Building ways to navigate our increasingly complex world
In the past industry age, things were binary. It was a world of competitors and collaborators, of workers and employers, of capitalists and communists. The resulting society was rather simple to navigate by journalists, politicians, academics, and people in general.
The Internet empowered us to build networks like never before, turning our societies into complex systems and eradicating the old binary landscape. Google and Apple are competing fiercely in the smartphone market, but also collaborating by providing hardware, software, and data to each other’s platforms. Everyone can easily design and fabricate a range of products and services, so it no longer makes sense to talk about workers and employers in a binary sense. And in politics, the old binary ideologies are washing away all over the world and exchanged by a mixed bag of interests.
So a binary mindset will no longer suffice. We can only make sense of the world around us by viewing it systemically. The challenge is that our systems are so complex, that it’s impossible for anyone to grasp. We have to extend our human capabilities with technology and build a way to better visualize the increasingly complex systems of the world. Below are three inspirational insights I picked from the Duckling network. Find more here.
Hiroshi Ishii: Understanding information by making it tangible
View it in 2 minutes: Historically scientists build tangible models and gadgets to understand vast amounts of information. Then we started creating digital data-visualization. The third age of interfaces is when digital and tangible interfaces merge. View insight
Ken Perlin: Augmented and virtual reality is just the beginning
View in 3 minutes: In the past years augmented and virtual reality changed the way, we convey information. But it’s just a simple beginning. Mixed reality will enable us to seamlessly switch between various levels of information placed on top of our physical world. It’s going to affect our interactions and alter our brains. View insight.
Ethan Zuckerman: Six or seven things media can do for Democracy
View it in 1 minute: It’s widely accepted that Facebook and the rest of social media have changed the mechanics of Democracy, and most observers find it to be in a negative and problematic way. In this piece, Ethan Zuckerman, Director of the MIT Center for Civic Media, argues that there are also ways social media can enhance democracy. View insight
Become a part of the Duckling network:
This is just a small taste of the Duckling network. Get the app to take the journey of topics, insights, and people, and to find and share your own insights. Get Duckling here. And learn about creating insights here.
