Follow the arrows

Very often, when dealing with any issue, people summarize it in some kind of bullet-point list. It makes everything look neat and tidy. Reality is never neat and tidy. You can bet that, every time, there are arrows indicating flows or influences from some of the points to some of the others, and every point is variable and could end up vanishing or multiplying in a litter of smaller points. And the arrows, that so often are nowhere to be seen in the presentation of the issue, are what could really tell you what's going on there.

This week has been a good exercise on learning to follow the arrows.

On Tuesday, the Energy Group had a topic meeting on the subject of smart grids. Smart grids have just about the same components as your usual electric grid. The difference is that it has a lot more sensors and capacity to influence other parts of the grid. In short: same number of points, many more arrows. The result is increased efficiency, less outages, and much better capacity to deal with renewables.

On Wednesday, there was supposed to be a Transition forum meeting, but most people who normally would come went to a big talk on climate change instead. There were only three of us in the forum meeting, but it was actually a great chance to have a long chat with a guy that I've only met a few times. One of his current interests is in systems design, or as he calls it, "machine machines" (machines to build machines). This is all about thinking how the flows of information/money/whatever will go, and whether they are going where you'd like them to go, and you're getting the effect you were looking for. For example, what is the ideal size for a team? How does information flow in a team that is too big or too small? Fascinating stuff.

On Thursday, there was a talk on "Building resilient local economies" by the New Economics Foundation. As usual, the New Economics Foundation have nothing more than a handy list of bulletpoints on how to fix the economy by having big green projects, localization, and a number of other great buzz words. But they seem to have little understanding of the arrows: how money flows at the macro level, and what kind of alternative model they are proposing. At one point, they dropped the expression "zero-growth economy", but there was no explanation of the implications of that. It requires no effort to understand what is a zero-growth economy, but why would an investor invest in stocks in such an economy? Or in bonds, for that matter? How is money supposed to flow? The worrying thing is that they obviously aren't even asking themselves those questions.

So, my advice to any reader is: whatever you do, follow the arrows, the flows, the influences, the way that things change. Never think of anything as static, or you are in trouble.