29th Day

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exponential problems require exponential solutions

October 23, 2012

Which Goose Lays the Golden Eggs?

Filed under: Political — glberry @ 6:04 pm

The United States (July, 2012) is on the brink of a divisive conflict between the Public Sector and the Private Sector (politically defined as “the middle class vs. the super-rich”). These two sectors have a quasi-symbiotic relationship. The Public Sector provides protection, regulation, infrastructure, and a safety net. The Private Sector finances the Public Sector by paying taxes, and creates jobs and wealth through innovation and risk-taking which is what enables it to pay taxes. The Public Sector hurts itself by being too onerous because that results in lower tax revenue. There is a limit to the alternative of borrowing and increasing the National Debt which occurs when lenders will simply refuse to lend. If and when that day comes, all of us will suffer far beyond our worst nightmare.

The reality is the Private Sector, not the Public Sector, is the goose that lays the golden eggs. Cripple the Private Sector, or the people who expand the Private Sector… and no more golden eggs. The creative spark of the unencumbered, entrepreneurial individual mind, whether in the form of the wheel, the telephone, or the computer, lights the path to prosperity. The rest is just window dressing. To say otherwise will never make it so.

One indication of the confusion about the free enterprise system is the controversy which has erupted in July, 2012 about the contribution of small business to the economy. What the small businessman does that employees and government do not is he (or she) takes a risk. If it works, he is successful; if it doesn’t he can lose everything. This is the essence of the free enterprise system and I am disappointed that nobody, Democrat or Republican, has mentioned it.

We have reached a tipping point as a result of the collusive relationship between politicians and unions, and misleading accounting practices – politicians have been promising higher pension and medical benefits to public employees for decades in exchange for election support by their unions. These benefits have been massively underfunded raising the specter of city and state bankruptcies. At the national level, the tipping point may be the actual cost if Obamacare is implemented, or simply waiting too long to repair Social Security and Medicare.

The very real threat of “A house divided against itself cannot stand” in this looming tragedy is because
half of us pay income taxes … and half of us don’t,
a few of us are wealthy … and most of us are not,
something which is ripe for unscrupulous political manipulation in an election year. And watch out for what Socrates said, “When the debate is over, slander becmes the tool of the loser”.

We have had a glimpse of the future in Greece and even in the State of Wisconsin. This is becoming a life and death struggle between concentration of power and distribution of power, between coercion and enlightened self-interest, between tyranny and freedom. It is time for all of us to take a stand one way or the other or get out of the way. Be wary of four fatal errors: 1. Everything will be resolved satisfactorily even if we do nothing; 2. This is really a struggle between the rich and the poor; 3. The Public Sector is the goose that lays the golden eggs; 4. A tyrant will be kind and generous to us.

September 20, 2010

The Coming Tea Party Tsunami and the Political Establishment

Filed under: Activism,Political,Theoretical — glberry @ 6:01 pm

Remember when the Tsunami hit Thailand a few years ago? We saw tragic images of children playing on the beach just moments before the wave overcame and engulfed them. With regards to the Tea Party movement and politics in America, the elite media and the establishment political class (both Democrat and Republican) remind me of those children.

So we see Democrat strategists crafting messages for political gain. We see the likes of Karl Rove and Charles Krauthammer wringing their hands over who will hold committee chairmanships in the Senate.

Such chitter chatter reminds me of those poor children who may have been arguing over who gets to place the flag on the top of the sand castle not realizing that 1/4 mile off shore there was a 15 foot wall of water that was about to completely overwhelm them. And then they wonder why we don’t pay them any mind.

The establishment is a power hoarding structure. It uses Creativity and Information (CI). It will try to consolidate its power as it crashes. The tea party is a power distributing structure. It uses Creativity, Information and Communication. It will continue to expand. The Communication component is both its method and message to distribute power.

That is not the only difference. The CI political establishment is centralized while the tea party is decentralized. This is a critical difference when it comes to robustness and power. See CIC and Complexity: The Tea Party as a Complex System.

The establishment and the tea party manifest their impacts on different scales. A complex system like the tea party operates on the individual person level but effects of the system can occur at a much higher level. This is called emergence. Emergent properties are not visible at lower scale (i.e. by looking at individual members of the tea party) and are not predictable by looking at the members of a system. Examples of an unexpected and unpredictable emergent property include the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts and the primary losses of eight national office incumbents. I expect the results of November 2 will also be surprising.

More than November 2, I expect incumbent losses to accelerate in 2012 and 2014. Even before the 2012 election, expect to see pro-term limit activism increase. Pay attention to 10th amendment movements next year, especially in the context of the Health Care lawsuit. Finally, I believe we will see the tea party adopted in other countries as the effectiveness, impact and message are demonstrated.

The political and media elites will continue to be confounded by tea party success because they view things through a CI lens and seek answers at the wrong scale. That will not change until they understand that the tea party structure is decentralized power distributor.

September 18, 2010

Iran: Will We Act or Will We Wait?

Filed under: Political,Theoretical — glberry @ 5:24 pm

Will We Act or Will We Wait?

When President Bush made the decision to invade Iraq, many of us said, “You acted precipitously, you should have waited”. Now, it comes to Iran, and President Obama is waiting. When not if Iran produces a nuclear weapon, won’t many of us say, “You should have acted sooner. You waited too long”? Why the difference in strategy and which approach will prove to be most prudent?

This is the way I would explain the difference.

There was a lily pad on a pond, which doubled in size each day until, after 30 days, it covered the pond. The riddle is, on what day did it cover half the pond? Most of us think the answer is the 15th day, but it is not. The answer is the 29th day … because the lily pad doubles in size each day.

So, it will not take 15 days to cover the first half of the pond and 15 days to cover the last half of the pond. What seems unbelievable to most of us is that it takes 29 days to cover the first half of the pond but only one day to cover the second half. This is exponential power.

Linear thinkers (most of us), who add to get the rate of change, think the answer is the 15th day and that 15 days remain to cover the last half of the pond. Exponential thinkers, who multiply to get the rate of change, know the answer is the 29th day and that only one day remains to cover the last half of the pond.  Q. How much of the pond is actually covered on the 15th day? A. 3/100,000 or 0.003% of the pond.

In the 21st century, for the first time in history, our world has become visibly exponential, that is, the rate of change is accelerating visibly, just like the lily pad. So, we are mistakenly thinking that the 29th day is only the 15th day. The result is we feel that (exponential) problems are becoming crises too suddenly, and traditional (linear) solutions are being implemented too slowly.  It is frightening us, angering us, making us feel that things are out of control.

President Bush was thinking exponentially. He understood the consequences of waiting and so he acted well before the 29th day. President Obama is thinking linearly and waiting. In effect, he is saying, “It is only the 15th day, we have plenty of time, we can fix it later”. When the 29th day arrives with Iran, how many of us will think mistakenly that it is only the 15th day? Suddenly, we will be out of time.

We have paid a terrible price already for mistakenly thinking that the 29th day was only the 15th day. Do you really think “We have plenty of time” to avoid another disastrous 29th day, even after our real-life experience staring us right in the face

… of waiting too long to avoid the 2008 Financial Crisis?

… or of waiting too long to avoid the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill?

… and now, hearing at the 2010 G20 Economic Summit that we are going to wait too long again, this time to do something about the US National Debt?

Linear thinking is making us act like we have a death wish!

We don’t have a lot of time. Iran is not waiting. Remember the lily pad. Israel will remember. Whether we like it or not … the exponential clock is ticking.

tick … tick … tick.

For the moment, the choice is still ours. The price-tag is our future.

George L Berry, Actuary, 29thday.org

August 31, 2010

What was Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally really about? (Maybe not what you think)

Filed under: Activism,Ecomonic,Political,Theoretical — glberry @ 10:40 am

Here is a question. Was Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally on August 28th about November 2?   In other words, was the context of the rally in terms of the 2010 mid-term elections?

Now, you might say, “That is a trick question.   It was not about politics.   Glenn said so.”

I believe you would be correct but probably not for the correct reason.   If I am right (and I believe I am or I wouldn’t be writing this) and if I can communicate clearly in this article,  I believe a light will go off in your head before you finish reading it and you will see the rally in a very important and new way.    But first, indulge me for a minute while I lay an important foundation for the discussion.

Imagine there is a pond, a small pond only 30 square feet in size.   In the corner of that pond, there is a lily pad that is 1 square foot in size. The lily pad starts to grow and each day it adds 1 square foot in size.   On what day will the lily paid cover the pond?   The answer is easy; on the 30th day. On what day will the lily pad cover half the pond?   Again, the answer is easy, on the 15th day.

Now imagine the same pond with a very small lily pad in the corner.    This time, each day, the lily pad doubles in size and on the 30th day in covers the entire pond. On what day does it cover half the pond?   The answer is on the 29th day because it doubles in size each day.    So, on the 29th day it covers ½ the pond and doubles the next day to cover all of it.    Was your first thought that it covered half the pond on the 15th like the first example?    For many people, that is the case.

Now, imagine that lily pad is a problem we face.   In the first scenario where it adds 1 square foot a day, on the 15th day, we have as much time left to solve the problem as has passed already; that is, 15 days.   We see the problem and we sense that it is pretty serious since it covers half the pond.    “That’s OK”, we say, “Because we have 15 days to solve it”.

Here is the issue.   The problems we face today are more like the second scenario.   The one where the pond is half covered on the 29th day.   The big problem is that we think it is the 15th day because that is how we think.    We think we have 15 days to fix it but then we wake up on the next day, the 30th day, and the pond is completely covered.    The problem has overtaken us and we can’t understand what happened.   We thought we had so much time.

Our problems are like the second scenario,  that is,  exponential in nature but our solutions tend to be like the first scenario,  that is,  linear.   It has always been so but we never noticed because exponential problems look and act linear when we are moving slowly.   The change came with the technological and communication revolutions in the last 30 years.   Suddenly, our exponential problems started acting exponential but we didn’t realize it.   We still thought they were linear.   This disconnect has caused confusion and fear.

Back to Glenn in a minute but let’s talk about November 2.    In the short term, November 2 is like the 30th day.   The political landscape in America is at the 29th day on a small time scale – say less than a year.   I believe November 2 will be the 30th day on that scale.   I have included a picture of an exponential curve below and how it changes over time – say the 30 days in our pond example.   For the 1 year political scale,   I believe we are at the 29th day, as indicated in the bubble.   See how steep the line is at the 29th day?   Think of steepness as activity.   The steeper the line, the more that is happening.   This is true for both problems and solutions.

expo2

Have you noticed that some people are concerned that the Republicans will win in November but then they will do what they have always done and move back to the center?    For many, that thought it discouraging.   It is like a 30th day solution but a 31st day defeat.

In fact, that is exactly what I believe will happen.   But, take heart, because I believe there is a bigger scale.   A scale that is 4 to 6 years in length. On that scale, we are not on the 29th day.    We are on, say, the 21st day.   That solution is also exponential. In the chart below,  I have put an arrow where I think we are on the 4 to 6 year scale. Again, think of the slope of the curve as the amount of activity.

expo1

Now, notice the line is not as steep at the 21st day as it is at the 29th day.   In other words, less is happening.   This is always the case with both problems and solutions.   So, what is happening at this “21st” day? Let’s look at the primaries.   If Murkowski of Alaska ends up losing to Joe Miller, she will be the seventh Congressional incumbent to lose in a primary this year.   Note, there are quite a few incumbents in State races that lost as well.   Seven is a lot but it is not a whole lot.    I believe it is what we would expect for the “steepness of the curve” on the 21st day.

But what about 2012? Or 2014?   What “day” will those be? I don’t know exactly but I believe they will be moving up the curve approaching the 29th day.    If I am right, it won’t matter if the Republicans do what they always have done – move back to the center because 2012 will be the 24th day and 2014 will be the 26th day.   How many incumbents will lose in 2012?   In 2014?   I believe the slope will continue to increase and the activity will continue to increase.   I believe there will be more incumbent losses in 2012 and even more in 2014.

Will 2016 be the 29th day? Could be. At some point in the next 6 years or so,   I believe we will see almost all of Congress either truly repent or lose their seat.   In other words, the 29th for Congress is almost complete replacement.

Does that sound crazy?   You might say, “Yes”.

If you want some science behind the claim, you can read CIC and Complexity but there is a reason it sounds crazy.   The reason is that it is really hard to see the problem or the solution on the 15th or even the 21st day.    Let’s go back to our original scenario, the second one, where the lily pad doubles. If it covers half the pond on the 29th day, do you how know big the lily pad is on the 15th day?   I did the math.   The answer is about 1/10 of a square inch.

That doesn’t look like that big of a problem, does it?   But that is when you need to start fixing it.

Finally, let me talk about the “Restoring Honor” rally.    I believe Glenn has identified a third trend on an even bigger scale than the short term or medium term political scales I talked about above.   On that scale, say, a 20 year scale, I believe we truly are on the 15th day.    The problem is apparent but not particularly clear.

I think people were surprised by the size and passion of the rally for one of two reasons.   Because we are on the 15th day, Glenn’s rally may look like a solution without a problem.    Or, it could easily be construed as a 21st or 29th day solution to a smaller scale event.   Look at the media coverage.   They don’t really know what to make of it.   They are confused and fearful.   They can’t understand how Glenn got that many people to show up.   Even O’Reilly didn’t think there was even a chance 100,000 people would attend.   That is not surprising given the problem and solution are both exponential but the old media and government (especially the old media and government) tend to be linear thinkers.

Another rule I have found is that the larger the scale, the more fundamental the issues.    In other words, short-term problems and solutions tend to be very specific and identifiable.   Longer-term problems and solutions tend to be more general and based on fundamental principles.    That is what I believe Glenn is onto.   His solution is one that addresses the fundamental question of who we are.

We have been moving away from our traditional roots for a long time but that has accelerated in the last 30 years.   It has accelerated as we moved up the curve and the curve got steeper and the activity increased, just like the graphs above.   We are on or around the 15th day.   We have the time to fix it.   It doesn’t look like a huge deal to a lot of people.   After all, it only covers 1/10 of an inch of the pond.   But now is the time to start before we start to move up the curve and it gets too steep.   Before the 29th day because then, we will be out of time.

One more thing;  if we truly are at the 15th day, then all the problems we have seen so far only represent 1/10 of a square inch of the pond.   In the next 15 days, we will be exposed to the rest.   I believe that is what Glenn is referring to when he says a storm is coming like we have never seen.

Glenn Beck is proposing an exponential solution to an exponential problem and he is proposing it on the 15th day, when the problem doesn’t look that big.   In fact, most people don’t even see it.   But many do.   The people who attended the rally do, even if they can’t quite put their finger on it.

We can solve this fundamental problem.   Glenn is right in the solution he proposes and there is enough time left to change.   So, now you know why I say that the “Restoring Honor” rally really isn’t about the November 2 elections and,  if I have achieved my goal,  you have hope.

July 21, 2010

The JournoList Scandal: Old Media tactics offend but should not surprise

Filed under: Media,Theoretical — glberry @ 7:59 am

In recent days, the Daily Caller website has released transcripts from the JournoList Listserv.    The JournoList is a private discussion group for liberal journalists and academics. Two items the Daily Caller reported were the efforts by the participants to hide the Jeremiah Wright story by attacking Conservatives by erroneously labeling them racist and the suggestion that the government should shut down Fox News. I want to keep these two examples in mind in the my discussion below.

The transcripts are quite shocking yet shouldn’t be once we realize the nature of Old Media. Chapter 11 of The 29th Day: Solutions in a World of Accelerating Change addresses old versus new media from a CIC/CI perspective.

To review, CIC (Creativity, Information) is at war with CIC (Creativity, Information, Communication). Entities can be defined as one or the other based on their tendencies.

From Chapter 2:

CIC distributes information while CI hides information
CIC focuses on means while CI focuses on ends
CIC uses creativity to overcome restraints while CI uses control to overcome restraints
CIC is a power-generator distributor while CI is a power-generator hoarder

CI without Communication is a power-generator. The dominant characteristic of the Industrial Revolution was success through the concentration of power generated by CI. The transformation of existing systems, and the creation of new systems was based on the principle of concentration of CI-power.

From Chapter 11:

Over the last 10 years or so, Americans, with their personal computers, and the internet are rapidly becoming CIC-driven, as they find themselves increasingly becoming the willing recipients of distributed power. This power is being drawn away from those CI-Structures, that are unwilling or unable to adapt to an exponential world. CIC is in the process of either transforming them … or destroying them. The older Media Organizations were formed in a time when CI -Structures dominated the landscape, when we lived in a CI world. Some of them apparently have been unable to adapt.

The two examples from the Daily Caller’s publication of the JournoList transcripts demonstrate classic CI tendencies. The solutions proposed to the perceived problems the JournoList participants faced were to hide information, consolidate power and control their opponents.

While most of these proposals are linear in nature, there was one aspect that was exponential, at least they hoped it would be. Daily Caller reports that the group hoped that by labeling one Conservative as a racist, they would push his head through a plate glass window – figuratively, of course. That image would cause other Conservatives to fear speaking out.

In the coming days and weeks, it is likely more revelations will come out and, along with additional transcripts, we should not be surprised to find more CI tactics. It is very likely that these tactics will offend us but it should not surprise us. CI structures are predictable and best fought with the light of truth through the distribution of information. Did you notice the weapon the Daily Caller employed to combat the JournoList participants? The Daily Caller fought back by distributing information. That is how CIC wins.

July 19, 2010

CIC and Complexity: The Tea Party as a Complex System

Filed under: Political,Theoretical — glberry @ 1:01 pm

I want to take a minute and talk about “systems”. When I speak of a system, I am talking about any collection of nodes and connections. Examples of systems include computers in a network, employees in an office, and puffs of air in a thunderstorm. A node is an individual unit in the system and a connection is the  interaction between two nodes.

Let’s look at some generic systems.

Did you notice something about the four node example? It has more connections than it does nodes. In fact, four nodes is the minimum number of nodes needed in a system to achieve the distinction of the potential for more connections than nodes.

A partial and simple definition of a Complex System is a system that has more connections than nodes.

How does this relate to CIC? Well, with regards to CIC, the Creativity and Information reside in the nodes. Communication provides the connections.  Let me say that last part again. The “Communication” component of CIC is equal to the connections the nodes in a Complex System.

Now let me introduce Metcalf’s law:

Metcalfe’s law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of  the system (n2) (emphasis added).

“Proportional to the square” means that as you increase the number of connections in a system, the value of that system increases exponentially.

Let me show you with some numbers. Don’t get hung up on the units of value. For now, let’s just see how the “value” changes in system as we add nodes and connections. Let’s use our example from above of a four node system.

Value of 3 nodes, 3 connections = 32 = 9 value units 

Value of 4 nodes, 6 connections = 42 = 16 value units

Value of 5 nodes, 10 connections = 52 = 25 value units

Value of 6 nodes, 15 connections = 62 = 36 value units

We added 3 connections to the network and increased its value by 400% (36/9).

This is likely conservative. A more applicable law for our purposes might be Reed’s Law, which values a network based on potential sub-groupings and results in a 700% increase in value from 3 to 6 nodes.

Now let me ask you a question? What do you think happened when the internet went main stream and added what was in effect an infinite number of connections to the system of computer users?

Back to our example, what if instead of adding three nodes and the associated connections, we add 400 million nodes and  the [400,000,000*399,999,999]/2 connections that go along with them. Remember, just adding 3 nodes increased the power of the network 400%.

Do you see why CIC works? Why adding C to CI makes such a huge difference? Do you think you might have underestimated its potential power?

Now, with regards to Metcalf’s law, that actually applies to any system and not just Complex Systems. So what is the big deal with Complex Systems? Before I get into that, let’s add a word. Let’s look at Complex Adaptive Systems.

A Complex Adaptive System is a special case of complex systems. They are complex in that they are diverse and made up of multiple interconnected elements and adaptive in that they have the capacity to change and learn from experience.

Examples of complex adaptive systems include the stock market, social insect and ant colonies, the biosphere and the ecosystem, the brain and the immune system, the cell and the developing embryo, manufacturing businesses and any human social group-based endeavor in a cultural and social system such as political parties or communities. This includes some large-scale online systems, such as collaborative tagging or social bookmarking systems.

Source: wikipedia

So, again, what is the big deal about Complex Adaptive Systems? Everything. But let me pick just one aspect here and I can best explain that aspect using an example.

Imagine that I want to model a thunderstorm in a computer program. How would I do it? It turns out that I could set up a collection of virtual “puffs” of air.  Then I would simply provide a few simple rules on how those puffs should interact with their neighbors.

For example, I might program in how a puff should change its temperature depending on the temperature of the puffs to its right and left. Same for pressure and humidity.

With the rules determined, I would begin by setting a starting value for the temperature, humidity and pressure for each puff of air. Then I would “turn on” my model and let each puff react. The way that would work is I would allow each puff to go through an iteration of the rules.   Then I could stop and assess the system before going through iteration.

There are two very, very important things to notice about these rules.

  1. They are simple in that they apply at the level of the nodes or puffs or air.
  2. The same rules apply to all the puffs of air. That is, there is just one set of rules.

So what could I expect to observe? Here is the amazing thing. With certain set of initial conditions, I might observe not much at all –a beautiful, spring day. With a different set of initial conditions, however, I would observe storm fronts developing in my model. I would observe lightening and thunder. I would observe heavy wind.

So the obvious question is where did the storm fronts, lightening, thunder and wind come from? Remember, we only programmed in simple rules that applied to single puffs of air based on their neighbor. The answer is that the thunderstorm is an emergent behavior.

An emergent behavior is a “behavior” of a complex system that is neither programmed nor observable at the node scale.
In other words, you can’t see or predict the emergent behavior by looking at the nodes and their connections. It occurs at a different scale and comes from the interactions of the nodes.

Because emergent behaviors are not observable or predictable at the system level, they are often surprising. Can you think of a surprising event that occurred recently? How about the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts?

While your mind wraps itself around all the repercussions of emergent behavior, let me go back to something you might have missed. Did you notice that in order to affect a complex system, you don’t need to program in a complex outcome? You only need to change the simple rules that apply to each node.

Here is a great example. Glenn Beck does this by teaching his viewers history. Here’s the rule: Teach node history. It is simple and it applies to all nodes equally. What is the emergent behavior? In April 2009, 3,000 people showed up at the Tea Party in Washington, DC. On September 12, 2009, just five months later, over 1,000,000 people showed up.

Wow.

That’s enough for now. There is so much more.

July 15, 2010

Exponential change and my letter to Glenn Beck

Filed under: Media,Political,Theoretical — glberry @ 1:46 pm

Dear Glenn

I am writing to you because my father and I have started to try to do something about where we find ourselves as a country and I wanted to let you know about it.

My father is writing again. You probably have not heard of my father, primarily because he sought to avoid fame when he was working. His name is George Berry. He is an actuary (as are my two brothers and I). My father is largely responsible for the health actuarial consulting industry as it exists today.

One of my favorite stories from his early years is the time he testified as an expert witness in front of a Senate committee concerning the cost projection for the Federal Employee Health Program back in the early 1970’s. The Blue Cross Blue Shield actuaries had made their projections and my father had made his. My father’s estimate was 1 billion dollars lower than all the others (a billion dollars was a lot of money back then).

At the hearing, my father was sworn in and the first Senator tried to sandbag him with the following question. “Mr. Berry, your estimate is 1 billion dollars lower than every other expert who has looked at this. Can you tell us in 30 seconds why you are right and everyone else is wrong?”

My father responded, “No, Senator. Not in 30 seconds.”

He had figured out that health care cost trends were cyclical and everyone else was using straight line projections. When the year was over, his estimate had been off by $16 million, or 1.6%. He will say it was mostly luck but he had nailed it. It was all up from there. He grew a very successful actuarial consulting practice over the next 15 years. He was involved in many high profile cases and projects. He retired in 1986 at the age of 46.

But then in the late 1980’s he noticed something was happening. Not just in health care but everywhere. He decided to come out of retirement to write about it and speak about it. Generally speaking, he got one of two responses from his audiences. They either gave him a puzzled look or they were openly hostile to him. He had never received this kind of response before and didn’t know what to make of it. So, in 1993 he set aside the work and retired to his farm in a remote part of Canada with my mother.

Then in October of 2009 he started to write again. Why? Because now what he had seen 20 years before had accelerated to the point where it was playing out everyday and very few people seem to understand it. People were afraid and angry and didn’t understand what was happening. The specific catalyst for him to write again was the first stimulus bill when Paulson spent $750 billion in the fall of 2008.

I don’t mean to be cryptic and I will explain what I am talking about but first please indulge me in an analogy.

There once was a pond that had a small lily pad in the corner. Everyday the lily pad doubled in size to the point where it completely covered the pond in 30 days. The question is when did it cover half the pond? Most people will say on the 15th day but that is not the answer. The answer is on the 29th day.

The essence of the idea is this. The world has always worked exponentially but for most of history it operated on the low end of the curve where it looked and effectively operated linearly. Therefore, people believed it was linear. With the hyper-accelerated development of communication and computing technologies in the past 25 years, reality has “moved up” the curve and is now operating exponentially. The problem is that people are still thinking linearly. Worse, they are trying to solve exponential problems with linear solutions.

I realize that description has actuary-speak all over it and I assure you my father does a great job making it understandable. As it turns out, he is not the only one talking about this sort of thing. For example, Ray Kurzweil talks about it in the context of technology, Jack Uldrich concerning business, Chris Martenson about the economy and Wayne Hodgins on education. You are doing it with regards to informing the public about government.

Each of those men communicates using the underlying principles in the context of a particular subject matter. My father has taken a different approach. His goal is to distill it down to its building blocks in order to understand how it works. He is doing this for two reasons. First, to help the average person understand how things really work and second, to help the average person use that knowledge to affect change.

When my father first saw it 20 years ago, it was just starting so it didn’t bother folks that much. But the internet and other factors, like Moore’s law, have brought it to a critical place. Back in the 1990’s he called what he was observing “CIC” (pronounced “kick”). CIC stands for Creativity, Information and Communication.

He realized back then that CIC brought down the Soviet Union. Today, it is what powers the Tea Party as well as the Stimulus bill – opposites to be sure. But one of CIC’s properties is that it is morally neutral. That is important. Those are just examples. CIC is everywhere.

CIC has an evil twin called CI. The latter is often present in old, top-down power structures that seek to retain their control by hoarding information. We see CI in the dinosaur media and in the current halls of Congress. There are reasons why the Tea Party is hated so much. Reasons that can be quantified, understood, and, yes, effectively countered once they are understood.

My father has written a book and I have put that book on a website. I want to assure you that this project has absolutely nothing to do with making money or getting famous. My father has enough of the first and spent years avoiding the second. This is about helping people understand what is happening and empowering them to affect it. As far as I can tell, your goal and this goal are completely aligned. It is one of the reasons I am writing to you.

The website is at www.29thday.org and, of course, is completely free to access. There is no advertising. My father has financed it and I built it. As I said, money is not part of this equation. The first few chapters lay out the CIC principles. The remaining chapters attempt to unpack those principles by applying them to contemporary events like Health Care, Terrorism and Immigration. By doing this, my father hopes to help the reader understand CIC and at the same time see how to apply it. The book is interactive in that it solicits reader feedback via Google Sidewiki and incorporates that feedback into text revisions.

Glenn, I appreciate your time. If you or one of your staff got this far in this letter, then I am deeply grateful. Like you, we want to empower people with the truth. If you think there is something to what we are saying, a quick word by you would send a lot of people to this resource.

The first two chapters are a quick read and lay it all out.

Thanks for your time and for considering.

Sincerely

Pete

June 8, 2010

Obamacons versus Tea Partiers from a Systems Perspective

Filed under: Political — glberry @ 9:29 am

The difference between the 15 million Obama voters who voted the first time in 2008 and the tea party members is the system construct. Both could be considered Complex Systems. The difference lies in what motivates the members of the system and how the systems are connected.

In the Dems case, it is a centralized motivation surrounding one man. Think of that as a hub and spoke system. Such a system is not particularly robust because it rises and falls on the success or failure of one man. This goes to the second point. The system is primarily centralized, which weakens it, because it’s focus is on an individual.

In contrast, the tea party members are motivated by personal conviction. Specifically, fear and anger. Fear for the financial future of the country – especially for their children. Anger at elected officials who have violated the sacred trust of representative government. These convictions are tightly and individually held and are not easily moved. In fact, the attacks on the tea party only strengthen them. The system itself is extremely decentralized with thousands of small pockets across the country. That makes it resilient, robust and powerful.

From a computer system stand point, the Dems are client/server and the tea party is peer to peer.

As with any Complex Adaptive System, there are emergent properties that develop that cannot be observed at the scale of individual members. We have seen such emergent behaviors in the tea party movement in the growth of participants in marches. On April 15, 2009, 3,000 march in DC. On 9/12/2009, 1 million marched. That is exponential growth. We also see emergent behaviors in the “unexpected” election results in VA, NJ and MA.

I have seen a lot of people try to describe the tea party in linear terms. They try to understand it but they are using incorrect system descriptions. For example, Ed Rendell says that it is weak because it doesn’t have a national infrastructure, not realizing that the decentralized nature of the movement gives it tremendous power.

November 11, 2009

How Social Media is Taking the News Local

Filed under: Business,Media,Tech — glberry @ 11:32 am

From Mashable. A very interesting article on how Social Media is being used by local news organization to grow audiences. The decentralization here is a key CIC principle. The article is worth reading. We haven’t addressed Social Media very much here at 29thday but I am thinking that it is a chapter unto itself.

Setting aside the main focus of the article, I found the following excerpt a fascinating example of CIC power. Checkout Chapter 2 from the book to figure which CIC principles apply.

Internet memes can spread fast using social media, and news topics are no exception. What started out as crowdsourcing for a news story morphed into a local meme in the Twin Cities when WCCO-TV reporter Jason DeRusha, asked his followers on Twitter how someone gets an official day designated for them. He tweeted: “It’s National Cheesecake Day. How do you get a ‘day’ anyway? Good Question at 10. (Anyone have power to declare DeRusha Day?).”

That’s when the meme began. DeRusha didn’t anticipate how quickly the “DeRusha Day” movement would snowball. A Twitter user started a #DeRushaDay hashtag, and then someone created a poster, another person launched a web site and someone else started online petition devoted to the cause, which were all tweeted about. The end result? Sept. 21 was officially proclaimed DeRusha Day by the mayor’s office and a party marked the event.

October 22, 2009

Did Brinkmannship Fell Berlin’s Wall? Brinkmann Says It Did -WSJ

Filed under: Activism,Media,Political — glberry @ 11:55 am

An article from the WSJ on what really brought down the Berlin wall. This is a fascinating story. Essentially, East German Politburo member Günter Schabowski wasn’t up to speed on a recent travel policy and blew his answer at an international press conference. This led the media to conclude the border was open. The effect was immediate.

Here was the consequence…

The result, once East Berliners had seen that night’s news on West German television, was chaos at border crossings across the city…At Bornholmer Strasse, one of the main checkpoints in central Berlin, confused border guards couldn’t get clear orders on how to deal with the crush, and debated whether to open fire. Instead, they opened the barrier, and the Berlin Wall was history.

CIC principle # 2 comes to mind – The Message must be an exact match to the self-interests of the target audience(s). That was certainly the case here with regard to the East German population.

Believable news reports (the Messenger) that the border was open motivated thousands of East Germans to flood the border crossings with the expectation that they could cross. It is hard to think of another circumstance that could motivate thousands of oppressed people to approach border crossings where many people had been killed.

CIC principles #3 and #4. The Message must be communicated to the target audience(s) and the Messenger must be trusted, with crystal clear core values.

I am sure others apply as well.

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