Why Life Can’t Be Simpler
We’d all like life to be simpler. But we also don’t want to sacrifice our options and capabilities. Tesler’s law of the conservation of complexity, a rule from design, explains why we can’t have both. …
Complexity
Principles for an Age of Acceleration
We live in an age where technology is developing at a rate faster than what any individual can keep up with. To survive in an age of acceleration, we need a new way of thinking about technology. *** …
Frozen Accidents: Why the Future Is So Unpredictable
“Each of us human beings, for example, is the product of an enormously long sequence of accidents, any of which could have turned out differently.” — Murray Gell-Mann *** What parts of …
The Need for Biological Thinking to Solve Complex Problems
“Biological thinking and physics thinking are distinct, and often complementary, approaches to the world, and ones that are appropriate for different kinds of systems.” *** How should we …
The Map Is Not the Territory
The Great Mental Models Volumes One and Two are out. Learn more about the project here. The map of reality is not reality. Even the best maps are imperfect. That’s because they are reductions of …
Making Decisions in a Complex Adaptive System
In Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition, Mauboussin does a good job adding to the work we’ve already done on complex adaptive systems: You can think of a complex adaptive system …
Ten Pairs of Opposite Traits That Creative People Exhibit
This beautiful excerpt from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention beautifully illustrates why it’s so hard to pin down creativity and …
Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World
“Simple rules are shortcut strategies that save time and effort by focusing our attention and simplifying the way we process information. The rules aren’t universal— they’re tailored to the …
Atul Gawande: The Building Industry’s Strategy for Getting Things Right in Complexity
Checklists establish a higher level of baseline performance. *** A useful reminder from Atul Gawande, in The Checklist Manifesto: In a complex environment, experts are up against two main …
The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge
“There certainly have been many new things in the world of visualization; but unless you know its history, everything might seem novel.” — Michael Friendly *** It’s tempting to consider information …
An Introduction to Complex Adaptive Systems
Let’s explore the concept of the Complex Adaptive Systems and see how this model might apply in various walks of life. To illustrate what a complex adaptive system is, and just as importantly, what it …
How Complex Systems Fail
A bit of a preface to this post. Please read the definition of Antifragile first. While the article below is interesting, the reader should read with a critical mind. Complexity ‘solved’ …
What Is Complexity?
While it seems more and more common these days, it’s important to determine when you’re operating in complexity. Complexity means that little things can have a big effect and big things …
5 Design-Informed Approaches to Good Learning
John Maeda offers five design-informed approaches for learning. BASICS are the beginning. REPEAT yourself often. AVOID creating desperation. INSPIRE with examples. NEVER forget to repeat yourself. …
Eric Drexler on taking action in the face of limited knowledge
Science pursues answers to questions, but not always the questions that engineering must ask. The founding father of nanotechnology, Eric Drexler, who aptly described the difference between science …
The Laws of Simplicity
“Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.” John Maeda is a graphic designer and computer scientist. His book, The Laws of Simplicity, proposes ten laws for …