One of the conclusions of my recent post about urban innovation was that growing cities need to adapt at a faster rate (innovate) as they grow to avoid stagnation. It would be a common mistake to assume that because a city is bigger it is capable of producing more ideas. The correct interpretation of the research is that since a process like innovation follows the law of increasing returns, not only a city would produce more ideas because it has more citizens, but each citizen would have to be more productive as the city grows. One must wonder how citizens can continuously become more productive in today’s world, thus enabling their cities to continue an ever expanding trend.

While the research is too general to venture into the possible ways in which such levels of productivity can be accomplished, a visualization produced by Facebook engineers provides some insight:

The linked video visualizes the interactions among Facebook users in real time. An interesting observation is the density of interactions within certain regions and among remote locations around the planet. While it is very likely the majority of these interactions are banal by nature the visualization helps me present my point more clearly:

In a closed community there are only so many interactions possible. The size of the group will determine the maximum number of interactions per individual, which in turn will determine how many messages each individual will be exposed to, which one can argue will lead to productive ideas. I can’t remember the source but this is a well researched area in communication theory. Given the communication tools that our generation has been given it follows to conclude that we must be exposed to a higher number of ideas. Our tools are continuously getting more efficient in many dimensions: global reach, instant delivery, zero overhead (twitter anyone?) and 24×7 availability through mobile devices.

At this point I’m reminded of something I wrote over a year ago in acoustic world:

An acoustic medium requires the user to consume it partially and obtain the full picture by means of active participation in it. Interpretation is not only good, it is encouraged as it makes the discussion more interesting. By presenting vignettes of reality apparently disconnected one from the other we can convey the illusion of reality as long as there is space for that active participation that compliments the act of viewing them. The net effect should be more powerful than having a single long feature narrating our story linearly.

This appears to describe the nature of our communication obsession. We must all participate, looking for the stories that evolve through the little vignettes produced around the world on common themes. These vignettes have a single source but are interpreted in many different ways by consumers around the world. All of the sudden it becomes obvious how digital citizens can achieve higher degrees of productivity: always scanning the digital ether for inspiration in simple messages originated beyond the scope of their own cities.

It would seem that a good indicator of a city able to accelerate innovation is the proportion of its population engaged in active global communication.

Cities, Global Culture, social networks

December 2, 2008

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