Private property, modern liberalism, the worldwide web – all of these inventions were supposed to be about decentralizing power, but with every single one we have seen reconcentrations of power.
Glen Weyl is Microsoft’s principal researcher; a visiting research scholar at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson Schools. He is a political economist and social technologist; his book Radical Markets proposes to abolish private property using blockchain technology. He argues that by thinking through the social and economic dynamics of decentralization, we might be able to build rules into a decentralized system to make it last.
Quantum computing has the potential to solve some of the world’s most complex problems. So how are quantum computers different from the traditional computers we use today?
Quantum physics describes how the world works at its most fundamental level.
Quantum computing has become one of the leading applications of quantum physics.
Quantum computers are not going to replace classical computers. But their radically different way of operating allows them to calculate in ways that classical computers cannot.
Classical computers encode information in bits. And each bit can represent a 0 or 1 (on or off).
Instead of bits, quantum computers have qubits, which make use of two key principles of quantum physics: Superposition and entanglement.
Superposition means that each qubit can represent a 0 or 1, or both at the same time.
Entanglement occurs when two qubits in a superposition are correlated with one another, meaning the state of one (whether 0, 1 or both) depends upon the state of another qubit.
Using these two principles, qubits can solve problems that are virtually impossible with classical computers.
In brief, quantum computers can examine exponentially more states than classical computers.
The story of ‘the six blind men and an elephant’ has slightly different versions in different cultures. The story goes like this: Once upon a time, there lived
six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, ‘Hey, there is an elephant in the village today.’ They had no idea what an elephant was. They decided, ‘even though we would not be able to see it, let’s go and feel it anyway’. All of them went to where the elephant was standing. Every one of them touched the elephant:
‘Hey, an elephant is a pillar’, said the first man who touched his leg.
‘Oh, no! It is a rope’, said the second man who touched the tail.
‘Oh, no! It is a huge snake’, said the third man who touched the trunk.
‘It is a big hand fan’, said the fourth man who touched the ear.
‘It is a huge wall’, said the fifth man who touched the belly.
‘It is a solid pipe’, said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.
The reason each of them was experiencing it differently is because each one of them touched a different part of the elephant. In other words, each of them had a partial truth. The elephant has all the features that each of them described, but isn’t fully what they described unless we combine all of their answers.
Only when each individual learns that they are part of a system, touching upon truth at some point, but probably not touching upon the total systemic truth, will each teammate seek out alternative perspectives.
Many times, disagreements are not really disagreements at all, but just individuals seeing or feeling a different aspect of the system. Revealing a portion of the truth, that only when combined yields the whole truth.
In other words, ‘the behaviour of a system cannot be known just by knowing the elements of which the system is made’.
However, this is still a prevailing philosophy, or ways of doing things, in our society. That is, when one wants to understand a system, there is a common tendency to break it into parts and study each part separately.
There are various definitions of a system. For example:
‘A system is a way of looking at the world’.
‘A system is a collection of parts that interact with one another to function as a whole’.
‘A system is a set of elements or parts that is coherently organised and interconnected in a pattern or structure that produces a characteristic set of behaviours, often classified as its ‘function’ or ‘purpose’’.
‘Simply defined, a system is a complex whole the functioning of which depends on its parts and the interactions between those parts’.
‘A system is more than the sum of its parts – it is the product of their interactions’.
It is important to note that a collection is also composed of a number of parts, but they are just ‘thrown’ together and are not interconnected. A system must consist of:
Elements or parts,
The interconnectedness and interactions between these parts, and
A function or purpose
Examples of systems: A football team; the digestive system; a school; a city; a corporation; an animal; a tree; a forest, etc.
A forest is a larger system that encompasses subsystems of trees and animals.
Similarly, your body is a large system that consists of various subsystems.
For instance, the digestive system includes elements such as teeth, enzymes, stomach, and intestines. They are interrelated through the physical flow of food, and through an elegant set of regulating chemical signals. The function of this system is to break down food into its basic nutrients and to transfer those nutrients into the bloodstream (another system) while discarding unusable wastes.
What is systems thinking?
Different scholars define systems thinking slightly differently, for example:
‘Systems thinking is a way of looking at, learning about, and understanding complex situations’.
‘Systems thinking is a way of seeing and talking about reality that helps us better understand and work with systems to influence the quality of our lives’.
‘Systems thinking is a big idea – the idea that you really can understand and tame the complexity of the real world by seeing things in the round, as a whole’ .
Systems thinking is a ‘new way of thinking’ to understand and manage complex problems.
In beliefs about the relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world, in philosophical understandings of the universe, or medicine and healing, we see numerous examples of cultures which have, throughout history, operated with a ‘holistic view’, seeing things as a whole or a system; this is the essence of systems thinking. The following examples clearly illustrate the centuries-old existence of systems thinking in many cultures.
Australian indigenous cultures (the oldest continuing cultures in the world) have a deep connection with the land that is expressed in their stories, art and dance. For them, country is a word for all the values, places, resources, stories and cultural obligations associated with that area and its features. It describes the entirety of their ancestral domains.
Systems concepts have also been present in the thinking and philosophy of Maori people in New Zealand. These indigenous people highlight the importance of the ‘Earth Mother’ and the ‘Sky Father’ and perceive that everything in the universe is connected.
For millennia, Native Americans have employed traditional healing modalities that are very old in methodology and holistic in nature. This ancient holistic approach is still used today by many Native Americans to resolve health care problems.
Eastern philosophy has evolved a unique, systemically non-linear and holistic worldview. For example, ancient Chinese philosophers believed that everything in the universe was made up of two forces called ‘yin’ and ‘yang’. This reflects not only the collective wisdom of ancient Chinese people about the fundamental features of the universe, but also influences the way of metaphysical thinking of subsequent Chinese in various schools or movements.
Reductionism is a concept in philosophy that claims a description of properties in a complex system can be ‘reduced’ to the lower-level properties of the
system’s components.
However, Western thinking was heavily built upon three fundamental pillars, namely:
Greek reductionism, separation of mind and matter
Which led to the separation of mind and body advocated by René Descartes
And a deterministic-monotheistic worldview originated by Isaac Newton
René Descartes taught Western civilization that the thing to do with complexity was to break it up into component parts and tackle them separately. This is still the prevalent mode of thinking in the West.
Systems thinking is not a new concept. It is not easy to identify the precise beginning of the systems thinking field, as the beginning is a matter of perspective.
For example, Midgley suggests that the field and study of systems began in the early 20th century with either Alexander Bogdanov or Ludwig von Bertalanffy.
It is widely acknowledged in the literature that Checkland and Senge also proposed influential systems thinking approaches.
Systems thinking is a very broad field.
Sherwood concludes that it would be impossible to cover all of its associated tools, techniques, methods and approaches in a single document. Understandably, there have been various books and papers written on the topic of systems thinking.
The application of systems thinking has been evident in many diverse fields and disciplines such as, to mention but a few, management, business, decision making and consensus building, human resource management, organisational learning, health, commodity systems, agricultural production systems, natural resource management, environmental conflict management, education, social theory and management, food security and population policy, sustainability, and complexity management.
Amongst the vast number of publications on systems thinking, Peter Senge’s book, ‘The Fifth Discipline’ is described as ‘bestselling’, ‘more than 1 million in print’ and ‘one of the seminal management books of the past seventy-five years’. Senge describes what he believes are the five new component technologies that are gradually converging to innovate learning organisations, namely
Systems Thinking
Personal Mastery
Mental Models
Building Shared Vision and
Team Learning
He emphasises how important it is that the five disciplines develop as an ensemble and points out the challenges of integrating new tools, rather than ‘simply apply them separately’.
This is why systems thinking is the fifth discipline – ‘the discipline that integrates the disciplines, fusing them into a coherent body of theory and practice’.
Apart from the millions that read this book, why is this ‘Fifth Discipline’ not yet absorbed into everyday decision making or implementation? Why is the journey from theory to impact so difficult?
In spite of its extensive application in various fields, systems thinking has mostly been used and applied by systems scientists and some academics.
The application of systems thinking by policy makers, managers, practitioners, and ordinary people remains limited. This has been attributed, but not limited to, several factors including the ‘difficulty to sell systemic thinking’, systems thinking is not yet a phrase in general use, it is a frequently misunderstood term meaning many things to many people, the emphasis in formal education is evidently placed on events, parts, and isolated processes rather than systemic relationships, and the bulk of systems education to date has been focused on training specialists.
In addition, the diverse schools of systems thoughts create confusion about the systems thinking concept. There is an urgent need to make systems and interconnected thinking become popular, or ‘unremarkable’ as suggested by Allen, and easy to understand by all, i.e., become ‘a common language’ as proposed by Zhu or ‘absorbed into scientific research, in the same way that statistics, is today an integral part of all sciences’ as postulated by Bosch, et al.
Despite many efforts to deal with the various complex issues facing our societies, plans and problem solutions are seldom long lasting, because we, as individuals, and our leaders are most likely to fall into the trap of using traditional linear thinking. It is natural and easy, but does not usually deliver long-term solutions in the context of highly complex modern communities.
There is an urgent need for innovative ways of thinking and a fresh approach to dealing with the unprecedented and complex challenges facing our world.
We are surrounded by systems, and are, indeed, a part of systems. Humans are not, however, in the habit of either seeing this or of thinking systemically.
Even when we can see that ‘something is wrong with the system’, we tend to analyse the problem by breaking the system down to smaller and smaller parts looking for that which is faulty, until we begin to lose sight of the interactions between all the elements
This type of thinking is a logical consequence of the sheer difficulty of observing and interpreting the actions and reactions of people or things synthetically (or holistically).
That is, it is mentally easier to break a thing down to inspect individual components than to study the component and its relationship to other components simultaneously.
Linear thinking might be satisfactory if you are deciding where to build a house if there are no councils and no environmental regulations.
And powering modern economies would be easy if we could burn oil and coal without consequence.
But these activities, like all activities, have consequences.
Additionally, humans instinctively understand the importance of systems and their parts. What we do not instinctively do in society at large is to regularly solve problems by considering the whole system, tending to focus instead on the part that appears to be malfunctioning.
Thus, governments attempt to control obesity by encouraging exercise or influencing food choices without also considering food culture, city planning, pet ownership, economic pressures, advertising, agriculture, human nature, serving portions, convenience, the availability of time for food preparation or other health issues that inhibit activity. Or they try to save endangered species by establishing national parks with porous boundaries which are already full of feral animals.
The lack of systemic management and cross-sectoral communication and collaboration are not new problems. There are seminars, retreats and courses that focus on finding solutions and entire books have been written on these problems. However, little has been done that is new or has proved able to both overcome the barrier to communication caused by the differing mental models of the world and to devise systemic management strategies towards complex problems.
In addition, governments and business institutions are under pressure to make the right investment decisions in the face of a continually changing world.
Policy makers, managers and leaders today are expected to deliver innovative solutions to cope with increasing change and uncertainty.
In order to govern our complex society towards resilient technical, economic and social developments there is an urgent need to step outside our collective ‘comfort zone’ and to develop new ways of thinking and acting in the interest of our future.
It is essential for current and future managers and leaders, and any citizen of our society, to be equipped with new ways of thinking (systems thinking) to deal with complex problems in a systemic, integrated and collaborative fashion. That is, working together in identifying and dealing with root causes of issues rather than focusing on short-term fixes.
Until now our inability to effectively deal with ever-increasing globally complex environments sees our world abound with failed projects and programs. The waste and opportunity cost is staggering at the local, regional, national and global level. In this respect, it is striking how wedded our international community is to linear approaches when dealing with complex issues. Our willingness to repeat the same mistakes and our unwillingness to embrace a more systemic approach was strongly evident until recently.
Fortunately, the world has moved on and today there is growing acceptance that current tools and processes, whilst important, are not sufficient for dealing with complexity. Complex issues – those that exhibit non-linearity, uncertainty, ambiguity, and emergence – those that have multiple stakeholders or may be subject to political influence, require a different approach. Given an assessment of the international community over the past years it appears apparent that systems thinking stands as the single most important contribution we need to embrace and to improve our capacity to better deal with complex issues and as a consequence, help create a better world.
Professor Ockie Bosch and Dr. Nam Nguyen the authors of this course have spent years refining their concepts and applications of systems, moving highly theoretical concepts into practice within specific settings. Through this course, the two professors have put systems thinking into a practical context that will enable anyone to make a difference whether that will be at a local or global level. This course is all about the art of change. It addresses the complex challenges we meet every day. It enables us to draw better maps of the world. It encourages learning not only about the technical world, but more than that about the micro and macro dimensions of political and cultural realities.
We learn about the dynamics that lead to complexity and how to channel them. We learn about the power of context and we learn to reflect on our role in creating a world and our responsibility for the outcome. This book takes us on a learning journey to become the change we want to see in the world. This course is designed to help ‘everyone’ with what is required to deal with complex issues – to start to focus on systems.
This video concludes the course by talking about the revolutionary implications of blockchain technology reshaping societal institutions towards a more decentralized model.
In this panel at the Malta A.I. & Blockchain Summit, token economics is discussed. The panelists are: Sebastian Markowsky – GP Bullhound; Godwin Schembri – KnowMeNow; Wei Zhou – Binance; Sarah Olsen – Gemini; moderated by Olga Finkel – WH Partners;
Olsen discusses the importance of a stable coin and the challenge of regulation.
Schembri talks about security tokens.
Markowsky talks about what type of tokenization is attractive to investors and getting the incentives right. He advocates an interlinked multi-token model for the purpose of utility and security/investment.
Zhou talks about the “Binance Effect,” which he describes as contributing to the perception that a token is premium, since Binance only lists 3% of the tokens that apply. He emphasizes the need for clarity in regulation.
This discussion was part of the Tokenomics & Crypto Conference.
Peer-to-peer networked forms of social organization have always been there from the earliest days, however, previously they have remained the domain of the local and the personal as they do not scale well without supporting communications technology.
Throughout the modern era, formal hierarchical social structures came to replace informal communities as the dominant organizational paradigm. It is only in the past decades that we have seen the emergence of a new form of social structure that reverses this process, the social network. With the advent of blockchain technologies, these forms of distributed organization are presented with an opportunity to sustain more and more areas of social life, establishing themselves as a core pillar of a world where peer-to-peer is the way forward.
The application of blockchain to the environment is rarely talked about, but we will try to illustrate in this video how this could turn out to be one of its most important potentials of this technology.
As we move from the technology paradigm of the industrial age characterized by machines and stand-alone mechanical systems, a new class of technology is emerging. Namely, the Internet of Things (IoT), which promises to revolutionize human life at unprecedented levels.
The Internet of Things is a journey we are just beginning. Over the course of the next decade billions of devices will come online. The amount of data the internet has to deal with will grow massively as vast networks of machines continuously communicate with each other, to coordinate production processes, for transport and logistics, for construction, climate control etc.
Coupled with blockchain, IoT could find a bright future in enabling mashes of smart devices to safely navigate the sea of data we produce while achieving a varied of tasks.
