Beyond fat tree global knowledge management

Enabling Wisdom Dynamically within Intertwined Tori (Part #7)

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As cited above with respect to supercomputer architecture, the more a system grows, the more fat tree switched topologies show limits of cost, maintainability, consumption, reliability and, above all, scalability. By contrast, connecting nodes using a 3D torus configuration means that each node in a cluster is connected to the adjacent ones via short cabling.

"Fat tree" (reproduced from Wikipedia)

The  Wikipedia entry comments on the above illustration to the effect that the links in a fat-tree become "fatter" as one moves up the tree towards the root. By judiciously choosing the fatness of links, the network can be tailored to efficiently use any bandwidth made available by packaging and communications technology (see also Robin Harris, Fat trees and skinny switches, StorageMojo, 24 August 2008).

The question is whether information overload, especially amongst those variously responsible for global governance, poses issues of knowledge organization and management analogous to the technicalities of "limits of cost, maintainability, consumption, reliability and, above all, scalability". Does global governance suffer from a "fat tree" crisis?

What is the nature of the cognitive "short cabling" it would appear is necessary to engage with the "adaptive hypercycle", as variously explored (Adaptive Hypercycle of Sustainable Psychosocial Self-organization, 2010; Hyperaction through Hypercomprehension and Hyperdrive: necessary complement to hypertext proliferation in hypersociety, 2006)?

How is it hoped that "wisdom" should emerge from plenary assemblies of global governance -- whose very seating arrangements and communication processes are so reminiscent of "fat trees" (as illustrated below)?

Image reproduced from discussion of Considering All the Strategic Options: whilst ignoring alternatives and disclaiming cognitive protectionism (2009)

The decade-long, trillion dollar expenditure on military intervention in Iraq-Afghanistan, with marginal benefit to all concerned, usefully reframes the concerns regarding "intelligence failure" prior to 9/11 -- as documented by a US Senate inquiry (cf Kjetil Anders Hatlebrekke and M. L.R. Smith, Towards a New Theory of Intelligence Failure? The Impact of Cognitive Closure and Discourse Failure, Intelligence and National Security, 2010.

The question is whether the remedy in its final stages of implementation is to be understood as vulnerable to the weaknesses of "fat tree knowledge management". The remedy takes the form of a massive surveillance centre under construction by the National Security Agency deep in the Utah desert, as described in an exclusive report by James Bamford (The Black Box: inside America's massive new surveillance centre, Wired, April 2012) under a cover title Inside the Matrix. Bamford notes that it is a project of immense secrecy: the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyse and store vast amounts of the world's communications from satellites and underground and undersea cables of international, foreign and domestic networks.

The centre will of course feature any number of supercomputers, presumably benefitting from the latest in toroidal design. Expressed otherwise, the question is whether the remarkable capacity in information management will enable and enhance any capacity in interpretation and insight management, as separately discussed (Incomprehension in the face of information overload, 2012). There is a certain irony to the manner in which Bamford's report uses the geometrical metaphors of "box" and "matrix" in the light of the argument made above with respect to toroidal insight (Comprehension of Requisite Variety for Sustainable Psychosocial Dynamics: transforming a matrix classification onto intertwined tori, 2006).

Aside from the implications of its name, a profoundly significant symbolic irony may be recognized in the fact that Bamford reports that the NSA centre is located in Bluffdale -- in the heart of Mormon country: where religious pioneers arrived more than 160 years ago. They came to escape the world, to understand the mysterious words sent from their god as revealed on golden plates, and to practise what has become known as "the principle", marriage to multiple wives. The irony is nicely completed by the fact that the following paragraph in the printed version has been "redacted" from the online version cited above:

Today Bluffdale is home to one of the nation's largest sects of polygamists, the Apostolic United Brethren... Membership has doubled since 1978 -- and the number of plural marriages has tripled -- so the sect has recently been looking for ways to purchase more land and expand throughout the town.

Should Christian deprecation of Muslim preoccupation with 72 virgins in the afterlife now be seen in a new light? Is there any doubt as to the probability of who will be the next President of the USA?

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