Author: JP

Of True Believers and Convenient Ends

The passage below is from Gulliver’s Travels, Dean Jonathan Swift, Chapter 4. Amazingly out of copyright. [Shorely shum mishtake? Ed.]

One Morning, about a Fortnight after I had obtained my Liberty, Reldresal, Principal Secretary (as they style him) of private Affairs, came to my House, attended only by one Servant. He ordered his Coach to wait at a distance, and desired I would give him an Hour’s Audience; which I readily consented to, on account of his Quality, and Personal Merits, as well as the many good Offices he had done me during my Sollicitations at Court. I offered to lie down, that he might the more conveniently reach my Ear; but he chose rather to let me hold him in my hand during our Conversation. He began with Compliments on my Liberty; said he might pretend to some Merit in it: but, however, added, that if it had not been for the present Situation of things at Court, perhaps I might not have obtained it so soon. For, said he, as flourishing a Condition as we may appear to be in to Foreigners, we labor under two mighty Evils; a violent Faction at home, and the Danger of an Invasion by a most potent Enemy from abroad. As to the first, you are to understand, that for above seventy Moons past there have been two struggling Parties in this Empire, under the Names of Tramecksan and Slamecksan, from the high and low Heels on their shoes, by which they distinguish themselves. It is alleged indeed, that the high Heels are most agreeable to our ancient Constitution: But however this be, his Majesty has determined to make use of only low Heels in the Administration of the Government, and all Offices in the Gift of the Crown, as you cannot but observe; and particularly, that his Majesty’s Imperial Heels are lower at least by a Drurr than any of his Court; (Drurr is a Measure about the fourteenth Part of an Inch). The Animositys between these two Parties run so high, that they will neither eat nor drink, nor talk with each other. We compute the Tramecksan, or High-Heels, to exceed us in number; but the Power is wholly on our Side. We apprehend his Imperial Highness, the Heir to the Crown, to have some Tendency towards the High-Heels; at least we can plainly discover one of his Heels higher than the other, which gives him a Hobble in his Gait. Now, in the midst of these intestine Disquiets, we are threatened with an Invasion from the Island of Blefuscu, which is the other great Empire of the Universe, almost as large and powerful as this of his Majesty. For as to what we have heard you affirm, that there are other Kingdoms and States in the World inhabited by human Creatures as large as yourself, our Philosophers are in much doubt, and would rather conjecture that you dropt from the Moon, or one of the Stars; because it is certain, that a hundred Mortals of your Bulk would, in a short time, destroy all the Fruits and Cattle of his Majesty’s Dominions. Besides, our Histories of six thousand Moons make no mention of any other Regions, than the two great Empires of Lilliput and Blefuscu. Which two mighty Powers have, as I was going to tell you, been engaged in a most obstinate War for six and thirty Moons past. It began upon the following Occasion. It is allowed on all Hands, that the primitive way of breaking Eggs, before we eat them, was upon the larger End: But his present Majesty’s Grand-father, while he was a Boy, going to eat an Egg, and breaking it according to the ancient Practice, happened to cut one of his Fingers. Whereupon the Emperor his Father published an Edict, commanding all his Subjects, upon great Penaltys, to break the smaller End of their Eggs. The People so highly resented this Law, that our Histories tell us there have been six Rebellions raised on that account; wherein one Emperor lost his Life, and another his Crown. These civil Commotions were constantly fomented by the Monarchs of Blefuscu; and when they were quelled, the Exiles always fled for Refuge to that Empire. It is computed, that eleven thousand Persons have, at several times, suffered Death, rather than submit to break their Eggs at the smaller End. Many hundred large Volumes have been published upon this Controversy: But the books of the Big-Endians have been long forbidden, and the whole Party rendered incapable by Law of holding Employments. During the Course of these Troubles, the Emperors of Blefuscu did frequently expostulate by their Ambassadors, accusing us of making a Schism in Religion, by offending against a fundamental Doctrine of our great Prophet Lustrog, in the fifty-fourth Chapter of the Brundrecal (which is their Alcoran.) This, however, is thought to be a meer Strain upon the Text: For the Words are these: That all true Believers shall break their Eggs at the convenient End: and which is the convenient End, seems, in my humble Opinion, to be left to every Man’s Conscience, or at least in the power of the Chief Magistrate to determine. Now the Big-Endian Exiles have found so much Credit in the Emperor of Blefuscu‘s Court, and so much private Assistance and Encouragement from their Party here at home, that a bloody War has been carried on between the two Empires for six and thirty Moons with various Success; during which time we have lost forty Capital Ships, and a much greater number of smaller Vessels, together with thirty thousand of our best Seamen and Soldiers; and the Damage received by the Enemy is reckon’d to be somewhat greater than Ours. However, they have now equipped a numerous Fleet, and are just preparing to make a Descent upon us; and his Imperial Majesty, placing great Confidence in your Valour and Strength, has commanded me to lay this Account of his affairs before you.

I desired the Secretary to present my humble Duty to the Emperor, and to let him know, that I thought it would not become Me, who was a Foreigner, to interfere with Parties; but I was ready, with the hazard of my Life, to defend his Person and State against all Invaders.

Blefuscu and Lilliput. Two states that waged war on each other, just because they chose to eat their boiled eggs differently.  One started at the Big End, the other at the Little End.

Some of you commented on my “polarisation” piece yesterday, and I thought I’d take that particular aspect of the discussion forward. After all, it’s a bit like Blefuscu and Lilliput.

I think there are three aspects to this:

One, we’re seeing a battle between those who are technically literate and those who aren’t as yet, the dinosaurs versus the newbies.

I have witnessed and experienced many polarised debates in IT over the last 30 years, particularly since opensource became a viable option, and, ever since OSX, even including a couple of Microsoft versus Apple sessions. Yet those debates pass into insignificance when you look at the way people get passionate about the social media tools they use. And I think there’s a reason for it. It’s what Kathy Sierra called the KoolAid Point, if I remember correctly. We’re seeing something new: those who were historically not techno-literate are now finding it easy to use these tools, tools that have themselves been the exclusive domain of the techno-literate. And the newbies will not give in without a fight, they’ve moved past the point of “your system doesn’t work” to that of “my system doesn’t work”. So they’re passionate. Which is a good thing.

Two, we’re seeing a battle between those who “manage stuff” and those who “do stuff”, the management professionals versus the software professionals.

This polarisation first came into my view when I saw the opensource-versus-vendor debates open up; I was expecting the arguments to run on technical and commercial grounds, and wasn’t prepared for the venom I faced when I espoused opensource many years ago. It took me a while to realise just how many people “manage” technical matters, reducing what they do to a variant of contract and purchase order management. They are so keen to become “the business” that they forget their primary role, to advise on, construct and deliver technical solutions to business problems. Rather than outsource operations, or even segments of development, they outsource thinking. Vendors exploit this (who could blame them) and this in turn leads to polarised arguments. This is a bad thing, and needs to be sorted out. Cue VRM.

Three, we’re seeing a battle between the “deliver-fast” versus the ‘deliver-right”. 

I think it was Rupert Murdoch who said: Big won’t beat small any more. Fast will beat slow. This is probably the most contentious of the polarisations. Most people have grown up with the idea that cost, time and quality are variables you need to trade off against each other, and as a result refuse to accept the concept of faster, better, cheaper even as a possibility. Agile techniques, fast iteration and fail-fast principles get them very upset indeed. [I have been flamed more often for this particular set of beliefs than any other beliefs, strangely enough.] Much of what is the Web; much of what is Web 2.0; much of what is Social Media; all these are predicated on internet time, on functional integrity with incremental functionality, on perennial betas, on feedback loops and fix-as-we-go.

All these three polarisations are themselves cutting across the San Andreas fault running through technology (or maybe it should be the Berlin Wall). Whatever it is, the tectonic plates have shifted. The Wall has come down. There is no more a Holy of Holies where the IT industry can hide.

We’re not the first profession to face this, and we won’t be the last. Priests, doctors and lawyers have all faced this before us, and accountants are facing it now. We can all no longer use inconvenient languages and esoteric jargon to separate us and protect our professions; we can all no longer walk around saying “this is complex, you won’t understand it”; and we can all no longer act arrogant about what we do, to the detriment of our customers.

All these three polarisations are about one thing and one thing only: the customer is in control.

You better believe it.

Stumbling Aloud

Recently Stumbled across these sites and liked them.

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Montana Skies, a cello-guitar fusion duet, covering songs ranging from Summertime thru Malaguena to House of The Rising Sun; I particularly liked Gringo Flamenco, which seems to be an original. i’ve VodPodded the last one for your convenience.

And then there’s Pablo Lobato from Argentina, who draws caricatures of people his way, unusually easy to recognise while being original and different. Here’s Pablo’s rendition of Jack Nicholson and The Three Stooges, two favourites of mine (and not just their caricatures). I would go to a performance of Nicholson reading the telephone directory out aloud. For that matter, I would have gone to a performance of Larry, Moe and Curly Joe reading the telephone directory out aloud!

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Stumbling can be enjoyable. As long as you keep feeding back what you like.

Does the blogosphere have a January Effect? And a welcome to new readers

I’ve been blogging for a while now, and I’ve been delighted with the response. I average around a thousand RSS reader-based subscribers (according to Feedburner), tend to have around 300 unique IP addresses visit me daily (according to ClustrMaps) and get around 7 comments a post. [The IP addresses sometimes understate what is happening, given the number of “institutional” readers I appear to have, but that’s anecdotal and irrelevant unless I try to “monetise” myself…which I won’t do.] I’ve occasionally broken into Technorati’s Top 5000, but spend most of the time range-finding between 8000 and 12000. Alexa does not recognise me, and I think there’s a strange reason: It seems to insist on collecting statistics from people using Internet Explorer rather than any other browser, and that’s apparently bad for my community of readers :-)

This has been a steady pattern for a while, and it’s worked for me. I’ve sensed that I have a Dunbar number of around 300 in the digital world, and I’ve been delighted to find I know most of the steady ones. Over the years I’ve actually met most of the community of readers, usually at conferences. The face-to-face contact, in turn, leads to a deepening of the relationship, and we land up creating and developing links in Facebook and Twitter. [I still land up with a smidgeon of LinkedIn requests, but to be frank the only reason I go to LinkedIn is to deal with Invitations to Connect.]

So when I see a change in the pattern, I wonder. More recently, I’ve seen a surge in the number of readers and commenters, I’ve even met some of the new ones, and there’s something happening. This year, for example, the average number of IP addresses reported by ClustrMaps has doubled. Which leads me to do three things:

One, I want to welcome new readers and ensure that you are aware of what I try and get done via this blog, so I quote the About This Blog piece below. If you want to know more, then please read The Kernel for This Blog, also quoted below.

Two, I want to try and understand where this surge has come from. Three possibilities suggest themselves. (a) people who met me at Le Web, or saw coverage of my chat there; (b) people who’ve connected to me via Twitter, with the possibility that the Twitterverse is less overlapped with the blogosphere than I originally assumed; and (c) that there is some sort of January Effect, and people research and adjust reading habits over the year-end holiday. I would consider this to be a “small-cap blog“, so a January Effect sort of makes sense. So do comment on why you turned up here.

Three, I want to open up a dialogue on digital Dunbar numbers. Those of you who are prepared to do so, please share with the rest of us some of what you see and experience. How many Facebook friends do you have, how many regular readers of your blog, how many followers in Twitter, do you see a correlation between the three, if not why not, and so on. Do you tend to meet a core of this number on a face-to-face basis, if not why not? What other tools do you use, tools such as Dopplr and last.fm and netvibes and so on. Freeform comments are fine, this is not deep research. Just trying to get a sense of what’s happening.

An aside. You guys are a small community of readers, and I’m grateful for the time you give to coming here, and to the comments you write. I thought you’d be amused at your vacation habits, as shown in a recent ClustrMap….. every time people go on holiday, I can see a definite shift in the number of dots in sunny climes, particularly the Caribbean :-). Because the map gets archived at the end of every month, the effect is very visible.

www.confusedofcalcutta.com-world

So. As promised. Here’s the About This Blog piece. As usual, comments welcome.

About this blog

I believe that it is only a matter of time before enterprise software consists of only four types of application: publishing, search, fulfilment and conversation. I believe that weaknesses and corruptions in our own thinking about digital rights and intellectual property rights will have the effect of slowing down or sometimes even blocking this from happening.

I believe we keep building layers of lock-in that prevent information from flowing freely, and that we have a lot to learn about the right thing to do in this respect. I believe identity and presence and authentication and permissioning are in some ways the new battlegrounds, where the freedom of information flow will be fought for, and bitterly at that.

I believe that we do live in an age of information overload, and that we have to find ways of simplifying our access to the information; of assessing the quality of the information; of having better tools to visualise the information, to enrich and improve it, of passing the information on.

I believe that Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law and Gilder’s Law have created an environment where it is finally possible to demonstrate the value of information technology in simple terms rather than by complex inferences and abstract arguments.

I believe that simplicity and convenience are important, and that we have to learn to respect human time.

I believe we need to discuss these things and find ways of getting them right. And I have a fervent hope that through this blog, I can keep the conversations going and learn from them.

And here’s The Kernel For This Blog:

Building Society for the 21st Century

Economic models that succeed tend to take advantage of the abundances as well as the shortages that characterise a particular economic era. Traditionally, the primary factors of production used to be land, labour and capital; much of this was in “institutional” rather than individual hands, and as a result, attempts to create efficiencies in the use of these factors tended to create institutional models as a basis for reducing transaction costs.

Land ownership has changed; while governments, churches and firms still own land, there is far more individual ownership of land than ever before. Labour is no longer bonded, and the ability to migrate between firms and even countries has never been greater. Capital is also more mobile, with deregulated markets and dematerialised securities and electronic cash; when many individuals have better credit ratings than the institutions they bank with, the definition of what a bank does changes.

The nature of asset creation has also changed, with intangibles forming a growing proportion of GDP worldwide; we now impute monetary value on talent and skill and knowledge and network and brand and reputation.

The Agricultural Revolution transformed our ability to produce food cheaply; the Industrial Revolution helped us reduce plant and equipment production costs, as well as those of core infrastructure providing heating, lighting and transportation. There were also major demographic and societal changes: barriers based on race and sex began to erode, infant mortality was lowered and people began to live longer.

The Information Age heralded the dawn of a true Services Revolution as human capital grew in importance and communications costs reduced sharply. Technological advances a la Moore, Metcalfe and Gilder continued their relentless march, as price-performance improved, network effects were realised and everybody started getting connected.

Despite major technological advances over the past fifty years or so, one thing has not changed as appreciably: man’s longevity. And, since assets were increasingly based on intangibles, this created, and continues to create, a war for talent. Institutions have found it increasingly difficult to attract, retain and develop talent.

Every institution had to take steps to value and protect human time. Simplicity and convenience became important, “dial-tone” services became important, design and usability mattered. Technology adoption curves became inverted: historically, adoption was driven by those with the largest R&D budgets – defence, aerospace, high-end manufacturing and automobiles, sophisticated capital markets. Products trialled in these sectors slowly drifted towards mainstream commerce and much later towards consumers.

What inverted? The age of the early adopter changed, which moved startlingly from 35-40 years old towards 12-21 years old. When you look at mobile phones, texting, instant messaging, downloads, Skype, the iPod and iTunes phenomena, multifunction devices, the standards for these are all set by youth. And this trend is now moving towards changing the functionality of “established” web firms such as Google and Amazon, eBay and Yahoo.

It was this shift, when youth became the early adopters, which signalled a real change from institutional to individual capitalism; not having been exposed to how organisations worked and not caring about how governments operated, youth began to set the agenda.

Peer respect became more important than the power of hierarchical authority; relationships and trust returned to prominence after a long time in the wilderness; there were no longer any taboos about asking why things were the way they were, and challenging the status quo.

Today is their Sixties. And, in a vicarious way, ours too; The Age of the Individual.

Empowered and free from hierarchy, jealous about personal time, keen on relationships and trust, inquisitive about values and ethics, with the power of the web to change their perceptions of time and distance and organisations and government.
What does this mean for firms and governments? Another inversion. Now, as such institutions fight to hold on to their piece of the talent pool, they realise that historical carrots and sticks have no meaning to the new generation. People migrate to institutions that reflect the values they hold and make it possible for individuals to make a difference. “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” has subtly shifted. Do ask what your country/company will allow you to do for them, before choosing.

This is not as shocking as it sounds. We already have odd critical masses developed over the years, such as shipping registration in Panama or company incorporation in Delaware or high-net-worth individuals domiciled in tax havens. It has been suggested that European IPOs grew as a result of Sarbanes-Oxley, as new entrants railed against increased regulation.
Human beings can now withhold their talent, their time, and their taxes, in ways that could not have been imagined before. Flash mobbing and IM and texting and blogs and wikis and video allow people to communicate in ways we could not have foreseen. The assembly-line approach that characterised our schools, hospitals, companies and governments is failing, as people choose to be different. Any colour you like, so long as it’s black, does not rule any more.

Assembly line approaches focus on consolidating volume and ensuring homogeneity, low standard deviation and uniformity. All citizens the same. All students the same. All the same.

The web is about diversity, individuality, personal-ness. People want to be connected, not channelled, to choose their experiences and to co-create them with peers they respect and trust.

As innovation democratises, and open-source ideas get shared and enriched and mutated, people behave differently. Diversity is no longer suppressed but celebrated.

We used to hate looking at someone else’s holiday movies and snapshots, but now we love Flickr. Why? Because we choose the time and place. Connected, not channelled.

Alumnus gatherings didn’t always work and were often lifeless, now they’re Friends Reunited. Why? Because we have transparency of information, simpler ways to discover the who and the where, and choice as to the relationships we grow. Connected, not channelled.

We choose the schools we go to, the courses we take at university, the firms we work for, the countries where we live, what we do with our time. When we work and when we sleep. We choose our relationships and who we spend time with. Connected, not channelled.

As the Cluetrain guys said, markets are conversations. They do not happen hierarchically. Even our Assembly Line software applications have disaggregated. All we have left is subscriptions to syndicated content, heuristically enhanced non-deterministic search, support for fulfilment and a framework to enable trust and collaboration.

Governments and firms are left feeling helpless, as central control diminishes and the power of the individual rises, and they need to recognise that bell curves now have very long tails.

As these changes come about, with individual capitalism and the subversion of institutions, we need new business models. What should these models do?

One, make a clear stance on values and ethics.

Two, allow relationships and collaboration to take place, rather than control the relationships.

Three, intermediate to enable trust and fulfilment rather than channel towards lock-in.

Four, recognise that the customer wants to create and co-create value rather than just receive.

Use what you stand for to attract the customer. Use what you do to retain the customer’s trust. Ensure that the customer is always free to leave, and paradoxically he or she will stay. Who is this customer? Your family. Your friend. Your employee. Your business partner. Your client. Your citizen.

In a world of empowered individuals, everyone’s a customer.

There are barriers in the way, and serious ones at that. There is a need to overhaul everything to do with Intellectual Property Rights, be they patents or trademarks or copyright or DRM or whatever. There is a need to avoid over-regulation, the creation of bad law driven by institutional values. This is particularly true for every form of communication, affecting big media, telcos, “content producers”, and the publishing industry in general.

This is going to be difficult, and often humorous, since these are tremendous changes. Witness what happened to Sony’s DRM or Hollywood’s attempts to send copies of Munich to the BAFTA judges. Witness what happened to Skype.

Connected, not channelled.

I wrote both About This Blog as well as The Kernel for This Blog a few years ago; my views remain the same. Your views will help me learn how to do what I want to do, better and faster.

Old Man’s River: Cosmic Banditos

There are many books that get called laugh-out-loud funny; often, it means nothing to someone like me, brought up in a home where giggles and snorts and guffaws were de rigueur while reading. We didn’t just laugh while reading Wodehouse or Thurber or Benchley or Parker or Marx; we managed to laugh even when the music in the background was courtesy Leonard Cohen. Which it often was.

So when I call a book laugh-out-loud I mean it. And so to:

Recommendation 6: (Book, and soon-to-be film)

Cosmic Banditos. Allan Weisbecker. Quantum mechanics mixed liberally with potent substances, shaken, stirred, then even more liberally garnished with explosive substances. Made me laugh enough to hurt. Soon to be released as a film, I know I’ll go to see it against my better judgment. Part of me wants the memory of the book to stay plain and uncorrupted in my head; the rest of me knows I have to see it. Because.

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Freewheeling about social media

This post is about Twitter, and yet it’s not. I’m trying to deal with a bigger issue.

First, do take a look at these two posts: Phillie Casablanca’s Ten Commandments and Paul Downey’s Twit or Twerp? Both are excellent; I have the privilege of working with both these guys, and I’m delighted that we have people who really try and understand what’s happening with social media.

While the discussions in the post are primarily about Twitter, I think the issues they discuss extend further. It’s worth looking at three aspects of any such discussions:

1. Prescription. Phil talks about his discomfort with the word “commandment”, and how he looked at using “etiquette requests”, but felt that it didn’t have the requisite ring or zing. We need to be careful in positioning any of these statements as guidelines rather than diktats. There are many people using Twitter who wouldn’t necessarily have the faintest idea what IRC was, and wouldn’t know a microformat if it hit them in the face; this doesn’t make them bad or stupid. In fact one of the biggest attractions of contemporary social media is the lowering of historical barriers, and we have to make sure that we, collectively, concentrate on providing advice and assistance and best practice rather than prescription or diktat. We need to be heading towards a place where we can say “If you want to get the best value out of Twitter, and if you want to make it easy for others to obtain value from Twitter, then you should consider doing the following things, and not doing the following things”.  That’s how I read the two posts, and I will strive to become more of a twit and less of a twerp.

2. Polarisation. For whatever reason, the industry I have found myself in just loves polarised debate. Everything, just about everything, is 0 or 1, black or white. Big-endians versus Little-endians. What’s happening right now is that our walls are coming down. “Vendor” power is shifting to the customer. “IT Department” power is shifting to the customer. “Standards Body” power is shifting to the customer. While we need new standards, we need to be sure that we don’t pave the cowpaths, create new sets of polarised standards “on behalf of the customer”; we need to be comfortable with letting the customer decide. Sometimes it’s going to feel like helping a child grow up and discover things for himself; as “parents” we cannot do the learning for them. [Reminds me of my favourite JSB quote: How long does it take for a five year old to become a six year old? One year]. For people like me, it’s about getting out of the way. For some of you, it may be about recognising the continuing existence of “grey”.

3. Personalisation. For many of the people playing with these tools for the first time, there are no rules. They will find ways of using the tools that the creators of the tools haven’t considered; they will find ways of making the tools their own. Whatever we advise, whatever good practices we suggest, whatever standards we come up with, we need to keep one perspective in mind. The newbie isn’t wrong. Just different. We need to encourage the newbies rather than reinvent the ivory towers and holy-of-holies of the past.

Lack of prescription. Avoidance of polarisation. Support for personalisation. These Ps are key, whatever else happens.

Along with passion. And patience. Lots of both.

We’re on the verge of a new golden age, centred around community and participation, as the underlying technology stabilises and becomes invisible. Let’s make sure we get there.