The bigger picture

The excellent Shift Index Report produced by the Deloitte Center for the Edge, a Silicon Valley based think tank, is useful reading for anyone who wants to better understand why the world is suddenly more complex, uncertain and ambiguous.

There are two significant bumps in the index. One occurs at start of the 21st century. The other bump towards the end of the first decade, which the authors interpret as "the recessions in 2001 and 2008" which "particularly moved the needle, representing much greater pressures on firms, consumers, and talent during those times."

But what if the index is measuring only some of the factors contributing to the accelerating change we are experiencing? What if there are other factors in play which may have a more powerful impact on society than the three indices and 25 metrics the Centre for the Edge used to measure the forces of long-term change in terms of the impact on firms, markets and people. And what might these other factors be?

Here's an explanation of the Shift Index. A copy of the report can be downloaded here.

For markets the index tracks competitive intensity, labor productivity and stock price volatility. For firms it takes into account asset profitability, the return on assets performance gap, the firm topple rate and the shareholder value gap. The aspects of people change are consumer power, brand disloyalty, returns to talent and executive turnover.

The flow index factors in market flows, virtual flows and amplifiers. The virtual flows are shifts in Internet knowledge, wireless activity and internet activity. The physical flow component is made up of the migration of people to creative cities, travel volume and the movement of capital. The flow amplifiers are worker passion and social media activity.

The foundation index looks at changes in technology performance, with a focus on computing, digital storage and bandwidth. It also considers infrastructure penetration in terms of internet users and wireless subscriptions. On the public policy front it factors in economic freedom.

According to our Complexity Theory Model of Socio-technological change each wave of change is about one-fifth shorter than the one before, as many more people become involved in knowledge creation and ever more powerful tools are invented which ratchet up productivity, including knowledge creation productivity.

And according to this model, one of the blips The Edge identified should be the start of the shift from an Information Age world to a Knowledge Age world, and the second blip, the start of the shift from Knowledge Age to Wisdom Age way of performing work, engaging with others, or incorporating new, more powerful theories into products.

The model predicts these changes:

a) tools, technologies and methods automate the work of the previous paradigm and add a higher skill component to earlier periods e.g. currently the work of teachers is being displaced by on-line learning. Internet knowledge repositories and search tools are displacing the work of librarians. Middle-management work is being displaced by group decision support systems, simulators and rich new decision/learning methods from fields outside the world of business.

b) earlier classes of work decline as a percentage of the workforce composition. The latest new class of jobs emerging are "wise-application of knowledge" jobs which may be hard to distinguish from knowledge jobs (but include roles such as certified ethical hacker and global governance director), in the same way that many Knowledge jobs (librarian, teller, teacher) have been hard to separate from Information jobs (clerk, secretary)

b) just before the transition point, the system becomes more volatile, before settling down again to a new pattern of activity, as indicated in this figure from a paper, Beyond the Frontiers of Project Management, by Manfred Saynisch, a thought leader in the field of complex project management.

c) a greater proportion of people become involved in the process of new knowledge creation, which further accelerates the rate at which new technologies, methods etc. are developed and implemented.

d) more stages of socio-technological development remain "in churn", thereby increasing the complexity and volatility of the system.

e) after the fourth bifurcation, the system has many more states of stability (but more critical and hard to tune into). The lines on the logistic curve are dynamically stable states, the shaded areas are chaotic regions.

So here are some questions for any and every organization to consider:

1. What are the big shifts that are taking place in your world, and how are they different to 10, 50, 100 and 200 years ago?
2. In your experience, how is the rate of change changing for you? Gives examples, for example product development cycles are now....x years long compared to y years long in 19XX.
3. Who and how many people in your organization system are involved in the process of knowledge creation, sense making and strategy formulation and how does this compare to 10, 50, 100 and 200 years ago?
4. What kind of change is happening to products and services? How fast are they changing, how many fields/disciplines are products/services dependent upon compared with 10, 20, 100 or 200 years ago. e.g. a motor car mechanic now meeds a knowledge of computers as well as mechanics to be able to perform his/her job.
5. What has happened to relationships? Compare relationships of 10, 50, 100 and 200 years ago and the technologies that influenced them e.g. the letter, the phone, the internet, the jet aircraft.
6. What has happened to infrastructure systems (complexity, connectivity) over the past 10, 50, 100 and 200 years? Think about roads, telecommunications, rail, air, buildings, government, financial transactions).
7. Considering all these trends, what do you think are the factors driving greater complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity?

Man-made tsunamis the new challenge

Back in the days when the world around us changed ever so slowly it was the nasty surprises that nature delivered which caught us off guard.

Although we have built cushions into 21st century living that shield many of us from the most diabolical of what nature has to offer, the hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, droughts, floods, plagues and volcanic eruptions have not gone away, and every so often, a bigger event than we expected wreaks havoc.

As a result of our efforts to smooth out nature's bumps, we have created a new kind of tsunami, that every so often washes through civilization and leaves a trail of destruction. Millions out of work, struggling to feed themselves and their families.

The man-made Tsunamis occur at the transition from one socio-technological age to another, when people and organizations don't realize they need to adapt to the new social, market and economic conditions in order to be successful.

It's the start of a new kind of economy - the Wisdom Economy.

The US Department of Labor (2001) shows that big dislocations occurred during the 20th Century in the 1930s which was the Great Depression where one in three were out of work, and again in the 1980s. We are in the middle of another big upset labelled the GFC or global financial crisis which began in 2008.

These epochs are well known to us. The Industrial Age (1700-1940), the Information Age (1940-1990) and the Knowledge Age (1990-2005). The timing of these dislocations broadly coincides with major shifts in the power of the knowledge we create, how we embed that knowledge in more complex and powerful tools, and the way we organize work.

We know from our history books that farm workers and artisans migrated to the cities in droves when their jobs were automated by machines. They found work in the factories that destroyed their old jobs, but miraculously created many more of the new.

Not only did we survive the extinction of clerical and secretarial work by computers and the automation of knowledge or professional work by expert and control system, but we also managed to upgrade the work, so that unskilled jobs now represent only a small fraction of what's available. It is now becoming more difficult to find adequately trained workers for the new jobs that are being created, especially maths and science trained vocational workers.

The really big dislocations occur just where we would expect, at the intersection between socio-technological paradigms. Each new wave is about one-fifth the length of its' predecessor, a constant which is the reciprocal of the Feigenbaum delta, 4.6669*.

We tend to think these dislocations are caused by some one's financial greed, but there appears to be a more likely culprit. All of us.

Our efforts to create a better life for ourselves and our children create a demand for smarter and better tools, products, services and methods. We then use these tools to create more  knowledge, which we turn into even better products and services to improve our lives. More and better trained people are needed to design and operate these more complex and powerful tools, which speeds up the rate at which we create new knowledge, and the rate at which everything changes.

The waves of change, from Industrial Age onwards, follow this pattern of knowledge use:

* knowledge transmission - experts tell you all you need to know.
* knowledge re-purposing - you get to work out what to do with an expert's knowledge
* knowledge co-creation - you play a role in creating new knowledge so you and your  organization can adapt more quickly to change
* the wise application of knowledge - everyone plays a role in creating new knowledge and applying it wisely by using tools with the wise application of knowledge" or "initial conditions" built in, like "Intel inside".

So paradoxically, our collective desire to reduce the uncertainties in life, creates more uncertainties.

The big question for society is can we continue to adapt to change, or are we sowing the seeds of our own ultimate destruction as a society? And what if those who can't keep up with the change (or don't want to), let the rest of us know they have had enough and forcibly drive us all back to a time when change was slower.

It is tempting to head back to the past when our world changed more slowly. Let's assume a generation is 20 years, about the time it takes for your kids to have your grandchildren. That's about 5 every 100 years, 50 every 1000 years, 500 every 10,000 years.

Since the big migration out of Africa, Hunter Gatherer society remain relatively unchanged for 2,000 generations. Sons and daughters were able to learn all they needed to know about life from their parents, who learned what they knew from their parents with hardly any variation for 40,000 years.

Our Agricultural Age ancestors lived in a world that stayed much the same for 400 generations or 8,000 years, plenty of time to settle down into a regular and reliable pattern.

For the next three stages of society, it is a totally different story. No sooner had the farmers left their farms and started work in factories, their world was turned upside down. Just 5-6 generations to get used to the concept of factory work, before the next 5-6 generations headed towards an Information Age world.

The Information Age came and went in three generations. The Knowledge Age is disappearing from view after one.

So here is a workshop to explore these ideas about the emerging Wisdom Economy:

1. Think back to some of your first memories of the world around you. What kinds of tools (products, services, methods and ways of learning) existed when you first arrived on the planet?

2. Think back over your life. What are some of the changes in technology that you personally have experienced?

3. Choose a technology with which you are familiar e.g. music players and describe the kinds of changes that have occurred.

4. Thinking about how knowledge is incorporated into the products and services that have changed during your lifetime, what shifts have taken place?

5. Give examples of each of the following kinds of knowledge processing (transmission of expert knowledge, repurposing of expert knowledge, co-creation of knowledge, wise application of knowledge)

6. Give an example of a group of people in society who have chosen to remain at an earlier stage of knowledge processing (transmission, repurposing, co-creation) How are they different to the leading edge of society?

7. What might be some of the consequences for human society of accelerating change/accelerating knowledge creation?

8. Describe a product or service for the Wisdom Economy with "the wise application of knowledge" inside"?

9. What might be the economic, social and political consequences of some people being unable/unprepared to adapt (i.e be educated to a higher level) to the societal change, and/or participate in the new kinds of "wise application of knowledge" jobs?

Is the MBA dead?

Is the MBA is dead in the water, as we know it?

Perhaps. But like any successful organism, the MBA is under pressure to evolve to something new, to meet the emerging needs of organizations, and probably will survive in a new form.

I earned my MBA 15 years ago. What I learned is still useful, but many of the central concepts about running a business or organization have been transformed by the changing times.

MBAs fill many management roles, including expert capabilities delivered into an organization;  functions such as change management, innovation, marketing and HR. But many of these roles are being shed and replaced by front line staff, not necessarily in supervisory roles, distributed throughout the organization who have a broad expertise in strategy, improvement, innovation, facilitation/leadership capacities, supported by new kinds of tools in which specialist knowledge is embedded, expert systems, group decision tools, simulators and calculators.

As society makes the shift from the current Knowledge Age paradigm to the emerging Wisdom Age world, the dominant work of the previous period is becoming automated by the newly emergent tools/technologies. The expert procedures/methods that are the jobs of knowledge workers, mostly people with degrees, are becoming embedded in the new tools, e.g. on-line learning (teaching), on-line conveyancing (legal), tools for dealing successfully with conflict (legal/judicial), on-line preventive health (medical) and financial management programs (accounting and share trading) so anyone can do the work, just by using the tool.

At the start of this new economic order, the Wisdom Economy, we are having to change the way we speak about everything we do.

The very name "administration" implies the need for organizations to be rule-based systems,  that are relatively unchanging. The situation for so called Masters of Business "Administration"  is thus complicated by the accelerating rate of change who find themselves operating in increasingly more complex, ambiguous and uncertain environments, where the rules must keep changing. So perhaps the course needs a new name, which  reflects its' future adaptive nature.

Perhaps we could keep the acronym, MBA, which might stand for the superlative, Magnificence of Business Agility, to celebrate our role as a player of infinite games, that we are in awe of the amazing possibilities ahead of us, and we are not the masters in the field, but excited learners, willing to wisely explore future kinds of agility, whatever may emerge.

Some organizations, at the leading edge now realize they ARE complex adaptive systems, to which traditional linear/serial tools derived from algorithmic and serial theories/models do not necessarily apply any more.

The methods that we will find in this new MBA course are being supplemented by (and in some cases displaced) by models/theories outside the world of business, as diverse as ethics, collective play, anthropology, neuroscience, complexity theory, fractal theory, biology, relativity theory, quantum dynamics, the creative arts etc. Although a Master in Fine Arts is now regarded by some as the new MBA, the theoretical repertoire required by a leader in business is more like the range of approaches available on TED and Poptech.

The new Wisdom Economy tools have "the wise application of knowledge inside", like "Intel inside" (decision support/rules systems, expert systems, simulators/simulations, calculators, calculators), and so perform many of the roles of a leader/manager/coordinator/expert. It's a kind of "transcend and include" thing.

Such products are likely to have automatic disposal/recycling of a worn-out/spent./outmoded "thingy" at the end of its' life, or the outputs from the use of the product/service are predesigned inputs to other services so they operate collectively as a sustainable system.

Tools such as the Zing complex adaptive learning go even further and incorporate "people skills" such as high-level thinking and relating skills, an etiquette to provide the norms for a group to quickly form as a team and reliably work together, the question sequences that guide the conversation to a successful conclusion, and the sense making step which results in the group creating new knowledge without having to be guided via the leadership/relating skills of a manager.

But there also seems to be a demand for MBA Lite, a kind of "quick and dirty" introduction to the principles and practice of business administration for those who are not from the world of business, such as managers and supervisors in community services, health and local government, to round out their skills. Think books like MBA in a Day from Professor Steven Stralser of Thunderbird Graduate School in Phoenix. Which bears out the "transcend and include" rule.

Here's a workshop to explore these ideas:

1. Brainstorm a new name for the Master of Business Administration course to reflect the need for the course to be a complex adaptive system in its' own right.
2. Give an example of a Wisdom Economy product or service that has "wise application of knowledge" inside and explain what it does and the value it delivers.
3. What might "wise application of knowledge" mean for organizations? What are some of the essential principles or "initial conditions" that "wise application of knowledge" organizations might adopt in terms of for product and services design, organization structures, relations with stakeholders, etc.?
4. If high-level strategy, planning, change, innovation and other capacities become more distributed how will organizations achieve a common sense of purpose?
5. What are some "transcend and include" strategies you might apply to business methods and processes, so that old "tried and true" methods become reinvented and incorporated in the new complex adaptive learning methods, wherever appropriate.
6. Go to TED, take a look at any video, make some notes about the theory, model, rules or concepts that the speaker describes.
7. Using the notes you have generated in 6, craft a set of rich questions that would allow a group to have a conversation about the consequences for an organization of the theory/concepts presented by the "thought leader".
8. Make a list of some of the critical people skills/principles required for organization success. Now develop an idea for a new product that has these skills or principles in the product.
9. Design a course for the Magnificence of Business agility.

Learning from nature

Sometimes we humans think we are super smart. But compared with nature we have the creative powers of a gnat. Or maybe not, for all we know, gnats may be more creative and intelligent than we have ever noticed or imagined.

Consider the skyscraper.  Tens of stories tall inhabited by hundred or thousands of humans and our fellow travellers. Like cockroaches. Bedbugs. Or rats and mice.

A human invention? Nope.

The craggy river red gum which inhabits river valleys all over Australia must surely be one of the first skyscrapers (Image, Peter Halasz). On average, each tree houses 150 households, in convenient hollows where the wood has rotted. Each hollow is a high rise apartment for possums, birds, insects and other creatures. All courtesy of nature, designed so that what we think of as waste - rotten wood- is recycled for another purpose. The outputs from one life process become the inputs to another, the very same principles of natural capitalism that Amory Lovens, founder of the Rocky Mountains Institute applies to organizations, to achieve greater sustainability.

So here a workshop to explore this powerful natural principle:

1. Describe a system where waste outputs spoil our/your way of life.
2. Choose one of the systems and make a list of all the components and how resources e.g. water, gases, minerals, soil, paper, organic matter flow through the system. How does each component arrive, e.g. as raw materials, where does it flow to, and how does it leave e.g. as finished products in trucks,
3. Thinking about the total system, what components of the system are "waste" or "pollution" and how do we currenly deal with those components?
4. Consider each of the waste outputs, what could we do, so they are inputs to another system, and are re-used or re-purposed?
5. Thinking about what is left over, that can't be re-used, what other way is there to design our system, so this waste is not produced, or produced in a re-usable form, just like nature.
6. What other natural approaches could we ideally adopt, so that the waste can be reprocessed or reclaimed in more natural ways e.g. harvesting heavy metals in water or soil using plants that soak them up, using biomimicry to use H, C or O to peform the save role as more complex/dangerous elements.

Seeing the world through other's eyes

There seem to be as many different ways of seeing the world as there are humans. The potential differences are mindbogglingly huge, an astounding Factorial 6500 million differences (about 10 multiplied by itself 10,000,000,000 times).

Each of us grows up with a unique set of influences that no other person on the planet - past present or future - will ever experience. And although this myriad of unique lenses could lead to ongoing disagreement, misunderstanding and lack of trust, there is equally the opportunity for considerable creative potential for good when we bridge and integrate our differences to create new theories, models, lifestyles, products or services.

There's over 6500 languages, with English currently displacing many others that have been around for thousands of years. We can grow up in the traditions of hundreds of religions including the Christian, Bhuddist, Hindu and Islamic faiths. We can stay within or surf to a new stage of human development, of which there are six, starting with the Hunter Gatherer and ending up with post-Knowledge Age (Wisdom Age or Wisdom Economy) ways of being in the world. Political views stretch from the anarchist, communist and socialist on the left to the conservative and fascist on the right.

Then there are career differences. We have White, Blue and now Green Collar work. We work for organizations that range from the academic, religious, business and community to local, state, federal and international  governments. Jobs are as diverse as soldier, lawyer, policeman, prostitute, airline pilot, fisherman, janitor, farmer, psychiatrist and teacher. Each has its' own unique language and concepts that may not be known to other disciplines....which can complicate communication beyond belief.

There's also a huge array of mental models with which to analyse and understand the world. MBA's frequently see the world through the lense of SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) or McKinsey's 7-S Model (Style, Structure, Systems, Staff, Strategy, Super-ordinate goals). Farmers think about Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring. Christians might view the world through the lense of the Ten Commandments, Thou Shalt Not Kill or Thou must not covet thy neighbour's ass. Some have a simplistic view of Right and Wrong. And electricians and plumbers have to be sure the power or water is On or Off before they start work.

So what if we could learn to see the world through other people's viewpoints, to live inside their mental models for a few minutes, or a days or a couple of weeks, a critical skill in the emerging Wisdom Economy. Here's a workshop to begin the process:

1. Beliefs: Brainstorm a list of 10 things you believe.
2. Labels: What's some labels you might use to describe the way you see the world e.g. Christian, Catholc, Bhuddist, Capitalist, Socialist, Accountant.You might be more than one....
3. Mental Models: Brainstorm a list of the 2-10 attributes you use to analyse the world around you....Here are some examples.....SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats), The Seasons (Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring,
4. Mental Models: Describe a mental model you use to understand the world around you and how you use in your life. e.g. Right-Wrong.
5. Here's a problem...Use your mental model to make a decison about how to solve this problem...give your reasons, and as you do, explain how you mental model/lense helps you understand it better.
6. Now pick another mental model/lense different to yours, and analysis this new problem..., explain how you used the model/lense to arrive at your conclusions.
7. What did you learn from this experience? What did you learn about mental models/lenses?

The language in "things"

It might come as a surprise that all the physical tools and objects we humans use are actually "concretized language".

Things are nothing more than concepts or ideas in a physical form, the results of our actions in response to questions that explore how we might do something or what to do next. Or implemented action in the form of lists of things to do that reorganize nature.

In a very real sense, everything we find in nature is simply organized information. The fundamental forces of nature such as gravity and electromagnetism guide how matter is organized. DNA guides the way organisms are assembled from the raw materials of atoms. We have learned how to manipulate these information processing systems in extraordinary ways. It is what defines us as a species.

The Russian psychologist, A.N. Leont'ev shows that sequences of automatic motor actions - either speech or gesture - eventually become a tool we can use. First a psychological tool or method which is merely a list of steps and eventually the phsyical tool that automates the method. The neurophysiologist A.R. Luria called the neural programs for speech and gesture muscle actions "kinetic melodies". The two are often produced together.

Consider for a moment the software you use to write a story, paint a picture, send an email or reconcile your bank accounts. These seemingly "physical" tools are simply words written by the programmer to tell your computer what to do next. The language is translated from words into mathematical symbols, 0s and 1s that determine how electricity will flow through your computer to actuate switches.

Or consider the pathway from a physical action to a physical tool. The common cup grew out of the gesture of a cupped hand. Before that we drank just like other animals, mouth in the water. Here's how it works. Imagine you are one of your ancestors, the inventor of the cup:

1. Bend down and stick nose in water to drink like other animals.

2. You think: Too hard. But what if I.....

3. Cup hand. Scoop up water and bring to mouth.

4. You think: Much easier. But what if I...

5. Find container like a cup that scoops up water.

6. You think: Very easy. But what if I...want to re-use it

7. Make list of steps to make cup. Make cup.

Conretized language takes many forms. The instructions that drive your computer software to display a character or a word, or print the words and symbols on a page are language. The sculpture that is left after you chisel away the surplus stone to reveal hidden inside the physical representation of an idea is language. Skyscrapers, jumbo jets and electrical power are just the re-organization of our nearby universe using instructions - our most powerfully organized words and concepts, in the most amazing order, made with electro mechanical devices such as metal cutting machines whose internal computer programs control the angle, depth, shape and speed of cutting or polishing or electroplating. There's even a new kind of printer that can print familiar objects such as appliance or car parts, one layer of atoms at a time, assembled in the same way as the printed word. All language.

Language of sorts has been with us a long time. It's not just humans that communicate. It's prairie dogs who warn others about danger, or bees that return to the hive with clear instructions where to find the best pollen, or proteins that help DNA do it's job of creating a new cell. Or light that communicates with matter in a way that re-organizes them both.

When we start to think of language this way it becomes much easier to see the universe as an amazingly rich conversation between the past and the future that has been going on for billions of years. And we are just one small part of this amazing story.

So here's some questions to explore this idea:

1. Give examples of the following different kinds of language: utterances, symbols, signs, conversations, concepts, questions, theories, statements, stories, poetry, lists, plans, methods, narratives, advertising slogans, newsapaper headlines.
2. What kind of extra powers do these forms of language give humans? Choose one and describe it's powers.
3. When humans invented the written word, what did this allow us to do, we could not do before? What did we have to do before? And before that?
4. What is the connection between human action/activity and language/gesture?
5. Imagine you are one of the first humans to speak. What do you imagine you spoke about. What kinds of words, signs, symbols or gesture did you use?
6. Thinking about an object in everyday use in our world, trace the language/gestural function of the tool back to its origins e.g. cup, cupped hand, drinking from water in a river or stream.
7. Make a list of all the parts of a jumbo jet or a motor car. Imagine and describe the journey from the past to the present for each of these parts.

Playing with pataphors

What do infatuation, obsessive compulsive disorder, theories of mind, teamwork, string theory, Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson machines have in common?

They are pataphors, high level abstractions, "wild" assumptions built on "wild" assumptions. It's the "science of imaginary solutions that rests on "the truth of contradictions and exceptions".

Pataphors are like the Second Life of the mind. Much of what is incoherent or impossible in the real world can suddenly be obvious and simple in these worlds of the wildest imagination.

Pataphors can help us solve wicked, unsolvable problems. They are metaphors on steroids. Like when a character in a story invents herself. Koinonia, the Mary Poppins of Imaginary Friends, is a pataphorical creation. She is one of the main characters in a wild romp I'm writing with colleague Abby Straus.

Pataphysics began life as "nonsensical" philosophy invented in 1893 by French writer Alfred Jarry to poke fun at physics and metaphysics, to parody the modern scientific method and all its theories.

physics > metaphysics > pataphysics

Just as metaphors lend new meaning to other words and help us explore new conceptual landscapes, pataphors help us create imagined worlds built upon the foundations or assumptions of the metaphor. 

Take metaphorical landscapes as an example. Imagine for a moment that a world exists in which words have the characteristics of mountains. Rivers. Hillocks. Deserts. Forests. Jungles.

Jungle "word worlds" might be inabited by tropical concepts like succulent mango, or sabre-tooth tiger, or verdant vines so you might "enjoy sex like a succulent mango" or feel so constantly threatened you have "a sabre-tooth tiger of a day" or go "swinging through life like Tarzan, leaping from tree to tree with the aid of a "vine pendulum", to mix metaphors.

Pataphysics is, in essense, a degree of separation from reality. If we see someone we know on the street and believe they are ignoring us (even if it is not true), and then begin to imagine a reason for them doing so, we are essentially thinking pataphorically.

An example of a real-life pataphor is String Theory. Physicists have created this theoretical  explanation of how the universe works on the flimsy foundation of "speculative" mathematical theories of general relativity and quantum mechnanics. String Theory is more in the realm of fantasy than science. What gets me is how the quantum mechanics maths only works when you apply a technique called "renormalization" that eliminates the inconvenient x/0 terms. Which is crazy, since any number divided by zero is infinity. And one of the truths of general relativity is that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. David Bohm's spin experiments say otherwise. And the superliminal effects of the Casimir effect and quantum tunneling show light travelling faster than it should. String theory is not in fact physics, but pataphysics.

When teenagers become infatuated with another, they use the tiniest cues or scraps of conversation to build a belief that the other is just as in love with them as they are with the object of their affection. I thought he looked at me (assumption 1), which means he thinks I am attractive (assumption 2)  and wants to sleep with me (assumption 3) and get married (assumption 4).

I know of a woman who was the mistress of the reputation killer pataphor. She began with the speculation "I wonder if Jack is having an affair?" Girlfriend One would reply, equally speculatively "I guess he could be having an affair". Turning to Girlfriend Two my reputation killer tells her "Girlfriend One said in all probability he is having an affair". The next time the story is told, the inconvenient words "in all probability" are left out and the story becomes "Jack is having an affair".  So out of almost nothing, a 'skyhook' or 'bootstrap' forms  and soon there is absolutely no doubt that I'm a cad, a bounder, a low life...and heading for the divorce court.

Pataphors can be our worst fears or cherished dreams run amok. They are whole worlds we create out of wild and wonderful assumption heaped upon wild "assumption assumptions". They are the creatures of a mind that borders on the schizophrenic, because according to the latest brain research from the Karolina Institute, the dopamine systems of the super-creative are similar to those of the victims of the condition we regard as a psychosis. We enjoy the same kinds of good feelings.

The ingenious contraptions invented by Goldberg and Robinson also defy normal physics. Wonderfully exotic and outrageous functions are combined into a complex "machine system" which covers up/brushes over the fatal flaws in logic.

The circular human chair is a physical equivalent of a pataphor. Each person sits on the knee of the person behind them to form a circle. Remove one of the humans in the circular chain and the whole structure falls over.

Here's a workshop to explore pataphorical thinking:

1. Brainstorm some metaphors and apply them to an everyday concept e.g. wolf woman, rocket man, diamond bullet, cave brain, corporate fool.

2. So starting with your metaphor, describe what it could be e.g. a cave brain is empty, dark inside, with a few skeletons, and the ashes of a long dead-fire.

3. Now in your cave brain world, describe how the "elements" you have included in your description come to life, e.g. the skeletons in his cave brain rattled around, looking for a fire to ignite his neurons, but all they could find were ashes.

4. Think of a time when you were madly in love with another person, but they took absolutely no notice of you. Describe how you imagined life would be like with them, and how even the slightest hint of a smile gave you hope.

5. Brainstorm a list of other kinds of "things" that "exist" that are pataphorical e.g. Second Life businesses, science fiction worlds, imaginary numbers i.e. square root of -1.

6. Thinking about the theory of mind concept and how you might imagine what another person might be thinking about what you are saying and doing. Invent two characters and how they think about each other this way. What do they do and say in your imagination?

7. What is your worst fear. Now, take that worst fear and explore at least five worst case scenarios that could happen as a consequence, and then a consequence of that, and then a consequence of that.

8. What is your most cherished dream? Starting with a cherished dream (that does not yet exist) explore at least five wonderful outcomes that could happen as a consequence, and then a consequence of that, and then a consequence of that.

Artist: Allan Lam, Rube Goldberg type machine from Dreams, Memes & Themes software, Zing Technologies, 2002.