Overlapping communities by multiple group membership: quantum behavior in social networks
In social network analysis, a network often looks quite simple, when you zoom in to a certain section. People are nodes, and they are connected to other nodes. Sometimes a connection means friendship, but it could also refer to advice giving, dislikes, knows, etc. etc. I’d like to see a connection as “works together with”, and nodes as people in a certain context, for example a large organization. In organizations nodes often belong to a cluster of nodes resulting in closed networks or clusters where ties are strong, and some nodes connect clusters, making them brokers. These ties are less strong. These networks are often visualized as a snapshot in time for sake of simplicity, and more often than not are overly simplified for readability purposes. Where people in organizational settings used to be member of one or two work-groups, nowadays with the rise in online collaborative spaces this membership is much more dynamic and volatile. Membership is much more voluntary than it is designed, groups emerge and dissolve faster and easier, and resources (knowledge, skills) come more from members themselves instead of the organization. Especially in the online world, albeit in organizational settings, this is and will be the case more often (well, in knowledge intensive organizations that is).
The above results in people being member of more groups than they were before. This can be as a core member in one or more teams, and it can be in the periphery in other teams. In social network terms this results in overlapping communities. There appear many bridges not made up of two different people (nodes), but a single node is forming a bridge by being a member of two or more communities at the same time. This is coined as a “structural fold” by Vedres and Stark (2010) as opposed to a “structural hole” coined by Burt (1992). To me, the “structural fold” is in abstract terms comparable to quantum mechanics. Where atoms in quantum-land can switch positions instantly (well, not exactly, but it can appear that way), people can too, when working with online collaborative tooling. It is common for many people to work at more than one project at the same time, dividing their time on different projects, not always knowing beforehand where to work on at what moment. That makes it possible to bring in knowledge and situations from one project to another almost instantly and by the same person. In network visualizing, there is a world to discover here. When a person connects two groups by being a core member for both, visualization could be relatively easy with Venn-diagrams. However, with more simultaneous multiple group memberships, and with more nodes in the network showing the same behavior, visualizing would be very challenging. I found the image below that illustrates what I’m referring to. The majority of the nodes are member of more than one group at the same time. With these numbers the visualization is good to interpret, but with growing numbers this will be a problem. Try to visualize overlapping communities with more than 10.000 people and hundreds of communities.
We see nodes being connected to other nodes, and being part of multiple groups. In this simplified example it is quite easy to interpret. In a global and large organization this would be quite problematic. Maybe when we add dimensions things would become easier. However, when introducing the quantum behavior as I just mentioned would introduce new difficulties when visualizing. Perhaps we have to let go of a person being a single node, a person can be many nodes at once. Person 1 can be at different ‘places’ simultaneously, and when a person is in which position is unknown, and perhaps irrelevant. The same is the case for person 2, 3, … n-2, n-1 and n. Showing and integrating their networks would be a great challenge. Maybe we can learn from current quantum visualizations. Nodes circling or jumping through network space via hidden dimensions. Although I wouldn’t be too happy when the controversial string theory would enter the social network space… Bottom line: a picture tells a thousand words, but that’s not always enough.
Everything is emergent
In a world that changes increasingly faster and faster, the perceived complexity increases with it. It becomes harder to predict the status quo even on the short-term, perhaps even that of tomorrow. The attempts to make predictions become useless. An obsolete approach.
We need to stop acting like we have control over what will happen in the future. We just don’t know. Often we are not even close. What’s the point of making predictions of the future anyway, and then trying to control what happens?
Organizations are the best example of future predictors. They keep trying to figure out the most likely scenario’s to occur based on what happened in the past. Organizations have difficulties in accepting the fact that these predictions are not only a waste of time, it’s even worse than that. They even try to understand what happened in the past based on the present situation. What happened in the past was just one of the possible outcomes. There are no parallel pasts that occurred at the same time and that have led to where we are now. Rationalizing what happened then, is like denying what could have occurred. Sometimes it helps to understand phenomena, but using that for future predictions means that the same mistakes are being made over and over again.
Again, we have to stop predicting, and start nurturing the current situation in a way that good outcomes will flourish, independent of what that outcome can be. It’s not the outcome that matters most, it’s the road to it. The road to it (where ever it will lead) is an emergent path. So many influences are on the lurk, so many that no one knows how many and what they are, that they should be dealt with along the way. They both can be positive or negative, both will have influence on the emergence.
Dealing with matter like I described above is so different then how we are used to, and not only different, but scary as well. To accept and be comfortable with uncertain paths is not suitable for most organizations nowadays. And it won’t be for the years to come probably. However, we see more and more organizations that operate in a networked environment, where many stakeholders play a role. In these situations, long-term strategies are being replaced by emergent strategies, where control does not have a place.
Coming back to the title of the post, maybe it is somewhat exaggerated at the moment, maybe it is more realistic to speak of a change from long-term goals to short-term goals. Dealing with short-term goals combined with iterative processes is a good first step towards completely letting go of control and accepting that everything is emergent. We are humans with brains that can think ahead in time, let’s not forget that important aspect of us.
Bas Reus' quest on self-organization and online collaborative spaces 
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