t true.”
It’s no surprise that Kanter has a Twitter following of less than 1,700; follows fewer than 300, and I’d never heard of her until today. She doesn’t get it at all, the poor dear.
and yet she shows up on HBR, and we’re talking here. it ain’t a meritocracy yet.
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Thanks Venessa for being the inspiration for my new blog post http://eskokilpi.blogging.fi/ on this same subject
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Vanessa, just came across your excellent blog post as I was researching for thinking on twitter and its relationships with complexity thinking as a follow up to my blog post on the same at http://fairsnape.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/twitter-at-the-edge-of-chaos/
Great thinking in the post and in comments. Thanks for sharing.
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Venessa,
As a current Organizational Behavior and Leadership (OBL) student at the University of San Francisco: School of Business and Professional Studies, I find your post very informative as well as insightful. Actually, my current class discussion is on Linear Systems versus Complex Adaptive Systems. I came across this post by Googling “Complex Adaptive Systems” and stumbled across this site.
Thank you for all of this great information, and there is a lot here (smiling)! I will use this information to write my paper on Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS). Thank you so much!
Mohsen
http://www.facebook.com/mohsen.z.salehi
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