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John Hopkins wrote:<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">You cannot have a truly distributed creative system without there
being open channels between (all) nodes. </pre>
</blockquote>
I don't think this is true.<br>
<br>
Imagine
an idealized communications system, where links were created directly
from person to person. If all channels were open at any given time, we
would be communicating simultaneously with 6 billion people. We do not
have the capacity to process this communication, so it has the net
effect of being nothing but noise and static. Call this the congestion
problem.<br>
<br>
This point was first made to me by Francisco Valera in
a talk at the University of Alberta Hospital in 1987 or so. He was
describing the connectivity between elements of the immune system, and
showed that most effective communication between nodes was obtained at
less than maximal connection, a mid-way point between zero connectivity
and total connectivity. Similarly, in human perception, we find that
neurons are connected, not to every other neuron, but to a subset of
neurons.<br>
<br>
What this tells me is that what defines a "truly
distributed creative system" is not the number of open channels (with
'all' being best) but rather the structure or configuration of those
channels. And in this light, I contend that there are two major models
to choose from:<br>
<br>
- egalitarian configurations - each node has the same number of
connections to other nodes<br>
- inegalitarian configurations - nodes have unequal numbers of
connections to other nodes<br>
<br>
Now
the 'scale free' networks described by Clay Shirky are inegalitarian
configurations. The evidence of this is the 'power law' diagram that
graphs the number of connections per member against the number of
members having this number of connections. Very few members have a high
number of connections, while very many members have a low number of
connections - this is the 'long tail' described by Anderson.<br>
<br>
The
networks are scale free because, theoretically, there is no limit to
the number of connections a member could have (a status Google appears
to have achieved on the internet). [*] Other inegalitarian networks
have practical limits imposed on them. The network of connections
between airports, for example, is an inegalitarian configuration.
Chicago is connected to many more places than Moncton. But the laws of
physics impose a scale on this network. Chicago cannot handle a million
times more connections than Moncton, because airplanes take up a
certain amount of space, and no airport could handle a million
aircraft. This is another example of the congestion problem.<br>
<br>
What
distinguishes the inegalitarian system from the inegalitarian system is
its the number of 'hops' through connections required to travel from
any given one member to another (this can be expressed as an average of
all possible hops in the network). In a fully inegalitarian system, the
maximum number of hops is '2' - from one member, who has one
connection, to the central node, which is connected to every other
node, to the target node. In a fully egalitarian system, the maximum
number of hops can be much higher (this, again, is sensitive to
configuration).<br>
<br>
As the discussion above should have made clear,
it should be apparent that fully inegalitarian systems suffer as much
from congestion as fully connected systems, however, this congestion is
suffered in only one node, the central node. No human, for example,
could be the central node of communication for 6 billion people. This
means that, while the number of hops to get from one point to another
may be low, the probability of the message actually being communicated
is also low. In effect, what happens is that the inegalitarian system
becomes a 'broadcast' system - very few messages are actually sent, and
they are received by everyone in one hop.<br>
<br>
In other words -
maximal connectivity can result in the *opposite* of a truly
distributed creative system. It can result in a maximally centralized
system.<br>
<br>
I'm sure there's a reference from critical theory or
media theory, but what would to me define a truly distributed creative
system is 'voice' (sometimes called 'reach'). This could be understood
in different ways: the number of people a person communicates with, the
average number of people each person communicates with, the minimum
number, etc. My own approach to 'voice' is to define it in terms of
'capacity'. In short, any message by any person <i>could</i> be
received by all other people in the network. But it is also defined by
control. In short, no message by any person is <i>necessarily</i>
received by all other people in the network.<br>
<br>
One
way to talk about this is to talk about the entities in the network.
When you look at Watt and Barabasi, they talk about the probability
that a message will be forwarded from one node to the next. This,
obviously, is a property of both the message and the node. Suppose, for
example, that the message is the ebola virus, and that the node is a
human being. The virus is very contagious. If contracted to one person,
it has a very high probability of being passed on to the next. But
suppose the person is resistant. Then he or she won't contract the
virus, and thus, has a very low probability of passing it on.<br>
<br>
The
other way to talk about this is to talk about the structure of the
network. The probability of the virus being passed on increases with
the number of connections. This means that in some circumstances - for
example, a person with many friends - the probability of the virus
being passed on is virtually certain. So in some network
configurations, there is no way to stop a virus from sweeping through
the membership. These networks are, specifically, networks that are
highly inegalitarian - broadcast networks. Because the virus spreads so
rapidly, there is no way to limit the spread of the message, either by
quarantine (reducing the number of connections per carrier) or
inoculation (increasing the resistance to the message).<br>
<br>
In order to create the truly distributed creative system, therefore,
you need to:<br>
<br>
-
limit the number of connections for any given node. This limit would be
based on what might be thought of as the 'receptor capacity' of any
given node, that is, the maximum number of messages it can receive
without congestion, which in turn is, the maximum number of messages it
can receive where each message has a non-zero chance of changing the
state of the receptor node.<br>
<br>
- maximize the number of
connections, up to the limit, for any given node. This might be thought
of as maximizing the voice of individual nodes. What this does is to
give any message from any given node a good start - it has a high
probability of propagating at least one step beyond its originator. It
cannot progress too fast - because of the limit to the number of
connections - but within that limit, it progresses as fast as it can.<br>
<br>
-
within these constraints, maximize the efficiency of the network - that
is (assuming no congestion) to minimize the average number of hops
required for a network to propagate to any other point in the network.<br>
<br>
These
conditions combine to give a message the best chance possible of
permeating the entire network, and the network the best chance possible
of blocking undesirable messages. For any given message, the greatest
number of people possible are in a position to offer a countervailing
message, and the network is permeable enough to allow the
countervailing message the same chance of being propagated.<br>
<br>
What
sort of network does that look like? I have already argued that it is
not a broadcast network. Let me take that one step further and argue
that it is not a 'hub and spokes' network. Such networks are biased
toward limiting the number of hops - at the expense of voice, and with
the risk of congestion. That's why, in hub and spoke networks, the
central networks become 'supernodes', capable of handling many more
connections than individual nodes. But this increase in capacity comes
with a trade-off - an increase in congestion. This becomes most evident
when the supernode attempts to acquire a voice. A centralized node that
does nothing but reroute messages may handle many messages efficiently,
but then the same node is used to read those messages and (say) filter
them for content, congestion quickly occurs, with a dramatic decrease
in the node's capacity.<br>
<br>
Rather, the sort of network that results
is what may be called a 'community of communities' model. Nodes are
highly connected in clusters. A cluster is defined simply as a set of
nodes with multiple mutual connections. Nodes also connect - on a less
frequent basis - to nodes outside the cluster. Indeed (to take this a
step further) nodes typically belong to multiple clusters. They may be
more or less connected to some clusters. The propagation of a message
is essentially the propagation of the message from one community to the
next. The number of steps is low - but for a message to pass from one
step to the next, it needs to be 'approved' by a large number of nodes.<br>
<br>
When
we look at things like Wenger's communities of practice, we see, in
part, the description of this sort of network. Rather than the
school-and-teacher model of professional development (which is a hub
and spokes model) the community of practice maximalizes the voice of
each of its members. It can be called a cluster around a certain topic
or area of interest, but the topic or area of interest does not <i>define</i>
the community, it is rather an empirical description of the community
(and thus, for example, we see people who came together as a hockey
team in 1980 continue to be drinking buddies in 1990 and go on to form
an investment club in 2000).<br>
<br>
Maximally distributed creativity
isn't about opening the channels of communication, at least, not
directly. It is about each person having the potential to be a member
of a receptive community, where there is a great deal of interactivity
among the members of that community, and where the community, in turn,
is a member of a wider community of communities. Each person thus is
always heard by some, has the potential to be heard by all, and plays a
role not only in the creation of new ideas, but also, as part of the
community, in the evaluation and passing on of others' ideas.<br>
<br>
==<br>
<br>
[*] I just want to amend slightly.<br>
<br>
I
wrote: "The networks are scale free because, theoretically, there is no
limit to the number of connections a member could have..."<br>
<br>
This should not be confused with the <i>definition</i>
of a 'scale free network', which is specifically, that "a network that
is scale-free will have the same properties no matter what the number
of its nodes is."<br>
<br>
But the relationship between my statement and
the more formal definition should be clear. If there is a limit to the
number of connections created by the physical properties of the nodes,
then the mathematical formula that describes one instance of the
network (a small instance) cannot be used to describe all instances of
the same type of network.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
-- Stephen<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">---
Stephen Downes ~ Research Officer ~ National Research Council Canada
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.downes.ca">http://www.downes.ca</a> ~ <a
class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:stephen@downes.ca">stephen@downes.ca</a> __\|/__ Free Learning</pre>
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