Heterarchy

In my new years resolutions for 2014, I made a mention to the fact my bets are against hierarchy and traditional. And maybe there is a word which sums this up? The full thing was…

Live the life I choose
Its become clear to me that career and life progression is going to be less that ordinary for me. I’m going to have to carve my own path through life and that means working in an adhoc style sometimes and being true to myself. I won’t lie, life is pretty good right now. Although it may seem like I should be working towards things, I’m always reminded of the Cluetrain rule #7 – Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy. As I believe in the hyper-connected world we’re moving into. My bets are against hierarchy and traditional. Maybe there is a word which sums this up?

Well Davelab6 informs me, the word I maybe might be looking for is… Heterarchy… (from Wikipedia)

A heterarchy is a system of organization replete with overlap, multiplicity, mixed ascendancy, and/or divergent-but-coexistent patterns of relation. Definitions of the term vary among the disciplines: in social and information sciences, heterarchies are networks of elements in which each element shares the same “horizontal” position of power and authority, each playing a theoretically equal role. But in biological taxonomy, the requisite features of heterarchy involve, for example, a species sharing, with a species in a different family, a common ancestor which it does not share with members of its own family. This is theoretically possible under principles of “horizontal gene transfer.”

A heterarchy may be parallel to a hierarchy, subsumed to a hierarchy, or it may contain hierarchies; the two kinds of structure are not mutually exclusive. In fact, each level in a hierarchical system is composed of a potentially heterarchical group which contains its constituent elements.

Ok thats one heck load of information wrapped up in something quite profound. What does this mean in simpler terms? Lets say more practical terms…

Numerous observers in the information sciences have argued that heterarchical structure processes more information more effectively than hierarchical design. An example of the potential effectiveness of heterarchy would be the rapid growth of the heterarchical Wikipedia project in comparison with the failed growth of the Nupedia project.[3] Heterarchy increasingly trumps hierarchy as complexity and rate of change increase.

Now thats certainly something which makes a lot of sense/a way of life for me and I’m sure many others out there.

Thanks Dave for sending this my way, always nice to put a name or title to something you feel is important. Interestingly there is a link to a podcast from ITConversations. So may have to fire that one up and listen sometime…

Avoiding a Tantrum over online dating

Everyone does it, yes even you and me!

You send off a message to someone of interest be that person a potential date, partner or even spouse. Then before they can respond you are cursing the air and everything. Why have they not responded, surely they must have seen the message? Maybe they are ignoring you or too busy doing what? Suddenly the mind starts to wonder…

In online dating this can be pretty bad as Dating site reviews points out in Avoiding an Inner Tantrum

a man looked at his phone, then sighed loudly. “I can’t believe I haven’t gotten a response yet,” he complained to his companion. “I texted her ten minutes ago.”
“Maybe she’s in another room and hasn’t read it yet,” offered the companion.

The man scoffed. “What is this, the eighteenth century? But no, she’s read it, the phone tells me that it was seen. The question wasn’t that difficult. I can’t believe she’d just ignore me. She does this all the time, too. In fact, last time -” He cut off in mid-sentence as his phone chimed. “There!” he exclaimed. “She says she was in her car and couldn’t text while driving.” He and his companion were silent. Finally, the man spoke. “At least she had a good reason,” he said.

If you think the man was being bratty and boorish, you’re not alone. However, we’re all guilty of a little of that behavior, especially when it comes to waiting for responses to first-contact emails. When we send off a message – particularly to someone we’re interested in – it’s not uncommon to sit there, drumming our metaphorical (or literal) fingers, hoping we’ll get an answer immediately.

I have witnessed this behavior in myself in the past and many times in other people including ex-girlfriends (no names).

When Northern Lass 32, wrote the piece which first got me writing, I could hear frustration but also a bit of inner tantrum forming (hey we’ve all been there). Even if you read some of the data about the differences in replies women and men get on online dating you can sense a little bit of inner tension. Everyone is different and this seems like a good use of gossip or anonymous blogging (if there is such a thing now?) Let off a little bit of steam.

As I started out saying, everyone gets them and but its really good to take note of when your starting to boil inside and ask almost unreasonable requests of someone else.

I generally think everyone is super busy, too busy to reply to my message, email or tweet. Actually one of the beautiful things about twitter at the start was the ability to reply to a tweet at your own leisure rather than a instant message on someone elses clock. Now if you reply to a tweet days later, people wonder what the hell your doing or even what you’ve been doing in the meanwhile? (oh how the mind wonders…)

With online dating, your contacting someone who might not be interested, just got into another relationship, just went on holiday, going on holiday, just had someone in their family die, just been admitted into hospital, moved country, lost there phone, had a broken internet router or any number of other things. Some of these might sound silly, but I can tell you for a fact they have all been used as excuses for why women haven’t got back to me.