Necessary, but not sufficient
When asked “who created Apple?”, it’s tempting to say Steve Jobs did it. The truth is that, although he may have been necessarily, he was not sufficient. Similarly Bill Gates, who (as Malcolm Gladwell...
Category: Complex Systems
The World Resources Sim Center: on its way to Silicon Valley
Last month I received an intriguing email inviting me to an event at Kimberly Wiefling’s house. I’d met Kimberly before through Jonathan Trent, as part of the work I’ve been doing to help out...
The re-emergence of Buckminster Fuller
This popped up today: (thanks, Ray Podder!) Of course. It’s a Bucky Ball.
Guest Post: A knowledge management system capable of blinking red
Inattention to critical knowledge is an old problem. Lessons are forgotten, near misses are ignored, caution is dismissed, disasters result. Titanic. Bhopal. AIG. Katrina. Fukushima. And on and on. Knowledge Management (KM) is supposed...
Guest post: Announcing World Makers
The goal of World Makers is to encourage people to build computer simulations of the world. This includes simulating water, weather, crops, land use policy or anything else. Models can be regional or global,...
Beyond Data (part 2): Big-O snowballs, copycats, and super levers
As computer scientists, one of our first lessons is about “big O” complexity of software. It’s used to understand the expected time for a program to run. “Big O” theory tells us that it’s...
Beyond Data (part 1): J. K. Rowling, Shakespeare, and the Sorcerer’s Decision
I rode the train on a beautiful spring day through New England. Arriving at the station, a few guys from our partner company greeted me happily; we were going to win this one. We...
Decision lever visualization: an animated review
Since thinking so much about levers in the last two posts, I’ve also been pondering the variety of levers I’ve built and seen, and the different purposes they serve in a decision model. ...
Catch the ball: shifting from text to visual/motor thinking for complex problems
We are shifting our thinking style to accommodate a much more complex and interdependent world than we have faced in the past. Consider: In 2014, Google purchased Deep Mind, formerly a UK-based startup with...
