judith meskill's knowledge notes...

musings on autonomic social & knowledge networks...

In my continuing research at the intersection of emerging social and knowledge networking trends, I have been tracking news in my 'knowledge notes' Weblog on 'autonomic' or 'self-healing' systems. As I was performing a search on 'autonomic knowledge management' this morning I came across the following article by Christopher Meyer, [coauthor of It's Alive: The Coming Convergence of Information, Biology, and Business] for Wired Magazine, - The New Facts of Life - in which he writes:

...networks could play a critical role as machines come to resemble living creatures. In life, as on the Net, connections matter more than processors. The Internet could allow sensors to interact in emergent ways, forming an autonomic nervous system for the physical world. An early version is taking root in Los Angeles, where sensors at intersections identify approaching buses and ask a central computer whether they're on time. Late buses get the green light; the system gives crossing traffic extra time in subsequent cycles. The result: 25 percent improvement in transit times without creating congestion.

Oddly enough, our growing knowledge of life processes could have its biggest impact in the social sciences. Social systems, after all, are made up of interacting agents, i.e., people. When we become adept at applying these insights to the social sphere, we'll be able to run simulations that reveal, say, the conditions under which Iraq would reconstruct itself. At that point, the new science of life will help us not only live better, but live better together...

In the above citation, Meyer talks about the importance of connections over processors. Isn't this concept - of relating as biological 'connections' - at the very hub of our current fascination with Social Networking Services [SNSs]? Centralized, standalone SNSs are fun at times, initially compelling, but eventually boring if they do not add value in our day-to-day lives.

Meyer also posits that "Scientific advances point to a startling conclusion: The nonliving world is very much alive." And these networks do indeed take on lives of their own - existing with or without us as - the non-biological representations of the 'us' aspect of our social groups and, - to the degree that we have shared, connected in, or up linked in these spaces - our social knowledge. This is the field of analysis in which we will often find social scientists such as Valdis Krebs at play - tracking, tracing, and trending our digital trails.

It is this delicate dance of 'us' maintaining 'presence' - in either loosely or tightly choreographed associations - that keeps these networks lively and infused with both our individual and collective knowledge. While I was ruminating over writing this post on 'autonomic knowledge management' this morning I was also chatting with Jim McGee who recommended that I reference David Reed's work in this area.

An excellent recommendation that inspired me to question - How soon and/or successfully will the current eruption of both Knowledge and Social Networking Services morph into viable components and/or extensions of David P. Reed and Andrew Lippman's visionary architecture of Viral Communications?

Historically, people do not scale well, networks do - and autonomic or self-healing networks hold the promise of robust scalability. An important upgrade for ailing telecom carriers and service providers who suffer from extensively manual business processes that are quite simply not sustainable in our burgeoning 'network-centric' world. Cultural change is imperative in the current 'carrier-class' world in order to 'tool up' for the near and distant future of wireless networking.

Reed & Lippman state, "The Essence of scalable wireless networks is cooperation..." I think that this 'cooperation' concept also applies to 'us' as the wetware components of these network architectures. Reed & Lippman also assert in a May 19th, 2003 Viral Communications draft that "the impact of enabling architectural innovations is amplified when they are in synchrony with cultural change." [This draft is available as a PDF file in the Viral Communications related link below.]

How can we - as early adopters - influence the evolution of Social Networking Services so they do enhance our communications - aside from the current widely practiced activities of job searching, dating, friend finding, and strengthening weak ties?

If you utilize one or more of the current entrants in this swell of online SNS offerings [such as LinkedIn, Friendster, Orkut, Ryze, and/or Tribe] - what value, if any, do you derive from them? And, harkening back to the citation with which I started this post, has one [or more] of these services assisted in helping you to successfully reduce the 'traffic congestion' at the 'intersections' in your life? And, in closing, any insights, comments, or ponderings on the recent and future blurring of lines between 'wetware,' 'software,' and 'hardware' in an infinitely connected wireless world?

Related Links:

Wired | February 2004 | The New Facts of Life
Viral Communications
Feedster Search: autonomic computing
autonomic computing - CiteSeer ResearchIndex
The Social Software Weblog - socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com

Without autonomic capabilities to maintain themselves by "learning" from experience and infusion of new data, knowledge management systems will not achieve their destiny as pervasive success tools for the 21st century manufacturing enterprise." [BMST Knowledge management]

Reed's Law says that the value of the network that comes from supporting the formation and sharing of information among persistent groups (group forming networks) grows exponentially in the number of elements.

K-Collector Topics: Jim McGee Autonomic Computing Comments Friendster Hardware Influence innovation Knowledge Management LinkedIn Orkut presence research Simulations Thinking Weblogs Writing Iraq Ryze
February 26, 2004 09:51 AM | google it! | threadorati