Misplaced Xenophobia - how an American citizen was denied the right to vote

Given that the election hype has been taken care of (regardless of the outcome, I'm not sure I could have physically tolerated extended gnashing vis-a-vis 2000's election) and the synapses have returned to normal, now is probably the best time of any to put out there an idea that has certainly gained a lot of press, but for the wrong reasons: technology enhancing election processes.

To begin with, there has been intense attention given to the technology (some would say to the boondoggle) of e-voting. Whether it is the voting machines themselves or the way the technology behind the vote counting is done, it is a safe bet to say that voter confidence with technology in the election process is at a low point. That is as it should be, but from my perspective, confidence in technology should be low, but not because of the end-user issues. The issue goes deeper than that, to a data infrastructure that is long overdue for a technology upgrade. My story follows...

I am an American citizen, born here and raised here, who has followed the civic duties and responsibilities as thoroughly as I could in my 38 years. I filed my first tax return in my teens, when I made enough to do that. I registered for the Selective Service, and had I been called upon before I was too old to be considered a liability, I would have served to the best of my ability. I pay my taxes and my wife and I have worked hard to be able to work up to the point of being able to own a house, and I vote. I'm not a registered 'Can or 'Crat, but I vote my conscience and personal leanings just the same (I have said - and I maintain - that the concept of a 'straight ticket' is a blight on the face of informed voting, and that it is absolutely impossible for one set of individuals to choose the absolute best candidate for every position; it would be better to not vote than to go in, punch one choice and walk out, thinking erroneously that your prep work has been done by whoever vetted 'your' party's candidates... but that's a digression in another direction).

This year my wife and I found out by bad experience that our data infrastructure is in dire need of BI and other toolsets to enable it to operate well. The last time we voted, though we had filled out the change of residence paperwork (we had the registration cards and the new addresses on our licenses), the changes didn't get made, and we were left registered in our old county. We went ahead and filled out the necessary paperwork and voted on provisional ballots, and did the paperwork needed to cancel our registration (again) in the old county and transfer it to the new county. All good, and we were pleased at how smoothly we were able to get through the process.

Then we tried to find out where we were supposed to vote this year, and were met with a nasty surprise. It seems that instead of cancelling our registration on the official rolls in the old county, and making sure we were on the current county rolls (as I said, we filled out our change of registration paperwork before the first time), BOTH county registrations were cancelled, and we were left in the unsuspected position of being unregistered. We couldn't vote provisionally, since not being registered doesn't count in the rules for those, so we were not permitted to exercise a right we had not only exercised before, but had attempted a couple of times to get right.

Here's why this is painful. We live in the state of Indiana, and one of the things our current governor (thankfully he didn't need our votes for reelection) has done has been to look heavily into the use of technology and newer business models to try to remove a lot of inefficiency from the state's operations. I personally think he's done a great job in doing this, because, warts and all, things do run more efficiently. My extended family has also experienced the negative side of how this has played out, but the benefits still outweigh the problems.

Of all the improvements, though, I don't believe anything much has been done with BI, and with a lot of state data under management, that is a mistake. Many people feel that things like BI are invasive and that somehow unifying data to figure out how to better deliver needed things to the places they are needed is inherently evil. Those people are misguided in their understandings,, choosing rhetoric from people who love drama but hate facts over facts from people who love to work smarter and better.

The databases that contain our taxpayer data have no problem locating us and deeming that we are eligible to pay taxes on our house and property. The municipality has no trouble locating us with the bills for our necessary services (trash removal, sewage, etc.). Our state legislators have no trouble finding our e-mail addresses to send us communiques and other things. All these things are good, at least in a civic way. However, when it comes to elections, we can drop off the radar with the erroneous stroke of a pen (who knows how these things work when you submit paperwork... it could have been a pencil). That is wrong, and the most rudimentary elements of BI could help ensure it doesn't happen.

Since I was brought up to never submit a problem without trying to come up with a solution, here is one way this situation could be minimized with BI. Logically, those individuals with a heightened stake in the affairs of the state would be those who not only reside in the state, but also own property in the state. They're not more important than those who rent and do not own property, but in terms of havnig things at stake that are financed by taxes, property owners are much more so at risk of higher taxes than those non-property owners, and they are more stable in terms of benig able to be located for taxation purposes. For that reason, the first BI action that should take place is to verify that all registered property owners are also registered voters.

If a property owner is found who is not registered to vote, then the second BI task would be to see if the owner is the same person as the one who is billed by the municipality for the services there at that address. If it is the same person, then an actual person could contact the individual in question (either by phone or by mailer) and offer them the ability to register. That would not only make it easy for them to register, it would also alert those who've had trouble with their records that they are not currently registered to vote.

If the municipality billing information is not the same as the owner, then the 'tiebreaker' could be a combination of the Motor Vehicle database and other, relevant sources to see if the registered owner lives in the state or not. If they live in the state, but not in the county, then that information would be checked against the county they are registered in.

There are probably several who are calling out that this represents Big Brother at his finest. Please note that I said nothing about saving the information that is generated anywhere. If forms register someone to vote, then those forms should be captured electronically and used as records, but the BI functions should be done without saving the statuses. Do them once per election, approximately three months before the elections themselves, and repeat the process. There are tools out there that could evaluate the amounts of data that are there and could produce a hit list of thiings without saving the results that are generated (except for the case where someone takes umbrage at the process and wants to never be cntacted again - you'd want to record that).

The above is only an example of how technology could really be applied to the election process to enable it at its roots. The solution is not perfect, and there would undoubtedly be some things that fell through the cracks, but allow me one additional question - how do you feel about the census? If you don't mind the census, then take a hard look at what it actually does. It is an attempt to perform BI where no cohesive data exist. If a census is okay, then it should be okay to perform census-type activity on the data generated by individuals in order to bolster the overall quality of the democtratic process.

Collectively we need to realize that BI is a beneficial tool, not some spying, prying, loathsome attempt to gain access to our inner-workings. BI helps make sure every time we go to our nearest superstore they have enough potato chips in the varieties we like to eat, shouldn't we be interested in using it for something of nobler intent?

A Violation of the Prime Directive...

With a nod to the Trekkies, I begin my first post after violating the prime directive of the professional - work hard, play hard. In the pursuit of doing everything that needed to be done, plus some that should be done, I neglected the necessary balance between working hard and purposefully relaxing to recharge and revitalize. That was a mistake, especially since this blog, though normally considered to be work - rightfully so - I consider to be a portion of play.

Bear with me on this one... there was so much to do and such a need for focus that my vision blurred and things that normally wouldn't elude me were evasive as ever. Why is it that the normally formidable combination of working smarter and working harder yielded diminishing results? What are the lessons to be learned here?

One interesting portion of this is that I put in a week of some of the hardest work when I attended IBM's IOD conference, yet that week was one where there was an unusual amount of clarity. I worked basically from sunup until late at night (some would call eating the occasional piece of cheesecake non-work, but it seemed there was always information to take in and try to apply, so I was always reading and connecting). Some of the work was networking, some was bouncing ideas off of others, some was meeting those individuals with whom I needed to forge a working relationship to try to benefit not only our service as a center for education but also the careers of our future and current students, some of it was even having the pleasure of meeting with a former colleague from my Master's program who is now a professional colleague. Whatever the task, though, the ideas and structures and problem solutions flowed as they hadn't in some time.

The answer to my questions, and really also to the conundrum where I had to fire Feng (pls. see the posts from September) lie in the style of the human versus the style of the machine. The human mind is made to form complex thoughts and solve multi-dimensional problems, not to perform routine functions that take time. That second type of activity is why we have computers in the first place. My official title is Lead ECM Architect, not Lead Access Configurator for an Old System, yet lately the limitations of an old system and architecture in use have cost me dearly in terms of the amount of time I have spent literally copying down account numbers that a person was given access to in one application for one of the many groups to which they are attached. It is important that we make sure that people have access to the things they need, and it is something I'm quite capable of doing, but it takes from my work time budget lately about the same percentage of time that my 1-year-old takes from my personal time.

The task I'm bemoaning is something that can be repaired by the proper security architecture, as driven by our unique needs and history, and that is enabled by the software tools we have on hand. There are many advances that have been made in the tools used to manager things like security, and especially in the areas where blended or more flexible security is needed. Careful design and deployment can either add years to your work, or years to your pursuit of higher-order goals; they inevitably lead to either violation of the prime directive, or enjoyment thereof.

My overall point is not to whine about my job - I have to say that now more than ever before it is one I feel satisfaction from , and which allows me the ability to play to my strengths and also encourage my weaker areas along nicely. My overall point is that, as IT professionals, we have a duty to not only push 'iron out the door', but also to do our work so that we enable our systems to play to their strengths and not shoot ourselves in the foot for later.

The return to my weekly pattern of blogging has more to do with the overall goals of my professional life than to my daily 'to-do' list, but it also goes to a final point that has been made on another blog about the continuous improvement that is needed in IT, and in Enterprise Content Management in general. The return to the more suitable problem-solving work and the delay of slowing of the velocity of the 'busy work' are indicative of the new way of work. When I tried to improve things I actually made the mistake of addressing the physical using feng shui, which is analogous to the traditional mistakes of just adding more disk (JBOD - Just a Bunch of Disks) or accepting substandard performance because of a change in platform (I once saw an application that took under two hours to run on the mainframe ported to run on a distributed server, and increase in time to an average of nearly 30 hours - true story! - and it was just accepted, probably because of FUD about using the mainframe and the driving myth that the mainframe was going away).

It isn't about the body, but about the mind. In refocusing the work, I'm actually doing professionally what I've been involved in doing architecturally, which is solving a problem of space and time by shortening space (virtualizing onto the mainframe so that all processing speeds are at bus speeds) and adding more available time, all done mentally (or at least with a different processor design). It is changing the work, changing the tempo and in the process changing the future, adding where there was nothing to add, and consolidating where before there was no time to consider it. First improve the architecture, then improve the physical. That sounds do-able.

Feng is fired!  Film at 11!

Sophie Tech 3: Big picture

Today's post is a shorter than normal journey through what data will be like for a child growing up today.  This was prompted by the pictures of Sophie I just saw last night.  In one particularly cute one, she is casually glancing back over her shoulder with a little grin on her face, and I noticed a few light speckles around her mouth.  Upon further examination, I found that they were specks from the snack she had eaten during the session that didn't get wiped off (or what more likely happened - she palmed a cheese puff and ate it when she got a chance).  Right there in the high-definition glow of the photo was a flaw that would in another time be unnoticed.  With a regular camera, the particular background and the other things happening would have softened the crumbs so that they weren't readily visible.  Regular film was good at that, giving an approximate representation that allowed the best possible interpretation on the part of the viewer.

Enter the digital camera.  With the definition present, each crumb stood out in its fake yellow-orange glory for all the world to see.  This is an interesting switch for the human mind and how it generally operates, and is linked to the difference between analog and digital technology.  Without trying to over-simplify this, I ask you to put two pictures in your mind.  The first is a giant S as tall as the Golden Gate Bridge, lying on its side.   The second is the picture out of the cell phone commercial that shows the same Golden Gate Bridge represented by the bars (indicating the service levels present).  If you put those two pictures op top of each other, they would approximate the same height, and would cover the same territory.

When you look in your mind's eye, though, you can tell a difference between the two.  The sideways S is smooth, while the form of the bars is a little rough, with flat spots instead of the gradual curving that takes place.  Even if you put more bars in that were thinner, you would still have a very different picture than the smooth curves.  This represents the difference between analog and digital information.  The analog information is the smooth S, the sound as it actually happens, or the picture as it actually appears.  The digital information is the picture made up of the many bars, each bar representing a sample.  As an aside, when someone talks about improving the digital quality, they are really talking about increasing the sample rate so that the bars get thinner and thinner and more closely represent what is actually there.

No matter what you do, the digital will not be the same as the analog.  It will be neater, more orderly, and more clear in content, if not intent.  In an analog photograph. there are grains that occur, but they are not all uniform, and the grain count is the average count per square inch, or some other increment.  The pieces all fit together and either form definite edges or smooth transitions between edges, and there are some fine details that get averaged into the other details in such a way that they get faded out, or covered over.  The general effect is a more natural appearance.  After all, this is how our eyes and brains work, harnessing processing power with the ability to do something that has eluded computing technology - smooth away the lines and barriers to grasp the whole picture.

In the digital world, the concept of grains is gone, replaced by pixels.  Unlike grains, each pixel is both the same size, and has the same distribution over the entire object.  Unlike grains, there is no transition between pixels, and each pixel can have only one color.  If you want a smoother transition, you must add more pixels, each getting incrementally smaller until you attain as good a picture as time and technology allow.  As a side effect, the more pixels you throw in there, the more varied colors you can find within the same image, colors that are taken by the natural eye and analog film and blended together, but in the digital image are starkly separated.  Enter the crumbs.

As cute as the crumbs are, I wonder how she will react in an increasingly digital world, where there are more details and less continuity and blending than ever before.  The same worry exists about the data within our systems.  We have a pile of 1's and 0's, and then we use logic and some smattering of skill to assemble them, then we interpret the results, inferring what is not readily apparent and constructing a picture that we can use to order our business and decisions.  This is a messier process, but it does involve the human intellect.  Taking the 'guesswork' out can make for a neater picture, but it can also cause the loss of the 'soft' data, the interpretive data, the things that actually glue together cohesive work packages into one, successful piece.  In other words, you can build a CRM [Customer Relationship Management - a 'Holy Grail' of software packages that attempts to replicate the savvy of Dave, the salesman who's been there 30 years and knows everyone, including all his customers, knows who's a Cowboys fan and who hates the Patriots, and keeps them straight when he sends out his touchy-feely e-mails, and does all the relationship-building things with his customers, without actually hiring a Dave - basically bringing the skilled position of salesman into a system and using only data operators] package that is successful, but it still can't understand the subtle nuances of relationships.  This is the problem for us as we write systems, and it is the problem for Sophie as she grows up in a world where everything is presented in a nice, neat little box, without the interpretation or discrimination that comes from real-world life.

Hopefully in our quest to capture and record everything within our data, we do not pixellate everything, reducing everything down  to a place where if you add all the pieces together they do not exactly equal the whole (remember when you are thinking about analog versus digital that the word lossless refers to the amount of the digital signal that is lost when transferring to another digital device - if you turned each sample into a number and you added them together, the sum would not be totally equal to the analog - it gets close, but until you can divide 10 by 3 and come out with a terminating number, the sum cannot by definition be the same).  Sometimes the mastery of a field has less to do with analysis of the parts than it does with the analysis of the whole.  Until humans are totally removed from interfacing with technology on a permanent basis, the more finely we pixellate our data, the less we understand fully.  Besides, sometimes when the Daves who are good at the soft data side provide that relationship with customers who deal in absolutes all day, the mixture leads to a great number of innovations that wouldn't normally have come up.

Globalization - a new member of my team

It is in a slightly tongue-in-cheek manner that this week's topic is presented, but given the focus on China currently, it is appropriate.  I have a new member on my KM team, and he is preparing for his probationary period.  His name is Feng Shui.  Of course I am personifying something that is an ancient practice with Eastern origins, but when you go to the abstract in thought and realize that you would call a robot a member of your team, generally, then it is not such a far reach to call any significant component of your approach to practice a member of the team.

I mention that it is on its probationary period because I am not by tradition, or conviction, a practitioner of Eastern philosophy, and the concept is often taken far deeper than a tool for work and becomes something around which people organize their entire lives.  I personally warn against this, but I also do attempt to constantly seek out ways to work better, so in the spirit of Da Vinci, as outlined by Michael Gelb in his studies of Leonardo, and especially three of his seven geniuses - Dimonstrazione, Sfumato and Connessione - I am giving the feng shui organization of my workspace a fundamental try out.

How does this connect with KM?  One might well ask what connection there is between data entry and an ergonomic keyboard.  There is a clear connection between information gathering and information facility, and this connection is directly-related to the quality of the KM work done with the data.  I remember well being a student in an engineering co-op program, and seeing my first testing unit (it was a Yokogawa - that's a name I haven't heard in years, but somehow it stuck with me) designed to measure the performance of an electric motor.  It had an incredible amount of memory for its day (1990), and it was indeed an impressive meter.  That would seem to indicate that the information gathering function was taken care of.

There was a problem, though.  The testing rate of the meter was so fast that it filled the available space within seconds.  That is okay to take a deep look at a partial picture, but no good if you need to evaluate a whole performance curve.  So in this case the facility of the data was not up to the same standard as the gathering.  What was gathered wasn't useful, in other words, even though it was gathered with precision and care.

So with this though I am going to take a few steps such as eliminating the 'to read' pile from my desktop so it doesn't face me every day, re-positioning my desk slightly to take advantage of 'command position' and creating an 'I love me' wall - military parlance for a wall displaying awards, trophies. etc. - though I don't place a large amount of stock in the value of such a wall, preferring instead to allow performance to define others' working definition of my value.  I also am toying with the addition of a water feature, but I must weigh its potential benefits against the danger of having 4 processors, 3 monitors and a mobile device in close proximity to water.

I intend to give the 'new' a chance and evaluate it s performance.  Feng may be a valuable co-worker, or he may be a form of 'time spam' (if no one has yet claimed that phrase. I'll take the opportunity).  He and I will work that out. 

Well-Rounded Knowledge Management

This week's post is fairly short, but it addresses a problem we see more and more.  There is a speed with which information goes past us, and our ability to grasp it is inversely proportional with its velocity.  In order to foster a sense of connectivity to our knowledge, and to round out the development of both KM and the person, I submit that practitioners should routinely read books and other, tangible matter.  There is far too much to disturb, there are far too many 'blinky-lights' on the typical on-line piece.  In addition, if you didn't catch the article on Slate this week regarding blatant plagiarism, there is something complete about an original source.

So without further ado, I challenge anyone reading this (if anyone does - I have no proof it happens) to put together a list of the next ten printed pieces of material you will read, and also WHY you find them important to read.  That challenge laid out, if anyone will send me their list I will try to aggregate a microcosm of recommended books to read and will post it later on for all to benefit from.  Send any lists to ctuite@bsu.edu.  To get the ball rolling, here is my list:

1) Hostage at the Table - will be read to enhance negotiating skills

2) The 21 Indispensible Qualities of Leaders - these will be turned into reminders I will post to myself

3) Don't Eat the Marshmallow...Yet - this was recommended by Kevin Eikenberry, a trainer and motivator whose advice I respect

4) An Innocent Man - I saw that John Grisham wrote this piece of non-fiction, and was intrigued because of his skill

5) ACIF Indexing with Content Manager On Demand - I will read this, because I will NOT lose to a machine

6) The Lucifer Effect - I am interested in the things that happen within an organization that turn normal people into conniving individuals. even when survival is not at stake

7) Death By Meeting - Patrick Lencioni has a brilliant way of telling a story that illustrates a point; in my book, he does the best job of this since Eliyahu Goldratt did his 'The Goal', and if you have no clue about that, hie thee quickly to yon used bookseller forthwith!

8) The Levity Effect - because life and work tend to get too serious

9) Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob - if you want to know where you are, you had better study those with differing opinions than yours, to make sure you understand your terrain (remember what we learn from Sun Tzu, and if you have never read 'The Art of War', go read it first before anything comes along and wipes you out, in a business sense); this book is written from the viewpoint that advances in online technology are not necessarily good, and techies need to bear the lessons in mind.

10) Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performances and Results from Knowledge Workers - I don't supervise people directly, but I do have to coordinate efforts, and am ultimately whose name is either positively seen, or universally cursed, at the end of the KM work that I do, and without the limitation of having a 'stick' to beat people with, the freedom to learn to motivate and collaborate allows me to do a lot more than would otherwise be possible.

Actual Perception is Theoretical Reality, or How Knowledge Management Kills Knowledge Management

After a couple weeks off, spent observing knowledge in other areas of the country, I return today with a thought.  Knowledge Management is definitely more than the tools used, but in the converse, it is also more than the knowledge managed.  The whole, in this case, carries value far beyond the sum of its parts.  An interesting concept to be sure, but somewhat difficult to explain.  Here is an attempt...

I have spent several hours in the last couple of months battling issues on the users' end with a software that we have rolled out in thin-client mode only [thin-client computing means that all installed software necessary to perform the software's functions doesn't reside on the user's computer, but on a server elsewhere, with the user's computer using a web browser to connect to and run the software on the server - it takes up less space on the user's computer, and has the benefit of making maintenance and other tasks easier and more efficient to do].  The interesting thing is that the ease and efficiency gained from our efforts is far less easy and efficient given competing knowledge management efforts.

A lot of the fight has been waged against potential problems that only appear on certain users' machines, and the root of the vast majority of those problems is Google's toolbar.  I am not a hater of Google - I do find their lack of competence in efficient computing and resulting spread of JAAWS mania (Just Add Another Windows Server - I coined that a while ago) to be disappointing, but I don't 'hate' Google - but their efforts in the knowledge management arena have hindered knowledge management in the systems with which I work.  The coding of the toolbar changes the functionality of the browser's behavior with respect to opening new pages, pop-up blocking and the like.  Those 'assets' interfere with the functionality of the software, which relies on dynamically building web pages for presentation to the user.

Why is it Google who receives my blame for this?  There is of course the most obvious primacy of position - my system is a production system, installed before Google toolbar was even promoted and entered into the Web, and so it should have spent more time in the stages of researching conflicts and making sure that it didn't interfere with vital software already on the host machine - but that is only a logical argument.  The reason for the blame lies in the manner through which the toolbar is distributed.

When Google toolbar is installed, the user is not asked about individual options, or given the information they need to be able to make an informed decision.  They are asked if they want to install the toolbar to protect them from evil things and help them find things they want.  If anything, it is the outgrowth of a wave of frustration and disappointment with the toolbar and other software offered natively by Microsoft.  From what I have heard, it is something that users like to use, which is a good thing for Google, since that is a primary requirement for an add-in to aid the user.  

There could be nothing easier than asking the user if they want to install something, and they just click 'Yes'.  The problem is that old nemesis the Law of Unintended Consequences.  We have long ago gone to the presence of medical testing ethics boards who must approve of medical testing, for example, and even if you are not doing anything that could cause long-term harm to an individual, you must have both the permission of the board, as well as the permission and full disclosure to the test participants, before the process begins.  This was done because of the Law of Unintended Consequences when the medical testing done in the post WWII era resulted in horrific side effects and innocent victims of the testing wound up harmed for life, or even killed as the result of the experiments.  The resulting outcry of society and resulting pressure on created the safeguarded system we have for medical testing today.  Can any of us truthfully say that the resulting discoveries from radiation testing on soldiers, thalidomide testing - even Josef Mengele's work - are justification for the ways in which the knowledge was gained?

You might say that comparing medical testing to testing and installation of software to be a reach, and if we weren't in the information age, where data and the decisions from it/harms done by it do have a lasting and indelible impression on the consumers and users, that would be the case.  In the past, the lifeblood of the post-capitalistic society was the value of human life as expressed by therbligs and other manpower measures of what a person could do with their physically hale body, and so things that would unwittingly tamper with that and the future life lived well were found to be taboo.  Fast forward to today, where we still measure productivity but in terms of data and information, rather than iron out the door, and you start to see the connection - anything that harms our ability to do more work, efficiently, is by definition the opposite of what we need to have.

The best-case scenario here would be for the developers of things like the Google toolbar to take a version of the Hippocratic oath that all doctors have to take, pledging that they will do no harm, and having a malpractice system that handles times when they don't (there is the gasoline for the fire).  Barring that, a proper installation process for the users would be one that takes them through a few options and tells them the possible consequences of what they do before installing.  As an example, when installing, warning the user that if they use any software that the first open a web page to use, they may begin to have problems using that software as the result of installing the toolbar.  That would definitely have a chilling effect on the rapid adoption of things, but it would 1) improve the quality of the coding, so that fewer interferences would be had, 2) enforce codes more rigidly so that 'improvements' don't lead to bare metal re-installs (to be fair here, it wasn't Google toolbar that caused the bare metal work, it was a calendar and shareware, but the concept remains the same) and 3) cause more people to be cognizant of what they are doing.

KM is a desirable practice, especially since knowledge is the new steel, in terms of our raw materials.  Tools that leverage KM are welcomed, because we don't have to carry the bit bucket ourselves.  It is at the locus of usability and benign effects where we find the true value in our KM systems.  There is far too much work to be accomplished to have to re-do everything we have done before because someone else has started to do something related, yet incompatible.  As inconvenient as it would be to have a user do more than click on 'Install', I can vouch for the fact that causing them not to be able to see the things they need to do their job is worse.

I'll have a pepperoni, with extra predictive analytics...

One of the great things about vacation is that it allows me to dicsonnect - or at least unwire - from technology. I find a great many things, though, that speak to technology issues, no matter where I am, or what I am doing.

I offer as an example of this the humble pizza, and its carry-out cousin, the Chinese dinner. When you have had a hard day of driving and fun, sometimes there is not enough energy left in your body to handle eating out. On such occasions, there are about two types of food that will deliver - pizza and Chinese. The two couldn't be more different, though, and I'm not just talking about the types of food.

When we ordered pizza one night, it came with one accessory - a box. It was exactly what we ordered, and nothing more. When we ordered Chinese, it came with napkins, extra sauces, plates, forks, and another menu.

Consider that for a second - which of the two places was more likely to make a future sale to us, the one that provided just what we asked for, or the one that provided what we asked for, plus some of what we needed, in a way that it allowed us to better consume what we purchased?

For the pizza, we had to tear up the boxes to create plates, and that meant that we had nothing to use to contain the crusts and leftover pizza, which I'm sure was a bad thing for the maid. We tried to be neat, but there was too much for the small trash cans in the room.

When we ate the Chinese food, we laced it on plates, ate with silverware like civilized people, and, when we were done, the box it came in was perfect to do the waste disposal in.

You may question what this has to do with knowledge management, but the concept of a simple take-out order has quite a lot of parallels to efficient use of information. Suppose that every time we asked for data it was useful to us - really useful - how much value would that add? A lot! True knowledge management is packaging core information within environmental, contextual, functional and perpetual data so that its value is enhanced.

I'm currently in New Orleans, a city that has seen what the effects are of accurate, but situationally-isolated data. I'm struck by how many potential disaster situations have either happened, or might happen. Would the mortgage crisis have been averted by the surrounding data showing tax rates, raw materials costs, insurance rates, debt-to-income rations and other, affiliated information, rather than just what each individual's assessed home value was so that 125% of that value could be loaned out? I'd say possibly, especially with the knowledge that taxes are based on assessed value, and so when the need arises to raise funds, there is no 'easier' way for that to happen than for the taxing municipalities to re-assess with an eye toward 'maximizing value' and other factors.

Responsible KM is more than delivery, it is also forecasting, defining and cataloging. We as practitioners must be careful to provide it properly, and thoroughly.

This posting is a couple of days late, due to some extremely challenging travel/housekeeping issues going on. Also because of a very low-tech issue involving a 15 year-old boy, overeager to help, and a phillips bit through a hand - but that would be a different diversion altogether.

I am currently in Chicago preparing for a training to help me be a more efficient and skilled technician in the realm of mainframe security. This brings to mind a framing of security in the grand scheme of things.

One would assert that security is an important thing to have on top of data, especially data, and on the surface I would agree. I argue, though, that a separate security functionality on top of data is hampered and half-way executed as well. To be truly effective, security must be part and parcel of the data that is extant in any system.

As an example of this, security has the ability to interrogate and allow/deny access to data, but there is no qualification property to it, by and large. When you seek access to data and it is granted, what security is there behind that? An attempt to obtain information is successful when access is gained to that data. If someone gets access to data, and improperly uses it, it is generally left until a forensic function to determine what was done, how, and by whom.

Truly effective security will include a predictive and analytical functionality so that access may be granted for 'honest' pursuits, but may be denied for those that are not so honest. As an example, if someone is a file clerk and suddenly requests information about staff salaries, as well as staff names, then a red flag could be run up to tell them that they need one, or the other, but not both. Technically they would have access to both types of information as a legitimate portion of their duties, but the combination would give them things that are actually outside the scope of what they do.

I wonder how many systems are technically protected, but forensically exposed. I wonder how much it would be worth for someone to develop an algorithm and taxonomy for data that would allow this type of predictive security. The details are somewhat difficult, but if you succeed in creating such a thing, you may dispatch the royalty checks to my address. All kidding aside, for us to truly protect ourselves, we need to protect against not only content, but also leveraged capability.

As a side note, we also see the problem of needless security. As an example of this, I submit Indiana University. As a public institution, all the financial information there is available to any researcher with the time and energy to track it down through government publications, etc. So, they just opened up the floodgates. While I would not feel comfortable in doing that totally, I do need to give them kudos for realizing that this is an option. Just because our buildings are box-shaped doesn't mean that we can't go outside them.

ICANN't believe it - How to turn somewhat structured data into virtual goo

As you might expect from the title, this posting enters the vast miasma of opinion about the decision to loosen up the rules governing naming web sites.  Here are the good, the bad, and the extremely ugly.

The good: 

MARKETING will absolutely love this as a way to further move their branding out into E-verywhere (I haven't coined a new term in a while... pronounced Ee-vrey-where, this term stands for the total pervasion into the electronic existence of an individual via sponsored e-mail, customized pushed servlets/dashboards, widgets and anything else imaginable).  It will permit them to have a potential where every company has their own place to go instead of having to conform to .com, etc.

USERS, easily amused by shiny, noisy things-which-make-amusing-diversions, will find this to be something new, therefore trendy.  Some users will find this to be something that they understand better than sticking to the country-based standards (who is .ru and why do they always want my corporate user name and password...), and their surfing will be enhanced.

TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES will enjoy having a fresh source of FUD-generated investment capital, and start-ups will abound that specialize in packaging the unneeded in attractive formats.

The bad:

   

MARKETING will find that it is easier to build something new than to cause people to use it.  Since the bare bones of the internet were constructed using a modicum of knowledge about what sites were and where they were, people will find it difficult to translate to the new way of things, where they knew what company they wanted to know about and they had a chance at tacking .com on the end and getting what they wanted.  Some will find the new names confusing, and so IT departments will be overrun with requests for more DNS entries (Domain Name Service is a translator that is used to help make the internet more usable for people - people type in the words and the DNS translates the words into a numerical address that the computer users to connect.  This works the same in reverse) and more proxy creations (a proxy takes one word and translates it into another set of words that are understood by the DNS server - basically a proxy would allow a user to type in BLOG, and the proxy would actually enter ctuite.blogspot.com, which the DNS server would then translate into the address, and so on...) to try to allow more users to do exactly what it is that they want to do, how it is that they want to do it and do it more quickly than ever before.

USERS will be confused, for the most part.  There will be quite a few more things they have to remember, and when they hear that they can use the old addresses as a matter of convenience, they will be a little taken aback at why the fuss was necessary to begin with.  When that point is considered, it is a little confusing.  This could be termed the conflict of human nature and technological capability, SHOULD versus CAN for short.

TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES will be forced to change and adapt.  Since that is a portion of the nature of technology, there really isn't a functional issue of note, but there is a perceptual notion that has to be taken into account.  Companies who 'play ball' will have to bend over backwards to accommodate the laggards (not a personal attack, just a business term), which will be interesting to see.  The companies will also find that in making information available, they have actually hidden it.  

As an example, suppose that a company wanted to use their name and were able to do it, so they decided to rename things along the lines of their different areas.  So this company, called Widgets, would place their sales department's page under www.sales.widget.  Someone who typed in www.marketing.widget would not get where they were wanting to go.  Currently web pages are coded so that if someone were to go to widget.com, they would automatically be placed on the index page, and could go from there.   If the company used .widget, they would have to have a way of getting users who have become lost in their site a way to 'get home' to the index, or main site.  This is not something that could not be done, but it would have to be standardized across the internet to make it truly effective, and the more variation there is in an organism, the less likely you will be to find useful similarities that cut across breeds.  At the very least this would be a massive recoding effort.

The ugly:

The nature of the internet is to have semi-structured bones.  What I mean by that is that the data contained within web sites is by its very nature unstructured, but the framework it is housed in and served from is very much controlled by a set of standards that govern how it is presented.  This is what makes it possible for a website written here to be read in China, and vice versa, and without this structure it is more difficult to receive and understand data.  Currently, you know that .com is a commercial site, .gov is a government site, .de is a site in Germany, etc., and you can code accordingly.  

The expansion of the total potential names makes it all that much harder to 'know'; what is out there by several orders of magnitude.  If you cannot know easily what something is, it is harder to deal with it.  This is not a simple situation where a couple of things are changed and the issue is fixed - it is analogous to all of a sudden allowing people to change their last names and expecting postal service, phone service and all other service based on that entity ID to handle the data changes.  Part of internet security is based on knowing where and what type of site is generating information, and this just complicates things.

The ugliest of all for me happens to be the ugliest because I am a parent of two teens, with a third one knocking on that door, which is a time for angst and issues to begin with.  It is relatively easy to explain to the kids what the naming conventions are, which ones to be careful of, and which ones are okay to use.  If they know .gov is our government, then they can type in whitehouse.gov and go where they intended to go (I mention that because of how many people have gotten confused by the system we HAVE and have gone to the .com variant, which is most assuredly not safe for work), and they can't have the excuse that they didn't know.  This is the same as teaching them to look for traffic before they step into the parking lot.  

Now, to keep with that model, there may be cars on the sidewalk, there may be what look like cars but are actually bicycles with car-looking fascias, and there may be illusions of cars, as well as cars that are painted so as to be hard to see, and thus increasing their danger.  Taken back to a legal standpoint, how many people could have work issues if they go to the wrong site, getting confused about what is happening, and what isn't.  I'm not being a doomsayer, and I know that this system could eventually work.  What I am saying, though, is that this is a huge mess that will take quite a bit of sorting out, the eventual purpose for which I am still not entirely sold upon. 

Sophie Tech 2 - It's About the User Interface

The alarm clock, the coffee maker, the key fob, the radio, the key sequence to wake up my PC (actually to log back in - apparently Microsquish took it upon themselves - AGAIN - to update my PC without asking first - there is another hour I'll never get back waiting for their faulty Outlook issues - if I were a believer in i ching, every time they did that I would know somewhere deep in my heart that someone in a former Eastern Bloc country or southern hemisphere neighborhood would produce enough pirated software to cost them a few million, and that it would be in line with the universal theory of equality - for now, all I know is that they couldn't code something right the first time out if you held a Linux to their head and threatened to replace all their bloatware with a functional OS... oh, wait!  Anyone seen the refusal of most developers to code to Vista?  The oncoming light is NOT the end of the tunnel, it IS a train, with a penguin as the engineer... but I digress) and now to enter this disrespectful, yet truthful, text - this whole day has been consumed with pushing buttons.  As an adult, I have gotten used to this and have begun to use buttons as tools, almost without thinking.  What does the user interface of today do for developing minds and technology?

Sophie is a very curious infant.  At the ripe age of eight months, she has begun to understand what buttons are and, more curiously, what they do.  She has even figured out which buttons will do which things, and will interface with them accordingly.  This equates to a level of access to technology that was unheard of just a couple of decades ago.

When the user interface was a string that had to be pulled out to cause something to happen, or some other mechanical device had to be employed in order to cause a toy to do what it was supposed to do, babies had a certain time of their developmental cycle when they would be able to interface with and use those technologies.  They had to meet minimum requirements in the areas of motor skills, fine muscle control and physical strength.  In other words, the body had to be able before even a mind that was willing could use the technology.  Those rules still apply, but to a far lesser degree now.  Instead of mostly being mechanical, the technology interfaces of today are electronic, with a much lesser amount of mechanical actuation.

I'm not one of those parents who thinks there is a super genius developing inside his daughter - she isn't nearly as clumsy as I expected she'd be, so she probably gets a little more from her mother than from me, in which case she will grow up to be a very smart lady - for I see her interact with these buttons and I really think other babies could be doing the same things.  She knows which button turns on the TV, she knows which of the buttons on a certain toy to touch in order to hear lullabies, as opposed to Old McDonald, and she seems to exercise choice over what she plays.  She even understands which button on my Blackberry to push to take a picture, and she knows which one gets us to the menu that allows the pictures to be reviewed.

This is not an accident, I think, but the natural consequence of some very good design.  When our interfaces were knobs that had to be twisted to varying degrees based on a little bit of skill plus some memory and interpretive function (remember trying to tune in a UHF station with the fine control that was nestled behind the channel selector?), or were 'all-in-one' controls where we had to memorize how many clicks did which thing, the learning curve for technology was steep, and thus inaccessible for the young.  Now the proper combinations of choice and ease of use has placed technological access into the hands of the super young.

John Adams once said that he studied war so his son could study Mathematics, and his son's son could study Art.  Following that logic, I suppose you could say that my father studied mechanical production efficiency and quality control (he retired from GM, where he was both on the line and certified as an internal ISO9000 auditor) so that I could study knowledge management, so that my kids could study proficient combination and synthesis of information to provide a better life for themselves, and hopefully their neighbors.  

It appears that this is off to a good start, because if Sophie can manipulate technological interfaces before she is a year old, how much longer in a fertile young mind can the ideas percolate to improve and advance these things?  How much more comfortable with a technologically-enhanced world will she be so that she doesn't need as much ramp-up time to have efficient use of it?  When I was born technology had to be sought out, and only when my physical self could support what my mental self wished to do.  Now technology greets babies when they are born, and sometimes before.  They are able to do what they wish to do with the technology, and if that doesn't speak volumes about the importance of user-centered design, then must thou hie forthwith to thine carriage, for thine Ordnung seeks thy safe return from amidst the English and yon infernal machines.  (It's not a Newton issue, but the prior comment infers that anyone who feels user-centered design is not important would feel far more comfortable in an Amish community.) 

In short - it's about the usability, techhie.  That's why, though I gripe about their methods and inefficiencies, my machines (save for two - one where I'm working with Ubuntu, and the other a Macintosh, which I'm actually blogging on right now, because after several failed attempts to get cookies to be enabled enough in IE 7 to allow me to even submit a post, I gave up and used this right from the start, because I had work to do) still run Windows.  Windows in its latent bloat and frustrating security update procedures still just does what I tell it to do about 80 percent of the time.  It's usable, but not efficient.  If Ubuntu can encroach on that 20 percent of what Windows can't do, then Pareto is dead, as Windows will at that point be also.  Then we'll have to turn our vicious attention to Debian.  I do wonder if the person who replaced the random key generator with something easier to use/crack was a former Microsoft coder.  Well, SOMEONE had to ask... maybe they were just a script-kiddie...  

Since this is the Friday before Father's Day, I thought it would be fitting to put my top tech/usability wishes for presents out there to read.  Thought some of these are tongue-in-cheek, if anyone reading this has the ability to turn tongue-in-cheek into Reebok-in-gluteus, it would be appreciated on this auspicious occasion...

Wish #1 - Given that I just spent a couple of hours this week wrestling with and recovering from errors generated by the automatic update that Microsoft crammed down our throats, I'd like for whoever in Redmond thought it was a good idea to initiate automatic updates that don't check to first see if there are important data transfers going on, and which don't shut down Outlook properly (thus initiating a 20-minute restore process. or safe mode, or both - c'mon, guys, it's YOUR software for crying out loud!) to come home one day to find that rogue contractors have come to his house in the name of safe living and have moved his doors around, filled in his pool and planted dandelions where the japanese maples used to be.  That would be justice...

Wish #2 - To equalize things in the IVR arena, I think it would be great if the payroll system as Sears worked EXACTLY like their IVR and customer service systems do, so that the decision-makers there, on finding they are not being properly paid, would have to call a number and select fifteen different options in a row in exactly the correct order, only to find that the people they are connected to cannot find or give out the number for the correct location to have gotten to, and when they finally do get to someone to straighten things out their checks will be issued in kopeks instead of dollars, for which the customer service manager will promise a call back and a check, neither of which will ever materialize.  That would be them tasting their own medicine...

Wish #3 - To purify the IT arena so that we can focus on the tech and not the schlock, I think it would be marvelous if, during this election year, we could have a software that removes political content entirely from all mass communication, unless it is specifically opted in for.  The pragmatic student of history knows that efficiency is something to be desired in machines and systems, but NOT systems of government, so doesn't it make sense that the use of technology to spread information about something inherently designed to be slower and less-efficient (thus fault- and failure-tolerant, writ STABLE) is at cross-purposes?  That would be matching purpose and vehicle...

Wish #4 - To increase understanding, it is high time that someone took Newton's to the natural conclusion and made it something of a web standard.  If you have not ever used Newton's Telecom Dictionary, then you don't understand this point, but you are also missing a unique chance to understand what you read.  We live in an acronym-based world, and when you read them, it is easy to gloss over what they are.  There are many times when I grab my Newton's to look something up that I've seen in a PowerPoint or other document.  If an intentional journey into the world of communicating meaning instead of volume were to be taken, then an option would be there for acronym expansion, allowing the user to either hover for more, or wholesale replacement with the words from the acronym for those who do not have a tech background, but would like to understand what is being shoved at them.  I'm not talking about manually-coding these in here, I'm talking about software that sees 'FTP' and knows that this particular user likes t have full explanations, so 'FTP' is changed into 'File Transfer Protocol', and then when the user hovers over it a thumbnail sketch of why it is important comes up.  That would be knowledge added, rather than idly glossed over...

Wish #5 - Having just heard from another trade journal subscription specialist (again, from the same one who called last week and renewed my existing subscription, but who also bought another unvetted subscription list and didn't bother to take a second to see if there were any current subscribers already there in their database with the same last name and employer) who asked me inane questions like what the primary business is - not entirely a dumb question, I suppose, if I didn't work at a university where University is one of the three words in the official name - I would like to see these journals have to pay a subscription fee for additional contacts about subscribing to the same magazine.  It would actually benefit them in the long run, because I don't know how much they spend sending me repeated offers to subscribe, but I do know there is a cost associated, and they waste an awful lot of money.  If they applied some of the rudimentary KM (Knowledge Management - this is a discipline involving taking the existing information/data/knowledge that is available via various sources, such as human knowledge and experience, computer databases, institutional tradition and others, and using it at its most efficient level to add value and reduce waste - just practicing for if I'm ever involved in Newton-izing the web) skills that are contained in the software and other systems they are part of, they would instantly see a return on investment that would shock and amaze them.  This would be them practicing what they preach...

Wish #6 - I have seen several different white papers and other things that espouse cost savings and other accounting trickery to justify things that people want to buy.  To me, this is shadow accounting, or the replacement of rational thought with FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt - this acronym describes a perceived marketing tool that consists of delivering information about potential problems or defects without paying attention to the likelihood or even actual real impact of any of them - see, this would come in handy, though it would goof up the pretty formatting that was done from time to time) or even worse, unrealized savings.  As an example of this - yes, I have taken the prerequisite Accounting courses and I realize that what I am about to say addresses something that is perfectly legal and in accordance with GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles - this is a confusing miasma that will reduce the most solid of IT professionals to the drooling on one's self level, and this is best left to those extremely gifted individuals who, other than the fact that they USE this pet peeve of mine, are wonderful folks who are gifted to be able to comprehend and assimilate everything that is accounting).  Nevertheless, I think that anyone writing in a white paper that a software or other product saves labor by using an hourly dollar figure should be subject to termination when their white paper is written.  What they are saying when they write things like that are that if there is work, then you pay each individual $10 per hour to do the work, so that three people working for an hour carry a cost of $30.  To follow, if their software is able to reduce the usage from three people to two people, then the net savings is $10, and that would appear to be correct.  However, unless that schedule is strictly followed, the saving are not there.  If it costs the university x dollars to process a form, and that process is made more efficient, we do not send people home, generally, especially if they are in a professional position.  We might find other work to occupy their time, but while that benefits the organization as a whole, the work generally wasn't being done before, so there is no cost savings.  Salaries stay the same, and the only efficiency gained is that of the process itself.  This would be apples being called apples, with the oranges placed into their own category...

Have a happy Father's Day everyone, and spend some time with your family.  We should all work hard, and play hard, and we should also relationship hard (however you do that).  

This afternoon I am providing an analog model for a very digital problem, expressed well by blogger Paul Gillin at http://innovations.ziffdavisenterprise.com/2008/05/the_collaboration_paradox.html.  He discusses very well the dilemma experienced by well-meaning individuals when they try to leverage collaboration within the workplace using technological tools which only few people will commit to using.  An interesting construct, this, but it comes as no surprise to someone who has a few tinges of gray in the beard, it is merely a long-standing problem dressed in new syntax.

Here's the model: in my prior life experience, I happened to be employed in the automotive industry, which is a sub-culture that would be fascinating to examine, if there were enough of it still in existence to provide statistically-significant information on (a culture that led to its own destruction through equal parts hubris and the condition I describe here) - I suppose one could make an argument that a species on the endangered species list is statistically-significant, at least for mortality rates.  The analog to today's Web 2.0 issues is none other than the Deming et al-led quality putsch (not a typo - explanation to follow).

During the latter part of the 80's and the early part of the 90's, quality was a hot topic.  A root cause for the concern within the auto industry was that W. Edwards Deming's ideas that had been summarily dismissed in the American auto industry were taken to heart by the Japanese auto industry, and their subsequent improvements in quality and reliability established a tableau of dominance that, though today it is false, provided Toyota, Nissan and Honda the ability to march right into Detroit, Dearborn and Pontiac and eat the lunches of their respective rivals.  The American companies began frantically to try to compete against this, and thus began the difficult situation.

Dr. Deming's principles had to do with having quality as a focus, using statistics to control processes, and having a continual and relentless focus on quality (recursive reference intended).  In typical entrepreneurial fashion, hundreds of companies sprang into action with slides created in Harvard Graphics (remember that software?) and programs ginned up by the best minds in marketing.  Deming's principles were dutifully copied out of the texts, printed up on cards to be handed out to all workers, and then Kitsch, Schlock and Missedit, LLC bundled all that together into quality initiatives.

I'm not on a tirade against marketing, per se, but the problem of taking a no nonsense and simple way of getting better and wrapping 'flair' around it was further exacerbated by the shortsightedness of those in charge of implementing quality into the processes.  About every 18 months, there was a new program from a different company, and the only common thing they had were those quality principles printed out (to be fair there WAS a little variation - some of them also had content from Crosby).  It became a joke amongst the very employees who were supposed to be implementing the things discovered.  What we saw was that the 'young bucks' who were at the lower to middle-management tiers went with gusto into the brave future, while those at the top and those who were actually performing the tasks where quality was supposed to happen were lukewarm or hostile about it.

There were many recurring jokes that sprang up - what color is the binder this month, what color is the banner they hang next month, if I break three parts out of four today but only break one out of four tomorrow do I still have to go to the weekly meetings, etc. - and the net effect was that a very needed functionality was diminished by both the lack of understanding about the importance and relevance, and by the multiple catchphrases that came through.

The typical management conundrum is all about motivating employees, so one year a program was introduced where one of the steps was that rewards begin to be given to those suggesting cost-saving and quality-enhancing ideas.  So the regular suggestion program suddenly had a dearth of ideas, and the ones that were circulating out there were being held until there would by a reward for giving them, and given the delays in the program, it is incalculable how many dollars were wasted in processes that were known to be faulty, but were being allowed to run as they were so that someone could be paid.

The long and short of it that now, finally, with QS9000 and other no-frills Deming-esque concepts having been accepted in the industry, American cars are just as good as their Japanese and German counterparts.  The problem is that few believe it.  Even when the quality rankings are posted, and the results of the polls are released showing that the new crop of American cars and trucks are just as good, or even better in some cases, people just have a hard time believing that the quality issues are solved.  Even now when I drive past my old stomping grounds, I see vacant fields where once there were facilities on both sides of the road, and I realize that intrinsic human nature trumps flashy new things.

Echoing what was in the blog post I mentioned, the problem wasn't with the concepts discussed within the materials, it was that each new thing was slightly different without having a core of change that was relevant.  When you see 'Zero Defects' in red letters, then in black letters, then in yellow letters, each with a different font and each with its own cloud of hows and whys, it is easy to lose track of what is important and focus on the minutiae, thus losing the point.  The need was for a revolutionary change in the way that things were done, not a change in how they were written.

I see this today in my work in IT.  For example, we had physical folders where programming changes were logged and tracked.  There was a filing system for the physical files, and a Q&A database (remember that one?) that tracked the changes, and could report on them.  The decision was made to take that system paperless, and so now it actually takes a lot longer to process changes than it did before, and there are no reports that have been enabled in it.  The net results is a loss of productivity, not a gain.  The application of technology for technology's sake is meaningless - there must be a fundamental benefit to it, or it is as nothing.  

So, every time I get into design criteria and workflow planning and all the other things that are portions of the work I do, the burning question I try to remember is, "Am I improving the life of the users?"  If I cannot save them time, resources, or any other things they find to be useful, then I know what I do will fail.  It will not provide them the incentive to improve anything, and they will politely (or not so politely) refuse to use the digital blood, sweat and tears I have provided them.  This is something that should be borne in mind for those who want to integrate technology into the lives of the masses.  They don't find everything as fascinating as IT'ers do - in fact 20% have never e-mailed (per pcworld.com re: Parks Associates study); they will only use it if it improves their life in a very real way; and once you have given them a tool to use that they have developed an affinity for, they will most likely not use the 'new' version of the old tool.  This is human nature - when we find something we can use, we will use it.

Newness is not an incentive, utility is an incentive.  Making my life easier is definitely an incentive, while making yours easier I couldn't care less about (not personally - I tend to find value in helping others, but the human race as a whole has put that on the back burner).  These are the concepts we need to design and develop to.  When we ask the whys (a precept of troubleshooting is that by asking 'Why?' up to five times, you arrive at the root cause of a difficulty), we often will discover that we are doing things that violate the Pareto principle.  It's fine for researchers to live on the bleeding edge, but the weight of the masses will determine what is actually viable, so any changes have to be loaded with value.

One thing here is outstanding - why my choice of the word putsch above.  This is a challenge to you - look up putsch in a good dictionary and synthesize how a power grab might be related to the quest to change the focus of a large group of peoples' work. 

This post is all thumbs. I'm entering it using the opiate of the connected masses-a smart phone. In my case it is a BlackBerry Pearl. This post is about an oddity of the connectedness such a device offers.

From a user's point of view, it is easy to see the appeal of such a device. I can have access to the internet wherever I am (assuming there is cell coverage, which is not necessarily a given), and can use tools such as e-mail almost without limit. The technology has delivered information to me by the side of the road, has sent pictures to kiosks for printing and has done all manner of things. It is almost ready to be released to the 'wild'.

I realize the smartphone is actually already out in the wild, but there are some things that must be considered. The first is the raw speed of things. As an IT professional, I have developed a typing speed of approximately 80 words per minute. However, using a keypad typing configuration, especially with multiple values being possible for each key,and keys that are actually smaller than my thumb tips, my speed is possibly thirty words per minute at the most. Cutting and pasting are possible, if clumsy, but the bulk of tools I use to create documents are not available, or are at least so inefficient as to be unusable.

So it is safe to say that though this technology is good in small doses, it is not a solution for real business needa for extended periods of time. This phone allows me to see the flow oF messages and even give terse replies as needed, though for sending code snippets and other more technical communications there are better tools.

The point here is that new and fun do not translate into beneficial and efficient. The relevance of this is illustrated by the resurgence of the mainframe within the computer center. The 'gold rush' of distributed apps was overcome by the practical realities of having to house, feed, cool and maintain the hardware. Here is where virtualization and other things enter in. When I do a posting using my intrepid keyboard, there is an interesting application I'll go over that I'm reserving the term virtual elasticity for - it will demonstrate this more fully.

PC-based computing systems are like my BlackBerry in that they provide a great convenience to be able to have access to a high level of information, with usefulness trending downwards with a rise in the need for intense data manipulation.

I can use my keyboard on my computer more than twice as fast as the one on my phone, which introduces two economies. The first is the economy of time saved. If I sit after a meeting and use the BlackBerry for ten minutes, I am trading in five minutes of time for convenience, versus getting twice as much done in the same time back at the office. If I have to go back to the office anyway, sitting down for ten extra minutes actually wastes time. I might try to walk and e-mail at the same time, but there is no net efficiency.

The second economy is the economy of separation. Extending the office allows me to work for more extended amounts of time and still be able to have time to try to balance home/work issues (paint doesn't self-apply, and I can see what kind of day is coming up while having breakfast), but it is inefficient work, and so the payoff diminishes rapidly.

Each of us starts out with certain amounts of time and commitment, and we spend those in the economies of our day. We need to maintain equilibrium so that we don't do ten hours of work in 20, and in the process lose even more efficiency due to the conflict of responsibilities and expectations. Technology created wings we can use to fly-it also created prisons that are inescapable, so be careful.

In closing, here are the top five ways you can tell you use your smartphone too much:

5) You actually begin 2 unDRstand Leet-speak

4) Your significant other has to make a beeping sound to get your attention

3) You hold contests to see whose phone can discover the most Bluetooth devices

2) You begin to wonder how to Remote Desktop to your work computer so you can save yourself the five minute ride into work

And the number one way...

1) You now notice your thumbs are flat.

It has been a while since I last posted, and I must confess that part of the reason for that absence has been that I have been routinely violating the cardinal rule of a successfully busy professional life - work hard, play hard.  I have been working very hard, as evidenced by a pending 'use it or lose it' vacation time crisis (the fact that I can even view vacation as part of a crisis is evidence of how bad the situation is), but playing hard has not quite been there.  I seem to remember where my golf clubs are, but I'm not totally sure.  However, I received a reminder of the importance something like blogging can have, so I'm trying to play hard in a virtual sense, and to me, writing, researching and collaborating ARE like play.

This first blog post back is actually a bit old.  I'm putting it in here to illustrate a point I'll get to in a moment, but the details of how this came to be are pretty spectacular.  The entry below was written longhand at around 3:00 a.m. on October 17, 2007.  I was in the labor and delivery room of the local hospital waiting on my first-born/fourth child.  That is not a typo, but it is a matter of some interest to some.  I began the impossible process of dealing with the teen years before I even held an infant who had my eyes and nose, so there I sat, a veteran father who had the same anxious thoughts as a new father.  At that point I hit on an idea that intrigued me more and more, so much so that I probably owe my wife an apology for the diversion of my concentration at certain times. 

The point I mentioned earlier is about the longhand version of this post.  I am immersed in a world of knowledge management, and what intrigues me is that there is so much information that needs to be captured and used, but is not in a structured, or semi-structured state.  I have heard this referred to as the 'cocktail napkin' (n.b. here is a link to an author's small presentation of his book "The Back of the Napkin" on BNET: http://www.bnet.com/2422-13724_23-196933.html), and this concept is legendary in the world of IT.  In fact, the circuits for the first Cray supercomputer were sketched out on the back of a napkin, and many deals have been sealed using documents that have a water (or triple-malt) ring on them. It is rapidly becoming my life's work to figure out the best way to use this information to its full potential.

So, the following entry has a little age on it, but it does afford a unique opportunity to examine some things.  My idea is to take a look at the effects that technology has on a person's entire life, and I am taking the opportunity of my daughter's birth to use her as the guinea pig for this series of observations.  This isn't the sole focus of the blog, and for the first few months of her life especially, the technologies have been frozen at the point where they were when she was born, because you don't expose an infant to ANYTHING for the first few months.  I'll occasionally make observations on how technology affects her, and how she interacts with it, and they generally won't be this long, but I'll call them Sophie's Tech.  As an aside, Sophie was indeed okay, and today she is a seven month-old of almost unbelievable health who strives to be at least five or six so she can compete with her siblings - the technology of competition!

SOPHIE'S TECH, POSTING 1 - 10/17/2007

I'm sitting in a chair beside a bed, a voyeur at best into the interactions between mechanical and electronic technology.  A bed with fully-hydraulic controls supports my wife, but that's just mechanical technology.  The real wonder is an interaction between pheumatic, electronic and mechanical technology that comprises the monitoring station.

A split-screen-type display monitors contractions from one sensor and the heartbeat of the baby on the other [NOTE: due to the genetic disposition toward stubbornness that must obviously come from anywhere but me - pause to allow the laughter to subside - Sophie refused to cooperate with the sonograms to determine her gender, so in this post when I use generic terms, that is why].  If the baby moves, its kicks and nudges cause information to change on a graph that also displays its heart rate.  I strongly suggest not watching the baby's heart rate monitor, because to the non-medical personnel, when you see it drop, then go to 0 the first couple of times, the nurses have to peel the excitable husband off the ceiling and explain to him that such things happen when the baby shifts positions and the monitors lose track of them for a bit.  

An integrated monitor takes a blood pressure reading every 15 minutes, displaying the number on an amber screen.  An interesting thing is that the amber screen conveys more of a sense of accuracy and medical efficacy than does the multi-colored PC-esque screen (actually, there is no -esqueness there - a Dell PC is providing the feed), even though I know intellectually the information is the same.  I suppose this could be termed the Windows effect.  It wouldn't be very good to have BSOD in a hospital!  I did actually see BSOD (blue screen of death - when Windows, much like Douglas Adams' whale, realizes it can't fly) on a monitor at a hospital a year or two ago when I was visiting a friend, but it wasn't hooked up to a patient, so I suppose it wasn't harmful.

I'm the birthing coach, so I should go.  I can't leave , though, without commenting on the things that make all this possible.  Someone somewhere wrote millions of lines of code to turn 1's and 0's into meaningful items, and then millions more lines of code to turn those meaningful items into informative ones.  Edward Tufte is a notable student (and teacher) of the display of information, and I think even he would be impressed with how all these pieces fit together.  So we have micro-pulses of electricity turned into stronger pulses that are queried and interpreted by other streams of electricity and turned into electrons that spit out of a gun and paint a picture that tells me that my wife and baby are doing fine.  At some point I don't doubt that there are other streams of electricity that take these interpreted streams of electricity and turn them into light pulses, which are then taken on the reverse course at the other end of a network.  And they say that the alchemists are gone... Now I must be gone as well.

I was going to end the blog posting right there, but there is some other technology that I have to talk about.  Sophie Elise (it was a girl!!!!) was born full-term at 5 pounds and 14 ounces, but she had difficulties during birth, and had to be resuscitated (I'm actually writing this a little bit after the 17th, but I wasn't about to take pen and paper to the NICU!) there in the delivery room.  I saw plastics technology used to both fill her lungs with air and open up passageways for that air, I saw more monitoring technology at work, and most importantly I saw a miracle when she came around, and saw the technology of touch as they let me hold her hand while they were doing their work.  I even saw chemical technology when her blood sugar started to crash and she had to be given special supplements to get it back under control.  If you know a lot about infants, they really are hard to do things for, because they are so new their systems can't tolerate a large amount of chemical input, and they have allergies sometimes, yet the supplements had been technologically advanced to the point where they didn't cause her any trouble.  Her prognosis is good, and all appears to be okay, and a large part of that is due to the skillful blending of technology and knowledge, materials and purpose.

You cannot separate yourself from your faith when you see your child who was not alive come back.  That is my final note, that the technology which matters most in life is faith.  Regardless of what it is - religious or secular - the act of faith - believing in what is not seen... yet - is the true driver of technology.  We have faith that we can make things that work, that they will work better than other things, and that they will improve life; we also have faith that all of this matters: the struggle, the process, the journey - the reason we should ever try, or do anything.  It is personal, but also vital, and without it most people would have returned to the hunter-gather tribes of the distant past.  Now if I might be excused, the nurse is going to teach us how best to apply materials technology to provide thermal comfort to a newborn (that's making a 'baby burrito', in non-technical speak).