Does anyone know if there's a term for a complex adaptive system going off the rails due to internal dynamics? YouTube rabbit-hole style? Where "on the rails" might mean "the intended state" in a social system, or it might mean "sustainable" in an ecological system.

#complexity #complexAdaptiveSystems #comlexityScience #systemsThinking

Rarely do I read a book that feels like an explanation of things I see happening around me ever since I’ve entered the corporate workforce. This book should be a must read for every #manager, because the challenges we face are often not #complicated, they are #complex.

#ComplexAdaptiveSystems #SystemThinking #bookstodon #book

https://books.apple.com/nl/book/its-not-complicated/id1358355547

For those with an interest, here are the slides from my webinar for Contact North | Contact Nord that I gave today: How to be an educational technology (warning: large download, about 32MB).

Here is a link to the video of the session.

I was invited to do this webinar because my book (How Education Works: Teaching, Technology, and Technique, briefly reviewed on the Contact North | Contact Nord site last year) was among the top 5 most viewed books of the year, so that was what the talk was about. Among the most central messages of the book and the ones that I was trying to get across in this presentation were:

Along the way I had a few other things to say about why that must be the case, the nature of teaching, the nature of collective cognition, and some of the profound consequences of seeing the world this way. I had fun persuading ChatGPT to illustrate the slides in a style that was not that of Richard Scarry (ChatGPT would not do that, for copyright reasons) but that was reminiscent of it, so there are lots of cute animals doing stuff with technologies on the slides.

I rushed and rambled, I sang, I fumbled and stumbled, but I think it sparked some interest and critical thinking. Even if it didn’t, some learning happened, and that is always a good thing. The conversations in the chat went too fast for me to follow but I think there were some good ones. If nothing else, though I was very nervous, I had fun, and it was lovely to notice a fair number of friends, colleagues, and even the odd relative among the audience. Thank you all who were there, and thank you anyone who catches the recording later.

https://jondron.ca/slides-from-my-webinar-how-to-be-an-educational-technology-an-entangled-perspective-on-teaching/

#collectiveIntelligence #complexAdaptiveSystems #distributedCognition #education #howEducationWorks #learning #teaching

When I say that a type of complex system, e.g. a form of government or a proselytizing religion, meets the minimum requirements (self-similar reproduction and mutation) for biological evolution to take place, I think a lot of people miss the most important implication of this:

The system has *agency*, independent of its constituent elements.

Governments and proselytizing religions can be legitimately said to have a will of their own. They have their own "best interests" which dictate their behavior. The longer these systems are subject to biological evolution, the more apparent this will become in their behavior, as they are continually shaped to maximize their own homeostasis and reproductive success through their behavioral tendencies.

#evolution
#biology
#agency
#will
#exobiology
#ComplexAdaptiveSystems
#government
#religion
#colonies
#colonialism

“The 4,000 or so degree-granting institutions of higher learning in America don’t tend to operate like businesses, which must adapt or die. Instead, a typical college is motivated to remain the same, operating through structures that are rare outside higher education.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/01/dei-universities-are-broken/677288/?gift=-Fv9R4P6cEEN68vsamhTNJFAa4D0Rlz8D1nZfXgtn04&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
#education #college #pedagogy #ComplexAdaptiveSystems #institutions #HigherEd

I had dinner with an edtech founder and told her the metaphor of the networked org tree.

It’s a very familiar narrative for me.

She really digged it and suggested I write it as a Medium article so she could share it.

Let me know your thoughts: https://www.superversive.co/essays/history-of-the-org-chart

#ComplexAdaptiveSystems #network #OrganizationalChart