Given all of the political upheaval around the world at the moment, much of it fueled or supported through social media and communications technology, it’s no wonder that news outlets are looking for experts to explain what’s happening.  There is a Feb. 18^th interview on the Wall Street Journal site with social media expert Clay Shirky: http://online.wsj.com/video/facebook-and-twitter-are-changing-the-middle-east/E0BAA515-5056-4F4A-AC5E-C684BADE46CA.html .  This seems to have resulted from an article which he wrote for Foreign Affairs: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67038/clay-shirky/the-political-power-of-social-media.  These led me back to talks he had done for TED: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html and http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_collaboration.html.

Shirky makes the point that the power of this new media is not the additional spread of messages from centralized figures of power.  Instead, the low cost and wide availability of cell phones and computers has significantly lowered the “cost of coordination” in both economic and political spheres.  It is the ability of small, individual actors to produce and hear messages from each other.  And as he explains, it is the power of those individual messages which shapes beliefs and changes behavior.

Access to information is far less important, politically, than access to conversation. Moreover, a public sphere is more likely to emerge in a society as a result of people’s dissatisfaction with matters of economics or day-to-day governance than from their embrace of abstract political ideals (Shirky, 2010, p. 35).

It’s obviously not all about cell phone videos and Tweets, though.  This information began at least as far back as the middle of the last century:

In a famous study of political opinion after the 1948 U.S. presidential election, the sociologists Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld discovered that mass media alone do not change people’s minds; instead, there is a two-step process. Opinions are first transmitted by the media, and then they get echoed by friends, family members, and colleagues. It is in this second, social step that political opinions are formed. This is the step in which the Internet in general, and social media in particular, can make a difference (Shirky, 2010, p. 34).

There are still deeper issues at work here, and they have to do with some of the basic principles of social systems.  Referring back again, as in previous posts, to the work of Andras Angyal (1941), and beginning at the level of individuals:

One of the essential features of living organisms, whereby they differ from any other object in nature, is what we might call their autonomy.  By this is meant that the organism does not represent merely an inactive point, in which various causal chains intersect – as mechanistic philosophy assumes – but is, to a large extent, a self-governing entity…  The organism is, to a large extent, the cause of its functions, that is, it is endowed with spontaneity.  We could also say that the organism possesses a certain degree of “freedom”…  (pp. 32-33)

But…

The autonomy of the organism is not an absolute one.  Self-determination is restricted by outside influences which, with respect to the organism, are heteronomous…  Thus every single organismic part process, and also the life process as a whole, is always a resultant of two components, autonomy and heteronomy (pp. 37-38)…  In this study, by autonomy is meant “self-government” and by heteronomy “government from the outside” (p. 39)…  If one now considers the organismic total process with regard to the a [autonomy]: h [heteronomy] ratio, one discovers a definite trend in the organismic total process toward an increase of the relative value of a in this ratio, that is, a trend toward an increase of autonomy (p. 41).

While it sounds as though Angyal (1941) is referring to individual people, or at least to individual biological rather than social units, he later clarifies his scope quite clearly:

We regard the life process as a unitary happening, as an organized single process whereof the organism and the environment are only abstracted features.  Instead of studying the “organism” and the “environment” and their interaction, we propose to study life as a unitary whole and endeavor to describe the organization and dynamics of the biosphere.  The subject-matter of our conversations are not organismic processes and environmental influences, but biospheric occurrences in their integral reality (pp. 100-101)

There is always danger of misapplication of theories in different realms, and even at different scales of systems. It is worth at least considering, though, that the principles which Angyal proposes may apply to human social systems as well as to biological ones.  If so, then the propensity of systems to move towards autonomy is an important one.  This is reinforced by Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s concept of progressive mechanization, in which systems become less responsive to their environments by way of repetition of the same internal processes.  They become machine-like.  Niklas Luhmann referenced the same kinds of processes in his description of operationally closed systems.  In this case, he included the possibility of exchange of matter and energy with the environment, but made the distinction that the internal processes of such systems were governed or regulated only internally.

Angyal (1941) makes an absolutely critical distinction when he clarifies that “internal” and “external” are not spatial issues.  They are issues of governance and relationship.

With regard to the organism the terms “external” and “internal” have a specific meaning.  They do not refer to spatial relations…  “Belonging” or “being a part of” means that a certain factor is carrying out a partial function of the total system (p. 42)

The conception of organism and environment as morphological entities which are separable in space is inadequate for the description of biological phenomena.  They become fundamental biological concepts if we define them as dynamic factors.  Dynamically expressed, organism is self-government and environment is heteronomous influence.  Every concrete biological process is a resultant of these two factors.  The relationship of these two factors can be expressed theoretically in the ration of a:h in which the relative values of a and h vary from case to case (p. 97)

So to extend all of this to the realms of social systems and politics, telecommunications media have facilitated conversations between people, which have allowed new systems to emerge.  These new social systems are comprised of individuals who quit responding to environmental governance which they would no longer support, and began responding to new principles of governance with which they better identified or “resonated.”  They did not have to move from one physical space to another in order to leave the old system.  The old system began dying when they simply quit responding to its cues. These changes have not generally been the result of a new political theory broadcast through mass media.  In fact, most the new movements or systems have yet to be clearly identified.  (Some existing political influences hope to fill the vacuums in their own plays for power, but the outcomes remain to be seen.)  The new systems with the strongest and most consistent patterns are the most likely to survive.  They will define themselves and move towards further autonomy and self-regulation.

Angyal, A. (1941). Foundations for a science of personality. New York: The Commonwealth Fund.

There have long been discussions about whether systems are “real.” Some take the position that the universe we know is comprised of systems which we discover through recognition.  Others claim that systems are only a way of seeing things – a particular set of concepts by which we describe reality, but which are arbitrary and completely subject to the interpretation of each observer.

This is actually only an extension of the more general question, “what is real?” While most people would agree that we experience a “real” world, it’s also true that we only experience it based upon our individual interpretations of the sensations that we have.  What we “see” is the result of how our brains interpret the neuronal impulses which our eyes produce in response to the light which stimulates them.  We assume that what we see is real (therefore the adage, “seeing is believing”) but we can easily be fooled through simple manipulations such as visual illusions. Similarly, we assume that our experience of the world is directly connected with the actuality of the world until we find ourselves in an altered state.  This can happen in dreams that seem so real that we don’t know whether they were dreams or not.  (At the neurological level, it was equally an “experience.”)  It can also occur as result of almost any alteration to our brain chemistry, be it from chemicals that we ingest (e.g. drugs), or injury, or excessive fatigue, or conditions such as dementia or schizophrenia.  It can even happen simply through suggestive states of consciousness such as from watching a really scary movie and becoming hypersensitive to “things that go bump in the night.”

One aim of science has been to overcome these problems by eliminating human bias from research.  Observations are made using tools and measurements which are to be verified by other observes, and ultimately through controlled experiments which can test the veracity of any claims.  For better or worse, though, science is a human activity which is always subject to human interpretation and understanding.

Because our experiences happen individually inside each of our brains, we can only compare and coordinate those with others.  We can never know for certain the actual experience of another.  At the same time, what we do – individually and collectively – affects the real, tangible world in which we live, just as we are a part of that world and are affected by it.

One aspect of the question in relation to systems is the choice of things on which to focus.  Ultimately, everything is connected in one way or another, even if just at the most elemental (e.g. quantum) levels.  And yet as humans there is no way by which we can focus on the entirety of the universe all at once.  We have to make choices.  As explained by Ashby (1956):

At this point, we must be clear about how a “system” is to be defined.  Our first impulse is to point at the pendulum and to say “the system is that thing there.”  This method, however, has a fundamental disadvantage: every material object contains no less than an infinity of variables, and therefore of possible systems.  The real pendulum, for instance, has not only length and position; it has also mass, temperature, electric conductivity, crystalline structure, chemical impurities, some radioactivity, velocity, reflecting power, tensile strength, a surface film of moisture, bacterial contamination, an optical absorption, elasticity, shape, specific gravity, and so on and on.  Any suggestion that we should study “all” the facts is unrealistic, and actually the attempt is never made.  What is necessary is that we should pick out and study the facts that are relevant to some main interest that is already given (p. 39-40).

What Ashby describes is what is often called the “system of interest.” It is that entity or phenomenon on which one focuses.  It is that part of reality that we separate from the rest in order to understand it independently, or “as it is.” In Gestalt work, it is what comes into the “foreground.”  In science it is the subject, and in engineering and other disciplines it is defined by what is included in a particular model.

From this perspective it’s easy to see why there is often confusion about the concept of systems.  The systems with which we work are bounded by choices of our interests or focus.  But that does not mean that they do not reflect aspects of reality.  (In fact, if they did not, there would be little value in having them at all.)  Robert Rosen made the distinction between formal systems (or models) and natural systems, or the entities in the real world which they represented.  As he explained it:  “Now the whole point of making models, i.e. of encoding natural systems into formal ones, is to enable us to make specific predictions (particularly temporal or dynamical predictions) about natural systems, utilizing the inferential structure of the model as an image of the processes occurring in the natural system itself ” (Rosen, 1985, p. 215).

Andras Angyal (1941) offers a perspective which suggests that there are systems in the world, and that we can discover ways to study them with some accuracy.  As he describes this:

Some state that wholes, as such, cannot be studied since scientific investigation presupposes that analysis of the whole into parts, which then makes possible the study of the interrelationships among parts.

It is, however, a misconception that the holistic type of study excludes analysis.  Analysis consists in a concrete or abstractive division of an object into smaller units.  One can, however, make divisions in many different ways, depending upon the principle according to which the division is made.  It is true that such division may destroy the whole, but there is a method of analysis which is perfectly adapted to the study of wholes, a method which does not destroy the object studied but, on the contrary, brings its structure into clearer relief.  Let us clarify this point.

Suppose one wishes to study a given whole, be it an animal, a plant, or even an inanimate object which exhibits some of the characteristics of wholes, for example, a building.  One can divide such wholes in at least four different ways.  1) One can “cut” the object into pieces at random.  The result of such division will be a number of fragments.  2) One can divide the whole according to a certain previously fixed principle which does not take into account the intrinsic nature of that given whole but is extraneous to it.  An illustration of this type of division would be the division of a tree into cubes.  3) One can “divide” by abstraction, by which is meant the resolution of objects into a number of distinguishable properties, for example, color, weight, consistency, etc.  The result of such analysis will be a number of features.  4) One can divide the whole according to its structural articulation.  Wholes, in the technical sense of the word, are never entirely undifferentiated, but are always structured and articulated into parts.  This characteristic distinguishes them from homogenous masses and from chaotic aggregations.  The multiplicity of parts is just as characteristic of wholes as the unity which holds them together.  The whole is never structureless but is a true unitas multiplex, as the philosopher would say.  The division of the whole into smaller units can be made, therefore, in such a way that the line of division coincides with the structural articulation of the whole itself, and thus the lines of division are prescribed by the structure of the whole itself (pp. 12-13)

References:

Angyal, A. (1941). Foundations for a science of personality. New York: The Commonwealth Fund.

Ashby, W. R. (1956). An introduction to cybernetics. London, UK: Chapman and Hall Ltd.

Rosen, R. (1985). Anticipatory Systems.  Oxford: Pergamon Press.