Quotes of the day

James Burke’s Connections was and is a masterpiece of work. Likewise his The Day The Universe Changed, plus Connections II and III, and his books on The Pinball Effect of History… currently he is examining how hyperlinking infrastructure is making possible a new way of thinking and approaching ideas and how we live our lives. If you understand Connections, then you have one of the quintessential analysis tools for how any two things are connected and why those connections influence how you think the way you do.

I would put his work up there with that of Moore’s Law and Metcalf’s Law, both necessary cornerstones for understanding technology and how people connect on networks and how they influence each other. Yet both of those pre-Connections views are fully encompassed by Connections and the later work of Burke. The fact that there is no ‘right way’ to view the universe does not mean you can’t adapt from multiple ways to find a ‘better way’ to view it and think about it, and when you do that you open up a vista of follow-ons for all of those who can build upon that view. Something as simple as learning that light was not a single color but a spectrum broke scientific inquiry wide open, and yet has fall out to how we color things and finding out just what color is. Just as in Connections where the simple blackout with you in an elevator brings home the fact that the elevator, without power, is a metal box with buttons on the inside. If the power has gone off for good (say an EMP attack but other sources at that time) then just what do you do? Where do you end up and how do you survive? Thrown out of modern technology you are now back 4,000 years in technology… if you must start over, where do you start?

That line of inquiry has had subtle effects on everything from the Green Movement to Survivalists, and radically alters our relationship to technology because it is based upon us, as humans. And yet, for those influences, that does not mean that any influenced line of thought is ‘true’ or even ‘good’, just striving to be ‘better’ and facing the test of time to see if it gets anywhere. This is true in politics, technology, religion, and everything we do in life as humans: nothing is immune to the connected influences and their results. It replaces the simplistic views with a simple one: complexity comes from simplicity and complex attempts to address complex issues fail, more often than not, because they do not address underlying simplicity.

That message rings stronger, clearer, over time, with every passing day as we see those seeking complex solutions failing in government, technology, indeed, everywhere. They are trying to change the basis for simple human relationships, and that simple fact of us being human is timeless and self-evident. Attempting to change it is costly and rife with folly, and has many fallouts beyond the simple… he goes through history with that view and connects up the simple things that matter and you get resultant complexity. Without James Burke we would be poorer as a culture, and many refuse to see the underlying simplicity in all of life while it is plain to see each and every day you live. I will live with connected simplicity because that is what we make, as humans, as it gives us richness as individuals to be so connected to the rest of humanity. And still individual.

ajacksonian on October 3, 2009 at 11:08 AM