The taxonomy of liminality is structure. We operate tools with different combinatorial potential. The binary light switch has the smallest one, stick shift in your car and a computer keyboard have more.

As we move from the light switch to the keyboard we need to onboard ourselves into the models and combinations available to us in order to make use of the technology in front of us.

There is a threshold beyond which the combinatorial potential is blinding and there is essentially no more structure.

The most simple example would be of course, a piece of paper, or a white board.

There is no point trying to calculate all possible things that can go on a piece of paper.

If we play the same progression from the user’s side, all of those structured interfaces warrant learning, and cementing mental models. Where the unstructured piece of paper requires un–learning (or at least ‘emptying...

As we’re moving from jobs to tasks and automate certain parts of our work.

Amazon just announced that it will pay up to $12,000 per employee to train in new fields.. Presumingly to help those being automated out of their tasks (not jobs – important distinction).

Once trained, there is a real chance that the jobs they occupied will not be needed – effectively making these individuals freelancers (defined here as practitioners ‘driving their own bus’).

As such, these people will need a lot meta skills: understanding own advantages, pursuing work and not jobs, develop an eye for opportunities maybe not announced.

In the transition between now and whatever next job equilibrium follows we will all be freelancers.

I had the immense pleasure of spending a couple of days in Santa Fe, bumping into the smartest minds in complexity, science and business.

One panel on gaming really caught my attention, where e–sports took a significant part of the conversation, with some sidebar comments on education and personal agency.

It brought me back to liminal thinking and the ability to train the mental models that allow the zoom out / zoom in techniques (maybe something anthropologists would call inside–out perspective, but applied to self).

If I were an academic I could have attempted to draft a research proposal looking at the effect of gaming (and technology) at liminal thinking*.

e-sports is a natural place to look for cognitive enhancements. I guess one possible method might be an unannounced and absurd anomaly to the physical nature of the gameplay (say no gravity), and measure the time of...

Technological innovation – defined here as a new phenomena, packaged in a new frame for the market – is subject to friction. Existing market patterns, users’ habits or false iteration work against the goals and development of an innovation.

Without new energy offsetting the friction, it would come to a stop. Things like founders’ care, costumers’ mind–share or finance are needed to move an innovation along before it can pass a tipping point, when gravity will take over.

However cheaper computation and the richness of the start up eco–system is exponentially reducing this friction. Costs are dramatically lower, barriers for entry are drastically non–present, and the money is there to be raised.

In a way, we moved from street to ice hockey. Technologies – being pucks in this metaphor – are gliding with very little friction. Increasing in ability, traction and value.

In that game of...

Complexity is the science of systems of emergence. Systems in which the internal relationship between agents results in an unexpected behavior.

As such it is particularly useful for economic modeling, policy, weather and social phenomena.

Marketing is the practice of nudging collective human behavior, and driving change at scale (normally for a commercial gain).

Being unexpected as it is, human behavior and the receptiveness of a message, seems very susceptible to system thinking, which then makes techniques from complexity and modeling available in new ways.

As a simple example: nodes within our target audience can display emergence when talking about a product, or maybe if one of them becomes a brand advocate. At that point the funnel is changed, and will likely not follow our design.

Using modern techniques of decision science, we could not necessarily predict what would...

We talk a lot about the first tools, normally as a precursor to the story of the industrial revolutions. How the first man (or woman) sharpened a stone to be a tool, and then we got augmented. First physically then cognitively, and how we are now using algorithms to push that collaboration far beyond.

What we don’t consider much is that person’s creativity. The nothingness that existed and the chaotic thinking that had to be exercised.

To come close to that, I urge you to imagine that everything (and anything) is technologically possible. What would you make that could have as much impact as that first tool? Something that will truly be new reality innovation, and not an incremental improvement.

This is hard, because mental models are the way we construct ideas, and fighting those requires discipline, space and an order of mindfulness. (Do you remember the last time you said:’it’s...

Reality is instantiated

The world is made of an (almost) infinite instances of reality.

Our individual, internalized perception of objective events make our sense of reality. We place objective events in an ever-evolving frame of cognition.

As creatives we might do our best to express instructions for reactions, but at the very best all they do is prompt perception.
The colors and accents of that perception are a function of the our beliefs of the world.

“(Reality) is a reconstruction based on our 
beliefs of the world”
– Alan Kay

When approaching systemic messaging, or any kind of system design that involves people (and their instantiated realties) we should remember that perception always beats expression.

It is in situations like that these that deploying behavioral economics, complexity science, and modeling becomes incredibly powerful in reducing ambiguity

“Imagine how...

“Book of Instructions for the Equationer or Universal Calculator” (1892)

From a very young age we’re used to following instructions. Guidance and habits: from our parents, teachers, and bosses.

The collective goal of those is to instill habits that are useful and beneficial. Things like look both ways when crossing the road, or say ‘thank you’ and ‘please’.

Being told what to do is an efficient way of installing a shared value system, and is useful as long as we all have shared goals.

It is agreeable that crossing a busy street can be dangerous and that being polite to your elderly is the right thing to do.

But what happens when goals divert? Or when the future is uncertain?

When we arrive at adulthood there are no instructions to follow. Or if there are, they would only make you average.

So now value comes from exploration rather than standing in line. Suddenly no one is...

Conventional economic theory chooses not to study the unfolding of the patterns its agents create, but rather to simplify its questions in order to seek analytical solutions.

Thus it asks what behavioral elements (actions, strategies, expectations) are consistent with the aggregate patterns these behavioral elements co-create?

For example, general equilibrium theory asks: what prices and quantities of goods produced and consumed are consistent with—would pose no incentives for change to—the overall pattern of prices and quantities in the economy’s markets.

Game theory asks: what strategies, moves, or allocations are consistent with—would induce no further reactions to—the potential outcomes these strategies, moves, allocations might imply.

Rational expectations economics asks: what forecasts (or expectations) are consistent with—are on average validated by—the outcomes these...

Think of a digital product.
on a piece of paper write its function, and purpose.
Be deliberate about the separation.

Now try and rewrite your product with cognition plugged into it. If you had cognition freely available today, what would it mean for your company, and users?