Mapping chaos
by John Craig
As the world of public policy gets only more complex, organisations increasingly ask Demos to engage in 'mapping' - helping them to understand the systems of which they are a part. It's a tough job. However, this article about the respective histories of the London and New York tube maps suggest that mapping systems that are truly complex is in some ways easier. Peripheral to our concerns, perhaps, but interesting. [via Invisible Rabbit].
Paul Hayes
The use of cartographic metaphors in the literature of both management and politics appears to be a growing phenomenon. There's also an ongoing academic debate around systems/network theories and their linkages. I was somewhat disapointed by your Systems Failure booklet for not really addressing this issue. The world has moved on from Soft Systems Methodology...
Couple of nice quotes for the inevitable forthcoming pamphlet from yourselves on diagramming :-)
"Every diagram is intersocial and constantly evolving. It never functions in order to represent a persisting world but produces a new kind of reality, a new model of truth. It is neither the subject of history, nor does it survey history. It makes history by unmaking preceding realities and significations, constituting hundreds of points of emergence or creativity, unexpected conjunctions or improbable continuums. It doubles history with a sense of continual evolution.
Every society has its diagram(s).?
Gilles Deluze, Foucault, 1988:35
And my personal favourite - this from Bart Kosko on the potential uses of Fuzzy Cognitive Map diagrams (or FCM's):
?I think in the future we will see FCM?s put at the end of opinion pieces or op-ed columns in the newspaper. Cut out the ego and cut to the FCM. At first the FCM will be an appendix tacked on to impress us. Then we will get used to reading them. We will get better at checking the words in the article against the causal links in the FCM. The words will only argue for FCM nodes and edges. Then in time we will get fluent with FCM?s. Journalists and Lawyers and Mom and Pop will feel safe with them. They will come to argue with them as in this century they came to argue with the charts and statistics of economics and medicine. Then the FCM will be the article and the words will go in the appendix. We may watch FCM?s grow beneath the talking heads on news shows.?.
Kosko, Fuzzy Thinking 1994:235)
Peter MacLeod
Nice bait John. But you're right, it's all here, nicely proving Jefferson's old point that design and politics are inseparable, one and the same. Both essentially belong to a broader category called systems design, and its heartening that as we develop new ways of mapping complex relationships, us scribbling types are being 'drawn' towards a deeper appreciation for the political significance of visual and aesthetic grammars.