KM 5433 Blog/Joe Colannino

TRIZICS/book review by J. Colannino

2011-07-20T19:39:00.000-05:00

This review first appeared in the newsletter of the Knowledge and Information Professionals Association (KIPA)

TRIZ is a Russian acronym for Theory of Inventive Problem Solution. In the 1940s G.S. Altshuller (1926-1998) studied invention in a novel way. Rather than interview inventors in hopes of advancing psychological theories of invention, he studied their output -- specifically patents. Thus TRIZ systematizes known results and does not depend on unverifiable mental models of inventiveness. Altshuller ultimately surveyed about 200,000 patents. His work has now been extended and validated into the millions of patents. What Altshuller found was that all inventions could be reduced to 40 inventive principles and 39 parameters. The basic method is to reduce the problem to a contradiction and resolve it (Cameron provides a TRIZ table to select which method(s) will solve the contradiction).

For example, suppose you need something to be lighter AND longer. Because longer things are heavier and not lighter, one has a basic contradiction. In TRIZ, weight of a stationary object is Parameter 2 and its Length is Parameter 4. Again, there are 39 such parameters. Using the TRIZ table, one finds a number of standard principles to solve the contradiction: For example, one may change materials (Principle 35) or add holes/porosity (Principle 31) among other changes.

TRIZ forces "out of the box" thinking. However, most problems can and are solved by thinking "inside the box"; in a sense, that is the definition of a discipline. It is only when standard tools of the discipline cannot solve the problem at hand that out-of-the-box thinking is required. The marriage of inside-the-box and outside-the-box thinking is one reason that Cameron's TRIZICS is so powerful.

In addition, Cameron assembles and organizes all kinds of ancillary support systems. For example, one powerful mnemonic is MATCHEM: systems tend to begin mechanically (M) and become augmented by acoustics (A), thermal (T), chemical (CH), electric (E), and magnetic (M) or electromagnetic inventive principles. Consider the evolution of the drum: acoustics were subsequently enhanced, thermal treatment was added to produce more uniform drum heads from natural materials such as animal skins, chemical formulations were adapted for synthetic drum heads, electronic amplification was added, and then electromagnetic systems (synthetic drums) were finally introduced. Overlying this general development, evolutionary trends toward increasing completeness and coordination/harmonization were applied to produce drum kits -- a coordinated assembly of various drums; Cameron describes eight such evolutionary trends.

Additionally, one learns four types of problem categorization: cause unknown, cause known, improvement/development, and failure prevention. These ancillary structures are important, because TRIZ is designed to solve cause-known problems, so some sort of root cause analysis must be bolted onto TRIZ to make the method comprehensive. This is another of Cameron's many contributions turning TRIZ into TRIZICS.

The book is organized into 11 Chapters and 8 Powerful Appendices: Chapter 1) Introduction to TRIZICS, 2) Standard Structured Problem Solving, 3) Cause-Effect Chain Analysis, 4) Ideality, S-curves, and Trends of Evolution 5) Nine Windows, the Anti-system, and DTC operator, 6) Functionality, Functional Modeling, and Trimming, 7) Scientific Effects, 8) Inventive Standards and Su-field Modeling, 9) Part 1 Contradictions and ARIZ Tools, 10) Part 2 Contradictions and ARIZ Tools, 10) Subversion Analysis, 11) Root Cause Analysis; Appendix 1) The 39 Parameters and 40 Inventive Principles, 2) Contradiction Matrix, 3) The 40 Principles with Examples, 4) The 39 Parameters Definitions, 5) Inventive Standards Flowchart, 6) The 76 Inventive Standards, 7) Table of Specific Inventive Principles to Solve Physical Contradictions, 8) Flowcharts/Roadmaps/Templates.

As an innovation professional, I have headed R&D departments, produced patents, and invented my share of stuff, but Cameron's book -- a comprehensive guide to invention and problem solution-- is the best I have ever seen, bar none. Its contents will easily support a full year course in invention/knowledge creation at the university level. A rich source of information, it will require careful study, reading, and re-reading to master its contents. However, it is worthy of the effort. TRIZICS is the new quintessential resource for creative problem solving and invention.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, Chip and Dan Heath/Review: J. Colannino

2011-05-29T08:39:00.000-05:00

"This book review first appeared in the May edition of the KIPA newsletter: http://www.kipanet.org/

Switch is a book about managing change by the Heath brothers (Chip and Dan). Chip is a professor at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and Dan is a Senior Fellow at Duke University' Social Entrepreneurship center. The two have teamed up before -- in 2007 they released their critically acclaimed Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. This latest effort focuses less on the stickiness of the idea and more on the change process itself. What should a change agent do to implement lasting change in a hard-headed organization that desperately needs it?

The book is organized into eleven chapters in three parts: Part 1, Direct the Rider; Part 2, Motivate the Elephant; and Part 3, Shape the Path. The titles come from a vivid metaphor by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt. In his book, The Happiness Hypothesis, Haidt likens a person to a rider on an elephant. The rider is the rational side of a person: the part that tells him to eat better, exercise more, and stop procrastinating, for example. The elephant is the emotional side that doesn't want to work to lose weight or exercise and would rather stay put; let's say willpower vs. won't-power; but why should that be? Whatever is autonomous and ingrained by habit belongs to the elephant. The rider is theoretically in control, but it is exhausting to continually tug on the reins and direct the stubborn elephant. Eventually the rider relents and the elephant goes back to doing what he's always done. Sound familiar?

Before going much farther, you should know that two things separate Switch from so many other glib books about change: first, the book has a very solid psychological basis. Despite its accessible style, scores of major psychological findings and studies are reported and undergird the book's practical formulae for change. Second, Switch is not a self-help book. I have no doubt that the book could be used in this way, but it is really a book about how to change things. It is primarily directed toward organizational change, though its principles are much broader. And there are many surprises.

The first big surprise occurs in the very first chapter.

"We know what you're thinking -- people resist change. But it's not quite that easy. Babies are born every day to parents who, inexplicably, welcome that change. Yet people don't resist this massive change -- they volunteer for it. In our lives we embrace lots of big changes. So there are hard changes and there are easy changes. What distinguishes one from the other?"

And the surprises keep coming. Like the two researchers who dramatically and permanently got folks to reduce their saturated fat intake. Or the doctor who saved over 100,000 lives and counting in American hospitals on schedule (18 months) by getting thousands of doctors and organizations to change their practices. Or the American who went to Vietnam and changed the face of malnutrition. Or the student who saved an endangered species in a Caribbean country that didn't give two hoots about it.

What do all these stories have in common? For one, none of these change agents had the sufficient budget or authority to succeed; yet, they did. How? Every one of them gave clear rational direction to the rider by finding the bright spots, scripting the critical moves, and clearly pointing to the end goal. All of them motivated the elephant by emotionally connecting with it, and they shrunk the apparent change by carefully communicating progress. They refused to underestimate their people. Instead they provided them with a newfound identity that let them to grow into the challenge. But there was more.

As the authors note, many times what looks like resistance is really confusion or even the result of misaligned incentives. That's why the path needs to be shaped by making manageable changes to the environment, building sound habits, rallying the herd, and reinforcing the new habit until it becomes a way of life.

Well, maybe that sounds like a lot of work. I think it is. But speaking from firsthand experience, it will be a labor of love. And if your heart is not in the change and you do not think you can derive reward from the process, perhaps you are selling yourself short -- or, maybe you're the wrong person to lead the change and you should stop kidding yourself. And perhaps that is what I like most about this book. It does not promise a panacea. It tells it like it is without the jingoism that has become the substance of many change management essays. If you are leading organizational change, the book will provide a solid prescription for achieving lasting results because Switch uses real research, reports real experiences, and provides real guidance. Here, my recommendation is enthusiastic."

The Death of Common Sense/Review, J. Colannino

2011-03-12T11:40:00.000-06:00

"The Death of Common Sense" is Howard's classic text (1994). It is prescient in its approach, predicting the health care legislation of 2010 by many years. Howard argues that common sense has died, sacrificed on the altar of prescriptive legislation. That is, once upon a time, common law with its general principles reigned supreme. For example, the general principle that property belongs to an owner means that others are forbidden to harm it. This is the ultimate basis of environmental law. The problem as Howard sees it is that this general approach has been legislated out of existence by statutes that are prescriptive ad nauseam, including many arcane rules of procedure. For example, Amoco spent many millions dollars attempting to capture an insignificant amount of benzene at the pipe while much larger emissions were not allowed to be touched, both to the dismay of Amoco, the public, and presumably some regulators. If the general principle of reducing benzene to its lowest practical level were followed, the cost would have been reduced and the emissions abated -- both by an order of magnitude. However, the law was so prescriptive that neither regulators nor the regulated were allowed to do the right thing.

Since 1994, things have only gotten worse. As an environmental professional, I see this in spades in environmental law today. Regulators simply will not confine themselves to telling the regulated *WHAT* they must accomplish, but *HOW* they must accomplish it. That is a recipe for disaster because no amount of planning can anticipate every scenario.

The bigger problem, according to Howard, is that accountability is emasculated. The regulator is not accountable for using common sense because the statute disallows it. The legislator is not accountable because he has delegated regulation to the executive branch. The result is a perfect storm: elected officials are unaccountable, regulatory executives are unaccountable, and the regulated spend wasteful amounts of money without addressing the actual problems. Just look at the complicated one-size-fits-all codes put out by OSHA, the EPA, the IRS, and every other agency that cost too much and accomplish too little.

Up to this point, I agree with Howard. However, in the closing chapter, he misses the larger issue. The reason accountability has been jettisoned is because the legislative branch has unconstitutionally granted legislative powers to the executive branch. This is a clear violation of the separation of powers. Legislators are given the enormous privilege and awesome responsibility of making law because they are the only branch of government elected by the people. The only responsibility and required duty granted by the Constitution to the executive branch is to execute and defend the laws passed by the legislature. This sacred obligation has been violated willy-nilly in both directions: not only has the executive branch usurped legislative powers, it also has refused to execute the will of the legislature. These are impeachable offenses, yet they are happening at all levels of government with barely a notice. As an example, consider the defense of traditional marriage (e.g., Proposition 8 in California and DOMA at the federal level). The point is not whether one agrees with the law -- bad law and bad legislators can be remedied by the people at election time -- the point is that respective executive branches are refusing to execute the will of the people by failing to execute or defend established law duly enacted by the people's representatives. This is a recipe for disaster, and the cake is just about baked.

Because Howard misses the forest for the trees, his final chapter "Releasing Ourselves" offers anemic and milquetoast "remedies." If only we would return to principles rather than prescription, Howard feels we would be safe. But this is tantamount to tautology: yes, the problem will be fixed once the problem is fixed; the larger issue is that there is no way under the current system to return to principles. The legislature has endowed the executive branch with prescription in lieu of principle; until they take it away, we shall continue to reap what we have sown. Remember that the legislative branch is the final constituted power. They alone have the power to abolish agencies and repeal laws -- from the IRS to the U.S. Constitution itself -- nothing is beyond their reach including the executive and judicial branches. Yet, the legislature has one master -- the people themselves. We ultimately bear the full blame of our fate befallen. Perhaps history will record 2010 as the beginning of a great awakening of the American people, or perhaps not. Time will tell.

The book is organized into four chapters: I. The Death of Common Sense; II. The Buck Never Stops; III. A Nation of Enemies; IV. Releasing Ourselves. Long a classic text, I recommend this book for many reasons, foremost among them, Howard's book and its contained examples remain a classic proof text and a cogent testimonial to an executive branch run amok.

Slack by Tom DeMarco/Review: J. Colannino

2011-02-18T10:25:00.000-06:00

Tom DeMarco wrote Slack in 2001. However, I have a ten-year rule on management books. If they're still around in ten years, then I read them. I formulated this rule after reading Blue Ocean Strategy which was mostly abject nonsense. Maybe I am already crotchety (is there a such thing as a young fogey?) but after more than 25 years of leading high performance teams I don't have much patience for most management consultants and their books. DeMarco is a bit different because he has practiced in real life what he has preached in his book.

Slack has something important to say, but first, the bad news. Although the book is short (220 pages) I often found it boring. The good news is that it is also interesting and insightful in some important places. And besides, having written a 630 page book on combustion modeling I am in a dicey position to complain about boring reads.

DeMarco starts out by describing an old puzzle you may remember if you are over 40: a square 2"x2"puzzle with 8 plastic tiles in a 3x3 grid with one space left over. The object was to order the tiles from 1 to 8 by sliding them around and interchanging tiles and spaces. DeMarco proposes a new "optimized" puzzle: 716/483/259. Great! If you like 716/483/259 then the puzzle is already in its final "optimized" configuration. The only problem is that there is no space left over to move the tiles around. Not much of a game, but think of the analogy with today's manufacturing model. All the air is squeezed out of the process. The minimal amount of effort is required to maintain 123/456/789. Everything is great, UNTIL you need to respond to changing market conditions, and then, you can't! There is no slack in the process. All unessential overhead has been cut. Folks are so busy doing their jobs and the jobs of one or two others that have been let go that they can't possibly do anything more.

As far as DeMarco is concerned, optimization is fine on the shop floor, but not with knowledge workers because thinking takes time and freedom, the very things that have been squeezed out of the process. No one is available to redirect the process. The best an organization can manage is some incremental improvement here or there. No breakthroughs can occur; just the same thing better, faster, and cheaper until better, faster, and cheaper can no longer compete.

My first chemical engineering professor actually worked in a buggy whip factory. How much better do you suppose their buggy whips became before they went broke? How much faster were they produced? How much cheaper did they become? Here is a link to a better, faster, cheaper buggy whip. Quite a bargain for under 13 dollars, especially when adjusted for inflation. So did a few better, faster, cheaper businesses survive? Not really. The company I reference started in 1973, and they do lots of other stuff besides buggy whips. Businesses only survive when they can adapt. Being best in class is important, but the ability to change or create the class is more important.

The book is organized into 33 short chapters in four parts. Part One introduces the concept of slack. Part Two: Lost, but Making Good Time illustrates a saying of mine: "When you're headed in the wrong direction, speed is not your ally." Part Three addresses change and growth, and Part Four speaks to risk and risk management.

DeMarco makes many good points; e.g., people are not fungible; transaction costs are almost always underestimated or ignored; invention requires resources; tactics without strategy is disastrous, etc. However, he also makes several blunders, almost all of which come from his errant view of anthropology and ultimately theology.

In Chapter 5, Managing Eve, DeMarco's worldview gets in the way. According to DeMarco, Eve made the right decision by breaking the rules rather than limiting her "growth as a person." I am no prude, but there are lots of experiences for which we are the poorer, not the better, and sensible policy is designed to limit bad consequences. Do organizations entertain destructive policies? Yes, but our job should be to reform the policy, not to do our own thing.

DeMarco also analogizes blind obedience to management policy as religion, but this is a poor analogy. The Christian religion is responsible for the hospital, the university, and science. Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Blind adherence to anything (including policy) is never a good idea, but that has much more to do with totalitarianism than religion.

Elsewhere (Chapter 28,Change Management) DeMarco decries the family as a poor model for business, especially during the changing times that we find ourselves in. But this is founded on an inadequate and misguided model of family as an authoritarian regime. Good family does have clear structure and authority. But that is not all it has. It also has apprenticeship, nurturing, guidance, training, and it prepares its junior members for succession to greater responsibilities. All in all, I think that is a very good model for business.

Yet and despite my disagreements, the book is a worthy read and a reasonable antidote to the blind dogma that poses for leadership in many organizations. One can only hope that those indicted are up for the challenge.

Operations with Continued Fractions and Square Roots/ J. Colannino

2011-02-08T08:51:00.005-06:00

Continued fractions represent a powerful and efficient method and codify an algorithm to generate the best rational approximations for any irrational number. For example, 355/113 is a remarkably accurate rational approximation to pi (and easy to remember: 113355, then split the 3s and invert). 2721/1001 is a good approximation for e. Likewise, 99/70 is the best rational approximation to the square root of two for any two digit denominator. (1393/985 is the best for a three digit denominator). Indeed, square roots are always expressible as periodic continued fractions. For example, sqrt(2) = 1+1/(2+1/(2+1/(2+1/(2... and simple continued fractions (those with 1 in the numerator exclusively like the one just shown) always reduce to the best rational approximations. In fact, square roots are always expressible in continued fraction form using unchanging numerators and denominators, e.g., sqrt(7) = 2+3/(4+3/(4+3/(4+.... I refer to these as facile continued fractions because they are easy to derive. They can always be converted to simple continued fractions; e.g., sqrt(7) = 2+1/(1+1/(1+1/(1+1/(4+... using simple operations. Since this blog doesn't permit the graphical features required, I've uploaded a document describing the procedure here. If you want to have fun deriving the best rational approximations, I've uploaded an Excel spreadsheet here. If you are interested in these kinds of things, my full LinkedIn profile has many more uploaded documents.

The Other Side of Innovation/Book Review, J. Colannino

2011-01-03T19:17:00.000-06:00

The Other Side of Innovation emphasizes R&D execution. Amen. After 20+ years as a senior executive in charge of R&D initiatives, I can affirm that good ideas are not the same as good R&D. Here, Govindarajan and Trimble tackle the oft overlooked piece of the puzzle -- execution. If your R&D is lackluster, the cause is almost certainly the execution structure of your organization -- specifically, a failure to differentiate between production and invention -- what Govindarajan and Trimble call the performance and innovation engines, respectively.

The performance engine is a finely oiled machine that doesn't tolerate a wrench in the works. Within the performance engine, incremental improvement might be tolerated, but breakthrough innovation will be fiercely resisted: the mission of the performance engine is to turn out reliable, repeatably performing product, not to have "creative" employees deviate from specifications. By contrast, the innovation engine is a kind of managed chaos requiring unique and one-off approaches. Such R&D inventions are unique and differ from what the current system has been optimized to produce. Even so, creativity in the R&D organization will get you inventions, but not innovations. For real innovation to occur, the invention must be assimilated and adopted by the performance engine. This is the creative tension that all innovative organizations must constructively maintain. How to do that? The authors insist that a hybrid team must be formed to mix the oil and vinegar. I am bit less exclusive in my thinking, but I certainly agree that it is one proven way to get there.

Besides an introduction and a conclusion, the book is divided into two parts. Part I: Build the Team, comprises three chapters: (1) Divide the Labor (2) Assemble the Dedicated Team (3) Manage the Partnership. Part II: Run a Disciplined Experiment, holds the remaining chapters: (4) Formalize the Experiment (5) Break Down the Hypothesis, and (6) Seek the Truth. The book tends toward the pedantic at times, but possesses real wisdom nonetheless.

Is that all there is to great innovation? No; much more could be said, and at the end of the day, innovation must be embraced as a person-centric enterprise. But I am convinced that "The Other Side of Innovation" is a good start. The organization that proceeds from its central framework will be ahead of those that do not because innovation requires good execution as well as good invention.

No, Virginia, There is no Santa Claus

2010-12-25T16:53:00.002-06:00

"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

"VIRGINIA O'HANLON.
"115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET."

VIRGINIA, your little friends are ~~wrong~~right. There is no Santa Claus. But there is truth. I, on the other hand, shall commit a series of logical fallacies to justify a lie in order to preserve my paper’s advertising revenue that spikes during the Christmas season. Let me begin with the ever-effective ad hominem fallacy and claim something about your friends for which I have gathered no evidence whatsoever: They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. [Of course, this is simply attacking the source rather than providing a legitimate argument. But it often works. Now to commit logical suicide by making use of something known as the self-destructing argument:] All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. [The reason that such an argument is self-destructing is because I, myself, am a mere man. If men’s intellects are “little” and “insect”-like, then I have disqualified myself from making any truth claims whatsoever, including the particular truth claim that Santa Claus lives.]

[Now to repeat the unsupported conjecture (repetition of a false or unsupported claim is an important device in propaganda):] Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. [I now continue with a false logical device known as the non-sequitur:] He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. [Whether any of the previous statements are true or false is actually immaterial because no argument has been proposed that connects the existence of Santa Claus to the existence of love, or generosity, etc.]

[Here is another non-sequitur:]Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! [And now to introduce the fallacy of the affirming the negative:] You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. [Lack of observation does not constitute a proof.]

[Now for a string of unsupported conjectures and non-sequiturs:] You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

[And another restatement of the unproved thesis:] No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. [And a final unsupported conjecture:] A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

[The moral of the story? Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.]

Handbook of Technology and Innovation Management/Review: J. Colannino

2010-10-18T07:41:00.002-05:00

I have been searching for many years for a suitable text with which to teach a course on technology and innovation management, and at last I have found it: The Handbook of Technology and Innovation Management, edited by Scott Shane. The book is a source book with each chapter written by an expert in the field; however, Shane's masterful editing coheres the book and makes it read as if it were written by a single author. Having written my own book and collaborated on several others, I know firsthand how difficult this is. I have worked in R&D since I was 20 years old, and how I wished I had this text when I began to manage technology and innovation development years later. The book would have saved me many hard knocks. Well, that was then and this is now. And despite thirty years of work in the field and having the privilege of leading global technology and innovation for a world class company, this work still taught me a few things.

The book is organized into 16 chapters subdivided into five parts. Part 1, The Evolution of Technology, Markets, and Industry, contains two chapters: 1. Technology and Industry Evolution, and 2. The Evolution of Markets. Part 2, The Development and Introduction of New Products, comprises three chapters: 3. Understanding Customer Needs, 4. Product Development as a Problem-Solving Process, and 5. Managing the 'Unmanageables' of Sustained Product Innovation. Part 3, The Management and Organization of Innovation, also holds three chapters: 6. Rival Interpretations of Balancing Exploration and Exploitation, 7. R&D project Selection and Portfolio Management, and 8. Managing the Innovative Performance of Technical Professionals. Part 4, Technology Strategy, contains four chapters: 9. The Economics of Strategy of Standards and Standardization, 10 Intellectual Property and Innovations, 11. Orchestrating Appropriability, and 12. Individual Collaborations, Strategic Alliances and Innovation. Part 5, Who Innovates?, encompasses the last four chapters: 13. Technology-Based Entrepreneurship, 14. Knowledge Spillover..., 15. The Financing of Innovation, and 16. The Contribution of Public Entities to Innovation and Technological Change.

The text is a very good introduction to the panoply of issues facing those who manage technology and innovation including very important areas such as how innovation diffuses in society (and how to influence that diffusion), how to develop robust products and discover unarticulated and unmet needs, how to manage the NPD portfolio and select among competing projects, marketing and technology strategy, and intellectual property protection. It is the very best book I have ever read on the subject and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Blue Ocean Strategy: Book Review/J. Colannino

2010-05-30T17:29:00.000-05:00

This book was initially written in 2005 and enjoyed success. This is my first opportunity to read it. Based on what I have observed, I think I will place a 5-year moratorium on reading any new book on management or business practice; it is much easier to separate the B.S. from the peanut butter that way. Management has been around as long as societies have been around as a cursory reading of Genesis will attest. Let us call management the world's second oldest profession, the first being, of course, agriculture. (I hope you knew that.) Since human nature does not appear to have changed, I think that management books should be read with particular suspicion, and in the case of this book, deservedly so.

The central them of the book is that one should create new markets (blue ocean) rather than slugging it out in existing markets (the red ocean). But most of the book is tautology. For example, Kim and Mauborgne argue that one should use a "strategy canvas" to assess the competitive landscape. The strategy canvas is a central tool in Blue Ocean. It comprises a categorical abscissa on which are listed subjective customer benefits and an ordinate that measures the degree of achievement for each category. The authors can call this an analytic; I believe that it is too non-quantitative to be exceptionally useful. But my main objection is that the categories themselves are nebulous, useless, or worse -- leading to an errant conclusion. For example, let us revisit the circus.

What categories should we place on the horizontal axis? Well, before Cirque du Soleil existed, we may have placed items like ticket price, entertainment value, number of acts, quality of acts, act variety (animal, flying trapese, clown...), etc. on our strategy canvas. Now scoring each of those, Ringling Bros. was the best game in town. The only problem was that customers didn't care about most of the items. The 3 different rings were distracting, the animals were smelly (or viewed as evidence of cruelty), the high priced performers were unknown to the average customer, etc. The only reason most adults went to the circus was to take their children. With that kind of strategy canvas, I would have been tempted to offer free school bus rides to kids as a major innovation. Cirque du Soleil transformed the circus to an event for adults with no animals, a vague but central storyline, a theater-like experience, ethereal music, and beauty and artistry that celebrated human beings in motion. When Kim and Mauborgne placed those items on the strategy canvas, then Cirque du Soleil became the clear winner. But the analysis was done post hoc. No one knew that such items should even be scored until the Cirque du Soleil strategy became successful. Using an outcome to inform the question is question begging at its purest.

Another objection I have is that the categories are open to manipulation. Anyone who thinks that they will be able to use a strategy canvas to convince a refractory management to change their ways will just find themselves in an argument over what belongs on the category axis. In the end, the strongest proponents -- the very ones steering the ship into the nighttime ice -- will be the ones deciding what categories should be scored. And surprise, the status quo will win and be more justified than ever in staying the course.

What I have learned over the years is that customer value is subjective and that innovation comes from visionaries (not the customer). What one needs for success is for visionaries that know their markets and customers and are cogent and capable to persuade management to do the right thing. And no book is going to create a persuasive visionary. Visionaries are born, not made. To paraphrase Robert Mitchum, one might as well go to school to learn how to be tall. To find persuasive visionaries requires excellence in talent selection, because they need to come from the outside. That fault lies with the refractory organization, not its internal visionaries. Steve Jobs would have been fired from Apple long ago if he weren't their CEO. In fact, he was fired even though he was their CEO. But Apple wasn't worth anything without him. Visionaries see the world a different way so it takes a superlative management team (or a desperate one) to embrace them.

Notwithstanding, the book finishes better than it starts with recommendations for how to navigate organizations to blue ocean in spite of themselves. To that end, Kim and Mauborgne have the following suggestions. Overcome the cognitive hurdle by exposing upper management to the pain of the customer through direct engagement. Mobilize a critical mass of resources by horsetrading with other leaders. Find the critical mass of managers ("kingpins") who will ally with you, and enlist their support early. Once you have enlisted support of key management, make measures visible to all ("fishbowl" management; I would call this aligning incentives.) As for executing the strategy, persuade downstream personnel using a "fair process" that openly engages employees, shows them why the new strategy is in their best interest, answers their questions, and resolves their fears.

These are contained in Chapters 7 and 8; and besides reading the Chapter 1 for context, these are the only chapters worth reading and the only reason I (barely) recommend the book.

Reinventing Corporate Growth, G. Slowinski; Reviewed by J. Colannino

2010-05-16T19:01:00.000-05:00

Honestly, I was unprepared for how good this book is. I wish I had read it five years ago when it was first published, and I wish it were published 20 years ago. That would have been much easier than learning the hard way, from experience.

We all know that firms grow in two ways -- organically, and by merger and acquisition (M&A). But we are all wrong. Firms grow also by alliance -- what Slowinski calls transformational growth or t-growth. The concept is as simple as it is overlooked: firms at the margins of your industry would benefit enormously by linking with your firm; and your firm would fare even better, because breakthrough innovation comes at the margins where "disciplines collide."

The book is organized into ten chapters. Chapter 1, The Transformational Growth Imperative shows why an alliance strategy is essential for growth in modern firms. Chapter 2, "Identifying the Organization's 'Wants'", begins Part 1 of the book: the Want, Find, Get, Manage (WFGM) framework.

Part 1 is developed through several more chapters: Chapter 3, "Finding the Technology the Firm Wants"; Chapter 4, "Getting the Technology: The Alliance Framework"; and Chapter 5, "Managing the On-Going Relationship". Chapter 6, "Working with the Venture Capital Community", begins Part 2 of the book, and is devoted to analyzing and inspecting the venture capital community (VCC). The VCC and its proper relationship to your firm is fleshed out in three more chapters: Chapter 7, "Building a Venture Capital Capability"; Chapter 8, "Outlicensing and the Fundamentals of Intellectual Asset Value Creation"; and Chapter 9, "Becoming the Partner of Choice". A "Conclusion" follows in Chapter 10.

But why should you work with VCs? Because they are plugged into the market space in exactly the opposite way you are: they are the early adopter of a technology that is more valuable to you than to them; they, unlike your firm, are adept at finding breakthrough technology; they have breakthrough technology but, unlike your firm, need a channel; you, unlike their firm, have a channel but need more breakthrough technology; and, they want to cash out precisely at the point you want to buy in.

I have spent the last 20 years of my life assisting in M&A valuations, developing and safeguarding intellectual property, and structuring alliances and ventures. Through both positive and (unfortunately) negative experiences, I can personally validate much of the wisdom contained in Slowinski's book. As Slowinski's states, "The failure mode begins when individuals inside the partner firm do not agree inside the firm and do not know that they disagree. (195)" "Complex tasks such as coordinating resources across corporate boundaries, integrating different skill sets between firms and resolving cultural differences are formidable barriers. (197)" Formidable yes, insurmountable, no. And Slowinski's book sets about articulating valuable solutions. For one thing, not all the important parties have been allowed to weigh in on the agreement. For another, hidden disagreement has to be actively hunted and exposed BEFORE approaching an alliance partner. Yes, I can already hear the objection: "But if I did that, the agreement might collapse." Perhaps... but only if the agreement never made much sense to begin with from one or more important perspectives. And wouldn't it be better to find that out earlier rather than later, behind closed doors, before approaching an important partner or losing credibility externally?

And speaking of intellectual property, why shouldn't you license some of your technology to your competitors? Well, because they'll use that technology to compete against you. Yes, fair enough. But perhaps they already are, and you aren't looking carefully enough to find it. If violations exist, a licensing agreement should be pretty easy to negotiate. But why license? Well, maybe you shouldn't. But if you did, you could avoid an expensive and unpredictable lawsuit, you would obtain an ongoing transfer of wealth from their bottom line to yours, and your competitor would handicap its own R&D efforts. Why? Because, as Slowinski states "Technology licensed in = capability driven out" (183). Part of the loss comes from from cost-cutting to pay for the royalty. Part of the loss comes from demotivation and demoralization of your competitor's R&D group.

If this is a different style of thinking than you have been exposed to, then you would do well to read this book; and if you already know all this, please write another. As good as this book is (and I think it is stellar), a single book in this area is too few.

Expert Political Judgment (Philip E. Tetlock)/Book Review: J. Colannino

2010-04-22T19:50:00.000-05:00

"Expert political judgment" -- it sounds like an oxymoron, but only because it is. Philip E. Tetlock's groundbreaking research shows that experts are no better than the rest of us when it comes to political prognostication. But then again, you probably had a sneaking hunch that that was so. You need rely on hunches no more. Tetlock is Professor of Leadership at the Haas Management of Organizations Group, U.C. Berkeley. A Yale graduate with his Ph.D. in Psychology, Expert Political Judgment is the result of his 20 year statistical study of nearly 300 impeccably credentialed political pundits responding to more than 80,000 questions in total. The results are sobering. In most cases political pundits did no better than dart throwing chimps in prediciting political futures. Of course, Tetlock did not actually hire dart throwing chimps -- he simulated their responses with the statistical average. If the computer was programmed to use more sophisticated statistical forecasting techniques (e.g., autoregressive distributed lag models), it beat the experts even more resoundingly.

Were the experts better at anything? Well, they were pretty good at making excuses. Here are a few: 1. I made the right mistake. 2. I'm not right yet, but you'll see. 3. I was almost right. 4. Your scoring system is flawed. 5. Your questions aren't real world. 6. I never said that. 7. Things happen. Of course, experts applied their excuses only when they got it wrong... er... I mean almost right... that is, about to be right, or right if you looked at it in the right way, or what would have been right if the question were asked properly, or right if you applied the right scoring system, or... well... that was a dumb question anyway, or....

Not only did experts get it wrong, but they were so wedded to their opinions that they failed to update their forecasts even in the face of building evidence to the contrary. And then a curious thing happened -- after they got it wrong and exhausted all their excuses, they forgot they were wrong in the first place. When Tetlock did follow-up questions at later dates, experts routinely misremembered their predictions. When the expert's models failed, they merely updated their models post hoc, giving them the comforting illusion that their expert judgment and simplified model of social behavior remained intact. Compare this with another very complex system -- predicting the weather. In this latter case, there is a very big difference in the predictive abilities of experts and lay persons. Meteorologists do not use over-simplified models like "red in the morning, sailor's warning." They use complex modeling, statistical forecasting, computer simulations, etc. When they are wrong, weathermen do not say, well, it almost rained; or, it just hasn't rained yet; or, it didn't rain, but predicting rain was the right mistake to make; or, there's something wrong with the rain guage; or, I didn't say it was going to rain; or, what kind of a question is that?

Political experts, unlike weathermen, live in an infinite variety of counterfactual worlds; or as Tetlock writes, "Counterfactual history becomes a convenient graveyard for burying embarrassing conditional forecasts." That is: sure, given x, y, and z, the former Soviet Union collapsed; but if z had not occurred, the former Soviet Union would have remained intact. Really? Considering the expert got it wrong in the first place, how could they possibly know the outcome in a hypothetical counterfactual world? At best, this is intellectual dishonesty. At worst, it is fraud.

But some experts did better than others. In particular, those who were less dogmatic and frequently updated their predictions in response to countervailing evidence (Tetlock's "foxes") did much better than the opposing camp (termed "hedgehogs"). The problem is that hedgehogs climb the ladder faster and have positions of greater prominence. My Machiavellian take? You might as well make dogmatic pronouncements because all the hedgehogs you work for aren't any better at predicting the future than you are -- they're just more sure of themselves. So, work on your self-confidence. It is apparently the only thing anyone pays any attention to.

The Black Swan by N. Taleb/Book Review: J. Colannino

2010-04-04T19:46:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I heard Vinod Kholsa speak at the ARPA-E conference in Washington D.C. He recommended this book, written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (NNT), so I read it. NNT is in some ways what I aspire to be -- a renaissance man. Three years my junior and born in Amioun, Lebanon he speaks fluent French, Arabic, and English. He has a reading knowledge of classical Greek, Latin, Aramaic, and Hebrew. NNT received his MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the U of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from the U of Paris, Dauphine, in Management Science. He reportedly made a personal fortune predicting the collapse of the financial markets and Fannie Mae. In fact, that prediction is in this book published in 2007, a year before the crisis. The Black Swan is Taleb's magnum opus -- at least so far.

Swans are white, by definition, until the first sighting of a black swan in Australia in 1697. The view was game changing and the definition of what a swan was had to be revised. By analogy, NNT defines black swans as rare, unanticipated, and game changing events; things like the laser, the Internet, and the personal computer.

Clearly an iconoclast, and I dare say angry man, NNT rails at the current state of academia and business, especially the statistical sciences as applied to economics and finance. He is angry because mistakes in finance and war destroy lives. One thing that NNT cannot brook is "epistemic arrogance" -- gasbags that bloviate about things that matter but that they only pretend or delude themselves into thinking that they understand. According to NNT, people become arrogant because arrogance grows faster than knowledge. Experts are the worst (most arrogant) and thus make suckers out of their clients/victims. If this language sounds extreme, you should read the book. I am toning it down. Taleb has to self-censor his own expletives with asterisks.

The Black Swan compares two hypothetical countries -- Mediocristan and Extremistan. In Mediocristan, all of the usual rules apply, including the normal distribution and derived statistics. In Extremistan, the bell curve is the "great intellectual fraud (GIF)." The problem, according to Taleb, is that we live in Extremistan, not Mediocristan. For example, market fluctuations of 20 standard deviations have arisen historically -- this is simply impossible in a world governed by the normal distribution. As a remedy for statistics based on the normal distribution, Taleb recommends Mandelbrot's fractal geometry; this does not give the precision of classical statistics, but it does give the best one can hope for in Extremistan -- a gray swan. A gray swan is a partially anticipated black swan. Black swans are hatched by nature, not created by man. The best one can do is maximize opportunities and conditions for hatching black swans.

Black Swans (game changing innovations) are accidents. They only seem predictable because of a post-hoc story that is irresistibly constructed to make sense out of the surprising. For example, there is no end of books about World War I and its cause. But consider this: if anyone really knew what caused World War I, it would have been prevented. One of the many things that really irritates NNT is that the experts who destructively lull the general public into believing financial markets are stable are never held accountable for the harm they do. That is, being perennially wrong has no consequence to their career.

I can draw many parallels in my own R&D career. Almost anything beyond incremental progress is serendipity. I agree with Taleb that the best one can do is to maximize opportunities for favorable outcomes. In my own experience this happened by moving incremental R&D to other groups, and maximizing the amount of breakthrough R&D we performed internally. In other words, I deliberately set about to maximize the opportunities for R&D by having more bites at the apple. The result was breakthrough research.

Part (or all) of NNT's pessimistic outlook seems to me to be conditioned by his worldview: that we are a chance result of grander forces. Hence, matters that count are random, unpredictable, and non-sensible; we merely invent post-hoc narratives as comfort food. Taleb is a pragmatist, and whether this is absolutely true or apparently true makes no difference to him. In everyday living, the end result and the proper actions to take are the same in both cases. Ironically, he seems to base his philosophy on this evolutionary paradigm, itself the ultimate example of the post-hoc narrative fallacy that he decries. While I don't share his worldview, I do think that he rightly shows that extreme events do not operate in a business-as-usual environment and that there is much money to be made by properly recognizing this difference.

The Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 1

2010-02-07T15:15:00.001-06:00

This is a profound and remarkably boring/pedantic work (as are most original philosophical tomes). Despite that, Aristotle still has relevance today and has influenced science, philosophy, and knowledge management (long before the latter was even a discipline). I have purchased both volumes of this work and am slogging through the first. I hope to be finished with the first 1200 pages in a couple of weeks and if I have the stomach I will crack open Volume 2.

I have long wanted to read Aristotle. Although I read ancient Greek, Aristotle is simply over my head, so I am hoping this English translation will get me through it all.... Oh, how I wish someone had written "The Portable Aristotle." But there is this. Too bad I already purchased seven pounds of Aristotle. (Yes, I weighed them.)

******20 Feb 2010******
I have now completed Volume 1, and I must say, I am flabbergasted. Contrary to university lore, everything I was taught about Aristotle was wrong. First, Aristotle's method was not purely deductive; he also made regular use of observation and induction. Not only did Aristotle make copious use of observation in many of his works (especially "History of Animals"), he was an astute observer. However, and at the risk of being classed as an iconoclast, nearly every conclusion Aristotle draws is abject nonsense. No doubt, he retarded science by millennia with his reliance on the four elements (earth, water, fire, and air) and their affectations (dry/moist, light/heavy, hot/cold) to explain all phenomena. When commenting on anything that was not directly observable he was wrong in virtually every conclusion he drew. A few examples from biology will make my point.

"Smooth chinned men are less inclined to baldness.... When men are afflicted with varicose veins they are less inclined to take on baldness; and if they be bald when they become thus afflicted, some get their hair again (p 823)."

"[W]e should reasonably expect baldness to come about this age upon those who have much semen.... [T]he front part goes bald because the brain is there, and man is the only animal to go bald because his brain is much the largest and the moistest. Women do not go bald because their nature is like that of children, both alike being incapable of producing seminal secretion. (p 1211)"

"Men go grey on the temples first, because the back of the head is empty of moisture owing to its containing no brain... (p 1212)"

"[H]air protected by hats or other coverings goes grey sooner (for the winds prevent decay and the protection keeps off the winds)... (p 1213)"

Or regarding menstruation...

"In most cases the menstrual discharge recurs for some time after conception has taken place, its duration being mostly thirty days in the case of a female and about forty days in the case of a male child.... After conception, and when the above-mentioned days are past, the discharge no longer takes its natural course but finds its way to the breasts and turns to milk. (p 913,914)"

Or again...

"Males have more teeth than females in the case of men, sheep, goats, and swine.... Those that have more teeth are longer lived as a rule; those with fewer teeth more thinly set are shorter-lived as a rule. (p 797)"

Nor are Aristotle's faux pas confined to natural science. He is dead wrong about cosmology, astrology, meteorology, and virtually every subject he considers. Aristotle reaches false and absurd conclusions so regularly and with such conviction that he should have classed arrogance as his fifth element. More surprisingly, he commits logical fallacies with near perfect regularity.

Still, I must recommend this volume because to read the author is his own words is absolutely eye-opening. I will never again look at Aristotle in the same way. His philosophy is deeply suspect and like Santa Claus there seems to be a large-scale conspiracy to keep his myth alive.

Well now... on to Volume 2."

Syntactic Structures (Chomsky)/ Book Review -- J. Colannino

2009-12-06T19:04:00.000-06:00

Syntax relates to the ordering of words; grammar goes deeper, examining relationships among sentence parts and making a normative pronouncement; semantics deals with meaning: Chomsky showed that it was possible to divorce grammar from semantics to the benefit of linguistics. He did this with a variety of examples, none more famous than "colorless green ideas sleep furiously." The sentence is clearly syntactical and grammatical but lacks any real meaning (Chomsky, 15). Contrastingly, I might add that a sentence such as "me wants on swing to play" (Hanegraaff, Apocalypse Code, 71) has meaning but is ungrammatical. Nowadays, this seems obvious, but it was "Syntactic Structures" that made this distinction plain. This seminal text was published during my birth year and I have always wanted to read it, but for a variety of reasons have not done so until now.
My research is actually interested in the opposite problem -- constructing semantics from structure for the purpose of semantic searching. For example "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe (Carroll, Jaberwocky)" is of course meaningless, yet the grammar still provides semantic clues. For example, it is clear that "brillig," "wabe," and "toves" are nouns, "gyre" and "gimble" are verbs, and "slithy" is an adjective, though they are words without meaning.

I suppose the obvious question now is "So what?". Well, divorcing grammar from semantics was actually a big deal -- one that lead to a great deal of progress in linguistics and grammar, and one that remains the dominant linguistic position of the day. Chomsky showed that grammars could be vastly simplified if they were reduced to a tripartite construction comprising 1. a phrase structure -- e.g., noun phrase-verb phrase [the man] [hit the ball], 2. transformational rules -- e.g., a rule to turn a statement into a question [Did] [the man] [hit the ball], and 3. morphophonemic transformations -- e.g., things like rules for changing tense -- [the man] [will] [hit the ball]. This allowed for grammars to be simplified and divorced from thorny questions about meaning. That is not to say that structure and meaning are divorced. Language is primarily about meaning; grammar functions as an aid. And as Pinker has shown (see my reviews) structure provides cues to meaning even at very elemental levels. But the converse -- that grammar requires semantics -- is what Chomsky demonstrated to be false, and I suppose the fact that the same meaning can be shared in languages with very different grammars is one proof of this.

I am nonetheless reluctant to recommend this book: those who are linguists will have already read it and those who are not will be uninterested. And, I think there are more modern works on grammar which are better suited for instruction. Notwithstanding, it remains a remarkable work, and at only 118 pages something of a marvel besides.

Makers and Takers (book review/J. Colannino)

2009-11-08T09:40:00.007-06:00

Communication is the giant part of knowledge management. Without communication, there is no corporate knowledge, no learning organization, and ultimately, no organization at all. Amazingly, those who ought to know better engage in actions that are destructive to both the organization and one's self. What actions am I referring to? The inability to disagree agreeably. Creative tension is vital, but one cannot cross the line to ad hominem attack. Ideas should be critiqued, not people. Yet, there is a huge ideological polarization today between neoconservatives and modern liberals that I have observed to shut down communication. When ideology trumps facts, we have a problem. Here is what I mean.

Compared to modern political liberals, it is apparent that conservatives are more selfish, greedier, lazier, less emotionally satisfied, and more politically ignorant; this is echoed in television news media and programming: in 2003, McIntosh et al examined 124 political characters in 47 popular films spanning five decades -- they found that liberal characters were portrayed as smarter, friendlier, prettier, and more noble. However, as Peter Schweizer shows, a dispassionate examination of actual scientific evidence shows exactly the opposite and by a wide margin. That is, conservatives are far more generous and give much more to charities for the needy. Additionally, conservatives work harder, are emotionally better-adjusted, and are much better informed regarding the political issues and general knowledge. But how would one REALLY know? Actually, liberals and conservatives say so themselves in extensive scientific survey data.

Well, perhaps liberals are just being more honest and self-critical. No. As a statistician myself, this is something I know a bit about. For example, we can check for consistency by rephrasing questions and interspersing them throughout the survey; we can make truth telling more palatable by keeping responses anonymous; and we can ask questions designed to ferret out duplicity (such as asking for strength of agreement to statements such as "I have never told a lie" -- which oddly enough is answered "false" if you are true and "true" if you are false). Finally, we can separate the wheat from the chaff using various statistical tests. In these ways, scientific survey methodology is a dependable and mature discipline.

Schweizer examines seven main areas in as many chapters: 1. The Mighty Me (selfishness); 2. Think Globally, Sit on Your Butt Locally (generosity); 3. Liberal$ and Money (envy and sloth); 4. The Whole Truth and Nothing But (honesty); 5. Anger Management (emotional disposition); 6. Mind Wars (knowledge); and, 7. Whine Country (complaint). The 258 page book also has an introduction, conclusion, notes, and an index. In all of these major categories liberals flunk resoundingly compared to conservatives.

As examples, consider the following. Should you always help a friend in need -- conservatives, 95% Y; progressives 79% Y. Did you do volunteer work last year -- conservatives, 44% Y; liberals 39% Y. Do you aspire to be rich -- liberals, 61% Y; conservatives, 51% Y. People can get ahead by working hard -- conservatives, 75% Y; liberals 14% Y. It is morally wrong to cheat on your taxes -- conservatives, 86% Y; liberals, 68% Y. I have been angry with someone in the last five days -- liberal, 27% Y; conservative, 14%. Knowledge: e.g., Is Al Gore Jewish (he is not); liberals 12% Y; conservatives, 1% Y (similar trends hold for general education and economic knowledge). Spiritual beliefs: I believe in ghosts -- liberals, 42% Y; conservatives, 25% Y; we can communicate with the dead -- liberals, 43% Y; conservatives, 29% Y; God is important in my life -- conservatives, 70% Y; liberals, 40% Y. Outlook: Life is exciting -- conservatives, 54% Y, liberals, 43% Y; I am very happy -- conservatives, 45% Y, liberals, 30% Y; I love my job -- conservatives, 53% Y; liberals, 41% Y.

Well, that is all very interesting, but the question remains, Why? Schweizer answers that liberals are essentially self-absorbed. They are all about feeling. Objective reality is secondary. "Caring" for the needy is good enough -- no need to actually help the needy. Whining about injustice is good enough, no need to actually do something about injustice. Subjective "knowing" is sufficient, no need to objectively check facts. God becomes "God to me..." truth becomes "truth to me..." reality becomes "reality to me..."

By now, the reader may be conjuring all sorts of anecdotal evidence that leads in the opposite direction. Let me help. Paul Newman was unabashedly liberal and very generous in his charitable giving. In fact, his foundation continues to give to the needy and disadvantaged, even after his death (over $250 million, cumulative to date). During his lifetime, he made no show of his charity; in contrast to his very public performances, here he practiced a quiet humility . He was clearly an intelligent man. Moreover, his profession, acting, is one that requires keen intelligence to do well because one must assume the role of the other, as sociologists say. Indeed, one can think of many actors and entertainers who are clearly liberal in their thinking and above average intelligence. In fact, there are lots of things that are true on average and false in particular.

Notwithstanding, ON AVERAGE, conservatives embrace many more of the qualities that we all adore. If conservatives are smarter and kinder in aggregate, it is obviously impossible that media characterizations (themselves, generalizations) of the boorish conservative ignoramus can be true -- it seems sad that one must resort to scientific data to make such a case. That is why liberals and conservatives alike should read this book.

Book Review: Orbiting the Giant Hairball/J. Colannino

2009-10-31T14:15:00.002-05:00

Gordon MacKenzie is an artist turned manager who worked at Hallmark for thirty years. His book gives an insider's look at how creativity can be nurtured and expressed even in the confines of corporate structure. As someone who has successfully been fighting this battle for more than 20 years, I like what Gordon has to say. According to MacKenzie...

The giant hairball is the corporate system of rules and regulations. A hairball starts when two hairs get together, then three, then, one-day, a hairball. But hairballs aren't all bad. There's safety in the hairball. It can be a nurturing place where structure provides guidance and order for necessary corporate functions. But then there's creativity -- that most unstructured and vital part of sustaining an organization. What to do about that? One could go rogue, upset the applecart, make a big mess, and ultimately cheese enough people off to doom your correctives to failure; or... YOU CAN ORBIT THE HAIRBALL!

Orbiting the hairball is the process of finding a creative way to do the necessary things required for you and your company to succeed. The hairball has lots of entanglements and cannot be furiously fought. What should be fought, however, are the unintended consequences of generally good rules and regulations. Here, one must learn how to find a way to do the right thing in a way that can be understood by those in the hairball.

Here are two instructive quotes:

"...the Anal Retentives, as Trustees of the Hairball, are loath to commit resources or genuine moral support to the amorphous concept of creativity. They lust for the fruits of creativity (especially when they see the very measurable results of a successful competitor's creative efforts) but mistrust the act of creativity, which remains invisible and elusive." p 197

"...your challenge is to help that bureaucrat discover a means, harmonious with the system, to meet your need." p 139

[italics, punctuation and capitalization in original]

For example, MacKenzie tells the story of a creative environment he structured. He had to break down some barriers to use things other than the common cubicle and drab office fare -- and he did. However, one sticking point was the waste basket -- MacKenzie had bought many milk cans to function as waste receptacles. But he was now having a conflict because milk cans were not on the list of approved furniture. Standing in front of the bureaucrat, he was about to go ballistic. Just then his co-worker asked if the milk cans could be classified as corporate art. Satisfied, the bureaucrat went happily on her way. What happened?

It turns out that most bureaucrats are not evil demons -- they are custodians of the corporation performing an important fiduciary duty. It's not personal, it is their job. You can entangle yourself in the hairball (and lose or create so much ill will your victory will be hollow) or you can choose to orbit the hairball, using some of your creativity to help everyone get what they need -- fiduciary discipline and creative production.

If you are frustrated with an organization that says they reward creativity but whose policies retard it (and that's all of them to a greater or lesser extent), you should read this book. You'll take a few points off your blood pressure and find out that, in the end, nearly everyone wants to do the right thing.

The Balanced Scorecard

2009-10-10T09:29:00.008-05:00

Beginning today, I am posting all my book reviews to this website as well as my LinkedIn site. This blog will allow others to post their comments -- something the LinkedIn book review site does not allow. If you would like to view my profile on LinkedIn, please click here. If you would like to see my previous book reviews (all 70+ of them) you will need to click the "View Full Profile" button on LinkedIn.

Kaplan and Norton's Balanced Scorecard has become something of an icon in the business literature. Originally published in 1996 it has seen many reprintings. The fact that the title is still available is a major testament to the quality of the work. The basic thesis of the book is this: metrics for Financial, Customer, and Internal Business Processes, along with metrics for Learning and Growth are all vital to corporate growth and must be considered in tandem. If we wish to score financial health through some metric -- say return on net assets employed (RONAE) -- we should not do so by shipping shoddy products early. In other words, there is a right way and a wrong way to achieve financial metrics. The wrong way increases a financial metric at the expense of another dimension of corporate health. Only by scoring all metrics simultaneously, can we get a true picture of the enterprise. I remember the main four metric areas with the acronym FACILE (Financial And Customer, Internal business process, LEarning and growth). Well, it works for me.

Because actual measures are always lagging indicators, we need to construct some hypothesized model using leading inputs for each of the four balanced scorecard dimensions. For example, in the Customer dimension we can measure customer satisfaction by means of a survey. However, we won't be able to get that result until sometime after the sale and we can't understand from that metric why a customer chose not to use our product or service in the first place. Therefore, customer satisfaction is a lagging indicator. One leading indicator might be the waiting time for the customer to talk to a sales representative or cycle time to respond to a customer inquiry. Tacit in this leading indicator is an assumption that faster service means higher customer satisfaction. However, if orders are filled quickly but inaccurately, faster service will ultimately achieve nothing. So, we add order fulfillment accuracy to our metrics. We proceed in this fashion so as to add a mix of leading (input) and lagging (output) metrics. But even this is not enough.

We can make all our customers very satisfied by efficiently delivering product below cost. But profit will suffer horrendously. So, we must consider financial metrics in tandem with customer metrics; that is, we must balance the scorecard. Kaplan and Norton contend (and I agree) that balancing scores across all four dimensions is needed to maintain a profitable company -- one that is growing to satisfy customer needs (and add value to society, by my way of thinking).

But what if our model is wrong? What if we choose the wrong leading indicators? Because we are not omniscient (or even prescient in many cases) we must continually validate our model by seeing if inputs are actually correlating with outputs; and in the case that they correlate, we must assure that they cause. There is a whole science of statistical model building and validation (something I have studied and practice extensively) that can help here, but organizations can puzzle this out if they actually take the time to look at the data. While we're here, I should say that the authors do not use the terms model or validation though they do describe the concepts in different words. I suppose my process control experience is showing here; but we do have a process -- the process of making money by providing value to society -- and we are trying to control it. The validation step fine-tunes the process. Here, and in other writings, Kaplan refers to this concept of continual fine tuning as double-loop learning. The first loop is the proposed input-output model and the second loop is the man-in-the-loop learning activity which reconfigures the model to match reality. Reality includes changing social conditions, new features of the competitive landscape, etc.

If we have arrived at this point, all should be well, presuming that the model is explicit and coded appropriately into balanced scorecard (BSc) metrics; this cannot be taken for granted. Kaplan and Norton are very explicit here: the BSc must be driven from the top down (CEO level) because success requires enterprise-wide buy-in. And this process is a continual one. The authors devote several chapters and an appendix to actually doing this.

In sum, and considering the many management books I have read, this is clearly the best practical guide for management toward achieving sustained profit in the marketplace. It is consistent with the proper role of profit in society and the value-added nature of capitalistic enterprise. I strongly recommend the work -- even after more than a decade, the book continues to deliver.

Ten Steps to a Learning Organizaiton/ Steps 6-10 Summary/J. Colannino

2009-07-12T16:29:00.005-05:00

In 2007 I wrote a summary of Kline and Saunders "Ten Steps to a Learning Organization," Steps 2-5. In the meantime, I had already submitted my Master's Thesis and graduated with and M.S. in Knowledge Management. However, recently Tori left a comment and asked if I would complete the series. Well, then... okay.

I have always said that the glory is not in the dreaming but in the doing. The dreaming is necessary, of course, but not sufficient. Steps 6 - 10 are about the doing. The authors begin:

"Imagine an organization in which everyone from top to bottom is either actually or potentially learning for the improvement of the organization.... Just in Time learning has become standard." "Who wouldn't want a learning organization? The answer is: all of us. [O]ne way or another we all tend to undermine the prospects for a Learning Organization."

With that surprising revelation, Kline and Saunders go on to argue that our misapprehension of learning as a scarce commodity is the root problem that keeps us from enabling the learning organization. Learning is not a scarce commodity. People are capable of unlimited learning, and talent is a resource in everyone. "We could learn all the time, if we were not prevented by one [of three] barriers[:]"

the logical barrier -- missing explanations derail our understanding or else we fail to see the relevance of new information and we quit trying to understand.
the ethical barrier -- if one feels an "important principle" is being violated, one's ability to learn is compromised.
the feeling barrier -- we fail to learn because we fear our new knowledge

At least, that's what the author's assert, albeit without any supporting evidence. I must say, I disagree. First of all, people do not have an infinite capacity to learn -- for one thing, our life spans are finite, for another we do not learn and grow without error. Moreover, the "barriers" to learning are really just tautologies. Being prevented from learning is the same thing as not learning. Being enabled to learn is the same thing as learning -- at least if Kline and Saunders were consistent -- because the only thing they believe prevents us from learning are barriers to learning. This is just circular reasoning.

Notwithstanding, while I do not agree with the authors in absolute, I do think they are on to something. Learning capacity may not be infinite, but it is much larger than many give it credit for. And there is great joy in learning for many, if not all. Learning is empowering. So things like workplace training, tuition reimbursement, encouraging and rewarding personal mastery, etc. can be effective -- or not. If the focus is training, the program is likely to be ineffective. If the focus is learning then results are much better. That is, the outcome, not the process, is the important thing. Because people are different, one size does not fit all.

The theory of multiple intelligences states that there are different varieties of intelligence and they vary with each person. The seven major groups are

Linguistic: sensitivity to meaning and syntax
Logical/Mathematical: fluency with symbolics and logic
Visual/Spatial: perception in 3D
Kinesthetic: preference for hands on learning
Musical: recognition of rhythm, melody, and harmony
Interpersonal: ability to sympathize, empathize, and communicate
Intrapersonal: ability to reflect and contemplate

Kline and Saunders then go on to describe a learning leader model where empathetic and cross-disciplined trainers are taught and then go on to share their knowledge in team environments. This is perhaps a bit formulaic, but overall, not a bad approach to leverage and disseminate learning.

Step 7 is to "map out the vision." That is, the big picture must be articulated, genuinely believed, and shared by the bulk of the organization including top management: they must walk the walk, not just talk the talk. Although incentives should be aligned, when push comes to shove, self-interest that is not aligned with organizational goals is likened to "organizational cancer" -- a part of the organization growing or operating uncontrollably at the expense of the whole. The cancer must be cured or removed.

Step 8 is "bring the vision to life." In particular, the organization must communicate in a way most can understand. The most neglected intelligence according to the chapter is kinesthetic. Many people learn by doing by physical involvement with the work. This is contrasted with traditional "book learning." Book learning has its place and is important, but should not be overemphasized to the point of impeding the growth of knowledge within a large section of the workforce.

Step 9 is "connect the systems." Here Kline and Saunders talk about techniques such as "mind mapping" and "kinesthetic modeling." But the basic idea is to get people to see the organization as a whole and understand how their learning and actions integrate with other parts of the body. This understanding will allow informal but powerful links to supplement and improve the dissemination of knowledge throughout the organization.

Step 10 is "get the show on the road." This, ultimately, is the act of getting on with things. No plan is ever perfect, and an organization must take its first steps despite that fact. In Step 10 Kline and Saunders describe activities that can help, such as a shared metaphor. Their preference is a dramatic metaphor whereby the employees (actors) all understand their roles and the importance of perfecting their craft. Managers are really directors, taking individual talents and focusing them in a harmonious way. Everyone understands that the show must go on.

Official Google Research Blog: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data

2009-05-04T19:23:00.001-05:00

See this blog for an interesting perspective on data vs. models thereof.

J. Colannino/Master's Thesis: Enabling Semantic Search via SIPs

2009-04-26T13:49:00.006-05:00

My Master's Thesis regarding enabling semantic search using SIPs is available by clicking on the title above. SIPs are statistically improbable phrases and my studies show that they result in ten times less information overload than keyword searching.

The presentation slides are here.

J. Colannino/My Amygdala Made Me Do It!

2007-09-18T22:59:00.000-05:00

This week our class viewed a video about emotional intelligence and how to harness our emotions for good rather than ill. We took a test to assess our emotional intelligence (EI). I learned some things and, for the most part, I agreed with nearly all that I heard. But what’s the fun in agreeing? So I’d like to focus (perhaps unfairly) on some pseudo-intellectualism that has been popular for the last hundred years or so, and which I heard in passing in both the video and the answer key to the EI quiz. But first, allow me to digress to consider amygdalas and almonds.

Amygdala means “almond” in Latin; it is the almond-shaped gland in the brain that is thought to be the “seat of emotion.” Some have called it our “lizard brain” – the “primitive” part of our “meat computer” that is very close the brain stem and which, in an evolutionary paradigm, evolved very early on for Homo sapiens. In contrast, and according to the same paradigm, our neo-cortex (the “seat of rationality”) supposedly developed much later in evolutionary time. Thus, we are conflicted creatures – our amygdala and neo-cortex at war in our heads.

The video took the class back in time to “the beginning” … Charles Darwin, who (we learned) finally gave an explanation for why emotions exist: they are an evolutionary trick to enhance our survival: our sexual urges, our base instincts – they are the near literal-fruits of the almond in our attic; our neo-cortex tries to keep a lid on things, but our amygdala has a hair-emotional-trigger.

I beg to differ.

First of all, there is nothing primitive about emotion or advanced about rational thought, nor is there a shred of evidence that we ever had one without the other; love is arguably the most noble, uniquely human, and advanced quality of all despite being an emotion.

Second, emotion has been the subject of serious inquiry for millennia; Darwin was hardly “the beginning.” The ancient Greeks considered the matter in detail. Humankind’s most ancient mythology, meta-narratives, and religious scripture are full of emotion, explanation, and insight. Christianity, also articulated genuine explanations for emotions (creation by a loving God), counseled the need to control them (fall narrative), and offered tangible and intangible benefits for doing so (redemption narrative). And that, in a nutshell, is my problem with the evolutionary explanation: it is… well … too religious. Going back to “the beginning,” Darwin postulated that from some “warm little pond” the primordial ooze became self-replicating (creation story); from agar to animal to ape we struggled for existence (fall narrative) until finally and fatefully – we became women and men. Now, enlightened by evolutionary theory, we can finally live up to our hope and promise as a species if only we can learn our evolutionary lessons (redemption narrative).

But what has evolutionary psychology added to our understanding? What explanatory power does the evolutionary meta-narrative have? Why do we hate? We became hateful because it increased our chances for survival. Then why do we love? We became loving because it increased our chances for survival. Likewise, we became selfish; we became altruistic. We became self-centered; we became social. We can “explain it all” – even mutually contradictory things – via the evolutionary meta-narrative. At core, this is neo-religious, mystic, and certainly irrational. Outright contradictions are not only tolerated but embraced. There is a word for this: nonsense.

We would be wise not to retread this path. Historically, the embrace of contradiction resulted in the complete stultification of the scientific method for centuries. In place of logic’s either/or decision tree, Eastern religions substituted “both/and” contradiction. Despite the fact that “Arabic” numbers originated in the Indian subcontinent, they were virtually useless for developing science in a “both/and” Hindu worldview. The numbers migrated through Arabia before reaching Western lands, but the religious fatalism of Islam stunted any exploration of the universe through them, despite journeying through the land of the greatest astronomers of the world. It wasn’t until the 16^th century that the scientific method finally exploded in Western lands. Historians generally regard the advent of the Reformation in the 15^th century (and the Judeo-Christian tradition in general) as seminal for the development of science. These traditions expected (actually, demanded) a rational and understandable universe as the product of a rational and loving God. That is why I am baffled to see such discredited religious concepts reappearing long after history has shown them to be the enemy of both science and the university.

Even our text book appears to prefer Eastern mysticism and first century Gnosticism to Western tradition. It is one thing to abandon a pure religion for science; it is quite another to abandon science for a discredited religion. For example, our text offers a bizarrely novel knowledge-management structure in its explanation of the knowledge-value chain: data... knowledge... understanding... wisdom... enlightenment. (This is different than the traditional hierarchy: data... information... knowledge [... wisdom], the latter being left out as often as it is left in. The traditional view is that data are bare facts, information is organized data, and knowledge is information systematized and applied to a purpose.)

Historically, wisdom is knowledge plus a moral dimension per the wisdom literature of many ancient cultures. Knowledge tells one how to go to war; wisdom tells one whether he should. This normative distinction can be included in a knowledge framework, but just as often, it is relegated to “ethics” and considered separately. (This is why wisdom is often not included in a traditional knowledge-management hierarchy.) I have no problem with either approach.

On the other hand, I do have a problem with cramming “understanding” and “enlightenment” into an organizational scheme for codifying objective reality. First of all, understanding and knowing are synomous; to rank one above another is epistemological nonsense. Moreover, the idea that knowledge or gnosis will lead to some form of enlightened existence is a foreign import; it resulted from the imposition of Eastern mysticism on fledgling Christianity in the first century A.D. The concept that gnosis would lead to enlightenment is thus pseudo-scientific. It is certainly antithetical to any fact-based approach. Likewise, evolution with its both/and tolerance of mutual exclusives is nothing more than neo-mysticism (or Western mysticism if the reader will allow me to coin a phrase).

Well, perhaps this is just an emotional outburst. Or perhaps I am completely wrong. If that were true, I could hardly be blamed, being that I am (as necessarily follows) rearranged pond scum. What can one expect from such a fellow? My amygdala made me do it.

J. Colannino: Transformation of the Library and Information Profession – Some Suggestions

2007-07-17T21:42:00.000-05:00

Abstract

The library has proven to be a strong and beneficial influence in balancing public and private information needs and rights. However, it is facing competitive pressures and internal turmoil as never before. It must be transformed. Free market principles including the introduction of felt competitive pressure would help to put the library on the right track. A study in free markets would greatly benefit knowledge and information professionals, allow them to properly weigh the pros and cons of central planning and distributed information, and help to shape proper library policy.

Keywords:

public library, relevance, free market, competition, capitalism, knowledge workers,

information professionals

Introduction

The move toward the knowledge economy, the advances in information and communication technologies, and the advent of the Web and Internet have created challenges and opportunities for the library and information profession.[1] Our class assignment was to “write a paper discussing the challenges facing the library and information profession” and “to suggest ways in which information professionals can be trained to take advantage of the new opportunities presented to them.” Specifically we were to include “recommendations on how and what educational institutions must and should do to equip the new generation of information and knowledge management professionals with the survival skills and competencies they need.”

Challenges facing the Library

The assignment listed the following specific challenges (the list was not intended to be complete). The author has grouped them into the four categories shown below.

· Information Management: e.g., reliability of electronic resources, content management, licensing issues.

· Patron concerns: e.g., information overload, privacy and security.

· Employee/employer issues: e.g., an aging workforce, knowledge loss.

· Competitive pressures: e.g., competition from electronic publishing, globalization, and outsourcing.

We shall consider each category in turn.

Information Management

To be useful, information must be available, accurate, and reliable.[2] Of the plethora of available sources for electronic resources, those in the library are rated as reliable[3]. Additionally, the public library sets the standard for content management of archival sources – indeed, the profession is dedicated to it.[4] Libraries also have a longstanding historical concern for licensing issues and have done a very good job leading the debate and balancing public access with intellectual property rights.[5]

This is not to say that all licensing issues have been completely resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. Fees for journals have continually risen[6] and many public libraries have been forced to be judicious in the number of journal titles that they make available in an effort to reduce operating costs. Since the public library relies on taxpayer funding, its budgets are generally set in ways that are beyond the library’s control and that do not necessarily reflect library needs. On the plus side, the library continually addresses these needs with legislators, and it is well-represented in this regard.[7]

Patron Concerns

Privacy and security for patrons are two concerns that the library is keen to protect.[8] There have been abuses in the past. For example, the McCarthyism[9] of the 1950s directly involved secret monitoring of reading materials at libraries.[10] As this was prior to the Miranda Act,[11] many of the accused did not have access to attorneys[12] and were forced to defend themselves. Likewise, the Patriot Act allows secret monitoring of reading materials.[13] Though these issues are beyond the library’s immediate influence, many librarians, information professionals, and library organizations have protested such privacy intrusions.[14]

Employee/Employer Issues

The library is prone to pressures that are familiar to many knowledge workers. Due to a declining birthrate,[15] First World countries employ a workforce whose average age is increasing.[*] This will put pressures on libraries (and other knowledge professions) to delay the retirement of experienced personnel; however, such effects are complex.[16] Enticement of a limited pool of skilled workers and retention of experienced personnel could act to inflate wages because competition for fewer new employees will drive starting wages higher; older employees tend to draw higher salaries, so retaining proportionally more of them will also cost libraries more. Thus, an already money-tight public library system could be strained further. A different problem could arise if the library does not have the wherewithal to offer competitive salaries. In such a case, young employees could exit the profession or refuse to enter it in the first place. Subsequently, the library could experience knowledge loss as older employees retire and insufficient new employees remain or fail to be attracted.

Unlike many information professions, the library is often not a happy workplace; recent surveys have shown many library employees to be disgruntled and the phenomenon is relatively widespread. [17]^,[18] Anecdotally, in our classroom, virtually everyone working in a public library has shared stories of frustration with library management; in other professions knowledge workers have higher job satisfaction.[19]

Competitive Pressures

New competitors have entered the information market: electronic publishing is both a competitor and a cost drain – a competitor, as it offers its wares independent of the library, and a cost drain as electronic library resources increase in price. Globalization of information via electronic media also challenges library and information professionals by making outsourcing easier.

I have argued elsewhere that library woes have been enabled by an insulation from competitive pressure.[20] Since libraries are publicly funded they do not go out of business when their service is poor or as their relevance wanes. Except in the rare case that libraries are de-funded,[21] they continue to exist regardless of their effectiveness or efficiency.

What Needs Improvement?

As we have shown, the library performs some activities very well. Libraries do an excellent job of providing accurate information in a variety of media without charge to patrons. This is the library’s main mission and some safeguards exist to keep things that way, including a high public expectation for information availability, an employee base dedicated and trained in information management, and the fact that information management is an area of continuing research for information professionals in the library sciences.

Additionally, library professionals continue to be strong advocates for public privacy. Although many privacy matters are a matter of law and beyond the library’s direct control, it is also safe to say that where the library can influence public policy, it has made strong attempts to do so in favor of the privacy needs of its patrons. This is not to say that no more needs to be done to strengthen privacy and security concerns, but rather, that most library professionals are sufficiently alert and attentive to this need.

In contrast, employee/employer and provider/patron issues represent two opportunities for the library to improve. Before considering some practical remedies, the author digresses to briefly explore library history and how the library came to its weakness in these areas.

How we got from there to here

Archived collections date back five millennia at least[22]. Although libraries existed before the founding of the republic, the current form – a multi-branched institution with free borrowing privileges – began to flourish in the United States during the nineteenth century.[23] This form of the library coincided with the populist movement which sought to mandate free education to all[24] and to increase the influence of non-secular sources of education. Had library funding remained private there may have been fewer libraries and less public access. Supporting the library with taxes, as opposed to private charity, probably increased the number of libraries and the timeliness of their construction. However, and ironically, it also acted to insulate the library from its mainstream patronage as funding was diffused from patrons in particular to the public at large. Shifting from private to public funding politicized the library[25] and led to decreased efficiencies because publicly-funded charities are less effective at executing their mission than private ones.[26]

Practical Remedies

As the author has already argued, insulation from competitive pressure accounts for much of the existing dysfunction in the library. Any practical remedy would need to be cognizant of this component. Along this line, there are several controversial possibilities.

1. Develop clear benchmarks for walk-in traffic, book circulation, patron satisfaction, and other measures of relevance and utilization, and tie some portion of management salaries and library funding to these benchmarks. In such a system, some portion of library funds is pooled and individual branches are forced to compete for them based on the degree to which the branch serves the public. The key is that the measures must be directly tied to user satisfaction and usage measures; they must not be arbitrary or designed to feign importance for political purposes.

2. Include performance-based salary components for senior management; such components should tie to clear and public metrics of library performance.

3. Include 360 reviews for all employees and base some portion of salary increases on them. A 360 review means that colleagues and subordinates (i.e., everyone who has exposure to the reviewed employee) is able to give anonymous feedback which then comprises an important salary component.

4. Audit public libraries according to published criteria made known well in advance and discipline or terminate library underperforming management.

5. Give individual library managers greater autonomy to make real improvements. Such a policy would allow for the timely diagnosis of problems and implementation of corrective measures. It would remove excuses and make visible distinctions between superior and inferior library managers.

6. Permit the closure of underperforming public libraries and distribution of their collections to better run branches. In the extreme case, allow the de-funding of library systems and sell their assets to the highest bidder for those that prove refractory to improvement. A real threat of extinction is a necessary and important motivator for positive change.

Consideration of Educational Topics for Information Professionals

As a final topic, students were asked to provide recommendations for educational topics that would benefit information professionals. Others have studied this topic in detail.[27] This brief paper cannot examine the topic in depth. Rather, the author seeks to make an incremental recommendation to existing KM curricula, which by now are reasonably well developed.[†] The author’s topical recommendation is a one-semester course comparing and contrasting information exchange in free-market and centrally-planned economies. Capitalism is a socially superior method for communicating market information, distributing goods, and benefiting society. This is true by nearly any economic or market measurement including gross domestic product, per capita income, or disposable income.[28] The study of pricing structure, competition, and collocation of worldwide intelligence in free-market structures would enhance the education for knowledge and information professionals.[29] To make a case for this coursework and to illustrate the enormous information communicated in the free-market price alone, the author digresses to consider Leonard Read’s classical treatise: I, Pencil,[30] retold below.

How Capitalism Motivates, Generates, and Collocates Knowledge

No one knows how to make a pencil. Pencil manufacture requires a wealth of knowledge[31] not resident in any single human being. Beginning with the eraser, [32] most today are made from synthetic elastomers, for example, polyvinyl.[33] To fabricate erasers (known as plugs[34] in the industry) requires a specialized understanding of reactor engineering and chemical kinetics, polymer science, and manufacturing technology. The final form is extruded,[35] colored, shaped and cut to precise specifications. The eraser is fastened on to a wooden base by means of a metal strip known as a ferrule. To generate the metal from the ore requires detailed knowledge in the mining, manufacturing, and metallurgy to form the alloy. This requires controlled chemistry and allows for suitable ductility, corrosion resistance, and other important material properties. Special equipment creates the ferrule, while other equipment places the ferrule and crimps it in place. The body of the pencil is wood. It requires planting, growing, harvesting, and grading; i.e., an understanding of forest biology, dendrology, and timber management. The raw wood must be dried, formed into shape, and grooved to accept the pencil lead. The pencil lead[36] itself is a mixture of graphite and clay controlled to precise properties for hardness and writing properties. Finally, the entire pencil must be painted, stamped, boxed, and shipped.

We have not even begun to consider other subtleties including colored pencils, mechanical pencils, and the complex daily market dynamics, or the requirements in fuel science, truck and rail manufacture, etc. in order to deliver the pencil to its final destination. Truly, no one knows how to make a pencil and deliver it to market. Yet here we have them, a triumph of modern technology and available for a little more than five cents a piece.[37]

How is it possible that scores of manufacturers and producers intimately communicate in order to make a pencil? How does the metal supplier know that it should sell its raw materials for use as pencil ferrules? How does the timber manufacturer know that it should direct its product to make a pencil rather than a floor? How does the chemical manufacturer know that its vinyl belongs in a pencil eraser rather than PVC pipe? How does the graphite producer know when to sell its product to a pencil company or a tire company? How can pencils be produced so cheaply and how can such markets out-compete centralized economies where experts allocate resources?

In a free market, all of this information is codified in the price. The seller aims to sell his wares at the highest possible price, the buyer aims to buy his raw materials at the lowest possible cost. The seller need not know the final destination of his goods. All he knows is that buyers with the greatest need pay the highest price. Once ferrule manufacturers have enough material, they are no longer willing to pay for more and the seller adjusts his inventory to serve other needs. In this way, each entity in the supply chain applies its formidable expertise over its small market segment to create a highly robust system of knowledge sharing. Millions of parallel computations are done every moment. So many, in fact, that despite supercomputer models of free markets, brokerage houses and governments cannot predict human-generated stock market cycles and market behavior. Although markets are not perfectly free or perfectly optimized, they are vastly superior to competing systems.[38] The communication of information and the enabling of market decisions based on managing such knowledge in real time should be of great interest to knowledge professionals.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The public library is declining in relevance and faces competitive pressures as never before. It must be transformed. Free market principles including the reintroduction of felt competitive pressure would help to put the library on the right track. A study in free markets would greatly benefit knowledge and information professionals, allow them to properly weigh the pros and cons of central planning and distributed information, and help to shape proper library policy in the future.

References

[*] Obviously, all employees grow older. However, the average employee age need not increase and indeed can decrease provided sufficient numbers of new employees join the rank and file.

[†] A Google search for “knowledge management” gave over 66 million results and “knowledge management curricula” gave over 300 results. Although a new discipline, knowledge management programs are now offered by universities worldwide. See for example, the program committee ACM’s 15^th Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, http://sa1.sice.umkc.edu/cikm2006/tpc.htm, last accessed on 15 July 2007, which lists scores of participating universities.

[1] Class assignment: Short term paper II, topic 2: transformation of the library and information profession, LIS-KM 5033, University of Oklahoma, Summer 2007.

[2] Slawson, D.C. and Shaughnessy, Obtaining useful information from expert-based sources, BMJ 1997;314:947 (29 March), available online at http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/314/7085/947?ijkey=7b29cce2afdfdd04e84543ec9648ee1c32862d85&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha

[3] Newall, M., and Daldy, R., Report on 2001 staff experience, Auckland University of Technology, p 43, 2002. Available on the web at http://intouch.aut.ac.nz/intouch/iru/knowledge_base/docs/Previous_Reports/01STASS.pdf , last accessed 10, July 2007.

[4] Oklahoma University website for the School of Library and Information Studies, http://www.ou.edu/cas/slis/ , last accessed 13 July 2007.

[5] Connecting culture and commerce, National Gallery, London, 26 January 2007, program excerpts available online at http://www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/mcg2007/, last accessed 13 July 2007

[6] Turner, S.J., Libraries see red over rising journal prices, George Street Journal, http://www.brown.edu/Administration/George_Street_Journal/vol24/24GSJ19c.html, last accessed 13 July 2007.

[7] News reports of nationwide library funding impacts, American Library Association, Chicago, available online at http://www.ala.org/ala/news/libraryfunding/libraryfunding.htm, last accessed 13 July 2007.

[8] Molnar D. and Wagner D., Privacy and Security in Library RFID Issues, Practices, and Architectures, 11^th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, October 25-29, 2004, Washington, DC, available online at http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~dmolnar/library.pdf, last accessed 13 July 2007.

[9] Joseph Raymond McCarthy, CNN Perspective Series, CNN Interactive, available online at http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/kbank/profiles/mccarthy/, last accessed 13 July 2007.

[10] Bowers, S.L., Privacy and library records, The Journal of Academic Librarianship Volume 32, Issue 4, July 2006, Pages 377-383, abstract available online at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W50-4K7169D-2&_user=10&_coverDate=07%2F31%2F2006&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=a1fcf1ab9a8150ec01e368f314644839 , last accessed 13 July 2007.

[11] Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 1966, available online at http://supreme.justia.com/us/384/436/case.html.

[12] Schwartz, M., Adversarial ethics: can another self-interested lawyer really benefit the common good?, 26 April 2007, p 66, Dartmouth Law Journal, available online at http://rockefeller.dartmouth.edu/assets/pdf/dlj_W07_schwartz.pdf, last accessed 13 July 2007.

[13] McCarthy, A.M., The patriot act under siege, National Review Online, 13 November 2003, available online at http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200311130835.asp, last accessed 13 July 2007.

[14] ALA Council: Patriot Act a danger, Library Journal.com, 3 February 2003, available online at http://www.libraryjournal.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA274528, last accessed 13 July 2007.

[15] Longley, R., U.S. birthrate hits all time low, About.com, available online at http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/censusstatistic/a/aabirthrate.htm, last accessed 13 July 2007.

[16] Malmberg, B. et al, Productivity consequences of workforce aging - stagnation or a Horndal effect?, Institute for Future Studies, available online at http://www.framtidsstudier.se/filebank/files/20051201$135140$fil$Z2YlJ37v394UPNoN7AU8.pdf

[17] Thorton, Jane K.; Job Satisfaction of Librarians of African Descent Employed in ARL Academic Libraries, available online at the ALA website: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crljournal/backissues2000b/may00/thornton.pdf , last accessed 18 June, 2007.

[18] Nader Ahmad Abu Sheikhaa and Abdul Razeq M. Younisb , Administrative factors affecting employees absenteeism in academic and public libraries in Jordan, The International Information & Library Review Volume 38, Issue 2, Pages 64-88, June 2006, Elsevier, Paris, available by web as of 24 April, 2006 at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WGP-4JT38RW-1&_user=10&_coverDate=06%2F30%2F2006&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=92dd0fa00528065b7774477f99985064, last accessed 18 June, 2007.

[19] Frankel, S.J. et al, On the front line: organization of work in the information economy, p 61, Cornell University Press, Ithaca NY,1999, available in searchable version online at http://www.amazon.com/Front-Line-Organization-Information-International/dp/0801485673/ref=ed_oe_p/104-4015548-7367903?ie=UTF8&qid=1184347535&sr=1-1, last accessed 13 July 2007.

[20] Colannino, J., NetBooks and its impact on libraries, a class assignment for KM 5033, University of Oklahoma, available online at http://km5433blog.blogspot.com/2007/06/colannino-netbooks-and-its-impact-on.html, last accessed on 13 July 2007.

[21] Rockwell, Lew; Sell the Public Library, http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/libraries.html, last accessed 18 June, 2007.

[22] Krasner-Khait, B., Survivor: history of the library, History Magazine, October/November, 2001, no page number available; available on the web at http://www.history-magazine.com/libraries.html, last accessed 12 July 2007.

[23] Ibid, Ref 23. The first public library opened in 1833; Andrew Carnegie helped fund 1700 such libraries between 1881 and 1919.

[24] Populist movement, Encyclopædia Britannica, 2007, available online at http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9060867/Populist-Movement, last accessed 12 July 2007.

[25] Politicization of Public Services, IPES online, Inter-American Development Bank, available online at http://www.iadb.org/res/ipes/2006/chapter9.cfm, last accessed 13 July 2007.

[26] Olasky, M., The tragedy of American compassion, Crossway Books, Wheaton IL, 1992, p 57, available online at http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0891078630/ref=sib_dp_pt/104-8342669-4421539#reader-link, last accessed 12 July 2007.

[27] Loon, L.C. and Suliman A.H., Knowledge Management Education and Curriculum Development, Journal of Information & Knowledge Management, Vol. 1, No. 2 (2002) 99–118.

[28] Bernstein, A., The capitalist manifesto: the historic, economic and philosophic case for laissez-faire, University Press of America, Lanham, MD, 2005.

[29] For an accessible and very brief (though opinionated) history of free-markets see Free market economics, available online at http://www.freemarketnews.com/FMNN-Economics.asp, last accessed 13 July 2007.

[30] Read, L. E., I Pencil, The Freeman, December 1958, available online at http://www.theadvocates.org/freeman/9605read.html, last accessed 13 July 2007.

[31] Online article: How cedar pencils are made, available at http://www.pencils.com/makeit.html, last accessed 13 July 2007.

[32] Pencil eraser, The Free Dictionary, available online at http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pencil+eraser, last accessed 13 July 2007.

[33] How Vinyl is made, The Vinyl Institute, available online at http://www.vinylinfo.org/materialvinyl/process.html, last accessed 13 July 2007.

[34] The Great eraser caper, available online at http://www.pencils.com/eraser3.html

[35] Ibid Ref 37.

[36] Ritter, S., What’s that stuff? Chemical and Engineering News, Vol 79, No. 42, a publication of the American Chemical Society, Washington D.C., available online at http://pubs.acs.org/cen/whatstuff/stuff/7942sci4.html, last accessed 13 July 2007.

[37] Rapid Supplies, commercial offering of $3.90/72 pencils, Sparco Pencil, available online at http://www.rapidsupplies.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=30264, last accessed 13 July 2007.

[38] Lott, J.R., Freedomnomics – why the free market words and other half-baked theories don’t, pp 43– 47, Regnery Publishing, Inc., Washington, D.C., 2007.

Colannino: NetBooks and its Impact on Libraries

2007-06-22T17:05:00.000-05:00

Abstract

The Netflix model allows subscribers to order DVDs online, receive them by mail, and keep them indefinitely and without late fees. If applied to books, this model (call it NetBooks) would offer an alternative to the public library. NetBooks, if successful, would push the public library into further irrelevance. However, such would have no real consequence for the public library which would continue to exist as a tax supported organization largely immune to competition from the private sector.

Introduction

According to Wired Magazine[1] consumers love “the Netflix model… which lets subscribers order DVDs online, receive them by mail, and keep them for as long as they want without late fees.” Wal-Mart and Blockbuster are now launching similar models. The Blockbuster model augments the return-by-mail option with in-store drop off.[2] Our class assignment[3] was to consider “what would happen if companies like Google decide to team up with a physical bookstore like Barnes and Noble to offer such services” for books.

Competition and the Modern Library

With the advent of the internet, Google Books, Netflix, and the Blockbuster model, the modern library is beginning to experience competition as never before. Some say that what lies in the balance is nothing less than the survival of the library as we know it.[4] However, in many cases, the library’s reaction to its deepening decline and lack of relevance has been denial and pretended value. For example, Ragnar Adunson makes the absurd claim that libraries are essential for promoting “cross-cultural communication” and that they are essential to democracy.[5] Bertot[6] insists that libraries deserve extra public funding as a meeting place for disasters; and, not to fund libraries in this way constitutes an unfunded mandate. In other words, according to Bertot, we owe the library a living. Such struthious behaviors do not address the core problem – libraries are becoming increasingly anachronistic and irrelevant; inventing pretended roles for them will not make the problem go away.

Modern bookstores have upgraded their surroundings, imported coffee houses and delis, added live and recorded music, and made their stores gathering places for all generations (students, the elderly, and the public at large). In stark contrast, the public library offers the same sterile setting I remember as a boy.

This is not to say that the public library is useless. An interconnected system of libraries with a combined borrowing prowess allows the author to obtain things he could never find at a bookstore (even an on-line bookseller such as Amazon.com). For example, chances are excellent that I can obtain an out-of-print book through my local library. I can also find something else (more properly, someone else) at a library that I cannot find at a bookstore – a reference librarian. These highly skilled search professionals are without substitute. However, these are niche markets, and in an increasingly consumer society of instant gratification, they may be of declining relevance.

Alternatives

Already, one can read books online. For example, the author’s combustion book is indexed (in its entirety![7]) by Google Book Search.[8] Why go to the library? About the only reason to visit one seems to be in order to obtain a physical copy of a text. However, if a service – let us call it NetBooks – were able to offer book rentals by mail, what advantage would public libraries offer?

Some may argue that books by mail cannot become a reality because books are more costly to ship and much more expensive than DVDs to replace. I tend to agree. Problems with damage and failure-to-return are much greater with a book; some books, such as technical books, are relatively expensive. Moreover, technical books would have a greater tendency to be hoarded by renters or kept for their reference value. Notwithstanding, NetBooks could survive even these objections. For example, a credit card number is good insurance against damaged or unreturned goods. If Avis can rent a car[9] with one, NetBooks should surely be able to lease a book.

Besides, there are other variations on the theme. Books may be burned to CDs or DVDs and there you have it – unlimited books by mail for $19.95, up to three at a time, if we follow the Netflix model exactly. There could be some copyright restrictions to work out, but even now, one can read books online, some for free and some for fee. For example, the University of Pennsylvania offers over 10,000 books for free online reading[10] while NetLibrary[11] offers access to 140,000 books to subscribers.

Problem Reactions

How does the library respond to such competitive pressure? Despite some well-articulated remedies,[12] the likelihood is that libraries will do more of what they have already done:

more whining,[*]
more self-aggrandizement,[†]
more inventing of feigned but pseudo “essential” and uses for libraries,[‡] and
more sliding into the dark abyss of greater irrelevance.

Dissatisfaction with libraries is not merely confined to the public. Libraries themselves seem to brood employee dissatisfaction. It is apparently a worldwide phenomenon from the Midwest[13] to the Middle East.[14]

Even now, the public library cannot compete with brick and mortar bookstores such as Barnes & Noble, BookStar, Borders, and the like despite the fact that libraries offer their wares for free. As far as free viewing is concerned, one can read books without charge at any major bookstore and enjoy a mocha frappuccino at the same time. In a public library one cannot even talk above a whisper. As many recognize, the library model has not changed in 200 years and some, like Lew Rockwell, are advocating library de-funding.[15] (Rockwell refers to libraries as “tax-siphoning book warehouses” and notes with approval a ballot issue for the de-funding of public libraries in Steve County, Washington.)

The Irrelevant Library

Who visits a library anymore?[16] Oklahoma libraries averaged 4.64 visits[§] per capita per year[17], and actually, library visits have increased over previous years.[18] These statistics appear favorable until you realize that they mean the average patron visits a library only once every 70 days.[**]

In contrast, library visits are dwarfed by online visits for information. According to Search Engine Watch, online searches total more than 213 million per day in the U.S., alone.[19] At the time of this writing, the U.S. population is 302 million.[20] Thus, on a per capita basis, one has better than a 2 out of 3 chance of querying the internet for information on a given day. If we presume that habits of U.S. and Oklahoma residents are roughly equivalent, Oklahomans are more than 50 times as likely to use the internet rather than a library visit to obtain information.[††]

The Irrelevance of Competitive Pressure for the Public Library

Despite its irrelevance, the public library is about as likely to go out of business as the IRS. The problem is not competition, but immunity to it. So what if no one goes to the library? Unlike private businesses, the public library does not depend on consumer or employee satisfaction to stay alive because it is tax-funded. To quote the famed economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman,[21] “there is nothing so permanent as a government organization.”[22]

Corollary Hypotheses for the NetBooks Model

What would happen if companies like Google decide to team up with a physical bookstore like Barnes and Noble to offer Netflix type services for books? Previously, we gave the presumed actuality of this model the moniker NetBooks. Now, for the sake of argument, we presume that NetBooks offers books by mail in direct competition with the library. In the parlance of a hypothesis statement, we have the following.

1. Main Hypothesis: NetBooks now offers books by mail in direct competition with the library.

Let us now explore what corollary hypotheses the NetBooks model demands.

Corollary Hypotheses

2. NetBooks is a for-profit organization and not supported by force of law or government subsidy. (This is the Netflix model applied to books.)

3. NetBooks is successful. (In order for NetBooks to offer competition with the public library, we presume longevity.)

4. NetBooks fills the need for public information in a way that is superior to the public library. (If this were not the case, NetBooks would cease to exist, presuming a for-profit model operating in a free market.)

What effect will this presumed new competition have on the public library? To consider that question, we need merely examine how the library has fared against its many existing “competitors” to date such as the internet, booksellers, etc. Obviously, the library has survived. However – and just as demonstrably – the library is in denial about its decreasing relevance.

The Public Library is in Denial About Its Decreasing Relevance

Denial by the public library is evidenced by a numerous specious claims. To consider one of many, the ALA has recently stated that “public libraries are a good investment.”[23] In support of their claim they cite a Florida study[24] which baldly asserts “For every $6,448 spent on public libraries from public funding sources (federal, state and local) in Florida, one job is created.” The stupidity of the statement is nearly self-evident – taken to its logical and absurd conclusion, we could end world hunger by building libraries. At this point, one’s malarkey detector should be in overload.

We may further demonstrate the statement’s absurdity as follows. The federal minimum wage is $5.15/hr;[25] counting leap years, there are 2087 working hours in a year (365.25 * 5/7 * 8 = 2,087.14) resulting in an annual minimum wage of $10,750 (2,087.14 * 5.15 = 10,750). In other words, if we take the ALA quoted statistic at face value, every dollar spent on Florida public libraries generates $1.66 in wages; this, if we conservatively count a job at its minimum wage equivalent (10,750/6,448 = 1.67). The Florida unemployment rate in May 2007 was 3.4% representing 310,000 persons.[26] So presto change-o, spend 2 billion dollars on libraries and generate 310,000 minimum wage jobs (310,000 * $10,750/ 1.67 = $2 billion) – unemployment solved! This is the equivalent of the perpetual motion machine – extract $2 billion in taxes and generate $3.3 billion in wages. With a total tax burden rate of 60%,[‡‡] we return the $2 billion in the form of taxes and we have taxed our way to prosperity and built our libraries for free.

What the report fails to consider are the number of jobs destroyed for every job created. Management guru Tom Peters[27] roughly estimates that it takes five government employees to do the job of one employee in the private sector.[28] In other words, the public library can only create $6,448 in jobs by destroying $32,240 worth of value.[§§] One can debate Peters’ glib statistic, but regardless of the actual level of waste, government efficiency is certainly worse than that of the private sector. Thus, in no case can government spending produce a net increase in jobs; indeed sound economic models demand the opposite.[29] To believe anything else is self-delusion.

Conclusions

We therefore conclude the following.

With the advent of NetBooks, the public library will grow more irrelevant.
The public library’s traditional response to its waning relevance is (and by induction will continue to be) denial.
In truth, the public library does not compete with other information providing services because it is supported by tax contributions and immune from competitive pressures.

Therefore, if a company such as Google decided to team up with a physical bookstore like Barnes and Noble to offer a Netflix type service for books then the library would become more irrelevant, but this would not affect its survival.

References

[*] See the Ellish article in the references section of this paper.

[†] Some authors have gone so far as to confuse forced consumption with relevance: see Hiss, Sheila and Boatright, Kay; Keeping the Library Relevant to Community College Students: Library Skills as a Required Course, Community & Junior College Libraries, Volume: 11 Issue: 4, 1 June 2003. Abstract available via web at http://www.haworthpress.com/store/ArticleAbstract.asp?sid=VA1GT08X0CBH8J92T0SFREKFMXTJ27C2&ID=38943, last accessed 20 June, 2007.

[‡] See the Adunson article in the references section of this paper.

[§]Adjusting for reading age does not change the analysis much. Children and adults of reading age constitute 91.5% of the population using Oklahoma population estimates taken from 2006 U.S. census data at the Oklahoma Commerce Department website:

http://staging.okcommerce.gov/test1/dmdocuments/2006_Oklahoma_Population_Estimates_by_Single_Age_Sex_1805071953.pdf This equates to 5.07 visits per reading age capita.

[**] Since there are 365.25 days per year (counting leap years), the probability of a person visiting the library is 4.64/365.25 = 1/72.

[††]We are comparing in-person library visits with all online information seeking. No doubt there are substantial online inquiries which are to and through libraries. However, were libraries to provide only this function, we would not need traditional libraries (brick and mortar). Nor would we need many of those comprising the traditional library staff. Accordingly, this author’s analysis fairly omits any adjustment for online library information seeking.

[‡‡] This is not far-fetched. Consider federal income and social security tax (34%), state income tax (15%), sales tax (9%), import taxes and duties, gasoline tax (~$0.62/gal), sugar and farm subsidies, excise taxes, estate taxes, funeral and other special taxes, …. The total tax burden is truly staggering approaching 2 dollars collected for every three dollars earned.

[§§] This argument, by itself, is not sufficient to demand the elimination of public libraries. All government spending is subject to inefficiency. Such includes public expenditures for essential public services such as national defense, the court system, police, fire, emergency response, etc. The author’s argument is not for abolition of government but for less self-deluded reporting. Government does not and cannot create net jobs because, by force of law, government always transfers capital from the more efficient private sector to the less efficient public sector.

[1] O’Brien, Jerry, “The Netflix Effect,” Wired Magazine, Issue 10.12, December 2002, also accessible via web at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/Netflix.html , last accessed 18 June, 2007.

[2] Blockbuster website: https://www.blockbuster.com/signup/s/howItWorks , last accessed 18 June, 2007.

[3] Class assignment; Short Term Paper, Topic Two Topic 2: Economics of Information and the impact of Blockbuster Model on Libraries, LIS-KM 5033, University of Oklahoma, Summer 2007.

[4] Swanson, Tim; Will the University Survive? The Ludwig Von Mises Institute, accessible via web at http://www.mises.org/story/2013, posted on 25 January, 2006; last accessed 20, June 2007.

[5] Audunson, Ragnar; The public library as a meeting-place in a multicultural and digital context : The necessity of low-intensive meeting-places; Journal of Documentation (J. Doc.), vol. 61, no3, pp. 429-441, 2005. Abstract accessible by web at http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=16800531, last accessed 18 June, 2007.

[6] Ellish, Jill; Library funding for disaster, government services long overdue, Florida State University News, quoting John Bertot, FSU College of Information Professor, accessible by web via http://www.fsu.edu/news/2006/09/25/library.funding/ , last accessed 18 June, 2007.

[7] Colannino, Joseph; Combustion Modeling, A Practical Approach, CRC Press, accessible via web at http://books.google.com/books?id=h-IqbdHvA1QC&pg=PP1&ots=wLs0xMok_6&dq=colannino&sig=cn9xzIF189F_cf4qILunPc8AyHM#PPP1,M1, last accessed 18 June, 2007.

[8] Google Books Beta site, http://books.google.com/bkshp?tab=wp&hl=en&lr, last accessed 18 June, 2007.

[9] Avis car rental with a credit card: http://avis.com/AvisWeb/home/AvisHome, last accessed 18 June, 2007.

[10] University of Pennsylvania online book site: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/, last accessed 18 June, 2007.

[11] Net Library online book site for subscribers: http://www.netlibrary.com/, last accessed 18 June, 2007.

[12] Dysart, Jane I., Why Libraries Fail and tips for staying alive, published online at http://www.dysartjones.com/presentations/feliciter_51_3_theme_feature_dysart.pdf , last accessed 18-June-2007.

[13] Thorton, Jane K.; Job Satisfaction of Librarians of African Descent Employed in ARL Academic Libraries, available online at the ALA website: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crljournal/backissues2000b/may00/thornton.pdf , last accessed 18 June, 2007.

[14] Nader Ahmad Abu Sheikhaa and Abdul Razeq M. Younisb , Administrative factors affecting employees absenteeism in academic and public libraries in Jordan, The International Information & Library Review Volume 38, Issue 2, Pages 64-88, June 2006, Elsevier, Paris, available by web as of 24 April, 2006 at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WGP-4JT38RW-1&_user=10&amp;_coverDate=06%2F30%2F2006&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=92dd0fa00528065b7774477f99985064, last accessed 18 June, 2007.

[15] Rockwell, Lew; Sell the Public Library, http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/libraries.html, last accessed 18 June, 2007.

[16] The following website (Web Junction) has an excellent summary of searchable nationwide library statistics by state: http://webjunction.org/do/DisplayContent?id=13268, last accessed 20 June 2007.

[17] Ibid Reference 16 using a population weighted average for all reported Oklahoma public libraries.

[18] The State of American Libraries, p 3, American Library Association, April 2007, available on the web at http://www.ala.org/ala/pressreleases2007/march2007/SAL_AnnualReport-FINAL.pdf, last accessed 22 June, 2007.

[19] Search Engine Watch website: http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2156461, last accessed 20 June, 2007.

[20] U.S. Census Bureau popwatch website: http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html, last accessed 20 June 2007.

[21] Autobiography of Milton Friedman, Noble Foundation, available on the web at http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1976/friedman-autobio.html

[22] Hoover Institute Interview of Milton Friedman, Hoover Digest, available on the web at http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3507421.html, last accessed 22 June, 2007.

[23] Ibid Ref 18, p 6.

[24] Griffiths, José-Marie, et al.; Taxpayer Return on Investment in Florida Public Libraries: Summary Report, September 2004, Prepared for State Library and Archives of Florida, available on the web at http://dlis.dos.state.fl.us/bld/roi/pdfs/ROISummaryReport.pdf, last accessed 22 June, 2007.

[25] Federal Minimum Wage, Department of Labor, available online at http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/wages/minimumwage.htm, last accessed 22 June, 2007.

[26] Florida labor market website: http://fred.labormarketinfo.com/analyzer/labforcedata.asp?geo=1201000000&tableused=LABFORCE&cat=LAB&session=LABFORCE&subsession=99&rollgeo=04&sgltime=0&time=20070305&adjusted=1&areaname=Florida, last accessed 22 June, 2007.

[27] Tom Peters’ website may be found at http://www.tompeters.com/, last accessed 22 June, 2007.

[28] Tom Peters as quoted by M.W. Hodges, available online at http://mwhodges.home.att.net/state_local.htm#spending, last accessed 22 June, 2007.

[29] Friedman, Milton; Why Government is the Problem, Hoover Institute, February 1993, available online at http://www.hooverpress.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=142 , last accessed 22 June, 2007.

Ten Steps to a Learning Organizaiton/ Steps 1-5 Summary/J. Colannino

2007-03-17T16:45:00.000-05:00

In an earlier blog, I overviewed Kline and Saunders Ten Steps to a Learning Organization. In this blog entry, I continue with Steps 2 through 5.

Step 2, Promote the Positive

According to Saunders and Kline, once an organization has made a sincere effort to assess its learning culture (Step 1) it must begin to reframe its negativity, because gold is in the mud, if only we care to look. That is, every organization has shortcomings, handicaps and impediments; but focusing on them does not lead to constructive behavior. A positive outlook recognizes the reality that we – that is all of us – have the power to do the right thing at all times within our organization.

Accordingly, one or more members of my scholastic workgroup are now working to create and enhance their learning organization. In due time, we will reassess our learning culture to see if our grade has improved. By the way, the highest average score[1] on Kline and Saunders assessment was a C- (the highest grade of any organization for the Tulsa KM 5263 student group). Their particular company is highly profitable. Those companies that scored lower were less profitable. One can only imagine the profitability that would inure as any organization that behaved more as a learning organization.

Step 3, Make the Workplace Safe for Thinking

In Step 3, “Making the Workplace Safe for Thinking,” Kline and Saunders[2] discuss the “Great Universal Walking School:”

“[Children] when they’re ready… just get up and walk as best they can while a circle of admiring relatives cheers them on. The child who falls is given loving reassurance and encouraged to try again.” “Thinking, like walking, is best developed through practice, and… best practiced in a supporting environment.” “[Non-thinking results] if we don’t ask probing and unconventional questions.” “One way organizations stifle there most creative thinkers is by simply not listening to them.”

This sounds reasonable. So why isn’t it safe to think in most organizations?

“Because so many managers have hidden agendas, they are unaware that their resistance hamstrings the creativity and productivity of their subordinates. Often, when performance in the workplace deteriorates,… they wonder why their employees act brain damaged in a crisis.” [Quoting Linda Honold]: “to encourage people to think for themselves… learn to ask them what they think should be done. It’s truly amazing what can happen when you allow people to answer their own questions.” “Management must develop a strategy for increasing each individual’s employability. The goal should be to assist employees to develop work skills that will make them more valuable to their present company and to anyone who hires them.”

This last point strikes at the heart of the hidden agenda. If employees are made more employable, won’t they leave the company? This is not an empty question. Some research has shown that making employees more marketable (e.g., reimbursing educational expenses) leads to loss of employees. For example, according to Finance and Development, an official publication of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) non-western countries that provide education to their population still seem to lose professionals to western countries because professionals prefer to work where the quality of living is higher. On the other hand, western countries having the highest educational standards suffer little brain drain. The analogy for corporations: if a company is a frustrating place to work then making employees more marketable will result in their flight; on the other hand, when the workplace is rewarding, enhancing marketability is seen as yet another perk anchoring employees to their organization.

In other words, managements that deny their employees marketability are testifying to their own incompetence[3]. It is as if they are saying “we don’t want people that work here to have marketable skills because if they did, they would leave.” The comedy of this attitude is even enshrined in a Frank and Ernest cartoon. But creative employees will always find a way to market their services and creative ideas are the ones most desperately needed, as Kline and Saunders note.

“Most truly creative ideas have… much trouble getting accepted…. [P]romotions in large companies may be far more influenced by territorial politics than by an intelligent drive to get the right person in the right job.” “Failure to respond to the full potential of creative projects could be the most costly form of mismanagement in industry today.” “[O]ne can hardly imagine a more valuable resource in industry today than a team that can think creatively as well as defend and promote its ideas.”

Step 4, Reward Risk Taking

In Step 4, Kline and Saunders talk about permanent whitewater. Permanent whitewater is the uncertainty that underlies all of our activities. We can be certain that future activities contain uncertainty. It seems sensible, therefore, to perform a risk analysis on any activity we seek to undertake. Here Kline and Saunders advocate “scientific risk taking.” That is, one should operate on the boundary between certainty and uncertainty. If we operate in complete certainty, we do not undertake the risks we should that could have a big payoff. If we operate in complete uncertainty, we are merely gambling with our companies fortune.

In classroom discussions we spoke about a physical analogy where all the interesting chemistry happens at the boundary between liquid and gas or solid and liquid. For example, in the combustion of fuel oil, the oil droplet never burns. Instead heat from the combustion zone vaporizes the fuel. It is the vapor which actually ignites and provides the heat to vaporize other fuel oil droplets. Analogously, the real payoff comes when we operate at the boundary between certainty and uncertainty. If we have a better than even bet that the risk will pay off, we should proceed. On the other hand, if we have less than 20-40% chance of a return on our investment, we should avoid it. We are merely gambling, not taking scientific risks. Although these estimates are necessarily subjective, they form a good rule of thumb. Finally, if we are certain the risk will pay off, by definition, we are not taking a risk. Obviously, if the idea is a good one, complete certainty is a good thing – but more than likely, complete certainty only results when we contemplate the commonplace and pedestrian. Such ideas often do not have much upside potential and actually waste resources. This is the concept of opportunity cost: tying up resources when they could be used to pursue much higher value-added work.

We must trust our own brilliance and intuition, have a good support team, and overcome the fear of mistakes which can be crippling. If we are open minded and trust and develop our intuition we will win more bets than we lose and our company’s will prosper. Kline and Saunders also advocate setting realistic goals and to visualize them. This kind of out-of-the-box thinking can only occur when people are not afraid to take risks – that is, when the workplace is safe for thinking.

Step 5, Help People Become Resources for Each Other

Step 5 is all about creating an organization where people synergistically interact. When children play, they often self-organize into various roles. Other examples of self-organization are people in crisis. For example, during the 911 disaster in New York City, many people in ordinary walks of life self-organized. Volunteers after the disaster provided food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and all manner of relief. It appears that self-organization is a deeply human trait. So why are so many workplaces so dysfunctional?

Many times the very thing that allows infant companies to leapfrog their competition is the self-organized resource sharing that takes place out of competitive necessity. Years later, however, one is often hard pressed to find any remaining vestige of this in the mature organization. The result of this, in many cases, is that the organization dies. For example, the railway industry was in a perfect place in time and history to transition its expertise into a brand new industry: the new but fledgling airline industry. The railroad industry had the infrastructure to organize men and materiel, scheduling and resource allocation expertise, and the best and brightest in the industry working for it. Alas, the railroad industry never capitalized on their near-monopoly position in transportation. Instead, their wealth and power lead to complacency. Ultimately, they could only helplessly stand by and watch their share of the transportation market evaporate to near insignificance.

One of the keys in becoming an agile and learning organization is to let go of the command-and-control structure in favor of a more self-directed team operating from a principle of enlightened self interest. In order to create this kind of team, people must make the most of their diverse experiences and become resources for one another. This kind of IQ addition allows the team to achieve super-human things. But to do that, we must see each other as more than mere job descriptions.

In our class discussion, one team member related how his or her organization applied authority in a role-based way. A sales engineer had authority to book an order, but not to engineer it. A design engineer could specify the equipment but not speak to the customer. A test engineer could test the equipment but not design it. Instead of looking at whether or not an individual had the expertise to do any of these jobs, people were identified with their job description. The absurdity is all the more highlighted when s/he revealed that all three engineers were the same person! While the employee was a sales engineer, he was only allowed to sell. When he transferred to the design group he was only permitted to design. When he became a test engineer he could only test; this, despite the fact that the employee was highly qualified to do all three jobs. This was amply demonstrated by his job performance in all three categories over his 13-year tenure. In fact, engineers from all three disciplines sought his expertise whenever they had a problem. Apparently other employees recognized what the company could not – the engineer was not merely his job description.

[1] The Kline and Saunders assessment is found on pp 66 and 67 of their book, Ten Steps to a Learning Organization. It grades learning culture on a Likert scale from 1 to 5. By subtracting 1 from this score, one may convert it to a grade point average (0 – 4, which may be converted to letter grades from F to A using the conversion method in use by most U.S. schools).

[2] Ten Steps to a Learning Organization, Chapter 3, pp 91-111.

[3] One group member encountered that very sentiment in his or her own organization when biographies of employees were removed from marketing materials for the express purpose of impeding their employability elsewhere.

The Distributed Organization: What Happens When an Irresistible Force Meets an Unmovable Object?/ J. Colannino

2007-02-17T14:51:00.001-06:00

Prologue
When irresistible forces meet unmovable objects, the result is contradiction, confusion, and calamity: contradiction, because the irresistible and the unmovable cannot both be so; confusion, because it is unknown whether the irresistible or the unmovable is the misnomer; and calamity, as those on the wrong side realign or resign. Just as the industrial revolution displaced the agrarian economy, just as collective democracy displaced monarchy, so shall the distributed organization displace the conventional brick-and-mortar corporation. Workplace and living space will merge like Eden of old.

Background
Following Pearcy, before the industrial revolution men and women worked alongside one another in a home-workspace. It may have been the baker who lived upstairs and worked downstairs or the blacksmith who lived up front and worked out back – whatever the arrangement, a man, his wife, and his children worked together. According to historical records, businesses survived the death of the husband indicating that a widow and her children were fully capable to carry on the family enterprise. Men, being in the home, were the primary target of parenting manuals and cookbooks.

All that changed with the advent of the industrial revolution, which tore work from home and men from their families. Men were being conformed to soulless cogs of an industrial machine; in reaction, they birthed employee unions, socialism, and communism. The domain of women and children plummeted in stature as a result of the divided family. Women reacted by demanding suffrage and equal access to the workplace. One can argue that that all such movements were overreactions; notwithstanding, a driving force seems to have been the struggle for dignity and worth, a basic human need of Biblical pedigree.

In whatever its current form, capitalism has proven to be an irresistible force, at least because of the great wealth and power it has inured to the nations that practice it.

The Distributed Organization
Imagine an organization with the following seemingly contradictory characteristics.

is leviathan in size yet agile in action
dispatches people across the globe yet incurs no travel expenses
pays its people least even as they make most
uses factories worldwide yet owns no capital equipment

Now consider a typical medium to large U.S. Corporation having staff serving legal, accounting, production, engineering, marketing, sales, etc. – let’s call it Joe’s Widget Works (JWW). Except instead of being located in New York or Los Angeles or Houston or Grand Forks, JWW people live in their respective hometowns. In fact, its 500 employees live in 50 cities from New York to L.A., from Houston to Grand Forks whose telepathy allows them to function as if they were in the same room. Of course, we have now left the realm of reality – or have we? Allow me to restate: in fact, its 500 employees live in 50 cities from New York to L.A., from Houston to Grand Forks whose telephony (actually internet, telephone, webcam, fax, etc.) allows them to function as if they were in the same room. When a customer has a problem, there is no need to purchase a plane ticket, one of their service engineers lives nearby – he or she can be there within the hour. People are clamoring to work there because they can live where they choose without the need to leave family and friends. JWW pays no relocation benefits and attracts the best and brightest talent across the nation. Family expenses are minimized because daycare is a snap – both parents work for JWW out of their home, and they can easily coordinate their schedules. They do not commute to work; they can go directly from the breakfast table to their work desk in seconds. So they keep more of their time and money – an equivalent salary results in far greater disposable income. JWW fabricates widgets close to their final destination via electronic drawing files to one of many local fabrication shops they routinely use. Since shipping and production costs are minimized, the company outperforms its competitors in profit, response, and product quality.

The Future is Here
This is not so far fetched. Compare a company like Amazon.com to a brick-and-mortar bookseller. Virtually all of my book purchases in the last year (a dozen or so) came from the former rather than the latter. However, in my opening comments I was careful to say that the distributed organization will displace (not replace) the conventional organization. This is because some kinds of facilities must have “whereness.” For example, production facilities must have “whereness” while knowledge does not. Indeed, information is a tertium quid, neither mass nor energy. It is this property that makes information distributable. Ultimately, even widgets are information applied to material. The information age has arrived and business structure is bound to follow.

Aptitude for Destruction (Vol 2), RAND Corporation/Review, J. Colannino

2007-02-11T21:57:00.000-06:00

Aptitude for Destruction (Vol 2) (is a 216 page document produced by the RAND Corporation for the National Institute for Justice. It applies organizational learning (OL) and learning organizations (LO) to terrorist groups. Volume 2 highlights case studies of four terrorist organizations from an OL perspective: Aum Shinrikyo, Hizballah, Jemaah Islamiyah, and the Provisional Irish Republican Army. It deliberately avoids discussion of Al Qaeda owing to its changing complexity. The authors have found OL principles to be a useful for understanding terrorist organizations. If your company promotes OL, there is an irony here that I suppose is best left unstated.

The last chapters discuss a four-component OL model comprising

knowledge acquisition
distribution
storage
interpretation

For useful definitions regarding knowledge management, see my wiki entry here. The knowledge model I have developed in my studies is very similar, differing mostly by name than content:

knowledge creation
knowledge sharing
knowledge safekeeping
wisdom building

It is a very ancient fact in human endeavor that knowledge can be used for evil or good. This is where my item 4 differs from RAND’s. I doubt that many would consider terrorism to be wise. Indubitably, however, terrorist organizations do interpret data, albeit for an evil purpose. In this regard, Rand’s item 4 is more general than mine. At the time I had developed my fourfold division, I had never considered terrorist organizations; for the sake of my organization, I am happy about this. If you believe that knowledge management applies to terrorism, then my definition is insufficient.

Toward a Theistic Theory of Knowledge Management/J. Colannino

2007-02-04T18:34:00.000-06:00

Current theories of knowledge management and learning organizations are conflicted about why human beings self-organize, whether the driving force is primarily psychological or sociological, and even what the ideal organization should look like. So, I am going to do something in this blog that I would never dream to do in any other kind of publication. I am going to present a rudimentary theory of organization from a theistic basis. I am hoping that my readers will do me the great service of commenting, challenging, and critiquing this theory and pointing me to other related research.

Premises
P1. God is relational
P2. God is omnipotent
P3. Man is created in God’s image
P4. Man is a fallen creature

In the above premises and throughout this blog I use “man” and related pronouns in the same way they are used in the Judeo-Christian tradition – to mean humankind, both male and female.

I anticipate a criticism before I even begin: some may say that the above premises are not “scientific.” This is a winding rabbit trail which I shall avoid except to note in passing that science was developed in a milieu of theism, not atheism – theists expected a rational God to have designed a rational universe. If you have a differing philosophy of science, I grant you your prerogative. This allows us to exercise Moynihan’s maxim: we are all entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts. So together, let us investigate what psycho-sociological results one might reasonably expect from the above premises. The reader may then judge as to whether or not such results are consistent or antithetical to reality.

Results
R1. God is relational (P1): man is created in God’s image (P3): therefore, man is relational and inexorably driven to form social structures. Indeed, man cannot find his highest fulfillment except as part of a properly oriented social network.

R2. God is omnipotent (P2): man is created in God’s image (P3): therefore, man is coregent; he seeks the cultural mandate – to be fruitful and multiply, to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky. He cannot be fulfilled lest he exercise his cultural mandate to produce and manage.

R3. Man is a fallen creature (P4): therefore the cultural mandate is often perverted; extortion and oppression are all too common. Organizations are created which are exploitative and which do not allow man to find his highest expression, passion, and meaning. Such socio-psychological behavior must be countered with preventative and punitive measures.

I somehow doubt these are original thoughts, but I have yet to find other practitioners which espouse similar ones. If you are familiar with this field or know others who may have studied this subject, please comment; I would be most appreciative.

Ten Steps to a Learning Organization, Ch 1-3, P. Kline and B. Saunders/ Review & Musings by J. Colannino

2007-01-25T19:57:00.000-06:00

Ever since Peter Senge’s “The Fifth Discipline” made its big splash, people have been trying to figure out how to make their organization a learning one. Peter Kline and Bernard Saunders purport the recipe. According to them, the ten steps are

Assess your organization
Promote the positive
Make the workplace safe for thinking
Reward risk taking
Help people become resources for one another
Put learning power to work
Map out the vision
Bring the vision to life
Connect the systems
Get the show on the road

Of course, I have my own ideas about this. My one step would be

Treat people like human beings.

I know this sounds trite, but it is not. Human beings were created in God’s image. They yearn to live, love, and laugh. They seek higher spiritual meaning and deep relationship. They long to belong, to create and build. They seek meaning. This is one of the philosophical reasons I cannot brook Darwinian evolution – because if it is true, life is essentially meaningless; but that is not what I see, and that is not how people act or how they know to treat their children. But if we were created in God’s image then relationship makes sense because God is relational. Creativity makes sense because God is creative. Living and loving and joy make sense too. This is not to say that we can’t almost bleach these things out of a person. Dehumanize people loud enough and long enough and you will create a dehumanized culture full of dehumanized employees who behave as little more than part of the machinery. But deep down, a fellow’s humanity is always there.

My company is, in many ways, a learning organization. And yet it could be so much more if it would eliminate the remaining bits of its ritual abuse. This happens in many organizations. Consider a company unwilling to upgrade travelers to business class on overseas flights. Often, business trips are taken on short notice – for example, damage control to solve an on-site problem or a last minute sales meeting or presentation. In those cases, employees are stuck in a middle seat in economy class for an extended period of time – say Australia (10+ hours) or India (20+ hours). A marathon flight in a middle coach seat an effective way to say “we don’t care.” Why would an organization that cares about its employees do such a thing? It wouldn't.

What a shame. Only a small portion of employees travel, so a change in policy would not cost the employer much. But the policy is known to all, so the lack of a policy change hinders everyone’s morale. In other words, this dehumanizing policy is costing them much more than the change would. That kind of leverage goes in the wrong direction. Moreover, the policy could be deadly – literally. Really, this kind of policy is more the hallmark of a retarded organization rather than a learning one. But it seems one can always find a mix of sense and stupidity in every collective. I have observed a dehumanization of employees in many companies in other subtle ways. For example, what does it mean when a company says “we treat our employees as an asset”? You mean, like a desk or a chair? An acquaintance of mine is “Manager of Human Capital” for a Fortune 500 company. Human capital? When was the thirteenth amendment repealed?

My class assignment was to read Chapters 1 – 3, and the chapters are spot on. In the introduction, the authors quote John Naisbitt’s Megatrends in calling for “high tech, high touch” – that is, a re-humanizing of the work force.

I do have a couple of minor quibbles. First, for whatever reason, it has become popular for authors addressing social issues to genuflect at Darwin’s altar. I have no idea why. If one were arguing for oppression, tyranny, or abuse, Darwinism would be a logical philosophy. But it is illogical to espouse if we want to treat persons as more than mere animals; and, as is usual, no understanding of any essential feature of the book would be harmed (or is indeed supported) by this Darwinian drivel.

Second, (again, as is typical for social issues arguments) political correctness rears its ugly head, and (again, as is typical) no understanding of any essential feature of the book would be harmed (or is indeed supported) by it. For example,

“A white male doesn’t know… that if he were a woman he’d have to work twice as hard to succeed… or if he were African-American or Hispanic he’d have to work even harder…. In any event, a white male can learn to appreciate these realities only in the abstract. He cannot experience them directly.”

Why can’t I know what Kline and Saunders know? Like me, they are middle-aged white males. As a second contradiction, if Kline and Saunders would like to experience the reality of prejudice directly rather than in the abstract, I can e-mail them some locations to take a midnight stroll. When it comes to error, no one has a corner on the market. We all have our handicaps. It seems to me that the goal ought to be to live life correctly in whatever station or situation we find ourselves, because ontologically, we are all fallen human beings trying to get back to the garden.

Fortunately, Kline and Saunders peddle such clichés very infrequently. The overwhelming majority of the time, they stick to the knitting, and that’s what makes “Ten Steps to a Learning Organization” a great read. Is your organization a learning organization? A 36-question survey on pages 61–63 lets you find out.

Models Of Organizational Learning: Paradoxes And Best Practices In The Post Industrial Workplace By Marilyn E. Laiken, Ph.D./Musings: J. Colannino

2007-01-20T20:14:00.000-06:00

Marilyn Laiken is a professor of Adult Education in the Workplace Learning and Change specialization at OISE, University of Toronto. In a three-year study (1998-2001), Dr. Laiken surveyed forty two organizations that publicly declared themselves to have become or to be in the process of becoming learning organizations. Ten organizations agreed to participate in further research by randomly selecting ten employees to take the Learning Organization 5 Stage Diagnostic Survey (Woolner, Lowy, and Redding, 1995). Evaluation of the survey identified five organizations that were mature learning organizations, of which four agreed to in-depth investigations including "individual interviews, focus groups, and on-site observations."

Dr. Laiken concludes that a learning organization is one that manages paradox effectively. By paradox, Professor Laiken specifically mentions

leadership vs. autonomy,
confrontation vs. collaboration,
action vs. reflection, and
the journey vs. the goal.

In other words, all eight qualities are important for an effective learning organization to exist. The secret is to balance these sometimes competing ideals. As an example, consider age-old sage advice about decision making.

Look before you leap
He who hesitates is lost

Both are true and at seeming odds: one cannot look without hesitating, or in Laiken’s parlance, an action-vs.-reflection paradox exists. Laiken has well-chosen her words. It is important to point out that this is a paradox not a contradiction.

Many knowledge management professionals are fond of embracing eastern mystical ideas at this point, especially the “both/and” (Eastern) vs. “either/or” (Western) way of looking at things. I have written about this in a previous blog and will not repeat my comments here. However, Laiken has used exactly the right word because the contradiction is apparent but not actual. Sometimes it is best to analyze a decision thoroughly before taking the plunge: if you’re heading in the wrong direction, speed is not your ally. At other times swift action must slay analysis paralysis in order to move forward. Knowing when to do what is the trick.

A command and control organization is not sentient – it is insular and inept. But shouldn’t a learning organization fare better in such matters? Such a near-rhetorical question belies a very deep philosophical conundrum. Can there really be any such thing as a learning organization or is it only individuals that can learn? I believe that pragmatism is firmly on the side of the learning organization as a sentient entity. In other words, some corporate bodies behave as if they are organized as an organic whole, acting in concert to achieve remarkable ends.

Probably the most famously recognizable example of such an institution in the West would be the Church. In capitalizing the word I am referring to various Catholic and Protestant believers all working toward some invisible yet understandable goal: e.g., to proselytize the world. In large part, this body succeeds. Is the Church therefore a learning organization? I can think of few institutions that have had such a lengthy corporate history (approximately two millennia). Even more surprising, the idea of individually empowered believers behaving in a corporate way to adapt, survive, and thrive as a corporate entity seems anticipated and encoded by its founder long before the phrase “learning organization” was ever coined. This occurs in many instances – in the great commission and Paul’s famous Corinthian discourse on the matter, to name two.

Perhaps the realization of individually empowered employees working together to achieve a greater corporate good seems to be such a rare religious experience because it is one.

Indexing the invisible web: a survey by Yanbo Ru and Ellis Horowitz/ Overview (and strained theological implications), J. Colannino

2006-12-03T09:48:00.000-06:00

The invisible web (also known as the deep, hidden, or dark web) is the part of the web that is not indexed by search engines such as Google or Yahoo. It is orders of magnitude greater than the part of the web we can see (called the visible or surface web). For example, Yanbo’s article exists in many places, none of which are accessible by search engines. The closest you can get is here, and that is after some trying. Other document warehouses will also hold this article, but all of them charge a fee. Fee-for-service websites deliberately keep most of their content invisible. However, even free databases suffer from the same malady because search engines cannot index databases or the contents of query sites where records are generated on the fly.

The subject article is all about indexing these documents. This is done in two main ways. One method is to index only an interface site. This is the way Google indexes this paper based on the search string “Indexing the invisible web” Yanbo. Because of the variety of databases, protocols, forms to fill out, etc., automated indexing of the invisible web has resisted progress; however, these web contents are often available manually. This leads to the second main way of indexing hidden web documents: professional (manual) indexing. Human indexers cannot possibly access every possible document, so this strategy indexes only a portion of interest within the hidden web.

The article goes on to vet the various methods. If you are interested in an overview of how some search engines attempt to access the invisible web, this 17-page article is well-referenced and helpful as a starting point. If you are interested in how to obtain information from the hidden web, visit a librarian. Information indexing and retrieval is their unequaled profession.

How would you end this article?
I have always wanted to write an article that uses the word “alas” and ends with the phrase “…and the theological implications alone are staggering!” Yanbo and Horowitz’ article ends with this: “A technique that can more comprehensively index the data in an invisible web site, and that will not get swamped by the size of the data, is required.” Okay.... But I was hoping for something less anemic.

In my view, we will never fully index the hidden web. Well, I suppose that is a universal negative akin to “no two snowflakes are alike.” And of course, universal negatives are often not provable, but we belive them anyway. That should give pause to the empiricists among us; apparently, er… alas, the world’s “greatest” religion is pessimism.

… and the theological implications alone are staggering!

The Terrible Twos: Web 2.0, Library 2.0, and More, By Greg R. Notess / Notes: J. Colannino

2006-12-02T19:59:00.000-06:00

The New Greek
43Things, Del.ico.us, Ajax, Amazon, Answers, API, blog, cloud, CSS, Digg, Findory, Flickr, GIS, Google, IM, java, Listible, long tail, mashup, Meebo, meme, News 2.0, Newsvine, RSS, tag, TailRank, Technorati, wiki, Writely, XML, Yahoo…

If the first paragraph makes virtually no sense to you, welcome to the new Greek (or Web 2.0 as it is called nowadays). In what can only be described as a vocabulary orgy, Web 2.0 provides a baffling array of geeky names, mostly representing answers in search of questions. Yes, it is overwhelming. That is why the referenced article, "The Terrible Twos," is a short and valuable read.

How much is really new? Since technologies are designed to serve people, and people never really change, perhaps there is nothing new under the sun. When Frank Sinatra sang his famous “Lady is a Tramp” it underwent several “revisions” over time, mostly to the refrain. Lady is a Tramp 1.0: … she loves the free fresh wind in her hair…; Lady is a Tramp 2.0: … she loves the sweet warm cuckoo super wind in her hair. Well, I’m not sure how sweet, warm, cuckoo, or super Web 2.0 will become, but I have a feeling that besides a few new words, it will work a lot like Web 1.0.

Digital Library Archaeology: A Conceptual Framework... by Scott Nicholson/Peripheral Thoughts – J. Colannino

2006-11-24T11:49:00.001-06:00

Here is a 25-page article that makes the case for data mining in a library setting. Dr. Nicholson calls this “bibliomining.” Clicking on the title above will take you to a summary, my thoughts here will be more peripheral.

Data mining is a relatively new field in statistics, but one that has gained respectability. The company with the most extensive record in data mining is SAS – it is certainly the dominant company in the industry. In my work as knowledge manager for my company, I do a fair amount of data mining. So, I know firsthand that data mining is hundreds of times weaker than on-purpose experimentation, statistically speaking. It is also not strictly possible to determine causal relationships with data mining, only correlative ones. That said, some data are only available in archival form and data mining is an appropriate strategy in these cases.

In looking at the blogs of my student colleagues, I see that many of them are more concerned about the implications of data mining in general than the technology in particular. I tend to agree. The title “Digital Library Archaeology” implies a reconstructive method of artifact analysis. However, archaeology is a science that pieces together history from the remnants of the deceased; if their history is maligned it will not inure personal detriment to the subjects themselves; however, that is not the case with bibliomining if based on an archaeological paradigm. Bibliomining cannot be archaeology – cultural anthropology perhaps, but not archaeology. Although Shakespeare penned “What’s in a name…” I must concur with Mark Twain when he said “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.” Cultural anthropology has safeguards for dealing with the habits of living persons – safeguards for anonymity. With these safeguards (and only with them) I endorse the value of bibliomining, and we can be sure this practice will become commonplace.

Now to be fair, Dr. Nicholson is constructing a scientific case, not a political one. However, scientific methods are not without political relevance or repercussion. One cannot do science in a vacuum. As a member of the American Statistical Association (ASA) I have seen willful neglect of the political ramifications in statistical debates for some time now. Most recently this was expressed in ASA’s statement on intelligent design (see my response here). Prior to this, a lengthy debate ensued about whether census data should be adjusted to reflect non-response. Statistically the answer is “Yes,” and this was reflected clearly in the pages of ASA’s periodical, AMSTAT News. However, politically the answer is “No!” or perhaps “Hell no!” as we will certainly have hell to pay if we allow any political body to monkey with census data. Great wealth, political power, and dissemination of funding are tied to census data and it is sheer political naïveté to believe that such adjustments, if allowed, will be done free from corruption.

In the same way, library and information professionals cannot afford to treat their science as if it were part of some non-overlapping magisteria, to borrow Gould’s phrase. Without some clear ethical requirement to destroy all personally identifying information before analysis, bibliomining will become as misused as social security records were barely 60 years ago in Executive Order 9066. Academics should begin to use the their tenure as it was intended – as a foil to tyranny – in order to argue forcefully for practices and legislation to thwart the unwarranted political intrusions that their research may justifiably be imagined to empower. Unless they do, they are only doing half their job. Indeed, those of us without such a protection should argue just as forcefully, for what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but lose his soul?

Reconciling Information-Seeking Behavior with Search User Interfaces for the Web by Daniel E. Rose/ Reviewed by J. Colannino

2006-11-23T13:11:00.001-06:00

For a fellow who is an expert in search engines, Daniel E. Rose’s biography isn’t very findable on the web. At least not if you search with Yahoo, Alta Vista, or Google. This is interesting, because he has worked for two of the three firms and his stated expertise is to improve search results for users. Maybe his biography is buried somewhere in the 740 Google returns for “Daniel E. Rose,” or one of the 297 returns for Yahoo, or somewhere on Alta Vista. But of course, being an expert on search behavior he should know that no one really looks past the first page of returns. It didn’t matter whether I qualified his name with “biography” or “curricula vitae,” I just couldn’t find his bio, even on Wikipedia. He is referenced multiple times in a book about natural language processing, but its text was not searchable within Amazon.com’s search-inside-the-book tool. Google Book Search did allow for searching, but there he was listed in references only. However, that did lead me to a book that he did author: A Symbolic and Connectionist. But I could find nothing indexed regarding a biography or an “about the author” section.

Here is what I was able to glean about his career: according to this reference he worked for Apple. UC Berkeley listed him as Dr. Daniel E. Rose and gives video of one of his presentations here. The subject article lists him as working for Alta Vista. I found both the video presentation and this subject article a bit too commercial for my tastes; it looks more like a commercial for Alta Vista’s Prisma search engine then anything else. However, maybe there is something to Prisma, because using it was the only time I actually found something of a biography for Dr. Rose. It was for the Ordinology Consulting Group where he is a principal, and you can see his C.V. here. At this point I wanted to play the Hallelujah Chorus by Handel. Unfortunately, Prisma only gave me access to paid downloads. However, Google linked me to a free sample clip. If you click the link you can find it in an alphabetized list under “HANDEL ‘Hallelujah’ chorus from Messiah” where you can download the MP3. It would be nice to play right now and to loop continuously as you read on.

Go ahead… I’ll give you a moment.

I think all of these user-interface guys have it wrong. We need systems that will accommodate us not only when we are in our initial “webtarded” stage, but also after we become proficient. That means two interfaces – the cryptic command line Boolean string stuff for experts and the pretty picture point and click interface. Why can’t we have both? There is a paper I wrote that discusses this. It concerned computer operating systems specifically, but I think that a variant has relevance for search engines as well. You can find it here. Then you can tell me what you think about my idea.

Okay, you should probably shut-off the Hallelujah Chorus now.

Text vs. GUI – a False Dilemma/ Joseph Colannino

2006-11-23T11:11:00.000-06:00

[Note: This is a reprint of a paper submitted in fulfillment of the requirement for a current issues paper for KM/LIS 5043 in July 2006. I have included it here to be used as reference material for another blog.]

The text-vs.-GUI dilemma is here to stay because it is irresolvable; user interfaces need both text and GUI. The text-vs.-GUI debate has been incessant since the GUI’s first major appearance with the advent of Apple’s Macintosh computer in 1984. A keyword search for text + GUI + interfaces resulted in more than 5 million hits on Google. A search under the coordinated phrase “user interface” indicated 201 million hits. Searching on the established phrase “human computer interaction” (a.k.a. HCI) gave nearly 30 million hits. Thus, the user interface continues as a mainstream topic worthy of academic and organizational interest. For example, W3C now hosts a user interface domain whose purpose is “to improve all user/computer communications on the Web (W3C UI),” and Gary Perlman maintains an extensive HCI bibliography at hcibib.org (HCI). But has not the issue of GUI vs. text been clearly decided?

A graphical user interface (GUI) now inhabits every personal computer, and text-based operating systems appear to have gone the way of the dinosaur. Alan Cooper summarized the general consensus more than ten years ago when he stated “The commonly accepted wisdom of the post-Macintosh era is that graphical user interfaces, or GUIs are better than character based user interfaces. This is a generally true statement…” (Cooper 1995). So where is the controversy?

Virtually all user interfaces contain a mixture of graphical and textual elements. However, the term GUI has come to mean an interface that uses a point and click structure as opposed to text entries on a command line. For example, the American Heritage online dictionary (Heritage) defines GUI as “an interface for issuing commands to a computer utilizing a pointing device, such as a mouse, that manipulates and activates graphical images on a monitor.” Yet, that most ubiquitous of graphically dominated venues, the worldwide web, continues to brood the text vs. GUI controversy. Witness Lesley Hensell’s 2003 article “Web Developer’s Dilemma: Text vs. GUI” (Hensell 2003). Her choice of wording inadvertently portends the subject thesis of this very paper; a dilemma, strictly speaking, is a choice between two unfavorable alternatives.

Hensell states that “with nearly a dozen large Web [sic] sites and complex e-commerce back-end systems, Encyclopaedia Britannica is one company that has forsaken GUI development tools in favor of text editors.” Nor is this an isolated instance. Hensell quotes Jay Cann, CTO of the web development firm Macquarium Intelligent Communications (Macquarium) to underscore the point: “We don't have any visual designers who just visually design – they’re all HTML coders.” But as reported by Hensell, Corel’s vice president of new ventures, Ian LeGrow, states that “HTML is definitely here to stay as the main vehicle for Web page layouts. But we're going to be seeing a pretty radical change from simple-to-edit, static HTML to more of an XML interface where [scalable vector graphics (SVG)] comes [sic] into play.” According to W3C’s SVG homepage (W3C SVG), scalable vector graphics “is a language for describing two-dimensional graphics and graphical applications in XML.” So what is the conclusion of these matters? Hensell summarizes in the last sentence of her article: “The balance of power may be shifting yet again, toward a new middle ground – and if it does, Web [sic] development tools no doubt will evolve to accommodate it.” The “new middle ground” is apparently the wedding of text and GUI capabilities in a single user interface.

Seeds of a dual interface have been around for a long time. As previously noted, all GUIs contain text, nearly all support text commands, and many contain more text than icons. Indeed, the mix is typically configurable by selecting which and how many icons one chooses to place on various toolbars (those horizontal strips of graphical elements near the top of the screen). To illustrate, consider the most ubiquitous of commands, the “save” function found in every application from the mundane (e.g., word processors and spreadsheets) to the esoteric (professional tools for specialty interests in the arts and sciences). Regardless of the particular application, GUI interfaces such as Microsoft Windows or Mac programs implement this in at least two different ways. One way comprises locating the disk icon and clicking it with the mouse. Another way is to type a command sequence – for example “alt+f s” in Windows. The latter sequence is completely executable without removing one’s hands from the keyboard. Indeed, it requires only one hand (the left) and is much faster than the point and click approach. Notwithstanding, many users, especially new users, will find the point and click sequence preferable because it does not require memorization of any command structure. The point is that differing users have differing user interface preferences.

Indeed, the GUI is not as obviously superior as Cooper’s truism may lead one to believe. For example, Mark Daoust illustrates in his online article “The Surprising Truth about Ugly Websites” (Daoust) that ugly websites often outsell pretty ones, or as he states succinctly: “Ugly sells.” Daoust notes that Plenty of Fish, a free online dating service (Plenty of fish) generates $10,000 per day in advertising revenue despite being “a very plain looking website.” Daoust believes that plain websites convey several important features: trust, functionality, and simplicity. He believes that glitz can sometimes be mistaken for slick and shady marketing while simpler websites exude a homegrown integrity. In support of functionality and simplicity, Daoust cites the Google search engine, The Drudge Report (Drudge), and Craigslist (Craig). In fact, the latter two websites are virtually all text. All are commercially very successful.

This author (Colannino) envisions a dual system where a command line at the toolbar level (similar in appearance to the subject line of an e-mail) gives the text equivalent of the user’s GUI selections as they are being made. Entry would be allowed in either way, and both methods would be fully supported and documented by online help with “show me” and textual instructions, and in offline documentation. GUI and text would be given no a priori bias. Both would always be visible and available. This differs from current Mac and Windows GUI interfaces that have incidental text and no command line. Once the user learned the text commands (gained fluency) there would be no need to interface with a GUI, except for unfamiliar actions. However, the GUI would always be available. The GUI would provide a consistent hierarchical interface; the command line would provide a concise flat interface. Apparently, this is not an original thought.

A Linux website (PCLinuxOS) offers the following advice in its online definition for “command line.” “‘Command Line’ refers to the entering of commands directly in a text mode using a terminal. For new users a graphical environment is easier to use but the command line is very powerful and definitely worth learning how to use as you become more experienced.”

Human language provides another direct though imperfect analogy: language students dream of foreign lands absent irregular verbs; intellectuals dream of concise and elegant expression of ideas and thoughts – the two are mutually incompatible. Neophytes require consistency. Experts desire economy and elegance. The war is between consistency and conciseness. Idioms and irregular verbs testify to conciseness and are the domain of the fluent. So it is in the land of computers; why should expert computer users be constrained to navigate the same hierarchy of menus in a GUI that novices must? Why should novices be required to memorize long lists of textual commands that serve only experts well? With a dual user interface (DUI) both graphical and textual command structures would be supported. Familiar commands would tend to be entered via the command line sequence while new commands and feature browsing could be done in a graphical environment. A convenient sequence, such as pressing both the “ctrl” and “/” keys simultaneously, would alternate between them.

The concept of a DUI is not well attested on the web. A Google search on the coordinated phrase “dual user interface” produced only 205 hits and the term was applied to mean different things. The following definitions had multiple attestations in the web literature; specifically, dual user interfaces have been defined as interfaces that

are cognizant of different user processing preferences or abilities (also called hypermedia) – for example, an interface serving both sighted and blind persons (Savidus and Stephanidis 1995),
produce two different scripts such as Arabic and English (Arabic Windows 95),
give different information based on viewing angle (Usernomics),
allow one to switch between graphical and text options (Flexus), and
present both graphics and text options simultaneously to the user (Silverlake).

The author uses DUI to mean the last option. Yet when the coordinated phrase “dual user interface” was qualified with the acronym “DUI,” it produced no hits. The author takes the wide variety of meanings and the absence of an established acronym to indicate a lack of consensus regarding the value of the dual user interface (definition 5) by the electronic community in general.

As the author has hoped to demonstrate, a user interface with both text and GUI elements would maximize the user experience and efficiency for both expert and newbie alike. The author would expect such an interface to have strong commercial possibilities and garner brand loyalty. Is this prescience or folly? Perhaps no degree of investigation is sufficient to answer now; at this juncture the best offering appears to be a proverb: time will tell.

REFERENCES

Arabic Windows 95, an operating system supporting both Arabic and English alphabets, http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Ben-me%3B498567 (accessed 27-July-06).

Cooper, Alan, About face: the essentials of user interface design. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1995), 41.

Craig, a regional classified advertising list, http://www.craigslist.org/about/cities.html (accessed 27-Jul-06).

Doust. The surprising truth about ugly websites, http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Website-Development/The-Surprising-Truth-About-Ugly-Websites.html (accessed 27-Jul-06).

Drudge, the Drudge Report, a news linking website, http://www.drudgereport.com/ (accessed 27-Jul-06).

Flexus, a website for COBOL programming tools, http://www.flexus.com/ (accessed 27-Jul-06).

HCI, a website compiling an extensive bibliography regarding the scientific field of human computer interaction, http://www.hcibib.org/ (accessed 27-Jul-06).

Hensell, Lesley, Web developer’s dilemma: text vs. GUI, E-Commerce Times, http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/31596.html (accessed 27-Jul-06).

Heritage, the American Heritage Dictionary, 2004 ed. online, http://www.bartleby.com/61/26/G0302650.html (accessed 27-Jul-06).

Macquarium, a web design company, http://www.macquarium.com/ (accessed 27-Jul-06).

PCLinuxOS, a website devoted to the Linux operating system for PCs, http://www.pclinuxonline.com/wiki/DefinitionsTerminology (accessed 27-Jul-06).

Plenty of fish, a free online dating service, http://www.plentyoffish.com/ (accessed 27-Jul-06).\

Savidis, A., Stephanidis, C. Developing dual user interfaces for integrating blind and sighted users: the homer uims. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, (New York: ACM Press/Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1995), 106 – 113.

Silverlake, a software company producing a dual user interface according to definition 5, http://www.s-2a.com/smms_features.htm#3 (accessed 27-Jul-06).

Usernomics a software company producing a dual user interface according to definition 3, http://www.usernomics.com/news/2005/09/pcworldcom-sharp-shows-dual-view-lcd.html,

(accessed 27-Jul-06).

W3C SVC, the Worldwide Web Consortium, SVC website, http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/

(accessed 27-Jul-06).

W3C UI, the Worldwide Web Consortium, user interface website, http://www.w3.org/UI/ (accessed 27-Jul-06).

Reading behavior in the digital environment, by Ziming Liu. Review and Musings/J. Colannino

2006-11-18T19:50:00.000-06:00

How has reading behavior changed with the advent of electronic documents? To find out, Dr Ziming Liu used a convenient sample comprising 250 surveys distributed to “engineers, scientists, accountants, teachers… managers… and graduate students at San Jose State University,” of which 119 were returned (six of them incomplete). In his study, he reports that online text is harder to comprehend and slower to read. The medium affects the message.

Perhaps changes are inevitable with the introduction of any new technology. When the masses began learning to read and write, philosophers such as Plato complained that we would lose our memories. I personally witnessed university professors warning of mental decline and that slide rules were better at preserving mathematical acumen. (Perhaps great mathematicians voiced a similar refrain with the advent of the slide rule; I am old enough to have used one, but not old enough to have witnessed its introduction!) The widespread influence of television prompted Marshall McLuhan to note that “the message is the medium,” meaning that television’s necessarily iconic representations changed not only how information was presented, but what was presented. Indeed, most of these prognostications have come to pass to greater or lesser extent, but on balance, society has benefited not lost. Apparently, this trend continues with electronic documents.

Most of us can bear personal witness to Liu’s conclusions, agreeing that electronic documents result in

Less time spent on in-depth reading
Less time annotating text
Shallower, more fragmented and less concentrated reading
Less intensive reading, and
The printing of documents

With respect to this last point, Liu says “It seems unlikely that the computer will in the future replace the printed book as a reading medium in the way that it replaced the typewriter as a writing tool.” On the other hand, electronic documents have some amazing advantages, including

The timely availability of information
Hyperlink options
Imbedded multimedia such as audio and video clips

Indeed, it is these features which (quoting Levy) lead “toward shallower, more fragmented, and less concentrated reading,” as users jump from the text to who knows where via hyperlink.

My Experience
I am a quinquagenarian who does plenty of traditional reading – especially of books. I highlight and annotate them copiously. I rarely reread books; the simple act of highlighting and annotating serves to etch the big picture and seminal facts in my mind. But what if I am trying to provide a formal reference for an important fact? In that case, my memory tells me which book to select and where on which page to look. If it is a fact I remember, I probably highlighted it on my initial reading, so the highlighting doubles as a finding aid. This accords with Liu’s summary of Olsen’s work: “Readers tend to establish a visual memory for the location of items on a page and within a document.”

Being over forty and a lover of books is supposed to be a recipe for shunning e-text; at one time this was true; but now in most ways, I prefer e-text. True, with e-documents, there is no side of the page or physicality to help in locating facts. However, I can search for the exact phrase and find it instantly, so this is not much of a handicap. Indeed, there are many advantages. For one, hyperlinked references are much more convenient than traditional print references. (How I wish footnoted references on physical pages were hyperlinked!) While I can (and sometimes do) misplace books, I can always find an electronic document on my computer, invoking the search engine if necessary.

Before I began graduate studies only a year ago, I was reluctant to read text on screen. However, I now read all e-text onscreen. Since most of our reading assignments are scholarly works of ten to fifteen pages each, I would say that I have now mastered the art of reading and writing electronically.

Old Dog Learns New Tricks
I am an old dog who has learned new tricks. I do everything I used to do with print materials and more; I highlight (usually in three different colors – yellow for important points, green for really important points, and pink for definitions), and I annotate. I do this with two main programs – Adobe Acrobat Writer and Word. I am aware of no e-text which cannot be converted to one of these formats.

If I can do it, anyone can do it. So maybe we should think of e-text and books as microwave and conventional ovens, respectively. Some things are less satisfying in the microwave, but we have learned the advantages of each and in so doing, we have learned how to live with both.

The public library as a meeting-place in a multicultural and digital context... by Ragnar Audunson/ Review and Critique -- J. Colannino

2006-11-18T10:27:00.000-06:00

I had not been acquainted with Dr. Audunson until now. According to his biography, he is a political scientist in the Library and Information Science Department at Oslo University College, Norway. The subject writing concerns the political and social roles of the library in democracy and proposes that libraries serve as an important meeting place for patrons to share and exchange culture.

Synopsis
Dr. Audunson asserts that democratic institutions require tolerance and diversity to function, or as he puts it “The cement of democracy is tolerance.” Accordingly, society must create “arenas where people belonging to different cultural groups can meet and communicate,” and these arenas should be low-intensive places. I did not find the concept well-defined in the text, except perhaps by contrast to high-intensive places, where: “You can communicate intensively with persons sharing your interests and values… and you don’t have to bother with those disturbing persons holding opposite values and views.” With such a definition, low-intensive places are mono-cultural ones and high-intensive places are multicultural ones, though perhaps the intensity of debate among seminal issues is meant to be the distinguishing feature. The author uses “place” both literally and metonymically (for example, the church choir is a low-intensive “place”). In his view, the library is the best low-intensive place to share rival philosophies, and “For the future of democracy this is a question of utmost importance.”

Finally, Audunson appears to endorse the opinion that “No teacher or librarian should try to tell people how they should live their lives…. the role of the library is to promote self-realisation… not to make judgments and selections.”

My View
So what do I think? I find Audunson’s arguments unconvincing. First of all, the construct that libraries should not behave normatively is self-destructive – it is a normative pronouncement that no normative pronouncements should be made. Yet his text is full of normative statements, things that libraries should and should not do, ways that democracies should and should not behave, actions that people should and should not take, how societies should and should not function. If librarians should not “tell people how to live their lives,” why should I listen to Audunson?

Second, Audunson does not support his pronouncements with data, and his assertions are easily disproved: we share ideas in many places, not merely low-intensive ones. Here are some counter-examples: political debates are high-intensive places where we are exposed to alien ideas. So are religious revival meetings. The university classroom can be a high-intensive place. And what of blogs and chatrooms?

It is even true that democracy can exist without diversity or tolerance; there is nothing in a pure democracy that even requires them. Even today, Japan is mono-cultural yet democratic. Singapore is politically intolerant, yet democratic. In the U.S., slavery was democratically enacted, maintained, and overturned. Democracy only means the majority supports an idea, whether good or bad. As such, democracy does not safeguard our freedoms, nor does diversity. Even tolerance can be oppressive if evil is its beneficiary. For these reasons, we need normative standards, the very kind Audunson seems to disapprove.

Finally, Audunson seems to hold to a (long-discredited) utopian concept of society where the mere provision of place creates harmony. If he were correct, Sunday would not be the most segregated day of the week, nor would the lunch room be the most segregated place on the high school campus.

The library is designed to collect information from authorities and disseminate it to patrons, but that is a one-way street. It is not well-suited as a marketplace of ideas among its congregants. How could a place that demands its patrons not speak to one another even be nominated for that function? Are libraries so unimportant in their own right that we need to feign that the fate of the free world is wrapped in their mantle? Must we invent new and nonsensical functions for them? Until libraries learn how to forcefully base their droit d'être (right to exist) on their raison d’etre they shall continue to decline in relevance.

RSS Feeds and Favicons / J, Colannino

2006-11-12T18:39:00.000-06:00

Well, I have just syndicated my blog using FeedBurner.com. The funny orange icon at the left of my blog will take you there. Once you get there you will see a “Subscribe Now” banner at the top right, under which appears icons for a variety of feed readers. Click the one you own, and voila, your subscribed. Here’s how I did it.

First, I went to the FeedBurner.com website. Then I followed the instructions. After completing the exercise it generated html code and asked me to past it intomy template. Blogger's html editor makes it almost impossible to show you the actual code, so I've omitted it.

You can paste the code anywhere in your template, but I had problems with the icon appearing at the very top of my blog where it was covered by the blogsites top banner. The best place seemed to be after the “End Profile” comment between the *h2 and */h2* headers near the bottom of Blogger's template code. That puts the orange icon right under the “View my complete profile” link in the sidebar at the left.

Our professor also showed us a cool link which ultimately led to myfavicon.com. There you can personalize your site’s favicon by uploading any digital picture you happen to like. If your browser supports it, you will see my happy little mugshot in icon form when you bookmark my site. If you follow the sites instructions, you can upload any digital image and it will generate two snippets of code. Again, I cannot show you the code, but the first snippet must be pasted somewhere after the *head* tag at the top of the template’s html code (I am using asterisks as the delimiters because the usual ones mess up the editor). The second snippet can go anywhere, but as I have said in the first paragraph, I found that the best place was between the *h2 and */h2* lines. In fact, I pasted the second snippet right after the FeedBurner.com code.

That resulted in the icon that looks like a small multi-color basket weave at left. Again, the site gave me the html code verbatim.

Now I can hardly wait to take a class in html programming!

Genre and Left Behind/ J. Colannino, a derivative review of Going into Godmode in Left Behind/Clive Thompson – Wired News

2006-11-11T15:26:00.002-06:00

A Game That’s really fun
Wired News presents Clive Johnson’s review about Left Behind the video game – the latest incarnation of Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series. Really? Yes, really. The official title of the game is Left Behind, Eternal Forces, The PC Game. Johnson had basically good things to say about game’s presentation. In other words it is not boring; it is actually fun and entertaining.

My Problem with Left Behind
So what is my problem with Left Behind? Let’s begin with an excerpt from the wired article:

“Indeed, I kept wondering when the game was going to throw it down and truly embrace the apocalyptic Christian vision. This story line isn't merely of armageddon, but Armageddon. Thus, the last Left Behind book -- Glorious Appearing -- concludes with the ultimate triumph of Jesus in a phantasmagorically gruesome holocaust. As predicted in Revelation, the savior [sic] returns to Earth, chides Satan for defiling the planet (and for inventing Darwinism), then proceeds to slaughter all unbelievers, dissolving their tongues and bursting their bodies like overstuffed sausages. As millions die in transports of agony, the ground becomes a swamp of blood and mud, and some extremely unpleasant things happen to the Jews who refuse to convert. As for the born-again? They stand around watching and cheering.”

Apparently the video game ends less offensively. However, the above prose prompted this reaction from one commenter (edited for length, expletives bleeped).

“you christians [sic] have a really bleeped up god [sic]... he really seems like a bleep... what with the wrathful vengeful bleep from the old testament (oh that's right, christians [sic] tend to forget about the old testament) and then jesus [sic] coming along and creating hell for people who don't grovel and worship him... i'm [sic] glad i [sic] don't have to deal with any of that bleep that comes from your overly humanized (and somewhat insulting) version of what god [sic] is...”

Well, do you blame him?

Certainly both excerpts are exaggerations and not strictly correct of either Left Behind or the Bible. Notwithstanding, both make a valid point: there is something grossly sinister in a collective schadenfreude. If God takes “no pleasure in the death of the wicked,” and prohibits believers from doing so, then where is the Biblical warrant for that sentiment in LaHaye’s Left Behind? LaHaye gets it wrong because he gets his genre wrong.

About Genre
Suppose my wife prepares an inventory of what is in the refrigerator and cupboard in order to create a shopping list. If I get the lists confused and take the inventory list to the supermarket will my wife not think I am mad? The shopping list genre tacitly says “buy this stuff”; the inventory list tacitly says “don’t buy this stuff.” By misunderstanding the genre I misinterpret the author’s intentions as incorrectly as one can and buy exactly what I should not.

Revelation’s genre is that of apocalyptic literature and must be interpreted accordingly. Contrary to popular belief (e.g., LaHaye’s) the primary audience for Revelation was never the Christian community 2000 years after its writing. Is the concept not absurd on its face? Apocalyptic literature was authored during times of calamity for the benefit of its then present-day audience. As such, Revelation comprises deliberately (but not hopelessly) coded messages; codes are meant to be decoded and without mysticism.

Revelation was designed to be circulated throughout the region of Asia Minor during a period of intense first-century persecution. Thus the document was publicly broadcast for a private audience. The most literal analogy is that of the transmission of coded messages during wartime. The text makes use of symbols and devices known to Jewish Christian converts in Asia Minor but veiled to the pagan persecutors throughout whose territory the message had to be disseminated. Understanding the genre and historical context is necessary for unveiling the meaning.

Who is the Beast?
The beast is Nero Caesar (Nrwn Qsr, Hebrew). How do I know? Gematria is the ancient practice of substituting numbers for letters of proper names and obtaining the sum. This practice was given an exaggerated mystical significance in the 13^th century by the cabbalists, but we should not import that into a first-century text. In ancient cultures, letters were often used as numbers in numerical calculations, e.g., Hebrew, Greek, and Roman numerals.

Here is John’s coded reference to Nero in Revelation: “let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred sixty six.” Accordingly, here is the math using the practice of the day: n = 50 + r = 200 + w = 6 + n = 50 + q = 100 + s = 60 + r = 200 = 666. This also accounts for a common textual variant footnoted in most Bibles “… and his number is six hundred sixteen.” Six hundred sixteen is the gematria for the Latin variant.

That Nero qualifies as the beast would have been readily apparent to the first century Jewish Christian community and probably the first name that would have leapt to their mind. One of Nero’s practices was soaking Christians in tar, hanging them in poles during the noonday sun and lighting them on fire during the evening for use as human torches. This lends a macabre undertone to John’s writing in Revelation 7.16 regarding the martyrs: “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat.”

Besides this, scholar Gary DeMar reports:

“Nero had his mother bludgeoned and slashed to death by marines… after his attempts to poison her had failed. [He killed his wife Octavia] so he could marry his mistress, Poppea. He kicked Poppea to death when she complained about him coming home late. The Roman historian Suetonius reported that Nero ‘castrated the boy Sporus and actually tried to make a woman out of him; and he married him with all the usual ceremonies… and treated him as his wife.’ His other sexual exploits are too degrading to put into print.”

The reason for this macabre digression is not gratuitous. When we recognize the genre of the text and the intended audience then (and only then) can the author’s intended meaning become clear: Nero and his kingdom will be overthrown; your suffering will end; even in death you are victorious, remain steadfast and you will receive the crown of eternal life. Has this not been the Christian message throughout the ages?

A Future Antichrist?
This is not to say that the world could not be faced with another Nero sometime in the future. We have seen them in the past – antitypes such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Hitler. If Hitler had come to dominate the world, Antichrist would have been an apt moniker. Is it possible that an antichrist could arise in the future with even more devastating consequences? Could he be the head of a world empire as was Nero? Yes, and it is a likely lesson intended in the wider context of the book – a lesson which we have failed to heed in the case of the aforementioned despots. But clearly, John’s primary purpose was not to ignore the murder and persecution of first century martyrs to benefit an audience that would not materialize for two millennia (and counting) after his death.

So What?
Why does it matter? Isn’t this a “non-essential” issue of Christianity over which we may respectfully disagree? Yes, it is. But error is error, and not without consequence. If we believe that the world is going to hell in a hand basket anyway, where is the impetus to transform the culture, shape politics, contribute to public debate and law, or to contend for the widow and orphan? Why should Christians pursue graduate degrees or engage in life? Yet, the Bible routinely commands Christians to transform and redeem culture.

So what have I learned this semester and how does it apply? This semester, I learned about genre. I also learned that failure to recognize genre can lead to serious errors. Quod Erat Demonstrandum ■

Political Correctness (PC) and Truth/J. Colannino

2006-11-06T20:59:00.000-06:00

There is something vulgar about political correctness that has nothing to do with its point of view. Supposedly, enlightenment includes “tolerance,” though I find such to be a confused concept nowadays: to be clear, one cannot tolerate a point of view that one embraces; else it is no longer tolerance. I do not tolerate hot fudge sundaes. How could I? I love them.

When I was seven years of age, I tolerated tonsil surgery. For me, most points of view lie somewhere between hot fudge sundaes and tonsil surgery. Thankfully, not many rank too closely with the latter. If they approach the hot fudge sundae side, I embrace them; if they are closer to the tonsil surgery side, I tolerate them. Tolerance means that I disagree, and that sometimes I debate those ideas vigorously. So please don’t suggest that I am intolerant because I disagree with your point of view – that’s the necessary part of a constructive argument.

The Real Reason PC is Vulgar
But the reason I find political correctness vulgar is not even due to its lack of tolerance and irrational insistence on complete agreement. The reason I find political correctness vulgar is due to its willful denial of truth. If we begin suppressing inconvenient facts then we are well on our way to group think, collective stupidity, and much darker things, including tyranny and oppression.

The Man Thing
Suppose I suggest that men on average are larger, or stronger then women, based on overwhelming and undeniable evidence. Now, it may be that I am wrong. It has happened before. In such a case, I expect and demand an argument based on evidence, not wishful thinking or personal shock or outrage. There is a place for all those things, but not within the pale of constructive argument. I see the leading sentence of this paragraph as a value-neutral factual statement with no prejudice toward a particular gender. Indeed, as a Christian man, these kinds of prejudices are unallowable, as I hope to show. And if you disagree with me, I hope you will tolerate my arguments long enough to consider them as evidence for the veracity of the historic gospels.

The first century A.D. was a time of great chauvinism within a patristic culture that exaggerated the virtues of war and wealth and oppressed and marginalized precisely the people groups many of us champion today – the poor, the sick, the needy.

Remarkably, women and shepherds were considered such untrustworthy sources that their testimony was barred in all courts of law. Yet, the Incarnation was heralded by shepherds, and the first to witness the resurrected Christ were women. Had the gospels been a fictional story, there is simply no way that the gospel writers would have chosen the two most significant events in recorded history to have been averred in such an embarrassing way.

Jesus, Himself, was a companion of the poor, the lame, and the destitute. Indeed, He went out of His way within a socially caste society to seek out the broken and distressed. Sadly, at that time, persons were considered socially if not biologically inferior for being female, racially crossbred, immoral, or non-Roman. The woman at the well of Sychar is an example of a person from all the aforementioned categories. Indeed, she expressed complete astonishment that a Jewish Rabbi such a Jesus would even converse with her let alone ask to use one of her drinking utensils. Yet the gospels faithfully record all of these facts that during their day could only be regarded as embarrassing and demeaning. There is simply no reason to do so, unless the story is true.

The apostle Paul stated specifically that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3.28)” This high standard for valuing people of all stripes is nothing short of a miracle in the context of the time in which it was written, and it has not been equaled by any other major religion, even to this day.

Back to Tolerance
Well, perhaps you disagree. And if so, thank you for tolerating my point of view. But if you choose to grant me the gift of your time to comment, at the very least, let us consider the facts, even if inconvenient. If you value diversity, then please do not be schizophrenic in your endorsement. Either people and groups are different or we are all the same. If we are different, we cannot be the same in every category. Perhaps that is inconvenient, but it is true. And far from being limiting it may liberating, and even divine.

LIBRARIES AND RSS, by Richard W. Boss/Comments, J. Colannino

2006-11-06T13:25:00.000-06:00

As part of our assignment on collaboration we were required to comment on at least one article selected by another student. I have selected the above entitled article because I do not know much about RSS feeds. This brief paper gives a good sketch of what RSS is and how it works. RSS uses XML and stands for something like “really simple syndication” (there is some dispute about the acronym). No matter, RSS allows for a subscriber to link to a site of interest and authorize the host to automatically send new updates about a topic as soon as the information is available. Thus, the technology is a push-by-permission technology. The feeds may be pushed to the user’s web browser without the need to provide an e-mail address. If the feeds become annoying, one may cancel or restore them at the click of a button without having to send an unsubscribe e-mail or wait from any action by the host organization.

This article suggested that RSS would be a good idea for libraries, and by extension, anyone wanting up to the minute news on any topic. The host site must have enabled RSS transmissions. This is usually shown by an RSS or XML button located on the site. The user clicks it and follows instructions to allow for automated downloads. The user also needs an aggregator. Mozilla’s Firefox browser comes with an aggregator built in, Firefox is free.

So now that I know what an RSS feed is and how to enable it, will I use RSS feeds? No. The technology looks nifty but I have developed a strong aversion for push technologies. When I want something on the web, especially from a favorite site, I have little trouble finding it. I find even e-mails to be a distraction and nuisance when they interrupt my daily routine. To borrow a phrase from manufacturing, I am a just-in-time (JIT) infophile. I want my information when I want it, not before, and not very much afterward. When I was younger, we called people with this attitude “spoiled” children.

Am I a spoiled child? To a degree, yes. A child who has their slightest wish granted often grows to be a tyrannical adult. Oh, I certainly don’t qualify for that "honor," but there is something about just-in-time or on-demand service that pushes one in that direction. I worry if we, as a culture, will lose our civility and I have observed signs of it everywhere and at an increasing pace. We have just-in-time Christianity (get your miracle), just-in-time food (fast food), just-in-time relationships (chat rooms), just-in-time sexual satisfaction (pornographic sites), just-in-time travel (road rage)… well, you get the picture. If patience is a virtue then just-in-time is a vice. Its fine for things and bad for people.

The trouble with just-in-time is that some things are best savored and are even demeaned otherwise. One cannot have just-in-time parenting or just-in-time love without doing grave injustice to oneself and others. What good examples have we of love? The premier examples used to be in the home, but divorce and a culture of instant gratification have begun to assault that bastion with increasing alacrity. Many I speak with are confused about what love is and are surprised to learn that sexual gratification is a very small drop in a very deep ocean – an ocean that rewards years of exploration with indescribable treasure. Once you are privileged to find it, you need never hurry on or look elsewhere, even in the face of social distractions with really simple syndication.

Gimme’ The Context: Context-driven Automatic Semantic Annotation with CPANKOW/ Overview and Opinion/J. Colannino

2006-11-04T12:46:00.000-06:00

By Philipp Cimiano, Gunter Ladwig, and Steffen Staab, Institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe, Germany

In an earlier blog I gave a coarsely articulated recipe for an automated semantic engine. I also spoke of Schmoogle, my word for a hypothetical semantic search engine that is as user-friendly as Google. Talk is cheap, of course. The glory is in the doing not the dreaming. To wit, now there is C-PANKOW (Context-sensitive Pattern-based ANotation through Knowledge On the Web. It is hosted here, though the server was unavailable each time I tried it.

The actual algorithms are a complex integration of propositional calculus, probability and Bayesian statistics, and analytic geometry. However, heuristically the automated metatagging follows this process:

scan the text of the subject web page that one desires to semantically tag,
match the text to a pattern library, creating “instances,”
generate an automated query to Google for each instance,
download the first n abstracts (n <>
assess the similarity (pattern match) between the downloaded abstracts and the subject page,
weight the pattern matching in the abstracts by number and similarity (these are presumed to be contextually relevant),
tag the subject page with the annotations contextually relevant as voted by the filtered web results.

I think the scheme, especially step 7, is clever.

For the instance recognition, C-PANKOW uses the part-of-speech tagger hosted at Ohio State University (the other OSU). Then it parses the parts of speech creating a kind of ordered paraphrase or pattern string. (Identifying parts of speech is the only way I can think of to begin automatically constructing semantics). C-PANKOW then generates an automated query to Google for these pattern strings, typically downloading the first ten hits for each instance, counting the number of pattern strings using one of Google’s application processing interfaces (APIs); I presume it is the AJAX Search API, but this is not clear from the article. At any rate, these hits provide the context for creating and interpreting pattern strings.

So, does it work? Yes and no.

First of all, it can take up to twenty minutes to semantically tag a page. Obviously, this could never be used on-the-fly. To be fair, the authors do not envision it as an on-the-fly tool, but rather as a way for creators to tag their web pages. But even so, twenty minutes is still a lifetime in computer years. No doubt the algorithm will continue to be refined and the tagging time will be reduced. However, the bigger problem as we learned from the Mohammed article is that no one believes metatagging – indeed, search engines ignore it.

So, C-PANKOW or something like it will not be a player in enabling semantic search, ever, unless some authoritative body undertakes to do the tagging. Even so, tagging times of minutes require careful selection of resources (e.g., scholarly work). Hasn’t this been the pattern with library resources anyway, whether metadata (cringe) is automated or hand crafted? Maybe the focus should be in creating trustworthy data asylums that are free, or at least inexpensive. Hey! We could call it a library!