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[ by Charles Cameron — with a Magnus Ranstorp squib in its tail ]
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The issue is complexity, and how you represent it. The case in point is Syria.

Here’s a diagram that suggests complexity as a sort of crazy weaving, all straight lines and colors:

This *simple* chart shows all states of hostility currently being played out on #Syria’s territory#IntractableWar pic.twitter.com/1inprNB6U0

— Charles Lister (@Charles_Lister) February 13, 2016

Daveed’s diagram has a network feel to it, with actord as nodes and the tensions between them as edges:

A pretty good graphic on the Syrian conflict (though quibblers gonna quibble). It illustrates ISIS's weak strategy: https://t.co/j1ccZpvGjT

— Gartenstein-Ross (@DaveedGR) August 26, 2016

Karl Sharro’s tackling the wider context, but his illustration at least gives the sense of a ball of twine after a cat has carefully re-arranged it:

Following recent event, updated diagram of geopolitical relationships in the Middle East pic.twitter.com/3QmDxZtnSn

— Karl Sharro (@KarlreMarks) March 26, 2015

Juan Cole simply provides a screenshot from Google Maps —

— the headline America’s Syria SNAFU: Pentagon’s Militias fight Turkey & CIA’s Militias — which is effectively friendly fire framed as paradox — and some paras beneath it using words to describe the tangle:

The Turkish incursion into Syria at Jarabulus was advertised as an attack on a Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) stronghold and smuggling station in conjunction with (fundamentalist) remnants of the Free Syrian Army.

But the southern outskirts of Jarabulus had already fallen to the Pentagon-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which are majority Kurdish but have a significant Arab component. The Arab, non-Kurdish SDF brigades such as the Seljuk brigade, the Army of Revolutionaries, and Northern Sun Brigade had fought to liberate the northern Syrian city of Manbij, due south of Jarabulus from Daesh. They have an outpost in the village of Amarna just a few miles south of Jarabulus, where they call themselves the Jarabulus Military Council.

The Turkish army, having secured Jarabulus itself with the help of fundamentalist militias, moved down to Amarna, where they met fierce resistance from the Syrian Democratic Forces, who are allied with the Kurds. The Turkish air force bombarded the SDF positions in Amarna and the militias responded by destroying two tanks and killing one Turkish soldier. Fighting continues there.

To be honest, I’m not sure which of those means of modeling a complex system leaves us best able to understand the situation on the ground.

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Maybe this one’s the best:

Sir Mark Allen once told me to fully understand Syrian conflict is like playing 3D chess under water with all pieces moving simultaneously.

— Magnus Ranstorp (@MagnusRanstorp) September 9, 2016

[ by Charles Cameron — a visual DoubleQuote on the difference between artist and politician ]
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As you may have gathered, I’m an admirer of the artist Alyce Santoro‘s work, and yesterday I came across her Existential Navigational Chart, with its little note in the bottom left corner:

Soundings in the Unfathomable at Mean Low Water (MLW)

In any case, it reminded me of the enormous difference between a political slogan and an artist’s insight.

Obama‘s HOPE (upper panel, below) was a lure, an appeal to an ideal in the sea of practical politics — and opinions are divided as to how well he managed to fulfill that one-word promise:

Alyce‘s navigational mapping of area surrounding the the Hope Islands (lower panel, above) on the other hand, is both more fanciful and more realistic — a wonderful combination if you think about it. Notice the nuance she manages to pack into her map, with Inner Hope Island, Little Hope Island, Hope Island, and on southwards to Lost Hope Island, False Hope Island, and Hope Ledge — and all so close to both Little Despair Island, and Love Rocks —

Who, truly alive, has not been stranded on one or more of those islands, nor dashed against Love Rocks?

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You can download a print quality, high resolution file of Alyce’s chart without cost, or click through to her Philosoprop shop to purchase a signed copy.

[ by Charles Cameron — delicious irony in the twitter stream as a teaching tool re middle east ]
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Given my propensity for seeing conflicts in sectarian terms, it’s a breath of fresh air / splash of wet water for me to read Hayder al-Khoei, scion of the eminent al-Khoei family and Chatham House Fellow, tweeting on the subject of the English football hooliganism in Marseille over the last three days, which has included both bottle-throwing against French riot police and a running battle with a pack of Russian supporters brandishing knives:

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As an England fan who speaks on behalf of all England & the English, I'd like to apologise for the senseless violence in France #NotInMyName

— Hayder al-Khoei (@Hayder_alKhoei) June 11, 2016

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Protestant Englishmen & Catholic Frenchmen hate each other due to deep-rooted sectarian history & violence in Europe https://t.co/rxraCFnDMf

— Hayder al-Khoei (@Hayder_alKhoei) June 11, 2016

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1627 siege marked apex of sectarian tensions in France. Ended in Catholic victory despite relief from England. #pt pic.twitter.com/okVNVlvNFF

— Hayder al-Khoei (@Hayder_alKhoei) June 11, 2016

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Early 19th century map depicts civil defence districts that were drawn up to counter threat of French invasion. #pt pic.twitter.com/ViXW91B2v1

— Hayder al-Khoei (@Hayder_alKhoei) June 11, 2016

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Disturbing hooliganism raises concerns of possible sectarian bloodbath as analysts warn US, UK, France, Russia & China all have nukes. #pt

— Hayder al-Khoei (@Hayder_alKhoei) June 11, 2016

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Russians parading in France with stolen England flags represent triumpahlist sectarianism to demoralise the English ahead of football. #pt

— Hayder al-Khoei (@Hayder_alKhoei) June 11, 2016

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US-backed Englishmen and Chinese-backed Russians clashing in France also part of broader proxy war between capitalism and communism. #pt

— Hayder al-Khoei (@Hayder_alKhoei) June 11, 2016

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In European culture, taking off your shirt when drunk is a pre-battle religious ritual that symbolises martyrdom #pt pic.twitter.com/jD3p8G06Ta

— Hayder al-Khoei (@Hayder_alKhoei) June 11, 2016

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Credible allegations from France that Chelsea & Arsenal fans are mostly responsible for the violence. A disgrace to London & England. #pt

— Hayder al-Khoei (@Hayder_alKhoei) June 11, 2016

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For Arabs trying to understand this violence, throwing a beer bottle in European culture is like throwing a shoe. An insulting gesture. #pt

— Hayder al-Khoei (@Hayder_alKhoei) June 11, 2016

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In Europe, holding a chair above your head & walking towards the enemy is a traditional challenge & insult. #pt https://t.co/uML5SEo2m8

— Hayder al-Khoei (@Hayder_alKhoei) June 11, 2016

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Growing reports contradict earlier allegations that Arsenal fans are involved: Arsenal fans cannot fight. I cannot independently verify. #pt

— Hayder al-Khoei (@Hayder_alKhoei) June 11, 2016

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If more Englishmen do not come out & unequivocally condemn this violence, people will think those drunk extremists represent all of us. #ENG

— Hayder al-Khoei (@Hayder_alKhoei) June 11, 2016

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Al-Khoei‘s observations offer us a brilliant parody of the way western analysts, myself included, all too often write about events in the Middle East, and I admire his skill in delivering his reproof — but it’s also worth remarking that England as I understand it seems less and less interested in attendance at its established Protestant church, while France is notable for it’s official laïcité. Indeed, of the three nations involved in this circus, only the Russians appear to be experiencing quite a resurgence of Orthodoxy, coming after decades of official atheism.

Enfin:

The England v Russia match was a 1-1 draw. Game theorists would presumably call the event a zero-sum game, since the two sides do seem to have cancelled each other out — but in the larger context of sectarian rivalry, the entire three days have surely been lose-lose, while al-Khoei‘s wit is a win for us all.

[ by Charles Cameron — expanding the computable to include qualitative ideation ]
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Let’s start with Viv. It looks pretty phenomenal:

That video is almost exactly a month old, and it’s pitched at “the universe of things” with a marked tilt towards e-commerce. Fair enough.

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It’s instructive to compare it with Wolfram Language, although here I’ve had to go with a video that’s a couple of years old:

Stephen Wolfram, the creator of both Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha, is focused on the world of numbers — and incidentally, that includes graphs of the sort I’ve been discussing in my series here On the felicities of graph-based game-board design, as you can see in the video above.

It will be interesting to see how the two of them — Viv and Wolfram — interact over time. After all, one of the purposes of these lines of development is to dissolve the “walled gardens” which serve as procrustean beds for current thinking about the nature and possibilities of the web. Do these two gardens open to each other? If so, why? If not, why not?

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I’ve talked enough for my purposes about AlphaGo and it’s narrowly focused though impressive recent triumph, and the wider picture behind it, as expressed by Monica Anderson — and tying the two together, we have this video from Monica’s timeline, Bob Hearn: AlphaGo and the New Era of Artificial Intelligence:

Bob Hearn: AlphaGo and the New Era of Artificial Intelligence from Monica Anderson on Vimeo.

Monica’s Syntience, it seems to be, is a remarkable probing of the possibilities before us.

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But I’m left asking — because Hermann Hesse in his Nobel-winning novel The Glass Bead Game prompts me to ask — what about the universe of concepts — and in particular for my personal tastes, the universe of musical, philosophical, religious and poetic concepts. What of the computational mapping of the imagination?

My question might well have large financial implications, but I’m asking it in a non-commercially and not only quantitative way. I believe it stands in relationship to these other endeavors, in fact, as pure mathematics stands in relation to physics, and hence also to chemistry, biology and more. And perhaps music stands in that relationship to mathematics? — but I digress.

If I’m right about the universe of concepts / Glass Bead Game project, it will be the most intellectually demanding, the least commercially obvious, and finally the most revelatory of these grand-sweep ideas..

From my POV, it’s also the one that can give the most value-add to human thinking in human minds, and to CT analysts, strategists, journos, educators, therapists, bright and playful kids — you name them all!

Seeing it in terms of counterpoint, as Hesse did — it’s the virtual music of ideas.

[ by Charles Cameron — on the rich visual similarities between two diagrams from widely separated topic areas ]
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I don’t think we always appreciate just how similar graph-based mappings are to one another — or why the HipBone-Sembl Games are therefore so closely analogous to so many other graph-based mappings of the world around us:

This particular pairing of images struck me today when Mike Walker tweeted it the Arpanet map in quoting a World Economic Forum post — and the memory it called up was another image I found, who knows where, quite a few years ago, of the workings of a washing machine.

We really have two tips of the iceberg of a hugely pervasive language of node-and-edge-based graphs here.

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Previous posts in this series:

On the felicities of graph-based game-board design: preliminaries

On the felicities of graph-based game-board design: two dazzlers

On the felicities of graph-based game-board design: three

On the felicities of graph-based game-board design: four

On the felicities of graph-based game-board design: five

Related posts, overlapping with those above:

Graph-types 1: sample graphs and boards

Graph-types 2: towards a universal graphical mapping language

I expect there’s more but that’s what a quick scan brought up.