issue 10 / mar 00
0 : the word - What makes people tick?
1 : Dale Amon - Reflections on the Third Millenium
2 : Frances Buggy - Roundabouts & Throughways: Is our future a traffic "snarl"?
3 : IF-Tom Brown - Interview with a Futurist
ENTHUSIASM AND CONCERN:
Results of a new U.S. Technology Poll
A review of the recent U.S. national survey sponsored by National Public Radio, The Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
Professor of Political Science in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, and author of Autonomous Technology and editor of Democracy in a Technological Society. ...READ NOW - CLICK HERE
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What makes people tick?
"Bonsoir, comment allez vous?" he said in passable French laced with a fine Cork accent, adding several "he, he, he" laughs for good measure. Did I laugh? Hardly. This guy was the agent for one of Ireland's top city-to-city courier companies. And I was calling to find out why the crucial software we sent to a staff member hadn't arrived after 3 days!
"Well, we tried 2 days ago but there was a rabid dog in the yard and... do you have a number for them?"
"That was given 3 days ago."
"Oh? Who did you give it to then?"
I paused, gathered my patience and carefully read him the riot act. He promised to "get a taxi" and deliver the package within "an hour or two, or so". It arrived 3 hours later.
Besides the annoyance, and his completely inappropriate humour, what struck me in this was the attitude. It's the attitude that's wrong. There's a time for fun and good craic, and there's one for work. I began to ponder this issue. What is it in the "old culture" that gets in the way of the future? Are we seeing the end of ways of doing things and ways of "carrying on"? It seems inevitable.
Having lived and worked on the Net in the U.S. for fifteen years, and then in mainland Europe for another few, I've often recited the idea "everyone wants to be American now". And it's true. The "American Dream" has become the global dream. Everyone wants an optimistic future, global-brand goods at the best prices, efficiency and good if not excellent customer service.
What stands in the way is not only "enough heavy history to sink the Titanic", as one wit said about Ireland recently, but also - more pervasively, the attitude. When and where does the attitude shift? Can one really expect to carry an old, out-moded attitude -- one that is often based in what should now be a redundant low-self-esteem barbed with "slagging" and "make me feel better" jokery -- into this future?
Of course there are lots of people and businesses in Ireland who have dropped "the old ways". It's apparent in the runaway successes achieved in the last few years. But what of the rest of the people? We talk about the disenfranchised, which is really the overwhelming majority at present, as if a little "up-skilling" will do the trick. It won't do it at all.
We need to pay attention to the overall attitude. Isn't that what really makes the difference? And I'll say this now, inclusiveness merely in terms of appealing to "greed" won't do it either. There's a whole lot of work has to be done to really reach out to the Irish people and convince them that there is a workable, liveable, sustainable future based on technology. There's a whole lot of work to "enlighten" the Irish mindset and bring us all closer to the future we have the potential to achieve.
Where there's a will... Isn't that the expression?
Your feedback is very welcome. I'd be interested in your view on this.
- Andrew Lovatt, editor
- if@redmoonmedia.com
For an "insightful" article on the Americanization of Ireland, see Frank Cronin's "We Are the Young Americans" - click here to read now.
Reflections on the Third Millenium
Whether this is the "true" start of the Millenium or not is really rather meaningless. We have rolled over the odometer and with it we have sealed yesterday into a box labeled Second Millenium.
It's the human cognitive perceptions which matter, and which mean we are today starting with a very large clean slate upon which to write the future. Our civilization is time based and individuals within it mentally package events based on the calendar. We put yesterday behind us, and then we package our yesterday's into weeks, months and years; perhaps once in an average lifetime we get to drop all of those years into a century sized box... and recently we packaged 10 centuries into the Second Millenium Box and placed it on the shelf of human history.
There is another factor that affects human perception and cognition. A form of Regression to the Mean. In an historical context it means that as we get more distant from a box in time, our perceptions of the contents of the entire box tends towards the *average* of that box. Thus, as we distance ourselves from the Second Millenium, it will not be a time of technology and spaceships. Apollo, Columbus and the Crusades are now shelved together, but in the minds of future school children the past millenium will be more one of sword wielding armoured men on horseback hacking away at each other, perhaps mixed up with some confusion about biplanes, radio and such.
The Second Millenium was not about science and technology per se. It was the millenium that led to the germination of those ideas at it's very end, on the doorstep to the Millenium in which they will fully flower.
This ability to box things gives us a certain freedom from the past as well. It allows us a psychological new beginning, one we can face with a semblance of a state of innocence and hope. It is somewhat of a comfort to have the excesses of the Inquisition, WWII, the Central State Communism of Stalin, the massacres of Hitler and Pol Pot, slavery and colonialism safely behind us, or at least sufficiently so that they do not a priori enter into the ethos of this blank slate called the Third Millenium.
The slate may be blank, but it does have initial conditions that will define it's first few centuries and certainly affect if not define it's mean when looked upon from the 4th Millenium.
There can be little doubt that technology defines this new era.
We have:
I've left The Internet until last because it is possibly the most explosive change of the lot and is the one that will aide and abet many of the above and change society into something that will be unrecognizable to Second Millenium minds. Precisely what those changes are is almost certainly beyond detailed prediction.
The Second Millenium opened with some of the elements of the birth of the Nation State in place, and in many ways the millenium is the story of the growth of that entity and the battle between it and it's competitors.
*This* Millenium is opening with the germs of an equally major re-thinking of how humans organize themselves. States are hierachical. They work well in a reality that has relatively slow information flows, and in which the collection and particularly the collation and analysis of information is very costly. In such a world information moves vertically. It is analyzed on the way up and then distributed from the top downwards. The last century of the previous millenium took this to it's logical extreme with "mass media". Whether in service to the Nazi state or to a less overt unspoken desire to keep the status quo in "free" states, mass media was the tool of thought control that made that century everything that it was.
But communications technologies have been eroding that ability to control and now as the internet goes into full flower over the next few decades, it is likely to undermine the very concept of the state and many of the concepts built around it. The recent results of the eToy vs eToys battle may perhaps be a foretaste of what is to come in a world where information flow is *horizontal*. Information is power, and if the flow is horizontal, then the *power* will also be horizontal.
I cannot predict where this will lead. I can predict certain events as likely, but I cannot describe the new society. For example, I can safely say that court rulings around the world that are made in the interests of those in the current power structure will be effectively overturned in practice. What use would it be to eToys for example, to win it's court case against eToy if public opinion then bankrupted it? What good will it do IFIP to win a court case in Denmark or elsewhere if the most vibrant part of the music industry is caused to move into the GPL? Even if they win, they might find their product turn to dust in their hands.
High speed horizontal flows of information imply a very different way of organizing human affairs. Events have *already* accelerated beyond the fastest possible pace at which the hierarchical structures of state bureaucracies can adapt. And the pace is still heating up. My own guess is that we are headed for a human society based on the self organizing principles of mathematical chaos. The numbers of human beings on earth are so large now that it is entirely possible the system could be a stable one. I would like to imagine this has some libertarian overtones to it, but I simply do not know what the instantaneous interaction of the individual decisions of 10 billion people will bring into being.
Whatever it is, it will certainly be interesting.
- Dale Amon is ceo/md of Village Networking, Belfast
<http://www.vnl.com>
- <mailto:amon@vnl.com>
Roundabouts & Throughways:
Is our future a traffic "snarl"?
On my way into Dublin via one of the M50 roundabouts recently, I was caught in the twilight zone of traffic that Dublin has become. I lost 45 minutes because some bright spark in the roads department thought it was a good idea to touch up the stripes on the approach road....at 4.30pm on a weekday afternoon!
Later that day I caught a flight to London, to get a connecting flight to Munich - because at the time of writing, there are still no direct flights to Munich from Dublin. It took me less time to check in, board, fly to London and secure my overnight accomodation than it takes to drive to work from beyond the M50 to the centre of Dublin in the morning.
When I arrived in Munich the following morning for a business meeting, I couldn't figure out why I was so relaxed. As I commuted to the venue, I felt a blissful sense of spaciousness, of order and organization. I had chosen a taxi over the S-bahn train, and there were no real tailbacks despite the relatively "prime time" hour. Nevertheless, the taxi driver apologised for the "dreadful" traffic, and moreover did so in accomplished English!
Then the penny dropped... I had choices. I could choose how I wanted to get into the city. The trains were comfortable and clean. The taxis abundant. And I realised, everything is running smoothly and on time. There's no push & shove. No running faster to catch up. The transport scheme has been meticulously planned and executed.
Efficiency need not be the preserve of the Germans alone. A long time ago in Ireland, somebody had a vision and a strategy for the transport choices people might expect to be offered... just about now. What happened?
In Dublin we are still building 2-lane roundabouts and reducing available car lanes to provide "inoperable" bus transport. I know. I drive on a "quality" bus corridor daily. I have come to the regretable conclusion that we don't have a Celtic Tiger, but a rather large and hungry feral cat which has outgrown it's temporary cardboard box.
We can't expect to find an instant remedy for a paucity of vision which has taken years to compound. However, we can begin to open our eyes! Public and corporate policy could do much to encourage widespread teleworking, intitiate remote & collaborative working from rural locations, and sponsor flexible work practices. This would relieve Dublin and other major cities of their traffic "snarls". By giving imaginative tax breaks, maximising internet connectivity, speeding up relevant training initiatives, we could embrace the flexibility and freedom offered by internet technology. This could be rolled out initially in Dublin and the other major cities. And why not transform the Fas offices to Telebureaus and Hot Desk Centres? We have the capability to transform much of our existing structure into IT centres and distributed communities. When is the question...
If we don't innnovate to solve our problems, and shore up our attraction for the increasingly mobile person with e-skills, then we are missing our opportunity to solve an intolerable situation. I hope that Dublin doesn't become "a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there" kind of city.
Now I'm off to pay my meter!
- Frances Buggy is chairperson of the Irish Internet Association
<http://www.iia.ie> and MD of Corevalue.ie <http://www.corevalue.ie>
- <mailto:answers@corevalue.ie> A full bio is available in the author's section
available in the top menu bar.
IF INTERVIEW
with Tom Brown, futurist
and publisher of MGeneral.com
Tom Brown is a public voice on leadership. He publishes MG - The "New Ideas" Website <http://www.mgeneral.com> which has readers in more than 62 countries and receives more than 3 million hits per year. In 1997-98, Tom made history by writing the first interactive online book for leaders, The Anatomy Of Fire: Sparking A New Spirit Of Enterprise. It has already been adopted as a textbook at several major universities and received a 5-star review from British Airways. In addition, the book was the subject of a two-page "Prospectives" column in the January 1999 issue of the American Management Association's Management Review.
Tom is also a futurist. His e-book, S T R E T C H ! - 21 EVENTS THAT WILL ROCK THE NEXT CENTURY, <http://www.mgeneral.com/4-ebook/99-ebook/stre_toc.htm> projects "future events" that will make headlines. It's science fiction, written in a journalistic style, projecting 21 events which will occur between 2000 and 2100, such as:
"Will the Big Three automakers merge and move to Ireland?"
"Will PolluPlague break out near India?"
"Will people in France and Israel start to marry, online, without ever meeting one another?"
We interviewed Tom about what he see's in the not-too-distant future.
IF : Do you see 2000 as a breakthrough year?
Tom : Absolutely! I think it's taking people some time to realize that this is THE DAWN of the 21st Century. However, as more people come to realize this (and are slapped awake into a new consciousness), I believe a lot of the 20th century handcuffs will come off, and we will see breakthroughs abounding in every field and discipline. It's now a cliche, but this IS an exciting time to be alive!
IF : What do you make of the AOL/TimeWarner marriage?
Tom : The famous, now-ex, management guru for THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Tom Petzinger, asserts in the current issue of our webzine <http://www.mgeneral.com> that all these mega-mergers are "the death throes of the dinosaurs." What we're seeing in AOL/TimeWarner is a massive threat and a huge opportunity.
The merger will be a threat if, in fact, we start to see a handful of corporations dictating what will be seen online by whom and at what cost. On the other hand, the evidence in many, many industries is that perhaps only 1 in every 4 mega-mergers ever realizes its alleged synergy. Put another way: no one really knows how to make an ultra-big company really sing and dance.
So, my sense is that there will be a vast opportunity for smaller players to take whatever AOL/TimeWarner does as a benchmark -- and then beat them at their own game. The beauty of the Internet is its diversity and individuality. Even with ALL their subscribers, AOL/TimeWarner is still a fraction of the total Internet population. And, to be sure, they will be only a small fraction of the total Internet content providers.
When it comes to The Internet, the race has just started. David and Goliath is still an analogy which applies to The Internet world.
IF : In your serial e-book, S T R E T C H ! , you propose that the Big Three automakers will merge and move to Ireland! Aren't you endorsing mega-mergers as the coming trend?
Tom : Hey, when I wrote that I really was NOT kidding! Don't think that any industry or cluster of companies today isn't potential prey to some looks-great-on-a-spreadsheet plan, no matter how far-fetched it may seem at first. STRETCH!, however, is my attempt to be a futurist. I'm not prescribing what should happen; I'm predicting what very well could happen.
In my view of things, whether Ireland becomes the home of a mega-autocompany or some other mega-corporation, it offers a lot of advantages to a world marketplace that is increasingly borderless and totally global. Ireland is geographically central and waiting, in my opinion, to be re-born in terms of its national capabilities and goals. I say that as someone whose mother was a native of Ireland -- so you know I'm totally objective!
IF : Do you see broadband "infotainment" and "pre-packaged" internet as the next wave in the U.S.? ...and globally?
Tom : Broadband, yes! But I have reservations about whether the generation now raised on The Internet will sit still if the medium moves to become an imitator of the television or movie industry. The Internet must become infinitely more than just a way to bring TV shows, radio, and flicks (in their existing formats) to one's home computer. So, no, I'm not sure pre-packaged, generic, low-interaction content will catch on (although it surely will soon be offered).
The immense power of The Internet is that it can circulate a wide diversity of peoples, cultures, points-of-view, and ideas across and around the planet in seconds. The immense power of the Internet will be stifled if it becomes a limited conduit for the thinking of any one country or corporation. As I said, it's going to take some time for people to realize that the way we managed information in the 20th Century is passe. The Internet is not radio, television, or movies -- no, no, no! It will embrace those old-time media and jump way ahead of them before anyone knows it.
IF : Do you see a hidden conflict between the origins of the net (1 person, 1 computer, 1 vote) & the emerging "channels of product", CRM / ERM and automated no-human-touch sales response mechanisms?
Tom : I don't think so. Again, there is a huge difference between what people will TRY and what will SUCCEED on The Internet. My opinion is that, more than any other medium created in the past, The Internet will be seen as the MAJOR invention brought forth into the 21st Century.
Why? Because it is, at heart, a huge FREE MARKET of input and output -- of people and ideas. Are we seeing some jaw-dropping consolidations right now? Yup. But, let's keep things in perspective: there are, what?, 120 million people online. And there are, what?, perhaps 20 million dot-coms and dot-orgs? And most of the world is not even technologically equipped to participate fully at this time!
So, I believe the origins of The Net and the infinite power of 1 person/1 computer/1 vote will not just roll over and allow "Big Brother" or some variation of Stanley Kubrick's "HAL" mastermind in "2001" to diminish the importance of unique and powerful voices and ideas which deserve to be heard.
IF:IRELAND'S INTERNET FUTURE is a primary example of what I'm talking about. The problem is not that someone will steamroll your e-zine; the problem is how to help the thousands of people around the world who want to follow your e-journal to FIND your publication. I don't fear BIG Internet companies as much as I fear incompetent search engines.
And, in terms of e-commerce, the first generation of vendorware is, admittedly, pretty human-less. However, with broadbanding, all it will take is for someone to define state-of-the-art e-commerce in 2005 (or whenever) -- where you are greeted online by another human who uses technology to show you how he or she can customize your car (or your blue jeans) in order to make a sale -- and the whole Internet sales game will have to be re-booted.
A vendor who only allows you to click your mouse will not prevail over an Internet vendor who provides sales associates who personally click with their prospective customers. Live and in realtime. In color. Using technology to communicate -- and impress!
IF : The MG "New Ideas" Website just awarded Peter Drucker and his "The Practice of Management" its Book of the Century Award. Does this mean that despite all the nuvo-hype, that even in the net age good management follows patterns laid down decades ago?
Tom : When I spent a recent morning with Peter Drucker, to take photos and interview him in connection with our award, I was amazed at how progressive this 90plus-year-old was in contrast to so many other people I've met. He made it plain to me that the agenda for the ideal corporation and the ideal manager has YET to be realized, despite the fact that he laid out the parameters in 1954. The Net Age is in search of good management and stirring leadership as much as the century before it.
Put another way, the world has enjoyed the ideals for managerial leadership for a long time -- just as it has enjoyed the ideals for the perfect computer. Are we there yet? Nope... not yet in computers and definitely not yet in management.
What we must resist -- with every erg of personal energy we have -- is the temptation to say "Good enough!" Are today's organizations and today's managers the best they can be? No way!
As in all fields of human endeavor, we must admire current achievements without becoming slaves to the current standards. We must observe the status quo - but only as the springboard to new horizons for human achievement.
That's why MG awarded Peter Drucker the title of top management author of the last century: he was ahead of his time. We must work harder to catch up to him. Human progress is inevitably hinged to our ability to manage the future.
- Tom Brown - see full bio in the author's section available in the top menu bar.
- mail: <mailto:mail@mgeneral.com>
- web: <http://www.mgeneral.com>
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