This is the fundamental premise that object oriented thinking was created to solve. You cannot understand a sufficiently advanced system from both an overview and granular view. You have to either see the overview and trust the granular objects, or specialize in one granular object and then trust your adjacent objects.
Its a problem written about in detail by Marcus Aurelius in Meditations when he comments on running an empire. He notes that the most difficult part is not having information in a timely fashion at scale -- you can either have timely information about a single place, or out of date information about the entire empire.
They key part in both is trust and responsibility. You must trust that granular objects can take responsibility for themselves. If each one requires knowledge of the entire system to function, then the weight of that will overburden any system over time.
> If each one requires knowledge of the entire system
The general problem is the growing number of dependencies. James Burke in "Connections" warned that civilization is an interconnected web of technology traps[1]. We survive as long as everything works (or "mostly" works), but there is a risk of cascade failure.
More recently, Dan Geer warned[2] about the same type of problem:
In the last couple of years, I've found that institutions that I more
or less must use [...] no longer accept paper letter they each only
accept digital delivery of such instructions. This means that each of
them has created a critical dependence on an Internet swarming with
men in the middle and, which is more, they have doubtlessly given
up their own ability to fall back to what worked for a century before.
[...]
Everything in meatspace we give over to cyberspace replaces
dependencies that are local and manageable with dependencies that are
certainly not local and I would argue much less manageable because
they are much less secure. I say that because the root cause of risk
is dependence, and most especially dependence on expectations of
system state.
[...]
Accommodating old methods and Internet rejectionists preserves
alternate, less complex, more durable means and therefore bounds
dependence. Bounding dependence is *the* core of rational risk
management.
I've met micro-managers that actually defend micro-management but even if you think it's a viable way to actually get what you want from your reports this is an objective fundamental problem with it as a management style. You simply can't scale it to any useful degree because any kind of scale requires trust and delegation.
Once you pass that magic threshold the people that report to you will take advantage of any slack you give because micro-managers don't inspire or create loyalty. They will also actively avoid making decisions because that's the manager's job and they don't want them all over their ass for being autonomous. At that point you're a manager with no time to think about the long term and you're in firefighting mode constantly. And I can't say I have any sympathy. You reap what you sow.
You've hit the nail on the head with the trust and responsibility. There does need to be overall planning and co-ordination; but solutions cannot be dictated at a large scale. Instead /goals/ must be dictated, strive for X, prevent Y, co-operate with Z to prevent unwanted unintended consequences.
Larger governing bodies need to provide a basic framework, the minimum standard and boundary for the system's operation. Possibly a framework for re-adjusting or outright re-initiating failed layers they contain.
They should then provide both the goals and responsibilities to their contained units, but not an express direction on how the task is to be handled. This allows for adjusting and reacting at a more finely grained level which also reduces the time needed to reach consensus and adjust.
I would like to provide an example. It's true of the metro area that I live in, and I suspect it is true of others as well. There appears to be a complete disconnect between landing sources of jobs, providing places for workers to live, and reliable transit to/from jobs. In particular suburban sprawl from hell exists (yet is confined vaguely within outlying urban growth boundaries); a result that is a misuse of resources and ensures that traffic is a nightmare. What's worse, departments of the government, such as the DoT, are so focused that they can only see trying to use their own specific hammer on the problem, instead of working with other departments to reach an actual solution.
In the containers system, the DoT would work with some urban planning / their own measurement to show current and projected traffic needs, as well as the budget required for tolerating them. Their containing layer, reacting to the massive budget shortfall properly, would pass directives that require localities to increase the density of 'quality' housing and lower the housing prices, and 'make the housing attractive to families'. The localities would then react and modify the environment, leading to an actual solution to the issue.
Government is a complex system, just like an engineer of any discipline should recognize, and it needs a massive overhaul.
I think this is the insight underlying Tokyo's zoning system (linked here a few weeks back) that keeps the city so eclectic and alive, and Toyota's production system that seemingly no one can replicate though its been studied for decades, with support from Toyota.
It seems to me that in Toyota, a first, basic process is designed centrally by someone who is an authority in that specific area, but realizing that the top of the pyramid lacks the on the ground information necessary for continuous improvement, it pushes agency to change the process down to the bottom of the pyramid, to the people who make up the process.
That is how Toyota is able to evolve their process and achieve yearly gains in efficiency of around 10%. There's no great genius other than in the insight that the boss can't do the job of his subordinates, that knowledge is situational.
And that is probably why companies fail to adapt the TPS - because they do not trust and even despise people on the floor.
I think that this is more a natural observation about distributed systems that object orientation. Neither precludes the other, but the root of the problem is the inherent necessity and limitation that comes from distributing information and decision nodes, and less from leveraging hierarchy to "get shit done".
Really, this is the idea behind every paradigm for programming. It's all about creating rules, structures, and abstractions to compartmentalize software horizontally and vertically (so to speak) and formalize relationships between the pieces.
I think there is an important art in recognizing signal over noise and being pragmatic when considering how to design a system. I think you're right about trust, but I would add in a focus on fundamentals/first principles over design.
> The Entanglement is a term from the computer scientist Danny Hillis, referring to a new era of technology that we find ourselves in, where no single individual can possibly understand what we ourselves have constructed. In other words, when even the experts are unable to fully grasp a system that they might have been themselves involved in the construction of, we are in a new era of incomprehensibility.
This is not a phenomenon of just cities or other large societal systems. In my experience, this is already true for many a single company.
It's true for life in general. It is a rare luxury to have and understand all of the information before being asked to make a decision. This is why fields like economics have traditionally been poor predictors of actual human activity, they assume an ideal that is rarely true.
That is a great term. I believe it can also be extended to devices like modern computers. They are now complex enough that no single person can understand all the parts of the system. Now I have a word for it, thanks!
Cities have a dark side. I think that most people who grew up in a small town and later moved to a big city have gone through a period of disillusionment.
I don't want to seem mean, but you're like a caricature of a country person. People are living things which grow to suit their environment, everyone thinks their way is the best way and that their hometown is the coolest. When you say things like "city people care more about money" and "city people are mean" you sound like a bumpkin.
Your point is a step in the right direction. Life is complex and diverse. Cities serve as models. Daily life is a test of the inputs and results. Every day they can be reconfigured and the data analyzed.
I see statements equivalent to these in the article:
- Cities are inefficient Rube-Goldberg contraptions
- Portions of city systems are too complex for one person to understand
- We see evidence of complex, unpredictable systems when things go wrong
- Cities have multiple complex systems that can and do produce unpredictable failures
- Methods inspired by scientific study may help us improve city life
I'd summarize it as: Here are some problems caused by complexity, and here are some (vague) ideas for how to fix them. From the article's content, I think there's an implied "yes" answer to the title.
I think it's a rhetorical question, with the article's answer being something along the lines of "Cities are possibly too complicated for humans to understand at a holistic level," which seems almost obvious.
Use the right kind of probe to see the right level of detail. - Mark Burgess
Make our comprehension of the world more manageable by limiting the amount of information we have to interact with at any time. Our experience of the world can be made comprehensible, or incomprehensible, by design. - Mark Burgess
The effect of limited information is that we perceive and build the world as a collection of containers, patches or environments, separated from one another by limited information flow. These structures define characteristic scales. - Mark Burgess
The more details we can see, the less we have a sense of control. - Mark Burgess
Separation of concerns ... a necessary consequence of loss of resolution due to scale ... a strategy for staying sane. - Mark Burgess
These quotes are all from In Search of Certainty: The Science of Our Information Infrastructure (2013), via my fortune database https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup
Can anyone with access to the book please answer whether or not Geoffrey West, Joseph Tainter, or W. Brian Arther are among the cited references?
I'm flipping quickly through a copy of Arbesman's The Half-Life of Facts and am disappointed to see that he (or his editors) have fallen prey to the gross misconception that numbered footnotes and bibliographies somehow diminish a book's value. Quite the opposite. (THLoF has end notes, but they're not indicated within the text, and insted reference pages and passages, which is a form of torture to be included in a future revision of the Geneva Convention.)
I don't know how useful biological ideas will be to urban planning, but this sentence tickled my brain:
"...This can include such things as cataloging bugs and unexpected behaviors in our infrastructure (like how a naturalist might collect insects)"
This sounds like what anybody working on a computer can use at a place like Stack Overflow. People have problems, post a description of it, and somebody else who happens to know helps them. The result of this process is available to others on the web who might have a similar issue.
Joseph Tainter has done some interesting work on the relation between societal complexity and collapse[1], here's a recent(ish) paper of his on the subject http://wtf.tw/ref/tainter_2006.pdf
They are often overcomplicated due lack of planning(environmental, ergonomics/accessibility), ad-hoc building design driven by commercial interest and persistent ignorance of users(cities are user-unfriendly) needs. Unless the bureaucrats are faced with public anger/complaints they would defer to major companies and investors opinion of what the city needs.
While some problems like fracking are really noticeable(creating wide-spread publicity), the corporate power creep seems invisible to average joe who blissfully thinks the city is made for him.
Infrastructure is not actually people-centric, its built to maximize utility/efficiency providing minimum standard that is "acceptable" instead of striving to improve the city(solving the problem the quick way).
Cities have developed in a complex and often fascinating manner, but along the way, we have portions of these systems that are more complex than any single person can understand.
Betteridge's law is fumbling here: yes, perhaps they are. Big, old cities are full of ancient infrastructure that slips through the cracks. People depend on it, and nobody knows exactly where its networks are routed; then when it breaks, it's a big disaster.
On the other hand, perhaps the answer is that they're just complicated enough. If the big, old cities didn't provide a unique economic advantage through their increased interconnectivity then no one would stick around to tolerate that ancient infrastructure.
[+] [-] tsunamifury|9 years ago|reply
Its a problem written about in detail by Marcus Aurelius in Meditations when he comments on running an empire. He notes that the most difficult part is not having information in a timely fashion at scale -- you can either have timely information about a single place, or out of date information about the entire empire.
They key part in both is trust and responsibility. You must trust that granular objects can take responsibility for themselves. If each one requires knowledge of the entire system to function, then the weight of that will overburden any system over time.
[+] [-] pdkl95|9 years ago|reply
The general problem is the growing number of dependencies. James Burke in "Connections" warned that civilization is an interconnected web of technology traps[1]. We survive as long as everything works (or "mostly" works), but there is a risk of cascade failure.
More recently, Dan Geer warned[2] about the same type of problem:
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKELMR6wACw[2] http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
[+] [-] brazzledazzle|9 years ago|reply
Once you pass that magic threshold the people that report to you will take advantage of any slack you give because micro-managers don't inspire or create loyalty. They will also actively avoid making decisions because that's the manager's job and they don't want them all over their ass for being autonomous. At that point you're a manager with no time to think about the long term and you're in firefighting mode constantly. And I can't say I have any sympathy. You reap what you sow.
[+] [-] mjevans|9 years ago|reply
Larger governing bodies need to provide a basic framework, the minimum standard and boundary for the system's operation. Possibly a framework for re-adjusting or outright re-initiating failed layers they contain.
They should then provide both the goals and responsibilities to their contained units, but not an express direction on how the task is to be handled. This allows for adjusting and reacting at a more finely grained level which also reduces the time needed to reach consensus and adjust.
I would like to provide an example. It's true of the metro area that I live in, and I suspect it is true of others as well. There appears to be a complete disconnect between landing sources of jobs, providing places for workers to live, and reliable transit to/from jobs. In particular suburban sprawl from hell exists (yet is confined vaguely within outlying urban growth boundaries); a result that is a misuse of resources and ensures that traffic is a nightmare. What's worse, departments of the government, such as the DoT, are so focused that they can only see trying to use their own specific hammer on the problem, instead of working with other departments to reach an actual solution.
In the containers system, the DoT would work with some urban planning / their own measurement to show current and projected traffic needs, as well as the budget required for tolerating them. Their containing layer, reacting to the massive budget shortfall properly, would pass directives that require localities to increase the density of 'quality' housing and lower the housing prices, and 'make the housing attractive to families'. The localities would then react and modify the environment, leading to an actual solution to the issue.
Government is a complex system, just like an engineer of any discipline should recognize, and it needs a massive overhaul.
[+] [-] dilemma|9 years ago|reply
It seems to me that in Toyota, a first, basic process is designed centrally by someone who is an authority in that specific area, but realizing that the top of the pyramid lacks the on the ground information necessary for continuous improvement, it pushes agency to change the process down to the bottom of the pyramid, to the people who make up the process.
That is how Toyota is able to evolve their process and achieve yearly gains in efficiency of around 10%. There's no great genius other than in the insight that the boss can't do the job of his subordinates, that knowledge is situational.
And that is probably why companies fail to adapt the TPS - because they do not trust and even despise people on the floor.
[+] [-] haimez|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acjohnson55|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Elof|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wellpast|9 years ago|reply
This is not a phenomenon of just cities or other large societal systems. In my experience, this is already true for many a single company.
[+] [-] jandrese|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tdy721|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jondubois|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wcummings|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mwsherman|9 years ago|reply
NYC (where I live) is wildly inefficient, except at delivering benefits that millions of people consider worthwhile.
[+] [-] endswapper|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ngrilly|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] khedoros|9 years ago|reply
- Cities are inefficient Rube-Goldberg contraptions
- Portions of city systems are too complex for one person to understand
- We see evidence of complex, unpredictable systems when things go wrong
- Cities have multiple complex systems that can and do produce unpredictable failures
- Methods inspired by scientific study may help us improve city life
I'd summarize it as: Here are some problems caused by complexity, and here are some (vague) ideas for how to fix them. From the article's content, I think there's an implied "yes" answer to the title.
[+] [-] elliotec|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] x3n0ph3n3|9 years ago|reply
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
[+] [-] Elof|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strictnein|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] contingencies|9 years ago|reply
Make our comprehension of the world more manageable by limiting the amount of information we have to interact with at any time. Our experience of the world can be made comprehensible, or incomprehensible, by design. - Mark Burgess
The effect of limited information is that we perceive and build the world as a collection of containers, patches or environments, separated from one another by limited information flow. These structures define characteristic scales. - Mark Burgess
The more details we can see, the less we have a sense of control. - Mark Burgess
Separation of concerns ... a necessary consequence of loss of resolution due to scale ... a strategy for staying sane. - Mark Burgess
These quotes are all from In Search of Certainty: The Science of Our Information Infrastructure (2013), via my fortune database https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup
[+] [-] dredmorbius|9 years ago|reply
I'm flipping quickly through a copy of Arbesman's The Half-Life of Facts and am disappointed to see that he (or his editors) have fallen prey to the gross misconception that numbered footnotes and bibliographies somehow diminish a book's value. Quite the opposite. (THLoF has end notes, but they're not indicated within the text, and insted reference pages and passages, which is a form of torture to be included in a future revision of the Geneva Convention.)
[+] [-] tomkat0789|9 years ago|reply
"...This can include such things as cataloging bugs and unexpected behaviors in our infrastructure (like how a naturalist might collect insects)"
This sounds like what anybody working on a computer can use at a place like Stack Overflow. People have problems, post a description of it, and somebody else who happens to know helps them. The result of this process is available to others on the web who might have a similar issue.
[+] [-] pjc50|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sturadnidge|9 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Ar...
[+] [-] FrozenVoid|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yason|9 years ago|reply
Just like life itself.
[+] [-] kazinator|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ItsDeathball|9 years ago|reply