Unfinished paper by Gunter Heim, December 2000:

The neural company

Abstract

Pointing out similarities between various forms of human society and human bodies is nothing new. From John Hobbes Leviathan of 1651 down to the still vague metaphor of the „global brain“ there have been more or less serious minded attempts at establishing functional similarities between highly individualized organisms such as humans and large conglomerates of individuals like human societies. This paper will be in the same strain. It will argue that large enough organizations do already resemble the information processing of human brains in some salient aspects and that they will increasingly do so as many groupware features, organizational features and workflow engines emulate isolated aspects of neural intelligence.

A foreword to the scientifically minded reader

It is not the aim of this paper to produce a fully elaborated testable theory. This paper aims at providing some inspirational stimuli to those engaged in shaping the way large groups of people will do „knowledge work“ in the future.

In style, it will try to persuade with a profusion of detailed examples and metaphors rather than convince by means of inescapable logical reasoning.

And although we as the authors are quite convinced of the validity of many of the propositions made in this paper, the only credit we have a right to ask for is the benefit of the doubt.

So, as a reader, you should adapt your mode of reading accordingly. Suppress your critical capacities, your rational impulse to reason and your demands for authoritative evidence. Instead, lend us, for a while, what may best be called your intellectual generosity.

We do not claim to be first in formulating the ideas presented here. In fact, we would be surprised had not someone else laid them out already. For the time is ripe for them. But we have certainly not stolen anything from sources without due reference.

References have been included where they serve to illustrate our suggestions. They have been omitted where they would have given the wrong impression of scientific ambitions.


The central idea: synaptic weighing of information

Although the brain’s working cannot be reduced to any one principle alone, the connecting points between different nerve cells, called synapses, seem to play a major role in the brain’s operating system. The basic information processing units of the brain are single nerve cells, called neurons. Each neuron has one outgoing nerve fibre called the axon. This may bifurcate a number of times. It is along the axon alone that the neuron can send signals to other neurons. Another structure stretching out from the neuron`s body is called dendrites. Dendrites usually have a tree-like shape and this is where ingoing signals from the axons of other neurons are received through. Now, each signal that passes from the axon of one neuron to the dendrite of another neuron has to cross a physically visible structure called the synapse. The likelihood, however, with which an ingoing signal will be transmitted across the synapse is influenced by the synapse’s momentary internal structure. The synapses readiness to pass on signals is called synaptic conductivity. Inside the neurons body, called the soma, the ingoing signals are processed in a way unknown. But most scientists would agree that the outgoing signal of a neuron is significantly influenced by its input.

If you appreciate the fact that an ordinary neuron is connected to about 10.000 other neurons, this fact can be formulated as follows: In any given situation, a neuron’s output is at least partly determined by the synaptic conductivity of its synapses. Weighing ingoing signals according to the current situation seems to be one key to intelligent information processing. We must, therefore, suspect some intelligent mechanism regulating synaptic conductivity.

The strength of this principle is proven by the widespread success of „neural networks“. These computer programmes exploit the mechanism of altering synaptic conductivity. By the use of more or less sophisticated learning algorithms, synaptic conductivity within a network of neurons is so manipulated that the network’s overall output increases in quality during a session of learning sets.

Let us now turn to human information workers within an ordinary organization like a company and see the similarities.

The picture above shows quite an ordinary working place in the control centre of an industrial plant. Via the monitors and through the telephones and notes lying about on the desk, the operator is linked to vast ressources of information. Long lists of telephone numbers, shift plans, process data showing temperatures inside tanks, rotational speeds of enginges, electrical currents and voltages, CH4-contents of analyzed coal, maps of the plant’s premises, plans of electrical intallations, flow charts etc.

In case of an accident, the speed and quality of the operator’s decisions and instructions given to other people „on the spot“ will largely depend on how fast he can access relevant information. This is true of any situation where human attention and time for information retrieval are limited ressources.

Technologies for user- and case-sensitive data-presentation are one key-focus of groupware and knowledge-management systems being developed at present. They all aim, more or less, at sensibly modifying the attention a certain piece of information can attract from a user in a given situation. To revert to the model of neurons, they modify synaptic conductivity between providers and potential recipients of information. If you place an important note right on the desk of a colleague instead of sending it through the company snail-mail system you are increasing the synaptic conductivity between the note’s content and your colleagues attention. And the same thing happens when you are surfing the internet using a commercially oriented browser. By constantly monitoring your interests, the browser may be able to suggest links, banners and tickers that are most relevant to you in such a way as to increase the likelihood that the linked contents will pass through the monitor or loudspeaker straight into your brain. Even the simple rules governing the right to speak between different people in a company fall in this case: the higher up on the hierachical ladder you are, the greater is your privilege to interrupt lowers in their conversation to put in what you have to say. This, obviously, increases the likelihood with which superiors can get their messages across. And the true value of a good secretariat is to filter and weigh ingoing information in such a way, as to best suit the needs of the superior. For an unimportant and unpopular colleague, the synaptic conductivity of the secretariat may be near nil whereas an important customer may gain direct access to the boss in the same circumstances.

So here we have one (no more!) basic mechanism of neural intelligence to build on: the weighing of different sources of information. And although the weighing of information inputs can occur in many ways without the aid of computers, this paper will concentrate on digitalized communication and knowledge management. Thus, the classical model of communication including sender, recipient, content and medium of information transmission is slightly modified to bring it nearer to the neuron model of real brains:

figure: model of organizational neuron

But the broader perspective of this paper cannot be attained unless we allow statistics to enter into the concept.

A case study: a large mining company

Small companies are not large enough to be treated statistically in the sense we want to. Average nations, however, are too big to be treated as an individual with some sort of unifying groupware making any sense. So something inbetween like a large company with at least some few thousand employees will do better. A differentiated organizational structure, too, is needed. And the complexity of the whole thing should be well beyond the grasp of even the most intelligent human individual.

So, for the sake of illustration, imagine a large mining company with many divisional branches spread across the globe.

Open-pit copper mines on the southern hemisphere, newly developed underground coal mines in the former Soviet Union, the exploration and exploitation of off-shore gas and oil fields and the mining of complex polymetallic ore bodies at various locations are only some of the company’s key-engagements. Besides, the company runs two global selling organizations. It is doing active research into milling, coking, geophysics and metallurgy. And the company entertains a worldwide network of lobbyism, public relations and widely appreciated sponsoring. Through some of its products, its name is explicitly known to most consumers of even the most basic constituents of the western life-style.

There is a headquarter somewhere in Europe, but many activities are managed on the spot without much interference from HQ. However, many issues need central coordination:

• Should financial ressources be allocated to research & development activities concerning sustainable sources of energy? And if so, to what amount and how can this be best coordinated with public relations and lobbyisms with legislative bodies in Europe and America?
• How will copper prices develop over the coming years and at what costs will the company be able to produce?
• Which part of the overall budget should go into which field of research?
• What is the right public announcement in answer to a public outcry against the company’s engagement in a politically controversial region?
• What are the company`s chances to get engaged in mining activities in a region not yet covered?

By taking a closer look at the last example, we will try to identify some helpful mechanism to reduce the complexity of the issue in order to reach an optimum answer. These, of course, will correspond to some phenomena in the human brain, as will be shown.


Digression: the internet mode of thinking

But let us first swerve a little from the main course of this essay. We will pose you a question and ask you to turn your attention inside-out and look into yourself: Monitor your thoughts for a while before reading on. Here is the question: Where will your next shopping tour take you to?

What happened? When we do „experiments“ of this kind, there usually crop up a number of rather diffuse images, ideas or words competing for full attention against each other for a while. In the case of the shopping tour these may be, for example: a vage image of the contents of the refrigerator to suggest what is needed, elusive connotations of various supermarkets or small shops, snaphshot views of congested streets and some fleeting sensory reminiscenses of dishes that are on the cooking plan for the coming days.

Sooner or later, one of the images will dominate over the others. As it gains in clarity, new images come within the ken of your attention. The image of a certain supermarket may suggest the image of a friend of yours you met there last week and who suggested a barbecue evening. From here, your thoughts may wander off to still other images and the chances are high, that you may lose your initial question of of sight.

Also bear in mind,that as each image brings with it a number of further associations, the direction of your thinking and the quality of its result heavily depend on the strength of those associationsl

This mode of thinking corresponds in some striking ways to a typical internet session. Suppose you were consulting the internet to make a list of possible holiday locations for a local youth group. You`d probably start by entering some search words like „holiday, children, youth“. As a result you are presented with a number of hits. You will open on of them which brings a new load of facts and further links to your attention. The quality of your session will heavily depend on how well links correspond to the content of the information sources thus addressed. And a good internet surfer will soon develop some sort of instinct that gives him some clue as to the content of internet sites. However, as in thinking, there is always a danger of getting lost by an uncontrolled following of links and associations.

We do not wish to overstrain the likeness between human thinking and knowledge work at a PC yet. We must, however, lay considerable stress on the similarities between the flow of ideas, images, words i. e. notions as existing in human brains on the one hand and information ressources in information networks such as the internet or companies and information working in both cases seems to involve hopping from one image to the next. We can, therefore, expect the nature of these notions to be of high importance.


Organizational reports as standardized ideas

Human thinking would not work the way it does without the existence of some reliably addressable informations ressources. Admittedly, each one of us may have completely different contents in his working space of consiousness when presented with the word „channel“. The important thing is, that within one brain, the information addressed by such a word is constant enough to play a defined role in complex information processes.

And the same is increasingly becoming true of organizational sources of information. Financial data is already made available in a highly standardized form to meet the rigid demands of professional accountancy. Software systems offer specified „reports“. But controlling, monitoring and other technical data are also increasingly shaped and moulded into reliable reports. The driving forces behind this tendency are manifold. The wish to employ standardized software, the demands for transparency and clear definitions of processes as laid down in various norms such as ISO 9000, the growing need to provide electronic data in an interchangeable format and, last but not least, the growth of intra- and internet structures where the exploding amount of information can only be met with the creation of reliable methods of retrieval.

In a number of years, the by far largest proportion of organizational knowledge will be stored in computer systems. Knowledge workers will rely heavily on standardized sources of information.

So, let us now return to our internationally operating mining company. Suppose it is your task to make well founded suggestions for future mining engagement anywhere on the globe. And let us further take it for granted that most of the information you may need is available electronically.

Starting from scratch, you load a work-flow sheet (just another report) labelled „new mining engagements“ onto your screen and switch into the „internet mode“ of knowledge work. The work-flow is a very good guideline and offers many sources of information that you should consult to get a first impression of viable potentials for further elaboration:

Scanning over the titles and the short descriptions of the ressources can be compared to evaluating the first images and words that come to ones mind when working out the tomorrows shopping tour. The deeper contents of the ressources are yet vague and you have to opt for one of them. In the case of the mining company, you may chose to start with a general overview of the mineral deposits. You open the site and you are then confronted with maps to click on and with further links to follow up. Depending on your disposition and circumstances, you may then stick to your work-flow or you may plunge into the fascinating world of geology and mineralogy of the world...

A report in this sense need not be identical with a physically compact storage of information. It can better be described as some standardized access to a more or less constant themes and topics. In practise, it is more like a personalized portal to some specific topic than a static list of facts.

However, don`t forget that your time is limited. Your telephone may ring any time to call you to some meeting, or your boss may give you some other most urgent work, or you may get ill one of the coming days. So the order of working through the knowledge ressources is most important. Missing some hint on a competitor’s activities, for instance, may invalidate completely the the result of your work.

So once again we are confronted with the importance of priorising links. This leads us back to the concept of synaptic weighing and it is left up to the reader to acknowledge the importance of this for any individual worker by analysing his own workaday office life.

In consequence, the tendency towards structuring knowledge in organizations will be flanked by a growing focus on producing various forms of reports for various situations and various people. The techniques for this are already being developed, albeit against different backgrounds. And they will only have to be merged into what my fittingly be called „synaptic browsers“ to emulate the internet mode of thinking that takes place in our mental life.

A common model of organizational and mental knowledge work

Having thus sufficiently established some functionial similarities between organizational reports, intenet-sites, documents etc. on the one hand and mental entities such as images, ideas, notions on the other hand we now want to set up a model that can account for many phenomena related to knowledge work in both fields of experience.

The model is restricted to knowledge work only. All knowledge, information and data is addressed as a „report“. Anything that can change reports on the basis of other reports in some predictable way is called a knowledge worker. All knowledge work takes place in the form of „tasks“. Tasks are so defined as to update a specific report on the basis of certain initial input knowledge processed by clearly defined knowledge workers. Various mechanisms subsumed under the titels of „task-manager“ and „emotion-manager“ constantly reassess the allocation of ressources and the weights of links within reports as to optimize the whole systems performance.

Reports must have an unequivocal title corresponding to a URL or its alias in the internet or a symbol within human mentality. It can contain some information like images, sounds etc. It also contains references to other reports.

In organizations knowledge workers can be identified with human individuals or computer programmes doing a certain job. They must only fulfil one criteria: If they are fed with certain pieces of information, their output must at least show some statistical dependance on the input.

Tasks are identified by the report they are meant to update. All information work finally results in the update of a report. By rallying together an initial set of reports and knowledge workers, a task is activated.

The task manager is like some background routine continously assessing the right distribution of knowledge workers to certain tasks. It stand for a mechanism that both monitors and asseses as well redistributes the the use of these ressources.

Using the metaphor of computer data processing the elements of our model can be characterized in the following way:

reports = data
knowledge workers = programmes
task = working space of a computer
task manager = operating system continuously managing the system ressources

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This piece of work was left unfinished in December 2000 due to a lack of time to further elaborate the model. The chief difficulty of the model seems to be as to characterize a neuron. Would it be a single worker? A group of people? A virtual team? A project? All of these?

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