WEBVTT - The Behavior Emerges 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.400 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.560 --> 0:00:14.840 Forward Thinking. Hi there, everyone, and welcome to Boards Thinking, 0:00:14.920 --> 0:00:17.520 the podcast that looks at the future and says, now 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:19.840 it's all right, It's okay, and you may look the 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:22.120 other way. We can try to understand the New York 0:00:22.160 --> 0:00:25.880 Times effect on man. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren voc Obama, 0:00:25.960 --> 0:00:30.240 and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey, Joe, Yeah, why are there 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:33.479 so many lol cats on the Internet? I don't know. 0:00:33.640 --> 0:00:36.120 Why are there so many lol cats? L Lauren, you 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:39.519 do social media, you do the stuff. Where do all 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:44.600 the loll cats come from? Whom? Well, Joe? When when 0:00:44.640 --> 0:00:48.519 an internet and an Internet user love each other very much? Um, 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:54.959 lol cats happens, happen apparently, so so whole letters of them. Yeah. 0:00:55.040 --> 0:00:59.400 Then we're using low cats as an example of something 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:03.320 that that many people refer to as a meme. It's 0:01:03.400 --> 0:01:08.200 a kind of a very basic idea, a germ of 0:01:08.200 --> 0:01:12.440 an idea that can evolve and transform over time. It 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:17.040 gets spread around kind of like uh, you know, really 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:21.760 bad flum in many ways. In fact, it's also very 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:25.480 similar to the concept of going viral. To continue with 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:29.880 the illness theme, but the idea of things things spreading 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:34.240 across the internet. This is one example of something that 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:37.640 we want to talk about today called emergence. Yeah. So 0:01:37.680 --> 0:01:40.720 if you look at an individual meme like a low cat, 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:43.119 a low cat is part of what we might call 0:01:43.240 --> 0:01:48.360 a meme plex, which is a complex system that displays 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:52.600 what we would term emergent behavior. Okay, so what exactly 0:01:52.960 --> 0:01:57.520 is emergent behavior? Emergent behavior is a really interesting way 0:01:57.600 --> 0:02:02.520 of describing how complexity or rises in systems. Okay, okay, 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:05.480 so think about it like this, Um, imagine a flock 0:02:05.520 --> 0:02:09.799 of birds. You've probably seen birds flocking before, like when 0:02:09.800 --> 0:02:12.359 they go into a big spiral, you know, and they're 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:16.239 all moving and you see the cloud of birds undulating 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:18.080 in the sky. So we're talking about like a flock 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:21.440 of sparrows as opposed to like the v formation of geese. Right, 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:25.560 all right, how does that flock of birds decide how 0:02:25.600 --> 0:02:28.760 to move? That's an excellent question. Obviously they have a 0:02:29.160 --> 0:02:31.960 foreman r Right. You seem to think, well, maybe there's 0:02:32.040 --> 0:02:34.840 like one bird that moves first, and the other birds 0:02:34.880 --> 0:02:38.800 follow that bird and the general bird. Yeah, the birds 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:42.160 don't have a leader the way we would describe how 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:46.720 these birds flock and create these beautiful complex patterns is 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:50.799 the concept of emergence, and what that means is that 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:56.600 it's a complex pattern that's unpredictable, that's created by individual 0:02:56.720 --> 0:03:01.880 agents following local rules. So the way birds create a 0:03:01.960 --> 0:03:05.959 flocking pattern like that is that each one individually has 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:08.840 no idea that it's flocking, and it has no idea 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:12.760 of how to create a flock. It just knows that. 0:03:12.880 --> 0:03:15.720 Well when the person, when the bird flying next to 0:03:15.760 --> 0:03:19.240 me gets x number of inches close, I move in 0:03:19.280 --> 0:03:23.080 the other direction, and I follow the bird in front 0:03:23.120 --> 0:03:26.280 of me, and to say, if there is a predator 0:03:26.320 --> 0:03:30.239 approaching or some other stimulus, we shift in in this direction. 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:38.720 And surprisingly enough, if you just get enough individuals acting 0:03:38.760 --> 0:03:42.360 on those rules, these crazy patterns emerged. Right. So the 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:44.600 same sort of thing is true in schools of fish 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:47.480 exactly where you'll see an enormous school of fish all 0:03:47.560 --> 0:03:51.480 moving as if it's one body, and it's not that 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:53.600 there is Just like with the birds, there's not a 0:03:53.680 --> 0:03:56.360 leader fish that every other fish is taking its cues 0:03:56.400 --> 0:03:59.720 off of. It's all behaving this this what if you 0:03:59.760 --> 0:04:01.480 were to boil it way down, if you were able 0:04:01.560 --> 0:04:03.720 to strip away the complexity, you would see that there 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:07.000 are these basic rules that underlie the system. It's just 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:09.280 that when you get all those different individuals together and 0:04:09.360 --> 0:04:13.760 you have the actual environment playing a part, those those 0:04:14.640 --> 0:04:19.279 usually fairly simple rules lead to this huge amount of complexity. 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:23.680 The other thing about how emergent systems behave um is 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:26.719 that one tends to say that they're greater than the 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:31.320 some of their parts. And what that means, like how 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:34.960 I just affirmed, yeah, doctor, yeah, they're greater than the 0:04:35.000 --> 0:04:38.000 some of their parts. So what that means is that 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:42.160 if you have a bunch of birds, they're not following rules. 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:46.159 Just like every bird move forward six inches, that would 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:48.479 not be an emergent system. That would be a totally 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:53.960 predictable system, right, And the movement of the birds would 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:57.560 be something that we could understand is simple addition of 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:01.599 all of the steps if if this than that. Right. 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:04.840 But the way birds actually flock is they interact with 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:09.640 each other, and this creates massively unpredictable patterns unless you 0:05:09.720 --> 0:05:13.440 have like a very powerful computer model that is simulating 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:16.840 each individual bird. Right. And we can see this not 0:05:16.920 --> 0:05:20.920 just in organic behavior. It comes up in all sorts 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:25.280 of systems. That have uh, layers of complexity to them. Well, yeah, 0:05:25.360 --> 0:05:29.200 you might even say, so, how about a termite mound 0:05:29.640 --> 0:05:33.600 or an ant hill. The mound itself is not living, 0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:37.320 but the mound is an example of emergence because no 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:40.800 single termite knows how to create a mound. There's no 0:05:41.000 --> 0:05:44.920 leader termite telling the other termites what to do. They're 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:48.159 all just following a rule like put a piece of 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:52.680 dirt where something is wet or something like that. And 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:56.880 then you end up with these eight foot tall monstrosities 0:05:56.920 --> 0:05:59.360 that look like something from a sci fi film and 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:01.760 you look at and you think, man, that looks like 0:06:01.800 --> 0:06:04.360 it was built by somebody. You know, it has this 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:08.720 illusion of design. Humans can flock the same way. If 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:10.279 you've ever been in a large crowd of people on 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:12.880 a sidewalk and haven't you know, run smack into anyone 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:15.080 unless you were looking at your smartphone. It's the same 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:17.919 kind of behavior. And uh, and that is not the 0:06:17.960 --> 0:06:20.479 only way that humans use emergence, As it turns out, 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:24.200 What's what's all this stuff about thought? Thought processes? Oh yeah, 0:06:24.200 --> 0:06:27.000 well there are actually so and this is controversial, right, 0:06:27.040 --> 0:06:30.520 we don't know this, but there are plenty of people 0:06:30.600 --> 0:06:34.599 who are consciousness theorists who think that the very idea 0:06:34.680 --> 0:06:38.240 of human consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:42.400 meaning that so the brain is constructed of neurons, has 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:46.520 lots of little neurons, and no single neuron knows how 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:49.560 to create a brain. What it is is that each 0:06:49.600 --> 0:06:53.400 one is following extremely simple local rules, but with enough 0:06:53.440 --> 0:07:00.599 interconnection and feedback and interactivity, they create this aminon that 0:07:00.680 --> 0:07:04.560 we would think of as a mind or consciousness. Interesting, 0:07:04.600 --> 0:07:08.320 so even emergent behavior on an individual basis, showing again 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:11.840 that systems are When we talk about systems, we're not 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:15.760 just talking about a collection of people or animals. We 0:07:15.760 --> 0:07:18.960 could be talking about a system as in and just 0:07:19.040 --> 0:07:21.800 a single person. And it's funny to think about how 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:24.640 there are levels of this. Right. So within a cell 0:07:25.000 --> 0:07:29.080 there is emergent behavior, right because it's individual proteins following 0:07:29.120 --> 0:07:34.040 simple rules of chemistry that interact together to form this 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:37.160 mass pattern known as a cell. And then you group 0:07:37.200 --> 0:07:39.480 all those cells together, and if you buy into the 0:07:40.880 --> 0:07:45.400 emergence theory of consciousness, they can in a brain make consciousness. 0:07:45.640 --> 0:07:48.800 And then you get enough people with consciousness together acting 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:52.560 individually to follow local rules, and they can create mass patterns. 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:55.480 Like One example I found that's interesting is um the 0:07:55.520 --> 0:08:00.000 idea of mosh pits as emergent behavior. You know, nobody 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:04.160 he's controlling the mosh pit. They're just simple rules. I'm 0:08:04.200 --> 0:08:08.920 not kidding. How many mash bits you been in this week? Hey, buddy, 0:08:09.200 --> 0:08:12.200 I went to college in the nineties. Okay, I was 0:08:13.520 --> 0:08:15.760 no I was trying to get out of the pit. Oh, 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:18.720 I see, you're the whimp. I'm the guy. I'm the 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:21.160 guy who I'm the guy who appreciated it when I 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:24.800 didn't have an elbow thrust into my temple. Okay, so 0:08:25.080 --> 0:08:27.400 that's fair. That's a fair point, I think. But I'm 0:08:27.400 --> 0:08:30.440 also a guy who loves punk rock. You did head 0:08:30.440 --> 0:08:33.520 banger hair, didn't you? I did back then? Yeah? Yeah, Well, 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:35.800 first of all, I had hair, and second of all 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:39.040 it was headbanger hair. This is true, his headbanger hair 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:42.600 and emergent behavior. I think it might be a meme. 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:47.559 I can tell you this. It's not emerging anymore. That 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:50.920 ship has sailed. I'm getting back, getting back to actual, 0:08:51.040 --> 0:08:53.680 the actual discussion yet. So you might be wondering, how 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:55.920 does this tie into what we were talking about, which 0:08:55.960 --> 0:08:59.120 was social media and part of that was the discussion 0:08:59.160 --> 0:09:03.440 about how is social media affecting us as society, how's 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:07.720 it affecting us on individual basis? Is it actually rewiring us? 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:09.880 If you've listened to our previous podcast, you heard us 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:13.160 talk all about that theory or that hypothesis I really 0:09:13.160 --> 0:09:16.959 should say, and that uh, and the disagreement that exists 0:09:16.960 --> 0:09:19.840 around that or at least around the the rigorous, rigorous 0:09:19.960 --> 0:09:24.360 scientific evidence that doesn't seem to be there for either side. 0:09:24.400 --> 0:09:28.319 At the moment um, we wanted to talk more about, 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:33.720 well maybe all of that, Uh, all of those concerns 0:09:34.360 --> 0:09:38.560 are ultimately moot. For one thing, this is the world 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:40.920 we live in now, right, I mean that's It's not 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:44.000 like I don't expect us to turn back from right right. 0:09:44.000 --> 0:09:46.200 We're never going to put down Facebook and say, yeah, 0:09:46.240 --> 0:09:48.160 I think we're bored of this now, no more of that. 0:09:49.520 --> 0:09:52.280 But but but something else, I think I think something 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:55.040 else would come along to fill that void or to 0:09:55.160 --> 0:09:57.840 make a new you know, something that we can't even 0:09:57.880 --> 0:09:59.760 think of right now. But it would be the new 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:02.960 thing that would connectivity. Yeah, it would be like if 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:06.360 they decided to take away television in the nineteen sixties. Yeah, 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:12.079 So right. So in one in one sense, the whole 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:16.000 discussion about emergence is really about how it's very possible 0:10:16.080 --> 0:10:19.240 that the way that we use social media and social 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:22.439 networking sites uh and the way that it plays a 0:10:22.520 --> 0:10:26.839 role in our lives, UH, that we've only scratched the surface. No. 0:10:26.960 --> 0:10:28.840 I was going to say that the concept of the 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:32.840 meme comes back to six before social media sites existed. UH. 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:35.480 Fellow named Richard Dawkins wrote a book called The Selfish 0:10:35.520 --> 0:10:38.600 Gene and this this was an entire concept that was 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:42.760 linking um the evolution of culture and pop culture specifically 0:10:42.840 --> 0:10:46.360 to to natural selection in biology. So it was saying 0:10:46.360 --> 0:10:49.440 that the way that genes are selected um and and 0:10:49.640 --> 0:10:53.120 processed over the course of evolution is the same way 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:56.880 that that ideas are selected within culture. Right, Because ideas, 0:10:57.080 --> 0:11:01.280 just like genes, are self replicating and they can change. Right, 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:03.680 Like an idea makes a copy of itself when you 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:06.240 share it with somebody else, But it can also mutate 0:11:06.360 --> 0:11:10.040 due to uh, either either misunderstanding or the person who 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:13.160 receives that idea gene um, you know, changes it in 0:11:13.200 --> 0:11:15.160 some way before they pass it on. Yeah. So in 0:11:15.160 --> 0:11:18.280 a weird way, ideas follow the same mechanics as as 0:11:18.280 --> 0:11:21.959 our genes do. Um. And so when you get enough 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:28.439 ideas churning about in a complex system, you might generate 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:31.720 something that's known as a meme. Plex got it that 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:34.400 it's all these memes interacting. It's kind of like a 0:11:34.440 --> 0:11:39.040 gene pool. And uh and what do you know? That 0:11:39.120 --> 0:11:42.840 idea has been taken to a slightly uh narrow. I 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:45.800 mean you could say everything on the Internet is a meme, 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:47.960 because it's all it's full of ideas. But on the 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:51.400 Internet a meme has come to mean something a little 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:54.680 more specific. Um, it's a what is it? It's a 0:11:54.760 --> 0:11:59.920 It's a visual or aesthetic or or literally share able 0:12:00.280 --> 0:12:03.320 share able note of some kinds, usually usually a pretty 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:06.720 small unit of information. Um. I would say colloquial speaking 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:11.000 that that we when we say meme, we mean you know, um, well, 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:14.240 I mean, okay, it's a trend. It's a trend, and 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:17.760 it's a small amount of information. The format of that 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:20.880 small amount of information doesn't matter. It could be a video, 0:12:21.320 --> 0:12:24.400 it could be an image, it could be text. On 0:12:24.400 --> 0:12:26.960 on Twitter, for example, I would argue that hashtags are 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:30.920 really just a meme enabler. Right. There are people who 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:35.240 will come up with some sort of clever joke or 0:12:35.360 --> 0:12:37.720 some maybe it's not even a joke, it might be 0:12:37.840 --> 0:12:40.880 something very serious, and they do a hashtag to kind 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:45.040 of separate that out from other from from the noise, 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:47.800 if you will, of Twitter, and other people may or 0:12:47.840 --> 0:12:49.360 may not pick up on it. And if they do 0:12:49.440 --> 0:12:51.480 pick up on it, then it really becomes a meme 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:55.679 where other people are taking that, adding to it, changing it, 0:12:55.960 --> 0:12:58.480 transforming it in some way, and passing it on into 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:02.520 a greater network of folks. Yeah. Cool story bro um. 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:07.240 So if you just take uh cats for example, that 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:11.959 probably the internet's favorite meme, right, They're they're big, They're big. Yeah, 0:13:12.040 --> 0:13:17.560 I hear they're big um cats on the internet. What 0:13:17.720 --> 0:13:23.080 is the cat meme plex? Who's controlling it? Cheeseburger? It's 0:13:23.120 --> 0:13:26.960 probably cheeseburgers. Yeah, But but there is no one in 0:13:27.080 --> 0:13:29.800 charge of the of the cat meme plex. I mean 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:32.920 that's probably meme plex probably isn't the right word there, 0:13:32.960 --> 0:13:37.320 but the but there's a living, breathing organism of you know, 0:13:37.800 --> 0:13:40.960 kind of a cat, isn't it. No? No, I mean 0:13:40.960 --> 0:13:43.160 bigger than a cat, like a like like a Kira style, 0:13:43.240 --> 0:13:45.120 like if you've glued a whole bunch of cats together 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:50.840 like that, kind of which reminds me of slime molds. Yeah, yeah, no, 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:53.120 no, no no, slime molds totally go for it. Slime molds 0:13:53.520 --> 0:13:57.079 being a five starum polycephalum um. And these are these 0:13:57.120 --> 0:13:59.640 are single celled organisms. It's almost like I've talked about 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:01.360 slime it's before in front of say a hundred and 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:04.520 seventy children this one time. Um. But that's a story 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:09.200 for another time. Uh uh. Julian Robert over it stuff 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:11.360 to blow your mind, have a really cool podcast episode 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:13.920 about this. But in in brief, these are single celled, 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:19.440 brainless amiba that can that form these colonies, these moving 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:24.760 thinking colonies that um that divert resources to uh to 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:28.920 policing to get bacteria out of there. That will you know, 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:31.680 if if they run out of food in the immediate area, 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:35.280 they will form a little slug like creature and move 0:14:35.520 --> 0:14:39.800 to another location. Um. They also spread out very long 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:42.720 ten drils to discover where food might be. And if 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:46.840 they encounter evidence of a pathway that they've already crossed, 0:14:47.200 --> 0:14:50.720 then instead of expelling more or expending more energy, I 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:53.640 should say, instead of expending more energy in order to 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:58.520 trace that same path again, it won't. Yeah, there's no 0:14:58.600 --> 0:15:04.000 brain there, kind of like lol cats. Lol cats, I 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:05.960 don't know that we can say they don't have a brain. 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:09.640 The interesting interesting thing to me the low cats. The 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:13.400 interesting thing to me is that that one you had 0:15:13.480 --> 0:15:16.960 this original kind of whatever, The original idea was of 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:20.520 the cute kitty cat picture with the funny caption going 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:23.400 on the internet and people thinking it was amusing and 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:28.000 and then sharing it. Then someone said, oh, I should, Uh, 0:15:28.000 --> 0:15:30.600 this would be really funny if I changed the caption 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:32.640 to this, And then they go in and they change 0:15:32.680 --> 0:15:34.520 the caption so it says something else, and then they 0:15:34.520 --> 0:15:37.320 share it, and then someone else says, oh wait, what 0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:39.640 if I took a picture of a totally different cat 0:15:39.840 --> 0:15:42.480 and either put the same caption on or to a 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:45.440 new caption on and it took such a life that 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:48.920 now everyone knows what lol cats are. That if you 0:15:48.960 --> 0:15:51.760 say low cats, everyone who is on the internet for 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:53.360 any length of time is going to be able to 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:57.600 think of an example that meets that that word. And 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:02.720 what's really fun hold them how to make one right? Yeah, 0:16:02.760 --> 0:16:06.000 it's emergent behavior in that sense. So and but we 0:16:06.040 --> 0:16:08.240 see this in lots of different ways. On the Internet. 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:12.680 And the whole point about the social networking uh episode 0:16:12.720 --> 0:16:15.240 was that this is something that's happening right now with 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:18.280 the way we use social networks, and that we can't 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:20.920 predict how that's going to play a part in our 0:16:20.920 --> 0:16:22.640 lives in the future. We just know it'll be a 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:25.200 big part, right, I mean, this is one of the 0:16:25.240 --> 0:16:27.880 things that makes the future of the Internet so exciting 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:32.720 is because it has it has their nodes everywhere. There's 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:36.360 no top down control, nobody's in charge of the Internet, 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:41.400 and the Internet itself and the Web are emergent, right, 0:16:41.480 --> 0:16:44.280 you know what I mean? They are themselves examples of 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:47.720 emergence that are full of smaller examples of emergence. One 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:51.680 great thing that I I don't think I ever would 0:16:51.680 --> 0:16:55.440 have predicted, but in retrospect it seems so obvious is 0:16:55.440 --> 0:16:59.560 the emergence of wikis. I mean, but I mean, put 0:16:59.560 --> 0:17:03.040 me in nineteen seventy and say, I'm I'm working on 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:06.919 our bonnet and you know, we're predicting something like the Web. 0:17:08.000 --> 0:17:11.200 How could I possibly have imagined wikis? I mean, it 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:14.320 seems so obvious now, Like I said, but well, and 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:19.880 these are emergent behaviors because they're created by users. Nobody's 0:17:19.920 --> 0:17:22.240 really in charge, or I guess you can have some editors, 0:17:22.240 --> 0:17:26.000 but that depends on each one. You know, they're they're 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:29.040 perfectly emergent, right and they do have they do have 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:31.560 their own sets of rules in the sense of wikis. 0:17:31.640 --> 0:17:33.800 It may be in this and whatever the rules of 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:36.960 what's permissible to post it may be, or it may 0:17:37.000 --> 0:17:38.560 just be even more simple than that. It may just 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:42.160 be the actual mechanics of the wiki itself, and that 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:44.879 you know, the complexity arises as more and more people 0:17:45.160 --> 0:17:48.320 join and contribute and consume this. Uh. One I think 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:51.320 is interesting is that with the Internet it's even more 0:17:51.359 --> 0:17:55.199 difficult to predict any sort of emergent behaviors than it 0:17:55.240 --> 0:17:59.919 would be in in other systems, because in other system 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:03.480 presumably you would be able to at least determine what 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:07.879 the basic rules are for each individual element that's in 0:18:07.920 --> 0:18:12.479 that system. Right now, we've already established that just because 0:18:12.520 --> 0:18:14.840 you even know all the rules, you can't really know 0:18:14.920 --> 0:18:17.560 what the complexity will be of the overall system, because 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:20.639 the sum the whole is greater than the sum of 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:23.320 its parts. Right And you also on the Internet have 0:18:23.359 --> 0:18:24.879 a have a little bit of doubt about who the 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:27.480 actual participants are going to be because it's it's such 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:29.840 a huge it's such a huge complex system that you know, 0:18:29.840 --> 0:18:31.399 it's not like a flock of birds where you say, oh, 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:34.360 well there's fifteen birds got it well and and there 0:18:34.359 --> 0:18:38.399 there's not the established rules, like we don't have a 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:42.080 set of rules that everyone follows. There are rules within 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:47.080 different groups that are on the Internet that follow you know, 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:49.800 they're mostly you know, things that are they may not 0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:53.240 even be uh vocalized or written down in any way, 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:57.160 but people just come to understand, oh, you don't do 0:18:57.359 --> 0:19:00.240 such and such, even though that's not stay in a 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:04.240 rule anywhere. That's just it's kind of bad protocol or 0:19:04.280 --> 0:19:08.240 it's bad form. For example, like I see this in 0:19:08.240 --> 0:19:12.160 in communities all the time, where someone will post something 0:19:12.440 --> 0:19:16.600 completely innocently or at least seemingly innocently, and then the 0:19:16.680 --> 0:19:19.480 response immediately comes back saying, no, you don't do that here. 0:19:19.520 --> 0:19:22.800 That's not that's not okay, even though that's not explicitly 0:19:22.800 --> 0:19:25.840 said anywhere. This sort of has evolved over time as 0:19:25.840 --> 0:19:28.879 the system has become more complex. Knowing that this is 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:32.159 not something that we want happening here. It happens all 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:36.200 the time in games in particular, But we don't have 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:40.959 an actual uh coda for for rules of the Internet. 0:19:41.000 --> 0:19:42.600 I mean there there are a lot of joke ones 0:19:45.400 --> 0:19:49.160 discuss here. Don't feed the trouble well, you know, but 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:51.640 but there you see them often in groups that are 0:19:53.680 --> 0:19:56.680 for better or worse. The people who who often think 0:19:56.720 --> 0:20:00.000 of themselves as owners of the Internet, like uh forge 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:02.560 Chan and Anonymous are two good examples. They have their 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:06.199 own sets of rules, most of which are jokes, not 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:08.879 all of which are, but most of them are. And 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:12.679 uh in a way, the rules themselves have become a 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:17.199 meme and the whole ideas it's fun to continuously add 0:20:17.240 --> 0:20:20.960 and tweak and change them. Um usually it's just adding. 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:23.439 A lot of them don't like it when you change 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:24.800 one of the rules, and they pay a lot of 0:20:24.880 --> 0:20:29.320 attention to that. But uh, you know, they're they're not 0:20:29.440 --> 0:20:33.480 particularly they're not the rules that you're speaking from experience. 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:37.480 Are you one who has tried to nail some precepts 0:20:37.520 --> 0:20:40.320 to the door of the anonymous Cathedral? Not so much that, 0:20:40.359 --> 0:20:44.040 But I've seen, I've seen what happens if someone posts 0:20:44.080 --> 0:20:46.840 like the rules to the Internet, but they either didn't 0:20:46.880 --> 0:20:49.439 copy and paste it, or they copied and pasted it, 0:20:49.640 --> 0:20:52.720 copied it from someplace that had the rules quote unquote wrong. 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:56.399 And then I've seen what they Oh yeah, no, no, 0:20:56.600 --> 0:20:59.200 I I look. I I write about this stuff and 0:20:59.240 --> 0:21:02.120 I blog about it, podcast about so I've I've been 0:21:02.200 --> 0:21:05.720 in these communities. I feel like a sociologist who's hung 0:21:05.720 --> 0:21:09.080 out with the Hell's Angels or something. But I've been 0:21:09.080 --> 0:21:12.280 in these communities in the mist, cats in the miss 0:21:12.840 --> 0:21:18.000 But it's they definitely, they definitely take their largely unspoken 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:22.879 rules very seriously. Um and uh, or maybe it's not 0:21:22.920 --> 0:21:25.639 seriously at all, And that's the problem. It's kind of 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:30.760 hard to say when they certainly react with enthusiasm if 0:21:30.800 --> 0:21:34.000 you were to break one of their rules. Well, here's 0:21:34.000 --> 0:21:36.560 something I'm interested in asking, what are some of the 0:21:36.600 --> 0:21:42.159 most interesting emergent behaviors you've observed on the Internet and 0:21:42.440 --> 0:21:45.120 in social networking. Well, I mean, I can start off 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:46.840 with one of my own, but sure, go ahead. Well, 0:21:46.880 --> 0:21:49.639 I mean, I think one of the most interesting things 0:21:49.880 --> 0:21:55.119 is um again, the unpredictable way that especially Twitter, but 0:21:55.280 --> 0:21:58.919 social media in general has been used to spread news 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:03.520 and information um like breaking news or like when there's 0:22:03.560 --> 0:22:06.800 a disaster when things break on Twitter before the news 0:22:06.880 --> 0:22:10.000 stations pick them up. Yeah, and it's so interesting to 0:22:11.480 --> 0:22:17.680 watch the way that the message proceeds through the Twitter spheres, say, 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:21.200 and and the way I think it's really interesting is that, Um, 0:22:21.280 --> 0:22:24.440 so it's not just I would say it is emergent, 0:22:24.560 --> 0:22:28.480 because it's not just a straightforward passing along of information 0:22:28.640 --> 0:22:31.119 like copy paste pass it along. I mean that that 0:22:31.160 --> 0:22:34.199 would be fairly predictable. What it tends to be I 0:22:34.240 --> 0:22:37.440 think is that there is some of that, but then 0:22:37.480 --> 0:22:41.919 there's also a lot of passing of information by way 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:45.600 of commentary on the information, and then there's a kind 0:22:45.600 --> 0:22:51.880 of cannibalistic message creation where the new message that's being 0:22:51.960 --> 0:22:57.720 shared becomes mainly the commentary from Twitter on the original 0:22:57.840 --> 0:23:00.480 piece of information. Yeah, I will frequently, I mean, because 0:23:00.480 --> 0:23:04.000 because you know, I check into Twitter maybe once every 0:23:04.200 --> 0:23:08.240 thirty minutes, which sounds really a lot now that I 0:23:08.280 --> 0:23:11.240 say that outline. That's great, um but but but you know, so, 0:23:11.240 --> 0:23:14.520 so I'll check in and I'll suddenly see half of 0:23:14.520 --> 0:23:17.720 my Twitter feed exploding about something, and It'll be Yeah, 0:23:17.720 --> 0:23:20.880 all of this oblique commentary or snarky commentary more more 0:23:20.920 --> 0:23:22.960 likely about some other thing that's happened, and I go 0:23:23.000 --> 0:23:25.640 in Google whatever the key word is to figure out 0:23:25.640 --> 0:23:28.320 what the actual news story is. Because from from those 0:23:28.359 --> 0:23:31.720 initial posts, I'm like, well, people are upset, but this 0:23:31.840 --> 0:23:35.000 must be a Tuesday. And it's like the story becomes 0:23:35.080 --> 0:23:39.000 the conversation about the story, like that's what the story is. Well, 0:23:39.760 --> 0:23:43.159 and that became really evident during the Arab Spring. I 0:23:43.160 --> 0:23:47.920 mean that was the story was how social media allowed 0:23:48.359 --> 0:23:51.800