Building Back Better - Introduction
Building Back Better - Introduction

October 2020

I thought it would be interesting, or maybe even create a sense of optimism, to consider some thought experiments around the future on the topic "Building Back Better". I am not going to spend any research time on this, it will come from background information. But I hope to explore some of the impacts of events that are impacting our lives at the moment.

It starts, like so much in 2020, with CoViD19. But over the next few months, I plan to write a regular Short Thought on how we as a society can recover better going forward, covering areas like urbanisation, its effects and can/should we reverse it? What will the impact of a Universal Basic Income be? On work, on cities, on towns? Although it could be construed political, maybe a thought or two on taxation, and government spending priorities. And Automation in it's many different forms - even keeping it very short, this could span several weeks. And artificial intelligence, self driving vehicles

I will expand on the ideas at a later stage, but my thoughts are heavily influenced by complexity theory and systems planning.

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Very simple rules, can give rise to very complex patterns and eventually to emergent behavior - Complexity Theory

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Systems generate recognisable archetypes across all different types of systems - Systems Thinking

(Example above of the Limits to Success Archetype from SystemsThinker.com)

Very, VERY briefly:

Complexity theory is that part of science that explores, or takes into account, what happens when a system transitions from orderly, to chaotic. THIS is where growth takes place - too much order, and nothing changes, to much chaos, and new structures cannot form. This takes place in every area of observation: Put enough hydrogen and oxygen molecules together, and they bond and form water. Bring together enough water molecules, and you get fluid dynamics. Even more and you have rivers, lakes and seas. Add in some other components like the sun, and you have weather, add time and you have climate. At each stage a new structure emerges, a phase transition takes place, And each phase typically say very little about the preceding and following phases.

Systems planning is not to do with IT systems, but rather the patterns that develop in large systems. In my interest, economic patterns. It is a little bit like studying a particular phase in complexity theory, and understanding how different agents in the system influences each other over time. It very much deals with archetypes: We are all familiar with positive and negative feedback loops, but if you put them together, you get oscillating loops. If you intervene at the wrong place or time in the system, you do not dampen the oscillations, you amplify them. This leads to ever bigger oscillations, and can sometimes have catastrophic results. Think of a wheel where the alignment is out. Add a weight in the wrong place, and the vibrations just get worse.

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Building Back Better - IntroductionBuilding Back Better - Introduction

Building Back Better - Introduction
Building Back Better - Introduction