Expertise is obviously available through programs of deep and continuous professional reading of books, scholarly journals, and more (and we should be reading them). But access to an expert or to a group with both expertise and a willingness to share it is a way to focus those programs and to enhance our experience in them. While perhaps insufficient in themselves, social networks and social media—including blog posts, Facebook, Twitter and email — are a way to advance Carafano’s goals.

Networks and Requisite Variety

The third idea is related to Ross Ashby’s law of requisite variety, a concept from cybernetics and control theory that states the ability of a system to influence outcomes in the environment is contingent on the number of possible disturbances in the environment and the number of responses available to the system. More responses available reduces the variability of outcomes. This is very much related to John Boyd’s so-called OODA “loop.”

To survive in an environment, a system must be able to orient to disturbances in the environment (i.e., understand its causes and effects) and have as many responses available as there are potential disturbances. What happens when a system doesn’t have the wherewithal? It can die out, it can change, or it can organize into a higher-order system with greater complexity and more available responses. A cell may not be able to defend against a contagion, so some cells organize as organisms (e.g., people). Organisms may not be able survive in the environment alone. So organisms organize as families, tribes, and nations. Another way of saying this is that an system must be as complex as its environment.

Social networking is one factor creating an environment in which new and more disturbances are possible. But networks create social structures with increasing complexity and associated with this complexity we can achieve greater potential for appropriate orientation and add potential responses, giving us more capability to influence and respond to the environment.

There is an interesting aspect of this network concept. We have to be careful about the networks we create. Connecting everyone to everyone is a recipe for entropy and white noise. Some of the necessary controls tend to happen in an emergent way. But some of it will generally come from conscious choices by those involved as well.

So What?

Carafano’s point is a good one. Deeply understanding is important. He is also correct that these are at least exceedingly unlikely to come from a single Facebook or blog post, a single email or a single tweet. But that is not how we experience growth via those media, and growth — serious, deep, important growth — can come via these means properly applied or, at the very least, can be enabled by them. And to dismiss them as he does is to do a terrible disservice to those only looking to learn.

Eric Murphy is a mathematician, operations research analyst, and strategist for the United States Air Force. The conclusions and opinions expressed in this article are his alone and do not reflect the official position of the US Government, the Department of Defense, or the Air Force.

This article originally appeared in the Bridge.

Image: Flickr/Osman Kalkavan.