What, Why & How do we Know ?
Wow, is it really two weeks since I last posted.
Actually I’ve been ill with a heavy cold, and have done very little apart from read.
Finished Heisenberg, Physics and Philosphy – good read
Started Poincare Writings, ed SJ Gould – not so promising
Started Melville, Moby Dick – excellent read so far.
Spotted this interesting BMJ link from Jorn
About drug companies talking up “illness” to boost drug demand.
From my perspective this is “spinning” information.
Computing is Too Complex
Article from InfoWorld (via Leon) about CTO’s in business finding that the complexity of computer applications is becoming or has become a problem in itself. (See Manifesto)
Binary or Tertiary views ? – Let’s do the Hokey-Cokey.
How many things do you divide something else into. Are you a
2×2 Person – BCG Grids, Yes&No, Black&White, we need a decision, binary chopper.
3×3 Person – three layer architectures, with three layers in each layer, onion-skins ad-infinitum.
Is there such a thing as an NxM Person ?
If you have a “bag” of say 20-ish issues, which are to some extent different or independant, but somehow inter-related, how many boxes do you draw before you allocate pigeon-holes ? This is more to do with pragmatic span of managability, and immediately perceived purpose, than anything fundamental about the classification of the issues themselves. (see TQM / brainstorming / facilitation techniques and bases of various approaches.)
Also a matter of geometric perspective / topology, a 2×2 grid is typically a tertiary decision tool. 2 different no-brainers, bottom-left and top-right, plus a set of problems top-left and bottom-right. In, Out and Shake-it-all-about.
Is there something better than “binary” classification. Is quantum computing part of the answer ?
I’m listed on the Internet Research Register
Trending propensity – assumption at current subjective scale that observable variations or changes reflect underlying trends or simple patterns. Compare chaotic fractal complexity, scalability, and “catastrophic” local instabilities and also anthropocentric views of genetic success in Steven Jay Gould – Life’s Grandeur. A rationalisation of the observable on the current level ? Cf Post-modernism and Lila – many independant levels on orthogonal axes – hold that thought.
Bayesian Methods – International Society for Bayesian Analysis.
After the Rev. Thomas Bayes.
Jules Henri Poincare – everybody’s hero (as I said earlier) in fundamental thinking behind complex behaviours. (Google#Poincare gets 1000’s of hits.)
Fusion Anomaly
Interesting web-site (design-wise). Picked-up on Google search for synchronicity, and found whole lot of quantum mechanics, memetics and chaos to boot. Worth a browse if only for inspiration. Catchphrase – “You are what you cache”
Synchronicity, Jung and I Ching – start a new thread.
I Ching Edition & translation by Hellmut Wilhelm & Carey Baynes.
On-line copy of the Foreword to I Ching by Carl Gustav Jung.
Synchronicity – the principle of Meaningful Coincidences. This is a somewhat mystic / psychobabble source, but a readable summary of Jung and Synchronicity, and relationship to “new physics” of the early 20th century.
Chris Lofting’s web-site on Meaning from a Semiotic Perspective also includes Jungian Typology and the I Ching as applied to psychometric profiling (a la Myers-Briggs) etc.
Meanwhile picked-up the Synergetics thread, prompted by Brian Josephson
Hermann Haken at Stuttgart Uni
Bob Ulanowicz at Chesapeake Bio Lab
Spooky synchronicity developing between non-locality, paranormal, quantum computing & information. Stapp and Josephson would clearly appear to be onto something.
Catch 22 or The Ultimate Cop-Out ?
I am clearly proceeding in an unashamedly unscientific way.
Effectively, I already know I am right and am seeking not so much supporting evidence, as meaningful, useful, implementable ways of expressing what is needed. I’d like to think I’d notice if I came across significant counter evidence. What was that about western arrogance ? I have to say, however, that every experience (new or existing) re-inforces the central hypothesis, neatly summarised in the Nonaka / Chun Wei Choo quotation below. Interestingly, even staunch defenders of the scientific method, and the preservation of doubt (such as Feynman), leave us the escape route that such method is not necessarily applicable to human / social sciences (sic). Knowledge Modelling appears to be one such subjective subject. Ethnographic / behavioural studies are much closer to the truth. (Walsham / Myers et al.)
Another Knowledge Management and Organisational Learning Link
Clive Holtham’s KM links page. Also Clive’s home page at CUBS.
Broad and varied range of links included – though no links to original material. Interesting Creativity stuff in addition to usual KM. Can find no reference to his earlier Warp & Weft concepts of Data / Info / Knowledge / Wisdom.
Interesting link to Intelligent Learning Organisation by Chun Wei Choo. The link from Holtham is an old one – to a draft of what is now a book in its third edition. Worth following-up Negative Entropy = Information also Information Processes / Organisational Behaviour / Organisational Learning / Decision Making and the Meaning of Life ! I think this guy has got it. All the right ingredients and a sense of humour – unbeatable. Quote from Nonaka, quoted by Chun Wei Choo in his Digital Libraries Singapore Conference paper based on Chapter 8 of his Intelligent Learning Organisation book.
Quote
The centerpiece …. is the recognition that creating new knowledge is not simply a matter of “processing” objective information. Rather, it depends on tapping the tacit and often highly subjective insights, intuitions, and hunches of individual employees and making those insights available for testing and use by the company as a whole. The key to this process is personal commitment, the employees’ sense of identity with the enterprise and its mission. Mobilizing that commitment and embodying tacit knowledge in actual technologies and products require ….. A company is not a machine but a living organism. Much like an individual, it can have a collective sense of identity and fundamental purpose. This is the organizational equivalent of self-knowledge – a shared understanding of what the company stands for, where it is going, what kind of world it wants to live in, and, most important, how to make that world a reality. … In the knowledge-creating [learning organisation] company, inventing new knowledge is not a specialized activity – the province of the R&D department or marketing or strategic planning. It is a way of behaving, indeed a way of being, in which everyone is a knowledge worker …..
(Nonaka) UnQuote [my bold emphasis]
In other words it reinforces the fact that Enterprise Information Models need a subjective / non-classical basis if they are to be any use.
[Historical Note – Spotted and introduced myself to Clive Holtham at a “PRIMA” conference in London 5 or 6 years ago, where the import of his “soft” paper appeared to go unrecognised in an alien “hard” engineering field in the Process Industries. Looks like he’s moved on to bigger and better things.]