Systems flow #

I frequently talk about how the push/pull of information is an indicator that we're dealing with a system rather than a network, but what that push/pull does is move the nodes as well as the data between nodes; which node it moves, when it moves it, where it moves it to are all fungible.

So what happens if a system stops flowing? It doesn't revert to a network. It's too interconnected; other systems in the wide system of our reality are affected by a plugged or flow-compromised system. What we call "system" is rarely the holistic beast, but a small part of the whole  —  even if it's unwieldy, hard to navigate, and complex to understand.

The flow, when diminished or negated, has knock-on scarcity-driven effects to the broader system. Healthy systems can rebalance periodic distress. Our weather does it all the time, and with an historically small quantity of extremely violent rebalancing (this is changing, thus the "historically" qualification). But we all know that the weather will likely be beautiful after a storm. A rebalance can be cleansing, brightening, and spread a sense of wonder and peace  —  if it's made in small enough increments. Go too hard with it, and we enter data chaos closer to tornados, floods, hurricanes, and forest fires.

Physical model: Water #

The natural world is complex. We already mentally chunk it up into systems that we consider separately, even while we know at some level that they are all interconnected. We recognize the physical world. We've lived in nature for our entire species' existence, and even in our constructs  —  like plumbing  —  we evoke certain understandings we evolved from nature. We can also poke and prod at it to see concrete outcomes, making it much easier to understand how it all hangs together.

The flow of water is something we're all pretty comfortable with. You understand that water moves where it can, won't be contained without effort (through plumbing mechanics, geography, or structures like beaver dams or levees), and can be powerful where it's contained through engineering (e.g., Hoover Dam, low-flow/high-intensity shower heads).

The amount of intelligence and work that goes into containing water is enormous, and all it take is a big enough storm to make it moot. Because of this, it's easier to use it to understand what happens in abstracted systems when flow is disrupted.

Water systems can be disrupted through lack (drought, excess use), engineering (animal or human dams, levees, plumbing), or excess (storms, broken dams or pipes). We know what happens in all these instances. If water is no longer available ,  the flow is plugged ;  soils dry up, plants wither and die, and animal lives are affected potentially to the point of death. Large-scale engineering is ecologically and socially disruptive in building and, in its most simple construction, can trickle water flow to a near-stop that affects downstream just like a drought. If you've ever had a plumbing issue, you know what happens if small-scale engineering goes awry: water, everywhere, until and unless you can find a valve; then everything after that valve is without water until the problem can be fixed.

Excess water on a geologic scale is powerful enough to be considered an act of god. Entire towns have been submerged and lost. Damages to human structures can run to the tune of billions per flooding incident. Lives are forever changed and even lost from flooding.

Water is necessary to life, and water kills, by excess or lack. Life or death, its flow is a necessary characteristic.

Information model: communication #

The inextricability of the highly abstract concept of information and concrete-through-repetition human behavior is incredibly complex. They each impact the other, and are influenced by many forces from both inside information, and inside people. Most of us like to chunk it up, talk about particular facets of human behavior and specific use cases that aren't as overwhelming. We understand certain portions of it, and leverage that understanding to navigate our world. Those points of understanding act as fractal patterns to help give insight into the whole.

Information system flow is communication. It can be as agnostic as connecting to a database, or as personal as talking with your spouse.

Our very consciousness is predicated, through our senses, by the inclusion of an ever-expanding well of information. Most information in our modern world is supplied by another person, through communication. How that information is presented, where it's coming from, how it's delivered, and what it means are just a fraction of the innumerable ways that information lives beyond our senses.

If we remove the constant influx of information, like through sensory deprivation tanks, our healthy brains turn to existing repositories to play with. Neurons still spark, thinking still happens; it's just not lead or supplied by external, newly-sourced information. This happens on smaller scales continually, too. We confabulate to fill memory gaps and make sense.

Our minds don't stop processing. The flow of information continues, but in a temporarily closed system. When people come out of a sensory deprivation tank, they take that experience with them. It still produced novel interpretation.

The raw power of the flow of information isn't as easy to represent as the raw power of the flow of water, but it truly is synonymous. People, as the ingestors of information, also become the expression of information into communication, behavior, and action. Each person has the agency to decide what to do, or not do, with information; information can also be manipulated so a person doesn't believe in their own agency. The push/pull between information and people is powerful, mutual, and inextricable, and affects the flow.

The only direct application of information that supports life is truth, in as complex a modality as necessary to promote understanding. A simple (low flow) structure or explanation is only part of the truth; sometimes we have to embrace complexity (high flow) to really understand what's going on.

Social model: economics. #

Social structures are complex systems. They can be made a little more understandable by thinking about natural system models. They still are affected by the way information and people interact. Once we get to social structures, it's the compounded decisions and information interactions that create our interpersonal dynamics. Both the compounded individual interaction with information and the interpersonal dynamics are what becomes our social structures. We affect the system through our decisions, each and every one of us  -  even the decisions where we're trusting others' thinking or believe we have no options but to follow a particular path.

A healthy economy flows, much like water. It's a translation point for goods and services, considers the values through time, and even translates between cultures. It has grown to be able to translate to everything (except air) that a person needs to be able to survive and even thrive. But none of it works until the money is used, moving from one entity to another. The flow of money is at least as important a factor to the system as how much is in it. Add more money, and its value diminishes  —  but if its distribution remains the same, valuation becomes more nuanced instead of more of a burden.

Water is also evocative of the inception of our current economy: Reagan's trickle down economics.

The trickle down economics system can be modeled like an engineered power dam, such as the Hoover dam. In its best form, it was intended to use condensed/contained economic flow to produce ergs. By utilizing a consistently available and replenished resource, great works could be built. Putting it in the more nimble hands of multiple, self-energized, go-getter entrepreneurs meant more could be done  —  or at least that was the narrative sold.

Nothing has only one medium of expression, use, and outcome. That is especially true as as a thing becomes more complex and is impacted by interactive human behavior.

At the far other end of the spectrum node for how dams can be and have been used is to cut all water flow. Yes, it's not the primary intent of a dam built explicitly to produce energy. But it is the primary function of the overall construction, as a precondition to be able to use it to produce energy as designed. That construction function never goes away. How a tool is used is based on the perception of the prioritized characteristics of the tool, viewed through the lens of the thing to do, to invoke its potential use. More simply: a hammer, prioritizing it's weight, can drive in a screw if used with more strength or into a softer medium.

In a scenario where the Hoover dam is used only as a dam, water doesn't flow; it's no longer translating the movement to energy. Instead, it's held, producing scarcity and damage downstream. The why's  —  human behavior, immediate environment, etc.  —  become very meaningful.

Assuming the overall water cycle is still functioning, stopping the flow through a dam has consequences both above and below the construct.

Above the dam, land floods. Life gets ousted. In economics, that's like making sure no one else can compete: hegemony.

Below the dam, all the life that depended on the flow of water founders. Life's options are to remove the block, relocate to greener pastures, or die. In economics, that's like setting up a competing business (already made harder by the above-dam flooding) or unionizing; leaving the company/industry; or dying. The last would be considered in our culture as an individual, personal failure, but it's a real outcome.

Human behavior affects the interpretation of the outcome of the system: we are awash in communications that it's not a problem of lack of resources, it's a problem of individual fortitude. What's really happened is that we've drawn a line in the sand of what we consider the system, and the results of imposed economic hardship was left out of the dominant model.

To produce power a dam needs to let water flow. Diminished flow doesn't reduce the conversion of the resources freed, but does reduce the energy produced. Downstream, not enough flow is just as destructive as none, but with a longer timeline, lingering hope for change, and a sense that stalwart suffering will get us through the (made) drought. It becomes harder to wrap our heads around recalibration.

In other words, people are part of the equation in our meaning-finding, interpretation, decision making, and all the things that happen (or don't) once a decision is made. Our economy is not just a system, viewed through the lens of a flow; it's also people, our interaction with information, and our interaction with other people who are interacting with information, each in their unique ways.

The issue in the trickle down economics model is that while wealth has been engineered to produce more power, the power is often not used for the social benefit sold in politics. That's because human behavior isn't as simple as the model that was sold. People, being people, used the tools to fit to their goals rather than the goals dictating how to use the tools. Then we start interacting, in all the ways people can interact. It's what we do, until we develop or modify social contracts with delineated expectations and accountability.

That model of flow impacts all our social structures. I used economics because the flow is currently disrupted. We know, in abstract, that too much wealth in too few hands results in all kinds of social issues. It's recognized through distribution, but the function that created the distribution is flow.

Some points of synthesis for understanding current economic behaviors and impacts are listed in the appendix.

Systems thinking #

Systems thinking isn't just a way to expand what we're considering as we're building out a finite corner of our world. It's a way to help us create mental models from concrete, navigable instances; expand on them to think about how selected information will affect other uses of the same information; how people will interact with selected and adjacent information; and consider how that might compound into social and environmental impact and balancing.

We are affecting our natural world through our social structures:

• in our massive engineering;
• in our reach of touch that has made 'greener pastures' a moot point;
• in our compounded decisions;
• in our valuation and ideas of what makes good sense environmentally, economically, socially, and politically;
• and even in the compounded impacts of our simplified priorities.

Systems flow. It doesn't matter whether the flow is as easy to see as water, or as vague and nebulous as communication. For a system to be healthy, it flows. It shares.

Stagnant systems of water breeds disease. Stagnant information is often wrong as the world adds information, synthesis, and interpretation. After all, once we thought leeches solved every ailment.