Cohort manager

In a special Kangaku group at Oxford we've been fielding ideas around the ideas of the University in society. What are educational organisations for? To me a central tenet must be to facilitating dialogue that at least maintains a culture, and perhaps even refines and generates new horizons.

To do this every mind is precious, cohort management is central. To explore the problem space we need every brain to connect in some way.

Specialisation, a lack of interdisciplinary research is rotting our our schools. Paranoia is being created by examination authorities and funding bodies (answering to (tabloid) voters). These create academic hierarchies and break down the levels of coordination we need to explore problems efficiently, and to do this we must be creative.

So back to practicalities. Groups are being formed on the Internet where people are collaborating. These groups and not formed according to any rules or constitution. This means the optimal social dynamic cannot be formed. The web despite intuition is extremely selective and discriminatory. This is the idea of a new web tool, to apply rules to cohort creation that allows people to create groups according to well-understood rules. Groups will be inclusive.

The stumbling block: we never know who anyone is on the web...this is a detail, something that can be ameliorated fairly easily. Trust can be established on the web.

Technology Paradigm Shift

It seems to me we are at the cusp of a technology revolution. For a long time we have been making digital equivalents of the postal service + filing cabinet + telephone. Things have become significantly faster but essentially very little has really changed. We're doing the same things faster.

A paradigm shift will happen when we begin to represent and re-represent knowledge in qualitatively new ways. It seems to me there is a big difference between 100 people writing a 100 articles on a theme compared to 100 people creating one simulation that efficiently represents the complexity of a system.

The paradigm shift will come when intellect overtakes (once again) ego and pictorial representation re-gains ground from sentential systems of explanation.

The diagram is becoming worth many millions of words.

The Ultimate in Project Management

I am on a management course at work, I am managing loads of project deliverable-s, and writing many proposals...but all this is superficial compared to the project of turning a house into a home. At work the meaning of milestones, tasks and sub-tasks, budgeting and delivering all have some resonance but hardly feature when compared to turning an old Georgian build into something more modern (perhaps?) Architecture effects us in complex ways, I know what I like but visualising what would work at number 42 is just about the most difficult task I have known. I've been here two months now and I am basically paralysed by the enormity of the effort. Where to start, how to deal with the unknowns, which bits to do myself, how to get help, budgeting, scale, scope - oh my word!

But all the books say wait a year, build up ideas and then off you go; and it will be enjoyable. I certainly think I should wait because I have had loads of convincing ideas that I known think of as stupid. The main downside though, like relationships, homes have the unavoidable side-effect of making you think long term - never a nice feeling. What will I like in 5, 10, 30 years? Indeed! One thing is for certain, I cannot believe I am mature and rich enough to actually own enough space that I could, if I chose to indulge, have my own table tennis table!

Emerging

Weather and climate

About 15 years ago Chaos Theory and the Butterfly Effect entered into the public consciousness. The crux of it to me was the idea behind sensitive dependence, how a small change in one part of the system can cause a large change in another. One of the stories told was that the flutter of a butterfly wing in europe could trigger a hurricane in the US Gulf.

These ideas entered my head again at a climate modelling talk this week. Modelling climate is about creating heuristics that realistic describe the climate in the past and so can then be used to extrapolate to climate in the future.

Climate is the net result of many weather systems interacting. Cloud cover, ocean currents, gaseous sulphates and so on. Hundreds of parameters producing billions of possibilities producing these kinds of graphs.

Alexander Pope

And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite,
One truth is clear, 'Whatever is, is right.'

From An Essay on Man, Epistle 1

Another reminder that the truth is all there is, and we should be too proud to admit we have been deluded.

And of course this is in rhyme one of those, iambic pentameter,
How clever of Pope, to say it so in meter long lineage heroic.