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.