Collaboration requires, as a condition, that the collaborators share language. It remains an open question as to whether information technology and mass collaboration will speed the adoption of regionally dominant languages as a lingua franca. At least one universal language to communicate cause-effect relationships and their degrees of precision, already exists, in mathematics. Math, as a sophisticated language is largely inaccessible to most. But because of the availability of most mathematics and science on the internet, knowledge of the simple basics may permit most to quickly find and use information, and collaborate in solving problems.
But for solving problems qualitatively, and making quantitative solution easier, easier avenues appear to exist even at this time, one being TRIZ (Russian acronym for Teoriya Rezheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadatch -- theory of inventive problem solving). This body of theory was pioneered by Genrikh Altshuller and his disciples in the former Soviet Union. Although much of Altshuller's work focused on mechanical and chemical engineering, he was familiar with, he is reported to have encouraged the use of TRIZ's methodology (e.g. contradiction resolution) in other disciplines. However, some of his students say that Altshuller cautioned against literally applying his 40 Principles to new disciplines. Instead, he saw TRIZ as an evolving method. This suggests that additional research, to distill new principles, may be important to achieving the goal of a "common language" across multiple subject areas. Starting from the 1980s when the Western world became acquainted with TRIZ, the field has seen rapid growth, and continues to expand into different fields. The theory has evolved well beyond Altshuller's 40 Principles. Several directions, in current research, supply language that makes known cause-effect relationships accessible across disciplines, and a framework for problem description and solution that transcends disciplines. One of these frameworks is described below.
In one version of this theory, a hierarchy of change has been presented, going all the way from the market (a group of people with a job to get done), to the function needed by the market (something being changed by something else), through the physical effect used to perform the function, the objects used to implement the physical effect, and generalized problem solving tools. With this theory, or other theories such as this, the only competitive advantage of individuals and firms may eventually be in the knowledge of the market they have--as anyone would have the tools to solve all of the other elements of a problem. Of course, there is always an advantage to discovering widely applicable cause-effect relationships, but such fundamental discoveries are usually rare.
Finally, we are always able to communicate more information per unit of time when we find suitable visual representations of that information (the eyes take in 10 MB per second on average). But the interpretation of visual information is very context dependent, as is our ability to use it. Nevertheless, as most individuals in the world begin to communicate, common visual language can well emerge -- as to some extent it already has (stock tickers, or sports statistics representations).
As the knowledge in the commons increases and a high school student is able to use information systematically (using a science of creativity, like TRIZ above) to solve the sorts of problems now solved by research scientists with extensive training, what sorts of solutions will become important?
As common language becomes ever more useful, controlling its definitions and introducing new terms for mass acceptance will become ever more important. Competitive advantage may well lie in controlling the development of the structure of communication itself.
The evolution of visual symbols will also be of interest. While there is significant work on the visual presentation of information, it does not consider the processes by which individuals learn those visual contexts in which they can rapidly assimilate information. But because there will be more mashups and new modes of communication generated at faster paces, simply falling back on old and accepted modes of representation, and their combinations may not suffice to yield competitive advantage.
We must remember that the disciplines through which we explain and see the world were each, in their day, invented by human-kind. Chemistry and Biology were the fruit of great thinkers who set out to delineate certain abstractions to be useful in pursuit of particular problems. But, in publishing, the delineation serves a different purpose: it addresses the Publisher's need to sell to the public.
By creating product categories that center on known bodies of thought, Publishers crispen long passages of text into identifiable disciplines that we see when we go to libraries and book stores. While these disciplines are useful top-level distinctions, human brains short-cut to efficiency by pattern-matching their in-moment observations with the memory bank of distinctions their brains have already learnt. Efficiency drives humans to see only the known: we each have bounded rationality of material that we know in depth, so we rely on domain language (the abstraction of conceptual models resulting from expert work) to communicate principles leveraged from others.
When talking at a surface level, such domain language is a quick and easy method of accessing and inferring deeper concepts from domains. But domain language arose from the results of problem-solving: there is no limit to what domain language we can invent.
Mass collaboration smashes down established boundaries of knowledge. Wikis provide textual mashup: content from biology and chemistry can be blended not just the one way that is most obviously useful (and that would get put into mainstream books), but also provides the space to talk about what didn't fit in the original author's work. The author can respond with propositional "try-this" suggestions, where experimenters can test out the hypothesis of theorists and provide the discovery and feedback channels that would help theorist and experimenters trust that experimentation was actually yielding useful results, or provide a parking space showing what experiments were tried so an abandoned train of thought can be returned to even a long time after.
This many-to-many peer-oriented world we now live in knows no time, space or intellectual bounds: it enables communication from whoever, whenever, whereever and about whatever. Wiki pages are boiling pots into which concepts get thrown into and mushed into soups, and a wiki as extranet provides a straightforward platform in which to do so.
From each wiki, out pops new domain language, expressing new conceptual graphs of newly found key principles and relations. En-masse we are entering a new type of world, one racing at breakneck speed with innovation and opportunities for growth.
The resulting emergent inter-domain language fills gaps between disciplines. It serves to harmonize and enrich the relationship between the domains, and identify and pull in adjoining domain specialists and identify for action dischordent issues. As nomenclature develops, capability is established in the gaps and can influence the future allocation of resources in its investigation.
The unification of disciplines also means the understanding of how to modularize the construction of several products and services.
As companies identify peer partners they are able to unspin support functions from the core of their firm--this would usually mean activities that are not as profitable as some others--but companies do make significant mistakes in this area, as is detailed below. For a business to be able to outsource a function, it has to be clearly definable, so that the function does not have to be performed at the same location as the rest of the business, or by a group that doesn't have to interact with the rest of the business. This happens only when a business determines how to modularize its product or service to some extent--this in turn implies a good characterization of the relationships between the different disciplines that go into making the components. Which in turn implies a unified language within which these relationships are stated.
It took IBM about 40 years to modularize the computer and produce the PC. But once the PC was created, the assembly of computers became a commodity, as anyone could do it. And the profits moved to the processor chip and the operating system, i.e., they got decommoditized. And Microsoft and Intel reaped the benefits as IBM outsourced these components to them. The business webs that spin out and value networks that emerge can be managed more strategically by small firms that play collaboratively at the industry level. These webs will change continuously through cycles of commoditization and decommoditization, i.e., the change in relative value of different contributing functions inside of a product or service. Worldwide collaboration--through information exchange, movement of talent, and movement of capital--will result in an increase of the frequency of these cycles, and hence, will make it much more difficult for any companies to become very large or dominant for long periods of time (more than five years). It appears that we are headed toward a future of small businesses and cottage industry.
Corporations largely exist as risk mitigation structures--they are legally immune to the sorts of risks partnerships are liable to, and explicitly quantify the risks that investors in them take: nothing more than the cost of the shares. Risk mitigation is needed when individuals do not possess sufficient capital to produce efficiently on their own. But the rise of individual wealth, and therefore the willingness to take greater risks, combined with greater knowledge and access to information for individuals, will continue to reduce the need for large enterprises and economies of scale.
Several examples can be given:
Airplane bodies are manufactured in very large facilities because of the enormous fixed costs of the molds and basic metal-forming equipment. But if we can get the requisite properties through simply arranging different metal foils onto plastic or terracotta supports, and heat them at low temperatures, great economies of scale aren't necessary. See for example, the work of Prof. Kenneth Vecchio at the University of California, San Diego, which comes from the continuing unification of engineering and biology.
Silicon microelectronics needs $10 billion fabs today. But if research efforts at nano self-assembly of such circuits in chemical reactions succeed, as they appear to be doing, the $10 B tab may go down to $100000, which makes it possible for a small business to do it.
For the typical American of today, there is little concern to keep the wolf at bay, as the typical net worth is above $100,000. Hence, individuals are able to be much more enterprising than before, starting new businesses or taking private risks at greater rates. This is seen in today's real estate market, or in the tendency of individuals to take time off, retrain themselves and start entirely new careers. All these are possible because of free or inexpensive access to necessary information on things such as real estate markets, profitable professions, and so forth.
The widespread availability of information will ensure the extinction of the university or schooling system in its present form. It will be difficult to maintain knowledge monopolies, and restrictions to access as the knowledge in the commons grows and more information is created in the commons than in restricted domains. Competitive advantage will depend upon the rate of generation of information rather than the information itself because of massively parallel discovery and rapid diffusion of information. The competitive advantage of societies may depend purely on how fast they are able to adapt their education systems to give individuals access to ever more information over shorter time scales, e.g., giving a high school graduate the same capabilities as a doctoral candidate. How do you compress the time it takes to learn? Unified notation is one side of it -- but there are several other factors: individual concentration and attention span appear to be the most important. Thus, systems that teach students to increase their powers of concentration the fastest will probably live longer than others. This calls for enormous experimentation which is not possible within the context of a bureaucratically controlled system of indoctrination that schooling generally is in today's world. This experimentation is more likely to take place where there is more private schooling or schooling controlled by the parents of the children. Examples are shoestring private schools in places like Nigeria or India. Under these conditions, knowledge of context will permit design of better educational experiments. And those experimental results that are universally applicable will be quickly adopted or used around the world (e.g., the Kumon system of mathematics training, or courses from 'The Teaching Company').
Indeed, many universities see this coming, and are offering remote classes, putting up course materials for sale on the web, and even opening up their classroom instruction to the world. Students today are not looking for information alone--they also look for the much faster acquisition of knowledge that is possible through face-to-face interaction in an academic community, and for the reputation bestowed by a degree from a reputed university. But the competitive value of these factors continues to reduce except in R&D because of the increase of bandwidth in communications. If you could interact with someone remotely on a 10 GHz link, true to smell, taste, sight, feeling and hearing, then it could very well substitute for a good classroom. The comparative advantage of expensive universities will continue to fall as online systems demonstrate the training of more and more capabilities.
Like education systems, the systems of law, completely outdated even now, will be changed. What if the same mass collaboration that is happening with open source products could (and will) happen with law? Now I'm not a lawyer, but it has been proven that someone can represent himself better than a lawyer and aren't they the ones profiting from the music industry's anti-collaboration efforts? What about us handling our own affairs without the necessity of an outdated, politicized, overworked system? I just paid my speeding ticket online today. No fuss. Just paid. I was guilty. I'm not sure how this would work, I was hoping to get some collaboration. If sharing and peering is so good and necessary, how are our basic systems, government, education, law, so antiquated and stagnant? Not for the people, not by the people, or of the people, but for, of and by an elite with legal education or with the wherewithal to purchase legal services.
In fact, legal systems are becoming more efficient. In Australia, there is an effort to use expert systems to quickly determine the possible outcomes of legal disputes to inform disputants the most likely outcome, and thereby help them settle without a costly trial. Besides, private courts and arbitrators are becoming more and more popular--from real estate through divorce disputes, arbitration provides a less expensive means of resolving disputes. But the catch is that all of this happens only in mature areas of the law. And indeed, the earnings available for lawyers in mature areas are not much. A basic difficulty with private courts or courts without lawyers is that there are few men or women that have the wide ranging knowledge necessary to fairly resolve disputes, or make decisions of life and death. The lawyers serve the purpose of translating the description of the real world into the legal language (though highly inadequate) that the judges can understand. If we do develop common and precise terminology spanning multiple disciplines through their unification--then individuals would be able to represent themselves in all manner of legal proceedings.
Regarding "The widespread availability of information will ensure the extinction of the university or schooling system in its present form."
Which university system? I think there is a good chance of changing the traditional American university system. I think we will move towards the system used at Oxford in Britain. There will be maybe an hour or two of face-to-face interaction between a student and a professor. These rest of the learning could be done via the net and community activities. I stress that there is some critical learning that only takes place when two people speak to one another.
It is possible that this face-to-face could take place via video chat over the net, but I am not sure that would really work.
contributed by Dwayne Phillips on Apr 12 11:04am
Concerning: "The widespread availability of information will ensure the extinction of the university or schooling system in its present form."
I too think that the face of education will change radically over the next century (does anyone think that far in advance these days :). That being said, widespread availability of information alone will not be sufficient to support education. Teachers/guides/facilitators and interaction will still also be needed. MIT made it's curriculum available to the world but I don't believe that student registration suffered as a result. Clearly information alone is not what students were looking for.
contributed by ">KQ</A> on May 4 5:36pm
Page Last Updated: Jan 30 2:05pm by Kartik Ariyur