Valdis E. Krebs writes:
> What is interesting here is that by being well connected, they gained even
> more connections! The concept of 'increasing returns' (them that has
> gets) in action!
Strangely, I don't think the concept is new. In the early 60's, NASA was
doing studies into just that. They concluded that the "informal leaders,"
(what they called the "inner face," of the organization,) was,
essentially, how the organization worked. Out of these studies came what
was to be called "group advice, one man decisions," which was an
organizational/management paradigm for NASA until the mid 70's, or so.
The term, "... concept of 'increasing returns' ..." is interesting, since
it is a term from complexity/economic theory. Additionally, it is
interesting that the term is used in relation to organizational
"connections" which would tend to indicate that the "informal leaders" or
the "inner face" of the organization could be modeled using cellular
automata, which is, in addition, a reliable analytical technique used to
model interpersonal and social relationships with game-theoretic
methodologies. See the works of Robert Axelrod and Stephanie Forrest for
details. I think they can be found at the Santa Fe Institute,
http://www.santafe.edu, and have proposed using genetic algorithms in
addition to CA/GT techniques to simulate dynamical outcomes of large
systems where game strategies are not constant-ie., the game rules have to
be developed, or learned, "on the fly."
I think Forrest's C source code is available on ftp.santafe.edu (I could
be wrong!) that she used to model a "society" with "massively" many
concurrent players, (or "citizens,") each player playing the
game-theoretic iterated "prisoner's dilemma," (ie., classic multi-player
zero-sum iterated game,) with the other "citizens" that are in close
proximity. The results of the simulation are astonishing, to say the
least. Most "players" eventually "discover," or "learn," and adopt a
cooperation strategy in relation to the "society" as a whole-which is a
counter-intuitive outcome in relation to game-theoretic analysis, where it
can be shown that the only "rational" strategy for such a simple zero-sum
game is non-cooperative. BTW, this was a major issue with John Von
Neumann, (who founded game theory,) and considered it enigmatic that
game-theoretic means predicted that the only rational outcome of humanity
was self destruction. (He made the comment, some time around 1954, that
this was why we are alone in the universe, since the "prisoner's dilemma"
has no solution, all intelligent beings would eventually destroy their
selves.)
John
References:
"John von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing," William
Aspray, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1990.
"Prisoner's Dilemma," William Poundstone, Doubleday, New York, New
York, 1992.
"Handbook of Genetic Algorithms," Lawrence Davis, Van Nostrand
Reinhold, New York, New York, 1991.
"Complexity," M. Mitchell Waldrop, Simon & Schuster, New York, New
York, 1992.
"Games and Decisions," R. Duncan Luce and Howard Raiffa, John
Wiley & Sons, New York, New York, 1957.
And a really great www site for the history and introduction of game
theory:
http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/class/histf.html
--John Conover, 631 Lamont Ct., Campbell, CA., 95008, USA. VOX 408.370.2688, FAX 408.379.9602 john@johncon.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>