Sustainability Calling

“An outstanding advance in foresight methodology.”

Dr. Thierry GAUDIN http://gaudin.org

Member of the Club of RomeBrussels

Honorary Member of the Club of BudapestParis

Founder and President of “Prospective 2100”, a World Foresight Association http://2100.org

Member of the Board of the World Futures Studies Federation www.wfsf.org

One of the four founders of the six countries Program on InnovationPolicies

6cp.net

Sustainability Calling

Underpinning Technologies

Pierre Massotte Patrick Corsi

First published 2015 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:

ISTE Ltd John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 27-37 St George’s Road 111 River Street London SW19 4EU Hoboken, NJ 07030 UK USA

www.iste.co.uk www.wiley.com

© ISTE Ltd 2015 The rights of Pierre Massotte and Patrick Corsi to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015944023 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-84821-842-0

Contents

LIST OF ACRONYMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii

PART 1. MODELS THAT CAN ASPIRE TO BE BETTER SUITED TO FUTURE NEEDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

CHAPTER 1. DISASSEMBLING SOME TRADITIONAL VIEWS . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.1. Time and space: past, present and future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.2. The (big) law of correspondence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.3. Intricate imbrications and their uncertainties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 1.4. Many levels: subatomic, micro, meso, macro, chrono, etc. . . . . . . . . 11

CHAPTER 2. IS GLOBALIZATION, OR HOLISM, REALLY A NEW PHENOMENON? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2.1. Some characteristics of the present globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2.2. A brief history of a very old concept: globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2.3. The nature of today’s globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.4. Some features of today’s globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 2.5. Impacts of a disruption: “catastrophe” in a global context . . . . . . . . 19 2.6. Management in economy: risks and disturbances are also global . . . . 20 2.7. Extending and transposing these concepts to enterprises . . . . . . . . . 26 2.8. Consequences: collective consciousness and behavior . . . . . . . . . . 29 2.9. A common idea of “catastrophism” and the need for ecology . . . . . . 31 2.10. Should we try to predict that the worst is yet to come? . . . . . . . . . 35

vi Sustainability Calling

2.10.1. The question is not “knowing what will happen and when”, instead “what could and/or should happen” . . . . . . . . . . . 35 2.10.2. Methods and tools related to conventional anticipation and prediction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

2.11. What we can conclude at this stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 2.11.1. On process performance and governance guidance . . . . . . . . . 40 2.11.2. On new constraints within a networked society . . . . . . . . . . . 42

CHAPTER 3. UNDERLYING DISTURBING PROCESSES: ASYMMETRIES, CORIOLIS AND CHIRALITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

3.1. By way of introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 3.2. New ways of thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 3.3. Information asymmetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

3.3.1. Symmetry and asymmetry in nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 3.3.2. A reminder on matter, dark matter and dark energy. . . . . . . . . . 49 3.3.3. What kind of matter and dark energy? Is it an asymmetry? . . . . . 50 3.3.4. Physical or virtual substance? Aether and “mind stuff” . . . . . . . 51 3.3.5. Asymmetry in nature: is this a novelty? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

3.4. Information asymmetry in a call center business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 3.5. General Information on asymmetry: antiglobalization corporations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 3.6. Asymmetry in communication and decision systems . . . . . . . . . . . 58 3.7. Decision-making in an asymmetric world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

3.7.1. When does asymmetry occur? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 3.7.2. Asymmetry due to mental predisposition (or soul) . . . . . . . . . . 61 3.7.3. Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

3.8. Chirality and symmetry and their impact on structures . . . . . . . . . . 64 3.8.1. Extensions of chirality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 3.8.2. Applications of chirality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

3.9. The Coriolis effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 3.9.1. A physics reminder: the dynamic movement of bodies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 3.9.2. Description of the Coriolis effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 3.9.3. Displacement and moving of physical objects: a question of amplitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 3.9.4. Curvature of displacements on the Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 3.9.5. Application to molecular physics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 3.9.6. Insect flight stability too . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 3.9.7. The Coriolis effect on the shape of live beings . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

3.10. Characteristics of evolution: symmetric pattern growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

3.10.1. Growth process of living organisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Contents vii

3.10.2. Local complexity growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 3.10.3. Characteristics of the fractal structures: applications . . . . . . . . 77 3.10.4. Traffic improvement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 3.10.5. Sunflower considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

3.11. Conclusions on underlying disturbing processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 3.11.1. Generalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 3.11.2. From rationality to ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 3.11.3. Consequences: highlighted concepts for a new engineering methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

3.12. Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

CHAPTER 4. TIME AND SPACE REVISITED IN THE CONTEXT OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

4.1. Time and space revisited in dwindling dance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 4.2. The concept of time within complex systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

4.2.1. What is in an issue? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 4.2.2. Notions relative to the perception of time: a static point of view . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 4.2.3. Digital time: a dynamic point of view . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 4.2.4. More about time with the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 4.2.5. Time is not a continuous variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

4.3. The perception of space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 4.3.1. What is in an issue? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 4.3.2. On the perception of a disturbance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

4.4. Impacts related to the perception in space and time . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 4.4.1. The increasing reach of media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 4.4.2. Knowledge management and the shrinking of the space-time system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 4.4.3. On the rationality of our world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 4.4.4. Are time and space essential parameters and variables? . . . . . . . 106 4.4.5. How are antagonisms linked to time? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

4.5. On the reversibility of time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 4.5.1. What is in a notion? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 4.5.2. Example 1: the study of an inverse function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 4.5.3. Examples 2: losing one’s key, wasting or forgetting an idea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 4.5.4. Consequences for practical life: time’s arrow . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 4.5.5. On decision support systems, reversibility and sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

4.6. Consequences for the complex systems surrounding us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 4.7. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

viii Sustainability Calling

4.7.1. Generalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 4.7.2. About decision-making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

CHAPTER 5. THE ENTROPY OF SYSTEMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

5.1. System entropy: general considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 5.1.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 5.1.2. Information and its underlying role in message and decision significance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 5.1.3. Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

5.2. The issue and context of entropy within the framework of this book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 5.3. Entropy: definitions and main principles – from physics to Shannon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

5.3.1. Entropy: introduction and principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 5.3.2. A comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

5.4. Some application fields with consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 5.4.1. Entropy in the telecommunications systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 5.4.2. Entropy in decision-making (for DSS applications) . . . . . . . . . 145

5.5. Generalization of the entropy concept: link with sustainability . . . . . 147 5.5.1. A comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 5.5.2. An interpretation of entropy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 5.5.3. Diversity in measuring entropy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

5.6. Proposal for a new information theory approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 5.7. Main conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

PART 2. ON COMPETITIVENESS: NATURE AS AN OBVIOUS APPROACH IN SUSTAINABILITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

INTRODUCTION TO PART 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

CHAPTER 6. A CONTINUOUS SURVIVAL OF SPECIES? CRISIS AND CONSCIOUSNESS PRODUCTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

6.1. Introduction and general considerations: what’s new behind life? . . . 163 6.2. Life survival: introduction and model transposition . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 6.3. Discussing the situation in between the three areas . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 6.4. Discussing the situation inside each of the three areas . . . . . . . . . . 174 6.5. Evolution of life: impact on management decision systems . . . . . . . 175

6.5.1. How does the brain work? Are we exhaustively perceptive? . . . . 176 6.5.2. Levels of consciousness in the brain: application to DSS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 6.5.3. Survival and decision-making: what makes the difference? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

Contents ix

6.5.4. Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 6.6. Opening new thinking ways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184

6.6.1. When consciousness leads to ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 6.7. Consciousness as an iterative feedback process growing from one level to another . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 6.8. Life and equilibriums in ecosystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

6.8.1. About the need for changing some paradigms . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 6.8.2. Application to ecosystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 6.8.3. Life: why and how? To perpetrate the survival of an ecosystem? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 6.8.4. Who is behind “survival” considerations? Who is the supervisor? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 6.8.5. Survival methodologies: which attitude and behavior? . . . . . . . . 195 6.8.6. Role time and evolution mechanisms in survival . . . . . . . . . . . 197

6.9 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 6.10. Consequences and action plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

CHAPTER 7. AGING AND SURVIVAL: APPLICATION TO HUMAN BEINGS, EUSOCIALITY AND AN INCLUSIVE SOCIETY . . . . . . . . . 203

7.1. A general consideration: what is new behind life? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 7.2. A little bit more about aging, survival and eusociality . . . . . . . . . . 203 7.3. Does aging equal disability? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 7.4. Aging and intelligence: variance and time dependency . . . . . . . . . . 207 7.5. Back to eusociality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

7.5.1. What is in a concept? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 7.5.2. Relationship with the “Inclusive Society” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

7.6. As a first conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 7.7. Case study: aging, motivation and involvement in collaborative work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

7.7.1. Introducing the case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 7.7.2. The problem definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 7.7.3. Why the aging of an organization is often linked to that of its members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 7.7.4. Aging and motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

CHAPTER 8. EVOLUTION OF LIFE PRINCIPLES: APPLICATION TO A CORPORATE POPULATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

8.1. Introduction: corporate aging and dying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 8.2. The human resources situation of small- and medium-sized enterprises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 8.3. The human resources situation in senior enterprises . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 8.4. Global evolution: the product lifecycle of an enterprise . . . . . . . . . . 232

x Sustainability Calling

8.5. Product lifecycle management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234 8.6. Example of corporate life and death: the saturation stage . . . . . . . . . 235 8.7. Product lifecycle of new technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 8.8. How to model the evolution of an organism (enterprise) . . . . . . . . . 239 8.9. How to measure and control aging in enterprises . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240

CONCLUSION TO PART 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

PART 3. GOLDEN SECRETS AND MECHANISMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

CHAPTER 9. TECHNOLOGY TOTALITARIANISM IN SOCIETY, CHANGE MANAGEMENT AND GOVERNANCE CONCERNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

9.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 9.2. Consequences associated with Web usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 9.3. Public–private governance: a privacy process issue . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 9.4. The principle of impermanence: Snapchat and Confide . . . . . . . . . . 254 9.5. Extension of the applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 9.6. Pervasive network interconnections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 9.7. Enterprises: Web evolution and sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 9.8. Additional comments about the control of instabilities . . . . . . . . . . 258 9.9. Sustainable networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

CHAPTER 10. PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICAL MECHANISMS OF SELF-ORGANIZATION: IN A WORLDWIDE COOPERATIVE CONTEXT . . . . . . . 261

10.1. Introduction: complexity in nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 10.2. Complexification: main principles of the “fabricational” evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

10.2.1. Fundamental rules are quite simple and universal . . . . . . . . . . 263 10.2.2. Application: an example of complexification. . . . . . . . . . . . . 266 10.2.3. What is next? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

10.3. Self-organization: the basic principles to understand system complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271

10.3.1. Closed loop systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 10.3.2. Analysis of the feedback loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272

10.4. Application to the real world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274 10.4.1. Networks, social networks and Web applications . . . . . . . . . . 274 10.4.2. The brain: the evolution of the human species is in continuous momentum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276

10.5. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 10.5.1. Impact on risk management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 10.5.2. Impact on system sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280

Contents xi

CHAPTER 11. COMPLEX SYSTEMS APPRAISAL: SUSTAINABILITY AND ENTROPY IN A WORLDWIDE COOPERATIVE CONTEXT . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

11.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 11.2. The context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 11.3. Information systems: some application fields and the consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287

11.3.1. Entropy in information systems: business intelligence . . . . . . . 287 11.3.2. Importance of entropy in an organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290 11.3.3. Recommendations and management practices in sustainable systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293

11.4. Evolution of entropy in complex systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 11.4.1. Notion of time in artificial intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 11.4.2. Temporal evolution of entropy in reasoning processes . . . . . . . 295 11.4.3. Discontinuities in the increase and reduction of the state vectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299

11.5. Underlying sustainability principles in information and decision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302

11.5.1. Structuring in phases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302 11.5.2. Analyzing the scientific thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303 11.5.3. Knowledge structuring principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304 11.5.4. Basic characteristics and measurement of an information system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 11.5.5. Increasing complex system design: measurement . . . . . . . . . . 307 11.5.6. Entropy control in information systems: a set of practices . . . . . 308

11.6. Business intelligence systems and entropy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 11.6.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 11.6.2. The brain: some specificities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310 11.6.3. The brain: underlying principles for a DSS organization . . . . . . 312 11.6.4. Collaboration and collective approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314 11.6.5. Loneliness: a common impact of collective approaches . . . . . . 317 11.6.6. Organization of some target complex systems . . . . . . . . . . . . 320

11.7. The holonic enterprise paradigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320 11.7.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320 11.7.2. Properties of holons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 11.7.3. A transposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323 11.7.4. A comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325

11.8. Self-organization and entropy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 11.8.1. Discussing examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 11.8.2. What comes after holonic systems? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327 11.8.3. Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328 11.8.4. Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331

11.9. Analysis of new trends in sustainable production systems . . . . . . . 332

xii Sustainability Calling

11.9.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332 11.9.2. Research and development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333 11.9.3. Emergence of modern networking: concepts and entropy . . . . . 335 11.9.4. Evolving organization of the networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336 11.9.5. Impact of disturbances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 11.9.6. Lean concepts: continuous flow manufacturing (CFM) and just-in-time (JIT) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 11.9.7. The general problem of “decoupling” processes . . . . . . . . . . . 341 11.9.8. Network and Web sciences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341

11.10. Artificial life and collective thinking science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344 11.10.1. General comments about bio-mimicry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345 11.10.2. Bio-inspired information systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346 11.10.3. Reminder of bio-inspired technologies and their sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349 11.10.4. What about cloud computing? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353

11.11. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355 11.11.1. Proposal for a new approach in information and business theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356 11.11.2. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 11.11.3. Concluding remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360

CHAPTER 12. TELEPATHY AND TELESYMPATHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361

12.1. About the brain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 12.2. The law of accelerating returns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362

12.2.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 12.2.2. The role of the interconnections in the new paradigm . . . . . . . 363 12.2.3. Factors involved in a major change: skill mismatch . . . . . . . . . 364 12.2.4. Brain communication: telesympathy and telepathy . . . . . . . . . 366 12.2.5. Non-invasive brain–computer interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366

12.3. Telepathy: an ultimate process? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367 12.3.1. Quantum entanglement and telepathy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368 12.3.2. Quantum entanglement and teleportation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370

12.4. Telesympathy: a less ambitious prerequisite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370 12.4.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370 12.4.2. Origin of telesympathy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371 12.4.3. Definition of telesympathy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372 12.4.4. A comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372

12.5. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375

INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397

List of Acronyms

ADACOR ADAptive holonic COntrol aRchitecture for distributed manufacturing systems

AHT Average Handling Time

AI Artificial Intelligence

AmI Ambient Intelligence

ANNs Artificial Neural Networks

ATG Advanced Technology Group

BCI Brain–Computer Interface

BI Business Intelligence

BMI Brain–Machine Interface

BN Brain/Neural

BP Business Process

BRIC Brazil, Russia, India and China

CAPPs Computer Aided process Planning

CBR Case-Based Reasoning

xiv Sustainability Calling

CCD Charge Coupled Device

CEO Chief Executive Officer

CFM Continuous Flow Manufacturing

CHON Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen

CIVETS Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa

C-MOS Complementary Metal Oxyde Semi-conductor

CP Combination of Particle

CRM Customer Relationship Management

CSR Corporate Social Responsibility (collaborative work)

CYC “enCYClopedia”, CYCorp AI project (Common Sense & ontologies)

DARPA Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

DB Data Base

DES Discrete Event Simulation

DFM Design For Manufacturing

DFS Design For Sustainability

DNA Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid

DNI Direct Neural Interface

DOD Department of Defense

DRAMs Dynamic Random Access Memory

DSS Decision Support Systems

List of Acronyms xv

ECB European Central Bank

ERP Entreprise Resources Planning

FBMs Field Bill of Materials

FFBMs Field Feature Bills of Materials

FSNs Fractal Structured Networks

GDP Growth Domestic Product

GMOs Genetically Modified Organisms

GNOSIS Knowledge Systematisation-European IMS Project

GPS General Positioning System

HMS Holonic Manufacturing System

ICTs Information and Communication Technologies

IMF International Monetary Fund

IMS Intelligent Manufacturing Systems

IS Information System

ITs Information Technologies

JIT Just-In-Time

KADS Knowledge Acquisition and Documentation Structuring

KBS Knowledge-Based Systems

KEGG Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes

LAN Local Area Network

LBO Leverage Buy Out

LISP LISt Processing language

xvi Sustainability Calling

LMA Line Manager Advisor (IBM project)

LOCs Lines of Codes

LSST Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

MERISE Méthode d’Étude et de Réalisation Informatique pour les Systèmes d’Entreprises

MIDs Mobile Internet Devices

MMI Mind–Machine Interface

MRI Magnetis Resonance Imaging

MTBFs Mean Time Between Failures

MTTR Mean Time To Reappear

NGOs Non-Governmental Organizations

NLDS NonLinear Dynamic Systems

NoSQL Not only SQL (non-relational DB Language)

NSA National Security Agency

OMs Operation Managements

OS Operating System

PCs Personal Computers

PLC Product LifeCycle

PLOT Plant Layout Optimization

PMA Primary Mental Ability

PMI Project Management Institute

List of Acronyms xvii

PPC Pay Per Call

PPT Pay Per Time

QoS Quality of Service

RAS Reliability Availability Serviceability

R&D Research and Development

RFID Radio Frequency Identification

ROIs Returns On Investments

RMS Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems

SA System Analysis

SAAS Software As A Service

SD System Dynamics

SICs Sensitivity to Initial Conditions

SIDs Sensitive Initial Deviations

SLA Service-Level Agreement

SMEs Small Medium Entreprises

SOC Self-Organized Criticality

SPQL Shipped Product Quality Level

SRE Social Responsibility of an Enterprise

STI Synthetic Telepathy Interface

TCA Tricarboxylic Acid

TCM Thermal Control Modules

xviii Sustainability Calling

TTL Transistor-Transistor Logic

UML Unified Modeling Language

VFDCS Virtual Factory Distributed Control System

WAIS/WAIS-R Wechsler test

Preface

Welcome to the land of overwhelming sustainability!

Within a few years, sustainable development has been raised to global status on an exponential scale, which has caught major international media headlines by storm and has made it part of the top political agenda at world summits. In fact, thoroughly encompassing industry and economy, the climate and the Earth’s resources are subtly impacting the livelihoods of both the rich and the poor. Here is a concept of a radically new type which mankind, despite its exalted prowess at long solving problems, now finds itself powerless to address suitably even to define with sagacity, insight and perhaps enlightenment. What does the concept of “sustainability” mean?

An encounter of a pernicious kind lurks in the face of man and the planet. Evidence shows an issue addressed by a whole range of hard to tackle complexities for mankind. Not really specific, the unfavorable regions of the world, everywhere and everyday impact each living being globally.

Has mankind ever encountered such a compelling affair? The call of sustainability is general and the sustainability imperative is inescapable and insuppressible. The term “sustainability” is universal and applies everywhere: business, non-governmental organizations, administration, cities, industry, individuals, any living being, etc.

How can we address the concept of sustainability?

Sustainable development is a subject of subjects: embracing many disciplines and at the same time transcending them, spanning man’s

xx Sustainability Calling

activities as well as the planet’s processes. Sustainability relates both to our external environment and to our intrinsic person as well. Being happy and feeling comfortable resorts to our sustainability. Preserving and growing our environment is a sustainable action.

The authors have taken a collection of questions and each chapter answers them. Here is a glimpse of what is to come:

– What do we mean by “sustainability”?

– What are the most critical sustainability challenges and factors facing us in this century?

– What are the underlying mechanisms of our complex systems?

– How can the fields of physics, natural and social sciences, life sciences, humanities, and technology interact to contribute to better understand these mechanisms and help in defining their solution?

– How do we balance the needs and desires of current generations with the needs of future generations?

– In nature and our environment, how do we combine the ambivalences and antagonistic properties to find the best “attractors” and equilibriums to get the best sustainability?

However, the most authentic question is to define how we can implement a sustainable development to improve our human well-being while preserving the resources and assets of our Earth such as: energy, air, water, food, and the survival of the climate and ecosystems. The central tenet of this book is that sustainable development can be done simultaneously by combining different theories, sciences and technologies.

In general, we humans tend not to easily perceive the underpinning critical and core problems; this is arguably because humanity is facing a huge and complex system: the livelihood on planet Earth. The difficulty will not consist of processing the effects of any non-sustainable system but of defining the underlying mechanisms and causes. That is the only viable way to address the present and future challenges of this century.

What strategy, approach and discipline should we follow when faced with a global sustainability issue or challenge? The aim of this book is to explain the various mechanisms behind the concept, to foster our critical thinking and analysis of complex situations and to bring out new paradigms based on the

Preface xxi

integration of well-known advances in several border sciences and theories. Many examples and application fields will be described to get practical and useful advice, simple ideas and best practices. Throughout the chapters, the authors do not mythically substitute technology for man, yet position technology in synergetic coordination with man, having themselves participated in numerous technological developments over the past half a century within large corporations, such as IBM, which several examples will be drawn from.

This book is structured into two volumes and seeds a number of previously disparate basic roots, each hopefully having a profound say on the subject matter of sustainability, when actually put in conjunction with others. Most of the shared scientific elements are already proven and some are not fully uncovered yet. The view is to lighten the unknown spaces so that a new consciousness may emerge that takes in all the seeds and can support, by design, novel futures having that one desired property: to be sustainable. In terms of C-K theory, it aims that the things which were deemed impossible or unthinkable only a few years ago may come of age by design for the sustained benefit of our livelihood everywhere on the Planet Earth.

For the sake of commodity, this book focuses on the technologies underpinning sustainability, while the second book [MAS 15] wraps up the findings by unifying them and addresses organizational issues by providing the keys to operationalize a more global sustainability. In this volume, the search for models, and then the study of nature and life principles, originates and precedes the quest for the mechanisms of sustainability, forming a collection of “novel technologies” underpinning the operations of sustainable worlds. Technology is taken in its etymological sense of a miscellany of methods, processes, or techniques – more generally knowledge – that can be used for an objective: the making of a sustainable society. It aims at mobilizing the knowledge pertaining to such an objective. Perhaps that knowledge will someday be embedded in some kind of automata or computing device.

About the authors

To make a long story short, it was January 2010 when the authors, having already co-authored two previous books on linking decision-making and complexity sciences, embarked in discussions on “building adaptive and sustainable worlds” and began to discuss underpinning principles, models

xxii Sustainability Calling

and possible approaches. After several attempts, the multilevel model from nano to macro was embodied and the keys to cross them emerged, which revisited many well-entrenched notions such as time, space, entropy, aging, survival and consciousness.

For Pierre Massotte (Higher Doctorate), this was the extension of career-long complexity projects piloting from IBM’s Montpellier plant in Southern France before being in charge of competitivity of Development laboratories and Manufacturing plants at IBM Europe. Pierre arguably led the biggest ever team on complexity issues locally and remotely, which peaked at one time at about 120 staff in places like IBM Europe, Pougkheepsie, NY, Yorktown Heights, NY, and later at ARMINES (R&D of Ecole des Mines). As one example, he was studying chaos and fractal factories in the real world of large computers manufacturing, hardware and software development, and complex organization re-engineering, at a time when nobody could imagine the possible links either between chaos and electronics, cooperation, competition and game theory, quantum physics and production control, or even between sustainability and entropy.

Dr. Patrick Corsi had his formative years right from Silicon Valley within IBM’s Research and Office Products Divisions since 1979 and then at the La Gaude plant near Nice in France. By quitting the company in 1984 with one idea in mind – the whole computing world going personal and IBM not listening too well – he pursued advanced artificial intelligence R&D projects while managing technology transfer from a start-up in Paris, then within the THOMSON (now Thales) Group, finally within the European Commission in Brussels. Today, he is specialized in designing breakthrough futures for firms and institutions, being an Associate Practitioner at Mines ParisTech.

Acknowledgments

We, the authors, are indebted to IBM Corp. for having walked the path of a unique company, a forerunner in complexity projects and a determined player in its way of deeply training and managing people. Pierre is also indebted to the School of Mines in Ales for participating in the reenginering of the education system, and technology transfer to Industry. The methodology orientation they deeply immersed themselves in, as well as the values which underpinned the moves, are probably the two special ingredients which enabled us to slowly produce this book. We also express our sincere and enduring thanks to the countless knowledgeable people we encountered along the way.

Introduction

Why “Transformation” Is the One Keyword

I.1. Where have we got by now?

Let us observe the environment around us for a moment. What do we observe?

For one, the current state of affairs in the world is not uniform: complexity arises from every corner and irresistibly requires from us a change in our way of thinking. The fact that everything is said to be “complex” relegates “non-complex” things into the realms of oblivion and they seem to no longer exist or are incredibly weak.

Thus, we acknowledge that the factors at hand that spell irrevocable change are hard to reach, or difficult to measure, and their understanding inherently resists an analytical approach. As a result, we tend to feel caught in a sort of nest that captures our past habits, yet at our own risk.

At the same time, new concepts and opportunities visibly emerge that signify new possibilities for those who would deliberately act upon new paradigms. Unsought complexity levels result as a consequence of evolution, and also possibly by chance as permanent mutations play their spontaneous role. And both evolution and chance are factors of diversity.

The emergence of new concepts is of great importance for our own living, our society and its environment. Everything evolves toward more complexity and new functionalities are offered to living systems through three main ways:

xxiv Sustainability Calling

1) By changing scale on a material plane: our society investigated the microscale over the last century and by now reached the nanoscale, which signifies offering new possibilities. The same phenomenon happened in the software development process, whose concepts always evolved and gave way to new applications, for instance due to reconfigurable and fault-tolerant pieces of code in a more global application.

2) By developing pluridisciplinary approaches and by transposing the discoveries made in biology, physics and genetics toward other activity sectors. In this way, innovative solution fields were opened.

3) By introducing new problem solving and design ways. For instance, within Nature, optimization is obtained through continuous back-and-forth trials, global convergence based on local equilibriums, and harmony between interactions, within complex and evolving networks.

Our issue is putting these new paradigms into use and co-evolving with them. This is the main subject of this book.

I.2. What evolution forward?

Society is changing, certainly due to technological evolution. In this respect, we can confidently assume that the following evolution will happen over time and soon (Figure I.1).

Figure I.1. Technological evolution is unstoppable [MAS 14]

Introduction xxv

This diagram starts with on-premise equipment and plots the evolution toward a “Mind-to-Mind” environment (which it expresses by the term “NoMatter-to-NoMatter”). Hence, the questions: are the interconnected levels leading to a unified model? What is the level of complexity gained at each new level of the evolution? And what is the impact on sustainability?

We are still learning how to look at this 21st Century with more appropriate models. The US National Science Foundation attempts at developing funding mechanisms which are common in nature and aim to improve our way of thinking and acting, with an orientation toward sustainability. It defines its key transformative research concept as follows:

“Transformative research involves ideas, discoveries, or tools that radically change our understanding of an important existing scientific or engineering concept or educational practice or leads to the creation of a new paradigm or field of science, engineering, or education. Such research challenges current understanding or provides pathways to new frontiers.”

I.3. Tackling transformation is the job

We never found the right time and enough time, when seeking a balance to the world: this has never be placed above the priorities and general interest of human beings. Balance that places humanity in harmony with its full environment obviously involves nature, as well as economic, competitive, societal and personal realms. Without necessarily granting anything for free, it is possible to make true gifts to each other. That is awakening now on a global dimension. It renders man complete. This therefore raises some questions:

– Why have we not collectively been able to redress our economic and financial systems to the point of certain sustainability yet?

– Why are many disruptions still lurking behind our back, ready to stifle our policy efforts?

– How long more are we going to repeat the past? The past has become a narrow game; it restricts and individualizes all (e.g. earnings).

xxvi Sustainability Calling

– The human journey needs searching for a new vision, a new goal, a new thinking, a new attitude and a new culture. So, how do we do all that?

To answer such questions, we have to rethink our vision of the world: the world is becoming ever more interconnected and unpredictable. Its correlated constraints are complexity and uncertainty. These create global economic, technological, political and environmental turbulences and crises. Within this context, decision-makers and managers are first hindered in their efforts to exit any crisis, then, develop, operate and control innovative business models, future organizations and production systems, new ways of living, working, and … new societies.

On the contrary, collective actions, social networks, emergence and self-organizations are quite common within nature around us; yet, they are not fully embedded into our brain or our human generative mechanisms.

This book is intended to prepare minds with a new mode of thinking toward a new conceptuality. It brings about a new way to position organizations and to relate them with each other. In order to achieve this goal, we can refer to basic mechanisms as used in nature and to main principles such as Gödel’s incompleteness theorem.

For the above reason, we have introduced new paradigms, such as “φ-design” and “G-organizations”. The term “φ-design” comes from the ancient Greek culture: “φύση = Physi”, meaning “Nature”. In the same way, “G-organization” is inspired by “Gaïa = Gé”, which relates to how everything is created, structured, organized and living on the Earth. Both approaches are complementary since they enable us to better understand and exploit the underlying principles managing the abilities of an interconnected individual, from the infinitely small up to the infinitely large scale.

With regard to the above statement, when a person speaks about “bio-inspired design”, we can easily conclude that, compared with what we are commonly doing, it is an improvement. Yet, that is a too restrictive term, as it is not related to a global system enhancement or a global optimized process. Introducing such paradigms is akin to implementing transformative research, development and engineering. It is a multidisciplinary approach since the main advances are always resulting from borderline, often straddling two scientific, social or economic disciplines.

Introduction xxvii

As a consequence, this book presents business, social, economic and political concepts/arguments, models and approaches that are believed to rebuild and enable a sustainable, equitable, social and economic setting. They are novel, free from past schemes and compelling enough to set our agendas with courage, poise and deliberate acumen toward improving the human condition on a sustainable planet – the Earth.

I.4. A summary of the book

In this book, dedicated to sustainability science, we propose an integrated view of current frontiers that may be faced by any organization – be it an enterprise, an administration or any human collective construction – that operates in a given environment, with a specific goal, mission or objective. What is striking is the magnitude and the speed at which the changes, of all types, have recently appeared. Frontiers are no longer gaps but walls.

A unified approach does not seem achievable yet: relevant modeling methodologies have to be either completed or reviewed; this would probably be a tantalizing undertaking by now. The authors have nevertheless tackled the amalgamation – and, to a partial extent, the merging – of the underpinning elements (theories, domains of expertise and of practice) and propose a resulting model for assimilating the new concepts with a global view to design the sustainable organizations of the future.

An originality of the book is that the authors consider constructive links between diverse theories and practices. Even if some are not mature yet, the readers already can extract some properties and characteristics and apply them in the real world: they show their relatedness and evidence a global coherency. The book paves the way toward a general convergence theory, which will manifest, as a by-product, genuine sustainability. The way sustainability is grasped in society and economy today is only partial and quite unsatisfactory, as well as it is neither coherent nor consistent in the sense of information theory.

Furthermore, and due to the fact that same main principles apply, the book redesigns the notion of “competitiveness”. Traditional facets of competitiveness are quality, cost reduction and flexibilities (in volumes and in product specifications). Today, confusion sometimes pops up, competitiveness being often reduced to profitability.

xxviii Sustainability Calling

As an example, some people say that only a swarming enterprise can intrinsically generate competitiveness, and that is from the inside. Indeed, this requires the blending of multidomains such as information theory, bio-inspired approaches, complexity sciences, networks theory and related social dynamics, scaling up and down from over macro designs down to under micro levels, etc.

As a result, we will be able to propose more efficient and effective solutions. We can also say that bio-inspired systems, or even bio-mimicry, are an enhancement in the design and development of sustainable systems. However, they already have their own limits and cannot once again bring a full and pertinent solution to our issues. We are living in an imperfect world and we have to proceed further in understanding the evolution in Nature, the oldest and most global existing system ever. This explains why it has become a necessity to get ahead in our inquisitive and prospective search and introduce the basic concepts owned by physical and other sciences.

The above considerations provide the rationale for this book.

I.5. What the present situation tells and the issues encountered

I.5.1. Foreword

In this introductory chapter, we take the opportunity to provide an update on issues raised by many project managers – some leading to the Project Management Institute (PMI) – working in the area of information systems and business intelligence. They are recurrently stating that their decision support systems (DSS) are, in the broad sense, continuously growing and creating more information ever (that is to say their related entropy is increasing); hence, they become difficult to control and manage. Here, we partly indicate to the issue of cloud computing, and in association with the notion of “Big Data”. In addition, those managers consider this phenomenon as irreversible due to technical advances that require all of us to move forward.

The latter assertion is questionable. It is both true and false because, as we will see later in the book, “ambivalency” is a concept that applies everywhere. Furthermore, in any engineering task that intends to develop a new product or an innovative service, sustainability has become the main