Human Memome Project

This title does not refer to tribe.net or anything else that pops when you search “human memome project” on Google. As it happens, the title turns out not to have much to do with this piece at all.

So why is it still the title?

cf. Wikinomics 85 et seq. re open-source.

Open Source Human Cognition, by which I mean: the Human Memome Project.

Memome?

Like genome, but for memes.

Got it. Proceed.

Pretending for a moment that there were such an open-source project (which I have to do, as I sit here unaware of the activities of any such extant open-source communities, conceived & conducting themselves explicitly on the open-source model, pursuing the memome project).

Go onnnnn..... [clockcycle, clockcycle, clockcycle ...] ☺

Well, the 'board' on which you array the information-product of the community ...

[I was here interrupted by a ½-hour business call to get my 'first-blush-quick-idea-check' on a business idea. The idea worked, from every angle I could think of. I battle tested it, shot it through, turned it round & round my hypersoccerball of {udap | k | reg | complex adaptive systems | etc...}.

It was a Σ [win₁-win₂-win₃-win₄ ... win_n] situation, by karate man lights. A real nonzero summer. Karate man knows 'em when he sees 'em.

But here's the key thing, the reason that I am bothering to write down this digression into my client call: I expressed this effectively to the client.

How?

¿Shall I go onnnnnnn?

☺¡Go onnnnnnnn!☻

Well, karate man doesn't hold back in telling you how much he dislikes the whole neighborhood some of your questions are coming from.

How many times hasn't karate man read you out some riot act down to the foundations of your understanding of the universe, when all you asked him was a question about credit card disclosures?

Karate man thinks it is important to balance that out and express to you how much he likes a construct that floats through all constraint-gauntlets untouched, in a nonzero sum kind of way, win-win-win ... (or, solve-solve-solve-solve, with all the solutions achieved at once by the same construct).

Why nonzero sum?

Solutions cost money. Solving two problems at the same time, expending only the effort and money it would take to solve either alone, is a net gain. Solving multiple problems at once multiplies the gains.

Each 'win' is a problem solved or avoided; win₁, win₂ ... win_n corresponds to a phase space of n mutually orthogonal dimensions, one for each problem to be solved. When a solution is hit upon that solves this rubik's hypersoccerball, the thing starts glowing in the dark. That's karate man's way of saying: it is apparent when this occurs.

It is also a very good thing all the way around. So, what a perfect opportunity for karate man to balance out his hypercritical truthstructionism.

May I ask, who is 'karate man'? Is that you? I didn't catch where karate man (km) came into the discussion.

Karate man is a voice. Voice as in, writer's voice, 'public voice'; but not as in 'hearing voices.' [you should pardon the digression, but it's very interesting – this hearing voices movement – another backlash against neurotypical psychiatry akin to Aspies for Freedom.]

It is based on the original Eddie Murphy karate man bit from Trading Places, with certain ironic differences. Murphy's character (km_em) is pretending, contrary to fact, to be a bigshot & infallible karate man. Whereas, the km voice I am employing (km_tb) has a basis for his utterances (as opposed to zero basis). km_tb is the real deal.

Now, km_tb is not perfect, which means that he will not have a perfect basis for his utterances, and he can therefore be wrong. To the extent that he is wrong, he risks being ridiculous like km_em. Of course, km_tb knows this quite well. To the extent he is wrong (and ridiculous), well, he's already playing a km character, which can easily switch over to km_em if necessary.

In other words, km_tb is a voice that allows the author to speak authoritatively and efficiently, but one that need not maintain a façade of intellectual infallibility. In other words, km_tb is allowed to say stuff that in an ordinary voice would be too pedantic (aspie) to hold the neurotypical conch for very long. So km_tb is, like km_em, doing a kind of rope-a-dope. In neurotypical society, being right is actually more dangerous than being ridiculous, because ridiculous people can be ignored more easily (or otherwise removed from the ring). Plus, ridiculous people can succeed quite well in conventional society, judging by the epidemic of doofuses we have been suffering.

So do you see the layers of irony in here? You've got km_tb prancing around the metaphorical jail cell, even though what he says is (mostly) not ridiculous. It's straight up, fact-based, logically consistent, pithy. His actions and utterances are perceived (or portrayed anyway) as ridiculous or otherwise not deserving of consideration on the merits. So km_tb has to dodge and weave and pull an escalating series of hyper-Marshall-McLuhans from behind the movie poster to keep his 'cellmates' on the run until he can make bail (i.e., transcend the 'jail cell' scene and no longer be vulnerable to the particular collection of neurotypical cellmates).

Can you give me an example?

No. I don't want to . Use your imagination.

Then I think you should stop writing now.

Well, I'll stop writing about who km_tb is.

Go.

Well, this was a digression to a digression anyway. Let me get back to the first level of digression: I was telling you about the business call that interrupted my big point I had to write down about memomes, etc. So, anyway, after the interaction described above, I told my client that that ½-hour session was an excellent example of how I can be efficiently leveraged. Not that I'm not good for anything else. But this kind of interaction adds more 'wins' to any win-win you already got going.

This increases the chance that the client will continue 'rolling up soccerballs,' by which I mean, collecting and connecting key information she regularly requires in her business. She will certainly appreciate this, not least because my bills will be a lot smaller; or rather, she can get more advice-utility per unit cost. I will appreciate it because I don't like to spin my wheels answering the same questions over and over, even at my high billing rate. I want to work with people who have a need for information, and who are in the practice of valuing it and understanding it and collecting it and applying it on their own. Then our interactions are always interesting. Questions come from perspectives of escalating expertise, so it becomes a richer dialog. Mutual learning ensues exponentially. Stuff gets easier; more can be accomplished with less effort.

Neurotypical nonexperts seem to expect that experts should be some kind of black box that spits out definitive answers that can be applied in all cases without the nonexpert having to do much critical thinking. There is no shortage of experts willing to provide services on this basis. Neurotypical nonexperts seem to prefer heavy consulting costs to moderate mental lifting.

In my view, an expert performs an iterative function – an expert is not someone who knows everything, but someone who knows a lot; and more importantly, knows how to learn and how to teach. How to find relevant information and collapse it into a concise, actionable understanding; and communicate that understanding; and nurture the emergent thought community whose job it is to implement that understanding.

So, my (digression) point is: I told the client this stuff, fairly explicitly (using different words, but same meaning). Why not say it explicitly, just in case my own elaborate thought process has not actually materialized whole inside her head yet. That is a kind of shortcut, heading off at the pass vast clouds of wheel spinning, for both of us.

Yes?

What starts rolling up to me are soccerballs that are 'rolled up' enough for me to start fitting them into “higher” orders of fractal rolled-up-edness.

Hunh?

Well, take the sierpinski triangle for example:

Let's say that represents a higher level of what I'm calling 'rolled upped-ness' than just a single triangle Δ, or pieces of a triangle like > or _. (I know, I'm mixing my metaphors.) What I get by way of an inquiry should ideally not be just a Δ or a > or an _ . What I start to get, from clients who are strong in the critical thinking department, is one of these:

which I can then much more easily fit into the higher order structure represented above. I don't have to start out each time explaining that they need an emergent thought community whose job it is to implement the understanding they have engaged me to convey.

Now, that's a toy example of what I'm talking about, but on-the-mark from a complex adaptive network dynamic mandelbrotian fractal synced scale-free emergent wikinomic econophysical perspective (pardon my redundancy).

So my role is not to administer neurotypical non-soccerball-roller-uppers (to be charitable; the worse issue is with those with no apparent normative understanding of the foundations of our society; or even worse, those with an understanding coupled with an indifference or antagonism).

No. My role is 'boundary spanner,' harmonizer of ideas and people. As Uncle Abe might say, “ass kicker.”

“You are going to have a big medical problem if you don't do X; you're going to need a major operation to get my boot out of your ass!”

Nice, Abe.

What if you use the community around you as an information processing apparatus ...

In the same sense that one might view a company, or a whole industry, or a group of industries, or a whole economy even, as a huge and complex adaptive iterating apparatus on which one's thought experiments can be run.

So, f'rinstance, you could query the system: “What if soccer-video-bloggers started self-exemplifying rolled-up nonzero soccerballness?” And then see what emerges by way of answers.

It's a way of lining up one's bundle of coordinated, rolled-up interests ... and the emergent product is “pulled” in by the audience (or not; but it is not pushed out). Plus, emergent phenomena can turn out to be extremely valuable in ways that are beyond present imagination.

Product?

Yes! For one thing, it's good to have a product. Otherwise, one risks not being productive (not to mention appearing unproductive). It's good for a product to be interesting to a somewhat broader audience than oneself

(ya think?)

It's even better if the product is interesting enough that the audience will 'pull' it at their convenience, with no (or very little) further effort or action by karate man.

But it gets better: the 'product' is a self-exemplifying unit, which can (and does!) both incent and equip others to emulate it. Who knows what nonzerosumness may emerge?

Anyway, that's the kind of system query I like to run, and I unabashedly have my thumb on the scale. I mean, I influence the system as it iterates by selective feedback. "The idea is to get the fire started; to kickstart the network so that it works on its own." [quoting Biz Stone, A Hyperconnected Peek at the World of Weblogs, p. 183]

What network?

I am speaking of networks of ideas and tools and people and practices.

So, your scale is not thumb-free, eh?

Right, but my thumb is scale-free.

Uth. Can you get back to the human memome project?

Oh dear, sorry. Well, no. I mean, I don't want to anymore (please refrain from cheering).

Well, what about "the 'board' on which you array the information-product of the community ... " That sounded like a promising beginning. That's the only reason I read through all your digressions.

Oh, that. Well, I'm sure I was going to talk about the physical infrastructure of the information age, a hugely important gameboard for game theory that is new under the sun. You know, rant # 14-G.