The IRG Solution - hierarchical incompetence and how to overcome it

The IRG Solution – David Andrews, Souvenir Press, 1984

This book, written in 1984, developed from a number of research papers at the Open University Energy Research Group, and an article appearing in the Guardian Newspaper which attempted an information and communication based approach to analyzing why things often went wrong ( ie inadequate policy responses with counter productive unintended consequences) in centrally governed societies equipped with hierarchic bureaucratic organizations (governments) and what the book called “central media” – ie print, and broadcast media, and predicted that a general environmental / energy / pollution / food catastrophe would inevitably ensue from these features alone, unless the mechanisms at work were recognized and appropriate information based solutions devised (as defined in the book) and implemented. It was argued, that home computers and modems, could be harnessed urgently, to create lateral media, or interactive computer based social networks, as the only form of media which would adequately understand and describe the complexity of the emerging environmental, energy and water crises we were rapidly heading into.

Lateral communication

One of the central ideas in the book was that for millennia, all life had been controlled, organized and responded to by other organisms, species, and environmental issues on a lateral communication / dispersed control basis – communication and signaling between individual cells, bacteria, amoebae and species – all created via a form of Collective intelligence self sustaining, self regulating ecosystems. Examples cited included “primitive” cultures with no king or power structure, slime moulds which are communities of individual amoeba, but which can come together to form a single purposeful organism, a school of fish, a flock of birds, insect colonies, and the human body. All of these indicated a high degree of organization and co-ordination without central control by lateral communication resulting in dispersed control between the cells or individuals in the community.

The book argued that environmental damage began to occur as soon as centralized control emerged, initially dynasties and monarchies using the tools of warfare, and then further centralization with the advent of the printing press.

The book argued that only by using technology to develop mass lateral media - sending messages between individuals, could we hope to recognize and solve our problems. This would be widespread use of computers in individual’s hands to mediate person to person communication on a mass scale, using modems and telephony – a radical and unheard of idea at that time.

Inherent problems of hierarchies and central media

The book first described the claimed inherent deficiencies of hierarchies and central media - Hierarchical incompetence - and their inability to recognize and deal with complex issues, and secondly to suggest the urgent development of what the book termed called “lateral media” which were described in some detail and were what we would recognize today in may respects as “the internet” and social networking. The book proposed that we should develop a system where a pc in every home would be linked by modems and the telephone network and be equipped with software to enable messages, news and enquiries to be forwarded selectively to create a cloud of lateral communications hopping from computer to computer – we would recognize this as social networking / email and many other features of the internet but at the time this was a virtually unheard-of concept.

The book cited the so called Small World problem as proof that such messages would diffuse to the appropriate people anywhere in the world between hierarchies without any central cataloguing using informal self generating networks and the book’s central argument that just as the technology of the printing press had amplified central communication, with many disastrous social and environmental side effects, so too should we apply technology (computers and email) to amplify the already existing but informal lateral communications - gossip, the grapvine, and other informal networks.

Information Routing Groups

Such a network of interlocked “Information Routing Groups” the book claimed would be able to discuss and process information much more effectively than highly centralized media and hierarchies, which inevitably produced non-sustainable solutions to almost any problem for intrinsic and inherent reasons the book went into some detail to describe why this was the case.

The book claimed that by diffusing information laterally between individuals knowledge of the true problems facing us and their solutions would automatically become apparent, which the book claimed were due to a lack of integrated thinking between organizations and individual leading to narrow, partial world views and hence decisions.

It was argued that these lateral communication networks would form a dispersed control system able to truly map the complexity of the problem,

Interlock research

The book proposed a method of research / administration / policy formulation called “Interlock research” which was a formalized method of creating interpersonal networks and dialogues between specialist across whatever professional or hierarchical boundaries needed to be spanned.

This concept took in all the various ideas in the book, such as defeating the relevance paradox, spreading tacit knowledge, avoiding unintended consequences and so on.

See also

• central media
• Delphi technique
• Hierarchical incompetence
• hierarchical organization.
• Interlock diagram
• Interlock research
• lateral communication
• lateral media
• Law of unintended consequences
• LinkedIn
• Social network service
• Relevance paradox
• Tacit knowledge
• The Wisdom of Crowds