Fragments of Ricocheting Thoughts

Continuing a tradition of publicly owning my ignorance, I am confessing that I read this interview of Emmet Gowin, and did not get it.  And perhaps it is appropriate that I don’t get it, because throughout the interview Gowin returns again and again to the value of embracing uncertainty.  

“So we can’t possibly know what it is we really need… and still there can be a good sense to what all our drives and needs are expressing.”

So there’s a sense to our desires and expression, even when the logic cannot be laid out? Am I getting this correctly?

“It’s so essential, so necessary.  It’s so appropriate to be confused, to be muddled, to be unsure. … But it is the aliveness of the unguarded intuition and the persistence of our own feelings that guide us to our discoveries.”

I love it.  I think it is a immensely romantic idea - that if we only followed our intuition, it will not lead us astray.  I want it to be true.  But fear, in the guise of a statistician, always pipes up.

What if this is selection bias?

We hear of the successes of those who followed their dreams, trusted their gut, and made it big.  But we hear about them not necessarily because they followed their dream - we hear about them because they made it big.  It’s the Japanese story about the fishermen guardian’s temple, where they hung pictures of survivors of great storms who were blessed at the temple.

“See? They survived that legendary storm because their were blessed here.”

“What about all those fishermen who were blessed here and drowned? How many of those are there?”

How does one just follow your intuition?

I know, this is very cynical.  I can feel it - I know it is fear hiding behind the statistician’s mask.  Nonetheless I can’t shake its logic.  But I can’t dismiss the feeling that Gowin is saying something important too.  So I am stuck in this strange place where I feel something is important, but cannot quite justify it.

Silly as this sounds, please please help me with this.  Tell me why (and perhaps when) you trust your intuition?

Kenyatta Cheese spoke at our Entrepreneurial Design class last week.  He spoke at length about the emergence of social networks and the virality of memes.  The internet is a platform for participatory media, and there’s an art and a science for engaging in it.

What struck me though was the uncanny similarity between how signals become amplified or suppressed in neurons in the brain, and how memes spread or die on social networks. 

In On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins proposed a model of neural learning based on prediction validation.  The idea is that clusters of neurons are monitoring signals (e.g. a sound frequency) over some period of time from a particular sensory input.  That cluster is also constantly making predictions about what might come next.  Hence, that cluster can be surprised by what comes through.  When a cluster of neuron is surprised, it will let other neurons connected to it know!  What does that mean?

[Warning: overstretched twitter/neuroscience metaphor.]

Let’s say that music unexpectedly comes on.  Your lowest level neuron clusters which was previously anticipating more silence is surprised, and will let other neurons “following” it know.

@auralNeuron85: Unexpected sound! http://your-ears.com/soundSample/ (cc: @auralPatterns)

Now, @auralNeuron85 is a simple, low level neuron. In the next moment its going to expect continuation of the sound, instead of silence. @auralPatterns, however, is a higher level neural cluster, following a whole bunch of low level neurons just like @auralNeuron85, and it begins to look for patterns.

@auralPatterns: @auralNeuron85 Yeah, @auralNeuron72 and @auralNeuron32 tweeted too. Some sort of music. @musicalPatterns @speechPatterns thoughts?

You start to see the signal spreading, because the appropriate parties are connected and “following” one another.  If the sound were just the hum of the air conditioner, @auralPatterns might recognize it and not tweet her followers.  However, since this is so unexpected, the meme continues to spread.

@musicalPatterns: @auralPatterns @auralNeuron85 sounds familiar.  It’s an A - see if the next note is a B?

@speechPatterns: @auralPatterns sounds like the beginning of an “N” sound.  Might be “new” “nerd” or “never” - Keep me posted?

Talking back and forth, your neurons are constantly making predictions, and validating them or discrediting them with each other in real time.

@speechPatterns: We have a word: It’s “Never” - @sentenceParsing what do you think? (cc: @auralPatterns)

@sentenceParsing: @speechPatterns it’s a song right? @musicalPatterns any leads?   My guess next word is “say” or “going.” (cc: @songsDatabase, @auralNeuron85)

@songsDatabase: I think I know what this is @knowyourmemes RT @muscialPatterns A B D B … there’s a song here. (cc: @sentenceParsing)

The different layers of neurons operate a different levels, some with concrete signals, others with abstract concepts, but through their constant chatter they make sense of the world. @knowyourmemes, for example, represents a particular part of your long term memory system dealing with internet memes.

@songsDatabase: @PrefrontalCortex @humour @knowyourmeme you’re not going to like this, or maybe you will. a-b-d-b-E-E-D and “Never going to”

@humour: @PrefrontalCortex Rickroll’d LOL! (cc: @sentenceParsing, @speechPatterns, @knowyourmemes)

@knowyourmemes: @humour Hahahah how come this does not surprise me?

@PrefrontalCortex: Geez guys. Calm down. @motorCortex can we shut that off please?

[End overstretched Twitter/Neuroscience metaphor]

At an organizational level, our brains are highly tuned to surprises.  Whenever a signal is surprising at a certain level, it gets amplified.  Highly surprising signals or patterns activates intense activity, and new neural circuitry are formed to deal with unfamiliar patterns.

Coming out of Kenyatta’s lecture, I can’t help but think how the various social network platforms have come to operate like giant neural networks.  Our social networks are highly tuned to the new, the cool, the surprising.  As we engage in social networks, decide who to follow, we position ourselves in this giant network.  Our position in the network and who we follow determines what kind of information we receive.  On these networks, we learn, we are surprised, and we share what we learn with others.  Ideas and memes are amplified and spread to individuals who are tuned in.

Let’s look at another example. On a site like Reddit, the frontpage is the metaphorical prefrontal cortex of this global brain.  On any given day our “mind” is full of distractions, like cat photos and advice animals - but persistently important issues will surface again and again, because they are amplified by upvotes.  When something really important and threatening comes up, like SOPA and PIPA - the entire neural network really activates, and you see collective action.

This is why we must continue building and protecting our digital public space.  Our collective intelligence depends upon it.

An article in Entrepreneur.com chronicled how a couple ladies who ran a gourmet ice cream shop in Seattle closed up their unsuccessful storefront and had phenomenal success selling out of a ice cream truck instead.

I was immediately reminded of the lecture Albert Wenger gave at the Entrepreneurial Design class on unbundling at USV two weeks ago. Albert talked about the nature of the internet - its fundamental traits of being global, instant, free, connected and ubiquitous. Without going into too much detail, Albert argued that the Internet as a new form of information technology disrupts and tears apart previous business models built upon older forms of information technology.

The most discussed example in class was the well known unbundling of the newspapers.  Functions that used to be bundled (e.g. classifieds and the news), under the previous logic of distribution and manufacturing of information no longer make sense with cheap ubiquitous connectivity. The old business model of newspapers was unbundled by the logic of the internet.

The ice cream shop in Seattle, however, isn’t really in the information business. How have they unbundled?  They unbundled themselves from their lease, from their located-ness, from having to staff their store during off-peak hours.

Why is that important? Because operating out of an ice cream truck allows them to go to where their customers are, when their customers desire ice cream. Without a store to maintain, new strategic options open up. They can now show up at community events, festivals, parties - any event that have a high concentration of people in festive moods. Their product is the same, but now their sales-per-hour is through the roof because they are not waiting for foot traffic at the mall, they are pursuing foot traffic on the road.

Operating a food truck is not a new business model. It has been possible ever since they can put refrigerators on trucks. What changed? The arrival of ubiquitous connectivity solved the findability problem selling out of trucks. Pre-internet, marketing and establishing a consistent brand was difficult for ice cream trucks, because they are not reliably in one place, and they had no reliable way of reaching their customers.

Remember how the internet is global, instant and ubiquitous? Food trucks today simply post their current location on a website. Plaster your website and twitter handle on the side of the truck - next time a customer craves your gourmet ice cream, they can just look you up.

In the Entrepreneurial Design lecture Albert called on us to look around in our world, and to identify business model not as natural, but as constructs built upon technological constraints.  Once we start seeing business models as constructs, we can start looking for the seams and joins to understand how these models are put together.  As interaction designers, if we understand our new toolsets, we can start to see how we might pull them apart, and put them back together in new ways.

Unbundling is about recognizing new strategic options as the societal landscape is reshaped by internet infrastructure and internet culture.  Whether this is online, or offline, our opportunities are where the technologies have changed, and the business models haven’t caught up.

This might be fun.