Gamesmanship on the 3-D Chessboard of National Development
Some say money determines opportunity as today’s youth explore their talents and the elderly travel more. Others claim what you know and think about creates life chances as youth invest in training and retirees draw on what they know to fulfill dreams as knowledge leads to more connections. ?This development puzzle demonstrates how the world shaped by knowledge expands the wealth of nations which in turn advances thought. Put succinctly, do ideas make society richer or does income stimulate consumption of knowledge and ideas to improve society? Do we consume wealth to know more or expand knowledge to grow smarter?
Just as GDP is linked to knowledge, so too knowledge affects economic activity. Higher GDP allows more individuals to participate in high value cluster activities. Increasing cognitive capacity allows individuals and groups to transform themselves to move development from random to strategic organization with a high degree of inter-connectivity. The history of economic growth moves from quantitative models aggregating labor, capital, and technology toward endogenous models of knowledge improving the quality of existing inputs. Simultaneously, the growth of knowledge moves along a path of acquiring facts and information;? building concepts; applying multiple concepts to solve problems and devising complex ideas. ?Elementary, intermediate, and advanced skill levels master knowing, applying, and reasoning as society advances while higher GDP allows more individuals to increase cognitive capacity.? Together, wealth and knowledge allow network science to connect people with? similar levels of ideas and interests that exponentially increase the common good.?
The move from production of better goods and services, and from elementary to advanced skills as knowledge expands, sets the stage for self-organizing complexity. Individuals and companies need to follow the progression of acquiring information to build innovative concepts, and applying them to? solve complex problems. At the same time, society must adapt to ?GDP growth moves from externally adding more labor, capital, and technology to internally applying higher levels of knowledge to workers, capital investment, and technological innovation. Both wealth and knowledge self-direct improvements in growth by expanding networks that benefits those individuals and societies that value change.
Network science suggests there are stages to network complexity as nations develop. Individuals, groups and organizations first develop highly significant frequencies of connections leading to a wide range of pathways across wider distances of clustered groups. Personal connections move from longer to shorter distance between groups that speed the flow of ideas among highly connected local interest groups. Early stages of network linkages start ?with disjointed individual and group communication which eventually moves into extensive pathways that extend coverage.
Once established, a move shortens distance to the many clusters especially with links to most influential groups. The process entails a move to quantitative connections relative to the total links possible that spreads diversity of scale across many clusters. Finally, the quality of important network clusters leads to expertise. As ideas held by influential individuals become closely linked, they increase their importance to the overall network. Creative persons who possess useful ideas share greater and quicker connectivity across wider channels feeding into the network effect.
Translated to national development, emerging nations start out with a random process of networking where connections span short distances with low clustering. Industrial societies normally have connections which span large distances across many clusters of special interests. Ultimately, advanced stages of development societies practice pathways across small average distances with high density clustering.? People and nations build links that are most connected, have the highest frequency of use, and are the most regarded.
Consequently, poor countries with few connections covering large distances have little centrality of focus and lack scale in clustering diverse interest groups. Industrial societies with high average distance nodes and high clustering but slow interconnection cannot speed up knowledge flows due to many long distance links but few short paths between pairing thereby preventing ?their full impact? of connections.
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Finally, future? society strengthens small distance connections connecting many across a wide range of advanced and influential cluster groups. It seems the value of networks increase dramatically when individuals from high-powered subgroups share ideas closely. Examples include stock traders, laboratory scientists, politicians, electricians, auto racers, entertainers in music and film, sport etc. These special interest groups form along lines of similar interests and have the effect of advancing thinking and problem solving success in understanding processes and applicatio
Spatial distributions of network complexity across rich and poor nations described above, have been explored further by Metcalfe and others who analyzed the relationships of networking benefits across nations linking cluster groups to create expertise. While Metcalfe focused on individual connections suggesting network size is proportional to the square of the number of actors connected to one another, ?Reed’s Law added the concept of group formation in network membership raising individual value through clustering. Later still, Odiyzko’s Law ?added to network value by arguing that the few smartest contacts are exponentially more important than the many average links because most individuals are not able to apply knowledge effectively since they are less astute at using cognitive skills to discern information circulating across networks. ?
Taken together, these insights support the stages of network research used to trace the relationship between wealth and knowledge mediated through self-organizing groups. Emerging countries with half their population with little or no functional literacy; middle-income nations with half the population having only elementary knowledge skills; and advanced nations with half their population with only intermediate level skills or more; it is no wonder knowledge growth will play an Important role in building influential social networks needed to build complexity?
One might contrast self-organizing networking with complexity in economic structure and knowledge expansion to a three-dimensional chessboard. As complexity rises so too must the knowledge needed to stay ahead in gamesmanship to amass wealth and knowledge on progress.
International development - governance and accountability Professor in Practice Durham University Emeritus Professor Shoolini University Associate Certified Coach ICF
5 个月Access to IT and AI coupled with the emerging world of more curious and keen students are challenges for countries including developing countries. Insightful piece, william loxley !