Papers by Paul B. Hartzog
Networks Diversity
the following concise formulation of his intent: “In this article I propose a teleological theory... more the following concise formulation of his intent: “In this article I propose a teleological theory of the ‘logic of anarchy ’ which suggests that a world state is inevitable… ” (Wendt, 2003: 1). I offer the following equally concise opposition: In this article I propose a teleonomic theory of the ‘logic of panarchy ’ which suggests that a world state is not inevitable. I suggest that the stable “state ” for this teleonomic process is a global “complex adaptive system, ” or governance network, in which the “logic of anarchy ” gives way to the “logic of panarchy.” It is essential to note that Wendt and I agree on far more than we disagree, but the points on which we disagree are fundamental. The following table serves to illustrate Wendt’s key points as well as mine. Wendt:
CommonsWealth
Punctum Books, Oct 8, 2020
We Have Always Been Modern
Food, Farms, and Solidarity, 2012
My main purpose in this paper is to summarize and respond to Bruno Latour's We Have Never... more My main purpose in this paper is to summarize and respond to Bruno Latour's We Have Never Been Modern. 1 Latour makes both descriptive and normative claims in the work. Latour's key descriptive claim has two parts. The first is that the construction of " modernism " is an instance of a human sense-making process that is perpetually present and has never changed, and therefore modernism's essential property, i.e. its claim to be a radical break with the past, is false. The second part is that this break is achieved by the privileging of a process of purification (i.e. the maintenance of the separation of Nature and Culture) at the expense of acknowledging the complementary process of mediation/translation, and as a result modernism cannot " see " itself clearly enough to tell that it is not a radical break with the past. Thus, we never have been (and never could be) " modern. " His normative assertion as a consequence is that by making transparent the denied construction of modernity (and its ongoing-ness) we will gain modernity's benefits without suffering its losses. Latour undertakes an investigation of the relationship between the epistemology and ontology of modernism. What Latour offers as an alternative is akin to a meta-ontology that hopes to makes sense of this process. Unmediated access to the world is impossible because it is, in essence, not " out there " to be accessed. Thus, there is a kind of ontological necessity that exists as a function of the reality of epistemological 1 Latour, Bruno (1993), We have never been modern, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Panarchy Is What We Make of It: Why a World State Is Not Inevitable
panarchy.com
Alexander Wendt begins his paper “Why a World State is Inevitable” with the following concise for... more Alexander Wendt begins his paper “Why a World State is Inevitable” with the following concise formulation of his intent:“In this article I propose a teleological theory of the 'logic of anarchy'which suggests that a world state is inevitable…”(Wendt, 2003: 1). I offer the following equally concise opposition: In this article I propose a teleonomic theory of the 'logic of panarchy'which suggests that a world state is not inevitable. I suggest that the stable “state” for this teleonomic process is a global “complex adaptive system,” or governance ...
Prospero is an infrastructure to enable public displays to reflect evolving public participation.... more Prospero is an infrastructure to enable public displays to reflect evolving public participation. Public displays, that is, displays located in public spaces and accessible to a public, constitute an increasingly important element of the public sphere. We will develop an infrastructure for community-aware public displays that are controlled by users' expressed needs and preferences; we see our endeavor as part of an ongoing, democratic reclaiming, by citizens, of control over an increasing number of aspects of the public sphere in general.
21st Century Governance as a Complex Adaptive System
Proceedings Pista 2004, 2004
The Information Revolution combined with connective technologies creates a unique global social n... more The Information Revolution combined with connective technologies creates a unique global social network. This network is vulnerable to cascades of information, norms, and coordinated action. The inherent unpredictability of the information society demands new kinds of governance that focus on rapid network-coordinated response over centralized predictive planning. Keywords: Complexity, Complex Adaptive Systems, Social Networks, Perpetual Contact, Smart Mobs, Computer Mediated Communications, Multiscale ...
Global Commons: Is Definition Possible?
There is much talk and activity about “global commons,” but there is exceedingly little consensus... more There is much talk and activity about “global commons,” but there is exceedingly little consensus on its definition. Different disciplines approach the discussion with widely varying assumptions, axioms, and goals, producing a body of writing that is inconsistent, if not incoherent. Clearly, however, the issue itself touches on some deep human concern, as is evidenced by the intense interest from many fields. Across these various fields, it is useful to examine what is meant by the term “global commons.” How does each discipline ...
Agent-based modeling is a valuable approach for investigating social systems. We investigate conc... more Agent-based modeling is a valuable approach for investigating social systems. We investigate conceptual models of social systems, i.e. structure and agents, in the social sciences including the relationship of systems to their environments. We outline a relational ontology/methodology for constructivist simulation modeling in the social sciences.
Agent-based modeling is a valuable approach for investigating social systems. We investigate conc... more Agent-based modeling is a valuable approach for investigating social systems. We investigate conceptual models of social systems, i.e. structure and agents, in the social sciences including the relationship of systems to their environments. We outline a relational ontology/methodology for constructivist simulation modeling in the social sciences.
Panarchy Is What We Make of It
Rousseau and Marx on Equality: Paradise Lost, Paradise Restored by
Panarchy: Governance in the network age
“What makes political systems cross over the threshold into parameter transformations? Some break... more “What makes political systems cross over the threshold into parameter transformations? Some breakpoints occur when a technological development enables individuals to engage in previously unimagined activities and collectivities to pursue previously inconceivable policy goals…. a turning point that occurs when the resources or practices of a system can no longer cope with one more increment of change and its parameters give way under the cumulative load.” 1
My main purpose in this paper is to summarize and respond to Bruno Latour's We Have Never Been Mo... more My main purpose in this paper is to summarize and respond to Bruno Latour's We Have Never Been Modern. 1 Latour makes both descriptive and normative claims in the work. Latour's key descriptive claim has two parts. The first is that the construction of " modernism " is an instance of a human sense-making process that is perpetually present and has never changed, and therefore modernism's essential property, i.e. its claim to be a radical break with the past, is false. The second part is that this break is achieved by the privileging of a process of purification (i.e. the maintenance of the separation of Nature and Culture) at the expense of acknowledging the complementary process of mediation/translation, and as a result modernism cannot " see " itself clearly enough to tell that it is not a radical break with the past. Thus, we never have been (and never could be) " modern. " His normative assertion as a consequence is that by making transparent the denied construction of modernity (and its ongoing-ness) we will gain modernity's benefits without suffering its losses. Latour undertakes an investigation of the relationship between the epistemology and ontology of modernism. What Latour offers as an alternative is akin to a meta-ontology that hopes to makes sense of this process. Unmediated access to the world is impossible because it is, in essence, not " out there " to be accessed. Thus, there is a kind of ontological necessity that exists as a function of the reality of epistemological 1 Latour, Bruno (1993), We have never been modern, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Institute for the Future - Ten Year Forecast - 2006, 2006
The scales of economy are shifting. In The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric Raymond claimed that, "... more The scales of economy are shifting. In The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric Raymond claimed that, "the closedsource world cannot win an evolutionary arms race with open-source communities that can put orders of magnitude more skilled time into a problem." It's an assertion that challenges the traditional understanding of collective action-as well as traditional views of how to organize global economic production. Yet over the next few decades, this viewpoint will fundamentally change organizational strategy-and perhaps the nature of human organizations.
We provide a model of “open” and “closed” methods of software production with and interrogative e... more We provide a model of “open” and “closed” methods of software production with and interrogative eye towards the convergence to a landscape of “openness.” First, we explore the competitiveness of those methods across a social landscape of varying density. Second, we explore the competitiveness of those methods by relaxing the constraints upon the less competitive method. We find a positive correlation between density and openness. We also find that, under certain conditions, the open method outperforms the closed method, but that when those constraints are relaxed the closed method can outperform the open method.
Panarchy is the emerging system of sociopolitical activity that we might refer to as the "wiki-fi... more Panarchy is the emerging system of sociopolitical activity that we might refer to as the "wiki-fication" of society. By "wiki-fication," I refer to the rise of massparticipation systems, that include 1) software production, or "open source," 2) knowledge production, e.g. wikipedia, or 3) group/identity production, e.g. communities. Mass participation is enabled by the recent spread of connective network technologies, from cell phones to the Internet. Panarchy emerges when these connective technologies, which lower the threshold for collective action, enable cooperative peer-to-peer production -of knowledge, of tools, of power.
""Politics can be characterized as the struggle to resolve the tension between the group and the ... more ""Politics can be characterized as the struggle to resolve the tension between the group and the individual. In other words, politics is concerned with what is universal, and therefore applicable to the group as a whole, as well as what is particular to each individual.3 The challenge for political philosophy has always been to balance the need for unity in the polis with the desire for freedom and diversity with regard to individuals.
The play “Arcadia,” by Tom Stoppard, contains an investigation of these tensions with an eye towards a possible understanding in the form of new ways of conceptualizing, or even escaping, traditional dichotomies.4 His source for his new insights is the study of complex systems and chaos theory. Insofar as science has typically been a search for universals, or general “laws” by which the universe operates, the study of complex systems, by contrast, offers instead what might be called the “sciences of the particular.” As it turns out, the study of complex systems and chaos theory provide the mechanism for transcending the universal/particular problematique.""
"In times of great transformation, civilization finds itself in T.S.Eliot’s Wasteland. Old rules ... more "In times of great transformation, civilization finds itself in T.S.Eliot’s Wasteland. Old rules become increasingly useless and do not result in the same successful outcomes as they did in the past, but a new Kuhnian paradigm has yet to emerge from the chaos of turbulent times. The discovery of a new path lies in the process of recognizing and illuminating patterns in the vectors that are operating in the transforming civilization. The primary hypothesis that I will endeavor to support is that leveraging the benefits of network organization constitutes a new source of power and a new way of accomplishing global governance. As individuals and groups engage each other globally, the locus of global governance shifts from state-centered activities to distributed networks. The cumulative effect of the shift from hierarchies to networks is a system of overlapping spheres of authority and regimes of collective action called “panarchy.”
Complexity + Networks + Connectivity => Panarchy"
"In recent years some historians and archaeologists have become interested in social science appr... more "In recent years some historians and archaeologists have become interested in social science approaches, such as are considered at the Santa Fe Institute, to issues of cultural selection and individual choice (often called “agency”) and how social institutions are shaped by these choices and in turn shape the domain in which choices are made.
Nevertheless, I argue that my work on “collapse” in Mesopotamia may well be a relevant case study of culture change that is amenable to new kinds of theorizing that may be appropriate for this working group. The paper presents examples of macro-societal change, the nature of social interaction in highly stratified societies, and principles of stability and instability in hierarchies, and it discusses the choices that humans, of high status and low, made and which affected their lives in the most profound ways."
"The Information Revolution combined with connective technologies creates a unique global social ... more "The Information Revolution combined with connective technologies creates a unique global social network. This network is vulnerable to cascades of information, norms, and coordinated action. The inherent unpredictability of the information society demands new kinds of governance that focus on rapid network-coordinated response over centralized predictive planning.
Complexity + Small-World Networks + Perpetual Contact = Unpredictability"
Uploads
Papers by Paul B. Hartzog
The play “Arcadia,” by Tom Stoppard, contains an investigation of these tensions with an eye towards a possible understanding in the form of new ways of conceptualizing, or even escaping, traditional dichotomies.4 His source for his new insights is the study of complex systems and chaos theory. Insofar as science has typically been a search for universals, or general “laws” by which the universe operates, the study of complex systems, by contrast, offers instead what might be called the “sciences of the particular.” As it turns out, the study of complex systems and chaos theory provide the mechanism for transcending the universal/particular problematique.""
Complexity + Networks + Connectivity => Panarchy"
Nevertheless, I argue that my work on “collapse” in Mesopotamia may well be a relevant case study of culture change that is amenable to new kinds of theorizing that may be appropriate for this working group. The paper presents examples of macro-societal change, the nature of social interaction in highly stratified societies, and principles of stability and instability in hierarchies, and it discusses the choices that humans, of high status and low, made and which affected their lives in the most profound ways."
Complexity + Small-World Networks + Perpetual Contact = Unpredictability"