Don't stop with this review, go read the book! It contains some critically important ideas both for the technologists who are creating the systems people later attempt to use in the work place, as well as for the managers who must get people to perform something like a useful task with the technology.
Technology often doesn't work the way it is expected to because the technologists often make fatally flawed assumptions about the end user or about the way end users will interact with the technology. This is even true of most of the software that, at least in the advertising hype, is designed with the user in mind. A lot of sweet technology is sweet, but of little or no interest or use to non-techies. We can all name any number of heavily hyped, truly cool tech products that failed because they were cool but not much use or sometimes were just useless to anyone but techies.
Perhaps the key point in the book is that people working together is a fundamentally social activity and that technology must be designed with that in mind. Technology that seeks to limit or control the social aspects of work will fail or prove to be counter-productive. This insight runs counter to almost all 20th century management guru thinking, especially the sort found on the best seller list. A second point that the book drives home again, and we (or certainly the media) do seem to need constant reminding of, hype isn't reality and anything that everyone agrees is the next thing, probably itsn't and even if it is, it probably won't turn out to be all its cracked up to be.
Closing thought: one of the things that makes the internet generally different from many commerical tech system implementations is that it actually promotes or facilitates communication in a very open and robust way. It does so because of design decisions made in the earliest days of arpanet, many of which run directly counter to the closed/proprietary models of most technology vendors. (A point I don't recall Brown and Selig making.)
This is interesting, and plays off the shadowrunners riff posted earlier.
Logos are more than just branding and taking up space. I know that in running shoes Brooks (tm) will fit me better than Addidas (tm) because of the last they use in construction. Just as I know that Arizona Jeans (tm) will fit me better than Levis (tm) because of the cut. If all products were indistinguishable, logos wouldn't mean squat, and they wouldn't be used. But the logo does represent the company and its products in a real way and, accordingly, conveys meaningful information. Lousey products make a logo a joke. A logo only has a chance of infecting the mind of the public if it represents a product or service that people want. Microsoft did not succeed because of its logo and name branding but because it was essential to a product that set the market standard and so became the market standard itself. No amount of advertising and logo placement could have accomplished what being picked as the operating system of the IBM PC(tm) did. (Abetted by some predatory business practices.)
It was correctly opined some time ago that the "Price of freedom is eternal vigilance." Never truer than today. Certainly the Warner Bros-Time-CNN/TNT-AOL and the teleco megamergers, for example, emphasize this.
But the lesson of Microsoft is get to big, act too much like a bully and the state will step in and punish you. The megacorps are truly forces, and largely unfettered ones, but there are individuals watching and there are lines that can't be crossed with impunity.
None of this suggests that our freedoms aren't erroding. On the other hand, I grew up in the 50's and social controls were much higher then. You dream of a state of being where individuals have true contol over their lives and social institutions. This is not a human state. Must humans will not think for themselves and when the do "think", are incapable of thinking through to the consequences of their actions. That's why social insititutions evolved to control on some levels the behavior of those who couldn't manage this on their own.
This does mean that those who are capable of thinking and acting for themselves will feel abused. That's the nature of society. You can't find a single viable example of a society in which that is not the case.
The lesson? Find an niche of your own and exploit it -- it could be as a shadowrunner. My computer program recommends: adopt a zen-like attitude.
But don't pretend that corporations even megacorps on the verge of running amok are anything other than human social institutions in many ways like all others.
BTW: while most corporate managers have adopted the mantra of stockholder value, they are really just careerists who run corps as private fiefdoms, subject only to making enough profit/share price value to keep the stockholders from demanding a change in management. And most major stockowners are not individuals they are corporate institutions themselves, often bigger than the companies they hold shares in, i.e., mutual funds, pension funds, and so on.
Let me get this straight; because some religious site had its access pulled by its ISP because the ISP thought that the religious site was the target of a DoS attack, and this seems to many posters like, at very least, a pretty lousy thing to do, then the posters who object to this are all a bunch of "hyperlibertarians support[ing] grossly illegal behavior"? Did I get this right?
No doubt some of the posters are hyperlibertarians, but what has this got to do with the orignal question? There was not even the remotest suggestion that the religious site was enagaing in any sort of behavior that was in any way illegal. Nor was there any suggestion that the relgious site was enagaged in activities that might be construed as violating other anyone else's rights.
In this case the ISP closed down free expression of religious views, because some anonymous cowards electronically attacked the ISP for hosting the religious site. Seems like bad business, a horrible precedent, and downright lousy behavior.
Full disclosure: I am no hyperlibertarian, I'm generally a cybercentrist. Furthermore, personally I find nearly all religious views childish and often find them offensive, Marx and Engles were too easy on religion. But even holding these views, it seems obvious that protecting free expression of religious views is nearly the purest example of the sort of speach that should be protected.
The essence of free expression on the internet is that we must endure both the hyperlibertarians and the authoritarians. Whether we like it or not, they have the right to express themselves and their debate will be conducted here as it will be elsewhere. We can only hope that neither camp wins, though the pendulum will certainly swing between them.
Anyway, their free speech is the price I pay for the right to offer up my insights/not.
F451 and Required High School Reading
on
Fahrenheit 451
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· Score: 1
F451 is certainly a great book, and, 'tho I doubt any of us will be around long enough to know for certain, probably a classic. Thanks to timothy for the review and the reminder.
Reading the posts, I wonder why my high school was so different. I read nearly all of the books listed by every poster as required reading in English class at some time during my high school years. The required reading list was recommended by the English Department and approved by the school board, it wasn't an individual decision by any of the teachers. What was discussed and so on was up the teacher, but the reading list wasn't. And yes, I went to a public school.
I can think of no good reason to pick and choose among these books, they are all great literature and offer important messages about humanity, and should required reading. Merchant of Venice (OK, its a play but its bound and published as a book as it has been for four centuries) may not be F451 but both should be on every high school student's reading list. As should all the other works cited by the various posters.
MS Office didn't start out with a decent set of programs. WordPerfect and Lotus were both far better, but with a virtually unlimited source of revenue from OS, MS apps had the time and money to catch up.
The fact that AOL clobbers MS today will mean nothing if MS can continue to pour, you pick a figure, any amount of money it wants to until it catchs and buries AOL. Its exactly the model MS used to bury netscape. Today IE is a good product, one I agree is better than Netscape, but it didn't start out that way, and had it been forced to develop without unlimited MS OS money, it probably wouldn't be the product it is today. Under more reasonable competitive circumstances who knows whether or not Netscape or IE or some other browser that never got going because MS killed the market would be a better product than what's available.
I just hope the break up occurs before my TV's got Win icons all over it. On second thought, maybe that would be a good thing, it would invariably crash at the critical moment in the program, so there'd be no need to watch in the first place.
There are times when I wonder if MicroSoft's fight against a breakup isn't a "Oh, please don't throw me the Brer patch" strategy. The AT&T model isn't entirely apt and who knows where its all going in telecom today, but breaking up AT&T was essentially a winner for all, especially the share holders.
It's likely that breaking up MicroSoft will yeild 3 or 4 hyper-competitive companies. And who knows of what they will be capable. But what the Microbabies won't have will be the anticompetivie advantage of being bundled, linked or even all-but-bundled with the OS on 90% of all PCs. Nor will they have the advantage that comes with a hugely profitable revenue stream coming from the OS sales and upgrades. The Microbabies will have to do it alone both intellectually and financially. This will certainly level the playing field considerably.
But whether this will really matter will depend as much on the competitors as it does on the Microbabies. If the competition doesn't compete effectively, then the Microbabies will continue to expand. Will the competitors be up to the challenge? Only time will tell. But at least they will be competing on a more or less level field for the first time in decades.
In the absence of a breakup, MS will simply grow larger, more dominant and anticompetitive. Think bundling will end with IE? Its a wonder to me why MS didn't start by bundling Office. Who'd have been left standing if they'd started there? Can you think of other major apps that could be bundled with the OS following MS's same lame argument used in defense of bundling IE?
Breaking up MS isn't a perfect solution. Windows will continue to be dominant player in the OS market, and the Microbabies will start with the advantage of their already considerable marketshares. But this has got to be better than the status quo.
Slashdot Mirror
Technology often doesn't work the way it is expected to because the technologists often make fatally flawed assumptions about the end user or about the way end users will interact with the technology. This is even true of most of the software that, at least in the advertising hype, is designed with the user in mind. A lot of sweet technology is sweet, but of little or no interest or use to non-techies. We can all name any number of heavily hyped, truly cool tech products that failed because they were cool but not much use or sometimes were just useless to anyone but techies.
Perhaps the key point in the book is that people working together is a fundamentally social activity and that technology must be designed with that in mind. Technology that seeks to limit or control the social aspects of work will fail or prove to be counter-productive. This insight runs counter to almost all 20th century management guru thinking, especially the sort found on the best seller list. A second point that the book drives home again, and we (or certainly the media) do seem to need constant reminding of, hype isn't reality and anything that everyone agrees is the next thing, probably itsn't and even if it is, it probably won't turn out to be all its cracked up to be.
Closing thought: one of the things that makes the internet generally different from many commerical tech system implementations is that it actually promotes or facilitates communication in a very open and robust way. It does so because of design decisions made in the earliest days of arpanet, many of which run directly counter to the closed/proprietary models of most technology vendors. (A point I don't recall Brown and Selig making.)
Logos are more than just branding and taking up space. I know that in running shoes Brooks (tm) will fit me better than Addidas (tm) because of the last they use in construction. Just as I know that Arizona Jeans (tm) will fit me better than Levis (tm) because of the cut. If all products were indistinguishable, logos wouldn't mean squat, and they wouldn't be used. But the logo does represent the company and its products in a real way and, accordingly, conveys meaningful information. Lousey products make a logo a joke. A logo only has a chance of infecting the mind of the public if it represents a product or service that people want. Microsoft did not succeed because of its logo and name branding but because it was essential to a product that set the market standard and so became the market standard itself. No amount of advertising and logo placement could have accomplished what being picked as the operating system of the IBM PC(tm) did. (Abetted by some predatory business practices.)
I closing, I gotta ask: is NOLOGO a logo?
But the lesson of Microsoft is get to big, act too much like a bully and the state will step in and punish you. The megacorps are truly forces, and largely unfettered ones, but there are individuals watching and there are lines that can't be crossed with impunity.
None of this suggests that our freedoms aren't erroding. On the other hand, I grew up in the 50's and social controls were much higher then. You dream of a state of being where individuals have true contol over their lives and social institutions. This is not a human state. Must humans will not think for themselves and when the do "think", are incapable of thinking through to the consequences of their actions. That's why social insititutions evolved to control on some levels the behavior of those who couldn't manage this on their own.
This does mean that those who are capable of thinking and acting for themselves will feel abused. That's the nature of society. You can't find a single viable example of a society in which that is not the case.
The lesson? Find an niche of your own and exploit it -- it could be as a shadowrunner. My computer program recommends: adopt a zen-like attitude.
But don't pretend that corporations even megacorps on the verge of running amok are anything other than human social institutions in many ways like all others.
BTW: while most corporate managers have adopted the mantra of stockholder value, they are really just careerists who run corps as private fiefdoms, subject only to making enough profit/share price value to keep the stockholders from demanding a change in management. And most major stockowners are not individuals they are corporate institutions themselves, often bigger than the companies they hold shares in, i.e., mutual funds, pension funds, and so on.
End of rant.
No doubt some of the posters are hyperlibertarians, but what has this got to do with the orignal question? There was not even the remotest suggestion that the religious site was enagaing in any sort of behavior that was in any way illegal. Nor was there any suggestion that the relgious site was enagaged in activities that might be construed as violating other anyone else's rights.
In this case the ISP closed down free expression of religious views, because some anonymous cowards electronically attacked the ISP for hosting the religious site. Seems like bad business, a horrible precedent, and downright lousy behavior.
Full disclosure: I am no hyperlibertarian, I'm generally a cybercentrist. Furthermore, personally I find nearly all religious views childish and often find them offensive, Marx and Engles were too easy on religion. But even holding these views, it seems obvious that protecting free expression of religious views is nearly the purest example of the sort of speach that should be protected.
The essence of free expression on the internet is that we must endure both the hyperlibertarians and the authoritarians. Whether we like it or not, they have the right to express themselves and their debate will be conducted here as it will be elsewhere. We can only hope that neither camp wins, though the pendulum will certainly swing between them.
Anyway, their free speech is the price I pay for the right to offer up my insights/not.
Reading the posts, I wonder why my high school was so different. I read nearly all of the books listed by every poster as required reading in English class at some time during my high school years. The required reading list was recommended by the English Department and approved by the school board, it wasn't an individual decision by any of the teachers. What was discussed and so on was up the teacher, but the reading list wasn't. And yes, I went to a public school.
I can think of no good reason to pick and choose among these books, they are all great literature and offer important messages about humanity, and should required reading. Merchant of Venice (OK, its a play but its bound and published as a book as it has been for four centuries) may not be F451 but both should be on every high school student's reading list. As should all the other works cited by the various posters.
MS Office didn't start out with a decent set of programs. WordPerfect and Lotus were both far better, but with a virtually unlimited source of revenue from OS, MS apps had the time and money to catch up.
The fact that AOL clobbers MS today will mean nothing if MS can continue to pour, you pick a figure, any amount of money it wants to until it catchs and buries AOL. Its exactly the model MS used to bury netscape. Today IE is a good product, one I agree is better than Netscape, but it didn't start out that way, and had it been forced to develop without unlimited MS OS money, it probably wouldn't be the product it is today. Under more reasonable competitive circumstances who knows whether or not Netscape or IE or some other browser that never got going because MS killed the market would be a better product than what's available.
I just hope the break up occurs before my TV's got Win icons all over it. On second thought, maybe that would be a good thing, it would invariably crash at the critical moment in the program, so there'd be no need to watch in the first place.
There are times when I wonder if MicroSoft's fight against a breakup isn't a "Oh, please don't throw me the Brer patch" strategy. The AT&T model isn't entirely apt and who knows where its all going in telecom today, but breaking up AT&T was essentially a winner for all, especially the share holders.
It's likely that breaking up MicroSoft will yeild 3 or 4 hyper-competitive companies. And who knows of what they will be capable. But what the Microbabies won't have will be the anticompetivie advantage of being bundled, linked or even all-but-bundled with the OS on 90% of all PCs. Nor will they have the advantage that comes with a hugely profitable revenue stream coming from the OS sales and upgrades. The Microbabies will have to do it alone both intellectually and financially. This will certainly level the playing field considerably.
But whether this will really matter will depend as much on the competitors as it does on the Microbabies. If the competition doesn't compete effectively, then the Microbabies will continue to expand. Will the competitors be up to the challenge? Only time will tell. But at least they will be competing on a more or less level field for the first time in decades.
In the absence of a breakup, MS will simply grow larger, more dominant and anticompetitive. Think bundling will end with IE? Its a wonder to me why MS didn't start by bundling Office. Who'd have been left standing if they'd started there?
Can you think of other major apps that could be bundled with the OS following MS's same lame argument used in defense of bundling IE?
Breaking up MS isn't a perfect solution. Windows will continue to be dominant player in the OS market, and the Microbabies will start with the advantage of their already considerable marketshares. But this has got to be better than the status quo.