Ecosystems vs the VHS triumph, two different forms of rationality

Personal note: I experienced great difficulties in describing a human (inter)action or even finding some occurence where the Rational Actor Model could be applied. It seemed to me that the way people rationalize things tends to always be bounded, either because of lack of information, or lack of computational capabilities to effectively rank alternatives etc. Hence, in light of these thoughts, i decided to represent the natural biome (ecosystems of all levels) as an "organization" with a common goal and a processing of information that approaches the Rational Actor Model. I hope it isn't outside of scope once again..


Natural ecosystems are characterised by high variability of organisms, genetic material, that ultimately forms (bio)diversity. This natural “library” of all available information allows for the systems to overcome disturbances with using that information to either return to their previous state or to progress towards a more advantageous solution (alternative). In ecosystems, selection isn't based only in the right physical or chemical material selected, but in the right “functional” material too. So evolution seems to be goal oriented and coordination on (possibly?) 100% basis is accomplished through objective limiting criteria, like mass balances, laws of thermodynamics etc. So ecosystems, in my opinion, can represent a form of a Rational Actor Model, a kind of ideal situation of (systemic) behaviour.

In societal systems on the other hand, we can observe in many cases, a time shift in reaction to objective criteria, and high dependency to subjective criteria like regulations, politics and policies, market mechanisms, media etc. One very important characteristic of societal systems is apparent in both of those cases, the level of uncertainty in the system. Apart from physical restrictions of the ecosystem, lack of information due to cost, computational capabilities or even cultural and ethical restrictions, makes it possible for disadvantageous, “irrational”, alternatives to be prefered. Also manipulation of the available information is crucial. Marketing techniques can in a great extent decide conflicts between two competing products, focusing more on consumer psychology than enhancing the actual products against the competition.

This bounded rationality in social interactions, is expressed quite well in the triumph of the VHS standar in the 1980's, over the technically superior Betamax standard. A number of reasons leading to this result can be identified, market mechanisms that effectively promoted the standards, lack of information on the organizational level (as Sony wasn't aware of the VHS standard being researched and developed when she signed a deal of information sharing with Matsushita, the company behind VHS), economic criteria (price wars aimed at promoting the products), marketing alliances (the company with the most supported titles would have the upper hand) and lack of (mostly technical) information on the consumer side, which made the objective ranking of the alternatives almost impossible. The fact that even news media surrounding the conflict, had considerable gaps of information in their descriptions of both systems, is indicative of the boundaries human interactions can impose to decision-making.

This behaviour, apparent in societal systems, leads to lack of coordination, which in turn leads to conflicting interests, practices and initiatives, finally creating most of the excessive pressure our society is applying to its environment. It even seems to skew the common (objective) goal, all members of this society, should have when confronted with important decisions concerning sustaining the natural environment.

Industrial Ecology-inspired puzzle (Take 2)

There is a general consensus that today's highly intensive consumption is inevitably unsustainable. As Thomas Princen states in his book “Confronting Consumption”, “if consumption is self-evidently a major driver of environmental change, consumption itself isn't self-evident. 

There is a need, therefore, to distinguish problematic forms of consumption that lead to significant environmental problems. This usually is a matter of degree, as for example a single purchase of an automobile may have a very small effect on the environment but a large number of similar decisions across society can cause substantial resource and emissions implications. One of the basic questions that Industrial Ecology poses to the consumption issue is why such behaviour occurs. The explanations can be divided into two discrete levels:

Individual level:

Changes in consumption patterns may occur because of peer pressure (all the kids in school must have the same kind of bag), age or gender (girls and boys identifying with certain products like cosmetics or sports items) or even economics (consumption patterns correlate with the person's ability to purchase certain products).

Society level:

Changes in consumption patterns may occur because of marketing pressures (popular marketing campaigns lead to major changes in trends of consumption), peer group choices (similar patterns are usually identified within groups with common societal characteristics) and even because of the availability of different options (specific options in transportation and infrastructure lead people in riding bikes in the Netherlands)

Even though these issues are not new in the environmental and social sciences, their complexity and their significance towards environmental concerns of modern societies require our attention towards them. There may be no other place where the physical and the social sciences meet so directly.

Experiences and gains from the EMS project exercise

    Apart from the obvious practical experience that this exercise gave to us (i am pretty sure most of us where new to the subject), it was really interesting on a personal level due to the team i was assigned. We were 'in charge' of the environmental department of the company and from the discussion that followed our project it looked as if we had fallen into a well-known 'trap'. The one where as an environmental department, we try to centralize all responsibilities of the system around us and thus even making the work of other systems redundant. We were shown that this strategy is very effective as it makes the work load inexorably big. We were even confronted with the fact that most companies don't have environmental departments, but choose to use these environmental systems and allocate the responsibilities through the company. That was a bit of surprising but educating at the same time. Overall it was a fun experience as almost all the group assignments we do in this master. I think apart from practical experience they help in coordination and cooperation, two important pillars of the SSPM course (in my opinion at least).

First impressions with the social perspective in Industrial Ecology

My first impressions of the social sciences, in the field of Industrial Ecology, are closely related to my first impressions of the course itself. Getting to know your professor is always a typical situation of saying a couple words about yourself. In the Social Sciences course we chose a different route, some kind of a 'Rorschach' test for young Industrial Ecologists! We were all assigned of a photograph and were all asked to relate the photograph with an area of Industrial Ecology that we find interesting.
At some point Dr. Boons asked a question, "what do you think the postcard game bring to the course?". That question was of a rhetorical nature but still got me thinking and led me to some interesting conclusions. It showed me how critical thinking can lead people to connections they never thought of beforehand. Connections that, once visible, may help us to understand the systematic view of industrial ecology systems.
I had never seen the temple in my postcard and i feel that most of us had not seen their postcard either, but that did not stop us from relating them to different aspects of social problems and how those reflected upon the environment.
I think what the postcard game brought to the course was the opportunity for us to take a peek at this interdisciplinary field and realize the connections between social constructions and Industrial Ecology. Or even move a step forward and realize IE as a social construction by itself. Realize that the material and energy flows, that are the main subject of research of Industrial Ecology, are shaped by the social context in which they occur.
Unfortunately, my earlier impressions of social sciences were very limited due to the nature of my studies.  Mainly mechanical knowledge was passed on, in the nowadays social science deprived course schedules. Whatever experience, if you can call it that, i have is from discussions with my fellow students and reflections on social problems of our society.