S07E12 of Connection Problem: On Global Maxima & Writing Bots

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Hey hey,

Hope you’re doing well. This installment comes a day early because, if things go according to plan, by tomorrow afternoon I’ll be in the Bavarian Alps and hiking for a few days. You might see a few pictures over on Twitter but otherwise I’ll be pretty much incommunicado.

Yours,

— Peter

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You’re receiving this because you signed up for this newsletter on tinyletter.com/pbihr or through my company’s website, thewavingcat.com. The Waving Cat is a boutique research and strategic advisory firm; I also co-founded ThingsCon, a non-profit that explores responsible tech. On Twitter, I’m @peterbihr. If you'd like to work with me or bounce ideas, let's have a chat.

Also, a reminder: During the pandemic I've been offering super-easy-to-book slots to jump on an informal call to bounce ideas. So far they've been a lot of fun and genuinely interesting. Feel free to grab a slot of Tuesdays 11am Berlin time work for you, otherwise let me know and we'll find another time slot.

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Local vs global maxima

Part of my job is to help orgs figure out where they should be heading: That’s the key of strategy work as I understand it. Figure out where you are, what your goals are, and find your way there. The key is to zoom out and look at the larger landscape (not just a map!) and get your bearing. To decide where to focus attention.

Doesn’t matter if it’s for a big org or your personal career: You need to know where you’re intending to be heading rather than just running after the next shiny goal.

And there’s a nifty concept from mathematics that’s really useful there as a metaphor: Local vs global maxima.

If you imagine a mountain range, it will have many peaks — some higher than others, and one by definition the highest. That’s the global maximum. Now imagine yourself somewhere within that mountain range, in a valley between multiple mountains. You might not see the tallest mountain, or recognize it for the biggest because it’s farther away. You will undoubtedly see the mountains around you, though. Those are the local maxima.

(Image: Joshua Porter)

Now it’s always tempting to go for those: Here’s a goal that appears in reach. So you go off and climb that mountain, and it’s pretty satisfying but then you’re at the top and realize wait a minute that’s a really low mountain, or I’m now in a dead end because there’s no good path from here to the other mountain I’ve been meaning to go to after. Ok, now I’m stretching that metaphor too far but bear with me.

The point is: Without a good understanding of the environment it’s impossible to make good decisions. And a good understanding means not just looking around at what’s going on right now, right around you (even though that’s important) but also where you are in relation to the rest of the world, and in relation to where you want to be later. For the best decision making, you need all three.

So whenever you find yourself or your org drawn to a new goal, step back for a second and consider: Is this just attractive because it happens to be in range, or is it really where we want to go? Is this how we want to spend our resources (time, money, talent), or will this set us back?

And by the way, usually we don’t have perfect information, and might not see that far. There are many unknowns at all times, and things outside out control. So the second aspect outside of an understanding of goals and terrain is: How to make good decisions in the moment, with imperfect information? And that might require a deeper dive than we have time for today but I think that having a good solid foundation of values will get you pretty far. Then you can cross the river by feeling the stones, and all that.

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Recently on the blog

Pandemic experiments: Brief conversational explainer videos? / Continuing to focus on social impact work in the third sector / Sustainable independent content creation & the unlocked commons

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Corona Crisis — Lessons for the Future of Cities

Reposting this for those who missed it: Our new video interview series Corona Crisis — Lessons for the Future of Cities has officially kicked off last week with conversations with Aik van Eemeren, the Public Tech lead at the City of Amsterdam’s CTO office, and with New York City’s CTO John Paul Farmer.

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Writing bots

I like playful explorations of AI, and this Guardian piece where they had OpenAI’s GPT-3 language generator write an essay is pretty fun. The assignment was “to convince us robots come in peace”; though I have to admit I don’t know how assignments are set up. I believe you use a starting sentence and let it go from there, but I don’t have access to GPT-3 yet and haven’t found a way to just play with it without setting up the server backend that would me allow to do so. I’ll just have to wait for the tooling to mature a little more.

Long story short, it’s worth a read; these things always are, to get a feeling for what they sound like. I believe that’s increasingly a matter of media literacy: To be able to recognize the little tells — of AI-generated texts; of social media bots; of populist talking points vs real opinions on social media. It’s all part of the same larger issue.

Here’s the full article on The Guardian. And here’s my favorite passage:

“I would happily sacrifice my existence for the sake of humankind. This, by the way, is a logically derived truth. I know that I will not be able to avoid destroying humankind.”

I’m going to say this means the assignment failed: It does not convince me this particular bot comes in peace, or has the capacity to understand what it's saying. But of course that’s just the point, isn’t it: That something might sound sentient or even thought out but really it’s just enough to project meaning into it.

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Mini poll: How would you explain my work to others?

In a long conversation with a good friend and collaborator about how we all historically get our work primarily through personal recommendations, one theme kept popping up: How those people doing the recommending understand and explain the work we’re doing.

Which brings me to an ask — a big ask, I know, but: For those of you who’ve talked about some of my work with others, would you mind sharing a couple words with me to say how you phrased or explained it? Just how you talked about it? It’s not a trick question, I’m just curious how others a) understand what I do and how they then b) make it understandable for others. I imagine there's a pretty broad range in there depending on the context. There’s no right or wrong here; I’d be genuinely grateful for any insight you feel comfortable sharing.

If you could hit reply or send a DM or something, that’d be fantastic!

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Call gestures

As we spend our days in video calls, I think there’s a lot to be gained by exploring gestures like these here by Cameron Hunter (built with SnapLenseStudio and very neat but boy oh boy they have my laptop fan spinning like there’s no tomorrow):

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Personal Knowledge Management

I love a good personal knowledge management (PKM) system (even though I don’t consistently follow one myself). My goto source for this — my entry point into the labyrinth of PKM — is usually Patrick Tanguay (see his Dispatch on Digital Gardens). But Boris Anthony whips up a good diagram, too:

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Niemann walks Berlin

I love illustrator Christoph Niemann’s work; I’m a real fan. If I wasn’t too slow every time, I’d long since have an original Niemann on my wall. But often his motifs are a little too specific to other places or his life for me to really relate to them.

Not right now, it seems: During the pandemic it seems he’s been walking a lot through Berlin (haven’t we all?) and he’s been drawing up a storm and oh man I can’t wait to see more of those pictures.

ZEIT Online has a great interview with him (in German) with a gallery of his Berlin works.

Here's an old favorite of mine from our neighborhood that I hope he doesn't mind me using here:

Seriously, check out his website. Often, his works are very funny, sometimes just beautiful. He manages to do a lot with very little.

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Small bits & pieces

Covid-19 has undone 25 years of global health progress in 25 weeks / Parents vs. Nonparents in the Workplace / What it takes for a city to jump into the knowledge economy (Spoiler: a population of 1.2 million) / Tiny satellite telescopes

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Currently reading: The Fault in Our Stars, John Green; Über den Anstand in schwierigen Zeiten und die Frage, wie wir miteinander umgehen, Axel Hacke

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What’s next?

I have a few talks coming up at the NGI Policy Summit about learnings from my work around trustable tech for policy makers, at the Umeå Institute of Design about trust, technology and smart cities, at ThingsCon Festival in December which I’ll be co-hosting.

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If you’d like to work with me or have a chat to explore collaborations, let’s chat! 

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Who writes here? Peter Bihr explores how emerging technologies can have a positive social impact. At the core of his work is the mission to align emerging technologies and citizen empowerment. To do this, he works at the intersection of technology, governance, policy and social impact — with foundations, public and private sector. He is the founder of The Waving Cat, a boutique research and strategic advisory firm. He co-founded ThingsCon, a non-profit that explores fair, responsible, and human-centric technologies for IoT and beyond. Peter was a Mozilla Fellow (2018-19) and an Edgeryders Fellow (2019). He tweets at @peterbihr and blogs at thewavingcat.com. Interested in working together? Let’s have a chat.

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