Pragmatics

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by Bernie Cohen
As we move into a technological era in which socially critical systems are built around large and complex, locally universal ontologies, such as openEHR, the Semantic Web, e-government and Network Centric Warfare, we will need increasingly powerful tools and methods to mediate pragmatic and ontological negotiations among embodied individuals. One such set of tools and methods, built around BRL’s PAN (Projective ANalysis), is currently being deployed within the context of its associated methods of asymmetric design.

Our goal is to be able to meet the challenge of managing the dynamic adaptability of large complex systems-of-systems to evolving and disparate contexts-of-use.

The Faustian Pact

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by Philip Boxer North-South dominance works when the environment can be assumed to be symmetrical to North’s assumptions about it. As the variety of actual demands on the organization increase, making this assumption increasingly less…

Must we fall into the vortex?

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by Philip Boxer
A turbulent environment is one that has a life of its own that can no longer be ignored by the organisation, i.e. it becomes asymmetric in a way that cannot be ignored. A vortex is what happens when organisations are not willing or able to adapt to this environment – they continue to ignore it, not because it is not there, but because they have no way of responding to it.
Must we then fall ultimately into this vortex? It depends on whether we can find it within ourselves to take up the double challenge these environments pose to our identities.

East-West Dominance

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by Philip Boxer
East-West dominance requires networked forms of organisation that can hold ‘the edge’ accountable for the way it uses the resources of the supporting organisation, but in relation to the situation in which the demand is arising. This contrasts with the hierarchical forms associated with N-S dominance. What is at stake is the performativity of what is done in relation to the demand at the edge, rather than the performance of what is done against centrally (symmetrically) defined criteria. It is not that hierarchy isn’t still necessary, but rather that it has to be situationally rather than universally defined.

Managing over the whole Governance Cycle

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by Philip Boxer
It is the personal nature of the response to the customer that distinguishes taking power to the edge of the organisation. It used to be possible to rely on ‘free’ market processes for creating such innovations, but in the 21st Century the whole cycle has to be managed. This presents those leading at the edge with a double challenge, but it also presents business leadership with the need to develop a capacity for asymmetric governance.

Security and Symmetry

by RichardV on

by Richard Veryard
In a symmetric world, there is a clear distinction between genuine customers and hostile attackers – and the task of security is to tell them apart and keep them apart.
In an asymmetric world, this distinction breaks down.

Interoperability Landscapes

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by Philip Boxer
This interoperability landscape describes a layer mediating between the demands of users within their contexts-of-use and the supply of services from APIs. We are interested in using this form of analysis from the point of view of particular new forms of demand to see where there are gaps in the resultant landscape. These gaps will identify risks that will need to be mitigated if those new forms of demand are to be satisfied. Asymmetric design is our name for the process for identifying and mitigating these gaps.