[originally posted April 2011]
Deb Roy showed a video on the development of language in his 5 year old son. Link here. It showed how we are all hooked up in a social matrix. A cloud of connections and interactions of people that grows and feeds on itself.
We reinforce our ideas in conversations with our friends, social circle and work. This is a method of confirmation bias based on our thoughts and who we interact with.
The Black Swan Theory is described in this link. These events are considered to have negative consequences. Similar in its rarity and impact, but having a positive powerful outcome, a company or idea that appears without warning and is growing exponentially would be a disruptive technology force.
This made me start to look for disruptive technologies in a couple of search engines. Made me start to look for phrases in Facebook and on Twitter; My conclusion was that it will not be on Twitter or Google Trends that you find these events. It will not be in the social matrix.
Reading from the Black Swan Theory wiki:
The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:
- The disproportionate role of high-impact, hard to predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance and technology
- The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities)
- The psychological biases that make people individually and collectively blind to uncertainty and unaware of the massive role of the rare event in historical affairs
The best we can do is to try to find the trends that are least prevalent. Maybe we should reverse the order of a popular idea or item in a search, starting at the least relevant criteria. Rethink trusted assumptions. The people who know that the disruptive event is coming are not going to tell you it's coming.
Do you have any comments or ideas on where to find these events?
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