Well, I think I'm going to play the Devil's advocate for this one, between offering a few new directions for exploration.

But the organization becomes truly resilient when its leaders, managers and staff are willing to reach across those departmental lines themselves -- when they collaborate to bring all of the organization's resources to bear on the threat or the opportunity.

This has really been a question in my mind for the last few years, when thinking of national-level resiliency, even if I haven't thought of it in terms of "resiliency." Considering the political polarization, the bickering in Congress between the parties and even the street-level polarization, I wonder what the chances are for a super-resilient U.S. anytime soon.

Now, of course, right after 9/11, people waved flags and Congress rushed to pass legislation, in a show of resiliency; but, well, how long did it really last, if it even happened?

So...I'm also a bit troubled by the platitudes DeAngelis uses: OH JUST LOOK HOW NEW YORKERS PULLED TOGETHER! LOOK AT LONDONERS! I'm fairly sick of hearing these things. They suggest only two paths, or a dichotomy: everyone just crumbles in mass suicide and paralyzing psychosis, or else they're RESILIENT! Ok, I think they may have been resilient, but not for the reasons DeAngelis suggests -- or at least not pursuant to the bare outline given here of resiliency in action. The cultural "We the Herd!" type of mentality (Go America! Go New York!) might have provided a cover; but really, the greater factor was probably a family-level, interpersonal support system combined with a desire to fall back into routines. (In fact, those routines may have been a bigger factor than having commiserating loved ones.)

They knew how to think about the challenge and how to rise to meet it.

But really, what did the average New Yorker do in response to the situation -- after the dust had cleared? I mean, how did Joe Blow or Jane "rise" to the "challenge" beyond just getting back to routine? I suppose I'm trying to suggest, as the Devil's advocate, that rigid structures are a comfort when disaster happens, and people may be more likely to find strength from those; so, this may not be the type of "resiliency" that is dynamic, organic, proactive.

This might also be why the country has fractured back into 2-party bickering so soon after the inauguration of the GWoT.

the people in a resilient organization know how to respond, have access to systems that support resilience, and know how to use them.

This, I think, may be true. But, again, if the support systems are routine -- whether the local government hierarchy, long-standing hospitals and emergency care centers, normal work patterns and life patterns, protocols -- then it would seem that this type of resiliency is dependent on clearly established paths. So...ossification should precede resiliency? (I'm just tying in a bit of a previous post.)

I mentioned proaction. I wonder, are there two types of resiliencies, one for reaction and one for proaction? We tend to speak of resiliency as if it is a purely reactive quality, imagining some disaster, disturbance, or disruption which demands resiliency if the other half of the dichotomy -- utter paralysis or self-destruction -- is to be avoided. Perhaps by doing so, we automatically assume a precondition for ossified, hierarchical, long-standing protocols (the known "systems that support resilience"). This may be fine for reactive resiliency, to a point, as long as these basic support systems are available. The more dynamic the world (disaster, disruption, whathaveya), the less likely that kind of resiliency is going to obtain.

And then, again, there's the question of proactive resiliency -- if such a thing exists.
 

mark: CGW actually touches on a discussion we were having earlier... that is the evolutionary mechanism (if any) in DiB. when he speaks of a hypothetical "proactive resiliency" i imagine it would end up looking very much like the evolutionary mechanisms namely: selection, variance, mutation, and gene flow.

but this now troubles me more than before. i see a white elephant coming down the road. all this talk of the unified londoners and stalwart new yorkers sounds much more like the death of a species than the variance, drift and flow which is vital for life.

are we supplanting biological rules with the barren seeds of informational networking?
 

Hey Guys,

I'm not sure if Steve meant to imply that kind of stark dichotomy, Curtis, at least that's not how I read it.

I'd also say that politics has a very strong zero sum, " I win-you lose" orientation that it is probably the worst arena to begin trying to initially build a resilient culture. Almost any other domain might be a better place to start.

Fed X

I strongly agree with your emphasis on evolution as an important mechanism or variable here - though I don't think evolution and networking are incompatible models. My memory tells me that network theory research is getting heavily into biological subfields -( Dr. Von, if you are reading this, feel free to chime in at this point )
 

Mark,

Consider your response --

I'd also say that politics has a very strong zero sum, " I win-you lose" orientation that it is probably the worst arena to begin trying to initially build a resilient culture.

--and my postulation--

The cultural "We the Herd!" type of mentality (Go America! Go New York!) might have provided a cover; but really, the greater factor was probably a family-level, interpersonal support system combined with a desire to fall back into routines.

--and then think about what's happening in Iraq.

Just a thought.
 

Hey, Mark.
Applications of network theory certainly exist within the biological sciences. For instance, the network structure of food webs in a variety of ecosystems are being studied in depth. The 'network' structure of the molecules used in cellular metabolism is another interesting application of network theory.

But the reverse is true as well, where analogs to principles in evolution are being used to study how randomness affects network structure and decision-making in networks. Genetic algorithms, where small pieces of two different, valid rule-sets are interchanged to produce an 'offspring rule-set,'can be used to see how rule-sets evolve within a given network. The Franks paper involved this technique, for instance.

I tend to believe, like Curtis, that there is much to the argument that a truly resilient network needs to be able to do more than just react. If we define resiliency as the ability to respond to new challenges, the response capabilities, resources and infrastructure of real networks need to be able to anticipate problems or attacks on that network. Now, this means we have great challenges. It is difficult to even attempt to understand the behavior of a complex system in any sort of detail, but add to that the fact that a complex system typically exists in a complex, dynamic environment, and the number of possible interactions and problems that may arise is staggering. For instance, think of the political example being raised.

There is obviously a 'barrier' to what political/policy decision is made because of the polarized state of the country right now. Here is the interesting part...in a relatively noise-free environment, there is esentially no crossover between the two parties and how they view or decide to act on some issue. Crossover and consensus do not occur until there is an increase in the noise (again, research along the lines of the Franks paper studies the effect of noise in networks). True changing of political minds tend to come about with increased noise; political decision making tends to be reactionary in nature. 9/11 was a 'big bang' that led to unification of the parties, at least as unified as we'll see them at any given moment. I don't think it lasted very long, nor can it last very long, because of the complex environment politics has to navigate. The noise (at least within the US) died down, and the boundaries have been redrawn. Curtis is right to say routine has become the norm again, because individals like routine and go back to worrying about day to day problems for survivals sake. It is evolution in action..adapt to the environment and focus on individal survival. To be resilient will require societal concerns and planning, more long-term thinking, and anticipatory thinking, which politicians are not very good at (particularly long-term thinking/planning).
 

"The " flow" of the resilient moment."

I almost passed this talking point up. In engineering, a moment is related to torque, which is, by definition, energy. So if we looked at resiliency in the context of a natural flow of energy it becomes an interesting subject, at least for me.

This is especially true when examining how Islam and Christianity flow and remain resilient. Each religion represents two different flows of energy. If I look at how each move through the world, Islam, more or less, represents an OODA loop and Christianity, more or less, represents a PISRR loop. Of course the flow of energy (power) represents the flow of both potential energy and kinetic energy, so both religions have elements of both. Also because energy represents a natural flow, in the context of physics neither flow is “better” than the other, only different. It would be like saying that the flow of air is “better” than the flow of water.

Air moves between a high potential to a low potential. This is more or less an OODA loop. With an air mass, first a potential is formed, then the kinetic energy takes over and the result is the movement of air. An OODA starts with potential energy then moves towards a kinetic state.

Water also moves from a high potential to a low potential and gravity (potential energy) enables it to move. However, the fact that water (kinetic energy) is at the top of the hill is the significant factor in the movement of water. In this way water can be considered a PISRR movement, which starts with high kinetic energy and moves towards a high potential. In this way water and air, like Islam and Christianity, are mirror images of each other.

Both religions are resilient because of their ability to loop back to their bases. When Islam is under stress it seems to loop back to its fundamentalist teachings, which seems to say for its followers to become more kinetic.
When Christianity is under stress it behaves differently. Christianity Penetrates an area of conflict and converts the masses towards the teachings (potential energy) of its prophet.

In a way, a PISRR movement settled the American West. The massacre of settlers represented the beginning of the end, for the Native American’s culture, and high kinetic energy. The Native Americans were then Isolated from their leaders, Subverted from their way of life by the reorientation of their form of government, and Reharmonized into the Judo-Christian culture of the United States of America.

Corporations are resilient simply because they have no loops. They survive because of one implicit law, to maximize profits. A non-profit corporation is miss-named. There are two kinds of profits: a zero sum and a non-zero sum profit. A non-profit corporation is a non-zero sum profit corporation. When a corporation is under attack, it simply does what it has to do to remain in business. This can include any explicit law needed, as long it doesn’t violate the implicit law, to maximize profits, either zero sum or non-zero sum.

In fact a zero sum profit represents an area of high kinetic energy. In physics, when the sum of the forces does not equal zero there is movement, or kinetic energy. If I am not mistaken this is the principle behind a zero sum profit. A zero sum profit represents one corporation wining and one losing, it could be said that the movement is toward the losing corporation.

A non-zero sum profit is when both corporations win. In physics this would happen when the sum of the forces equal zero, there is no movement, it represents a high form of potential energy.

So corporations do have a loop that enables them to become more resilient. In times of stress they move from a high kinetic form of a zero sum profit towards the more potential form of non-zero sum profit. But then again this is probably what Dr. Barnett is telling us.
 

Mark,

After being paralyzed by the disruption to my blogging caused by the introduction of this domain, I've now broken the paralysis by expanding the dialogue into a symposium.

;)