Scale-free networks and mirror worlds. I visited my local den of piracy in order to read Linked sooner than Amazon could ship it to me. Now I know more precisely what Clay Shirky means when he talks about "power law distributions" and "scale-free networks." An example of a power law distribution, as Clay noted in his ETCON talk on LiveJournal, is the way in which such networks display a "rich-get-richer" pattern of clustering. This is something Tim O'Reilly has often called attention to, as well. There is a kind of naive egalitarian notion that because links are free and everything is connected, all nodes are created equal. In fact, although it apparently never occurred to early network theorists, nothing could be further from the truth. As networks grow, new nodes don't attach themselves randomly. They prefer to connect to the nodes that are already the best-connected. ... [Jon's Radio]
6:49:58 PM  #  

Compliance vs. Creation.

From Whoosh: Business in the Fast Lane,Tom McGehee on what makes a company suck or rock:

Compliance Companies	Creation Companies
Policy driven	Principle driven
Rule based	Relationship based
Conducts training	Allows for structured and unstructured learning
Forced organization	Self-organizing
Reactive	Proactive
Good of organization over good of individual	Good of organization through good of individuals
Measures activity	Measures outcome
Ordered	Chaotic
Closed system	Open system
Patterned	Emergent
Internal focus	External focus
Risk avoidance	Opportunity creation
Confuses models with reality	Understands modeling
Tries to re-create past success	Tries to create new successes
Methodology based	Model based
Expert's mind	Beginner's mind
Tolerates diversity	Thrives on diversity
Seeks equilibrium	Seeks progress
Deficit focused	Positive focused
Creates burning platforms	Creates compelling opportunities

Application to national governments or revolutionary organizations is left as an exercise for the reader. [istori/log]

[Seb's Open Research]
6:47:27 PM  #