21st Century Complexity

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened. (Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

Last week I was hugely privileged to attend the 2024 Complexity Global School for Emerging Political Economies, a collaboration between la Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Colombia, and the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), USA.

The school wants to attract:

Brave thinkers willing to explore new ideas about economics, policy, and governance. Early career change-makers from civil society and early career scholars.

I attended on the invitation of our newest Intersticia Fellow, Juan Pablo Castilla who is Teaching Co-Ordinator of TREES (Teaching and Research Equitable Economics from the Global South) at la Universidad de los Andes as well as CEO of Apata Colombia, a tourism company committed to peacebuilding in Colombia with which another of our Fellows, Sergio Mutis, is also involved.

Both the Santa Fe Institute and la Universidad de los Andes are members of a network of 16 research centres which

focus on the renewal of political and economic thinking in theory and policy in order to generate the kind of thinking and theory that will capture the emergent dynamics of a global economic system that we are only beginning to understand (see https://www.santafe.edu/research/themes/emergent-political-economies).

So, what is “Complexity” in economic theory?

Complexity science is “the study of the phenomena which emerge from a collection of interacting objects”.

I remember years ago having conversations about the difference between complicated versus complex problems and what I learned then was that:

• complicated problems are predictable, controllable, and designable while
• complex problems are unpredictable, self-organizing and emergent (see here)
• Complicated problems can be hard to solve, but they are addressable with rules and recipes, like the algorithms that place ads on your Twitter feed. They also can be resolved with systems and processes, like the hierarchical structure that most companies use to command and control employees
• Complex problems involve too many unknowns and too many interrelated factors to reduce to rules and processes. A technological disruption like blockchain is a complex problem. A competitor with an innovative business model — an Uber or an Airbnb — is a complex problem. There’s no algorithm that will tell you how to respond. (See here).

Complexity characterizes the behaviour of a system or model whose components interact in multiple ways and follow local rules, leading to non-linearity, randomness, collective dynamics, hierarchy, and emergence.

On reading the website for the 2024 Summer School this phrase immediately stuck out:

The world is changing. The political and economic paradigms that dominated global affairs in the 20^th  Century were largely based on linear thinking, and often originated from within disciplinary and cultural silos. The challenges now facing humanity require new ideas.

Sound familiar? This is exactly what we say at Brave Conversations and it felt a bit like ‘coming home’ to be at the 2024 Summer School where I found a group of both brave and courageous individuals who were well and truly prepared to speak out and think differently.

The Summer School itself uses the pedagogy of the ‘flipped classroom’ where some of the best and brightest exploratory minds in the field come to mentor, challenge and collaborate with the students in order to push boundaries and explore novel pathways.  The Faculty was very impressive drawing on people from a diverse group of backgrounds.

The students learn through collaborative projects and peer learning, sharing ideas and perspectives, all enhanced by living on campus at the University as it sits under the Magdalena in Bogota.

Whilst I was there primarily as an observer it was fascinating to see this concept evolve and the partnership between these “Global North” and “Global South” institutions develop.

There are a few things that I observed.

The first is that for those of us who have been working in the interstice between the various academic disciplines for many years events such as this are a joy to attend.  I do feel though that the real power is not just the immediate network, but the networks of networks which could potentially evolve.  There are so many similar conversations happening in spaces such as the Digital Humanism Summer School in Vienna, the Digital Humanities at Oxford University, and of course our Web Science events and conferences at our labs around the world, to name just a few.

I first discovered Web Science when we were holding our inter-disciplinary Meta conferences from 2008 to 2011 and I began working with the Web Science community in 2012.  At that time I also met people like Noortje Marres who was then working at Goldsmiths University creating Digital Sociology and Danny Miller, who was creating  Digital Anthropology in 2012 who were very much pioneering interdisciplinary fields harnessing digital information systems to enhance social science research.  Very early on the Web Science community predicted so many things that happened and partnered with organisations such as the Digital Enlightenment Forum to influence Government Policy in the UK, the US and the European Union, and whilst much of this work is now considered mainstream the truth is that academic silos are as strong as ever and the real work is still happening in the interstice, precisely the space where this Summer School fits.

The challenge as always is that networking networks is complex it itself, requiring a nuance of communication, and understanding of different languages, disciplines, mindsets, currencies and valences, and the time, energy and patience to work in the interstice.

This is one of the objectives of both Intersticia and Brave Conversations.

The second thing I noticed is the use of the terms “Global North” and “Global South”.  I have long felt that these descriptions are both inadequate and quite neo-colonial in nature because of their binary nature and lack of any sophistication or nuance.

According to UNCTAD the Global South comprises:

• Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia without Israel, Japan, and the Republic of Korea, and Oceania without Australia and New Zealand.
• The Global North comprises Northern America and Europe, Israel, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, and New Zealand (see UNCTAD Definitions).

I totally appreciate the utility of this definition for economic and development purposes, particularly for funding organisations such as Foundations and NGOs.  However, words are of enormous importance when describing human systems (this article is well worth reading).

As I mentioned in my last post I very often find the Western Eurocentric frameworks that are postulated for so much of human history and development problematic.  None of the so-called ‘developed’ countries is ‘developed’ throughout; similarly none of the so called ‘undeveloped’ countries are ‘undeveloped’ throughout (consider Saudi Arabia for instance and it’s massive investment in projects like NEOM; the diversity of lifestyles in places like Bogota and Cape Town; the lives of aboriginals in Alice Springs or Darwin).

For me a much more nuanced approach is something akin to Joseph Henrich’s WEIRD which recognises the different mindsets which exist amongst people living in the “Global North” (as in students from non-Western countries who live and study at Western Universities) who are influenced by Western culture and language.  Then there are those living in the ‘Global South’ who are highly educated, well travelled and hugely proud of their heritage and culture and have different mindsets about what is developed and what is not.

Finding words that can even begin to describe the complexity of human systems in the 21^st Century is, to me, where some of the true complexity lies and where some of the real gems of academic research and new thinking might come from.

The final thing I would like to mention naturally comes from the first two.  As a European-Australian conscious of the colonial roots of the country in which I live I am acutely aware of the enormous value of the contribution and importance of First Nations people to bring their knowledge and perspectives to any discussions which impact socio-economic systems, politics and the impact of information technologies.

I recognise that this can all too often be tokenistic but in the intersticial space these voices are, I believe, of enormous importance and of crucial value.

As I have stated the economic value of indigenous knowledge and information is something that I feel that the Global North neither really understands nor has the tools to integrate in to much of what they do.  There are efforts, but these are still very nascent and much more work needs to be done.

In her book The Memory Code Lynne Kelly describes how ancient societies encode knowledge and memory in the landscape, and during my years doing research with Libraries and Archives whilst I was at Fuji Xerox we were told time and again that the only way to really preserve information was either on microfiche or to print it on acid free paper.  The assumption that digital information systems and archiving are something we can rely on to be utilised by future generations is a flawed and I firmly believe that we should embrace the “power of the and” and always consider both physical and digital systems, something that indigenous cultures can teach us a lot about.  This is where the work of people like Professor Angie Abdilla is so crucial (see her paper on Indigenous Knowledge systems and Artificial Intelligence).

This is the first time I’ve really interacted with the Complexity community and I am hugely impressed by their energy and preparedness to address difficult and thorny issues.  Events such as The Complexity School, and all that underpins it, is enormously important in terms of both bringing together interdisciplinary mindsets but also facilitating collaborations between peoples from different backgrounds and cultures with an openness to challenge, a courage to dream and a desire to create positive change.

I would like to thank William Tracy and his wonderful Santa Fe Institute team, Silvia Mongelós and Juan Pablo Castilla and all at TREES for having me.

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