Mark Anderson introduces “flow and interaction” as a theory of change

By Shelby Cate

Founder and CEO of the Future in Review conference Mark Anderson kicked off day two of the FiRe 2016 conference by elaborating on his idea that flows can be used to describe a wide variety of macro and micro trends.

He said that the two fundamentals” of “flow and interaction” with other external forces can be used to describe everything. He applies this idea to both animate and inanimate flows.

“There was a time when there was no life on earth and things were still changing,” Anderson said. He noted that flows have long shaped coastlines, but flow can also be found in a leaf or other living things.

“What is this life thing all about?,” Anderson said. “It’s a very efficient organization of flows and interactions.”

This introduction opens a day of lectures on how this idea applies to a broad variety of subjects, including biology, economics and computing.

“People have imagined the geological cycle and the water cycle and so on, but they are basically change,” Anderson said. “Change is what flows all.”

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