Little Green People; Collaborative Design; Product Design Software

BOOK RECOMMENDATION:

The Laws of the Web: Patterns in the Ecology of Information
Bernardo A. Huberman
ISBN:0262582252
In the past decade, the realm of the internet has grown exponentially. Analysts predict that it will continue to expand, adding new members to the online community from every corner of the globe. While China’s internet penetration rate is around 20% and the U.S. is somewhere around 80% in 2008, online users in China numbered in the 250 million range, surpassing the number of users in the United States, which is around 225 million people currently online. Each year, the reach of the internet as a whole broadens to include more people from more countries. This expansion of the internet has allowed physicists and statisticians to begin drawing an initial framework for a broader social theory of humanity. With the aid of computers, human social and information networks are beginning to be mapped, and the picture coming into focus looks a bit like the physical structure of the known universe. Huberman’s book attempts to show that some of the behavior exhibited by humans in their social and informational networks is predictable and follows prescribed natural laws, much like those that govern the birth and death of the universe. Some of the findings in this book can lead toward more efficient online communities, as well as, on a higher plane of thought, help to explain other collections of matter and energy while our conception of time and space evolves from our known universe to the reality of a multiverse made up of billions of universes just like our own.

_____________________________________

The computer is becoming a mainstream tool that is being used by more and more people around the world for business, research, and social connections. The thing that makes the computer so useful is the fact that as more people come online, the more useful the machines become at gathering, sorting, and sharing information. This increase in information that is collected helps in drawing larger patterns about human behavior in general.

The information that is being collected ranges in application and format. We are all familiar by now with Google’s data collection software that monitors our every move in the digital world; this kind of information is used predominantly for advertising purposes (or so we are told). The information that is collected in vast data storage centers is constantly expanding. These centers house billions of strands of bits that make up our digital selves. Where is this collection of information taking us? What patterns are emerging? What will the powers of authority do with the information? In a way this new world that is being created before our eyes is scary and can be quite troubling when contemplated on a philosophical level, but the potential to use the data to improve our collective society exists.

What we do today with the information that the computer is telling us will define the direction that humanity takes over the course of the next one-hundred years. We will either use these stacks of information as a form of population control or to sell more widgets, or we will use them to find more efficient ways of conducting business and sharing information. As computers and the internet spread from industrialized societies to developing nations, we have a unique opportunity to make capitalism and democratic societies more efficient and more representative. We will either use the internet to enhance the principles of freedom or we will use it to give birth to a sort of socialist societal structure that will keep secret files in an attempt to protect the lives of the privileged.

The computer is quite possibly the tool that will be used to spread the next great evolution in humanity. The industrial revolution that drove most of Europe and United States to the forefront of global dominance was centered around the production of materials through indiscriminate harvesting of resources. This initial sequence of events that encapsulated a period in world history put the planet as whole on a trajectory on which we are still traveling today. We are at the point of near total resource depletion because of the principles enacted during the industrial revolution; and that is with less than a third of the world’s populations living a life that we here in the United States call ‘middle class’. We are in desperate need of reforming the economic and political worlds that we live in.

Before the advent of the computer and ushering in of the Internet Age, ideas spread slowly around the globe. The transference of technology and knowledge in general moved slowly through written documents or oral communication. Now, however, any individual with internet access has the opportunity to influence governmental policy or economic strategy. This structure of information transference has given us each the ability to share our ideas in ways that has the potential to improve the collective society.

This concept of massively distributed communications, websites that ‘go viral’, pages of information and links that almost instantaneously can include millions of stakeholders in decisions that, before now, only governments and businesses made is an all together new step along the human evolutionary chain. No longer can decisions with huge societal implications be made behind closed doors in secret. The information almost always will leak out and then be broadcast to millions of people over the internet, who through the power of a collective voice, will make their interests heard. The internet fosters democracy and freedom of expression.

These online communities that are dedicated to the free sharing of information are beginning to evolve. Social networks allow highlighted information to spread across the internet like a virus. While many people choose to simply view information on the internet and not take action based upon it, more and more people are beginning to find ways to be included in defining the overall structures of government and business dealings. The computer, in comparison to the television, is an interactive device that creates the potential to include millions of stakeholders in important societal decisions.

Central to the idea of an inclusive democracy with equal representation is the concept of a forum large enough to house and organize all of the disparate information that comes in from interested stakeholders. Computers and the internet act as this medium. People are represented by bits of information flashed digitally across wires over great distances that record and catalog their interests. There is no more need for physical spaces big enough to house millions or billions of people. These digital data collection centers can influence governmental policies and the executive board decisions of successful businesses.

While the concept of collective development is easy to imagine on a governmental level, it is harder to see how businesses would benefit from having millions of users direct the development of a singular product. For starters, many businesses have separate design and production facilities. Take the automobile industry as an example. Cars are designed, and then once a design is decided upon, the concept is brought into production. Many times, problems are found during production or even post-production and usually result in lost revenue for the company, or worse yet, wasted resources. A community of collaborators, design and production staffs all working together simultaneously hooked together through the internet, has the potential to create a vastly more efficient production process than one department could have produced on their own. Now, add the consumer into the internet loop, and what you have is a streamlined production process of a product that uses the least amount of resources, and one that is highly desirable to the general public. What more could a company want?

The idea that collaboration can increase not only efficiency, but also sales is an idea that is ultimately going to end up fundamentally transforming the way that businesses manufacture resources into consumable goods.

Lifecycle assessment software, or LCA software, is the name of an emerging field in computer science. LCA software brings together all of the people affected by a product as it moves through its lifecycle curve. For example, let’s look at the lifecycle of the computer. Now that we know about the dangerous levels of toxins that are being put into our computers, we have a choice. We know that most of our computers, once their technology becomes obsolete, are being shipped to developing nations as e-waste because industrialized nations forbid the dumping of toxic metals and chemicals into landfills; so, we are faced with another choice. We also know that this e-waste is responsible for depositing toxic metals and chemicals in the soil and water halfway around the globe; another choice. This series of choices we are making is a direct result of our lifestyle we choose to live in industrialized nations!

Well, for the first time in capitalism’s history, thanks in part rapid spread of information over the internet, manufacturers can make choices, knowing the full consequences of their decisions, and consumers have the power, tools, and methods to force manufacturers to consider sustainable methods, and factor the demands of all stakeholders into the decision making process.

Industry moguls are beginning to realize the amount of money that can be saved by cleaning up their acts, that is, they are beginning to use computer software that can not only tell manufacturers the most cost efficient material to use in the production of some particular consumable, but it also can inform these manufacturers of the ecological footprint that individual materials make. Business executives can now begin to make decisions that weigh costs, not only in relation to finance, but ones that also consider any environmental or social costs that, up until now, got distributed haphazardly in the form of unwanted waste to the least represented populations of the world.

LCA software, by definition, is “a computer program that can be used to calculate the potential environmental impacts of a product or a service throughout its lifecycle, from being manufactured to its ultimate end-use destination”. The software helps product and service designers estimate social, environmental, and financial costs associated with extracting resources, manufacturing products, recycling programs, and end-use disposal of the waste created by manufacturing and consuming their product. This is truly revolutionary.

The idea that businesses are figuring triple-bottom line (environmental, social, and financial) costs into the their production processes is trickling into many of today’s biggest industries. For example, many of the largest industrial companies are pursuing closed-loop refineries; the most advanced of these, in the near-future, will capture their own CO2 from the smokestacks, pipes it to algae ponds that use the CO2 for photosynthesis, which then are harvested for energy. A former waste product, CO2, is now an input asset into another system that uses it as a feedstock to grow hyperactive algae. This closed-loop thinking is generating excitement around its potential to solve some of the society’s most dramatic climate issues regarding pollution.

Collaborative software, social software, and massively distributed collaborative projects will only maintain value as long as computers remain an active and sustainable extension of daily interactions. For now, though, there are many exciting developments in this field. The computer programs that are being developed allow their users to interact and share information among all of the other users. Of course, YouTube, eBay, Napster, Wikipedia all have their roots in these types of programs, but it’s the next generation of collaborative software that has entered the industrial side of society.

More specifically, lifecycle assessment software is essentially a form of cooperation among interested parties where information-sharing systems are the centerpiece of the organization. Calculating the recycling costs of a particular material that goes into making a shoe, as well as which glues are the least toxic to use to hold it together is a refinement of the trade of production in general. It is the evolution of business. Capitalism is evolving to come more in line with the laws of the universe. Creation is a natural process; there is no waste in the act of creation. In nature, every waste product is used as an input for another creative system.

Almost every current industrial process that we use to manufacture products or services has a negative impact on the environment. For the first time in capitalism’s short history, natural resources have found their limit. Conservation, as well as recycling waste streams, is a promising way forward for the future populations of humankind. Lifecycle assessment software like SimaPro and Eco-it are only ahead of their time by less than a decade. By 2022, the business world will have evolved to incorporate these kinds of environmental assessment tools into the mainstream.

The original aim of LCA software was to offer product and service designers the opportunity to compare a range of environmental damages based on their input. It is evolving into an industry that will streamline the production process as a whole in a way that is not only good for the triple-bottom line but also good for the planet. Once, as a collective society, we put a real value on clean air, water, and soil, LCA software will be the standard in all new product development.

For the first time, businesses are considering such concepts as global warming and greenhouse gasses, acid rain, soil degradation, depletion of fossil fuel deposits, deforestation, spreading of deserts, air pollution and smog, food toxins, death rates, water sources drying up or being poisoned, and animal extinctions as important considerations in their business decisions. More importantly, this way of thinking is what the business world is evolving into. These considerations will become the standard over the course of the next one-hundred years.


__________web recommendation
Earth Shift
www.earthshift.com
Many new environmental assessment consultancy firms are springing up. EarthShift is an example of the type of consultation today’s most innovative businesses are seeking. This firm uses LCA software to help businesses figure the total cost assessment, or TCA, of their product line. Companies like this one are part of a larger movement, which is taking place among people on the earth; that is, a redefinition of what resources have real value. For instance, what is more valuable, petroleum or water? Did you answer water? So many fresh water sources are ruined in our exploration for more fossil fuels, so it would seem from looking at our business models that we value fossil fuels more than we value clean water, air, and soil. The idea that we allow business to pursue fossil fuels at the expense of humanity’s needs is not an accurate picture of what people want out of life on earth. Petroleum has many substitutes; water has none. There is a larger shift coming to the business world, and lifecycle assessment software is contributing the initial steps on the road to placing real value on the resources we value most.

Little Green People; Collaborative Design; The Power of Many Voices

BOOK RECOMMENDATION:

Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
by Howard Reingold
ISBN: 9780738208619
This book is an attempt to show the power of the collective consciousness in the digital age. What is happening now that communication technologies are increasing human opportunities for collaboration? Are we getting smarter collectively? All of the instant information sharing that the internet has offered its users is beginning to give us a glimpse of what the human species may look like from above as viewed from an omnipotent perspective; we appear to simply be a mob. Reingold’s book takes this concept of ‘smart mob’ and defines it as what happens when the ideas of many people are organized and then shared; patterns emerge and an overall intelligence begins to emanate from the collective whole that is 'smarter' than the individual parts. There have been many innovations in the way smart mob systems are structured and used, but the model is not fully developed yet. We have used the power of smart mobs to coordinate acts that cover both ends of the spectrum, from terrorist attacks to the ultimate form of representation in democracy and capitalism. The ideas presented here in Reingold’s book seek to redefine the consumer as a product designer, that is, the consumer has evolved to the level of having influence over the manufacturing process. Using the example of file-sharing copyright protected material in the music and movie industry, Reingold shows that file-sharing was a brilliant spontaneous industry that was created by blending together several software and hardware technologies with collective ingenuity. Peer-to-peer sytems completely revolutionized the way people looked at different media forms in general and the control they could exercise over the content. While the legality of file-sharing in certain industries is still being worked out, the concept has inspired a fresh look at the way we share information. From a theoretical standpoint, this new generation of internet users will have to try to align the concepts of smart mobs, marketing theory, and democratic politics with technology innovations in order to bring intelligence to the next level in the human race.

___________________________________

In nature, the idea of collective intelligence is called swarm intelligence. National Geographic recently did a piece on swarm intelligence after looking at colonies of bees and ants. This concept of swarm intelligence applies not only to insects, but also to fish, birds, and mammals; in concept, all living creatures exhibit some form of swarm intelligence.

According to the National Geographic article, after careful study of ant and bee colonies, scientists were able to declare that no single bee or ant was intelligent (not in any measurable form), but as a collective whole, bee and ant colonies seemed to act intelligently. They offered us humans information that we could apply to our own systems of operations; they shared knowledge with another species. The phrase that sticks out in the article the most regarding ant and bee colonies relates to the idea that individual ants and bees are ‘tiny little dummies’; but even though they are 'dumb' on an individual level, their colonies have learned how to respond quickly and effectively to environmental stimuli and to quickly share new knowledge with other members of the colony.

Could it be that human beings, if viewed through the same degree of perspective of us looking down upon ant or bee colonies, that our own species is one that is just made up of ‘tiny little dummies’ also? When we are viewed as individuals, our intelligence is not readily visible, but collectively we are able to design what has come to be defined as the modern world with efficient transportation routes, effective methods of gathering food, complex social networks to share information, etc... Could it be that, much like a school of fish or a herd of antelope, human beings as individuals are not equipped with enough intelligence to survive?

The fundamental proposition that human beings thrive under conditions of colony creation and continued communication has been raised in earnest by the creation of massive file-sharing and instant communication networks on the internet. These relatively recent developments using the computer have catapulted the human consciousness to a new larger view of themselves; it is one much like the Buddhist state of enlightenment, a view of the collective nature of the human species and the individual's place within that collective whole. On the other hand, it has also numbed our emotions (to a degree) to the suffering and struggle that go on at the level of the individual (suffering that is unseen as part of the collective but essential to the overall progression of the colony). In a digital world, where we are all now connected digitally and reams of information are being collected in gargantuan databases relating to human behavior, this collective whole vision is beginning to take shape.

So, what do we do now that we are all connected? What do we do with the reams of information being collected about human nature? Does the internet really have the capacity to make the human species smarter. It is completely logical to assume that a multitude of human behaviors can now begin to be analyzed, anything from shopping habits to internet searches to traffic patterns to media preferences to voting results to credit card purchases; really all of the actions that we take during any given day can be grouped organized and analyzed and streamlined for efficiency using computers.

Sound like a Brave New World? Well, it’s here and whether or not you participate in it, you will be affected by it on the macrocosmic scale. Already, companies and governments have tapped into swarm intelligence and how it applies to the human species as a way of moderating the complex interactions that take place when considering hundreds of millions of citizens or consumers all moving about according to their own choices and desires. By understanding how large groups operate in terms of establishing a collective intelligence is something that most humans are not comfortable with.

This concept gathering information for the collective as an idea has a history of being grouped together with the terms socialism or communism; but, would you say that an ant colony or a school of fish or a herd of antelope is necessarily socialist or communist by nature? You would be acting from an anthropocentric frame of reference if you said this because socialism and communism are human inventions. Swarm intelligence tries to describe an invention that is beyond the control of any one human; heck, even beyond the control of ALL humans.

To understand what we are supposed to do with this newfound super-power of seeing the human race collectively, we need to go back and look at the reasons why the internet was brought to the foreground of technology revolution. If we agree that the answer was and still is ‘to access information more easily and communicate instantaneously with each other’ then we will be well on our way to understanding the human swarm that is gathering as digital bits in broadband cables and then zipped across the globe, and we just might realize the power of action that these bits can create. It is as though, with the invention of the internet, the human species became one body and the cables and satellites that enable the internet to exist are the nervous system; the bits of information are electrical impulses that tell parts of the body when and how to respond to certain stimuli. Unlike an individual body, though, the internet does not have a central processor (brain) to interpret all of the signals and coordinate the movements of the body. This is what is currently being developed in many digital communities on the internet, but without much success because collaborative systems work best without a centralized control structure.

To understand how all of this information that is being shared through the internet (email, blogs, webpages) and cell phones (texting), we should probably go back and look a little more closely at how an ant colony functions. Most people become insulted when they are told that the answer to some of their most complex societal problems can be found by looking to a seemingly unintelligent source. However, the study of swarm intelligence shows that communities of living creatures are anything but unintelligent.

By definition, swarm intelligence is what comes out of an operating system of behavior, ‘whereby the collective behaviors of unsophisticated agents interacting locally with their environment cause coherent functional global patterns to emerge.’ In other words, each ant/human is only following the rules that pertain to their own choices of behavior, but all of the ants’/humans’ choices put together result in an objective intelligence that can be seen by an observer (the guru on the hill).

Much like projects of mass-collaboration on the internet, there are no centralized control structures dictating how individual ants should behave in their colonies. Instead, interactions in a colony seem to be driven by a force that cannot be comprehended on the local level by the individual ant/human. These local interactions can only be collected together to reveal much larger, global behavior patterns. Once established, though, then it becomes possible (at least for humans) to view our place in the system of operation and to do our part to increase levels of efficiency.

According to the National Geographic article, the military and transportation industry have already started using management techniques inspired by swarm intelligence. In the trucking industry, believe it or not, computer programs are directing truckers on routes based upon ant foraging principles. These ant foraging principles are simple rules that, in most cases, are counter-intuitive to the human mind, but companies are starting to realize noticeable savings by mimicking our tiny cousins. In many industries, the concept of swarm intelligence is gaining momentum; even airlines have even begun mimicking ant behavior in airplane terminal selection and departure schedules, as well as in overall terminal design.

Through initial studies, the internet is beginning to reveal that human social patterns look strikingly similar to swarm behavior. All of the FaceBook, Frienster, Flixster, and other social networking sites have helped reveal the true nature of the human being, and it is very similar to that of the bee.

A bee colony looks as follows: First collect an array of possible choices, then allow for free competition to develop among the different choices where open communication is encouraged, and finally narrow choices using some kind of filtering technique with a proven effectiveness. This method of how bees choose their hives also describes how internet social networks function. Perhaps the internet will reveal to the human race what has seemed to escape them for millennia, and that is, there is intelligence behind the actions of everything that is alive or was at one time living (including rocks, plants, animals, and humans).

The patterns of internet behavior are a brand new field of study with enormous potential to revolutionize the way human beings do virtually just about everything. Right now, we can organize the internet into three distinct types of users. People that connect to the internet generally fall into three categories, tier #1, tier #2, or tier #3 users. Tier #1 users simply go online to get information about a particular topic; they might also check up on email and send digital communication back and forth on an occasional basis. Tier #2 users not only search for information, but they are also prone to joining multiple social groups, as well as posting on different message boards on various topics. Tier #3 users rely upon the internet for sustenance; it is essential to maintaining their businesses and livlihoods. People in this tier believe that the online community is better with more people in it, so they are always actively trying to encourage more participation on a local and global level.

Let's look at Wikipedia as our first example here. People who use Wikipedia solely to figure out the definition of something are tier #1 users. People who use Wikipedia as a reference in their online postings are tier #2 users. The people who created, organized, and currently manage the Wikipedia site are tier #3 users. This online encyclopedia, created by its own readers, is considered by experts to be the largest, fastest-growing reference work available for free. The site is translated into 253 languages, and it has over two million articles. Why Wikipedia is special, besides that it is offered to users for free, is that it is put together in a collaborative fashion by volunteers around the world. Anyone, anywhere with a computer can contribute. It helps make us collectively smarter. The same can be said of Google.

Another example of a collaborative project that was developed to bring the power of many to help solve a global problem and make us collectively smarter is called climateprediction.net. This project came out of a recommendation from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as a first step in drawing logical conclusions relating to global warming. The idea was based upon the simple fact that one computer would take enormous amounts of time to calculate all of the possible scenarios for climate change based upon the variable data involved in predicting future weather patterns (especially in terms of decades and centuries); but, many computers running the same model can accomplish the task much more quickly and provide patterns of possibilities that yield suggestive curves rather than definitive results (much the same as in quantum physics where models predict the general vicinity of particles and not their exact location).

It is both interesting and insulting at the same time to have the claim thrust upon us that human beings are no more intelligent than ants or bees or antelopes when it comes to collective smarts. In fact, it seems as thought natural colonies have long known what human beings are beginning to explore through the advent of the computer. These natural colonies seem to be able to put aside any sense of individuality and act simply for the benefit of the colony.

As the human population continues to grow worldwide, swarm intelligence just may provide the type of systems thinking that will help us manage the slew of problems on humanity’s horizon. The increase of resource depletion that comes with the inefficiencies associated with systems involving large groups just may be able to be mitigated by following the example of some of nature’s most efficient creatures.

All is not lost; we have come this far. It is now possible for us to see the effectiveness of the simplicity of natural systems and the complexity of the human condition within those natural systems. Our consciousness has brought us to the brink of discovery; we can now see ourselves as a collective colony functioning in predictable patterns. What we do with this information, whether it be to convince the collective to consume more or to persuade the collective to want only what we need, this decision will determine our collective future.

____________________________________Web Recommendation
Center for Collective Intelligence; MIT
cci.mit.edu
The Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT asks one fundamental question, that is, “How can computers and people be connected so that collectively they act more intelligently than individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before?” MIT recognizes the advent of the age of the internet as monumental; we live in an age that connects more people in more geographical regions of the world than at any other time in human history. This unique opportunity for the human species has already yielded such collective projects aimed at advancing humanity as Google and Wikipedia; what new collective projects are on the drawing boards? Professors and students at MIT involved in this project believe that now is the time for more of these types of projects aimed at advancing the human race collectively, and this site describes some of them.