BOUNDARYLESS CONVERSATIONS PODCAST #3

Beyond markets: sense-making and organising, in a world of open networks — with John Robb

Our conversation with John Robb suggests that there’s no way we can get away with ignoring the question concerning technology, as society literally “becomes a technological artifact”. Yet, the emergent future of organizing may not disrupt or obsolete the existing markets but rather coexist and transcend them creating a space where you’re only as smart as your network is.

Podcast Notes

In this episode, we have a Boundaryless Conversation with John Robb, the owner and principal analyst for the monthly Global Guerrillas Report, that covers the intersection of War, Politics, and Technology. Its goal is to provide people with the frameworks needed to make sense of our relentlessly chaotic world. In other words, John helps people think clearly at a time when that kind help is in short supply.

In our conversation with John, we explore how the rapid power shifts we’re witnessing towards open source, and self-organizing networks are going to change the way we organize society and the economy.

We touched upon the fact that the emergent future of organizing may not disrupt or obsolete the existing markets, but rather coexist, and that there’s no way we can get away with ignoring the question concerning technology as society literally “becomes a technological artifact” as John said.

Here are some important links from the conversation:

> John’s patreon page https://www.patreon.com/johnrobb

> David Ronfeld, Tribes, Institutions, Markets and Networks, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2005/P7967.pdf

> John Arquilla, David Ronfeldt (eds): Networks and Netwars, The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy, https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1382.html

> Marshall McLuhan, whose ideas were frequently mentioned in the conversation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan

> The Cynefin Framework for Simple, Complicated, Complex and Chaotic domains, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7oz366X0-8

> Examples of games mentioned that allow modifications to be developed in the kind of open source community: Fallout and Skyrim: https://fallout.bethesda.net/en/; https://elderscrolls.bethesda.net/en/skyrim

> Code Academy, https://www.codecademy.com/

> Cameo, a new platform for getting personalised messages from celebrities, https://www.cameo.com/

> The company where John in 1996 wrote the report “personal broadcast networks” https://go.forrester.com/

> How to Run a City Like Amazon and Other Fables, a multi-author future fiction imagining cities being run by different companies. https://shop.meatspacepress.com/product/how-to-run-a-city-like-amazon-and-other-fables

Key insights

1. The emergent future of organizing may not disrupt or obsolete the existing markets but rather coexist through different layers, such as Tribes, Institutions, Markets and Networks (like in David Ronfeld’s TIMN framework)

2. To build local resilience, local constituencies need to find ways to connect to the global system “on their own terms”, but still have enough local capacity to survive short- to medium-term disruptions (e.g. energy supply).

3. There’s no way we can get away with ignoring the question concerning technology as society literally “becomes a technological artifact” as John said, referring to various framings by Marshall McLuhan. The next frontier of this techno-social and entrepreneurial shift is according to John the virtual reality space.

🌐 Boundaryless Conversations Podcast is about exploring the future of large scale organising by leveraging on technology, network effects and shaping narratives. We explore how platforms can help us play with a world in turmoil, change, and transformation: a world that is at the same time more interconnected and interdependent than ever but also more conflictual and rivalrous.

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, Stitcher, CastBox, RadioPublic, and other major podcasting platforms.

Transcript

This episode is hosted by Boundaryless Conversation Podcast host Simone Cicero with co-host, Stina Heikkilä.

The following is a semi-automatically generated transcript which has not been thoroughly revised by the podcast host or by the guest. Please check with us before using any quotations from this transcript. Thank you.

Simone Cicero:
John, thanks very much for for coming to the podcast. It’s a pleasure to have you. And especially for me that you know, I know your work since I think something like 10 to 12 years, something like that, because I believe the first the first thing interview that I had the chance to, to have with you was from 2011, to text interview for our blog for my blog at the time. And it’s a pleasure for me to have you back here and in conversation. As you know, the main objective of the conversation that I would like to have with you today is to explore your understanding in terms of how we can expect new patterns of organizing to show up in the coming decades, and essentially, especially patterns of organising that can be applied at scale all over the globe. And how these new patterns of organizing, mainly interplay and interconnect with all these incumbent institutions and power structures that we have up to date, such as markets or traditional government and something like that.

John Robb:
All sounds great. Thank you for having me on.

Simone Cicero:
So if you if you can outline, what is your impression in terms of how these new power of networks and you know, in terms of what kind of patterns Do you see emerging, especially in terms of also new constituencies and new, I would say subjectivities that are emerging in the world of organizing beyond the traditional institutions and orientation, what would you would you say?

John Robb:
Okay, I have some frameworks that are probably useful for this. One that I use is from David Ronfeld, he wrote to networks and net wars big thinker in the in the military side in the US in terms of how to use networks. He has a framework called TIMN. T-I-M-N and it describes four different layers of decision making. You know, we, as a society, each of our societies make decisions as groups using these methods. One is tribes. That’s in the past that used to be you know, tribalism used to be, you know, very crude forms of, of ways of organizing or kind of relationships between people. Most recently in modern history, it’s nationalism. It provides us cohesion, it lets you know who is similar to you or who’s working on your side or should be working on your site at least. So you know, tribalism is an important kind of decision making methodology. Second is institutions as that’s basically your bureaucracies, like Max Weber would say it would be bureaucracy is the kind of the cockroach of organizations that it transformed us into the modern world that it made science possible made corporations possible made big government possible, allowed scalable, infrastructure is possible, um, bureaucracies are great at mobilizing resources, allocating resources, making plans, building things, organizing vast numbers of people. So institutions are, you know, pretty much the bedrock of the way we make decisions. Now and then, the third one is a markets. So we had tribes, institutions, markets, markets, are great at allocating resources and finding which resources would yield the best return or which investments would we yield the best return. And we use that also to, you know, modify how we run a bureaucracies, we use markets to decide who would run the bureaucracy through through elections, elections is a market making or market decision making system. So these three, decision making systems have pretty much been combined in ways that allowed us to get to where we are right now. And we’re in the process of trying to add networks and networks is, until recently, it was, you know, unknown how to actually use networks to make decisions, or whether we even needed it. And what we’re finding is that the world we live in because of globalization, connectivity, information flow, is exceedingly complex. And it’s, you know, moves very, very quickly and moves in ways that breakdown the old methods of decision making can do like this pandemic, for instance, it’s, you know, the way it’s swept across. It’s breaking markets right now. It’s making it impossible for bureaucracies to make decisions effectively. They’re allocating resources in the wrong direction, doing the wrong things. It’s breaking down kind of the nationalism that ties countries together, people are dissatisfied with the responses. In many cases. What we need to have for a world that changes that quickly is is is a network decision making system and I think what we’re seeing globally is some form of that developing. You know, in the in the US, when the federal decision making system broke down, and found itself unable to fully respond to the pandemic network, like open source network, and this instance actually ran the whole response that’s going on in the United States. So it enlisted the support of governors and various institutions within the federal government. Most of the responses that people are taking are at the individual level and voluntary. They sharing information on how to do it most effectively. And they’ve made a commitment, come up with a consensus that they should work to try to eradicate the disease. And so they’re pushing, you know, all these different organizations in to react in a way that would further that goal. The downside with that network decision making system is that it allows, you know, strong counter pressure. And so we have in the US, a lot of people still saying they just shouldn’t believe that there is a pandemic in some instances as good because it keeps the consensus from becoming too strong. If you have too much consensus on a given issue, there isn’t any anything any way to counter it. So it’s good that we have that mechanism. But it also, the downside is it slows the response. So are you following me on this so far? Does it make sense?

Simone Cicero:
Sure. I was thinking, I was thinking that, you know, sort of following your work, we can recognize these referencing to this emergence of networks as a new space of governance. And I appreciate that, you know, for example, when we think about what’s happening with the covid, how do these networks have very strongly, I would say, shaped the response that a country like the US has been able to put together in response to the to the outbreak. But my question is, I see when we think about these frameworks, I can I can imagine, I can see that all these steps somehow built on top of each other. So somehow the institutional age has been building on top of the tribal age, and the as you said, as well, the market age has been building on top of this isntitutional age. So somehow these networks age is building on top of the market age. So for example, now we have this Twitter and Facebook that provide the space for liquid conversation and open governance. But they still based on the, I would say, these institutions that have been created through markets, such as social media platforms, for example. So I’m interested in understanding what is your impression in terms of, you know, what kind of changes and what kind of different expectations we — as participants in these new networks — are supposed to develop. Can we relate with these emergent, global and open and participatory networks in the same in the same way we have been interacting and relating with markets and institutions.

John Robb:
We will, but it will take time. And this is a you know, with social networking and the internet, it’s very similar to the arrival of the printing press. I mean, the printing press made possible, you know, global markets and it made possible large bureaucracies and it made possible the kind of, you know, kind of media dominance that allows nationalism to develop. So, you know, we have this technological change and then we develop ways of using it to make decisions better as a group and then we formalize the process. And in that process of formalization is going to take decades. You know, where we kind of curb the excesses of the decision making process, maximize the goodness of it. To the extent possible, come up with some kind of equitable way of or some kind of participatory way that doesn’t freeze out different populations allows it to be effective for most people. And then we integrate it with the existing decision making systems that we’re currently using. I mean, there’s things that the network does better than the others. It’s better at Information Discovery. All these different little edge voices that we have out there. At least you know, we could see it with the pandemic was very early to pick up on these voices were very early to pick up on the severity of it inside China and then project out that it was going to be a problem. I mean, I wrote my January report, and titled it, pandemic before they well before we They call it a pandemic. So this is back in January. And those voices help us discover information discover solutions earlier than you would in a standard bureaucracy, bureaucratic setting. In a kind of a, in a, in a market setting. It also allows us networks allow us to mobilize and we we haven’t really fully used that yet, but we can see this in in the big protests that have been started on on networks. I mean, we had went to Puerto Rico just recently where the governor overstepped and there was a massive protests in the governor stepped down so it was like it could mobilize a you know, huge protests and, and large group action. networks are also good at, you know, information sharing so good ideas travel very quickly, far quicker than it would be traveling using mass media or traditional method, at a much more granular detail than you would get in the water down meshes, messages you get at the mass media level. So you at the mass media level, you would say have people say wash your hands with soap and water and then in the network world, it’s not only that, but you know, what kind of other things you can take in terms of hygiene, that that allow you to, you know, survive in this environment. I think the, the big the big thing is, you know, dealing with a complex world, you know, the difference between like, you know, simplistic, complicated, complex, chaotic, that kind of quadrant thing yet so, you know, moving from complicated which is where markets and bureaucracies and, and tribalism seem to be best suited, you move to complex you have to have this extra, you know, discovery mechanism for finding the ideas that best suit this this complex challenge or the complex challenges you face in this environment. And it’s got it, you know, it provides you also the speed at which the speed at which you need in order to respond to the challenges you face.

Simone Cicero:
You brought something into with this reflection. And so when you think about, for example, new solutions, these new networks are able to provide perspectives, new perspectives, new solutions that normally traditional institutions or markets cannot bring. My question is, do you see these transition, let’s say in terms of transition between markets and networks as going through a breakdown or some kinds or or it’s a smooth transition. So my question is, for example, when we transition towards a complex, complex environments, and we agreed that, you know that additional industry solutions cannot cope with that, and we need to organize the networks. Do we also need to be as individuals and communities do we need to be open to, to what? To breakdown to leave something? You know, leave something on the table. To renounce to something that we may be used to in the world of institutions. So how is this transition going to happen is it’s going to be a bumpy transition or is going to be a smooth one.

John Robb:
Well, it probably be bumpy. I mean, there’s there’s a things we will see and we see right now. I mean, we see it right now and the response to the pandemic is that the That we have to get used to having vocal opposition to what the consensus is, you know, appear on on the networks. I mean, and that it, that there’s always going to be clusters of people that disagree. And it’s better to let them do that, even though you get a suboptimal response, because having those edge voices in place allow us to break out of a consensus if the consensus actually ends up being wrong. It’s early to identify that right. And it’s also where the new ideas come from, that the new new discoveries come from. And it’s really hard for people to get their heads around the fact that that there are these especially even in times of crisis is that there are these edge voices are actually valuable. I mean, it’s the normal reaction is to get mad at them. And then there’s a interesting thing is that big technological changes like this or moving on to social networking, it’s, you know, I like that Marshall McLuhan view of this is that it’s not just changing, you know, how we are communicating and how we are organizing, it’s, it’s rewiring us, it’s rewiring our brains at a very deep level. It’s changing the way we think. You know, when we went through the the printing press revolution, we started to think more as individuals. And you learned by reading through self reflection, and you stood as an individual with your opinions and your knowledge and your and your individual voice. This is different going to social networking, we become more tribal. And we think as groups more and we think in patterns, we do a lot more pattern matching. It’s a it’s a deep rewiring. That’s going to have an effect in terms of how we that’s, you know, driving this kind of reorganization of society that we’re seeing. And back can potentially be…You know, it might provoke war. I mean, it didn’t, you know, after the printing press it, with what it did with the Reformation in terms of how it reorganized society in Europe. So, that rewiring is really cool if you got to really think in terms of how it’s actually changing the way you you use you process information and how we process information. Like for instance, when I see something that I’m not sure about online, I don’t have to determine whether or not that is true just by myself. You know, used to be that you’d have to as an individual determine whether something is true or not. And then you’d have to have institutions protect you to make sure that you only had this true information. But in a networked world, I throw it out to my network. And we think as a group, there’s always somebody in that in my network, though, that will say, hey, that’s wrong. That picture is false. That’s misinformation or that doesn’t tell the whole story. here’s, here’s the rest of the story. So, in a large sense, that are to a large degree, you’re thinking as a network, and you’re only as smart as your network.

Simone Cicero:
Is this network space, this space, where the new entrepreneurship is going to emerge. So so to say that we are pretty used, you know, your reference referencing to this, essentially to this evolution from the individual, the age of the individual into the age of these networks and communities. So my question is, how is entrepreneurship going to change in this process? What may what becomes of the word enterprise, what are we going to organize? What kind of needs and what kind of desires are these communities going to organize around? And in this process, what is the role of scale? How do we interconnect scale? What entrepreneurial project can be replicated? And how are we going to these the patterns of open source? What is the role of blockchain, for example, in these distributed organizations? How do you see that playing out?

John Robb:
Okay, that’s a lot of questions. You know, I haven’t really seen as much as I’d like in terms of blockchain, but, you know, network thinking is, it’s already permeated the workplace in terms of how people interact with each other, how people share information, how people get information in how they make decisions, You know, all of the younger workers already, you know, coming in, into the workforce. So our network natives in that respect, I mean, they, they live on their phones, and they live in this kind of socially networked world. And they think that way naturally. So it’s permeating the workforce in that regard. In terms of big changes, I’m seeing it mostly at the at the super macro scale. You know, these big, you know, the open source decision making that’s running the US response to the pandemic is a great example. And I see it also in the way in which, you know, disruptive ideas emerge. And so, you know, companies, for instance, will have to become more tolerant of opposition, or oppositional ideas. You know, there’s a difference between those two You know, those ideas that are just, you know, intent to do damage or harm or, or malicious, and those ideas that are potentially good and potentially needed in order to, you know, stay relevant or in the marketplace. And the way I guess you differentiate those is, of course, if you find somebody has a good idea if they gains purchase within the company, that’s the kind of idea that you want to focus in on, I mean, the one that actually gets a following behind it, that other people see that pattern, other people see that potential. And that may be the idea that actually allows your company to succeed where others haven’t. Um, in terms of entrepreneurship, I mean, mostly on the tech side. You know, most of this is most of the really fast moving ventures have all been in terms of just slicing up the social networking space, smaller and smaller. I mean, I would was in social networking back way back back in 2001, when we’re doing the initial blogging in RSS, and building the initial social networks, so I kind of got the sense of how that kind of marketplace took off. And it was slow, because it took till 2004 before Facebook and beyond that for for Twitter, but using the same mechanisms that were kind of put in place back then. The big I think the next big tech entrepreneurship boom is going to be end up being in the, in the augmented reality space in terms of and the only reason I see that say that because that’s always been a you know, technology on the come and it’s always, you know, on the way towards us is that I’m getting a real sense of what that would look like and how that would add value through playing some you know evergreen games that allow you to heavily mob them. So I mean, I don’t know if you guys ever played, say Fallout or Skyrim. I mean, they’re open world games and they allow mods to, you know, modifications to be developed in the kind of open source community. And even though those games are old, been out for years, there’s dozens of new mods out every day. And what they allow you to do is they allow you to change everything, you know, from the character’s appearance to the, to the environment, to the, to the voices to the even that kind of the feel of the environment around you, the music, the background, everything is changeable, everything is modifiable. And if you project that out into the kind of AR world that we’re right on the edge of of hitting, is that allowing you to modify everything about your world, add objects that a decor, sunlight on a cloudy day, add environmental details and add information to everything is it is it like an amazing transformation that’s going to, you know, make this whole thing explode. So, you know, all of the dislocation that we’re going through now with with with just social networking is going to be you know, cubed when we get to that, and that’s going to come faster than we most people anticipate.

Simone Cicero:
That sounds sounds like I cyberpunk visual right?

John Robb:
Well, it’s just it’s just your environment and then you add info. So you know you’re you’re looking at, you’re looking at you know, say your living room, and you want it to be sunny. When you can make it sunny. You know, if you wanted to, you want to change the colors on your wall, you want to change your, your decor, you can do that. I mean, you can modify your entire environment, you can modify the people that you interact with, you can change their looks, you can change how they talk. It’s everything is actually something you can actually potentially manipulate. I stayed in the game, the game is when you when you actually play these games and you start modifying things and you start to tweak them and you get to the things that you like, I mean, being able to change everything in your visual and auditory environment is amazing. It’s absolutely nuts. And you can only see that by doing that in the game. And projecting out that that’s, we’re very close to doing that and to the world around us. So entrepreneurship, if you’re looking for places to go that this is this is like three or four years before you that starts to hit.

Simone Cicero:
And what do you think in terms of, you know, in terms of instabilities and risks factors that that we can imagine now if we think about, for example, the issues related to resources, you know, all the potential issues related, for example, to climate change, disruptions to agriculture or water cycles or even supply chains. So when I’m thinking about this new risk factors, how they can impact this place of organizing, you know, giving for granted that we’re gonna still be able to leverage on these networks on this communication information networks, but more in terms of the new priorities that such a, such a widespread and new types of risks are going to project on the entrepreneur all the citizens. How do you see that playing out with these new priorities?

John Robb:
Well, it’s um, I don’t think it’s solvable, any of these things are really solvable using the old institutions and decision making mechanisms that we have in place. I mean, networks changes, it could, it allows has the potential for allowing us to operate on a international scale where we have a consensus developed, across nations to do XYZ and actually mobilize the resources to get things done. And we’re not there yet, but we’re moving towards that. But it also because of networks, there are these downsides. You know, these shocks are amplified by these these networks, and it can cause a lot more internal fragmentation as a result. So the biggest challenge we’re facing right now is how do nations stay together? How do they They maintain cohesion in the face of these on ongoing shocks. I mean, this is like for us, it’s the third major shock that we’ve seen at the global level. Since this Millennium started, we had 9/11 we had the financial crisis and now this and we’re really not getting a much better at it, but every time it hits, you know, we’re, we’re being torn apart a little bit more. Yeah, the The downside is right now is trying to figure out how to maintain cohesion. There are a couple different ways to do that, though it you know, there’s this kind of new kind of dynamic that allows you to respond to these changes while maintaining cohesion. And we’re kind of trying to work that out in the US political scene. You know, rather than the standard left and right we have the consensus and disruption: first big consensus action has been responses to pandemic disruption and you can see that every day with Trump — constantly changing the the conversation constantly disrupting the conversations. And then there’s the opposite is would be like a China with its social credit system saying, Okay, let’s use the network to lock down society locked down the socio economic system and that they picked the kind of Confucian model of what the best design society is and they’re locking it down using gamification and corporate participation, and trying to use that as a way to maintain cohesion in this kind of complex and chaotic world that we’re in. We’ll see over the long term which one actually wins. I think the dynamic system actually wins if it can work out some way to institutionalize It’s his processes. Because it, it’s better at discovering information earlier. And we saw the downside in the Chinese system that was very slow to discover the pandemic. I mean, it suppressed the early information back in December, in early January, that could have made it very easy to extinguish. And, you know, that system worked against them. So we’ll see which which system actually works out best. I do know, though, that if you stop the development of a, this kind of mechanism, by you know, preventing data accumulation putting limitations on social networks, you might end up with a system that is not able to handle these shocks. Long term.

Stina Heikkila:
Yeah. It’s good If I can jump in on that, because I had a question on what you were saying before that now we we are not alone in our sort of sense making but because we have access to networks, we, we can seek information at scale from the people we’re connected to. So actually linked to what you said now, I had a question around. So what happens when, for example, the networks themselves start to monitor the information that is being shared, like we’ve seen in some cases or by Twitter and Facebook, because of regulation that is emerging, but there seems to be a sort of gap between the institutions, the markets and the networks, as so if you have any thoughts to share on these kind of risks of — if you want — censoring, or regulating the information flow.

John Robb:
Right. There’s the kind of short term problem with a censoring regulation but I think what you’re referring to maybe longer term is this, this idea of, of AI, and a control over networks. And, I mean, Marshall McLuhan would say that the only way we survive this, this transition, is that we turn our society into a technological artifact. Kind of the Chinese are already doing that, trying to combine AI, and gamification to turn their society into a technological artifact. We have the potential of doing the same here. But it’s, you know, I have no doubt that AI is will play a big part and actually, you know, smoothing this out and making it making it viable. I mean, it you know, already, I mean, all of us. If you’re using social networking at all, you’re interacting with AI’s every day. They’re modifying what you see and what you know how you interact, you know, billions of people are already interacting with the Facebook and Google AIs. And they’re constantly getting better, and they’re getting more information every day. You know, how do we utilize those API’s to make this system this network decision making system work better, without actually blocking it down like the Chinese? I mean, I don’t see that as a viable goal now for us. But there’s also, you know, question of what, whether AI is, or maybe I think AI is going to be in virtually every product in 2030 years. And AI is required data. And the biggest pools of data are social data. And if you block that, like I think Europe is doing now is that that those API’s will be stunted or not developed at all. And then you know, every product you’re developing has to have some kind of AI component in it. Some services that’s been delivered through it. And if you don’t have those AIs, it’s going to kind of start your economy over the long term. We’ll see what happens in the US in terms of data privacy, we may end up going down the same road. So it’ll only end up being China has the has the only really, truly powerfully AIs. So what could AI do for us that is a positive thing is that? Well, I mean, thinking in terms of achieving social goals, it could smooth our interactions. So once we develop a consensus, it can now adjust to the next decision that we have to make in order to make that consensus real and tangible. Yeah, it’s good. Yeah, actually how to use it in a positive way. is really the conversation that that’s going to dominate, you know, discussions, you know, in five to 15 years, we’re still kind of early in that. And the parameters of that have yet to be established. But I don’t see us, you know, going long term without working out those those restrictions and what we want to use them for, they would certainly be, you know, very useful right now, if they were employed to help us with this pandemic response, but so far, they’ve been really just sitting it out, censoring a little bit on the edges, but trying to promote various responses that would actually make this go faster, or our response, you know, amplify our response in a way that would would make this a more successful effort. So we’ve kind of dropped the ball in terms of utilizing AIs in that regard.

Simone Cicero:
My question John that a question or a topic that is coming to my mind that the moment is this friction now between these two layers. One is the national and even supranational, I would say that we see as a potential as a way to enforce coherence. So for example, when it comes to a pandemic, of course, there was some articulation of sense making at the level of these open source networks, the social media and so on, but at the end of the day, you need some kind of national or federal in the case the US response that is that we can call it on three phase, these threat and this kind of threats are going to be more frequent, I guess in the future not just pandemics maybe but also, you know, resource scarcity issues or related to climate change or something like that. And on the other hand that we have this new possibilities our community ladder to get to develop a more resilient strategies and probably these requires reprioritization that we were talking about a few minutes ago and also as an enterpreneur, I may be more concerned in the future about ensuring for example, that my local community can you know, produce food locally or get disconnected from or partially disconnected or more resilient with respect to these interconnected supply chains that we are now using, now these real time supply chains. So I see these these kind of friction: looks like we are a bit lost now between looking for more coherence at the national level in the wake of these new risks coming up, or more resilience or community level. So what do you how do you see that? And especially again, from the perspective of designing organizations, what do you how do you see that playing out?

John Robb:
Well, I mean, I have a rule of thumb with regard to resilience. And you know, my earlier work was focused a lot on resilience and handling the problems associated with system disruption and how easily, you know, the large fragile systems that we’re dependent on, can break down. And, you know, my general philosophy with resilience in the modern world at the individual and the community level is to come connect with the bigger system on your own terms. So what that means is you build enough productive capacity or reserve capacity. So that if the bigger system goes down, you can still function, you can still achieve your goals. But on the other hand, you don’t want to totally disconnect or overproduce at the local level to the point where you are competing with you know, more efficiently produce stuff at the, at the, at the macro level. So, you know, take advantage of, you know, I have a generator at home, a whole house generator, you know, when the power goes out, it goes on. So, I really don’t ever miss a beat with that. But I don’t produce it 24 seven because the energy that I get from the grid is a lot cheaper. And you know, I don’t have to replace the parts on my generator all the time if it was running full steam. And that’s, you know, pretty much the case with everything is that you, you take advantage of all the the benefits of connecting to the larger system, but don’t make yourself dependent on and connect on your own terms. Does that answer the question?

Simone Cicero:
Yes. So if I think about these I can, I can imagine that maybe this is also a new space of organizing. So maybe as entrepreneurs, we can imagine that that could be some strategies in developing these infrastructures that can allow our communities to connect with the system on our own terms, because at the other, you know, at the end of the day, this means essentially producing redundancy and let’s see, and, somehow also in terms of infrastructures that way to create. So I believe when we look into resources to build these infrastructures, it may be may be hard to invest, you know, all these all these resources into creating infrastructure that are not used most of the time.

John Robb:
Oh, yeah, that’s the feat: you don’t do you don’t want to produce so much. You don’t want to build a completely parallel infrastructure. You just want to produce enough emergency capacity that you don’t end up destitute, you don’t end up completely broken. If the system breaks down. You know, it’s like, I maybe it’s because of the way you know, we buy stuff we always have. Somebody mentioned that we always have like two weeks of food in our house. So if stuff shut down tomorrow, we wouldn’t, we weren’t able to buy we at least have two weeks at a minimum. But just how we purchase our it is not two months. It’s not two years, but it’s a two week buffer. So it’s, you know, a short duration buffer that allows you to kind of weather these these breakdowns. And then, you know, it’s like, okay, so for instance, if you can’t go into the office, well, here’s the alternative is that we have the kind of online coordination tools necessary and the procedures necessary to actually work online. So my son’s a programmer down at Code Academy. And, you know, they close their office and they’re not missing a beat, they know how to work online, you know, how to get things done, and it’s not optimal, but the procedures were put in place to make that possible. And then the software was made available and, and and the kind of experience necessary to actually utilize it effectively was there so they weren’t completely shut down when the the shutdown of the office occurred. It’s just it’s it’s not it’s not If you try everything in parallel, you’re you’re going to over the cost structure is so steep, it’s going to bury you in costs and make you incredibly inefficient.

Simone Cicero:
Sure, I’m wondering if any of these investments in creating these resilience essentially, in creating this redundant systems that can protect us from shocks, at the end of the day, it means that we will have less energy or less resources to invest in things such as you know, the latest technological gadgets or the latest digital experiences like you know, traveling with Airbnb ease or, or I don’t know, maybe, you know, there’s a platform this weeks that is making grounds. It’s a platform for connecting celebrities to people so that you can have a celebrity to make a birthday wish to your relatives. For example. It’s called Cameo So I think, you know, maybe in the future, we will have to invest energy and resources, in building resilient infrastructures, and, and all this, you know, kind of pointless services and gadgets. And maybe I’m going to be no more in our priority list. And somehow would it mean that we need to expect some kind of reconfiguration in terms of priorities for citizens, and therefore also for entrepreneurs?

John Robb:
Yeah. Well, the beauty of moving towards a more of an information environment is that, you know, when things change and things change constantly and in a complex environment, I mean, think about it back even two months ago, would you even imagine that you were exactly in the situation you are in right now in the world has changed. I mean, really, really quickly, and it’s changing daily. And in amazing ways, I mean, amazingly bad in many instances but, but as that changes there, the beauty about moving towards more of an information economy is that, that those services and those ideas and those entrepreneurial fixes those things that that add value to people’s lives can roll out really quickly. So taking advantage of that, that the instant change in demand has never been more more possible than today, you know, rolling out that new service that that nobody would have paid attention to two weeks ago, or three weeks ago, and that would have been lost in the noise and all of a sudden becomes a hot thing because it solves this specific problem or adds value to lives that are that are have been disconnected as a result of this. So yeah, that kind of that kind of speed. You know, and then it it all accelerates when they do that whole at at that AR component is because you just you can start modifying environment. Very, very quickly and the speed of the change is just amplified is that more of the things that we interact with on every you know, everyday basis will all be informational in interchangeable and modifiable it’ll surround us surround our visual environment, an auditory environment. And the things that we have the physical things will change at a slower rate. They’ll be more you know, they’ll kind of fold down into the infrastructure.

Simone Cicero:
I’m starting to connect with is this idea of AR because it’s some kind of new layer of experience that is extremely resource light. And so it looks like it’s more apt for for the future that we can expect in terms of relationship with resources and changes. So thanks very much. This was a very illuminating comment, I believe.

John Robb:
Oh, yeah, you know, I didn’t really see it fully I thought I saw it. You know what the potential was before and then I then I, when I saw it working in the game, and I saw the number of modifications flowing out that did, you know, changed everything, it changed all the interaction that you had, and how that could be applied to life. on a day to day basis. It was like, Wow, it became so apparent that that was going to be it. It’s kind of like, I wrote a report back in 96. I was at Forrester, I was a Forrester internet analyst back in 95. For them, and maybe one of the few in the world that were doing it full time. And I wrote a report in 96 called personal broadcast networks. And it was apparent to me that, you know, he’s kind of describing what the social networking space would look like, but it was 96. And people are like, looking at me, like, are you crazy, but it was like really, really apparent that people would want to publish out pictures and text in a way that can then be subscribed to by others, and then they would network that and you’d take the stuff that you were subscribing to. And you’d add value to that and publish it out with with comments and things like that. And then that kind of network made so much sense. And so you know, it’s like when the light goes on, you see it, it’s like, wow. So anyways, that’s just my thinking process. Sorry about that.

Stina Heikkila:
Yeah, I was reading something the other day. And in this book that is a future fiction book on imagining cities being run by different companies, and they were talking about his voice programmed cities, and it seems tangent to what you’re talking about. So do you’d be able to sort of by the data, what you say, your surroundings would change because someone is capturing that data and somehow transforming it into a physical or a virtual reality somehow,

John Robb:
right? And it’s depends on your mods that you you want You add it probably be the cruder form like we do, you know, it’s like back when the difference between people who have PCs, you know, back in the early 2000s, and people were trying to go on the smartphone route is the PCs allowed a lot more modifications and a lot more nuanced use. And then the people were using smartphones, which are basically, you know, portable PCs didn’t have that level of control. Everything was packaged. So they were buying, you know, they’re more accessing services. So it’s a kind of, yeah, yeah, the voice stuff is probably going to end up being more of the mass version of it. And the, you know, where the services are kind of layered on and, and, you know, you get kind of like a soup to nuts solution for this or that and then, you know, you’ll share it with you know, 10s of millions of other people. So, it’s kind of it thinking it through on that is there’s gonna things are going to change really quickly. And you can see, you know, everyone holed up in their houses right now you know that how that actually would sell right now if it was available just for the change just for the variety. And in you know if you can change your environment constantly, it makes, you know, staying in one physical environment a lot less of a negative. You know what I mean?

Stina Heikkila:
Yeah. I had another question as well regarding the entrepreneurial space. And also because of something I was reading about the energy question and how integrated our value chains are that you would actually be difficult at the moment for Europe to gear up, for example, in solar energy, because many of the components come from China, and because of these disruptions, and so I was wondering what you think in terms of the potential of thinking in terms of a circular economy and if there would be, if you see a lot of potential in, in that space, like we have limited resources, and with these needs being pressing and, and trade being disrupted, if you if you have thought about that potential

John Robb:
The downside of globalization right. So it’s a, the problems with being dependent on countries that could just like disappear or regions that could just disconnect from you and then leave you stranded. And that’s going to be your learning process. I mean, I think most nations right now, for instance, in medic medical manufacturing, we found that 95% of our masks were produced in China. And we only produced 5% domestically. And that kind of shock, hopefully, you know, will kind of send the signal to the least the national governments that they should do more of the central production locally. An area or in region so that when things got bad that they were able to, you know, have something to boot up something to, you know, build upon, it may not be all of the production because it’s not the most efficient. But I think the way this the global system is set up, the markets are set up, but I don’t think we’re going to see a move away from the most efficient supplier for most stuff. But that the amount of locally or domestically or regionally produced things in within certain categories will be should be increased in order just to you know, provide that kind of “connect on your own terms” capability where if you do have to ramp it up like we are right now in masks, since we’re not getting any from China anymore. Is that you have something to build on.

Stina Heikkila:
yeah, yeah, sure.

Simone Cicero:
Well, it looks like john from this interview. That is, I think We are getting we’re getting to the last bits. But it looks like you’re you pointing out the future where basically, we need to factor in, in a better way, fat tail risks somehow. And from what I understand from this conversation, it’s also an open question maybe how these institutions are going to interplay. So these four stages that four layers that you mentioned at the start, the tribes, the institutions, the markets, and the networks are going to coexist. That’s my, my feeling, you know, after this conversation, but we don’t know yet. What responsibility and what I would say what function they will have in society. And now they are going to interplay we don’t know yet am I right?

John Robb:
That’s correct. I’m still trying to find ways to formalize and modify networks in a way that, you know, that they could so they can integrate, integrate into the existing decision making systems and we’re still figuring out what they’re good for. I mean, you and I might see that, you know, three of us may see the value in utility and using networks, but it’s not really quite, I’m not really quite sure that most people do yet. And how to get them to participate in a way that that’s positive. I mean, it I mean, there’s so many ways that networks changes, it’s just like, you know, I did a couple reports on on now, how it you know, social networking, uses a lot of empathic language and creates kind of tribalism and, and that, you know, a lot of what we’re conveying on social networks is often emotively loaded and that people see what we’re we’re talking about. And they see patterns of activity or behavior that they can condemn. Based on that, you know, there’s emotionally laden words, and there’s a lot of us versus them, that that easily to construct online using social networking, and pattern matching. And that in the extreme end could end up owing a lot of extremist violence. Because when you start to build tribalism, and tribalism is built through empathic language, you know, somebody is hurting one of us that that can yield negative results. So, I mean, we still have to work through all of this stuff, but you know, it’s a it’s a, it’s a lot. It’s gonna be a lot of studying and a lot of experience. It’s going to have to be developed over time that you know, and how it changes us and you know, it’s like… geez, it’s kind of a non sequitur is the idea that you ever heard Marshall McLuhan say, we become a global village. Okay, so it’s not really Global Village is global villagers. Right, is that you go back to the kind of old villager kind of way of looking at things and everyone’s interested in everyone else’s business. And they’re very judgmental. And, you know, they, they are sometimes very bloody minded because everyone is like, packed cheek to jowl, you know, really closely. And when other people talk, and other people say things that are really contrary to what you believe to be true, it also it can seem so personal because it’s like, delivered right to you. It’s on your phone, it’s like right in front of you. Coming from your network. You know, that’s, that’s a lot of the things that we’re gonna have to figure out how to tolerate and how to you know, through, you know, new mechanisms of thinking that will allow us to fully utilize a tool without going crazy.

Simone Cicero:
It’s like after all these centuries, we still didn’t figure out how to relate with technology, you know, techniques to quote, you know, to piggyback on the question concerning technology, that is such a whole topic of exploration and compensation for philosophy. It’s, it looks like to me that we’re living through a world where we are extremely narcissistic, extremely powerful as individuals, where technology connects all of us and we don’t have answers, and we don’t have the answers yet. So it’s an extremely challenging getting that also, sometimes scary, but also sometimes very, very, you know, open and potentially transformative perspective, I would say,

John Robb:
Yeah, it’s true. It’s rewiring us I mean, it’s changed the way we think and that’s the electronic technologies are and and printing. We’re very profound in that regard. I mean, the physical changes like cars and automobiles and things like that. And airplanes mean they change the way we organize society, but they weren’t as traumatic. When you start rewiring the way the brain works. Like what we’re seeing now with the Internet and social networking, it’s it’s, it’s it’s affecting how you think. That’s it. That’s about as traumatic as it can get. Right. And but most people don’t even think that they’re actually being changed, but they are. They are being rewired

Simone Cicero:
Yeah, yeah. Maybe at the end of this conversation that our listeners will need to get back to study a little bit Marshall McLuhan’s work. I think that was there could be a good suggestion.

John Robb:
Well, it’s easy to misinterpret. I mean, I did a report, it’s free up on my thing. And on my Patreon, but, you know, it’s at least what I got out of it was that, that the key things were were being rewired. And here’s what that feels and this is what that means and that we are headed towards, you know, some kind of technological artifact that will instantiate, you know, the kind of mechanisms that for how that network works that will, you know, carry us into the future to allow us to, to kind of optimize how network decision making works at a societal level at a global level. And that allows it to be incorporated into the other decision making systems that we have.

Simone Cicero:
Definitely, definitely. I think to close this conversation on this note, and I think it my feeling is, the future is pretty open ended, right, John?

John Robb:
Yeah, it’s definitely open ended. It’s what we make of it though. And, you know, you got to accept the changes and, you know, make them your own.

Simone Cicero:
Thanks very much, John, once again, for the conversation. First, before closing a tab would love if you can point our listeners to where they can find more for your work.

John Robb:
Well, I have a Patreon it’s John Robb, you know, at Patreon, it’s the global gorillas report, which is my whole global girls blog. And, you know, I just I put up a little, a little bit of barrier because I didn’t want to get swarmed with people who are just kind of wrecked the kind of community that I’m trying to develop. But right now I’m doing a pandemic 2020 paper, which is pretty much every day I’m updating it with new insights into pandemic response, things are changing so quickly. People seem to like that.

Simone Cicero:
That’s it. Thanks very much for your contribution, John, and I am sure our listeners are going to enjoy this conversation as we did. Oh, thank you very much.

John Robb:
Yep. But nice meeting you. Stina.

Stina Heikkila:
Likewise, thank you so much.

John Robb:
All right. With take care of thanks again

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