Death of the Knowledge Society
March 4, 2009
Since the early 90s we have been living in what many have called the Information Society, although the notion goes back much further than that. Basically it is only since then that access to technology and information have been sufficiently democratised to enable a significant impact on the day to day lives of many people. This in its turn has enabled many more people to be implicated in the creation and sharing of knowledge, and the emergence of an immaterial economy. We are already well down the path (some would say too far) towards an economy where physical goods are the least significant contributor to the economy, meaning the physical content of a product is overshadowed by its knowledge content (R&D, design, marketing, support, etc.. )
Turning to Artificial Intelligence which has long been a favourite theme of Science Fiction, futurologists and technologists alike, we can add some spice. Ray Kurzweil is probably the best known of those suggesting that desktop computing power (if it continues to follow Moore’s law) will have the equivalent processing power of the human brain by 2029, although the ability to transform that power into true intelligence may lag behind. Nonetheless the last few months have seemed to be particularly active in this field with Anders Sandberg and Nick Bostrom publishing a credible Whole Brain Emulation – A Roadmap, and IBM’s Dharmendra S Modha’s project to emulate a rat’s brain, suggested to the Singularity Summit that the project was positioned halfway along that roadmap, (Next Big Future) – with the rat-scale model being 3.5 larger than the previous work on mouse brain emulation.
It was estimated that a system 400 times larger than the rat model would be needed to emulate the human brain, with the most powerful machines currently available being able to handle models 10 times larger than those of the rat. With DARPA contributing $4.9 million to the project, it is clear that this research is leading somewhere, and possibly faster than we expect, even taking into account the probable need for quantum computing to reach full human brain emulation.
This of course takes us towards Kurzweil’s singularity where machine intelligence will start evolving more rapidly by itself, and I question what will happen to the knowledge society/economy when machines can accumulate and generate and create knowledge more rapidly and more cheaply than a human counterpart.
Will these knowledge machines be creative? Intuitive? Empathetic? Will they become the wealth generating engines replacing talented humans. Will our values change, with personal knowledge being no longer being a key success factor?
We are talking of potential changes over the next 25 years, and remember that 25 years ago few believed the impact that the Internet and mobile technology would have on our lives and the way we do business. My guess is that these sentient technologies will start having an impact on defence applications much sooner than that.
Given that many policy makers and leaders still do not understand the implications of a networked society, what will they make of the post knowledge society, assuming they are still in charge.
Making Twitter meaningful
February 23, 2009
I first had a look at Twitter a year or so ago, and I must admit that after a couple of weeks dipping in and out, I could not really see the point. At the end of last year I was persuaded by my son to revisit Twitter, but not treat it as a messaging – microblogging environment, but more as a mechanism for searching out new ideas and up to the instant expert reflection. This is of course in addition to the RSS feeds, daily, weekly monthly newsletters, and the occasional bit of serendipity, as mentioned in my previous blog.
For me Twitter has in fact supplanted or at least partially replaced some of these mechanisms, but as usual the main problem is deciding what tweets to examine. Although the people I follow act as a first phase filter of information that might interest me, I still need to examine each link to find that information. A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to take part in a limited beta test of MicroPlaza a product designed to provide a solution for those who want to use Twitter as the information resource it has the potential to be.
The idea is simple. In the normal timeline (tweets flowing through the network) Web locations are tweeted and retweeted in various compressed formats, along with a short comment.
MicroPlaza pulls this information together and presents a list of sites either by timeline or frequency of occurrence, including the comments made by my network.
This is fine if you have a homogeneous network that is primarily focused on one topic, but most of us are interested in a variety of things. Enterprise 2.0, telework, UK politics, business issues, social issues, folk music, friends, genealogy and direct family, all influence whom I follow. MicroPlaza enables me to arrange my network into tribes (groups), some of them will exist only in one tribe and others in several tribes according to my selection. I can then review each tribal timeline with the most recent information and postings.
On top of this I can “become” one of the people I follow, and see their timeline based on tweets to them.
This is great. Prior to my day’s activities I can look at those items that were of greatest impact to my network on a certain topic. If I have a meeting on sustainability coming up, I can quickly inform myself of topical items. If I know their is going to be a focus on a certain aspect, I can put myself in the shoes of my favourite expert and see it through their eyes.
MicroPlaza is not the finished item yet, search facilities are being added, and various suggestions will be taken on board based on feedback from the public Beta. As a recent convert to Twitter – I realise the potential usefulness of it but also the overwhelming impact it can have as a time consumer. MicroPlaza gives me an instant view of what is of interest to me on a given topic. For a lot of users this may be the only tool they will ever need to take advantage of the potential of Twitter.
Information Addiction
February 20, 2009
Like an addiction to speed, dangerous pursuits, gambling etc., the current trend for sharing seems quite self destructive. Not that sharing in itself is a bad thing, far from it; but the processes and mechanisms needed are present in such abundance as to make recovery across the many channels needed, a real chore, like finding a soul-mate at a party where everyone is blindly reciting their life story.
In fact I would suggest we are perilously close to meltdown, with the real benefits of sharing being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of emails, feeds, blogs, postings, twitters etc.; like an indecisive man starving to death in a restaurant, or a decisive one having a Monty Python moment (Mr. Creosote in the Meaning of Life).
At various times in the past analogous situations have arisen. Originally the postal service carried real and meaningful communications and information. Friends, family, customers, suppliers, and the volume just grew to the point where a moderately busy individual could not find time, and finally junk mail (yes it did originally apply to snail mail), killed it. The secretary or PA was entrusted with the job of sorting the wheat from the chaff, and making sure only the important stuff got through.
Many people used to ridicule the managers who had their secretaries read their emails for them and were labelled technophobes. In fact they were just applying good information filtering as applied to letters and telephone calls. The PA wasn’t just a filter, they were a search engine too.
“Contact John Smith and find out who is the best expert to evaluate this, then get his cv and contract conditions, by tomorrow morning” -
Next morning “John Smith is away on vacation, but his PA said he uses Bill Jones – so I contacted him, and by the way he a weekend package that might be appropriate for your anniversary next month, when you have the time to look” etc.
Problem solved and a bit of serendipity thrown in.
If we substitute John Smith with all the different ways that information can be imparted, the size of the problem becomes apparent.
Someone somewhere has probably just discovered the piece of information I need, in a website somewhere. What are the chances of me finding it? I need it in the next couple of hours. Well let’s hit the traditional search engines. I find 2000 potential items, and the tenth one I open appears to have what I need, except the source is dated 2003 and I need a very recent source. Well lets look at my feeds, time is running out. I can check Delicious, Digg, and Twitter. I could spend time searching the tweets, following the links, searching the articles etc., but unless I was very lucky it would be a couple of hours wasted. I already spend almost 50% of my work time searching for information, if it goes much higher then my productive time will dimish rapidly.
What I want is the immediacy of Twitter, the depth of the search engine, the accumulated experiences within Delicious, the topicality of Digg, and a twist of serendipity.
In fact what I really want is a PA with a PhD in Business practice, a Masters in social sciences , and an Engineering degree in IT, the willingness to be paid a pittance and be able to make great coffee. Failing that a single interface that can handle my favourite topics, my favourite people, their favourite people, whilst providing me with element of discovery provided by social platforms.
Then perhaps I can get some work done, or just handle even more information.
Am I asking for too much?
Perhaps not.
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Too Old to Rock ‘n Roll, too Young to Retire
January 28, 2009
- Konrad Adenauer Image via Wikipedia
The chances are that those of you in your 20s and early 30s will have to continue working until 70 so as to qualify for a full state pension. That is if you can find a job. Of course there are plenty of examples of those reachin
g their pinnacle of success in later life, De Gaulle was president of France between the ages of 68 and 78. Konrad Adenauer stayed in power in Germany for 14 years between the ages of 73 and 87, Ronald Reagan was president between the ages of 69 and 78, etc.
In 1980, 45% of CEOs in the 300 largest U.S. companies were aged between 60-69; however things are changing, by 2002 only 25% of CEOs were in that age group (Spencer Stuart), and probably that percentage has decreased even further today. Even the political world is changing: Sarkozy became president at 53, Blair became Prime Minister at 43, Obama president at 45, Merkel Chancellor at 51.
OK JFK was young too but a real rarity at that time. It is fair to say that in many fields people are reaching the top positions 20-25 years earlier than 40 years ago. Although a top politician might expect to be in power for no longer than 8-10 years, most are now generally young enough to have a second successful (and lucrative) career post politics. Many business leaders are bowing out earlier as well, Bill Gates has retired from his business activities at the age of 53 to focus on his second career.
Amongst mere mortals things are rather different. In Belgium the average retirement age is with 57 and only 25% of the male population aged 55-64 are still in the workforce, even the European average retirement age is only just over 60.
Currently EU life expectancy is 74.7 years for men and 82.5 for women, although those surviving until 60 can expect to survive at least another 20-25 years. In Europe-12, life expectancy has increased by 1.8 years over the last 10 years, and so in 40 years time when Gen-Y retire, it is conceivable that this will have increased by another 10 years. This means that a sixty year old will likely to survive until 90. and healthy life expectancy is usually estimated at 10 years less than the total, so one would hope that this extension of life expectancy would be associated with a similar extension of active life expectancy.
In cyclic downturns (every 8-10 years) voluntary redundancies are most likely to affect two categories:
- those older who see final payment as rounding off pension needs, and
- those younger ones who feel confident of getting a new job and use capital for home/investment.
Those not going for the offer tend to be more constrained by family and mortgage commitments, typically in the 40-50 age band, however these are exactly the people who are most likely to be hit with compulsory redundancies. The point is that those being made redundant from their late 40s onwards (kids still at school or college, house not yet paid off) have a significantly reduced chance of re-entering the employment market in a position to make full use of their accumulated knowledge and experience, whereas the top dogs are just beginning to capitalise on theirs.
Dr John Philpott, CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development ) Chief Economist comments, “but the business performance of organisations will be strengthened if they have the right people and skills in place to prepare them for the upturn in the economy, whenever it comes.” In the current wave of redundancies in the UK around 38% are amongst Managers and Professionals with 23% being amongst Skilled non-manual workers, indicating that in the current environment the majority of redundancies in the UK are amongst knowledge intensive positions. It is reasonable to assume that this will be replicated in other economies.
An interesting aside: research has also shown that retiring early at 55 or 60 is not associated with better survival rates than retiring at 65 in a group of past employees of the petrochemical industry. Mortality was higher in employees who retired at 55 than in those who continued working (BMJ) (text). So work really is good for you!
Given the above, it is reasonably safe to assume that a large amount of potentially shareable knowledge is lost to employers when putting large scale early retirement and compulsory redundancy programs in place. There is real and valuable knowledge (aka experience) being put to one side in favour of stacking supermarket shelves, driving a taxi, or gently vegetating at the 19th hole or similar establishments. It is quite understandable that managers find that some employees in their 50s are providing diminishing returns in terms of classical bottom line and this involves many factors including seniority based salary structures, less inclination to binge work, etc.
However it is an established trend for many hitting the job market in later life to launch into new business ventures and usually with a higher degree of success than their younger counterparts. This can be attributed to several factors, the first is that of course they have greater experience and another important consideration is that perhaps they have more realistic projects which can be self funded rather than relying on external funding which can be fickle to say the least.
Certainly the USA and UK have significant influxes of mature entrepreneurs but sadly in many parts of Europe there is far less encouragement. For example, early retirement benefits can be lost if an official business is formed, whilst training and investment programs tend to be focussed on the young. There are some good examples of the parent organisation encouraging entrepreneurship in the groups being made redundant e.g. Philips in Austria, but still a rarity.
Whilst many of us understand that the new working environment places new requirements on society, many of the policy makers seem to either not understand or choose to ignore the need to re-engineer the whole education, work, retirement continuum, being content to leave it to the forces of the market, which we now know to be rather short-sighted. Our young need exposure to work environments before quitting the educational hallows, whilst all of us need training throughout our lives, and finally retirement should be a gradual transition, not a sudden cold shower.
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Global Knowledge Society needs a G8 initiative.
January 21, 2009
In July 1994 in Naples the G7 leaders emphasized on the necessity of encouraging the development of a world-wide Information Society. To my mind this was quite an astonishing bit of vision from an organisation that normally produces a lot of fog but not much clarity, although one has to admit the reduction in 3rd world debt program was quite effective. (Notice quite – not very, or extremely just quite, but so much better than ineffective).
The G7 members and European Commission used the the Ministerial Conference held in Brussels on 25-26 February 1995 to select 11 international pilot projects to demonstrate the potential of the Information Society and stimulate its development internationally.
Don’t forget this was before Amazon first opened on-line (July 16, 1995) and there were significant doubts at that time as to whether the Internet could support robust eCommerce activity. I remember that even at Telecom Inter@active ’97 in Geneva, a presentation from an eCommerce proponent admitted that he could not see how anyone would consider buying a high value item like a Mercedes through the Internet.
The idea was to involve countries beyond the G7, and a wide variety of organisations and projects.
The key objectives of these Pilot Projects were to:
- support international consensus on common principles governing the need of access to networks and applications and their interoperability,
- establish the groundwork for productive forms of co-operation amongst the G-7 partners in order to create a critical mass to address this global issue,
- create an opportunity for information exchange leading towards the further development of the Information Society,
- identify and select projects of an exemplary nature having tangible and clearly understandable social, economic and cultural benefits which would demonstrate to the public the potential of the Information Society,
- identify obstacles related to the implementation of practical applications serving the creation of a global Information Society,
- help to create markets for new products and services, where appropriate.
The projects chosen were to adhere to the following criteria and should
- add value for the development of the information society,
- be relevant to citizens,
- stimulate cooperation,
- bring in other countries and encourage open access.
- avoid creating new bureaucracies or institutions
- and finally they should only be financed by existing programmes. (Which meant no cash from the G7).
The G7 Ministers identified 11 pilot project areas at the Brussels meeting:
- Global Inventory project (led by the European Commission and Japan)
- Global Interoperability for Broadband Networks (Canada and Japan)
- Cross-Cultural Training and Education (France and Germany)
- Electronic Libraries / Bibliotheca Universalis (France and Japan)
- Multimedia Access to Word Cultural Heritage /Electronic museums (Italy and France)
- Environment and Natural Resources Management (USA)
- Global Emergency Management (Canada)
- Global Healthcare Applications (European Commission)
- Government On-line (UK)
- Global Marketplace for SMEs (European Commission, Japan, USA)
- Maritime Information Systems (European Commission, Canada)
Admittedly some of these projects did not make much of an impact, but others such as the Global Marketplace for SMEs did contribute in raising the visibility of eCommerce and the required infrastructures. In fact the project continued in various guises until 2003 when the Deeds project finished. Interestingly one of the conclusions of that project was that Knowledge Management was the next major hurdle to be surmounted by small businesses.
So after that lengthy introduction I cut to the point. Those G7 (later G8) pilot projects successfully acted as catalysts for various aspects of the Information Society that today we take for granted. I’m sure a valid argument could be made to say these developments would have happened anyway, however these projects did provide focus and, as a true catalyst should, facilitated and speeded up the process.
I firmly believe that we need another global initiative that will help focus the attention of administrations and the other key actors on stimulating the knowledge economy rather than just throwing billions of Dollars/Euros/Pounds on short term initiatives that might alleviate some short term pain, but that will do little to promote much needed long term change.
An early initiative from the new and enlightened President of the U.S.A. would be favourite.
Why not make suggestions for 10-15 projects of a global nature that would contribute to the ongoing development of the Knowledge Society.
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Telework? Forget it and think again.
January 11, 2009
From the coining of the term in 1972 by Jack Nilles, until the mid 90s, Telework was always an idea whose time had not yet come. Management styles were too inflexible, technology and telecommunications costs generally too high, and the unions too suspicious. Of course there were exceptions, but the advocacy that went on during that period paved the way for acceptance when the prevailing conditions were right. The advent of readily available broadband connections provided those conditions.
Within a few years the market for home PCs had outstripped the corporate market, and internet access is now on the agenda for universal access, putting it on a par with utilities such as water, electricity & telephone, as a citizen’s right.
It is hardly surprising that for most knowledge workers, telework has become a non-issue. PDAs, Portable PCs, GSMs (cell phones), mean working on the move is a natural part of daily life, and yes, either working at home for at least a couple of days a week or working really flexible hours has become common-place. In the event of poor weather, transport disruption, security alerts, hangovers, and other inexplicable ailments etc., telework has become the norm.
You must have noticed that the traditional rush hour, has now expanded to almost 4 hours in the morning (6:30 – 10:30) and another 4 hours in the evening (15:00 – 19:00) sometimes longer.That’s because a lot people engage in flexible work practices, either doing tasks at home prior to going in to the office, or leaving early and finishing off tasks at home.
Whilst a lot of companies now support flexible working, a lot of teleworking is still carried out ad-hoc without any formal recognition or much support, either logistically or financially.
Essentially telework involves removing distance as a barrier to work, and it has some great benefits that are well documented. The danger is that by successfully implementing telework within an organisation and getting good results, management will consider the job done without looking at the even greater potential for restructuring work patterns.
You can certainly see the trend in younger and those more dynamic environments, where formal structures are disintegrating in favour of ad-hoc structures based around the needs of the task in hand. The company does not need to be that small. In ’98 I had the good fortune to be invited by Cisco to a small gathering of 30-40 consultants in Nice. The information day was topped off by John Chambers flying in to share his vision. Much of his vision and the processes under way in Cisco then, are now being reflected in Enterprise 2.0. I was impressed at the time and continue to be impressed by the approach of Cisco.
These days any organisation can follow a similar path.
With a minimum amount of guidance and control, teams can self select and self organise. The emerging Enterprise 2.0 tools and platforms support individuals and teams in a variety of ways that are inherently flexible and adaptable to new circumstances.
Although collaborative platforms have been around for some time it is only recently that they began to make a serious impact being able not only facilitate task sharing effectively, but also enabling the sharing and retention of knowledge. These integrated platforms that go way beyond sharing are still young and have a long way to go, but they are proving more user friendly and flexible than their predecessors thus gaining greater acceptance from the user.
It is not unusual to find a project team working together from several different continents, so that processes flow in such a way as to permit continuous advancement rather than just a single 8 hour slice, like a factory working on a full 3 shift system but with each shift in a different time zone. Such teams may be working on engineering developments, proposal developments, software development and testing, etc. The platform not only enables the current project, but also benefits other projects with the knowledge accumulated.
If your organisation has not yet come to grips with telework, perhaps you should think about leapfrogging that stage and looking at new work structures and methods from which the benefits of telework will naturally flow. You may never have a better opportunity to restructure working methods.
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