AIDS/HIV AS A MACHINE (IT IS ALL ABOUT ONE NODE)
Soon after HIV and AIDS had been discovered these afflictions were regarded as any other disease. Our first care went to the sick patients (machines) which we tried to make better.
AIDS/HIV AS A SYSTEM (IT IS ALL ABOUT THE NODES)
They quickly understood the disease was not so easy to treat. We started to regard the disease as a system, and everything in it as well. A patient could not be made better, the HIV could not be treated. But we started to administer medicine cocktails that affected the different components of the human body, the system. We also started to advocate condoms because we found it spread by sexual contact. But we were still mainly occupied with the nodes.
AIDS/HIV AS A NETWORK (IT IS ALL ABOUT THE LINKS)
Now that we are able to treat ‘the system’ in a way that stops the disease from spreading we can take the next step. We can look at HIV/AIDS as a network. If we want to eradicate the disease we should think about the links. Firs we have to take out as many links as possible to cripple the network. Perhaps everything in medicine is connected, but in the nineties and the beginning of this century ‘the network approach‘ as been practiced more and more. The ABC approach of PEPFAR has probably a lot to do with the success of this program. This approach is directly aimed at the links, but perhaps not so smart yet. With AIDS a containable disease we now start to deal with the net-effect.
What do you mean with links in this context? And it is nice to speak of a paradigm, but also with the ‘machine’ and ’system’ way of looking at the world only a few people act on it ‘consciously’ and even than not 100%. The real ‘problem’ (in my opinion) with this paradigm is that it is the hardest paradigm possible; unconstrained, ever changing and with everybody involved (in the network).
And in the social sciences this kind of paradigm shift took place in the 1960’s… Even before that time sociologists were thinking in network terms. And, that is what ‘itches’ me, you have to take it to another level to really distinguish your thinking from what is known already ;-)
if you already know how it works can you explain it?
Asking ‘if you already know how it works can you explain it’ is exactly showing why it is so damn hard as even all ego’s are part of the network ;-) That’s the beauty of it, you can’t REALLY know how it works
It is too social, too subtle, too flexible and changing all the time in all kinds of directions… Good luck with trying to put in one simple model that explains it all, because that’s what it’s about, about everything and everyone connected or linked! But, of course, it is much worth the try, but please start where others already left off ;-)
i think you can’t because you are stilling thinking ’systematic’, in the wrong paradigm. it is not about a ‘model’ or about ‘knowing’ and ‘exactly’, we agree on that. but there must be a way to simply describe it, to use it as a model of reference to understand phenomena, etc.
thank you for the wishes of luck, but i was hoping from some help. i was hoping we could form a network to constructively evolve this concept…
There is no right or wrong paradigm. I don’t even know if we are talking paradigm here! Machine-thinking and later syste-thinking are more like ‘turns’ in science. These turn are not about either or but moreover about and and. The different turns and perspectives add up. Our thesis is that we might see another turn - sometime called the complexity turn. That shift is about adding another kind of perspective in addition to machine, system. We propose to use ‘the network’ as a metaphor to understand this shift. Nobody is trying to find a model that explain it all. We use the network methaphor to explain that systems just doesn’t explain it all. True that the word network, network analysis etc are a derivitive from the social sciences and gained additinal momentum with the roll-out of digital networks. But all perspectives started in one science or another… the big turns start when certain sciences start to influence others. I think social sciences is starting to blur with many other fields, even with hard science… but the fact that it isn’t new is no show-stopper for me… in traditional economics the word network just doesn’t exist… so in the current crisis there is a lot of system-approach, we just wondered what a network approach might look like. It is the approach that is really different from dealing with medicine, nanotech, behavioral economics etc. Systems are just not the only explanation anymore… so now we call it “Self-learning complex adaptive living systems”… for me it is often a sign that the more words you need to explain that it is a system but …… we might better be looking for a new perspective =)
(And it’s why I think the social sciences are much harder than the hard sciences ;-) But hat aside…)
Haha, nice of you to project your thinking on me as if I am still thinking in the systematic paradigm or whatever name you give it. Well, honestly, who is not than? Can you tell me how the systematic way of thinking evolved and when, maybe that will show how people tend to look at their lives and their (social) surroundings, in a bounded rational way. (Yes, there it is again, people are bounded rationally!) And if that’s true, will we ever totally leave a ’systematic’ way of thinking?
if you assume it does how would it look like?
System thinking evolved end of 19th century and lead to a wide spread of turns in science from molecural biology and chemistry, Gestalt-theory in psychology to the linguistic turn in philosophy. Scientific management, Operations research and cybernatics stimulated this view after WOII. But you can Google your way around to find out more about that =) … will we leave systematic system… well if it was truly a paradigm, than the answer would be; not for decades =) But for me this is not about paradigms… it is about finding perspectives to understand certain events. All these perspectives are an add-on… When people discovered that the traditional laws of physics didn’t add up at a sub-molecular level, we didn’t abandon the old laws, we added a ‘quantum’ perspective.
In a network there are many equilibria at the same time while in a system there is only one optimum. This is just one of many examples why it might be important to take different angles at the same problem. So even in economics, behaviour and individuals are taken more an more into account, but when you start to add up micro & macro economy instead of seperating them, we get a system-of-systems and we are entering a stage of complexity where ‘the whole’ can never be understood. The network-metaphor helps us to find some patterns, some view on this development to not label everything we see nowadays as ‘chaos’.
there are several things said in this post and the discussion that followed. we don’t know yet how to deal with ‘the system’ that might be understood from a different perspective namely ‘the network’. but, as arjan said, we see all sorts of phenomena we try to explain from a systems perspective. we can’t, so we keep adding adjectives to make it bigger. perhaps we need a different perspective.
apart from the online discussion we also have an offline discussion. one of the topics in these discussions is whether we can talk about paradigm, in this context. and whether we can talk about a paradigm-shift. this depends on the use of the word paradigm.
we can (and perhaps we should) use paradigm in the context of a “kuhnian paradigm-shift”. this makes ‘paradigm’ heavy, something that spans decades, perhaps even centuries. from this perspective it is difficult to defend ‘the network paradigm’ and it is much more convenient to talk about ‘the network perspective’. but if you take the first 2 definitions of paradigm, paraphrased as a ‘distinct concept’, i think it is very valuable.
my problem with ‘the network as a perspective’ is that you can default back to systems-thinking because it is ‘only’ a perspective. and, to my opinion, it is much more than that. so, after all our discussions, i would formulate network-thinking as distinctly different from systems-thinking, a perspective so different it can almost be called a different paradigm. but the problem with that is that for me ‘network’ is something that includes ’system’. so it is not a distinct concept literally, it is something else.
I agree that paradigm is used in multiple ways but let’s not mix popular definition with more scientific models. One research project deals with the fact of understanding which innovation curve we are on (think Neo-Schumpeter, Kondratieff and especially Freeman). We think it might not be the age of the PC but the age of the network. Why is that important? Because people tend to explain the world (from galaxy to body and mind) in the metaphors of its time, most often technology. Therefor it is important to understand what the leading technological metaphor is/ could be and how that might impact science, culture etc. Kondratieff is also spanning decades, Perez as well… so Kuhn-paradigms might fit those models. Meanwhile for the SBR-mtehodology study we are looking at different models for Scientific breakthough, Kuhn on one side and Popper ‘on the other side’. Since we are in the middle of discussing what our take is on this as Freedomlab, I tried to prevent mixing the one with the other. Therefor we think in three scenarios: Analog consensus, Digital Sphere and Quantum Society. Along with that we are considering what the impact would be if a way to deal with increased complexity would bet the notion of the network as an additional perspective.
I do think that we can use machine, system and networks perspective at the same time, they most likely will return a different outcome but they are complimentary. That is the second reason I doubt to talk about paradigms here. Even people like Witgenstein already talked about the Net of language vs the System of language… to be short… let’s keep the discussion narrow… in this case it is about the HIV method of Pepfar. I just wanted to say that big power-words like paradigms etc might dilute the message =)
Yeah, but Wittgenstein also said “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” ;-)