Connectivity

The theory

When I wrote the post about death I had a good old rant about what I was feeling like ranting about at the time. Quite understandable rant under the circumstances, I hope you'll agree. But I've been thinking about it since, and I realised, I missed a great chance to describe one of the fundamental differences between a living body and a dead one. Again, sorry if you find the subject unpleasant, but old-fashioned analytical thinking misses a lot of the important stuff here, and systems thinking can say plenty that is useful.

The old way of telling if a body was dead or alive was to check if the heart was beating. Nowadays, we have machines that can keep the heart beating forever. The new way of telling if a body is dead or alive is to check if the brain is still active. The first method tells us if the circulatory system, that keeps blood flowing throughout our body, is still active. The second method tells us if the nervous system, that keeps information flowing inside our body, is still active. Both methods are testing a fundamental property of a system: connectivity. Blood and nerve impulses are the two flows that keep all the cells in our body heavily interconnected. Eliminate one or the other, and the body isn't a person any more, but a collection of cells. And once they stop being well connected, individual cells can't manage to stay alive on their own for very long.

Connectivity means how much each part is connected to other parts, or more accurately, the strength of the relationships between different parts. In other words, how much changes in one part of the system affects other parts of the system. For example, the transport system of rich countries and the different organs inside the body have high connectivity; beachgoers and tiger communities have low connectivity.

People who worry about oil depletion (peak oil), worry because they know that oil is essential for transport in the world. And less oil means that the world will go from being highly connected and globalized, to less connected. The burning question is whether this is going to happen in the way of a catastrophic collapse (as it happens when an animal dies) or the change can be reasonably gentle (like people losing touch with their friends in college as they get older).

To make the question even more interesting and difficult to answer, the world has recently increased enormously in connectivity in terms of information, and soon will have to reduce connectivity in terms of flow of materials. Imagine that in the early days of the evolution of animals, when they first developed a nervous system, nerves had developed incredibly fast, but shortly afterwards animals were forced to reduce the flow of blood dramatically. Is this even possible? I don't know of any example of an animal with a highly developed nervous system and a very simple circulatory system, but then, the analogy may not be useful at all.

The only thing we know for sure is that highly connected and poorly connected systems are quite different. Many people fall in the trap of thinking that one kind is fundamentally better than the other (nowadays, the "highly connected" fans are quite loud) but there isn't a better kind: it all depends on the situation.

A good way of understanding the differences between highly connected and poorly connected systems is to think about how people behave in groups when they are constanly keeping in touch with each other, in comparison with situations where people behave independently and don't communicate a lot.

Highly connected groups produce great collaboration and coordination. They produce big solutions to big problems. Decision-making is often pretty good, because different points of view have their say. They can also produce big, visible actions. That's the plus side.

The minus side is that usually some people get excluded, and some individuals may feel threatened or forced by the group to do things they didn't really want to do. They often have a poor analysis of different options ("group think" only happens in groups!). And they aren't very good at watching their surroundings, highly connected groups are often inward-looking.

On the other hand, poorly connected groups have the advantage that anyone can easily join (not many connections to make!). They easily adapt to specific needs of specific individuals. They are also good at analysis and observation, that's why we speak positively of independent analysis and independent observation.

On the other, negative hand, poorly connected groups can only produce small scale solutions. There is little coordination, which makes a whole lot of plans impossible. They aren't good for making decisions, because there isn't enough deliberation among their members. And any actions are in a small scale.

All these considerations may be very handy when you are trying to find solutions to specific problems. Is it better resolved by a highly or poorly connected group?

The practice

Experiment 1

Think of an organization you are part of (it could be your place of work or a voluntary organization you take part in). What are the main aims of the organization? How well connected are the people within it? Is the level of connection well suited to what the organization is trying to do? If not, how could you increase or reduce the level of connection?

Experiment 2

Go to the nearest garden to where you live. It could be a park or a vegetable garden, it doesn't matter. How much interaction do you think there is between different plants? Does it look highly or poorly connected? (Hint: Plants can't move, so the connections between them are often done by animals. Does it look like there are many or few species of animals living there?)

What do you think it would look like if it was more or less connected? (Another hint: as a rule of thumb, the taller the plants - trees - in an ecosystem, the more connected it is. This may not apply in highly artificial environments. Can you imagine why this rule of thumb works? Interestingly, this also applies to human habitats, highly connected cities usually have the tallest buildings. Again, can you imagine why?)