26 July 2011

The sameness of organisms, cities, and corporations: Q&A with Geoffrey West

On stage at TEDGlobal 2011, Geoffrey West talked about the universal mathematics that govern cities and corporations. Knowing only the population of a city, he can predict the number of patents, the crime rate, the average walking speed and many other features of a city.

Before the conference, TED’s Ben Lillie reached him in his office at the Santa Fe Institute, in New Mexico, to talk about how this is connected to his previous research in biology, and how it might be extended to corporations, and even conferences.

You’ve done a lot of work on finding universal laws in biology and other subjects. Should I be surprised that there are such universal laws?

Yes, I think you should. After all, we believe in natural selection and the Darwinian process. That means that each organism, each component of an organism, each organ of a mammal, even each cell type, each mitochondria and each gene has evolved with its own unique history and its own environmental niche so to speak. Therefore what results is historically contingent and that’s one of the major points of natural selection. So if you look at any kind of physiological variable, from the classic ones like metabolic rate or the rate at which oxygen diffuses across a cell, or any life history event like how long do you live, how long does an organism take to mature, etc.. You would expect these, if you looked at them across a spectrum of sizes, it would be all over the map. You wouldn’t expect very significant regularities if you took the view that everything was determined purely by some kind of random interactive process. Quite the contrary, what you see is an extraordinary regularity, which implies that there are a whole bunch of constraints that are in play during natural selection.

Interesting, so this shows us that natural selection is operating within a set of constraints and maybe those constraints are stronger than we previously thought?  

Yes, I think that’s true. If you go back and read The Origin of the Species, Darwin makes remarks to this effect at a couple of points. He doesn’t talk about what they are, but he just simply says it’s not totally random – there are all kinds of other things that are at play implying that there’s physics and chemistry and all these other things that are at work. I think the viewpoint that I take, anyway, is that in some ways an emerging property from natural selection that there would be these kind of constraints. Some of them are external, but they really come out of natural selection because they are, at least in the work I’ve been involved in, the constraints are the properties. These regularities are reflection of the network systems that sustain life at all scales, whether intracellularly or within you and me or in ecosystems or within a city for that matter. You could not have evolved a complex system like a city or an organism – with an enormous number of components – without the emergence of laws that constrain their behavior in order for them to be resilient. This is a very important point: if you want long term sustainability, susceptibility, resilience, and yet have adaptation and evolvability laws kind of have to emerge for that to happen. And so it isn’t all just random, it’s not arbitrary. From our viewpoint the natural construct for that are networks. If you have a million citizens in a city or if you have 10¹⁴ cells in your body, they have to be networked together in some optimal way for that system to function, to adapt, to grow, to mitigate, and to be long term resilient. Life is extraordinarily resilient. It’s been around for over billion years.

That ties in with a fascinating observation of yours: when you look at cities, very few cities failed or really gone away. That’s somehow an even stronger form of resilience than an individual organism.

Yes! The two questions that motivate me in this part of the work are “Are cities and companies, for that matter, just an extension of biology?” Are they biological – is New York a great big elephant? Microsoft a big anthill? We use those because, we can laugh at it, and we do, but the fact of the matter is biological metaphors are continually used in socioeconomic situations – the DNA of a company, the metabolism of a city. The question is, is that just a metaphor or is there something substantive about it? In what way do cities and companies behave as if they are all organisms? And in what way is there some new kind of dynamic, new kind of system evolved after man and woman started talking to one another, developed language. But then a subsidiary question to that is the one that you raised – if that’s the case, how come cities never seem to die? It’s very hard to kill [a city], we know classic cases of course, but of the millions of communities that have grown on the planet, almost all of them are still with us. My classic example is that you can drop an atom bomb on a city and 30-40 years later it’s thriving. It’s unbelievable. If you drop the equivalent of an atom bomb on Google and it will be dead, for sure. So to understand what is the underlying mechanism and what are the principles that are governing these kinds of phenomenon.

You base a lot of this work on the analysis of networks and the behavior of networks, is this something you can apply to just about anything that’s networked, say large international conferences or something like that?

Oh you could, absolutely. The worked I’ve been involved in, of course, has been biology and from intracellular levels up to ecosystems – you know, forests, and so on – and now cities and that’s clearly networked. It is networked in a much more subtle way. There’s the obvious networks of the roads and electrical lines and all the rest. But really what’s driving a city is the virtual network: the social interactions, the way individuals interact in clusters and interact with each other. So it’s kind of a network system. But you could expand that it to things like NGOs or conferences or TED. Or, not TED, what it would really be are things like TED – all the various gatherings like this. It would be very interesting to note are there any kind of commonalities and regularities as you look at the different scales at these kinds of events. I’ve wondered a little bit, if you go to Davos, TED, Techonomy, and these various conferences, they’re very different scales. But if you hang out it’s clear there are commonalities even though each one is different and has it’s own quite distinct character. It’s obvious there are a bunch of common features because they are a network of people. There are people interacting and there’s universality to the way people interact – no matter where you are in the world. That’s really where we are at the moment. It’s developing the conceptual framework and trying to put that stuff into a mathematical framework, which we did in biology, and is turning out to be more challenging.

Your background is in physics, and you attacked this from a very physics perspective. Clearly that’s one reason why this was new research and the people working in biology hadn’t done it before. Do you have thoughts on other reasons why?

Very long story short, one of the main reasons I got interested in this was the demise of the SSC [the Superconducting Super Collider]. I got kind of angry at the whole thing, the way in which physics was somehow being sidelined. The great adulation of biology, I thought, was certainly correct in terms of it being the science of the 21^st century. My concern was that it didn’t look very much like science to me, for a physics perspective. It wasn’t quantitative – I mean areas of course are – but a lot of it wasn’t.

I was also getting interested in the question of aging. What motivated this work originally was — I said to myself as an arrogant high energy physicist — if biology were a real science you would be able to predict, or at least understand, not just the mechanism of aging, but where in the hell does a 100 years for the lifespan of a human being come from? Why isn’t it a 1,000 years or a billion years or six months? We believe everything is molecular whether its genes or respiratory complexes or whatever, but those have molecular time scales. How the hell do those things build up to 100 years? What upset me is that I would read in the gerontological literature at that time they would say that lifespan is genetically controlled. I would say that’s an explanation of nothing. In fact, the great mystery of health is how the molecules know a 100-years. And not only that how do the same molecules, if they’re in a mouse, know its 2-3 years?

And so then in just thinking about that and doing a little bit of literature search, I came across these scaling laws [such as the fact that an organism's lifetime is determined by it's size. Bigger animals live longer according to a very accurate mathematical relationship]. When I first saw them I was astounded because they were so good. I started looking at it, and no one had done anything; all they had done was collect this marvelous data. In fact it had been quite an active field up until the 50’s by many of the famous biologists. Then of course the molecular revolution took over, so it was kind of forgotten. There were people that did recognize that there was something remarkable about scaling laws, but then it kind of devolved into just being a curiosity. It amazed me that biologists weren’t struck by the fact that this is potentially an extraordinary window into underlying principles – which is what it is in physics. Scaling has played a critical role in physics, certainly did in the development of high energy physics.

So, I started to think about it and that’s what got me involved and I realized the tremendous difference of a physicist looking at the problem versus a traditional biologist. I started working on this, a skeleton of a theoretical framework, but I was extremely fortunate in coming together with my colleague, Jim Brown, who is a very distinguished ecologist who had been thinking about these things from an ecological viewpoint. This guy is a traditional biologist in the sense that he does a lot of fieldwork and has a huge number of students and post docs and he’s very well known in his field. He is totally mathematically changed, but he has amazing intuition. We were brought together through the Santa Fe Institute and that’s how I really started getting connected with him. He was very traditional, but at the same time he had a non-traditional mind that was incredibly important in terms of me being able to kind of put it all together.

I must say that just as a physicist coming into that field in a rather informal way, I was struck, not just by those scaling laws, but by the fact that biologists had not appreciated how extraordinary they were. That this was saying something very general and I actually believe quite deep about biology. A lot of biologists have bought into that, and a lot don’t get it or are threatened by it. One of the interesting things about this has been this cultural difference between biology and physics in terms of what constitutes scientific explanation, what do you focus on. Roughly speaking, I now make a total cartoon of it, biologists don’t believe in theory and they don’t believe that there are any general principles other than natural selection, nothing else. I just find that bizarre, actually. I still do. I mean, many of the best ones don’t feel that at all.

Moving into the social sciences, it’s been interesting there because the analogy to the problem with biologists has been the problem with some economists. (Not all, Paul Romer, an economist at Stanford has been a big admirer, which is very nice.) Many have a similar kind of funny reaction that some biologists do, but the thing that has been really encouraging and really delightful is that urban geographers, urban designers, urban planners, architects — people who are doing it have been extremely positive. That has been very encouraging.

Posted by Ben Lillie | Permalink | Comment | Trackback

26 July 2011

The surprising math of cities and corporations: Geoffrey West on TED.com

Physicist Geoffrey West has found that simple, mathematical laws govern the properties of cities — that wealth, crime rate, walking speed and many other aspects of a city can be deduced from a single number: the city’s population. In this mind-bending talk from TEDGlobal he shows how it works and how similar laws hold for organisms and corporations. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2011, July 2011, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Duration: 17:33.)

Watch Geoffrey West’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 900+ TEDTalks.

Posted by Emily McManus | Permalink | Comment | Trackback

25 July 2011

Update: TED2012 Fellows applications extended until August 1

Apply now to join the TED2012 Fellows class, and attend TED2012: Full Spectrum in Long Beach. Artists, scientists, inventors, change-makers … Learn more about the amazing TED Fellows program >>

UPDATE: Application deadline is Monday, August 1, 2011, 11:59pm US/Eastern.

Posted by Emily McManus | Permalink | 1 Comment | Trackback

25 July 2011

Time to end the war in Afghanistan: Rory Stewart on TED.com

British MP Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan after 9/11, talking with citizens and warlords alike. Now, a decade later, he asks: Why are Western and coalition forces still fighting there? He shares lessons from past military interventions that worked — Bosnia, for instance — and shows that humility and local expertise are the keys to success. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2011, July 2011, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Duration: 20:30.)

Watch Rory Stewart’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 900+ TEDTalks.

Posted by Emily McManus | Permalink | 1 Comment | Trackback

22 July 2011

Wow: SmartBird in the wild, swarmed by seagulls

This video was shot by Flickr user ldrose two hours after the live demo of SmartBird inside the auditorium at TEDGlobal. Festo engineers brought the bird outside to Holyrood Park, in central Edinburgh, and sent it up into the sky. Eyewitnesses tell us that, almost immediately, out of an empty sky, SmartBird was swarmed by seagulls, dozens of them, each taking a turn to dive at the giant bird. The video tells the story … and YouTube user finesoftwarewritings captures the whole sequence in the 4-minute clip below:

Here’s another SmartBird swarm video, from Paul Kemp-Robertson at Contagious magazine …

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22 July 2011

Fellows Friday with Kamal Quadir

Since selling CellBazaar, what have you been up to?

I wanted to take some time off after selling CellBazaar. But a week after selling CellBazaar, I took over this extremely exciting company, bKash. We launched nation-wide service of bKash yesterday.

“Bikash” in Bengali means “blooming” or “prosperity.” “Kash” sounds like “cash,” and “b” can stand for Bangladesh. bKash is about creating financial services for people in Bangladesh who don’t have access to banks. Bangladesh has a tremendous mobile network. It’s one of the best-networked countries in the world: 97 percent of the population has access to mobile phones. Yet only nine percent have access to conventional banking. bKash is trying to minimize that gap.

Cell phones are like mini-computers: you can maintain a bank account with a mobile phone. We have made a mobile phone-based financial service, which is safe, convenient, and easy to use. I have been helping to build the company since January 2008.

Did your CellBazaar experiences help prepare you for bKash?

At CellBazaar, I learned how to use mobile technology in effective ways, which is helping me tremendously at bKash.

There are many technological innovations taking place all over the world that could improve lives in Bangladesh in many ways. The challenge is finding the right technology and communicating that to 160 million people. Most of them do not have access to the Internet or regular media, and do not read English. Sixty percent of the population doesn’t have access to electricity. How do you include them in the technological possibilities? It’s a fascinating challenge to work on.

With CellBazaar, we approached this problem by making a virtual marketplace, accessible via the cell phone, so even a farmer in a remote corner of the country can easily and efficiently sell his bag of potatoes. The technology itself is a small piece of the puzzle. Figuring out its execution and limitations is the key.

(more…)

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20 July 2011

New TED Book: Erin McKean’s “Aftercrimes, Geoslavery, and Thermogeddon”

Ever been brainjacked? Or Breitbarted? Perhaps you’re a kangatarian or a newpreneur. If not, you can still be a wordnik. Come with us as we peek into the notebook of lexicographer Erin McKean in Aftercrimes, Geoslavery, and Thermogeddon: Thought-Provoking Words from a Lexicographer’s Notebook, her revealing look at a torrent of new words and phrases—in science, politics, social life—that reveal our changing societies. It’s a surprising window on our world. We caught up with McKean recently, in the midst of her linguistic sleuthing.

Your work will often focus on big ideas that have been encapsulated in a single word. With so many new ideas, how do you decide what to include?

I’m always looking for words that are striking and interesting. Words are like houses for ideas, and well-designed, beautiful words are easier for ideas to live in. A lot of the words have to do with science and technology, which I’m always interested in. Scientists and engineers often create great new words for their discoveries and innovations, because they’re (in effect) naming their babies. I also like new words that are made from recycled parts of other words, especially ones that create new suffixes, such as “bustaurant” (from “bus” plus “-taurant,” creating a new suffix from the end of “restaurant”).

Isn’t our language rich enough already? Why are new words needed?
Asking why English needs more words is like asking why we need new novels or new fashions. On a purely practical level, we don’t. We could all read what’s already published and wear the same styles for the rest of our lives. But people like novelty and new words for new things satisfies that human urge.

Any favorite new words?
Every day I have a new favorite word. Sometimes they’re really new (like “plussies,” for users of Google+, Google’s new social network) and sometimes they’re very old words that are just new to me, such as “awald,” an old word that means “Lying helplessly on the back: said of a sheep when unable, through sickness or fatness, to get up.”

Do certain languages have a propensity to invent new words?
I don’t know enough about other languages to speak with any authority on how generative they are, but English is productive enough to keep me pretty busy! And of course, since so many new things and ideas are created (or disseminated) by English-speaking people, often English gets there first, and other languages assimilate the English term for whatever the new thing is.

Has the number of new words increased recently?
It’s hard to say. It is true that we have more tools now to track new words. More and more text is either born digital or is being digitized (thanks Brewster!). There is Twitter, various status messages, and so on, which is the closest we can get to eavesdropping on conversations.

What’s the richest source for new words?
Anyplace where there’s innovation going on will throw off new words alongside new ideas, but those new words have to make it to a wider audience to really enter the language, which is why journalists (either traditional media or bloggers) are the best source for wordhunters to mine. When journalists have to report on new things, new words are just part of what has to be explained.

Have you ever invented a new word?
I’ve never tried to invent a word. It didn’t seem fair. But through my dress blog I did inadvertently create the word “Duro,” referring to a kind of kimono-style dress with contrasting fabric bands, similar to styles created by the designer Duro Olowu. It’s not widely used outside a few sewing enthusiasts, but it’s used there! I wrote about this for the The Boston Globe.

***

Aftercrimes, Geoslavery, and Thermogeddon: Thought-Provoking Words from a Lexicographer’s Notebook is part of the TED Books series. It is available at Amazon for the Kindle and all platforms that use Kindle Reader apps (the Mac, PC, and Android, among them), as well as at Apple’s iBookstore. It costs $2.99. Be sure to also check out McKean’s enthusiastic TEDTalk.

Posted by Jim Daly | Permalink | 2 Comments | Trackback

19 July 2011

Fighting viruses, defending the net: Mikko Hypponen on TED.com

Fresh from stage at TEDGlobal 2011, last week in Edinburgh:

It’s been 25 years since the first PC virus (Brain-A) hit the internet, and what was once an annoyance has become a sophisticated tool for crime and espionage and a global problem. Computer security expert Mikko Hypponen tracks down the authors of Brain-A, tells us how we can stop new viruses from threatening the net as we know it, and advocates worst-case preparedness. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2011, July 2011, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Duration: 17:35)

Watch Mikko Hypponen’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 900+ TEDTalks.

Posted by Emily McManus | Permalink | 1 Comment | Trackback

19 July 2011

Siegfried Woldhek sketches TEDGlobal

At TEDGlobal 2011, portraitist Siegfried Woldhek sat down in the Autodesk Café with an iPad and some special drawing software, and proceeded to sketch, with lightning speed, anyone who took a seat in front of him. You can see his work in his iPad Portraits Flickr set — attendees, TEDx hosts, Coffee Common baristas, and TED Fellows, all sketched in his inimitable style.

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15 July 2011

Video: TEDGlobal 2011 timelapse

Starting on Saturday night, an army of workers began to build TEDGlobal 2011: The Stuff of Life. Music: “Tidal,” from the wonderful Imogen Heap. Photos and timelapse: James Duncan Davidson.

Posted by Emily McManus | Permalink | Comment | Trackback