Slashdot Mirror
Citizenville: Newsom Argues Against Bureaucracy, Swipes At IT Departments
Nerval's Lobster writes "Gavin Newsom, former mayor of San Francisco and current lieutenant governor of California, argues in his new book Citizenville that citizens need to take the lead in solving society's problems, sidestepping government bureaucracy with a variety of technological tools. It's more efficient for those engineers and concerned citizens to take open government data and use it to build apps that serve a civic function—such as Google Earth, or a map that displays crime statistics—than for government to try and provide these tools itself. But Newsom doesn't limit his attacks on government bureaucracy to politicians; he also reserves some fire for the IT departments, which he views as an outdated relic. 'The traditional IT department, which set up and maintained complex, centralized services—networks, servers, computers, e-mail, printers—may be on its way out,' he writes. 'As we move toward the cloud and technology gets easier to use, we'll have less need for full-time teams of people to maintain our stuff.' Despite his advocacy of the cloud and collaboration, he's also ambivalent about Wikileaks. 'It has made government and diplomacy much more challenging and ultimately less honest,' he writes at one point, 'as people fear that their private communications might become public.' Nonetheless, he thinks WikiLeaks and its ilk are ultimately here to stay: 'It is happening, and it's going to keep happening, and it's going to intensify.' In the end, he feels the benefits of collaboration and openness outweigh the drawbacks." Keep reading for the rest of Nick's review.
Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government
author
Gavin Newsom, Lisa Dickey
pages
272
publisher
Penguin Press HC
rating
7/10
reviewer
Nick Kolakowski
ISBN
1594204721
summary
A rallying cry for revolutionizing democracy in the digital age
Gavin Newsom has enjoyed quite a career in government: after serving two terms as mayor of San Francisco, he became lieutenant governor of California. Maintaining the status quo of our current political system, one could argue, is in his best interest. Yet in his new book Citizenville (co-written with Lisa Dickey, who’s collaborated with a number of famous people on their books), Newsom argues that government should take a backseat to citizens solving society’s problems via collaboration and technology.
“We have to disenthrall ourselves, as Abraham Lincoln used to say, of the notion that politicians and government institutions will solve our problems,” he writes at one point. “The reality is, we have to be prepared to solve our own problems.” The government structure that facilitates such troubleshooting, he adds, “makes use of social media, networks, peer-to-peer engagement, and other technological tools.” In other words, government should open up its vast datasets so that armies of developers and engineers can transform that data into software we can all use.
According the book’s thesis, it’s more efficient for those engineers and concerned citizens to take open government data and use it to build apps that serve a civic function—such as Google Earth, or a map that displays crime statistics—than for government to try and provide these tools itself. It’s easier for citizens to engage with their representatives via Twitter and online chat rooms than gather in a physical room, where voices can be shouted down. He acknowledges that collaboration and technology has its limits: there will always be a need for elected leaders to help manage things, and nobody wants every bit of private data open to widespread scrutiny (to his credit, Newsom acknowledges his own issues with making his official schedule and meetings public).
It’s even possible, he suggests, to make civic involvement look more like “Farmville” or an online game—the “Citizenville” of the title. While he positions this idea as more of a metaphor than something that should be pushed into a reality, he repeatedly suggests that a “mashup of gaming and civic engagement,” powered by “real physical rewards,” could get people to interact more fully with their communities.
But there’s also a significant threat to this vision of supreme interconnectedness: government bureaucracy, which moves slowly and hates releasing anything—such as statistical data—that might cause politicians embarrassment.
“Our government is clogged with a dense layer of bureaucracy, a holdover from an earlier era that adds bloat and expense,” Newsom writes. “But technology can get rid of that clay layer by making it possible for people to bypass the usual bureaucratic morass.” Social networks have made interaction with government a two-way street, forcing politicians to listen to constituent concerns well before the next Election Day.
Newsom doesn’t limit his attacks on government bureaucracy to politicians; he also reserves some fire for the IT departments, which he views as an outdated relic. “The traditional IT department, which set up and maintained complex, centralized services—networks, servers, computers, e-mail, printers—may be on its way out,” he writes. “When the computer revolution began, IT departments were truly needed, as people had no idea how to set up and use the new technologies infiltrating their work space.”
Things these days are different, he argues: “As we move toward the cloud and technology gets easier to use, we’ll have less need for full-time teams of people to maintain our stuff.”
Newsom was mayor, of course, when city network engineer Terry Childs locked down San Francisco’s FiberWAN fiber-optic network and refused to give up the password. Freezing the network also stopped government emails and payroll. After days of outside contractors trying—and failing—to break into the system, Newsom finally had to march into Childs’ jail cell and practically beg him to surrender the 28-digit code. Whether that experience slanted Newsom against IT departments in general is hard to tell, but it’s clear from the book that he’s embraced cloud services as the way of the future.
That being said, Newsom does believe that online collaboration and sharing have their limits as forces for good. He’s not the biggest fan of WikiLeaks. “It has made government and diplomacy much more challenging and ultimately less honest,” he writes at one point, “as people fear that their private communications might become public.” Nonetheless, he thinks WikiLeaks and its ilk are ultimately here to stay: “It is happening, and it’s going to keep happening, and it’s going to intensify.” Privacy isn’t dead, but it’s definitely on life support.
Newsom also isn’t a starry-eyed ingénue: he knows that bureaucracy is firmly baked into how we do things, and he knows that all these shiny technological tools won’t necessarily make government more efficient overnight. However, he’s also relentlessly optimistic in technology’s ability to bring about change—even if that change proves detrimental to our current system.
You can purchase Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
“We have to disenthrall ourselves, as Abraham Lincoln used to say, of the notion that politicians and government institutions will solve our problems,” he writes at one point. “The reality is, we have to be prepared to solve our own problems.” The government structure that facilitates such troubleshooting, he adds, “makes use of social media, networks, peer-to-peer engagement, and other technological tools.” In other words, government should open up its vast datasets so that armies of developers and engineers can transform that data into software we can all use.
According the book’s thesis, it’s more efficient for those engineers and concerned citizens to take open government data and use it to build apps that serve a civic function—such as Google Earth, or a map that displays crime statistics—than for government to try and provide these tools itself. It’s easier for citizens to engage with their representatives via Twitter and online chat rooms than gather in a physical room, where voices can be shouted down. He acknowledges that collaboration and technology has its limits: there will always be a need for elected leaders to help manage things, and nobody wants every bit of private data open to widespread scrutiny (to his credit, Newsom acknowledges his own issues with making his official schedule and meetings public).
It’s even possible, he suggests, to make civic involvement look more like “Farmville” or an online game—the “Citizenville” of the title. While he positions this idea as more of a metaphor than something that should be pushed into a reality, he repeatedly suggests that a “mashup of gaming and civic engagement,” powered by “real physical rewards,” could get people to interact more fully with their communities.
But there’s also a significant threat to this vision of supreme interconnectedness: government bureaucracy, which moves slowly and hates releasing anything—such as statistical data—that might cause politicians embarrassment.
“Our government is clogged with a dense layer of bureaucracy, a holdover from an earlier era that adds bloat and expense,” Newsom writes. “But technology can get rid of that clay layer by making it possible for people to bypass the usual bureaucratic morass.” Social networks have made interaction with government a two-way street, forcing politicians to listen to constituent concerns well before the next Election Day.
Newsom doesn’t limit his attacks on government bureaucracy to politicians; he also reserves some fire for the IT departments, which he views as an outdated relic. “The traditional IT department, which set up and maintained complex, centralized services—networks, servers, computers, e-mail, printers—may be on its way out,” he writes. “When the computer revolution began, IT departments were truly needed, as people had no idea how to set up and use the new technologies infiltrating their work space.”
Things these days are different, he argues: “As we move toward the cloud and technology gets easier to use, we’ll have less need for full-time teams of people to maintain our stuff.”
Newsom was mayor, of course, when city network engineer Terry Childs locked down San Francisco’s FiberWAN fiber-optic network and refused to give up the password. Freezing the network also stopped government emails and payroll. After days of outside contractors trying—and failing—to break into the system, Newsom finally had to march into Childs’ jail cell and practically beg him to surrender the 28-digit code. Whether that experience slanted Newsom against IT departments in general is hard to tell, but it’s clear from the book that he’s embraced cloud services as the way of the future.
That being said, Newsom does believe that online collaboration and sharing have their limits as forces for good. He’s not the biggest fan of WikiLeaks. “It has made government and diplomacy much more challenging and ultimately less honest,” he writes at one point, “as people fear that their private communications might become public.” Nonetheless, he thinks WikiLeaks and its ilk are ultimately here to stay: “It is happening, and it’s going to keep happening, and it’s going to intensify.” Privacy isn’t dead, but it’s definitely on life support.
Newsom also isn’t a starry-eyed ingénue: he knows that bureaucracy is firmly baked into how we do things, and he knows that all these shiny technological tools won’t necessarily make government more efficient overnight. However, he’s also relentlessly optimistic in technology’s ability to bring about change—even if that change proves detrimental to our current system.
You can purchase Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Leave it to a politician to explain how the IT field is going to disappear. "As we move toward the cloud and technology gets easier to use", and who supports these technologies Mr. Mayor?
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
So the more we rely on cloud services, the less we need full time people to maintain them? BWHAHAHAHAHA!
Except it is coming from a liberal insider, not a libertarian outsider, so the details and reasoning vary. It might point towards common ground so we can grow into something better than the current sludge we have now.
There are too many of them and they need to be sacked en mass. Leave one or two of those who can actually come up with ideas to progress society forwards. This goes doubly for political and financial commentators who have a history of being as god as a toss of a coin. Sack 'em all.
So we are supposed to take technology advice from the same guy who allowed Terry Child's to have so much control that he was able to shutdown government operations? Yeah, let's go ahead put that data in the cloud. That will solve the problem.
I know it's tough to remain objective in situations like this. I've been in some form of IT support or another for the better part of 20 years now, so this emotionally feels like an attack on me and my way of life. I'm trying to remain objective and consider his proposal, but damned if it doesn't sound silly. Servers don't run themselves, even when (especially when) they're in the cloud, and SOMEONE has to be around to help users when their laptop stops working. It's simply not realistic to expect secretaries, accountants, etc. to maintain deep technical understanding of their computers in addition to the deep understanding necessary for their respective fields. Don't get me started on expecting grandmothers to self-support!
I'm sure IT support will change as a result of cloudification, but I also suspect that there won't be much of a net cost or headcount change, just a shift in how support is provided and where the resources reside. Companies using the cloud will have fewer server admins, but will most likely need more systems architects to manage the proliferation of interfaces and to ensure that whatever is built provides sufficient performance, cost, and stability for their customer base. Where these highly-experienced individuals with deep knowledge of the business will come from without the entry-level server admin jobs I have no idea, but I guess that's why I'm not a manager with a corner office.
Knows nothing to very little of IT. Most users think data moves about rainbow colored moonbeams farted out by hyper intelligent unicorns.
“When the computer revolution began, IT departments were truly needed, as people had no idea how to set up and use the new technologies infiltrating their work space.” Change that to:
“When the computer revolution was mature, IT departments were still truly needed, as people had no idea how to set up and use the new technologies infiltrating their work space.”
That's all fine and well. I just want for he and his ilk to keep in mind that they're the ones crying about not enough STEM education while at the same time making moves to board up shops that hire STEM employees. It's pretty discouraging. Maybe we can all just become politicians since they don't seem to mind high overhead and low results on the administrative levels of government.
Given the benefits of having all that data, I wonder if companies would be quick to hand over their ability to control and monetize their business data so quickly to cloud providers.
However, there is certainly an argument for most services eventually being hosted in some way, by providers, but in the end, if feels a lot like the managed host providers who won't let you even see your equipment when it is installed, don't let you make changes, and charge you through the nose for adjustments.
In the end, I think that the best solution may be to take the commodity parts of the infrastructure and move them to the cloud providers, but maintain a small stable of experts in the IT needs of your particular field on staff to interface with the providers. That calls for the minimizing of IT staffing in-house, but not it's complete reduction to project management.
Sure, the IT departments of the 1990s aren't going to be the IT departments that we need today, but we rely on computers much more in 2013 than we did in 1995. In many places, if the computers are down (or the network is down) work simply cannot be done. A great example of this is at a bank, if the bank's internal network goes down, tellers cannot really process your transaction, they can't let you know if a check will clear, they can't add the deposited funds to your account. The best they can do is write you up a paper receipt and add the funds to your account whenever it system comes back up. An IT department is CRITICAL there to fix the problem ASAP, because otherwise the bank might as well stick a closed sign up. There are many other businesses that when the network goes down the business simply cannot function.
Yeah, everyone knows now how to stick an ethernet cord in your computer. Sure, most companies will have several people who know how to install RAM. How many of them though know how to fix a server when it goes down? How many of them know how to restore from backup? In 2013 it is true that an average (good) IT guy will spend less time having to do things in an average day than back in 1995 simply because hardware and software is much more reliable than it was back then and so less time is spent on maintenance and fixing minor issues. But when you have a failure of some component, having a well-trained and well-equipped IT staff is absolutely critical.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Gavin Newsom is a big, swinging dick in San Francisco city government and he gets what he wants from his IT department, rÃpidamente.
Once all his shit is outsourced to some "cloud provider", he's nothing more than yet another adulterer in San Francisco, just another entry in a vast database and he will NOT have his service expectations met.
And then he'll have another IT department.
So you propose a model of work that is not unlike prostitution.
Service providers only exist to help companies screw over workers.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Aaron Swartz certainly "sidestepped government bureaucracy with a variety of technological tools". Look what it got him.
I want my tax dollars spend on things that bring value, not for make work jobs for STEMs. If “the cloud” can offer services cheaper then why not do it? I am sure there are reasons but creating government jobs is not one of them.
Before anyone goes and aggros the concept of government, try to remember first that government (as intended, anyways, prior to the inevitability that concentrated power attracts the corrupt) is supposed to be the gigantic lever by which the public can accomplish massive tasks that were too big for communities or individuals to do by themselves. Folk get together, agree on a solution, and contribute to it... and no matter what form that takes, you've just defined a government. That said, the nature (and speed) of technological advancement is changing this game. It doesn't make government bad; it just further empowers smaller units of self-government more than was previously possible... so yes, the equation can and should change... but does not serve as excuse for condemning something we've (in all of recorded human history) not been able to do long without.
so because he's a liberal that means his perspectives are good..and if he was a libertarian, they'd be bad? what kind of rationale is that?
I think you missed the word "insider".
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
It seems disingenuous for a politician to complain that corporate IT is too complex and too slow to adopt new technology when it's the politicians that put into place the policies that make IT so complex and slow to adopt to new techology. Sexual harassment laws and fear of lawsuits make us install firewalls and content filters, fear of violating privacy laws make us install IDS systems, restrict mobile devices, limit access to data, etc. Entire careers have been built around ensuring SarbOx compliance for IT systems.
These wouldn't all go away if there were no such laws, but the laws are part of what's put them into place.
Few outside of IT understand why Cloud Computing is not going to make any of these issues go away. It's nice that health records are stored at a HIPAA compliant SaaS privider, until we find out that Marketing has been downloading extracts that include PHI and using that data for a public marketing campaign. Or we find out that the CFO who insisted that he be allowed to access our financial data on his iPad lost the iPad on a train and he had turned off the PIN code because it was slowing him down so whoever picked up his laptop had unfettered access to the financial system over the weekend.
There's a reason why corporate IT is cumbersome and it's not because IT likes explaining for the hundredth time why you have to have a PIN code on your mobile device and why you can't use your 6 character dog's name followed by a digit as your password even if you did so at your previous company and never had a problem with it (as far as you know).
Not really. Texas is in a lot of trouble as well. They've effectively removed all taxes and have had to rely on federal handouts to make the payments needed to keep functioning. They've had to literally shutter nursing homes because they can no longer afford taking care of the elderly.
Does he not understand that "the cloud" is centralized servers? Who maintains them?
It's a large, bloated corporation that gets less efficient the bigger it gets (the opposite of the volume, volume, volume! rule) with the odd property that it can legally force you to continue buying its products.
What keeps it ostensibly under control is the same thing that brings you reality TV and McDonald's.
Now someone integral to that growth has thrown up his hands and questoned it.
Welcome to the club, buddy. You're almost there.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"Computer... exit."
I think you missed my point.
If a Libertarian (and I consider myself a pragmatic libertarian) were to say this then it would be the same old thing. Not saying it’s wrong – just not advancing a new argument.
However, if a liberal is saying this – that is new. And if the left and the right can agree on something – well – that is new and news – and worth exploring.
I haven't read his argument, just the summary provided here, but it's not clear to me that he's that far off. Fundamentally, our economy, our education systems, our corporate structure, and most assuredly our laws and regulations are stuck in the industrial era. By that, I mean that those structures are reactions to the problems encountered in industrializing: jobs had become less secure, cities had become crowded and crime-ridden, even basic jobs required literate employees and the like. Right now we are in the midst of a dramatic change in social structure, as profound and deep as that which accompanied the industrial revolution.
Before the industrial revolution, livings were primarily made in agriculture, with a thin layer of tradesmen, shopkeepers, and professionals in the urban centers, which were quite small. After the industrial revolution, livings were primarily made in large urban centers, and in manufacturing, the bureacracies required by and mass-market retailing enabled by industrialization, with a thin layer of farmers in the country. It appears to me that we are heading for a point where livings are primarily made by independent workers creating goods and services in small organizations, and providing them either online and globally, or offline and hyperlocally. The bureaucracies and clerks required by industrialization will largely be replaced, I think, by a combination of customer-management tools online, and the ability of small companies locally to deal directly with their customers without high overhead in either information or regulation. This will mean that living patterns will shift again, because people can do most of this kind of work living anywhere. It will also mean that the legal and regulatory structures will change to meet the challenges of that way of living, as the support systems of the city and the bureaucracy break down in the face of changes in where people are and how they work and what they do.
So in the face of all of that, the structures that IT was built up to support and enable — big business and big government primarily — will become more and more rare, and more and more distributed and cooperative rather than centralized and hierarchical. In such a world, where do big IT departments fit? I suspect that hosting will become largely cloud-based, and regulations will arise to ensure privacy and security in such systems. I suspect that the front-end to cloud-based services will be largely through devices owned and controlled by those accessing the data, but through applications owned and controlled by those who provide the data. Sure, there will be a need for a lot of savvy IT workers in such an environment, but the traditional IT departments are not only unhelpful in such a condition, they are actively harmful. And so they will be reduced, and mostly survive in large organizations that cannot or will not downsize to become more nimble.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
"The mainframe era ended"? Really? Then why is IBM having trouble keeping up with demand for them... and I hear that every ten years or so, when I hear the era is over.
The cloud? Tell me, what's the difference between the cloud and a time-shared mainframe? The only answer is that you've got a cluster of seriously high-powered servers instead of one high-powered box.
Move all your govenrment stuff to the cloud? Well, recently the UK decided it would *not* be doing that, because whichever cloud they were talking to could not guarantee that the private stuff (what we call PII, HIPAA, and all the rest) would reside solely on UK territory.
Some of us have varying levels of clearance, just so we can work with servers that might have that kind of data (I, personally, have a POTS, which entitles me to bottom secrets, or maybe just bargain basement secrets... it's a JOKE, son, a JOKE). Do you think that the folks who work the cloud *all* have that kind of training or commitment?
Phat chance.
We already hear, regularly, about somone working for a government entitiy who's looking up stuff on someone they shouldn't. You really think to trust folks who are stuck with, say, third shift and a lower salary than you're making? All of them?
Sorry, but nowhere *near* everything can be done on a pc.
mark
Despite his advocacy of the cloud and collaboration, he's also ambivalent about Wikileaks. 'It has made government and diplomacy much more challenging and ultimately less honest,' he writes at one point, 'as people fear that their private communications might become public.'
Not much more challenging. They just need a way to encrypt communications between two people. Like, say, PGP.
Come to think of it, why doesn't everybody have a PGP-enabled email system these days? Why aren't there common email clients - particularly web-based ones - that use PGP?
Note that this may not block individual attacks, but it should prevent mass cable intercepts.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
You have to be very naive to trust your data to "the cloud."
So I doubt that anyone significant is moving to it. For the clueless hordes on Faceplant, already accustomed to handing over everything about themselves, maybe so... but the people who actually run things, and do big things... they'll be keeping their data where they have control over it.
They don't trust it to the IT department, either. They're more likely to run, or own, the IT department. And they have your data. But you don't have theirs.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I disagree. One thing you can say about the cold war is that it produced a lot of good, experienced engineers and scientists. I say, more government handouts for them, not less. Just make sure they are actually doing something.
Play Command HQ online
I am perpetually amazed by the blinding stupidity of people who think that if only you move "to the cloud" there is no more configuration or maintenance to be done for applications.
Just who does this fellow think maintains those cloud services?
The underpants gnomes?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
'As we move toward the cloud and technology gets easier to use, we'll have less need for full-time teams of people to maintain our stuff.'
Gavin Newsom, present. This guy is a political diva. Don't pay attention to him. His book and his overall schtick are pure self-promotion. In California, "lieutenant governor" means "guy who has no duties whatsoever and is there in case the governor dies or something."
If âoethe cloudâ can offer services cheaper then why not do it?
Security. That's just the first thing that comes to mind. Cheaper is rarely better or even the same.
'As we move toward the cloud and technology gets easier to use...'
And who is going to administrate the "cloud"? Yeah, it's nicely removed, there is still quite a bit of manual work to be involved even with cloud solutions.
And just who is going to fix his shit when the cloud decides to do a Nemo, or it just evaporates? He really doesn't have a clue.
Bryan
Oh, good. IT departments are going away. Is this when users finally stop calling me because they hid their whatsit toolbar in Outlook and they don't know what they did and they need it back and they don't know how to get it back and why is it so technical??!?!!!?!
Good. Maybe I'll get some real work done instead of bouncing between Slashdot and walking users through basic functions of Microsoft Office for the billionth time. Glad that users don't need my help anymore.
Actually, I think this will be going away in the next 10-15 years. Sure, stupid users will still exist out there, but I see 3 year olds texting now. The idea that you "learn" computers is going away.
Kids are learning how to use computers, iPads, and random electronic interfaces before they can read. Just in the people we've hired in the past 5 years I see a huge difference. The "experienced" computer user from 5 years ago has a harder time learning new software than the "inexperienced" (right out of HS and no training) computer users today.
They might need help and have stupid questions, but I think the days of "I don't know how to do this because it looks different" are going away.
I don’t think you disagree.
Those STEMs were engaged in cutting edge research – often in basic science which is one area that the private sector does a very poor job. They were doing real work and I am all for that.
Having 5 STEMs keep up a e-mail server when you only need 2? How is that going to advance the economy? Sure, you may have a patent clerk you invents special relativity – but that is the exception.
And who notices when all the corporate data you have, which can be accessed by anyone in the world with just a username and password, starts getting downloaded in central China, or Estonia?
Or who cares? That cloud provider lets you setup usernames and passwords, and tell you it's secure. Your employees go home, where they've recently downloaded "AVG Super Microsoft Spyware Buster Plus" for a small fee, and now your corporate data is available on bittorrent.
If you call that cloud provider and complain, they say "our users can work anywhere in the world, it's "the cloud
The one outsourced to CSC?
Yes, they get the economies of scale, while killing the supply of trained local competitors. Do you think they will share these economies with their customers?
Big contractor shops have economies of scale. Does this mean cheaper rates to hire them?
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
You never hear "lets get rid of doctors. With so much information at their fingertips nowadays, people can just diagnose themselves!"
I get your point, but have you seen some of the stuff the government paid for? Star Wars was supposed to put hundreds of half-mile long particle accelerators in space. It was ridiculous, but they actually went ahead with it for a long time. Not that missile defense is a bad idea, or doing it from space is a bad idea, but the plan they were going ahead with could never ever fly.
Play Command HQ online
Get. The. Fuck. Out. while you still can.
The cloud is coming. It is going to destroy your industry unless you work for a cloud startup. Box is looking at your SAN with big HTML 5 hard on.
Just saying.... the accountants will make this happen.
I thought that would happen, but it doesn't seem to be. I still hear people in their 30's using the same line that we heard 25 years ago about the "Computer Whiz Kids" and how kids today know soooo much more than adults. Your example of people hired in the past 5 years having a harder time than those right out of HS today shows the point. Those people hired in the past 5 years grew up in the computer age. Most of them should not remember a time when computers were not all over the place.
I hope I am wrong, but it appears that "I don't understand it because 'Computers are hard'" has become a permanent fixture of our culture. Just read any article about installing Linux over the last couple of years. Right here on a site that caters to the technically proficent will have thread after thread about how installing Linux is too hard.
I call it Socialocracy http://jimijon.blogspot.com/2011/03/origins-of-socialocracy.html cheers
Mind | Body | Spirit | Cash
because the 'cloud' let's you put all the labor where ever it's cheapest. I seem to remember a fellow named Marx talking about that, but all anyone can remember about him is two or three dictators borrowed his rhetoric for their pogroms.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
One of the consequences of the cold war is that both sides got a bit of Lysencoism (real spelling in in cyrillic so don't give me shit), which is where some projects that just ran off the rails of reality so far that they were really just welfare got some funding because they made promises that sounded good to clueless idiots in power.
Secondly, even though technology is much more common (particularly with the younger generations), technological sophistication is still fairly rare. The vast majority of people use the technology of their jobs in the most narrow ways possible, and further they expect technology to "just work". When it doesn't, they call on the IT guys, or they call on their uncommon coworkers like me who aren't in IT but are still the unofficial IT guys by virtue of having more than modest computer knowledge.
Think about that statement. The areas where people want to use 'clouds' are areas where they are not designed to handle. It's like using a plane's prop as an egg-beater. The people who see this in action are trying to correct the misapplication, but the people making these decisions have an attention span measured in microseconds. They think IT is trying to save their own jobs (possibly), without realizing that IT is trying to prevent (yet another) management fiasco. Why would IT want to stop this fiasco, even if they end up on top afterwards because of it? Because it's a complete waste of seven months of their time, and millions of dollars, doing something which they will never be adequately reimbursed for. No one wants to spend 6 months of their weekends trying to write a parser to get the data from the cloud people back into the company database, because the original contract never stipulated being able to migrate that data back if everything fell through.
Of course, the people looking into clouds would know that, right? That they can get their data in and out of it, and even change providers in a pinch if they need to, right? Because otherwise they would have migrated the company to a platform that is impossible for them to move off of, and their new 'friends' can ramp up prices as much as they like, holding the data hostage the entire time.
I am John Hurt.
The 'T' in STEM stands for technology, which (I)nformation (T)echnology is.
I am John Hurt.
Newsom is an upscale lowlife who knows absolutely nothing about IT. Sounds like he picked up on a magazine article on a plane flight and now he knows everything I work in SF financial district every day doing IT and NO ONE outside fasionable cocktail parties are talking seriously about this. Maybe his dog groomer might consider a move to O365, but a city or a corporation? 1. Small companies see the cloud for real savings when they just need simple apps, email, and even simplier security controls. 2. Medium and up (+100 heads) have more complexity and sometimes an app or two in the cloud (Salesforce, MS CRM, Email or Spam filtering) makes sense, but the data really resides in house. So go with Office 365 and let go the Exchange guru who probably did a lot more and hire a guy to maintain the AD sync and coordinate with Salesforce, etc. when something is not flowing. You still need support and service maint. 3. Large companies talk about it like Newsom and only so they can hear themselve say cloud. No CIO is going to take risks while Amazon "goes down" or Azure "is having a bad day". Sorry, they have their own diesel contracts for their own facilities on company property. Big IT even uses SMTP services only if they really make sense. After having used hosted Exchange since 2002 I can say the hosts do hav a role, but they can not give us application customization our in house developers do with our in house core products. Really the question here is: can it ALL be moved to the cloud? Yes, for some and soon for everyone else who will yield control. Today your give your data to LinkedIn, tomorrow Google.......appcreep
But surely we could have launched those particle accelerators using the spacecraft that would have resulted from project orion had it not been cancelled.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Cloud technology has its place and it's here to stay without a doubt. The benefits it brings in a more connected world is undeniable. Just how much or how little to leverage it is debatable. But from what I see the greater population within "Citizenville" is just simply not technical enough to make needed technical decisions. They're savvy yes, they use the tools creatively yes, but everyone is still just not as technical as I they'd need to be to in order to be self sufficient. His attacks on IT likely reflect his real world experience working with his own IT departments that are slow to adapt and "behind the times" which is true for many IT departments, especially in the political arena. The problem is many people that work for government office have cushy jobs and stay there as "lifers". That sort of mentality breeds apathy across the board. And that's a shame because they make the rest of us look terrible. So in some ways I can't blame him for his own ignorance. The only exception to this is the defense and national security arenas. But again, if he were more technical he'd see the problems in his IT staff in plain sight. What he's saying is akin to saying we no longer needing mechanical and computer engineers because all of our manufacturing is automated these days anyway, the ignorance is obvious to those that know better.
Replaced entire justice system with Thunderdome: two men enter, one man leaves.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
He wants everything to be cloud based and then worries about privacy? Sorry brah, you can't have it both ways.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Actually, I think this will be going away in the next 10-15 years. Sure, stupid users will still exist out there, but I see 3 year olds texting now. The idea that you "learn" computers is going away.
It pretty much has already changed as have IT departments along with it. Although there are questions, very little of them have to do with the average user experience with the bare computer. Hardware takes up a small but not insignificant amount of my job. People can already outsource that if they want, it just depends on how important it is to you to keep your workers working. The basic fact is that if you want the sort of support business needs, in most cases it will be cheaper to have in house people do it. Most of my job is training in the particular business applications the workers are using, setting those applications up to meet the needs of our business beyond what the vendors can do, and then administrative work that normal users do not know how to do nor do you want to give them the power to do. This is especially true of inter-application communications and finding out where something zigged when it should have zagged in the under the hood bits of the the user's applications. IT departments have already gone beyond what people think of them as just to keep businesses running. The current implementations will not go away until vendors start creating easy to understand, perfectly meshing computer systems with no bugs that can also read the users minds to write the needed database reports and change the systems to meet changing needs. I suspect that will happen soon after all business decide to move all their computers over to being thin clients, which is to say not in the foreseeable future.
That would have been fun.
Play Command HQ online