Over the past few weeks I’ve been conversing online with Dibyendu De, a reliability management consultant in Kolkatta, India. For 23 years of his career he has applied his extensive background as a mechanical design engineer toward helping 50 organizations achieve sustainable growth. Our conversation utilized social media channels like Twitter, Google+, and blog posts, written in response to some of the questions I raised for my assignment in “Management Issues for Information Professionals”, a class I’m taking at QUT. Eventually we caught up for a brief Hangout using Google+, where we discussed his views on management, strategy, and innovation.
patterns
Inter-individual relationships
A search on the term led me to a paper stemming from the Neuro- and Bioinformatics field (gradschool.uni-luebeck.de ). The work of Thomas Martinetz and team utilized “mental models” of how our brains accurately predict changes in context of how we relate our intentions, emotions, and goals to others. I don’t see “empathy” mentioned, but it’s my thinking that empathy is the dynamic the researchers are noticing when the subject’s brain regions reveal a “high similarity in emotional experience” and a “similarity in activation patterns”. The researchers observed this using a MRI technique called ‘pseudo hyperscanning’ on their subjects. The first subject was being video recorded while scanned and questioned and then later the second subject watched the video while under the impression it was live.
It appears that Hebb’s rule of “Neurons that fire together wire together” could also apply to asynchronous exchanges. This has me questioning if a network of individuals could use consumer brain–computer interfaces both as a controller and monitor to gauge their collective ‘creative coherence’. We might also investigate if brain waves in any way correlate with the Earth’s magnetic field. The notion hasn’t been fully explored, but Dr. Buryl Payne appears to have scratched the surface.
Alan Watts explains the nTubes
@toughloveforx @dde337 Looks like Alan Watts understood nTubes #Nemetics – bit.ly/OVdMRf
— Dan RD (@ddrrnt) October 22, 2012
“For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people,are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other. At the input end they even develop ganglia of nerves called brains, with eyes and ears, so that they can more easily scrounge around for things to swallow. As and when they get enough to eat, they use up their surplus energy by wiggling in complicated patterns, making all sorts of noises by blowing air in and out of the input hole, and gathering together in groups to fight with other groups. In time, the tubes grow such an abundance of attached appliances that they are hardly recognizable as mere tubes, and they manage to do this in a staggering variety of forms. There is a vague rule not to eat tubes of your own form, but in general there is serious competition as to who is going to be the top type of tube. All this seems marvelously futile, and yet, when you begin to think about it, it begins to be more marvelous than futile. Indeed, it seems extremely odd.”
Decisions 2.0: The Power of Collective Intelligence
Eric Bonabeau of Sloan Review writes that the human brain evolved to “avoid complexity (not embrace it) and to respond quickly to ensure survival (not explore numerous options).” Today’s world is said to require “short response times and more accurate responses and more exploration of potential opportunities.”
Information technologies are thought to provide “a more accurate and intimate understanding of our environment”. With the paradigm shift towards Web 2.0 and tapping into “the collective” comes a new era that Bonabeau labels “Decisions 2.0.”
Bonabeau points out a weakness called “pattern obsession“, when we see patterns where none exist which then influences how we frame our decisions. He calls it a “common trap” that leads us astray due to our basic human nature. Collective intelligence, he adds, “can help mitigate the effects of those biases” by providing a diversity of viewpoints and input, thus deterring “self-serving bias and belief perseverance.”
Bonabeau considers the challenge of designing the right mechanisms for collective decision making and if giving all users equal voice, is better or worse than giving certain individuals a greater say than the collective? If it’s the latter, he ponders, “how should those special individuals be selected?”
source : MIT Sloan Review
Web of Intuitions
StrengthFinder2.0, by Tom Rath, recommends the following to anyone who experiences Connectedness:
Don’t spend too much time attempting to persuade others to see the world as a linked web. Be aware that your sense of connection is intuitive. If others don’t share your intuition, rational argument will not persuade them.
Charles Parkhurst says,
“All great discoveries are made by people whose feelings run ahead of their thinking.”
Global Guts 