FretDFire's WebLog

The Fisherman's Approach

FretDFire — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 16:35:00 GMT

Edward Albee wrote in his play THE ZOO STORY "sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly."

Another way to to think of it is this excerpt from Computers, Pattern, Chaos and Beauty: Graphics From an Unseen World by Clifford A. Pickover, 1990. Seems to me to have relevance for the blogosphere...

Sometimes I consider myself a fisherman. Computer programs and ideas are the hooks, rods and reels. Computer pictures are the trophies and delicious meals. A fisherman does not always know what the waters will yield; however a fisherman may know where the fishing is good, where the waters are fertile, what type of bait to use. Often the specific catch is a surprise, and this is the enjoyment of the sport. There are no guarantees. There are often unexpected pleasures. Readers are urged to participate by dipping into unknown waters. Hopefully, readers will enjoy looking at the catches or dissecting them further to learn more about their internal structures.

Inbox = Times Square

FretDFire — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 20:15:00 GMT

Bruce Sterling had it right - "Reading my e-mail now is like walking through Times Square at the height of the porn boom. It's genuinely sinister. There is this parade of thieves, hookers, fraudsters and viruses."

Tao of Poker

FretDFire — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 15:35:00 GMT

I'm thinking that the art of successful project management at Microsoft can be pretty well described by substituting "project management" for "poker" in the excerpts below from: The Tao of Poker: 285 Rules to Transform Your Game and Your Life, by Larry W. Phillips.

POKER RULE #78: "When somebody bets into you, strongly, or raises you, look at them and ask yourself the following question: How serious are they?"

What is their level of commitment? There is a certain "solidity" to when a player really has the goods-- a kind of wall-like solidity of purpose. It usually has a kind of Mt. Rushmore look to it. Look also for smoothness, naturalness, ease of movement-- mannerisms that show they are proceeding quite confidently without much fear at all.

Another way of asking the same question might be: "Am I beat?" In fact, most opponents will tell you, with their body language, demeanor and betting, whether you are about to lose (or whether they are “ahead” of you in the hand). But you must hear it—and you must be able to act on the answer.

In low-limit games, try to move your poker play in the direction of matching your "folds" to how certain your opponents seem to be that they are about to win.

POKER RULE #80: “Mastering yourself.”

At the more advanced levels of poker, mastering yourself becomes a key part of the game. This is because at this level of play you already know the game, and so do your opponents, and everybody is approximately equal. The person who masters himself is the one who gains an important edge.

POKER RULE #91: "A player who is good enough to win is also good enough to break even."

It's a funny thing about talent-- it can be used for more than just winning. Or for less.

Violinist Itzak Perlman could use his violin talent to play "Lady of Spain" in a subway station. Bill Gates could use his computer knowledge to become a very good computer repairman, if he so decided. Pro golfer Tiger Woods could use his talent to play with one arm tied behind his back. (Or to play drunk.)

All these peoples' talents could be used for less than optimum purposes. Make sure some variation of this isn't happening to you. Don't hamper the abilities you have by deliberately handicapping yourself in some way—spotting your opponents some advantage through casualness, playfulness, lack of attention, or indifference.

POKER RULE #95: "The curiosity trap."

You’ve got your poker radar set up to guard against sloppy play. You’ve "steeled" yourself against this and most of the other well-known traps and pitfalls: tilt, “chasing”, anger, revenge, impatience… but how about curiosity? Are your defenses set up for curiosity? Curiosity-- such a small thing, so ordinary and innocent that we hardly notice it-- can sometimes slip underneath our radar.

It's not a highly visible threat. It's not raging emotions. It’s not tilt. Just simple garden-variety curiosity... But it can be just as deadly because it keeps us in too long, staying until the end to see what another player has...

Microsoft patents body power

FretDFire — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 19:33:00 GMT

I love this company. Thniking about innovation these days and noticed the excerpt below from http://www.zdnet.co.uk/

Microsoft has been awarded a patent for using human skin as a power conduit and data bus.

Patent No. 6,754,472, which was published Tuesday, describes a method for transmitting power and data to devices worn on the body and for communication of data between those devices.

Personal area networks -- or PANs -- are nothing new. Some, such as Bluetooth, use radio signals, while others use infrared. Some work has been done on near-field intrabody communications -- most notably by IBM's Almaden Research Labs, which at Comdex '96 demonstrated a prototype device that let two people exchange electronic business cards by shaking hands.

IBM's work, which was led by Thomas Zimmerman, took advantage of the natural salinity of the human body, which makes it an excellent conductor of electrical current. IBM's device, which was the size of a pack of playing cards, used a current of one-billionth of an amp (one nanoamp) -- lower than the natural currents already in the body -- to transmit data at the equivalent rate of an old 2400-baud modem, though speeds of up to 400,000 bits per second were mooted.

<what's "mooted"?>

Furthermore, said Microsoft, the physical resistance offered by the human body could be used to create a virtual keyboard on a patch of skin.

You bought it. Who controls it?

FretDFire — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 17:16:00 GMT

More thoughts on innovation from Edward Tenner, June 2003 http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2003/jul/01/life/20030701lif4.html

…The tamperproofing that some technology companies are now putting in place threatens a tradition of user-centered innovation. Incapacitating designs will slam the door on these vital superthinnkers.

...Incapacitation would also limit the academic training of the companies' future technical staff. Freedom to tinker - defined by Felten as "your freedom to understand, discuss, repair, and modify the technology devices that you own" - benefits technology industries most of all. Even the film industry needs young people who have had free access to the nuts and bolts of digital graphics and special effects, and I'll bet that Microsoft doesn't make its young Xbox game-programming recruits sign an affidavit that they have never violated an end-user license agreement. New hardware security is manifestly a good idea for servers with sensitive information. There is a good case for new levels of protection… for those vulnerable sites. But if they extend incapacitation too far, the builders of the Trojan mouse may find themselves caught in their own trap.

Kill the Operating System!

FretDFire — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 17:09:00 GMT

More thinking about innovation. Wanted to share this excerpt from the article titled "Kill the Operating System! When designing computers, companies could take a lesson from Hollywood" by By Simson Garfinkel. The Net Effect September 2003

You use Windows, I use a Mac, and we both know people who use GNU/Linux. But for all the differences between these three families of computer operating systems, they implement the same fundamental design; all are equally powerful, and equally limiting.

Virtually every operating system in use today is based on a single computer system architecture developed in the 1960s and ’70s. This architecture divides code running on computers into a “kernel,” responsible for controlling the computer’s hardware, and so-called application programs, which are loaded into the computer’s memory to perform individual tasks. Applications, in turn, operate on named files arranged in a tree of folders. True, there are a few niche operating systems that don’t adhere to this tripartite structure, but they are but bit players on the digital stage. Even PalmOS has a kernel, apps, and files (which PalmOS mistakenly calls “databases”). It’s almost inconceivable that this approach won’t be the dominant paradigm for many years to come. And that’s a deep problem for the future of computing.

Hollywood, though, has a better idea.

….It’s not such a far-fetched notion. Alas, the convenient It wouldn’t take much to enable today’s computers to store every version of every document they have ever been used to modify: most people perform fewer than a million keystrokes and mouse clicks each day; a paltry four gigabytes could hold a decade’s worth of typing and revisions if we stored those keystrokes directly, rather than using the inefficient Microsoft Word document format. Abstractions of directories and files make it difficulty for designers to create something different. With a little thought, though, we could do far better. Hollywood has dreamed it; now Silicon Valley needs to make it real.

burn the house to roast the pig

FretDFire — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 16:42:00 GMT

Thinking about innovation today, and censorship. The excerpt below by Lawrence Lessig from RED HERRING 11/02 won't go out of my head...

In 1930, 10,027 books were published. Today, 0 those books are still in print. What would it take to put the remaining 9,853 out-of-print books on the internet?

Later in the article...

As the Supreme Court once said about a statute that banned all indecent speech so that children would not be exposed, we don’t “burn the house to roast the pig.”

Lessons on Accountability from the Football Field

FretDFire — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 16:35:00 GMT

I'm currently reading the management book THE RADICAL LEAP by Steve Farber. I was reminded of the excerpt below from from http://www.chasmgroup.com/underthebuzz.htm

Lessons on Accountability from the Football Field

(From a discussion with Steve Young, former 49'ers Quarterback)

Since his retirement from the NFL in 2000, Steve Young, former Superbowl-winning quarterback for the San Francisco 49'ers, has begun to fashion what he learned in professional football about the importance of individuals taking responsibility for their actions - even to the extent of turning apparently impossible game situations around - into a highly relevant theme for businesses to learn from.

Young make a persuasive case that, besides being 'just a game', football is a real laboratory of human experience with particular value for leadership and teamwork in all activities of consequence, especially including business. Below are some examples of quotes from the conversation we had when Young visited our firm's offices several weeks ago. One telling lesson for us as we listened to his analogies between the sports field and business, was that businesses would be much more successful if they practiced to a similar extent that professional footballers do, instead of managing by the seat of their pants (go on, admit it, this does occasionally happen in high-tech organizations!). In a parallel between sports and war, Young reminded us that although "armies practice a lot, when combat starts, all hell breaks loose", thus inferring that practice is especially critical if you are in a fight for survival, despite the likelihood that a certain amount of disordered conflict is likely to ensue.

Read on for more instructive parallels from Young regarding sports and 'real life':

On learning to find the 'invisible' receiver:

"People don't realize perhaps that, when you are a 6'1" quarterback, there are many times when you can't see the receivers, because of these enormous defensive backs coming at you and blocking your view. After missing a number of times in the early days and being asked why, I would say: 'I couldn't see the receiver!' The response invariably was, 'Well, you'd better find a way to see him'. After spending some time puzzling over this, I started throwing to where I hoped or expected the receiver to be. I would act on the last sighting I had, and became a player who could play blind."

On not seeing the results of a great play:

"I started it, but because of those huge human beings coming at me and occasionally sacking me, I didn't get to see the result of my throw … but I would then find out that something great had happened. To do this, I learned to make my living as a quarterback by reading the receiver's body language. One of the reasons that (Jerry) Rice is such a great receiver is that he transmits great body language - he probably doesn't realize it, but he does. This whole thing about passing blind and reading body language taught me a lot about the importance of having faith in your team-mates."

On never being able to do enough to satisfy some people's requirements:

"Despite my attempts to explain how difficult it was to get the ball to him, Jerry Rice would curve his arms close to his body in a ball-catching pose, and say, 'That's OK, but … (I need the ball) right here!"

On being accountable:

"One of the critical things about being a quarterback is that you have to realize that the whole team is working to protect you and provide this cocoon around you; so you have to do just one thing - which is, do something good with the ball. But when you get intercepted (as I was 202 times in my NFL career), everyone kinda freezes and just looks at you … If that's all that happens, everyone slumps their shoulders and goes off the field, feeling pretty deflated. What I learned from these painful occurrences is how critical it is to rally the team, and it's really quite simple to do. I would just say 'I screwed up. It won't happen again, so let's go back to the touchline, get a drink of water, come back out ready to play, and kick their asses!'"

On what happens when no one is accountable:

"In the absence of (at least) one person being accountable, you get a sudden vacuum, into which a swarm of opinions fly; soon, political camps form, team spirit and resolution dissolves, and you can quickly suffer the downward spiral toward defeat."

Toward the end of our meeting, I was reminded for no particular reason of the contrasting situation in which people fail to accept full accountability for their decisions and actions, preferring instead to blame others. This is neatly summarized in a popular saying about certain types of soccer coach in Brazil, whose attitude regarding accountability is exemplified by the 'person' they use when alluding to contrasting results obtained over time by the teams they were responsible for coaching to victory: "I won. We tied. They lost."

The lessons brought out by Steve Young undoubtedly have value for business leaders, especially at a time when blame and accusation are flying back and forth regarding the accounting fraud, insider trades, and other excesses committed by company executives during the recent economic boom and bubble. At a time when American society has also been hit hard by the 9/11 attacks of a year ago, people seem to have a clearer sense of what it means to be responsible for one's actions. And, for managers and executives in technology companies, where exercising accountability for missed goals, targets and deadlines is often an elusive aspiration, the image of someone on the football field understanding so clearly where their responsibility begins and ends - as Young clearly did - should serve as some kind of example.

The Threat of Pigeons and Other Fundamentalists

FretDFire — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 16:07:00 GMT

I cut the below excerpt from FAST COMPANY in July 2003. I still find it thought provoking. Do you? BOLD text below is my emphasis added.

The Threat of Pigeons and Other Fundamentalists,

Skinner was right: You can make a pigeon superstitious. Just put it in a cage and arrange for food to appear at regular intervals. Whatever the pigeon happens to be doing just as the food arrives—sitting around, bobbing its head, whatever—it will keep doing, over and over again, in the hope that the dance caused the food to appear. The pigeon will assume a cause-and-effect relationship that doesn’t really exist. That’s what a superstition is: a compulsion to take an action that has no influence on the desired outcome. Pigeons are superstitious, and I’m afraid that most of us are as well. There’s plenty we do—plenty we’ve always done—that has nothing to do with what actually works. But once we’ve made up our minds, we’re like pigeons. We don’t want to change our behavior, regardless of how much data we see to support a new and better alternative. It’s easier to be superstitious, easier to hope that the food will just slide out of the dispenser when we spin around and around.

We don’t expect a pigeon to wise up and change its behavior. But what about your boss? Have you ever had a boss who said, “I’ve looked at all the best thinking on [insert issue here: factory expansion, layoffs, global warning, stem- cell research, foreign trade], and I’m going to change my mind; my old position was wrong, and this is what we should do instead”? Or is your boss, well, more like a pigeon?

I’ve got nothing against pigeons. The problem comes when superstitions belong to people in power—when superstitions become the operating system for major companies and other important institutions.

People in power usually want to stay there. And one way they think they can do this is by enforcing rigid adherence to a set of principles that they believe are responsible for their organization’s success. By requiring employees to abide by these superstitions—better known as company policies—rather than examining the facts, they build organizations that appear streamlined. In fact, they’re doomed

You can think of these managers as examples of the current crop of fundamentalists who are appearing all over the world—including the world of business. These people are characterized, I believe, by two traits. First, they live according to a large body of superstitions. Second, they believe that they are right and everyone else is wrong. They believe that they have found the one and only truth, and they can’t abide changing old rules in light of new data.

Fundamentalists decide whether they like a new piece of information based on how it will affect their prior belief system, not based on whether it is actually true.

It’s much easier to effect change if you don’t have to overturn a superstition first. For example, nobody questioned the law of gravity, that’s because there wasn’t a competing theory of gravity (a superstition) built into the dominant social systems of the day. No one was threatened by gravity, so it was quickly accepted as fact. One of the reasons why email took off so fast was that it didn’t try to replace the phone or the mailman. It was a third thing, something new. But finding a place to grow where there isn’t already a prevailing superstition is hard. When I meet someone who’s willing to disregard an obvious truth just because it conflicts with his worldview,
I wonder about his judgment. I wonder what other truths he’s willing to ignore in order to preserve his superstitions.

When such a person is in charge, I do more than worry. I think that we’re obligated to start pointing out superstitions at work, in politics—anywhere we find them.
Superstitions are the final vestiges of pre-scientific mankind, and they make the workplace (and the world) a scary place.

The problem is that challenging someone’s faith (when it’s killing your organization) is a scary thing. Here’s the useful insight: When we know what to call this aversion to rational change, it’s much easier to deal with it In a meeting, we can say, “Are we superstitious about closing this plant and hiring people to do software instead? Or is there an actual analysis that will help us decide?” We can sit down with a coworker or a client and talk not about what we irrationally believe, but about the facts that suggest that we should try doing things a different way. My dream is that we’ll discover our obligation to spot the fundamentalists and call them on it. Regardless of the organization—nonprofit, factory work group, political party, it doesn’t matter—we now have no choice but to point out the difference between rational thought and pigeon-minded superstition.

Hindsight

FretDFire — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 19:26:00 GMT

It's useful to occasionally take a look inthe rear-view mirror. Note the below excerpt from Quentin Hardy in November 2002:

High tech is in deep trouble, and that owes to more than the economic downturn. The doldrums will end eventually, but for years to come tech vendors could be hampered by basic changes in how businesses spend $375 billion a year on technology and what they demand from it.

IT spending fell 11% in 2001, will decline 1% this year and may rise only 3% next year.