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Just to reiterate, the study we are discussing and my original post are about inefficiencies in the design of human social hierarchies and not inneficiencies in
by laotzu 11y ago
Just to reiterate, the study we are discussing and my original post are about inefficiencies in the design of human social hierarchies and not inneficiencies in data structures.
>Hierarchies are efficient, that is why they exist.
They exist because they are legacy systems that were once efficient or at least practical.
>If we want to know who is responsible for some aspect of an organization we ask the boss after gathering some basic info on how that organization is structured and work our way down.
This is exactly what is now inneficient. When information was centralized due to the constraints of paper and print media this may have been efficient. But now that information is decentralized and distributed it becomes much quicker to simply query the information instantaneously yourself rather than having to go through a third party.
Centralized information leads to pyramid shaped social hierarchies.
Distributed information leads to flat or spherical internetworked social organization.
- clavalle 11y ago> it becomes much quicker to simply query the information instantaneously yourself rather than having to go through a third party. But we are still going through a third party to make that query. We are not doing it ourselves. Information is more centralized than ever. Google itself organizes it into a hierarchy. It may be more fluid than a bunch of people shuffling papers in an office or government building but the basic structure is still there. Besides, raw information is only one small part of the story. The other half of information is generation which is still boxed by responsibility (a long term information store in human form) that is most often, even today, most easily navigated to through a hierarchical organization. It might not look like the old hierarchies but that doesn't mean they are not there.