The title of this 18-minute video, “Complexity, citizen engagement in a Post-Social Media time,” seems extremely academic, but the message is germane to every human. Dave Snowden, founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge as well as founder and Director of the Centre for Applied Complexity at Bangor University in Wales, helps us see that we embrace a false, primitive dichotomy. That is that we act as if we are either in an ordered or completely chaotic system.

Snowden points out that there is another type of system, one that we interact with everyday, the complex adaptive system. This type of system is defined by its connectivity though many of the specific connections are not known. There are dark constraints in these systems and we know we have them when we can see the impact of a constraint but can’t see the actual constraint. We know there are boundaries in a complex adaptive system but they aren’t always clearly defined. Snowden calls out humanity and the internet as examples of complex adaptive systems and points out that aiming to control a complex adaptive system isn’t appropriate. He says that we should, instead, seek to “understand the connections and change the linkages.”

Personally, I love when people use scenarios we can all identify with to make a point. Snowden does this with much humor, using the example of a 9 year old’s birthday party to explain how silly it is to interact with a complex adaptive system as if it were an ordered system.  Instead he shares how we ought to adopt flexible boundaries, catalytic probes and amplification strategies. The rest of the video explains his research and findings on deploying this approach and how anecdotes (narratives) are critical in complex adaptive systems.

If you watch this video, please share your thoughts in the comments below. If you have any suggestions for future videos of the week, contact me.