The Serendipity Machine

In The Serendipity Machine, David Green begins the 1st chapter with: “It’s risky business to make predictions about the future of technology” and than he goes on to demonstrate it by referring to IBM’s founder’s prediction about the future of computers. We know how off the mark Tom Watson was. What about the other crystal ball gazers; how accurate those predictions were? The answer to this question is quite predictable and almost always accurate: predictions are very inaccurate, and yet there's an insatiable and even insane appetite for predictions.  Why? Predictions satisfy three fundamental human emotional traits: hope, fear and superstition.

Since humans are driven by these powerful and often completely irrational stimuli: hope, fear, superstition many amazing discoveries and inventions came into existence by way of serendipity rather than perfectly rational thinking. For what did Watson have besides his experience and vision to make such his prediction? His predictions were based on rational thinking and experience; but that was before 2020!.

I see no evidence that most of today’s social luminaries and futurists are any less myopic than soothsayer of the dark ages, even with all the high tech gizmos, Big Data, AI algorithms and fancy models at their disposal. In fact some of the truly amazing discoveries and inventions are overlooked and ignored simply because of the pursuit of instant gratification through trivialization of complex issues.

“One of the problems the Internet has introduced is that in the electronic village all the village idiots have Internet access.”~ Peter Nelson.  In 2020 it seems that the most powerful human stimuli: hope, fear and superstition are satisfied by trivia and the typical, all the while individuals and collectives are being beset by complex problems.  And when complex problems can no longer be endured, humans as always seek out the 21st century soothsayers for solutions.  And the soothsayers unfailingly deliver: more trivialization of complex problems and more sensationalisation of banality.

Who knows you?

There was time when what one knew mattered, indeed mattered much. Somehow the paradigm has changed to: "it's not what you know but who you know that matters" stupid. Well in this age of information deluge and short attention span the newest paradigm is "it's neither what you know nor who you know, but who knows You", stupid! Celebrities get appointed as ambassadors of the UN and the mediocre busybody buffoons get promotions. The quiet achievers and the productive personnel go on unnoticed. Naturally there are exceptions to this paradigm.

Mediocrity in your Face

“We realize that the low expectations of our culture, of our community of artists, even, instill complacency in us. We look at our work and unconsciously use a scale to evaluate it that is based on the mediocrity and lack of vision in our culture. If we can't work shoulder by shoulder with great people, we should take time to remove ourselves, to live in a kind of solitude where our standards can become the standards of our own passion, of our own souls.”
by Alex Cox of Italy Journal

The fundamental problem with the criticism of mediocrity is that it expects the mediocre to remove themselves from the positions of leadership and influence; this is a naive proposition. Such proposition affords the mediocre the luxury of pointing their finger towards the more capable.

The curse of the mediocrity is that the mediocrity’s worst and weakest can turn the talented against themselves. The more mediocrity is pervasive the more talented people suck up to it; if you can’t beat it, join it. “Team spirit” is one of mediocrity’s catch cries and spiritual strongholds for it best serves the mediocre. Understand me right. I’m not against team work or team structures. It is the spiritual notion of team that suppresses the blossoming of the talent. Too often we see organizational grand slogans like: “Innovation & fresh ideas!”. What they really demand, however, is fresh mediocrity while promoting those with the most insatiable appetite for mediocrity. The extent of mediocrity saturation in organisations - both governmen & private sectors - is amazing.

What’s than the solution, is there one?

Knowledge is Power or is it?

Over the last decade knowledge has become the principal value driver in every economy. Despite this, most managers, still have not learned how to harness knowledge. Why? There are 4 ways to get into a position of power and in the following order of precedence:

1. By manipulation, including skillful ignorance and Machiavellian tactics
2. By inheritance
3. By accident
4. Through knowledge, know-how, skill & experience

Having acquired some power the mediocre (the 1st 3 precedences) will raise the shields of ignorance to guard his/her position. It is mediocrity not stupidity which costs organizations and their stakeholders dearly! Someone said: "Knowledge is expensive but so is stupidity" so the mediocre managers have shut out the knowledge.

It is not the stupidity we need to be concerned about but about the monumental mediocrity which has permiated much of the middle and upper layers of management.

Mediocrity is far behind ability and scantily ahead of stupidity

Recently I've read the blogs worth reading:
Communication Nation
Jane Genova
Mathemagenic

Knowledge Management Failure

Apparently the vast majority of KM systems fail. Many IT & KM experts and managers who claim to know what KM is all about have written countless articles, produced huge volumes of white papers and case studies, all eager to explain the causes of such failures. If they do understand the ills and the reasons for the ills of KM systems, than why can’t they fix the problems? Or is it because their finger prints are all over the failed KM systems?

I submit that KM systems which have failed have had little to do with Knowledge. In other words the systems which so comprehensively failed were not KM systems at all. They were re-branded ordinary data, information and document management systems. What has failed is the populist KM thinking paradigm. To squeeze more sales out of their ordinary data & document management systems, some vendors stick such “sexy” tags on their ordinary offerings like:

Information Knowledge System – IKS, which resembles more a plain, flat or hierarchical repository of outdated information, which should be labeled as junk information. Why? Because it consumes a lot of resources, it does not stimulate seriously creative thinking; in short, from useful Knowledge perspective its usefulness is limited. In fact it would be more profitable not having such system at all.

Knowledge Management Tools - KMT. A tool set which promises to decide for the user what is relevant for the user. Its decision is based on the user’s query or worst; user's profile. Implicitly these tools are promising to relive users from thinking; an attractive proposition for the simpleton and the mediocre for whom thinking is torment. The same grandiose "benefits" were promoted and promised for years by now discredited CASE tools and DSS/EIS systems. Now these things are called KMT.

Dynamic Knowledge Systems - DKS - little more than intranet based glorified electronic discussion boards or portals facilitating broad discussions, topics and interests. It is this "dynamism" of many participants with broadest topics and interests that promise to elicit on-demand tacit knowledge and convert it into an explicit knowledge and then codify and organize this knowledge into a repository of explicit knowledge. In reality most – not all - DK Systems are just feeders of more low grade information to IKS and KMT.

The list is endless. Sadly, KM label has become a fashionable fad and a corruption of knowledge application practice.

The fundamental problem with various so called KM systems is that they are implying that thinking is a difficult and daunting process, whilst suggesting that managers have more important things to do than think or could spend their corporate time on better things than "wrecking" their grey matter. The prompters of KM systems are offering a relief from such "torturous" pursuits as thinking; such elixir does appeal to the mediocrity.

Few are blessed with serious, specifically relevant knowledge or know-how. Any system which facilitates overly broad participation will inextricably bury any expert knowledge under a pile of low value chatter. I am persuaded that for valuable ideas & thoughts to produce innovation there need to be a highly afferent and efferent system capable of synthesizing powerful multidimensional analytical databases with the know-how of subject matter experts, the imagination of visionaries and the creative mind of innovators who do not fret from the challenge of thinking.

So is there such thing as successful KM and can it ever reach a consistent and higher rate of successful implementation? Yes to both questions for as long as the cognitive dimension of knowledge, which steams from the cognitive faculty of the mind, is at the core of Knowledge System. I'm reluctant to use the KM term for obvious reasons, so instead I'm using Knowledge Systems (KS), and where system does not mean technology only.

The fundamental pre-conditions to successful knowledge diffusion are:

• Do not manage knowledge; manage knowledgeable people.
  
• Sophisticated database technology is a critical component of a working KS, however, only if it is synthesized with human knowledge.
  
• Knowledgeable people love technology. Without it knowledge diffusion would be inefficient and less effective and ultimately would compel high value knowledge workers to gravitate to places with high concentration of high quality technology.
  
• The creators of knowledge are the best diffusors of knowledge and emanate from the same mind. The role of management and Knowledge Manager in particular is to encourage this dual process of knowledge creation and diffusion.
  
• Focus on elicitation of USEFUL / EXPERT Knowledge only!
  
• Match technology's sophistication level to people's cognition level. If people's cognition is low, question leaders' ability; if need be replace them with capable people & begin building a viable Knowledge System.
  
• Elevate cognitive excellence above mediocrity.
  

Those enterprises, which are not captive to the mediocre leadership, will excel spectacularly.

Bill Ives: "I have found the key differentiator in KM success to be the quality of leadership and not the quality of KM solution design or technology. I have seen implementations with acceptable designs flourish under the right leadership and brilliant “next generation” KM designs flounder under poor leadership." - Portals and KM

Knowledge should be organisation's most potent assets in its assets portfolio. Those organisations where knowledge isn't the most valued asset are facing a bleak future; they'll become either an easy takeover "prey", or they'll die a cruel death.

Wallowing in the World Wide Web of morass

The original idea of the WWW was to contextually link the content on the net. Today the idea of contextual linkage has been totally abandoned and the hyper linking shamelessly abused. Today everything is linked irrespective of context. The garbage on the web is overwhelming. We have submerged deeply into this morass, yet, we – the society are not choking on it. Oh no! We’ve learned to breath it, chew it, swallow it and than excrete it back into our own cyber environment, and… consume it again. This cycle of consumption of our own data/information excrement is so intense that now even the alternative (non-online) news media and information sources offer little more than reproduction of what is found on the first page of Google’s search result.

I see and hear my colleagues around the water cooler, in the meetings or even in knowledge groups are quick to offer instant solutions sourced from the WWW search results. And everybody seems to find the same staff instantly. Somehow the garbage always makes to the 1st page of the search results. The management appears to be the biggest suckers for information sludge.

I see a bright future for those of us who know how to find the fine information on the WWW. However, for now we just have to keep our heads above the sea of cyber gunk.

The Information Age is seriously ill

Smartmobbing Urban Catastrophe

"The era of Information "hunter/gatherer" is fast fading away. Welcome to the era Knowledge Management". This I wrote as a starting statement in my KDR Lab web site. Well, it is my wish only. The information age – as aged and ill as it is now - isn't fading away fast enough. Whilst conventional information systems are excellent for data harvesting and processing they are no longer able to provide neither the required predictability of unconventional situations nor able to cope effectively with the impacts of unconventional situations and events. The idea that we need more information to make sound decisions and to solve our social and organizational ills still persists and is like a millstone around our necks. After countless failed critical decisions which were based on poor information and gut feel rather than on judgment based on discerned information, knowledge and know-how, there has been some realization of the value of knowledge and in many cases – although not many enough - even a noticeable shift towards engagement of knowledge diffusion specialists.

Arve Sund, executive VP in charge of extrusion for Hydro Aluminum North America, Baltimore in an article in the Indusry Week submits: "We are in an information society, and if you look upon the consequences of that from an industry perspective, it has deep implications of how we run our businesses. ...When you look back in history you see that information and technology was the power base of running a business. The consequence of that was that you protected information, you protected technology. If you look at it today, information and technologies are immediately available all over the world at the same time. That changes what is the key to success for businesses. It gets more and more important to look at the human resources side and people side as the key to your response."

Sadly, however, there are still too many snake oil merchants out there selling the need for more information gathering power and information storage to IT managers. What's even more sad is that some IT managers are still falling for the fallacy of the more information gathering power is better; and so they keep hording up mountains of all kinds of information and in the process burying the valuable information under the non-contextual, irrelevant, outdated and incongruent information heap. Welcome to the era of Information Deluge and Knowledge Depravity! Some IT managers worship the technology by decree yet cloak themselves in robes of grandiose slogans like Knowledge Management (KM), Competitive Intelligence (CI) and Business Intelligence (BI), whilst parading as champions of collective knowledge and memory. In reality these information gluttons are just like the emperor with no cloths. *“But the Emperor has nothing at all on! …But he has nothing at all on!” at last cried out all the people.” Yet the corporate information moguls still keep on dragging their organisations into the morass of useless and costly information: *"The Emperor was vexed, for he knew that the people were right; but he thought the procession must go on now! And the lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than ever, to appear holding up a train, although, in reality, there was no train to hold.”

Hording up information in corporate silos is easy and glamorous. Creating and diffusing knowledge, however, is difficult and not glamorous. The fact that it is far easier to sell technology than to asemble useful, contextual information and diffuse knowledge has led to the proliferation of coxcomb consultants who equate any kind of information with knowledge and will do anything to tickle technology worshipers' ego for a quick & easy sell. For they understand one thing well: "The more gross the fraud the more glibly will it go down, and the more greedily will it be swallowed; since folly will always find faith wherever impostors will find impudence." (Rev. Charles Caleb Colton 1780-1832)

** “The Emperor’s New Clothes” – Hans Christian Andersen

World Wide Web of Junk

The WWW is the greatest junk yard of low grade information!

The value of the Internet as a repository of useful information is very low. Carl Shapiro in “Information Rules” suggests that the amount of actually useful information on the Internet would fit within roughly 15,000 books, which is about half the size of an average mall bookstore. To put this in perspective: there are over 5 billion unique, static & publicly accessible web pages on the www. Apparently Only 6% of web sites have educational content (Maureen Henninger, “Don’t just surf the net: Effective research strategies”. UNSW Press). Even of the educational content only a fraction is of significant informational value.

So why is it that the Internet is so popular as an information resource for the masses? I submit for 2 reasons:

1. Convenience:
   Since everybody is using the same thing – the WWW – there’s no compelling or competitive pressure to seek out quality information.
2. No alternative. All feed on the same junk.

For those who are skilled in finding the nuggets of valuable information an online library of 15,000 quality books is an attractive proposition.

Oh yeah one more thing; entertainment content has little quality information value, however, for as long as it tickles the consumer’s senses the Internet will unfailingly seduce all of us.

Did you know that there were days when the most popular search word on the internet wasn’t sex; it was hotels; sex ranked only 6th. Wow how useful this information is, and it wasn't hard to find.

Lo^oK up

Terms, words & expressions (old & new)...

A coxcomb is ugly all over with the effectation of a fine gentleman. (Dr.Johson)
A coxcomb is one whom simpletons believe to be a man of merit. (La Bruyere)