High Tech Politics
Hi! Happy Tuesday!
Irreni World Scale is bursting with computer science principles to be applied to politics. Why? Because we humans know how to scale computers where both Google and Facebook have over one billion users today. Irreni is a Silicon Valley political solution not just because of high tech advocacy such as The Data Center on the Moon or the Device of Life. Irreni is also a Silicon Valley political solution because it applies the design of scale we've learned how to practice in Silicon Valley where our politics today needs to scale but is sorely lacking in that department.
Yesterday I blogged about Greece and how Greece is a prime example of a failed state that didn't scale. Yesterday I offered analysis that failed states like Greece and Syria and Sudan are burgeoning in modern times because politics doesn't scale due to a lack of bottom up approach, a lack of people making decisions themselves.
Today I'd like to take a further elaborate and take a moment here to go on about an important computer science design principle; a Silicon Valley staple of the process of being agile.
Being agile means iterations. Agile means innovation.
The agile process starts with a principle that has been known for a long time in computer science: throw away your first prototype and start over. Have we scrapped the US Constitution yet? No. Why not? Because we have always had a fever-pitched, religious, irrational reverence for the document. That is a helluva a way not to scale, to worship something.
The US Constitution is our first effort and should be thrown out and rewritten. If in fact the US Constitution as a piece of peopleware were under the control of Silicon Valley then it would be unrecognisable from its original form because naive software doesn't scale. It would have been completely rewritten.
Besides throwing out a first effort then what does agile mean by iterations? What agile means is a constant revolution of top-down vs. bottom-up design.
Prior to the agile process there was the waterfall process. The waterfall design process of software was kinda like ideology in that it was top-down, claims were made without evidence.
The bottom-up side to the agile process involves something called test-driven development. In test-driven development first the APIs or claims are written out. Then tests for those APIs or claims are written before even a single line of code. As the design claims come to together and the tests start to fail then the failures of bottom up effort are fed back into the agile process so as to inform the top-down design.
Irreni takes a test-driven approach and thus a bottom up approach to politics by calling for massive scientific experiments of societal, political claims. The failure or success of these test results are then meant to be fed back into the top-down design of politics.
Using exclusively a top-down or a bottom-up design is short sighted. We know this from experience in Silicon Valley. We have historically taken a top-down only approach with computer science and since the year 2000 have moved on to iterating between top-down and bottom-up. Politics today needs the same design process applied.
But the situation is worse in the US than just needing to add new bottom up processes; the bottom-up process that once existed now no longer functions. What little bottom up feedback we once had in the US has been completely torn asunder. The absolute proof is that our representatives have a 10% approval rating and a 90% incumbency rate. Our bottom-up feedback, which is our only bottom-up feedback, is voting on legislators to inform the top down. However, we are no longer changing who gets elected when we do not approve. Why? Because the system is only offering bad choices. The bottom-up aspect of politics today is 100% broken.
If there is only one lesson you learn from Irreni World Scale then let it be this: a bottom-up feedback loop needs to be inserted into the politics today. But Irreni offers so much more than a single lesson that we've learned here in Silicon Valley about how to scale. Why not apply all that we have learned?
Innovation involves applying a feedback loop of learned experience during the process of design. Apply a feedback loop of immediate testing from the bottom to inform the top. This constant iteration can be thought of as a wheel turning where the top becomes the bottom and vice-versa. Each iteration then becomes a revolution of the wheel of design. In this sense innovation is revolution, a revolution of the perspective wheel.
But that is not what people mean when we use the word revolution as applied to politics. Revolution generally means a whole replacement of a government as opposed to incremental innovation. Whole replacement is not going to work today. The US constitution is no longer a prototype in an alpha stage so sadly a complete rewrite is not an option today like it was 200 years ago. But we can innovate. And we should start today.
Revolution as defined to be an iteration of the design wheel from top-down to bottom-up is very much a Silicon Valley way of thinking, a Silicon Valley process. Revolution as defined as innovation is what Irreni World Scale means by its slogan "Silicon Valley scale applied to political scale in the 21st Century". Well, that and the actual technology of a Data Center on the Moon, the Device of Life, the Virtual Environment Reality You and the V.E.R.Y. Terran Space Port. ha!
Revolution as innovation and not overthrowing a government is a Silicon Valley principle of agile scale. Welcome to the 21st century.
Cheers!
Scale your empathy, scale the world!
Find your tribe!
Be sexy people!
The future is coming!
Innovate at a rapid pace!
Slow speed ahead!
Well come! and well met!
Irreni World Scale is bursting with computer science principles to be applied to politics. Why? Because we humans know how to scale computers where both Google and Facebook have over one billion users today. Irreni is a Silicon Valley political solution not just because of high tech advocacy such as The Data Center on the Moon or the Device of Life. Irreni is also a Silicon Valley political solution because it applies the design of scale we've learned how to practice in Silicon Valley where our politics today needs to scale but is sorely lacking in that department.
Yesterday I blogged about Greece and how Greece is a prime example of a failed state that didn't scale. Yesterday I offered analysis that failed states like Greece and Syria and Sudan are burgeoning in modern times because politics doesn't scale due to a lack of bottom up approach, a lack of people making decisions themselves.
Today I'd like to take a further elaborate and take a moment here to go on about an important computer science design principle; a Silicon Valley staple of the process of being agile.
Being agile means iterations. Agile means innovation.
The agile process starts with a principle that has been known for a long time in computer science: throw away your first prototype and start over. Have we scrapped the US Constitution yet? No. Why not? Because we have always had a fever-pitched, religious, irrational reverence for the document. That is a helluva a way not to scale, to worship something.
The US Constitution is our first effort and should be thrown out and rewritten. If in fact the US Constitution as a piece of peopleware were under the control of Silicon Valley then it would be unrecognisable from its original form because naive software doesn't scale. It would have been completely rewritten.
Besides throwing out a first effort then what does agile mean by iterations? What agile means is a constant revolution of top-down vs. bottom-up design.
Prior to the agile process there was the waterfall process. The waterfall design process of software was kinda like ideology in that it was top-down, claims were made without evidence.
The bottom-up side to the agile process involves something called test-driven development. In test-driven development first the APIs or claims are written out. Then tests for those APIs or claims are written before even a single line of code. As the design claims come to together and the tests start to fail then the failures of bottom up effort are fed back into the agile process so as to inform the top-down design.
Irreni takes a test-driven approach and thus a bottom up approach to politics by calling for massive scientific experiments of societal, political claims. The failure or success of these test results are then meant to be fed back into the top-down design of politics.
Using exclusively a top-down or a bottom-up design is short sighted. We know this from experience in Silicon Valley. We have historically taken a top-down only approach with computer science and since the year 2000 have moved on to iterating between top-down and bottom-up. Politics today needs the same design process applied.
But the situation is worse in the US than just needing to add new bottom up processes; the bottom-up process that once existed now no longer functions. What little bottom up feedback we once had in the US has been completely torn asunder. The absolute proof is that our representatives have a 10% approval rating and a 90% incumbency rate. Our bottom-up feedback, which is our only bottom-up feedback, is voting on legislators to inform the top down. However, we are no longer changing who gets elected when we do not approve. Why? Because the system is only offering bad choices. The bottom-up aspect of politics today is 100% broken.
If there is only one lesson you learn from Irreni World Scale then let it be this: a bottom-up feedback loop needs to be inserted into the politics today. But Irreni offers so much more than a single lesson that we've learned here in Silicon Valley about how to scale. Why not apply all that we have learned?
Innovation involves applying a feedback loop of learned experience during the process of design. Apply a feedback loop of immediate testing from the bottom to inform the top. This constant iteration can be thought of as a wheel turning where the top becomes the bottom and vice-versa. Each iteration then becomes a revolution of the wheel of design. In this sense innovation is revolution, a revolution of the perspective wheel.
But that is not what people mean when we use the word revolution as applied to politics. Revolution generally means a whole replacement of a government as opposed to incremental innovation. Whole replacement is not going to work today. The US constitution is no longer a prototype in an alpha stage so sadly a complete rewrite is not an option today like it was 200 years ago. But we can innovate. And we should start today.
Revolution as defined to be an iteration of the design wheel from top-down to bottom-up is very much a Silicon Valley way of thinking, a Silicon Valley process. Revolution as defined as innovation is what Irreni World Scale means by its slogan "Silicon Valley scale applied to political scale in the 21st Century". Well, that and the actual technology of a Data Center on the Moon, the Device of Life, the Virtual Environment Reality You and the V.E.R.Y. Terran Space Port. ha!
Revolution as innovation and not overthrowing a government is a Silicon Valley principle of agile scale. Welcome to the 21st century.
Cheers!
Scale your empathy, scale the world!
Find your tribe!
Be sexy people!
The future is coming!
Innovate at a rapid pace!
Slow speed ahead!
Well come! and well met!
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