Think on This
April 17, 2003
Things I read today that seemed to have a connection, to me and to each other. Things I'd like to think about some more. (0000FA)
CITIZENS, NOT CONSUMERS: A MANIFESTO FOR A NEW NON-COMMERCIAL ECONOMY (0000FB)
Dave Pollard provides advice on a slow revolution against the "commercialization of everything". (0000FC)
We have declined in social, political and economic importance from citizens participating in the development of our world, to disenfranchised consumers who do and buy what we are told. Our value in society is now based on how much we own and how much we earn, rather than how much we contribute. Our status is measured in terms of wealth, rather than well-being. (0000FD)
The tools of this revolution are frugality, education, and the creation of non-commercial economy. (0000FE)
What's the best MetroCard option for you? (0000FF)
From kottke.org: A simple demonstration of what's wrong with the economy. (0000FG)
McGee Roughs (0000FH)
Eric presents his notes from a presentation on collaboration at the Seabury Institute that included Jim McGee?. (0000FI)
McGee? posits the question of 'permission to think' in organizations. Does one have to ask [p]ermission to think, is one deprecated for thinking, or thinking out[ ]loud? (0000FJ)
Eric has some musings I found valuable. He questions whether knowledge management is an imposition of answers or the empowerment of knowledge workers. I think this is the question that must be answered soon, or else knowledge as an empowering tool for individuals will be co-opted into the consumerist universe Pollard describes. Large segments of the KM business see knowledge tools as ways to harvest the latent creativity of the workers to reach economic goals. If the workers happen to be shinier happier people in the meantime, that's great and all, but don't forget the bottom line. (0000FK)
More development, less progress (0000FL)
Loosely Coupled presents an article in response to an interview with Marc Andreesen. (0000FM)
But at all costs, it's essential to resist the temptation to over-engineer the core platform. (0000FN)
You see, if you try too hard, you'll end up with something that's too sophisticated to catch on, and too constraining to have broad applicability. (0000FO)
I made this argument about faceted classification once upon a time. Philip Murray found a brief note of mine that claims faceted classification fails in the face of the criteria in innovation diffusion theory. I've complained in a similar fashion about RDF. (0000FP)
I think, however, that there are economic and political factors that drive creators to make things complicated: they create barriers that require work to get across and separate the powerful from the not. (0000FQ)
Will Technology Transform the Modern Corporation? (0000FR)
Rob Paterson compares two British naval ships, HMS Inflexible and HMS Dreadnought, as examples of a cultural shift in attitudes about knowledge. (0000FS)
So what is the lesson for us? Lesson #1 is that on its own technology does not do it. We won't sell KM or blogging etc as a stand alone artifact. What is needed as a driver is a new doctrine. For Fisher it was the issue of asymmetry. A cheap torpedo boat could sink a battle ship. Getting in close was no longer a "good" idea. So he had to find a way of fighting at a distance. Hence a revolution in doctrine. The all big gun ship driven fast by a turbine engine. The technology to achieve this demanded a shift in social culture at work as well. (0000FT)
True enough: technology on its own does not "do it". But why the unfortunate reference to sales? (0000FU)
Open Here (0000FV)
From stpeter: (0000FW)
This approach points to the critical importance of the "third leg" of the stool: an open community. An open protocol or format that is dominated by big companies (with only one marginal open-source implementation or a few token offerings from smaller developers) is not a healthy ecosystem. To really thrive, a protocol needs a wealth of implementations -- some closed, some open, some from big companies, some from smaller development houses, some from open-source projects -- and a community in which the real people who do the work and use the software can share information and learn from each other. (0000FX)
It's remarkable the number of times people says things like "Oh, hey, I know, if we get some people talking, things will be better." Isn't that obvious? Shouldn't that be obvious? Fie on my malgnostic thinking. Isn't it great that so many people are talking about it these days? (0000FY)
That's better. (0000FZ)
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