1 + 1 = 3

Value in excess of the parts:
Experience and knowledge exchange in the information age.

It was 2006 and I was flying to Paris to meet an extended branch of the family I hadn’t met before. At the time I was perma-lancing as the head of the creative technology group at BBDO’s digital arm, AtmosphereBBDO. By then I had been a tech entrepreneur, an early employee at some pioneering New York companies like On2.com and PlumbDesign, and had also been involved in a peer-to-peer startup, DataSynapse. While not a world-class engineer, I was abstractly inclined enough to understand the principles in the work I’d been exposed to: chiefly ideas from complexity science and conceptual frameworks of how to facilitate adaptive and fluid exchange in network models. That the structure of the network determines and constrains behavior is fascinating and real. We can see it in social systems, where the quality of one’s personal and social network often acts as both determinant and constraint on potentiality.

When I landed in France I was to meet my young cousin, Idriss, studying to be a cognitive scientist at Ecole Normale Superiore. Over email exchanges it became quickly obvious we shared a natural affinity for art, film, literature, and the changing shape of the world as brought about by technology.

Idriss waited for me in the subway station. I remember he was in a suit and had been sitting in the subway tunnels of Paris for nearly 3 hours, unsure of my exact arrival. We hugged, both excited and grateful to share all the thoughts roaming around in our heads. When we finally got to his campus, the same halls that Sartre had once roamed, I opened a marble notebook and showed him an idea that on the face of it felt so simple, yet was a very fundamental way of perceiving real world interaction, knowledge, network effects, information, human relationships, you name it. It’s a concept whose spirit says that the whole is in excess of the parts, that when two molecules of hydrogen are mixed with oxygen, water is formed. When two human beings connect in a unique and special way, love can be born. Love is in excess of the individuals, yet the individuals remain as participants and constant sculptors and influencers of the love. I showed Idriss a simple proof:

1 + 1 = 1 & 1 & (1&1)

Nothing was lost in the addition of two distinct units while a new unit was created that was composed of both entities. In essence, 1 + 1 = 3.

I have spent a lot of personal time inspired by the search for models or algorithmic truths that could leverage the benefits of the virtual eco-system which defines the information age. While matter constructs the physical world, the virtual world’s eco-system is constructed by bits of information. Reducing a system to its most minute units of information is a flattening process akin to visualizing the virtual world as a Lego collection with infinite blocks and near endless reducible parts, and thus potential for exponential growth and variation.

The physical world’s exchange and trade opportunities are confined to time and space, and thus have adopted raw materials and monetary currency as the mechanisms of exchange to determine and create value. In consequence, civilization has adopted access to monetary and material assets as its mode of survival. The virtual world’s construct as a system of information abstraction emboldens the opportunity for a new form of currency, one not modeled on the constraints imposed by the laws of scarcity in the physical world. One idea for this currency is knowledge.

Seeing knowledge as a currency plugs into the long view of the evolution of human thought through the ages. While humanity has hung tightly onto resources and gold for power (often slowing down the flood of knowledge in the process, as a strategy for retaining power), the hidden driver of civilization has always been the discovery and dissemination of knowledge and information, of ideas that reshaped our understanding and potential for living. If you’re reading this and thinking, “baloney, technology pushes civilization forward”, then I urge you to remember that information, knowledge, and ideas all precede and give birth to technology.

A simple way of viewing the key difference of exchange between the current system of capital and material currency, and knowledge as a currency is summarized as follows: in exchanges of capital and material, you give me $1, I give you something in return. We both have replaced our original asset with something new — we have lost something in order to gain something. In the exchange of knowledge nothing is lost in the transfer. I share knowledge with you, you share knowledge back, and we both now have retained our knowledge while adding the other’s. It’s positive sum, versus zero sum. Further, in considering the nature of knowledge’s makeup, every unit of knowledge is composed of all knowledge that preceded it, and thus is perpetually composed of it. In this sense, we can view the growth of knowledge as exponential and its composition as a fractal.

This is what took me to 1 + 1 = 3. It may sound trite or overly simplistic, but I feel the spirit of this equation is what defines the possibility of knowledge exchange and the possibility of seeking new frontiers, both real and virtual. This equation has been in my mind for over a decade, purely derived from an intuitive sense that 1 + 1 = 2 is a very limited way of seeing the world. It’s a material equation that does not measure up to the dynamic nature of human exchange. The implication of 1 + 1 = 2 is that the original units of composition are lost when they are joined, or that they do not create more value than the sum of their parts. While in a fluid system, such as life, such literalism is rarely the case. Below, let’s go deeper into our relationship example that eventually brought me to 1 + 1 = 3:

1- Human Relationships: For the sake of this example, let’s stick with relationships between two lovers (this concept applies to all relationships). While the romantic in us may long for a complete merging of two individuals into a cohesive unit, this type of thinking could result in personal neglect based on the impossibility of physically merging two bodies into one. Thus, the “relationship”, in actuality, is an entity created in abstract while the two original distinct bodies (and individual experiences) remain ever-present. This can be seen as a relational field, an energy body. The human being, when adding a lover to his/her life, now has a new entity — the relationship with the other. Each person’s experience of their own lives is retained, plus they now have the experience of the relationship. These three entities all exist together, yet seperate and create their own network constraints and models, such as the idea that interdependence fosters independence. Even as perceived by the outside world, there are always the lovers as individuals, and the lovers as a couple. Human relationships are always the units plus the whole. 1 + 1 = 3.

I find it’s implications profound. So did Idriss, as he’s recently begun incorporating 1 + 1 = 3 it into his presentations.

Let’s go a little further with an example of knowledge exchange, by joining the understanding of how to create fire with the knowledge of how to excavate steel. By joining these two knowledge sets we get the creation of all kinds of tools and instruments, the birth of the idea and need for a furnace, among other things:

Knowledge of creating and sustaining a fire. (1)

+

Knowledge of excavating steel. (1)

=

Idea for a mechanism to control fire and manipulate the shape of steel (3)

+

Design and construct a furnace (>)

+

Making tools (>)

Making weapons (>)

Making building support systems (>)

….

This inverse Pandora’s box creates entire worlds of creation and discovery based on the possibilities brought forth by associating two complimentary knowledge sets and creating a new set of knowledge. In this case knowledge is:

1 + 1 >= 3

Looking at the current paradigms of our world we can see there is a beautiful clash between the opposing spirits of hierarchal control and order, versus peer-to-peer fluid ordering; between linear deduction and non-linear mapping; between analog exchange and digital sharing. Civilization grows slowly compared to the growth of knowledge over an individual’s lifetime. This is often true because the institutions that control and foster civilization have obtained and retained their control in the hierarchal paradigm of power based on zero sum exchange. By absorbing and controlling vast sums of monetary and material resources, institutions and large actors have the ability to deeply impact the complexion and growth of a civilizational eco-system because the accumulation of asset value to exchange with their vast sums is difficultly obtained. The structure of institutional networks determines the constraints of our system — of civilization. The digital canvas, with knowledge as a currency, operates under a different paradigm and eventually the physical world’s hierarchal paradigm will need to reflect the digital experience of sharing without a loss between individuals.

It’s easy to forget the possibility for growth when encountering an “other”. Using creativity as our main tool, inquiry into an “other” will reveal knowledge that when combined with our own, spawns something new, something unforeseen. Sharing our knowledge emboldens collaborative learning, as it did with myself and Idriss, when he used this basic concept 7-years after first hearing it from me, and now I’ve incorporated some of his work on the knowledge economy into my own thinking.

Many believe mastering the knowledge (currently “sharing”) economy is the key paradigm to forecast and shape the future constraints and possibilities of our systems. How we learn and share our knowledge has ramifications on global peace and (g)local cohesion. Attempts to transform the knowledge economy into a capital economy could create cognitive dissonance and have unforeseen consequences, as is already being discovered in the IP wars and secrecy.

I’ll leave you with some food for thought as expressed in three over-simplified equations solely geared towards knowledge set exchanges:

1 + 1 <= 1

Cognitive dissonance (or worse). When one active knowledge set erases the other active knowledge set. Examples are in war, one-sided accounts of history, the Church imprisoning Galileo, etc. This could also occur when a knowledge set proves another knowledge set wrong. Nothing is created, but incomplete or false knowledge is stopped from disseminating.

1 + 1 = 2

Hierarchal instruction, top-down, dissemination of knowledge. A teacher (active knowledge set) instructs a purely listening student (non-active knowledge set — a receiver) who doesn’t share back with the teacher. Now, a single knowledge set has literally duplicated itself.

1 + 1 >= 3

A true knowledge exchange. Collaborative and mutually sharing. Two active knowledge sets share and create a new knowledge set(s). This is iterative and spawns rapid growth potential for new discovery and insights that are in excess of their parts.

* For less philosophical arguments of this idea, Set Theory will provide more insight.