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THE MODULARITY MOVEMENT REVISTED

Dan of tdaxp has added an interesting counterpoint to my last post on modularity where he expands the concept with a look at research into brain physiology and cognitive function in “Evolution Away From Modularity“. An excerpt:

“[Evolutionary Psychologists interpret the] Watson selection tasks [as meaning] subjects appear to reason more effectively about social contracts than about non-social contracts… subjects ignore the logical properties of the condition they’re evlauation and focus exclusively on whether someone is receiving a benefit without playing the correspond cost… subjects… focus on whether someone has taken a benefit from them without paying a cost to them.” (Buller 171)”The theory behind the cheater-detection mechanism module should lead us to expect a mechanism that is specialized in detecting cheaters in the domain of social exchanges. But the experimental results that purportedly support the existence of a cheater-detection module involve detecting cheaters int eh domain of social contracts.” (Buller 172) (a problem for EP or a distinction without a difference?)”

Interestingly enough, I’ve found out from Dan’s post that there is a “Massive Modularity Thesis” about the brain but I’m not sufficiently well informed here to evaluate the pro and con positions ( a good question for the Drs. Eide !). My intuitive guess is that modularity is a meta-principle and wherever you have complex systems you will also have some evidence of modularity and that the human brain will be no exception. That is however, only a guess.

I’d love to have any experts with a medical, psychological or scientific background, who might be reading this, to weigh in on this question.

ON ATTENTION

One of the great difficulties in effective communication is that to be a great messenger you need more than something important to say or the capacity to say something well. Your most important act is to win the attention of those who you want to receive the message. Without that, your effort goes for naught.

Attention is actually a scarce commodity. While we like to attribute that to living in an age of cell phones, PDA’s, the internet, 500 channel cable TV, video games, treos, blackberries ad nauseum, I suspect that we are exaggerating their collective effect and that inattentiveness and a proclivity to distraction is our natural state. We like to imagine that in the past, we had a simpler, more solemn and focused age. Well, at the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas spoke before crowds of up to 20,000 – who milled about, coughed, laughed, cheered, jeered, engaged in conversation, hollared, smoked, spat, ate food, held wailing babies, argued, fought with fists, tended horses and meandered about drunk. As one historian put it:

“At some of the debates there were no ladies present, but at others, they were there and given the only seats that were available except for the Conestoga wagons and the covered wagons that some of the people arrived on. People sat on their wagons. It makes one wonder how many people actually heard the speeches and how many people were out for the celebration. You know, you had ice cream being consumed and picnic barbecues, liquid refreshment — a lot of liquid refreshment — fights breaking out in the back of the auditorium, the back of the crowds, a cannon being fired off. Douglas traveled with his own cannon. That was the only amplification around. He traveled with a brass cannon, and his supporters were instructed to fire it every time he got off a good point against Lincoln. So there was lots of noise, lots of crowd yelling and cheering and booing and talking back, nothing like the debates today where our candidates make such an intentional and careful effort to take the high ground and to be very calm and not answer. Negatives and fighting and audience attacks were part of the game.”

Not quite the school textbook image. I have to wonder how many people heard even half of what was said, given that these debates ran for three hours straight. Lincoln’s propensity for jokes, irreverence and colorful stories for which he was sometimes criticized, as unbefitting the dignity of his office, were learned on the stump as devices to entertain and win the crowd’s attention. The fact that sound bites on TV have grown more effective as they have been made shorter is a poor indication of what the actual average American attention span might be.

As poorly as we sometimes are at paying attention extrospectively – we could benefit far more by greater attention or some old fashioned Zen “mindfulness” being directed inward. Metacognitive regulation requires an introspective monitoring of one’s thoughts and ideas, which means active, conscious, effort to pay attention. This requires practice to sustain for any length of time though on the other extreme, master Yogis and Zen monks have exhibited the ability to effect significant physiological changes through meditative concentration. Having acquired sufficient attention to engage in metacognition, we can begin to select our cognitive frames and approach problems with greater discrimination and conscious choice, rather than being driven frantically by events, simply reacting.

It pays to pay attention.

THE NEW FEEL OF GROUP BLOGGING…

Aside from being honored with requests to guest post by such sterling individuals and uber-bloggers as Bruce Kesler, Austin Bay and Chester, I have pretty much stuck to an individualist course in the blogosphere. I have always liked that Zenpundit represents my particular voice even though there have been many, many, times I’ve wished for an extra hand to tackle some important topic.

Well, I intend to keep blogging solo here as energetically ( or slothfully, depending on your point of view) as before, but I am now also part of a group blog -or a “blogject” – Discover the Rules, organized and inspired by “Captain” Critt Jarvis to investigate gaming as a platform for connectivity to the wider world. My esteemed fellow crewmembers include Dan of tdaxp, Sean Meade, Larry Dunbar, Shawn in Tokyo and Sokari Ekine, a diverse and talented team that spans generations, continents and hemispheres.

We are still getting our ” sea legs” under us but stop by, leave your comments, ask your questions and help us discover the rules !

THE MOVEMENT TOWARD MODULARITY

A great post by Steve DeAngelis at ERMB, “Globalization and Resilient Enterprises“, neatly explains the cutting edge trend for large organizations that wish to survive and dominate their market or environment. Some excerpts:

“What Palmisano calls “the globally integrated enterprise,” is what I have been calling the “Resilient Enterprise.” Whether you call it a globallly integrated or a resilient enterprise, isn’t as important as the fact that what we are describing is a momentous shift in the global business paradigm — it’s not just a name change. Palmisano continues:

The key to this paradigm is the ability to “pull apart” business processes and “put them back together” as needs dictate. Of course, this kind of talk excites me because Enterra Solutions is in the business of enabling globally integrated corporations and turning them into Resilient Enterprises. Tom Barnett and I spend a great deal of our time addressing multinational corporations about this subject. We talk about the need for the next generation Enterprise Architecture, which pulls apart business processes and turns them into automated rules sets that can be recombined as required in the corporate DNA. Because it utilizes a service-oriented architecture and a standards-based business process layer, the next generation Enterprise Architecture enables integration across departments and, as Palmisano notes, across the globe. “

Pulling apart segments of an organization and reassembling them to fit the conditions of a new and different scenario is a description of modularity, a critical principle for “managing complexity” (This capacity, incidentally, also increases organizational resilience by increasing the internal link density of the entity). Ideally, with modularity you want to have an organization where the parts, while able to function independently if need be, achieve net gains in effeciency and parameters of capabilities by integrating into a synergistic network.

If your organization must make decisions in a chaotic, “noisy” environment then modularity offers a significant advantage. Unsurprisingly, with war being the ultimate in disorderly environments, the U.S. Army has begun to experiment with a ” modular” structure though the costs and the execution are proving controversial. The next evolutionary step in organizational modularity will be when the modules of an organization are able to self-organize in terms of reacting to an event without requiring central direction to ” pull them apart”. In other words,
” smart modularity”.

The very acceleration in decision making tempo created by Gobalization’s drive toward a 24/7 world hypereconomy, a dilemna that DeAngelis described as “The problem is that the landscape is changing so fast we haven’t figured out how deal with it.“, is going to force large organizations -corporations, states, armies, social movements – to go modular or go the way of the dinosaur.

GOTHS AND VANDALS

Lexington Green of Chicago Boyz noticed that the British Ministry of Defense seems to have an admiral who echos John Robb and Robert Kaplan:

“Very Global Guerillas-esque vision — From the British MOD“

“Quoting Rear Admiral Chris Parry, head of the “development, concepts and doctrine centre at the Ministry of Defence”, who is “charged with identifying the greatest challenges that will frame national security policy in the future.”

He identified the most dangerous flashpoints by overlaying maps showing the regions most threatened by factors such as agricultural decline, booming youth populations, water shortages, rising sea levels and radical Islam. Parry predicts that as flood or starvation strikes, the most dangerous zones will be Africa, particularly the northern half; most of the Middle East and central Asia as far as northern China; a strip from Nepal to Indonesia; and perhaps eastern China. He pinpoints 2012 to 2018 as the time when the current global power structure is likely to crumble. Rising nations such as China, India, Brazil and Iran will challenge America’s sole superpower status. This will come as “irregular activity” such as terrorism, organised crime and “white companies” of mercenaries burgeon in lawless areas.’

Hmmm. I’d like to see the map. I bet it looks a lot like the Gap.

That concerns me.”

Globalization and immigration are not incompatible with assimilation nor must they result in catastrophic security problems. However when you opt to allow in large numbers of foreigners (U.S., E.U.), lack real border controls (U.S.), discourage assimilation of immigrants by promoting crackpot multiculturalism (U.S., E.U.), encourage the dole instead of employment (E.U.) , make acquiring citizenship nigh impossible (parts of E.U.) then you have to expect to have problems in your immigrant communities, at least on the margin.

Immigration can be reduced, assimilation can be encouraged, Islamist Imams can be prohibited entry or kicked out, inane economic policies that create permanent unemployment can be reversed. Actions can be taken to prevent autocratic kleptocracies from easily exporting their spillover costs from incompetent governance. Captured terrorists can be tried and hanged instead of being given “culturally sensitive” MRE’s.

We have choices. We are not doomed.

UPDATE (LINKS):

DDC STRATEGIC TRENDS ( Hat tip to UK Fan )

The DDC link is worth an extended examination along the lines of the National Intelligence Council’s 2020 Project.

“Beware: the new goths are coming” at Times Online

The Small Wars Council

“Modern-day Goths and Vandals threaten the West via cheap flights and the net” at The Australian.