Some good advice about the important role of mistakes and what to do
with them. My goal has always been to make “interesting mistakes.”
New essay: how to learn from your mistakes.
If you're doing something interesting, mistakes are inevitable. How you
learn from your mistakes defines what kinds of mistakes you'll make the
next time: the same ones? new ones? mistakes that get you closer to
success or move you away from it?
Bob Frankston has had several recent posts illuminating the long-term
strategic blindness of competitors pursuing doomed approaches to
Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). The short and sweet version:
DRM vs the Bathroom.
For those who found my recent DRM post too complicated I’ll put it more
simply. There are those who believe that I must not zap commercials
while watching their content. It's not very different from saying I’m
not allowed to go to the bathroom during commercials — I must use a
DRM compliant toilet in order to implement such policies.If they can require that all my wires and devices be DRM complaint why
not the other distractions that reduce the value of their content? [SATN]
In a much longer post,
well worth your attention, Frankston draws some very provocative
connections between DRM approaches to competition and the fundamental
emptiness of intelligent design as a way to not think about how
evolutionary processes truly work. Several key grafs:
Too bad evolution is taught in biology class because it makes it hard to see the larger issues. Dynamic systems are evolutionary systems and if you
try to limit their dynamics they fail. If you believe in intelligent
design you can assume that systems can be guided. Marketplaces are just
complex systems. If you give the incumbents the role of the intelligent
designer the systems will fail because you don’t allow for new ideas.
….This is why I keep emphasizing that teaching evolution in biology classes
leaves us without understanding that evolution is a characteristic of
all systems not just “special” ones. Without such understanding it is
difficult to see how and why the Internet works. Even more to the point
why it works despite and not because of governance. Why complexity is
an emergent property of the lack of understanding. We don’t “solve”
complexity by layering on top of it. When we design systems we have to
go underneath the system expose the simplicity.It’s not at all fair to accuse those who thwart marketplace processes as being “anti-evolutionists”. Even though I think it is obvious the onus is
still on me to demonstrate that the mechanisms are the same. I still
claim that there is a basic philosophical alignment akin to the one
that George Lakoff posits in Moral Politics.
It is hard to trust the marketplace because at any point in time it’s too easy to see the “right” answer. It’s even more difficult to see the
importance of these dynamic processes when cling to the present for
safety.[SATN]
Hierarchical organizations are typically not very comfortable
with real market dynamics. Most strategy work is about finding ways to
avoid or interfere with the smooth workings of competitive markets
without going to jail. At root, what Frankston is arguing is that in
the long run, markets will always win.
Some interesting tidbits from Gates about computing in the educational arena. The Chronicle of Higher Education has nicely placed the interview outside of their usual paywall.
The Chronicle Interviews Bill Gates. Bill Gates offered some predictions of the future and a defense of Microsoft’s security practices, in an exclusive interview with The Chronicle’s Andrea L. Foster. (The Chronicle, free link)… [The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog]
Rex is right. Go read what Kevin Kelly said.
Then think about how the same logic applies inside organizations. Organizations that continue to try to apply top-down control will increasingly fall behind those organizations that can figure out how to tap the same kind of bottoms-up logic that has driven the web over the last decade. How fast that will play out is hard to say, but the evidence from the web is that it will happen much faster than we expect or will be comfortable with.
What Kevin Kelly said. What Kevin Kelly said: (Note: I’m still not blogging this weekend, I just happened to finally getting around to reading something in a magazine that, fortunately, is also online, and couldn’t help myself.) In a must-read Wired Magazine article, “We Are the Web,” Kevin Kelly displays how to make a profound argument stick, not by focusing on the rules and rants about who can and cannot blog, but by providing insight into the beauty of what has taken place over the past ten years — and, in turn, making us realize that the next ten could take us places the rule-makers (be they bloggers or old-media types) are the last to envision.:
What we all failed to see was how much of this new world would be manufactured by users, not corporate interests. Amazon.com customers rushed with surprising speed and intelligence to write the reviews that made the site’s long-tail selection usable. Owners of Adobe, Apple, and most major software products offer help and advice on the developer’s forum Web pages, serving as high-quality customer support for new buyers. And in the greatest leverage of the common user, Google turns traffic and link patterns generated by 2 billion searches a month into the organizing intelligence for a new economy. This bottom-up takeover was not in anyone’s 10-year vision.
No Web phenomenon is more confounding than blogging. Everything media experts knew about audiences – and they knew a lot – confirmed the focus group belief that audiences would never get off their butts and start making their own entertainment. Everyone knew writing and reading were dead; music was too much trouble to make when you could sit back and listen; video production was simply out of reach of amateurs. Blogs and other participant media would never happen, or if they happened they would not draw an audience, or if they drew an audience they would not matter. What a shock, then, to witness the near-instantaneous rise of 50 million blogs, with a new one appearing every two seconds. There – another new blog! One more person doing what AOL and ABC – and almost everyone else – expected only AOL and ABC to be doing. These user-created channels make no sense economically. Where are the time, energy, and resources coming from?
Some early morning wisdom from Ernie and Wurman. It's not just ok, but a good thing to admit ignorance.
Be happy: admit ignorance.
Richard Saul Wurman is the guy who coined the term 'information
architect.' He's also the the creator of the popular Access Travel
Guides, and the founder of the wonderful TED conferences. I've been
re-reading his book Information Anxiety 2, which… [Ernie The Attorney]
One way to get a handle on the future of work is to get to know some of those who are already there.
In the recent news about layoffs at HP, several sources noted that Alan Kay is among those getting a pink slip. It struck me that Alan is a perfect embodiment of William Gibson’s observation that “the future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.” He is the prototypical example of someone who has been living in, and creating, our future for the past 30 years. Taking some time to examine and reflect on his thinking is time well spent. Alan was one of the scientist/engineers at Xerox PARC. Much of the technology we use and take for granted today traces its lineage to work Alan and his colleagues did in the 1970s at PARC. Alan is an engineer not an academic; more interested in building things than in writing papers for journals. If you ever get an opportunity to hear Alan talk, take it. In the meantime, there are some worthwhile starting points on the web I can recommend:
Alan is also fond of aphorisms. Two of my favorites and among his best known are “the best way to predict the future is to invent it,” and “point of view is worth 80 IQ points.”
Lately, it seems like I’m always running behind.
Had a column go up at ESJ two weeks ago and I’m just getting around to blogging it here now. It is on the notion of thinking about how you might go about setting up a knowledge workshop for your day-to-day knowledge work. I wanted to set up a contrast with the “one magic, integrated, tool” mindset that seems to dominate most current software marketing.
Check it out if you’ve got a few minutes. I’d be curious about two things. To what extent do you find the analogy helpful as something more encompassing than the typical tools perspective. Second, what’s in your workshop?
Fascinating animation and narration of the growth of the U.S. from the initial 13 colonies to 50 states. Worth the 10 minutes.
Michael Parekh pointed me to an awesome 10 minute movie of how the United States came together.
A treat from Betsy Devine – somehow an appropriate counterbalance to today’s celebrations. Makes you wonder what the Founding Fathers (and Mothers for that matter) would make of what has transpired over the last 229 years.
Science ha-ha from my mailbox: Governmentium (Gv). Berkeley just announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element has been named “Governmentium”.
Governmentium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.
When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element which radiates just as much energy, since it has half as many peons, but twice as many morons.
Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. It can be detected, however, as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A reaction that normally takes one minute or less will require a week or more if contaminated by any Governmentium.
The half-life of Governmentium is 4 years. It does not, however, decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutron exchange places. In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. The characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration.
This hypothetical quantity is called “Critical Morass”.
Thanks for the funny email to Damian!
Done. Painless. Take 15 minutes and add your two cents.
Be a statistic and *please* help Cam graduate. Pretty pretty please.