You know that time when you couldn't concentrate at all because of someone having a phone conversation right next to you? It's the trouble with a halfalogue. Hearing only one side of a conversation, it turns out, can be more distracting than hearing the whole dialogue. This might stem from the unpredictability of the conversation — our brains working overtime to connect the dots and uncertain what's coming next.

Halfalogues were investigated in a paper by Lauren Emberson and coauthors: Overheard Cell-Phone Conversations: When Less Speech Is More Distracting. The distraction potential of halfalogues could have more serious impacts on a driver from a passenger's phone conversation in the back.

A halfalogue is a nice extension of the dialogue and monologue.

Emberson, Lauren & Lupyan, Gary & Goldstein, Michael & Spivey, Michael. (2010). Overheard Cell-Phone Conversations: When Less Speech Is More Distracting. Psychological science. 21. 1383-8. 10.1177/0956797610382126.

Halfalogue

Durable dynamic systems have elements, or layers, that change at different rates. The fast layers that change quickly provide the innovation, while the slower layers stabilise and remember.

In his short article Pace Layering: How Complex Systems Learn and Keep Learning, Stewart Brand gives this evocative example of the time hierarchy of a coniferous forest:

"Take a coniferous forest.  The hierarchy in scale of pine needle, tree crown, patch, stand, whole forest, and biome is also a time hierarchy.  The needle changes within a year, the crown over several years, the patch over many decades, the stand over a couple of centuries, the forest over a thousand years, and the biome over ten thousand years.  The range of what the needle may do is constrained by the crown, which is constrained by the patch and stand, which are controlled by the forest, which is controlled by the biome.  Nevertheless, innovation percolates throughout the system via evolutionary competition among lineages of individual trees dealing with the stresses of crowding, parasites, predation, and weather.  Occasionally, large shocks such as fire or disease or human predation can suddenly upset the whole system, sometimes all the way down to the biome level."

It's an example of his wonderful framework of pace layers which he applies as the working structure of a robust and adaptable civilisation.

Time hierarchy

Continuous partial attention describes the state many of us find ourselves in as we try to stay connected to all the different areas of life that are now possible — as a result, we pay only partial attention to anything.

The accompanying stress or tension and, sometimes, decrease in relationship quality may contribute towards our increasing desire and awareness for the opposite: the wholly disconnected times of meditation, yoga, forest bathing, time in the outdoors, and other activities that allow us to give our full engaged attention for our wellbeing once more.

Continuous partial attention was coined by Linda Stone.

Continuous partial attention

Jared Diamond’s classic book Guns, Germs and Steel, proposes some remarkable hypotheses about how the pattern of history played out, notably trying to answer the question of why it was generally the Europeans that invaded much of the rest of the world rather than the other way around. One hypothesis, striking in its simplicity if you’ve ever looked at a world map, is the significant contribution of the general orientation of the major continents.

The Americas are largely lined up north–south, while Europe and Asia (Eurasia) are largely lined up east-west. An east-west alignment means the land generally has a more similar climate, day-length and seasonal variations. The general logic of the hypothesis is that the similar latitude of an east–west alignment means animals, crops, as well as travel and trade, more easily spread across the continents than across those with a north–south alignment — of the Americas and Africa — which naturally encounter more different climatic zones.

As a simplified example, horses and other large animals and crops spread throughout the shared temperate latitudes of Eurasia. In contrast, South America’s only large domesticated animal, the thick-coated llama (and related species like the alpaca), couldn’t easily spread to North America through the impassable tropical barrier of the isthmus of Panama. They just aren’t built for it.

There are a lot of viewpoints on the theory, and Diamond includes many more factors of geography and others — like never being able to domesticate the zebra — that go towards answering his question of why Spain invaded the Americas and not vice-versa. But ever since reading his simple hypothesis, available to anyone with a world map, I’ve found it hugely intriguing.

The continental axis hypothesis

The value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system.
— Robert Metcalfe

This law explains a little of the remarkable power of a growing network. Each time you add a user, or node, to the network, the number of connections increase in proportion to the square of the number of users. So, in this simple example where every new node gets a connection to each of the existing nodes, you can see that, say, adding a single node to an 11 node network creates 11 new connections.

It’s a simplified example because in most networks the value is not directly proportional to the number of connections as some connections or users may be more valuable than others, and usually adding a new user wouldn’t create a connection to all existing users — say if it was in a different country, or people spoke a different language, or just cared about different things. But nevertheless, you can see how a network quickly becomes valuable as users join.

So, Facebook has about 2 billion users…

Metcalfe was talking about telecommunications networks and the basic proposition has been modified since it was formulated including by Metcalfe himself.

Once again, just because something is called a law doesn’t mean it is one. See Fitt’s Law

Metcalfe’s Law

How the expectations of new technologies often evolves.

The Gartner Hype cycle

A remarkably common pattern for the evolution of many things. You see it all the time in the evolution of technical things, but also many systems in general.

When you start to reach the top of the limits of what one system can do you’ll start to see a focus on efficiency, cost reduction and small improvements and optimisation. This is great because it forces a new creative solution to arise in order to make any real progress. An image search gives a few examples.

Also, see some related sketchplanations: The long nose of innovation, designing for adoption, understanding the chasm.

The S-curve.

I love this concept from Stewart Brand, that different aspects of the world change at different speeds. So, fashion and art changes and cycles faster than commerce which is faster than infrastructure, and in turn governance, culture and finally Nature. The outer layers tend to innovate faster and so pull along, or be stabilised by, the lower, slower layers. At the boundaries you get constructive turbulence, say between Uber and governance, or how the growth in video streaming requires Internet infrastructure to come along with it. I’m sure you can find counter examples, but as a framework for thinking about big complex things I find it quite handy.

Pace layers

Update: for times when you really need to remember a password I still like this technique, for all other times — which is to say, ideally every time — I suggest using a password manager. Use a password manager to generate unique passwords for every service so long and complex that you couldn't possibly be bothered to type it and that will force you to always use the manager instead.

However, for the few passwords that you can't avoid typing they might as well remind you of something good. I have found this makes me happier.

Choose passwords that make you happy

This chart is from the original he published - just the five data points. Pretty simple huh? The “observation, originally made in 1965, that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would continue to double every year. Although this increase has slowed to a doubling in eighteen to twenty four months, Moore’s law has held true for nearly fifty years and is the foundation for the astounding Information Technology revolution we see around us.”

For those interested in Moore’s law, remarkably, I think the best information is my Dad’s book, The Computing Universe, which is also the source of the quote.

Moore’s Law

Cheat sheet for Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore

Understanding the Chasm

You can see this trend in most technology products. Increasing subtleties and functions are added improving what a product can do. At some point, the complexity is sufficient to force us to focus efforts on simplification (or the benefit great enough that a simpler technology will take over) - while maintaining functionality. Classic menus migrating to context-sensitive menus; the original NES controller, to the xbox controller to Wii and Kinect control, Yahoo’s list-the-web, to Google’s search the web, multiple glasses to photochromic glasses, and so on.

I believe this observation is from Edward De Bono, but I learned it from Darrell Mann. I keep finding it helpful.

Things get more complex before they get simple

The combination of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO setting controls the effect you get in your photograph. Ultimately it depends on the shot you want, and in any situation you someone may want to use a different combination than you, but knowing the basics helps. Now go read the manual and experiment with some of those extra buttons on your DSLR.

Shameless plug if you have a moment: Some of my photos on Flickr

Putting it all together: Exposure

The clever folks — Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith — who invented the CCD sensor, the basis of what enables modern digital cameras to capture light and record a photograph were awarded the Nobel prize for their troubles. And the silver halide film Kodak were famous for is equally remarkable.

Understanding ISO

The length of time the shutter is open, and therefore the light can reach the sensor.

Understanding shutter speed

A little mini-series and a little challenge for me to try and condense the interplay of the key aspects of control for photography into a few short sketches (I thought about doing this much earlier, but kept kicking it down the line). Please let me know in the following ones if it helped. Though the only way really, is to get out there, play with the settings, take some pictures and learn.

One of the biggest benefits of digital photography has been the narrowing of the feedback loop between taking a photo and seeing the result. Imagine taking some long exposure night sky shots on the perfect evening after many days hiking only to find, a week or so later, that your aperture, shutter speed, ISO combo was all out of whack. But what did you do wrong? And would you remember how to correct it next time you were up there. Now you can take, test, edit, test, learn. Any time the feedback cycle narrows between doing and learning expect big changes.

Understanding aperture

Which, remarkably, still does not mean they are secure.

There are 2.2 trillion combinations of an 8 character password

I love Bill Buxton’s Long Nose of Innovation theory that basically a ton of small incremental work precedes what feels like a wow innovation moment. Computer mice, touchscreens, robotics, CNC machining, haptics etc were all around for decades before they hit the big time.

The Long Nose of Innovation

Every time I stop and think about a microwave I am reminded of Arthur C Clarke’s 3rd law of prediction:

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Right up there with wifi and MRI. All just magic.

Also, I think you can use microwaves that little bit better when you understand what’s really going on.

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Category: technology