The age of deep automation Thanks to interconnected computers that are able to compute and communicate at incredibly low costs, we have entered a time of what I’ll call deep automation. The story of modern economies has always been a story of automation, of course, but what what’s going on today goes far beyond anything that’s happened before. We don’t know what the consequences will be, but the persistent, high levels of unemployment in developed economies may well be a symptom of deep automation. In a provocative article in the new issue of the McKinsey Quarterly, W. I want to argue that something deep is going on with information technology, something that goes well beyond the use of computers, social media, and commerce on the Internet. The computer system is, Arthur argues, “intelligent” in only the most basic sense of that word – intelligence defined as the ability of a thing to change its state in response to a stimulus.
Wicked (1) I sense a theme. I've been reading a lot of blog posts, and comments to same, that highlight the seemingly intractable quality of current world problems. This recent post by Steelweaver is a great example. --And this is a brilliantly insightful idea, but it's a little bit sad, too, because it seems as though a lot of people are just discovering this problem, and yet it's been well known for decades. I spend a lot of time with people who have a very particular way of looking at problems: define it, decompose and scope it, solve it, implement it. But often, in the human sphere, there are what're called "wicked" problems. There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem (defining wicked problems is itself a wicked problem). It is not the case that wicked problems are simply problems that have been incompletely analyzed; there really is no 'right' formulation and no 'right' answer. Our most important problems are wicked problems.
Edge Perspectives with John Hagel I’ve become increasingly interested in the role that corporate narratives can play in driving business success in more competitive markets - something that I've written about here and here. While many people find the concept of corporate narratives interesting, they often struggle with what a narrative might look like for their company. This isn’t surprising given how few effective corporate narratives there are out there. The defining elements of a narrative As many will recall from my previous writing, I view narratives as having two key attributes. This is probably the most difficult element of narratives for executives to internalize. At their most fundamental level, narratives answer three questions: Why are we here? So, what might some corporate narratives look like? A hypothetical narrative for a healthcare provider Throughout history we’ve focused on treating disease – it’s been a reactive proposition. None of this is a given. A hypothetical narrative for a bank But that’s not all.
Entries Tagged elmcity - O'Reilly Radar Visualizing structural change When information has structure we can use it to see change more clearly. Think about the records that describe the status of your health, finances, insurance policies, vehicles, and computers. Why Facebook isn't the best home for your public events Facebook may not be great for event listings, but it could be a useful conduit. Organizations should strive to own and control their online identities (and associated data) to the extent they can. Uniform APIs for the data web The Open Data Protocol is a promising approach for uniform APIs. What if blogs had come of age in an era when a uniform kind of API was expected? How will the elmcity service scale? The calendarsphere will be another collection of small pieces loosely joined. A blog feed is just a special kind of web page. The iCalendar chicken-and-egg conundrum Publishing calendars as HTML is necessary but not sufficient. Heds, deks, and ledes Headlines matter. Developing intuitions about data
Science Fiction as Foresight Well, I went and done it. I've completed my Master's in Strategic Foresight and Innovation (now watch me innovate!). It's taken two years but I enjoyed every class and project. Most of you know I was working on this; I've described the general idea behind foresight here before (basically, futurism without tears) but a lot of people were asking what my thesis was about. Well, it's about science fiction, funnily enough. For about ten years now I've been periodically hired to write fictionalized versions of foresight findings. SF's also used in other ways by foresighters. Curiously, when I write scenario fictions I'm not trying to generate new ideas of my own, but rather to represent the ideas that some set of futurists, subject experts, or public panels has already developed. My thesis was on how to write the things. Science fiction is more than just a genre of fiction.
Building data startups: Fast, big, and focused This is a written follow-up to a talk presented at a recent Strata online event. A new breed of startup is emerging, built to take advantage of the rising tides of data across a variety of verticals and the maturing ecosystem of tools for its large-scale analysis. These are data startups, and they are the sumo wrestlers on the startup stage. Setting the stage: The attack of the exponentials The question of why this style of startup is arising today, versus a decade ago, owes to a confluence of forces that I call the Attack of the Exponentials. At the same time, these technological forces are not symmetric: CPU and storage costs have fallen faster than that of network and disk IO. Leveraging the big data stack As the foundational layer in the big data stack, the cloud provides the scalable persistence and compute power needed to manufacture data products. Finally, at the top of the stack are services and applications. Let’s take each of layers and discuss the competitive axes at each.
Neomedievalism While I’m on the subject of Bruce Sterling, here’s a brief piece he flagged up at Foreign Policy – a bleak prediction that the world is reverting to a kind of technology-mediated econo-political feudalism. Call it Neomedievalism: The state isn’t a universally representative phenomenon today, if it ever was. Well, colour me vindicated – this sounds a lot like the world I’m trying to describe when I batter on about the death of geography, the decline of the nation-state and the rise of the corporate entity as political liege… albeit a more succinct (and distinctly more qualified) version thereof. Coming as it does from a publication whose focus is international diplomacy, the screed above takes a bleak view of this imminent new world order – if you can see your profession withering on the vine, it’s bound to make you a bit glum. … those of us who still have any certainty left, that is. Be Sociable, Share!
Globalization and the Law of Unintended Consequences | Ron Hera As social and political upheaval and civil unrest have spread across the globe, it has become clear that the problems facing Western countries are neither transient nor temporary. Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States share a common set of problems over and above economic decline and sovereign debt issues linked to problems of the global financial system. The issues surrounding civil unrest comprise a lack of economic opportunity, political disenfranchisement, erosion of individual rights, a systematic lack of accountability from local authorities to national leaders, deteriorating credibility of political and financial leaders and disintegrating national government legitimacy. National governments have become increasingly subordinated to international bodies, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), Group of 20 (G-20) or the European Central Bank (ECB), as well as to large multinational corporations. Globalization and Individual Liberty