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Template:M intro design System redundancy: Difference between revisions
Template:M intro design System redundancy (view source)
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The modernist programme is as simple to state as it is self-serving: a distributed organisation is best controlled centrally, and from the place with the best view of the big picture: the top. All relevant information can be articulated as data — you know: “[[Signal-to-noise ratio|In God we trust, all others must bring data]]” — and, with enough data everything about the organisation’s present can be known and its future extrapolated. | The modernist programme is as simple to state as it is self-serving: a distributed organisation is best controlled centrally, and from the place with the best view of the big picture: the top. All relevant information can be articulated as data — you know: “[[Signal-to-noise ratio|In God we trust, all others must bring data]]” — and, with enough data everything about the organisation’s present can be known and its future extrapolated. | ||
So, that generational drift from business systems run by humans, lazily, randomly, sorting hiccups out “ad hoc”, to ever-more infinitesimally-sliced ''process'' triaged and managed by a pre-programmed, automated applications — we put that down to [[data modernism]]. It has streamlined and enhanced the great heft of business-as-usual commerce, but at some cost to outlying cases, that no-one can be bothered to design processes for. We call this effect “[[Pareto triage]]”. Great, as long as you’re part of the huddled mass that just wants the normal thing. But that long tail of oddities and opportunities is poorly served. | |||
Even though, inevitably, one has less than perfect information, extrapolations, mathematical derivations and [[Large language model|algorithmic pattern matches]] from a large but finite data set will have better predictive value than the gut feel of “[[ineffable]] expertise”: the status we have historically assigned to experienced experts is grounded in folk psychology, lacks analytical rigour and, when compared with sufficient granular data, cannot be borne out: this is the lesson of {{br|Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game}}. Just as Wall Street data crunchers can have no clue about baseball and still outperform veteran talent scouts, so can data models and analytics who know nothing about the technical details of, say, the law outperform humans who do when optimising business systems. Thus, from a network of programmed but uncomprehending rule-followers, a smooth, steady and stable business revenue stream [[emerge]]s. | Even though, inevitably, one has less than perfect information, extrapolations, mathematical derivations and [[Large language model|algorithmic pattern matches]] from a large but finite data set will have better predictive value than the gut feel of “[[ineffable]] expertise”: the status we have historically assigned to experienced experts is grounded in folk psychology, lacks analytical rigour and, when compared with sufficient granular data, cannot be borne out: this is the lesson of {{br|Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game}}. Just as Wall Street data crunchers can have no clue about baseball and still outperform veteran talent scouts, so can data models and analytics who know nothing about the technical details of, say, the law outperform humans who do when optimising business systems. Thus, from a network of programmed but uncomprehending rule-followers, a smooth, steady and stable business revenue stream [[emerge]]s. | ||
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This is the single virtue of the [[reduction in force]]. By arbitrarily removing a percentage of the system components, you might ''force'' it out of equilibrium, giving the components no choice but to find new ways of working. But their motivations as they do so are no less self-motivated than they were: you cannot shock a system into behaving selflessly. | This is the single virtue of the [[reduction in force]]. By arbitrarily removing a percentage of the system components, you might ''force'' it out of equilibrium, giving the components no choice but to find new ways of working. But their motivations as they do so are no less self-motivated than they were: you cannot shock a system into behaving selflessly. | ||
Damon Centola<ref>Damon Centola, {{br|Change: How to Make Big Things Happen}}, 2021.</ref> research about concentration and bunching of constituents to ensure change is permanent. Complex change isn't like viral infection. We can’t expect to drop jewels of crystalline logic into a well established system equilibrium and expect it to spontaneously revolutionise itself. | Damon Centola<ref>Damon Centola, {{br|Change: How to Make Big Things Happen}}, 2021.</ref> research about concentration and bunching of constituents to ensure change is permanent. Complex change isn't like viral infection. We can’t expect to drop jewels of crystalline logic into a well established system equilibrium and expect it to spontaneously revolutionise itself. Even viral infections,which do that, rip through the population and then vanish. Individuals are either dead or ''resistant'' to the virus, but beyond that the system carries on more or less as it did. | ||
A better model, Centola says, is a fishing net. Where a virus spreads quickly and burns out before people have been influenced to change ( and indeed may be more resolutely set against change), when people are exposed to change through many strong, deep network ties change will spread more slowly but more effectively and permanently. | A better model, Centola says, is a fishing net. Where a virus spreads quickly and burns out before people have been influenced to change ( and indeed may be more resolutely set against change), when people are exposed to change through many strong, deep network ties change will spread more slowly but more effectively and permanently. | ||
This, too stands to reason: if we are invited to propose change and sponsor it, rather than having it imposed upon us, we are more likely to own it. | This, too stands to reason: if we are invited to propose change and sponsor it, rather than having it imposed upon us, we are more likely to own it. | ||