Comments on: How to Deal with Complexity

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:40:35 +0000

That illustrates the point perfectly David- thanks! And thanks for stopping by too.

By: David Mottershead

David Mottershead — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:10:39 +0000

‘One of [Albert] Einstein’s colleagues asked him for his telephone number one day. Einstein reached for a telephone directory and looked it up. “You don’t remember your own number?” the man asked, startled.

“No,” Einstein answered. “Why should I memorize something I can so easily get from a book?”

In fact, Einstein claimed never to memorize anything which could be looked up in less than two minutes.’

Reference: http://oaks.nvg.org/sa5ra17.html

By: For breakthrough ideas read the unreadable | Game-Changer

For breakthrough ideas read the unreadable | Game-Changer — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:58:53 +0000

[...] a breakthrough but I think you get the point. With so much information out there, the ability to filter and then make sense of it can and will land breakthrough ideas at some point and by practicing your associative abilities [...]

By: Innovation Lessons from The Checklist Manifesto « Book Reviews « Innovation Leadership Network

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 07:16:05 +0000

[...] from The Checklist Manifesto How do we deal with complexity? A while ago I suggested that one strategy that we use to handle complexity is that we outsource some of the rote memorisation of facts and routines that we need regularly. [...]

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Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:57:50 +0000

[...] This is my weakest area – I don’t outsource nearly enough complexity. I need to get better at taking notes on things I read, in searchable media, so that I don’t [...]

By: Combining Ideas – a Key to Innovation « Innovation Strategy « Innovation Leadership Network

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 21:19:06 +0000

[...] Jason Potts & Mark Dodgson for this year’s DRUID Conference). One of the ways that we deal with the complexity we face is by innovatively connecting ideas. We can try to do this in a way that guides the future [...]

By: Tim

Tim — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:32:16 +0000

Thanks for the feedback Peter! The TV flow charts in EGIBFY are great – I quite like Johnson’s work.

I don’t think I was trying to say that we should bypass memorization completely. The point I was trying to get at is that we should choose what we spend our personal cycles on since there is plenty that we don’t have to memorize ourselves.

That said, this is an area that can clearly be improved with practice and discipline (hence, your job!).

By: Peter Baum

Peter Baum — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 19:35:20 +0000

Tim,

I generally agree with your premise. A fun, if light, take on the same subject comes from Everything Bad Is For You. The author demonstrates our increasing ability to process from complexity by looking at, among other things, TV shows. His flow-chart analysis of an episode of Dallas from the 80s, when compared with a similar one from a an episode of 24, demonstrates our rapidly increasing ability to synthesize multiple interconnecting narratives. It also explains why my beloved Dallas now seems interminably slow.

But I am skeptical of when and how we bypass memorization. Your phone number example is spot on, of course, but in teaching I often see too much high-level abstract reasoning presented to kids who can’t handle it. One ritzy private school taught an intellectually elegant, abstract model of both algebra and trigonometry. It was self-evident that their scores on rote achievement tests would suffer, but the assumption was that their better theoretical understanding would more than compensate. After ten years, I can confidently assert that the program failed on both levels.

Anyway, thanks for the stimulating commentary.

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 09:49:06 +0000

Thanks for the thoughtful comments Venessa & Marco!

I ran across the Plato quote while reading A Better Pencil by Dennis Baron – a fascinating book about communication technologies over time. I’ll write more about it when I’m done with it. There’s an interview with him about some of these ideas here:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/09/18/barron

I think you’re right about visual/spoken word communication – there are definite advantages to that as a way to spread ideas (although, recorded speech has many of the same problems as written speech from the perspective of Plato’s…).

With regard to the link, and Marco’s ideas, a lot of that is picked up by Joel Garreau in his book Radical Evolution, another worthwhile read.

By: Marco

Marco — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:27:02 +0000

I think it is easy to see the source of this (mis)understanding of what mnemoic devices and other technologies serve.
On the, let’s say, “traditional” view, the mind is enclosed in your head, and thus when you give up some of the functions of the mind in your head, your head becomes less and less useful.
Now, some argue for an “extended” view of mind, wherein the mind goes beyond what is enclosed in your head and includes such external devices as calculators, iphones and whatnot. Some argue that the key behind extended mindedness is the ability to communicate (and thus, the necessity of language) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Mind
This extended mind hypothesis can also be useful in the context of business networks and explains why we need to engaged in more communication with external world; the intelligence of the firm is not enclosed in its organisational boundaries: http://www.whartonsp.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0137024762