iTunes 10 goes Ping (and makes good use of social media concepts)

Apple launched the new version of iTunes yesterday – version 10. Besides a host of small improvements, including a long overdue change in the icon (dropping the CD image!), the big news is that Apple have understood that social media concepts can be integrated into any software and shopping platform. It’s obvious, and we have talked about this at length on this blog (see especially this blog entry on going beyond the “obvious” with social media in businesses), but so many companies just haven’t got their heads into this space. It’s good to see Apple taking their first steps here with the introduction of Ping as part of iTunes 10.

Unfortunately, they’re only first steps. There’s a long way to go still before it is really impressive.

Ping is a social media platform that sits inside iTunes (that’s part of the problem, as it crawls along at even slower speeds than the snail paced iTunes store). Ping allows you to follow artists and friends and have them follow you – basically a music-based social network. It also promises to be quite clever about learning your music preferences (from your iTunes library, purchases and likes). It displays a customized Top 10 chart that is based upon your followers (although when you start, it’s a bog standard list that includes Lady Gaga, U2 and Linkin Park). The friends feature allows privacy controls so you can choose who to share your music preferences with.

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Declining Job Markets everywhere – even chicken sexers are changing

I had to check that it wasn’t April Fool’s Day when I read an article yesterday. It tells the story of an industry that is changing. On this blog, we try to provide the reasons why the future of world of work is changing and give insights into what it might look like. We often look at examples and case studies to illustrate the points we’re making about new skills, shifting structures and the unlearning and relearning that will be required to be successful in the near future.

We’ve highlighted all sorts of changes, from why the trucking and engineering industries are battling to get young people to join their industries, to issues faced by banks, pharmaceuticals, media, the military, politicians and almost every other industry.

But this article was a revelation to me. Apparently, Japan has dominated the world wide chicken sexing industry for nearly a century, supplying almost all of the highly trained people who are able to decipher whether a newly hatched chick is female or male. But things are changing. Read about it at News24 here, or an extract of the news item below. It might be a bit of fun, but it’s also another example of the changing world of work…

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A bit of fun: 10 Incredible Politician Technology Gaffs

FastCompany magazine recently were a bit taken aback by a very unscientific survey that rated the “Digital IQ” of the United States Senators. It was a completely nonsense survey, but it did allow the magazine the opportunity to poke fun at some top politicians who clearly have not fully come to terms with technology.

You can read an extract below. If you’d like to see some of the pictures, and links to videos of the actual events, then read the original at the FastCompany website.

Top 10 Politico Tech Blunders, From the Internets to the Google

BY AUSTIN CARR
Aug 20, 2010, FastCompany

… Politicians are notorious for their blunders and ignorance of all things tech-related, and this study–while not exactly using the most scientific metrics to determine tech-savviness–may just be a blunder in itself. Here we present our top 10 politico gaffes that show just how low our elected officials’ Digital IQs actually are.

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Constant Change must be a Continuous Business Process

At TomorrowToday we are convinced that the decade ahead will be the most turbulent that any of us have ever experienced. The change will not be spectacular (in the sense that there will be world changing changes), but rather that the speed and complexity of change will be incessant. The changes will come in small steps, but they will come so often that the effect will be of constant, disrupt change.

The pre-emptive management/leadership approach in such times will be to build the ability for constant change into the heart of your organisational processes. This is obviously easier said than done. Yet, it is not as hard as it might seem if it becomes a leadership focus. Booz & Co’s S+B e-zine recently featured an excellent article highlighting this very issue. You can read it online here, or an extract below.

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Gartner Says the World of Work Will Witness 10 Changes During the Next 10 Years

I was recently sent this list by email. A quick Google search points to the source at Gartner. It’s a quick read and has some useful insights and thought provokers.

The world of today is dramatically different from 20 years ago and with the lines between work and non-work already badly frayed, Gartner, Inc. predicts that the nature of work will witness 10 key changes through 2020. Organizations will need to plan for increasingly chaotic environments that are out of their direct control, and adaptation must involve adjusting to all 10 of the trends.

Organizations will need to determine which of the 10 key changes in the nature of work will affect them, and consider whether radically different technology governance models will be required.

1. De-routinization of Work
The core value that people add is not in the processes that can be automated, but in non-routine processes, uniquely human, analytical or interactive contributions that result in words such as discovery, innovation, teaming, leading, selling and learning. Non-routine skills are those we cannot automate. For example, we cannot automate the process of selling a life insurance policy to a skeptical buyer, but we can use automation tools to augment the selling process.

2. Work Swarms
Swarming is a work style characterized by a flurry of collective activity by anyone and everyone conceivably available and able to add value. Gartner identifies two phenomena within the collective activity; Teaming (instead of solo performances) will be valued and rewarded more and occur more frequently and a new form of teaming, which Gartner calls swarming, to distinguish it from more historical teaming models, is emerging. Teams have historically consisted of people who have worked together before and who know each other reasonably well, often working in the same organization and for the same manager. Swarms form quickly, attacking a problem or opportunity and then quickly dissipating. Swarming is an agile response to an observed increase in ad hoc action requirements, as ad hoc activities continue to displace structured, bureaucratic situations.

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A new normal – a new reality – for the economy

This is an excellent interview with Mark Anderson, the editor, publisher, and chief correspondent of the Strategic News Service newsletter. It was conducted by S+B (Booz & Co’s ezine) in July, and gives one view of the “new normal” that is emerging. Well worth a read:

A Return, Not to Normal, but to Reality

Mark Anderson, the high-tech industry’s most accurate prognosticator, foresees an economic landscape still under the stress of too much liquidity — and decision makers still in denial.

by Art Kleiner

In trying to make sense of economic uncertainty, it pays to look beyond conventional wisdom for an explanatory theory of the hidden fundamentals that can drive or hinder growth. Hence this interview.

Mark Anderson is the editor, publisher, and chief correspondent of the Strategic News Service newsletter, one of the most incisive publications in its field. Ostensibly about the future of the computer and communications industries, it covers a broad range of factors that affect and are affected by those businesses: everything from technological advances to capital flows to government policies to educational innovations to advances in physics.

Anderson argues that the root cause of the crisis of 2008–09 was excess liquidity: too much money seeking rapid returns, subsidizing too much production for too few customers. That bubble burst, no subsequent engine of economic growth has proved sustainable, and the excess liquidity remains, driving some prices up and others down, and splitting the world even more dramatically into economic haves and have-nots. Three critical measures, in Anderson’s view, need to be put into place before serious recovery can get under way. The first is better protection of intellectual property. The second is the specific type of financial reform that would prevent “jackals” (short-sellers) and “vampires” (sophisticated investors who take profits without contributing either market balance or information) from dominating the market as they do today. The third is a rebuilding of the manufacturing base of the industrialized world, including an accelerated transition to green energy and technologies.

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When People Reckon It’s OK to Cheat, by Dan Ariely

Dan Ariely, professor, author and behavioural economist, is someone I have found in recent months. His research is fresh and his insights interesting. He is the author of the best selling “Predictably Irrational” (buy now on Amazon.co.uk or Kalahari.net).

He is doing quite a lot of work at the moment on why people cheat, and what you can do to make sure they don’t.

I picked up a nice piece on him in the BusinessWeek – very interesting stuff:

Perhaps because of the cheating uncovered in the aftermath of the financial crisis—the lies told by everyone from mortgage lenders to Bernie Madoff—behavioral economist Dan Ariely has been getting a lot of calls about the nature of dishonesty. Ariely, a Duke University professor and author of the best-selling book Predictably Irrational, has spent years studying the topic.

Ariely says he’s not surprised that derivatives—whose values are based on other financial assets—have gotten a bad rap. He has found that people are more likely to cheat if they are a step removed from the cash payoff. In one experiment, he paid subjects (whom he allowed to report their own scores) for correctly solving math problems—some in cash, some in tokens to be redeemed across the room. The second group exaggerated their scores twice as much as the first. Similarly, in studies of real-life expense reports, he found managers pad expenses more when their assistants compile the report. Such detachment, Ariely says, may be what’s involved “when you backdate a stock option.”

His most recent experiment—on deception’s slippery slope—was inspired by some Prada swag he got after speaking at a conference last year. Carrying a genuine luxury bag made the fashion-challenged economist “feel different,” he says, leading him to wonder about the psychological effects of sporting a counterfeit.

In an experiment involving 500 people, he found that subjects who knowingly wore fake Chloé sunglasses later cheated more than twice as often on an unrelated task than those assigned to wear the authentic designer goods. “If you take that first step, your self-image changes,” he says. “It becomes easier to do the next dishonest thing.”

Ariely’s new obsession is how to prevent cheating. Consider the math task with the tokens. In one variation, testing participants first on their recall of the Ten Commandments eliminated cheating on the math scores. Then there’s the study Ariely did with an auto insurer: Car owners who signed their names at the top of the insurance application, he found, were more honest about their driving habits, even though higher annual mileage meant higher premiums.

“We all like to think of cheaters as evil people,” Ariely says. But deterrence can be as simple as reminding people of their better selves. His advice to the IRS for next tax season: Move the signature line to the top of the form.

Source: BusinessWeek

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As Google Wave dies, here’s what Foursquare does NOT understand about social media

Google officially axed the underutilised (and overhyped) Google Wave project last week (read Fast Company’s obituary here). I have a fear that my favourite geo-tagging program, Foursquare, will go the same way.

Foursquare allows you to use your mobile phone’s GPS capability to “check in” at various venues (read an intro slideshow here if you need to know more). But they are missing a few tricks by not understanding some basics of what makes social networks work, and also by misunderstanding some basic human psychology. I hope they sort this out soon, because I’d love to see geotagging really take off.

Here is my list of reasons why Foursquare is unlikely to grow further, and will ultimately die:

• They have failed completely to discuss and engage with users on the issue of security. I personally don’t have a problem checking in and letting my friends know where I am, but many people do fear the openness of letting others know their physical movements. Foursquare needs to actively engage in debate and social values shaping conversations.
• Their iPhone app provides no information from Foursquare. On a few occasions, Foursquare has shut down in order to do upgrades. But all that happens on their App and website is that nothing works. No messages, no interactions, no connection…
• When you move from one city to another, you start all over again. It treats each city entirely independently. For what reason?
• It provides no connections with my friends. Why is there no “friends nearby” feature? And why are there no features to challenge friends, connect with friends, chat to friends? This surely is the key to social media success: that you create connections between people, and enable them to connect with each other. Foursquare doesn’t do this.
• It does not provide “near things”. The only “near here” type functions are paid for adverts called “specials nearby”. But what about “places your friends frequent” or “places your friends have written tips about” or “most visited place near here”?
• It doesn’t do competition well. I have an ongoing battle with “Kay A.” for the mayorship of Raynes Park train station. But, there is very little way for me to interact with Kay. More importantly, neither of us know where we are in the competition stakes. The system doesn’t let me know how many check ins I need in order to become mayor, or how close other people are behind me in the race. Each venue needs a “leader board” type function to raise the stakes of competition. Otherwise, it loses its lustre very quickly.
• What’s the point? Badges are too hard to earn. I can leave tips at venues, but there is no incentive to do so. Companies are given no incentive to interact with regular attenders. And so on… Incentives are required.
• Finally, providing feedback to the system (especially, for example, indicating duplicate venues) is a really long and complicated procedure (and is not a feature of the iPhone app – why not?). This functionality also needs to be delegated down to “editors” in local areas (think of how Wikipedia manages content).

If you’re a Foursquare user, what do you think? Have I missed anything?

In summary, then, Foursquare has the potential to be brilliant. But only if it learns the lessons of other social media success stories. Connect us, and enable us to connect! Speak to us, and enable us to speak to you. Enable us to contribute to the development of the system.

Foursquare, I hope you’re listening, because I don’t want you to go the way of Google Wave. But if even the mighty Google can get it so wrong, then no-one is safe.

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Talent teams vs Talented individuals

A new report is about to be released in Organization Science, entitled: “Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth: How High Status Individuals Decrease Group Effectiveness” (Authors: Boris Groysberg, Jeffrey T. Polzer, and Hillary Anger Elfenbein).

Their Abstract says:

Can groups become effective simply by assembling high status individual performers? Though an affirmative answer may seem straightforward on the surface, this answer becomes more complicated when group members benefit from collaborating on interdependent tasks. Examining Wall Street sell-side equities research analysts who work in an industry in which individuals strive for status, we find that groups benefited—up to a point—from having high status members, controlling for individual performance. With higher proportions of individual stars, however, the marginal benefit decreased before the slope of this curvilinear pattern became negative. This curvilinear pattern was especially strong when stars were concentrated in a small number of sectors, likely reflecting suboptimal integration among analysts with similar areas of expertise. Control variables ensured that these effects were not the spurious result of individual performance, department size or specialization, or firm prestige. We discuss the theoretical implications of these results for the literatures on status and groups, along with practical implications for strategic human resource management.

This is an issue we’re convinced of at TomorrowToday. We have recently developed a presentation we’re calling, “The Talent Reboot“. Our message is simply that talent works best when it is part of a talented team, and not treated as an independent entity. This is true in the world of work, just as it appears to be true in the world of sport, or in Hollywood.

For example, think of the 2010 Football World Cup. The two teams that made the finals, Spain and Holland, did not have too many superstars, and their superstars did not overly shine in the tournament. Other teams were studded with stars, and merely stuttered along. Football is a team sport. The U.S. men’s 2004 Olympic basketball “dream team” was equally filled with star NBA players. Yet the team underperformed and only won the bronze medal. They didn’t play as a team.

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Using Design thinking to create a culture of innovation

Working through some old magazine clippings last week, I found this amazing excerpt from a book that was released just a year ago. It’s by Tim Brown, the CEO of design shop IDEO, and is called “Change by Design” (buy it Amazon.co.uk or Kalahari.net). The excerpt gives a case study of a hospital they worked with to illustrate critical importance of design thinking and the use of tools that come out of the world of design (brainstorming, prototypes, scenarios, storytelling, etc) to build cultures of innovation in organisations of all types and sizes.

I was inspired by the excerpt. The book will be on my shelf soon. This is a MUST READ for all leaders.

Change By Design

BOOK EXCERPT
FROM: BusinessWeek, September 24, 2009
by Tim Brown
In his new book, the CEO of design shop IDEO shows how even hospitals can transform the way they work by tapping frontline staff to engineer change

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Where are the markets going? No-one really knows, and that’s the ‘new normal’

One of the strong messages of our work on future trends is that this recession has been more than just a financial downturn. In almost every industry we work in, the past two years have seen the acceleration of forces and drivers of change that are changing the fundamental structure of the industry. The rules for success and failure and the understanding of “how things are done” are being rewritten.

We are trying to document as many examples from different industries as we can, so that we can both prove our assertion that we need to be preparing for a “new normal” as the upturn begins, and to help our clients anticipate and prepare for the new business landscape they’re likely to face in the decade ahead.

I recently was working through some old magazine cuttings, and came across this article from a year ago, at the height of the chaos on the stock markets. It was by Business Week. At one level, the article says nothing more than “we don’t have any idea what’s going on”. But it says a lot more than that – it says that the rules by which we work out investment strategy seem to have changed dramatically. It’s a long read, but well worth the effort. You can read it online at BusinessWeek (make sure you click on the graphics on the first page and see the impressive century data), or an extract below:

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The most important development opportunity of the next two decades

One of my personal passions is trying to work out how to help developing countries, especially in my home continent of Africa, can help their people out of debilitating poverty. I believe it is possible. It is certainly desirable at all sorts of levels.

One of the possibilities that presents a huge opportunity to help developing countries take a quantum leap forward in wealth development is the fact that the majority of their commodity and resource wealth is most likely yet to be discovered. Put another way: “There’s gold in them hills”.

Here’s a pop quiz to prove my point. Imagine an average square mile of the earth’s surface. How much sub surface value is there in the earth below it? I’m talking about the sub soil resources, minerals, etc that can be extracted and commodotised. In the typical OECD country (and OECD countries account for a quarter of the earth’s surface), each square mile has about $ 300,000 of sub soil assets below it.

In Africa, what do you think that number is? Is it less or more?

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Quotes from the digital edge

I have been doing some work preparing for a workshop session with an advertising agency. They want me to help them think through the implications of social media for their agency. We’re using our framework, “Beyond the Hype” as a starting point.

While doing some focussed reading, I came across a few quotes which you might appreciate. They got me thinking…

Bob MacDonald, CEO of Procter & Gamble: “What I would like to have is a one-on-one relationship with seven billion people in the world and be able to customize offerings for those seven billion people. Digital allows that relationship.”

Seth Godin: “The role of the CMO has changed from Chief Marketing Officer to Chief Movement Officer.”

Alice Louw, of TNS Global Brand Equity Centre, said: “Forward-looking agencies and companies of all types need to adopt the role of expert consultants capable of guiding clients in their Crowdsourcing endeavours: helping them to achieve optimal community engagement; to build and sustain a level of trust and authenticity with the community; to implement appropriate incentive schemes; and to make appropriate tactical decisions. This will mean stepping outside of engrained ways of thinking; adopting new philosophies; and re-evaluating traditional cost models.”

General Eric Shinseki (via Tom Peters’ excellent business book, Re-Imagine): “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”

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Are Most Big Corporates Really Psychopaths?

RANT ALERT. Most times I try to be a dispassionate researcher of the new world of work. But sometimes I just can’t take it anymore. Today is one of those days…

Almost every day I pick up a story on the Net of someone being fired by their company for some indiscretion related to social media or digital communications. I suppose people get fired every day for breaching company policies, but when you dig into most of these stories, you really get a feeling that the people in charge just have no freaking clue and are acting like reactionary, idiotic psychopaths.

A psychopath is “a person afflicted with a personality disorder characterized by a tendency to commit antisocial, perverted, criminal, amoral and sometimes violent acts and a failure to feel guilt for such acts.” (dictionary.com)

It may be a bit over the top to call the reflex firing of a person a psychopathic act, but it certainly is not the act of a rational, emotional stable or intelligent entity either. And when it is clear that someone has been fired largely because their employer just does not understand how social media or digital communications work, then I think you can label it antisocial, perverted, criminal and amoral. And normally there is no apology later. That’s a psychopath then!

Is your company a psychopath? You’d be surprised who else is…

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Voting for a tax rise? I think I know what will happen…

Watching the UK news this morning, I see David Cameron’s latest version of the “Big Society” (his code phrase for reducing the size of government and “handing power back to the people”) is to allow people to vote on whether they should have rises in their Council taxes or not.

Basically, the central government will set a cap on how much local councils can increase the Council tax (local municipality tax) each year. If the Council wants to increase it by more than that, it must hold a vote and get all the local residents to approve it. The proposal is that it will be a simple “Yes” or “No” ballot.

What are they thinking? What do you think people are going to vote?

This is the problem with society right now. What do we want? We want lower taxes! When do want them? Now! What else do you want? We want more services from the government! When do you want them? Also, now! OK, explain how that is going to happen…

For too long, “the government” has been seen as some magic mystery box. Somehow, from somewhere, it will just keep finding money to keep giving you everything you can imagine and dream of. Better schools, better hospitals, random wars in foreign countries to ensure you’re kept safe from terrorism, support for single moms, help for the elderly, pensions, drinking water, roads, police, libraries…. These are (mostly) all good things, and necessary too. But they need to be paid for. And the government isn’t some kind uncle with unlimited means who can just keep shelling out money. It’s got to get that money from somewhere.

It’s time for the government to metaphorically call the family into the sitting room and sit us down and tell us the bad news. “Kids, you know things have been tough the past few months. Daddy and mommy have been working hard, but you know we’re paying paid less and didn’t get a Christmas bonus last year either. We’ve run out savings, and no-one will lend us any more money. We’re going to have to cut back on our expenditure as a family, and really work together to get out of this mess. We’d love to go on holiday at the end of the year, but we just can’t. We’d love to send sonny here to a better school, but we just can’t afford it. We’d love to fix his skew teeth, too, but that will have to wait….” And so on. You might have had just such a conversation with your own family.

So, instead of going to the voters and saying: “Can we raise your Council tax, Yes or No?”, the government should go to the voters with a different proposition. Let’s say that every percentage point of tax increase is worth £ 10 million for a local council. They should have a list of things that £ 10 million could buy, and if you vote NO to the tax increase, you also have to indicated which activities of the Council you are happy for them NOT to do.

So, I vote NO to the tax increase. I then have to say whether I’d prefer my children’s school to not have any maintenance and lose 3 teachers, or to have the bins collected only every other week, or to not have the potholes fixed in my road, or to close the closest library to me.

You shouldn’t be able to just say NO.

And you also shouldn’t be able to say NO, and then still complain about the government at your next dinner party.

It’s time for voters to grow up. We’re living in the aftermath of the worst economic period most of us will ever experience. But it’s also time for the government to grow up, and start treating us like adults who can think, rather than pandering to the lowest common denominator of voter appeasement. Otherwise, this is all going to end in tears.

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The Talent Exodus looms large

We’ve been talking almost since the recession began about a talent exodus. Our view has been that as soon as the economy begins recovering and companies start hiring again, there is going to be a tidal wave of staff movement. We’re calling it a talent exodus.

It should be obvious why this will happen. People have been overworked, and often abused, by their employers during the downturn. Imagine, for example, what it must be like to work for BP right now, when your boss has just announced his retirement at age 53 and a £ 600,000 a year pension for the rest of his life. You will be paying for that pension out of your salary, which has not increased in two years, nor will you get a bonus this year. Most other company examples are less extreme, but the same outcome exists – people are ready to look around at other options.

Secondly, when companies begin expanding and looking for new talent, they will not favour the currently unemployed. They will prefer to hire new staff from other companies, and they will not be constrained by industry boundaries either. So, your staff will be getting head hunter calls soon, and most will be willing to take the calls.

And now, a survey confirms our instinct. According to Deloitte LLP’s fourth annual Ethics & Workplace Survey, one-third of employed Americans plan to look for a new job when the economy gets better. Of this group of respondents, 48% cite a loss of trust in their employer and 46% say that a lack of transparent communication from their company’s leadership are their reasons for looking for new employment at the end of the recession.

It’s not too late to do something about this now! But you need to start now. This issue should be top priority and the head of every management agenda for the next year! If it’s not on your leader’s radar, your company is in big trouble.

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Visualisation: An ageing world

I really enjoy clever visualisations of data (see previous blog entries on this here). So, this is the shortest of blog entries to alert you to one I just discovered. Brought to us by GE, it’s a visualisation of how various countries will age over the next few decades. See the population pyramids expand and contract, and compare two countries at a time. It’s pretty easy data, but well done as a Java Applet.

Check it out here: http://www.ge.com/visualization/aging/

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Nine key workforce trends for the next decade

Download a copy of this article in PDF format – right click here. The contents of this article can be presented as a keynote or a workshop for your team. Contact our UK or South African offices to find out how.

My company, TomorrowToday, researches the new world of work, and focuses especially on helping our clients to understand the disruptive forces that will change the world in the next decade. We use a variety of constructs or frameworks to help people understand and respond to these issues. One of my favourites is our “TIDES of Change” framework (read an extended article on it here).

I was recently asked to simply list some of the key workforce trends of the next decade. It was an interesting exercise. So, without much explanation or detail (search this blog site for more details on each of these trends), here is a list of the most important issues we’ll be facing in the next few years in relation to our employees, leaders and teams. There are obviously some variations in different world regions, but these are fairly general trends for the next decade:

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Graeme Codrington speaking in Johannesburg, 19 August

If you’re in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 19 August, this may be of interest to you…

Unique Speakers Bureau presents…
A rare opportunity to join

Dr Graeme Codrington

at a public keynote presentation of “The TIDES of Change“…

Thursday 19th August 2010, 08h30—10h00
(breakfast available from 07:30am, arrive by 08:00 to register and ensure a prompt start to the presentation at 08:30am)
Venue: The Graphite Conference Room, The Forum,
Didata Campus, 57 Sloane Street, Bryanston, Johannesburg, SOUTH AFRICA

R890.00 per person including finger breakfast

• Understand the forces that are shaping the new world of work
• Insights into five disruptive trends that are going to change your industry forever
• Get a jump start on your competitors as the upturn begins
• Inspire and challenge your team to think bigger, more creatively and strategically
• Discover the secrets for success in the next decade – as a company, and as an individual!

To book your seat please contact marilyn@uniquespeakerbureau.com or phone Paul +27 83 268 6057.

Download a PDF version of this page here.

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Managing chaos

We all need to learn how to manage chaos these days. We live in turbulent times of disruptive change, and it’s not going to get any easier over the next few years.

The first step in managing chaos is to look for the patterns that provide a clue about the “organising system”. We label something ‘chaotic’ mainly because we don’t know the guiding and organising principles of the item we’re observing. For example, if you watch a sport without knowing the rules, the actions of the participants will assume to be random and senseless (or ‘chaotic’). If you observe interactions (for example, greetings) between people of another culture, their actions can appear meaningless and unusual (or ‘chaotic’).

Take a look at this video of a traffic intersection somewhere in Asia. A few years ago, my wife and I spent an idyllic 10 day holiday in Bali, Indonesia, and we learnt the rules of the road that govern this intersection. In fact, it is only one rule (with a sub rule for the motor bikes). See if you can work out the rule that governs traffic flow and right of way in this video (watch it before scrolling down – don’t cheat):

Available directly on YouTube if you can’t see the video embedded above

Now, read on to find the guiding principle of the traffic.

… Continue Reading

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