Post by account_disabled on Feb 25, 2024 11:07:56 GMT
To concisely explain the link between social networks and the so-called "complex systems", I have extracted this short article from the guide THEORETICAL ELEMENTS FOR THE PLANNING OF SOCIAL NETWORKS by Gianandrea Giacoma and Davide Casali (whom I thank enormously for having made this text available with Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License ). There are many interesting passages in this booklet, but for now we focus only on the relationship with complex systems and its basic concepts. The network by its nature is a complex system and behaves as such. It is useless to aspire to particular design determinisms or forecasting capabilities.
A network can be a product but it will always be a social, psychological and Chinese Student Phone Number List technological experiment at the same time. Instead of chasing difficult certainties, it is better to adopt a step-by-step methodology and an armory of knowledge, tools capable of following the network in its life cycle with sensitivity to weak signals and the ability to adapt and modify. It is risky to rely only on a hypothetical architecture and theoretically successful project, it is better (as is normal for those familiar with complex systems) to organize teams, practices, projects, methodologies that can be modified over time. Sometimes what has blocked good networks has been precisely the difficulty of technically modifying them in the meantime or the difficulty of explaining to the client the dynamic nature of these complex objects, or even the very difficulty of accepting or keeping up with the project on the part of the client. team. Starting with a good analysis and project is certainly important, but the malleability and modularity of many factors is fundamental.
The basic concepts underlying the complex dynamics are: • feedback: consists of a feedback process that can be positive or negative and indirect; • equilibrium on the edge of chaos: systems emerge and exist in conditions of dynamic equilibrium between a state too chaotic for the stabilization of an organization and one too static to allow interactions; • emergency: complex systems give rise to new phenomena and organizational forms that are not predictable and reducible to the sum of the elements that underlie them; • butterfly effect: when a system is on the threshold of an organizational leap, an infinitesimal phenomenon is enough to trigger an unstoppable and global chain process; • attractors: complex systems oscillate between organizational configurations that can be represented and described as gravitational forces into which a system can fall by being attracted.
A network can be a product but it will always be a social, psychological and Chinese Student Phone Number List technological experiment at the same time. Instead of chasing difficult certainties, it is better to adopt a step-by-step methodology and an armory of knowledge, tools capable of following the network in its life cycle with sensitivity to weak signals and the ability to adapt and modify. It is risky to rely only on a hypothetical architecture and theoretically successful project, it is better (as is normal for those familiar with complex systems) to organize teams, practices, projects, methodologies that can be modified over time. Sometimes what has blocked good networks has been precisely the difficulty of technically modifying them in the meantime or the difficulty of explaining to the client the dynamic nature of these complex objects, or even the very difficulty of accepting or keeping up with the project on the part of the client. team. Starting with a good analysis and project is certainly important, but the malleability and modularity of many factors is fundamental.
The basic concepts underlying the complex dynamics are: • feedback: consists of a feedback process that can be positive or negative and indirect; • equilibrium on the edge of chaos: systems emerge and exist in conditions of dynamic equilibrium between a state too chaotic for the stabilization of an organization and one too static to allow interactions; • emergency: complex systems give rise to new phenomena and organizational forms that are not predictable and reducible to the sum of the elements that underlie them; • butterfly effect: when a system is on the threshold of an organizational leap, an infinitesimal phenomenon is enough to trigger an unstoppable and global chain process; • attractors: complex systems oscillate between organizational configurations that can be represented and described as gravitational forces into which a system can fall by being attracted.