The Laws of Fragvergence

I’d like to thank Marko Bijelic for providing the spark a few years back to rummage through my collection of excapite memories and take them for a walk around the network one more time

Since then we have briefly revisited everything from the emergence of the Time Wallets to the Fractal Narratives and lot of things in-between

Do they still have currency in the emerging age of “Intelligence in the Absence of Intelligence” ?

Certainly the GenAI bots that continue to harvest the content of my old blog on a daily basis seem to think so… as the old song goes… we work the black seam together

I must admit when I hit up the old keyboard again I was hoping to stumble across a new idea or three to kick down the road while I was here... but I’m not sure I’ve found any as interesting as Pheroaming or the Fractal Narrative

In truth I have discovered the network - or at least this network (Think: LinkedIn) - is more about engagement than reach and the ability to seed discussions is more rewarding than diving deep in search of new insights

Group discussions ankle deep in the shallows are popular here - but that is a function of conversations mediate by the keyboard and fragment by both time and distance

I’d like to finish up this grand tour of yesteryear’s thinking - the grand tour of the excapite rubble - with the laws of Fragvergence

A deep dive into why it was always inevitable that Generative AI was going to be the sum of our collective banality, rather than the sum our collective imaginings

Well over a decade ago - when it first appeared on the excapite blog - the Fragvergence described the tensions in play between the inevitable convergence and fragmentation of the networked economy. The convergence being the signal generated by a singularity of behaviour (e.g. hunt for likes and shares) and the fragmentation being the infinite noise being generated in our attempts to trigger that behaviour across the network

The laws were formulated in an afternoon around the time of the Facebook IPO and they go like this…

The First Law of Fragvergence

The Total Economic Value of of the Network is significantly less than the total effort required to create and maintain the network

Network theory and Metcalfe's Law may be a brilliant conceptual model for selling expensive information technology, high value management consulting services and attracting page views for tech bloggers. But it fails to explain why the life cycle of these "game changing" networks is so short. Or is at least subject to an initial fast growth to a high peak and then a long slow decline.

After all, if it is self evident that everyone benefits from an ever expanding network why are these networks subject to cascading failure? Why are they so easily disrupted by the next best thing? Why does everybody choose to move away if everybody is already here?

What I think we need is a new conceptual model. Something that accounts for the tensions between convergence and fragmentation in the networked economy. A conceptual model that expresses the true value of "fragvergence" at the nodal level.

You see the problem with the ever expanding universe theory that drives the cost benefit analysis of network theory is that it fails to account for the economic and practical realities at work at the nodal level.

I say that because as the network expands it becomes self evident that at some point the cost of maintaining a presence on the network at the nodal level exceeds the benefits of being an active participant on the network.

Take for example the App Store economy where we have discovered on any number of occasions that the total cost of the effort invested by the developer community in the iNetwork economy far exceeds the total value of the goods and services being purchased through the App Store.

I have previously described it as Supply Side Freemium but the reality is network economics isn't a zero sum game. It always requires significantly more effort to build and maintain the network than the economic value that is realised by the network.

The same applies to the Google economy with its focus on SEO and the generation of content. The total effort to build the Google Web far exceeds the financial benefits being extracted by all parties doing business on the Google web.

We could apply the same cost benefit analysis to Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or any number of these emerging Social Networks. The reality is the economic value of these networks do not reflect the sum total of the effort invested in creating and maintaining them.

So why don't these networks automatically fail when the average effort required by the individual nodes far exceeds the social and/or economic benefits of maintaining a connection with the network?

Why? because that would assume that the majority of participants in the network are rational. The reality is the majority of participants are there for emotional reasons and therefore one cannot assume they will act rationally. The network is a collective of irrational actors. Why else would they continue to contribute unlimited time and resources to connect to a network that in all probability will fail to deliver an ROI to the individual actor?

The tipping point then that initiates movement away from the network is not a cost benefit analysis.

A cost benefit analysis for the irrational just leads to inertia (i.e. its all too hard). Indeed a cost benefit analysis of investing resources in any of these networks would deliver a business case that suggests you are going to be wasting your time and money. You are there because the illusion is everybody else is there. It is emotive groupthink that powers the growth of these networks. Not economic rationalism. It is the delusion of loss (ie Sunk Cost). Rather than illusion of opportunity that drives most of this activity.

No what really happens is the node sees change happening around them and becomes excitable. It moves with the flock.

Which suggests we are not dealing with a network but with a complex adaptive system.

The key then to unlocking the secrets of the "network" isn't to be found in the economics of the network economy but in the chaotic influence of strange, point and circle attractors in shaping behaviour on the "network".

Network thinking is about creating and exploring fixed patterns. i.e. Bring the world to rest around you.

Fragvergence is about creating and exploring movement and activity. i.e. Providing the world with the catalysts to move with you.

The future isn't about counting hits, likes or tweets. It's about creating experiences that move the greatest number of actors on the network.

The Second Law of Fragvergence

In a networked economy the quality of the activity is inversely proportional to the quantity of activity.?

The Second Law of Fragvergence based on the idea that, as?the value chains of the converging industries fragment, the collective products and services offerings are normalised to mirror the mean offering.?i,e. The specialist premium offerings are disrupted by the amateur?or, what Aden Hepburn would?describe?as, "the lifeless subspace of the undetermined middle ground"?as each segment of the value chain competes for business in the adjoining sectors.

This trend can be mistaken as a function of increased competition that inevitably drives down the cost of delivering the product or service. The inevitable trade off is the product and service offerings trend towards the "lowest common denominator". However this would be to acknowledge the symptom rather than the cause.

You see this trend is not exclusive to the convergence in media and advertising and marketing. We see the same trend across all the digital economies. For example Amazon mirrors the iTunes Store which in turn mirrors the Android Store. There is an inevitable convergence of offering as the offering is shaped by the technology employed to create and distribute the offering is standardised across the cross industry value chain. Likewise corporate treasuries, airlines and retailers have discovered they too can become bankers and?financiers?simply by employing the technology to run their own currencies (e.g. Supply Chain Hubs and Loyalty cards).

The root of this greying of the fragvergence. This beige of normalised?capabilities?is of course the technology. The tools we use ?to connect to this global network of databases. If we all use the same tools in the same way then it becomes somewhat inevitable that we all trend towards offering the same products and services. The output of the knowledge economy is just messages?distributed?as parcels of data after all.

The market differentiator is?knowledge?on demand not knowledge by design. This is what Google understands and the rest of the media and communications industry is still struggling with.

Plus, realistically, in the age of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the viral meme what does the professional have to offer that kids can't ?do in their bedroom or the marketing department can't do in-house?

The truth is the technology democratised the craft. Where once you had to spend millions of dollars to build suites to edit video tape today you can do it on your smartphone. But this?democratisation?of the medium comes at a cost and that cost is not so much grey but more a tasteless haze of beige.

Which is to say that every garage band may aspire to become the next Coldplay but the reality is?truly?innovative creative talent is the exception to the rule. And by that I mean talent is not merely a function of the tools you have at hand to play with

Or, put very simply. In a networked economy stupid wins.

If you are in any doubt then just take a quick look at the latest social meme... Gangnam Style

and all of this leads us to the 3rd and final law of fragvergence…

The Third Law of Fragvergence

The total economic value of the network is?significantly?less than the effort required to build and maintain the network is simply?because?the quality of the work that goes into building the network is inversely proportional to the quantity of work required to build the network.

So tell me how do you see Facebook? Is it?a network of 1 Billion members?or 1 Billion micro networks whose average size amounts to no more than 300 members each?

Think about it and you'll understand the real meaning of the networked economy. The true measure of its scale isn't in the sum of its nodes but the average number of connections across each of its nodes.

This then is?the logical?fallacy?of the assumed value of the network being expressed as variant of the sum of its nodes.

It also explains why 1 Billion users isn't a barrier to the collapse of Facebook. The?argument?that everybody is on Facebook doesn't stand up when you understand that everybody to the average member on Facebook is less than 300. That's why Michael Wolff is correct when he writes?Facebook is under threat from the carve up of its social experience.

It is simply a question of the depth vs. the breadth of experience. The agility vs. efficiency of the network experience which is at the heart of the Fragvergence paradox.

And, if you think about it, there is a beautiful?symmetry?between the two Laws of Fragvergence which leads us to the third and final Law of Fragvergence

The total economic value of the network is?significantly?less than the effort required to build and maintain the network is simply?because?the quality of the work that goes into building the network is inversely proportional to the quantity of work required to build the network.

Or, as we have seen before?Gamification = Garbage.

The only exception to this rule being perhaps when you work through the process of migrating a real world network into a digital network. (i.e. repurposing an existing network whose ROI has already been realised prior to migration - although even here the?benefits?are marginal over time)

This then is the reality of living the Electric Beige. The glory and the paradox of the networked economy.

It explains why, 20 years on, in this the quintessential Facebook moment, the Internet has fallen so far short of our original expectations and perhaps why it is apparently the root of our economic malaise.

The question is, now having understood the three Laws of Fragvergence, are we able to move on from this moment? This wreckage of the original dream of a world connected. To create that?dinner party we never had?and consign this technology induced Electric Beige to the annuals of?history.

Postscript 2012

Let’s finish off the decent into the Fragvergence by revisiting some old ideas about the networked economy being a collection of?Lists and nests.

But let's change the conversation by describing lists as masculine and nests as feminine.

And let's rethink the social conversation as a conversation about nesting rather than connecting.

After all social media (for the most part) is a distinctly feminine activity.

Of how these social networks are less networks and more a nesting place full of nests.

The crowdsong is the call to nest and the crowdflocking the migratory journey to secure a nest alongside all the other females in the new, more fashionable nesting ground.

You see the words we use to describe the behaviour change the way we think about the behaviour.

It helps to explain why walled gardens and portals like AOL and Yahoo! are disrupted. And why search and social struggle to live in the same location.?But more importantly new words and new ways of thinking allow us to rethink how we can disrupt this?behaviour?and begin the process of experimenting with the look and feel of the Facebook killer or alternatively, if we rethink our ideas around the masculinity of lists (i.e. biggest list wins.), Google.

The walled garden and the road trip.?Suburbs and cities. Homes and Skyscrapers. Nests and Lists. Feminine and Masculine.

Think about it. And then you'll understand that you are not in the business of changing the world but in the business of taping into deeply embedded human behaviours and primitive?impulses.

This is the subtext to the fiction of the networked economy. It isn't a ?roadmap for the future. A new way of doing business. Merely a blueprint for monetizing the basic instincts of?a generation in flux.

The 2023 Postscript

If you have made it this far you are probably wonder what’s the kicker? How does Fragvergence and Generative AI come together?

The 3rd Law of the Fragvergence states

The total economic value of the network is?significantly?less than the effort required to build and maintain the network is simply?because?the quality of the work that goes into building the network is inversely proportional to the quantity of work required to build the network.

ie it’s a volume game and that’s why memes beat deep dives every time

My assessment of Generative AI is very simply (by harvesting the content generated by the network) it is self evident the network becomes the model

and within that context it is my observation that Generative AI is the ultimate expression of the Laws of Fragvergence

ie….

The total economic value of the model is?significantly?less than the effort required to build, populate, train and maintain the model simply?because?the quality of the work that goes into building, populating, training and maintaining the model is inversely proportional to the quantity of work required to build, populate, train and maintain the model.

All of which is to say the economic value generated by Generative AI will be significantly less than the economic value invested in the network that is being harvested to create the model

if you understand what I mean…

However the key observation in the original posts was 'The market differentiator is?knowledge?on demand not knowledge by design'

Understand what this means in the context of the 'GenAI chatbots are the future of intelligence' narrative and you can see how the key problem GenAI is designed to solve is not delivering AGI but how do you put a pay per view, knowledge on demand 'walled garden' around the web without having to pay for the privilege of doing it?