This page is part of an in-progress commentary by Roger
Frye
on High Altitude
Thinking: The International Informatics Summit.
Jim Taylor about a question that a database answered involving movement of a very select list of people that saved lots of money. Personal story about uncle advising him to think about communications while he was an eternal (4th year) sophomore at Berkeley. Took course on Rhetoric of Freudian Psychology. Matriculated in Rhetoric. Would have met Everett Rogers.
Ev starts with a story about Adobe itch. The doctor was Taylor's uncle.
Diffusion is the process by which an INNOVATION is COMMUNICATTED through certain CHANNELS over TIME among the members of a SOCIAL ...
Innovation is an idea, pratice or object that is PERCEIVED as new. Perceptions matter: the W. I. Thomas dictum.
Plot of diffussion of internet users shows the beginning of the famous Ogive, S- shaped curve.
Critical mass. The knee at the beginning of take off.
Background of diffusion research. 1943 Ryan and Gross study of hybrid seed corn diffision among farmers in 2 Iowa communities. High relative advantage: 20% yield increase, mechanical corn pickers. But took 7 years to get going. 1954 Ev at Iowa State U, dad would listen to his learning about innovations but not adopt. Dissertation on diffusion of 2-4-D weed spray in Collins, Iowa.
Growth of the Info Mesa. Flat from 1988. Budget ramp up starting 1994. Now 27 informatics ompanies, 425+ employess in Santa Fe plus 80+ virtual employess, $100M+ in estimated annual sales.
Personify with chronology of Roger Jones. LANL, CASA 1995, Intelligize 1997, Complexica 1999, Commodicast, Assuratech 2002.
Why Santa Fe. Agglomeration: the degree to which some quality concentrated in a geographical region. History (Story of Schockley, inventor of transistor,needing Mom to wash laundry) (Mother Hen, SFI), Infrastructure (Theory, complexity science), venture capital, Netwroks (Safari club), quality of life, but telecommunications and schoo limitations.
Applying complexity to other things: Publisher, Plexus institute in Cranbury, NJ mainly academic, biological and medical. Heartwaves Inc. also in NJ run by Olympic team physician applies complexity science to lack of varience in our living situation affecting our hearts. A large drug company has designed (with help from Plexus institute) a large scale HIV intervention in Zimbabwe where drugs unaffordable.
QUESTIONS
Taylor asks about tribes developing language around an idea of an in group. What advice about how to promote willing application of our science. Answer:: Water boiling in Peruvian village to avoid infection. Culture did not believe in germ theory.
Calling something "complexity theory" won't help. World doesn't have to understand complexity to use it until something goes wrong. He is trying to get it into college courses. He thinks applications spreading more rapidly than understanding. Go t Casti's 101 course.
Question: Still use a set of percentages to find critical mass take off? Answer: yes. Used to think 2.5% to16% for all, but depends on perception that everyone else is doing it.
Question: What other innovations in world? Answer: Internet affects neighborhoods and thus other innovations.
Question: Since critical mass not invariant, but perception, ...? Answer: When teaching at Stanford, university created a new email system. Photo of key user on school magazine triggered rapid diffusion.
Question: Jeffrey Moore's book Crossing the Chasm. Why counter-examples of innovations that did reach 16%? Answer: 3 or 4 out of 1000s survive. Fundamental disagreement: Moore thinks the gap, chasm after early adopters, but Ev sees gap between innovators and adopters.
Question: Early part of curve is quasi-chaotic and also at the end during transition to another curve. Answer: small numbers, of untypical people make behavior erratic and prediction uncertain. Doesn't have an answer, but looking to complexity science for help.
Question from Taylor: Every once in a while a big one grasped by a few. Nukes, Black-Scholes. What happens when complexity is understood by a small priesthood but impacts a large clueless population. How does the wizard step out from behind the curtain? Answer: 3 kinds of knowledge about innovation: 1st awareness (e.g. email awareness), 2nd how to send email, 3rd principal knowledge of how it works. The 3rd step is needed when something goes wrong. Example, Andes mountains of Columbian, GMO potato, spread rapidly, virus killed them all. Old version survived. People never understood why.
END