As I have said multiple times before, complexity is increasing in day to day life. Daily lives of humans, which were dependent on natural uncertainties for the most part are increasingly dependent directly or indirectly on man-made uncertainties embedded in network of machines and/or computers. Some of the natural uncertainties like climate have changed with large impact, but man-made uncertainties continue to increase in number and complexity as the technosphere around humanity deepens.
I wish to reflect here about the changing nature of our ways and means of carrying out our activities in modern life. Computing power is becoming cheaper and easily available. The nature of problems to which computing is being applied is increasing. The number and types of algorithms being deployed are increasing. But there are certain complex categories of problems to which simple algorithms can be proved not to exist. The equivalence class of real-life problems where one encounters these limitations is significantly large by itself and I contend that as systems (of systems(of systems...)) increase, this equivalence class is increasing in size. Essentially there are more and more significant aspects of our day-to-day lives which are limited only by the computational complexity of these algorithms.
Now consider the complexity of enterprise IT architectures (including code and data) where such code and data is embedded in. I recently saw a Gartner video about why the only way that digital transformation can meet the goals of reducing TCO and improving agility of adapting to business change is to reduce complexity of IT architectures. Actions by CIO's to reduce the complexity of enterprise IT architectures while adapting to business change are the only way of reducing future cost of change, the need for which in a very dynamic business environment will always be high.
In my view every human needs to be actively involved in managing the complexity of the technosphere around him and how his/her technosphere connects to the enterprise technosphere, community technosphere, national technosphere and global technosphere. Unless we together actively manage the complexity in this inter-network of techosphere, the aggregate technosphere will increase in complexity thereby increasing the future cost of change and/or future inequality of service delivered through the technosphere. Every individual and enterprise need to do their bit to keep the aggregate technosphere simple. The service environment architecture that is emerging as the technosphere around each individual/home/car/factory also need to be managed and interconnected in ways which preserve good "network" properties (e.g. equality of opportunity and freedom of speech within the network), else our humanity might waste a lot of money later due to increased complexity to modify the network to create these properties.
Netneutrality illustrates type of principles we need to ensure and I am sure we will see more and more debates of the net neutrality kind as the Internet (the BIG NEW WORLD) continues to be colonized, just like democracy emerged and grew in America during the colonization.
Regards
Pratap
13th May 2015
I wish to reflect here about the changing nature of our ways and means of carrying out our activities in modern life. Computing power is becoming cheaper and easily available. The nature of problems to which computing is being applied is increasing. The number and types of algorithms being deployed are increasing. But there are certain complex categories of problems to which simple algorithms can be proved not to exist. The equivalence class of real-life problems where one encounters these limitations is significantly large by itself and I contend that as systems (of systems(of systems...)) increase, this equivalence class is increasing in size. Essentially there are more and more significant aspects of our day-to-day lives which are limited only by the computational complexity of these algorithms.
Now consider the complexity of enterprise IT architectures (including code and data) where such code and data is embedded in. I recently saw a Gartner video about why the only way that digital transformation can meet the goals of reducing TCO and improving agility of adapting to business change is to reduce complexity of IT architectures. Actions by CIO's to reduce the complexity of enterprise IT architectures while adapting to business change are the only way of reducing future cost of change, the need for which in a very dynamic business environment will always be high.
In my view every human needs to be actively involved in managing the complexity of the technosphere around him and how his/her technosphere connects to the enterprise technosphere, community technosphere, national technosphere and global technosphere. Unless we together actively manage the complexity in this inter-network of techosphere, the aggregate technosphere will increase in complexity thereby increasing the future cost of change and/or future inequality of service delivered through the technosphere. Every individual and enterprise need to do their bit to keep the aggregate technosphere simple. The service environment architecture that is emerging as the technosphere around each individual/home/car/factory also need to be managed and interconnected in ways which preserve good "network" properties (e.g. equality of opportunity and freedom of speech within the network), else our humanity might waste a lot of money later due to increased complexity to modify the network to create these properties.
Netneutrality illustrates type of principles we need to ensure and I am sure we will see more and more debates of the net neutrality kind as the Internet (the BIG NEW WORLD) continues to be colonized, just like democracy emerged and grew in America during the colonization.
Regards
Pratap
13th May 2015
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