doctoral dissertation academic year 2018 The Practice of Change keio university graduate school of media & governance j o i c h i i t o Joichi Ito: The Practice of Change, How I survived being interested in everything, © 2018 cb ABSTRACT Over the last century civilization has systematically supported a market- based approach to developing technical, financial, social and legal tools that focus on efficiency, growth and productivity. In this manner we have achieved considerable progress on some of the most press- ing humanitarian challenges, such as eradicating infectious diseases and making life easier and more convenient. However, we have often put our tools and methods to use with little regard to their systemic or long-term effects, and have thereby created a set of new, inter- connected, and more complex problems. Our new problems require new approaches: new understanding, solution design and interven- tion. Yet we continue to try to solve these new problems with the same tools that caused them. Therefore in my dissertation I ask: How can we understand and effectively intervene in interconnected complex adaptive systems? In particular, my thesis presents through theory and practice the following contributions to addressing these problems: 1. A post-Internet framework for understanding and interven- ing in complex adaptive systems. Drawing on systems dynam- ics, evolutionary dynamics and theory of change based on causal networks, I describe a way to understand and suggest ways to intervene in complex systems. I argue that an anti-disciplinary approach and paradigm shifts are required to achieve the out- comes we desire. 2. Learnings from the creation and management of post-Internet organizations that can be applied to designing and deploying interventions. I propose an architecture of layers of interoper- ability to unbundle complex, inflexible, and monolithic systems iii and increase competition, cooperation, generativity, and flexibil- ity. I argue that the Internet is the best example of this architec- ture and that the Internet has provided an opportunity to de- ploy this architecture in other domains. I demonstrate how the Internet has has made the world more complex but through low- ering the cost of communication and collaboration has enabled new forms of organization and production. This has changed the nature of our interventions. 3. How and why we must change the values of society from one based on the measurement of financial value to flourishing and robustness. The paradigm determines what we measure and generates the values and the goals of a system. Measuring value financially has created a competitive market-based system that has provided many societal benefits but has produced com- plex problems not solvable through competitive market-based solutions. In order to address these challenges, we must shift the paradigm across our systems to focus on a more complex measure of flourishing and robustness. In order to transcend our current economic paradigm, the transformation will require a movement that includes arts and culture to transform strongly held beliefs. I propose a framework of values based on the pur- suit of flourishing and a method for transforming ourselves. Reflecting on my work experience, I examine my successes and failures in the form of learnings and insights. I discuss what questions are outstanding and conclude with a call to action with a theory of change; we need to bring about a fundamental normative shift in society through communities, away from the pursuit of growth for growth’s sake and towards a sustainable sensibility of flourishing that can draw on both the historical examples and the sensibilities of some modern indigenous cultures, as well as new values emerging from theoretical and practical progress in science. Keywords: Cybernetics, Systems Dynamics, Philosophy of Science, Internet, Cryptocurrency iv Scheming with Timothy Leary in 1995 Question authority and think for yourself. — Timothy Leary ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To my late godfather Timothy Leary for “Question Authority and Think For Yourself.” To Jun Murai for pushing me to do this dissertation. To my thesis advisors: Hiroya Tanaka, Rodney D. Van Meter, Keiko Okawa and Jonathan L. Zittrain for their extensive feedback, guid- ance and encouragement. To Nicholas Negroponte for the Media Lab and his mentorship. To the late Kenichi Fukui for encouraging me to think about com- plex systems and the limits of reduction. To the late John Perry Barlow for the “Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace.” To Hashim Sarkis for sending me in the direction of Foucault. To Martin Nowak for his guidance on Evolutionary Dynamics. To my colleagues at MIT and particularly at the Media Lab for continuous inspiration and my raison d’être. To my research colleagues Karthik Dinakar, Chia Evers, Natalie Saltiel, Pratik Shah, and Andre Uhl for helping me with everything including this thesis. To Yuka Sasaki, Stephanie Strom and Mika Tanaka for their help on helping me pull this dissertation together. v To David Weinberger for “The final edit.” To Sean Bonner, Danese Cooper, Ariel Ekblaw, Pieter Franken, Mizuko Ito, Mike Linksvayer, Pip Mothersill, Diane Peters, Deb Roy and Jef- frey Shapard for their feedback on various parts of the dissertation. Finally, thanks to Kio and Mizuka for making room in our family life to work on this and for supporting me through the process. vi CONTENTS Acronymsx 1 introduction1 1.1 Overview of Dissertation . 5 2 requiring change9 2.1 The Peril of Silos . 9 2.2 Monolithic and Centralized Systems . 11 2.3 Emergent Democracy . 14 2.4 Rethinking Health and Medicine . 24 2.5 The Environment . 26 3 theory of change 31 3.1 Understanding Change . 34 3.1.1 Paradigms . 34 3.1.2 Systems Dynamics . 34 3.1.3 Evolutionary Dynamics . 37 3.1.4 Cybernetics . 39 3.1.5 Solving Complex Problems . 40 3.2 Designing Change . 41 3.2.1 Design . 41 3.2.2 The End of the Artificial . 45 3.2.3 Disciplines and Scholarship . 46 3.2.4 Rethinking the Disciplines . 48 3.2.5 Decentralization and Layers . 55 3.2.6 Reinventing Health Care . 60 3.2.7 Lessigian Quadrants . 62 3.2.8 Aesthetics of the Internet - Context as a Medium 63 3.3 Deploying Change . 69 3.3.1 Resisting Reduction . 69 3.3.2 Singularity . 70 3.3.3 Changing the Goals of a System . 74 3.3.4 Interventions through Arts . 77 3.3.5 A Culture of Flourishing . 78 vii viii contents 3.3.6 Communities and Values . 79 3.3.7 How Nightclubs Work . 84 3.3.8 The Hippie Movement . 85 3.3.9 Hippies and the Internet . 87 3.3.10 Movements . 89 4 practice of change 93 4.1 The Antidisciplinary Approach . 94 4.1.1 Joining the Media Lab . 94 4.1.2 The History of the MIT Media Lab . 95 4.1.3 How the Media Lab Works . 96 4.1.4 Accounting . 97 4.1.5 Membership Model and Growth . 99 4.1.6 Community . 101 4.1.7 The Media Lab Mindset . 103 4.1.8 Permissionless Innovation . 105 4.1.9 Motivations of Researchers . 108 4.1.10 Leadership . 109 4.1.11 The Next Generation . 110 4.2 Antidisciplinarianism at Work . 110 4.2.1 Bioengineering at the Media Lab . 110 4.2.2 The MIT Knowledge Futures Group . 113 4.2.3 The Space Initiative . 117 4.2.4 Extended Intelligence . 119 4.2.5 Council on Extended Intelligence . 124 4.3 Decentralization in Practice . 127 4.3.1 Creative Commons . 127 4.3.2 The Open Source Initiative . 139 4.3.3 Blockchain and Questioning Sovereignty . 141 4.3.4 The Startup Ecosystem . 151 4.3.5 Building Layers of Interoperability . 154 4.4 Technology for Social Justice . 171 4.4.1 Artificial Intelligence . 171 4.4.2 Health . 179 4.4.3 Tackling Climate Change . 188 5 agents of change 197 contents ix 5.1 Happiness . 198 5.2 Interest-Driven Learning . 201 5.3 Competition and Greed . 204 5.4 Disobedience . 207 5.5 Civility and Governance . 208 5.6 Self-Awareness and Humility . 211 6 conclusion 213 6.1 Contributions . 213 6.2 The Learnings . 214 6.3 Future Work . 215 6.4 Call to Action . 217 6.5 Summary of Chapters . 218 6.6 Looking Ahead . 222 6.7 What’s Next . 223 6.7.1 The Internet . 223 6.7.2 Blockchain . 224 6.7.3 The Commons . 225 6.7.4 Health . 226 6.7.5 Space . 226 6.7.6 The Environment . 227 6.7.7 Media Lab . 228 6.8 Concluding the Conclusion . 229 a professor of the practice research statement 231 b letter 1 to massachusetts legislature on pre- trial risk assessments 237 c letter 2 to massachusetts legislature on pre- trial risk assessments 245 d havenco, ltd. business plan 261 e joi and the internet in japan 271 f nia tero preamble 281 g health 0.0 285 bibliography 291 LISTOFFIGURES Figure 1 The Internet decreased collaboration and com- munication costs and increased complexity. 5 Figure 2 The Internet decentralized some monopolies but created new network-based monopolies. 6 Figure 3 Thesis Structure . 7 Figure 4 Machine learning and artificial intelligence ar- chitectures for drug development. (Shah, 2018) 27 Figure 5 Diagram of my theory of change. 32 Figure 6 Image of a simple system inspired by figure from Donella Meadows’s essay (Meadows, 1997) 35 Figure 7 Three systems connected together. 36 Figure 8 Nine systems connected together. 37 Figure 9 A system of systems. 37 Figure 10 Evolutionary dynamics version of interacting systems. 38 Figure 11 Graph of the use of the word “cybernetics” in books from 1940-2018 according to Google Books. 40 Figure 12 Krebs Cycle of Creativity (Oxman, 2016)...