Sunday, October 4, 2009

Why Meta and Why Me

In this blog you will see the word "meta" used a lot but what is meta? Meta is just a fancy word for an abstraction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta. A meta system is simply a system of systems.

We live in a meta system. Our bodies are a system of systems. We have a respiratory system, a digestive system, a circulatory system and so on. Those systems combine to create a system of systems which we call the body. Each system, like the digestive system, can be broken into it's own system of systems, a mouth, an esophagus, a stomach, and so on.

We live on earth with is part of our solar system. Our solar system is part of our galaxy. Our galaxy is part of the universe.

There are many examples of systems of systems in our world. When a product is manufactured, the supply chain provides a system of systems which transforms raw materials into finished goods. When you look at your car you see systems of systems. Actually, it becomes hard to think of something that is not a system of systems. If you can find something that isn't a system of systems it is called a primitive. Optimizing the way systems interact to provide the absolute best whole is the job of the metasystem analyst. We look at systems in multiple levels of abstraction and we look at how meta systems interact with other meta systems. We look at both human and tool systems. It is extremely important to remember that every meta system includes both people that participate in the system and the tools they use.

My work has always been in reflexive meta systems. That means systems of systems that can create (and recreate or evolve) themselves depending on the directions of a user. I work on things like:

Programs which create programs
Data which represents data
Interfaces which create interfaces
Robots (or agents) that create robots (or agents)
Dynamic Repositories of Dynamic Repositories
but my favorite of all is working on improvements which improves improvements, improving the way we improve (credit to Doug Engelbart)

There are people who think that ultimately reflexive meta system will do all known activities for humans. They will build all our products, provide answers to our questions, even clean our houses and do our dishes! They will do anything for us that we can imagine. If this ever happens we will enter what is being called the age of singularity. The thought leaders think this may happen as early as 2020. Change is always worrisome but many of us are thinking hard about how to make sure this change happens in the right way. Correctly creating the systems of systems that can be used to help create real solutions to the very biggest of our global problems is a challenge that many of us are working on right now.

One of the communities working on this challenge is Program for the Future. http://programforthefuture.org/. If you click on this link and then click on the about tab you can see us hard at work.

So, why meta? We believe that improving the improvement is the best way to provide the future we all want for our children and grandchildren. Meta provides answers the two important questions -

How do I/we get what I/we want?
How do I/we know this is what I/we really want?
(credit to Sam Hahn)

So, why "me"? Every person is capable of making a small improvement. Small improvements when added together create big improvements and those big improvements ultimately will benefit not only "me" but we can pass off a better world to our children and grandchildren.

2 comments:

  1. I look forward to hearing more in future blogs about how meta provides answers to the questions, especially the second one. Because sometimes people seem to want things they "shouldn't". Thanks for a clearly written post.

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  2. I thank you for sharing your knowledge. Im glad Dan Brown was able to give you the push to actually create the blog. I was reading the book and had to see if it was real too haha. My question to you though is what kind of major did you have to pursue to get where you are today? I admire the type of work that you do. I'm also not sure if its possible to message back but if not please send me an email at mcspargeslarg@gmail.com I'd like to hear from you too.

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