The Network Garden - Mark Sigal's Blog

Triangulations: Quality of Life - Is There More to Life than "Winning"?

"Software devs be like, 'We can change the world! ...unless it involves race, gender or economic oppression, then that's just how it is.' - Benito Applenoms (‏@yeloson)

Life presents a Parodox. It really does.

Are you satisfied with exhibiting a well-executed Pose?

Do you demand Performance from yourself?

Do you pursue a directed Path?

How about holding your Peers to some measure of Accountability?

Are you willing to look the other way so that Wall Street can hide behind the credo that Capitalism has no duty to the Greater Good? Or, Society for that matter?

It's why Wall Street can unashamedly steal from its own government with impunity. Pure capitalism, after all, is about the pursuit of Profits and Growth over Everything Else.

It's a revolving door. A lotto ticket to be cashed in. You would, too. Or, would you?

Is the Social Contract Dead?

Is so, what then? What's the end-game for the "Losers" in the game of life?

Silly talk? Get with it. A non-trival percentage of the population doesn't see itself as being gated on any sort of social responsibility boundaries. The market cures all, after all. The great antiseptic.

It doesn't see funding Safety Nets and Education as an "Us" topic. But rather, a Them topic, or worse, tantamount to waste and dead-beatism.

It raises a fundamental question of what represents Quality of Life in our society.

Is it collecting Stuff?

Is it Pursuing Big Ideas?

Is it Family and Friends?

Does establishing a Collective sense of "We"-ness matter anymore?

SImple questions, but the practice of actually building truths that do it in an always-on, always connected, Mobile First world require a fresh take on systems design, workflow, marketplace structuring and economic models.

TED as Emblematic of the Empty Sound Bite

Which brings me to TED. And sadly, no, I am not talking about that Ted.

Writing in theguardian.com, Benjamin Bratton argues compellingly that science, philosophy and technology run on the model of American Idol – as embodied by TED talks – is a recipe for civilisational disaster.

Read the full article, which is rich and thought-provoking. This excerpt captures what Bratton is advocating:

"Instead of dumbing-down the future, we need to raise the level of general understanding to the level of complexity of the systems in which we are embedded and which are embedded in us. This is not about "personal stories of inspiration", it's about the difficult and uncertain work of demystification and reconceptualisation: the hard stuff that really changes how we think. "

Amen to that. This requires multi-generational thinking. Can WE do that?

I pledge to do my part in the Year Ahead.

How about YOU?

The Jobs Engine: On Indivisibility and Integrated Systems (GigaOM)

There is a looming sense, a dark narrative that America’s best days are behind it. Why? A clash of civilizations. A sense in many pockets of the country that we are living in a time of anomie, inequity and worry.

Everywhere you look, there is disaster. At ground zero are the remnants of a 100-year flood known as the 2008 financial crisis; it’s a flood that never completely receded.

Put another way, whether you are politically right or left, believe in trickle down or trickle up,  the hard truth is that there are few catalysts for significant job growth in America right now.

Take a look at that one great wonder and power of our age, broadband internet. In many ways it has been an engine of growth and created whole new industries. Yet it has also set off a wave of painful disruption, through the triumvirate forces of:

• Digitization: Anything that can be turned into bits, will be.
• Globalization: Where location can be rendered moot, it will be.
• Commoditization: When bits and logistics can commoditize, they will.

In its wake it has permanently broken or even destroyed multiple industries. In fact, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows quite clearly how such industries that were rocking and rolling prior to broadband are now sucking wind, including electronics stores, book stores, electronic components, employment services and information services, to name a few.

Less obvious, but equally troubling, is the fact that when these industries break it also disrupts the ecosystems that surround them as well, cascading in a domino effect. 

Here’s how it works: When an industry like print media goes sideways, not only do publishers and the employees housed within them go away, but so too do printers, production houses, delivery trucks, book stores, newsstands, book reviewers, sales reps and publicists. Worse, this hits regional hubs especially hard. And we now know those jobs are not coming back. Ever.

The immutability of this dynamic hearkens to a signature line in Oliver Stone’s ever timely, ‘Wall Street,‘ when broken trader Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) asks corporate raider Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), “Why do you need to wreck this company?” Gekko retorts, “Because it’s wreckable, all right?”

Read the full post HERE.

UPDATE 1: Kevin Kelly, author of 'What Technology Wants' (one of the more thought-provoking books of recent years), and long time Wired writer, has written an excellent article on what he calls 'The Post-Productive Economy.' Most fundamentally, he argues that sustaining growth waves take decades to reach full bloom, yet our measures are tailored to both the wrong kinds of metrics and the wrong sense of periodicity. I think that it further underscores the truth that the strongest counters to Commoditization, Digitization and De-Localization is Integration.

Related:

1. Retail Needs a Reboot to Survive (GigaOM)
2. HP, Dell and the Paradox of the Disrupted (GigaOM)
3. Assessing the Internet: Great Creator or Better Destroyer (GigaOM)
4. The Great Reset: Why Tomorrow May Not be Better than Today

Pattern Recognition: Caught Red-Handed; Re-thinking the 'I' in IT; Twitter-nomics

My goal is to write one 'Pattern Recognition' a week. Just the top 3-4 stories that stayed under my skin. Here's what stuck this week:

1. Caught Red-Handed in the LIBOR Cookie Jar: If you wonder why Americans are losing faith in their institutions, look no further than our Banking System, where Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone has done exceptional reporting on the systematic manipulation by Big Banks of LIBOR, the London Interbank Offered Rate. If you are not familiar with LIBOR, it is 'only' one of the most common metrics that lenders use to set lending, credit card and bond rates for consumers, businesses and municipalities. In other words, the fact that major banks could manipulate the rate to grab additional profits, speaks to the endemic corruption across the banking industry. In this particular case, several of the major banks (Barclays, GE Capital and Royal Bank of Scotland are the known names so far) were caught red-handed in bid rigging scandals constructed to skim billions of dollars from the already thinning coffers of cities and small towns across America. This particular industry, whereby the banks help municipalities by issuing municipal bonds on their behalf, is a $3.7 trillion dollar market. If you read HERE, HERE and HERE, you get a sense of the persistent, ubiquitous nature of this type of thievery, where good old-fashioned graft expedites the process. If anything, the challenge for folks like Taibbi is to reduce the mind-numbing numbers and complexities of the transactions themselves into memetic pictures, graphs and narrative that forevermore changes public sentiment about 'too big to fail.' Or, as Stalin once said, "The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of millions is a statistic." Money shot from the Taibbi piece: "You find yourself thinking, America's biggest banks ripped off the entire country...every day, for over a decade!"
2. Does IT Still Matter? Ashlee Vance writes in today's Businessweek, 'It Took Less than Ten Years for IT Not to Matter.' In the article, he essentially argues that most companies have no business trying to tackle IT in-house and that they should rent such services, which generally speaking, translates to "trust the cloud."  Talk about confusing attributes with outcomes. As I wrote for GigaOM in a recent analysis of the travails of 'bricks and mortar' retailers (' Retail needs a reboot to survive'), businesses need to differentiate, which fundamentally is about integration. Sure enough, the most successful companies on the planet hugely use IT to differentiate. Thus, if there is any moral of the story from enterprise struggles with IT over the past decade, it's that too few of them had a clear, reasoned understanding of: A) The role that technology could play in their business; B) The cultural barriers to overcome; and C) The specific outcomes needing to be realized to make it worth the effort. Netting it out, a big part of the problem is that the 'I' in IT stands for information, when it needs to stand for integrated, coupled with the fact that most companies tend to be silo'd into business units, which is the antithesis of integration, something that I wrote about in 'DIS-Integrated Systems: A Parable.'
3. Twittter-nomics: Twitter continues its path to maturity. On the positive side, they are building serious conviction about delivering a great and consistent user experience via Twitter Cards, a structured tweet model that I suggested should their path to monetization way back in 2008 (see 'Twitter-nomics: Envisioning Structured Tweets.'). One the other hand, under the double-speak of delivering a consistent user experience, they are starting to clamp down on third-party clients. You know, the same third-party clients that made the Twitter experience so great before Twitter decided to co-opt them. It sucks, but then again, it amazes me how few grok that APIs (and platforms in general) are like toll bridges. They can lift up and disappear, or change their fare structure at any time. Forewarned is forearmed, and free is often too high of a price to pay. 

Pattern Recognition: That Was Then; Losing My (Institutional) Religion; Mobile Native

My goal is to write one 'Pattern Recognition' a week. Just the top 3-4 stories that stayed under my skin. Here's what stuck this week:

1. That Was Then, This is Now: Reading about Morgan Stanley's role in screwing retail investors in the Facebook IPO, and JP Morgan's hedge fund safely nestled in a too big too fail mega-bank (with an implicit US government guarantee), I am reminded that Wall Street wasn't always an amoral, scumbucket octopus. Back in the mid-70's, New York City was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Dark days, to be sure. Then, Walt Wriston, the visionary CEO of Citibank (now Citigroup), stepped in, and quite literally, helped save the city. Talk about a juxtaposition. Today's Citigroup not only had to be rescued by TARP, but its CEO was recently rebuffed by angry investors over his excessive pay package. All of which leads me to conclude that if the circumstances of a major municipality going bust were to repeat itself in America today, couldn't Wall Street be "trusted" to find a way to profit from the bust vs. acting socially responsible? How times have changed.
2. Losing My (Institutional) Religion: A few weeks back, I saw an intuitive, yet troubling, chart on how Americans are losing faith in our greatest instituitions (e.g., Congress, Banks, Schools, the Presidency, the Supreme Court). Then, I read Apple's legal response today to the Department of Justice's E-Book Case. The specific way that Apple frames it (it's worth a read), put a bow around how fucked up so many of our intitutional processes are. This point was lain especially clear in a conversation I had with a friend of mine in the real estate industry. Regardless of whether you consider yourself pro-businesss, anti-business, liberal or conservative, his point was illuminating. He told the story of how everyone in his industry is worried about the capricious way that the government has gone about changing the rules for banks about lending, from reserve requirements to constraints on where they can make loans. His point was less that the government shouldn't be coming up with policies for these things, and more that the government bodies typically step in with broadstroke policies that are completey disconnected from the outcomes they want to encourage or discourage. As a result, we end up with policies that by virtue of their superficiality, just institute random risk, which is obviously not a good thing if you want business investing in growth. To me, this speaks to a false dichotomy that we find ourselves in with respect to the role of government. Today, it feels like a choice between: A) laissez faire policy/enforcement (which led to an SEC completely asleep at the wheel, culminating in the 2008 economic crisis); and B) broadstroke governance, which results in policy that's akin to the "successful" surgery where the patient dies. It's why the health care reform sucked so bad for the very people it was supposed to help most, at a time when they needed it most. The net effect of this false dichotomy is that it only serves to perpetuate the gridlock in Washington. 
3. Go Native (Mobile): It's the nature of technological waves, that the first stage of a new wave always looks derivative of the old wave. But, the new wave doesn't lead to lasting, transformational change until 'native' applications are born that could only exist within the new medium. The silent film gave rise to the talkie, and while it took a while for the new medium took find its footing, our concept of what a motion picture could be was never the same again. The first TV shows were basically redux versions of their radio show parentage, but ultimately the medium became something entirely unique. So, too, the PC and then, the Web, completely transformed what came before it. Now, we are sitting at the precipice of 1 billion post-pc devices, on our way to 10 billion devices globally. Respected VC and Blogger Fred Wilson suggests that this confluence is due to give rise to legions of Mobile Native Services. In other words, apps and services that are not simply 'children of the Web,' but rather, new DNA entirely, powered my untethered mobility, GPS-locative attributes, perpetual connectivity, unparalleled scale, social fabrics, big data graphs and application platforms that are part hardware, software, service and tool. Metaphorically speaking, we are at the moment in the 1950's when everyone thought that TV was simply 'radio with pictures.' But very soon, that will change, and what rises on the other side is destined to be the Golden Age.

 

Predator, Parasite or Protected Class: The NEW Theory of Relativity

So we completetely borked the budget ceiling negotiation last week, leading to the S&P downgrade of America (read, 'What Happened to Obama' for a brilliant analysis on Obama's utter failure to establish a coherent narrative as president).

And if that wasn't enough, last week also underscored how completely the patent laws are screwed up to the point that they're officially a drag on innovation - the exact opposite of what patents were designed to do (read the transcript from the NPR program, 'When Patents Attack' to see what I mean).

Somehow, we can no longer figure this stuff out, yet recent history suggests that we can figure out how the universe works, can figure out how to thwart Hitler and rebuild Europe after World War II, can put a man on the moon, can create the Internet, etc.

Given this seeming asymmetry between the two realms, let me submit the following:

1. While everything is more complex than you give it credit for; and 
2. The weight of self-interest meaningfully incentivizes people who **should** know better to nonetheless screw the pooch for everyone else;
3. We don't have to be dumb and blind about it.

Much of this starts with changing the old memes (i.e., ideas that virally propagate), and replacing them with new memes.

Simply put, while form logically follows function, there is a larger truth that our thoughts on the "definition of the situation," including both specifically desired outcomes and tangible constraints, fundamentally instructs function.

In other words, our thoughts codify function, which give a mandate for form to manifest in a particular way.

In fact, there is a specific term that defines how we process congruities and incongruities called Cognitive Dissonance.

It basically suggests that if your actions and perceptions are out of whack, either you need to change your actions OR you need to change your perception of the situation as it exists. To NOT do so is physically and mentally uncomfortable.

A simple example is that if you think that you are fat and need to change your diet, one of two things is going to happen the next time that you are chowing down on a deliciously greasy pizza.

One, you will feel that eating that pizza is incongruent with your new aspirational image for yourself, and stop eating pizza so much.

Or, two, you will decide that being thin is over-rated, all relative, and more to the point, life is too short not to eat pizza, which is so delicious.

So, what does this have to do with the mess in our economy, our governance mechanisms, and the rot festering within society in general?

Most fundamentally, it's that changing the narrative and the actual words that we use to establish that narrative is a first, integral step to manifesting real change.

Putting it to the Test

Therefore, next time you encounter a story about Wall Street, Insurance Companies, Congress or Special Interest Groups (like Unions, Patent Lawyers, Environmentalists, etc.) start training your mind to be on the look out for:

1. Predatorial Behaviors: Ask yourself if the behavior being discussed is a case where one individual or group is taking advantage of another group by virtue of power, influence, wealth or knowledge.
2. Parasitic Entities: In order to maintain its existence or position in the economic, societal or organizational system that it participates within, does the entity leech off of the lifeforce, blood, energy or money of others? Does it remove more from the system than it puts in?
3. Protected Classes: Does the indvidual, industry group or company have undue influence on the rules that define its governance, and the methods and consequences by which those rules are enforced?

Now, recognize that most stories will be presented according to False Dichotomies, such as being "pro" this (e.g., business, big government, unions or jobs) or "anti" that.

It's far easier to tell a story, and sell a desired outcome, such as passing a bill or changing a rule, when the conclusions are presented in black and white terms.

Don't get fooled by this anymore. When you hear the facts presented in a way that frame the topic as an either/or scenario, be willing to question if the scenario presented is indeed a false dichotomy, and be rigorous about: A) consistently calling it such; and B) codifying what a reasonable "and" scenario looks like.

Understanding "Relative Yields: Everything is Relative

Similarly, the efficacy, or goodness, of specific outcomes are defined by the qualitative and quantitive content of what they yield.

Most yields are relativistic to multiple variables. Ask yourself what the yield is locally in your own backyard, for the larger region or nation as a whole, and/or globally.

Think about the actual impact both in the short term, measured in days, weeks, and months, and in the long term, over many years.  

Also, ask yourself if there are collateral impacts that further shape yield. For example, a program that results in less expensive clothes for consumers, but that also has the collateral impact of jobs moving overseas can be good or bad, but the collateral impact is real, and needs to be factored into relative yields.

Finally, when all else fails, simplify the topic and be surgical about the words that you use to codify it. If an individual did this same type of action to another individual, would that action being considered reasonable or lawful?

If not, then ask yourself, why it's reasonable at the governmental or corporate level. There may be valid reasons, but learn to articulate and understand the "What" so as to ask "Why," and be willing to challenge conventional wisdom by saying, "So What."

UPDATE: Mark Cuban has written an excellent post arguing that we should get rid of software and process patents completely. Worth a read.

Related Posts:

1. The Great Reset: Why tomorrow may not be better than today (O'Reilly Radar)
2. Why the Malaise in our Economy (and Society) is a case of The Innovator's Dilemma
3. Getting Real: On Doomsday, the Demise of So-Called Experts and the New Arbitrage
4. Assertion-based Reasoning: What, Why and So What

Why the Malaise in our Economy (and Society) is a case of The Innovator's Dilemma

 

So the Republicans play chicken with not only the US economy, but the global economy as well, and the President, always wanting to be seen as the "most reasonable guy in the room," once again lets smart tactics, lead to poor strategy and an even worse outcome. 

What's going on? Is the President just clueless? Are the Republicans just evil? 

Meanwhile, our economy sits in a 'dirty diaper,' with literally no catalysts for significant job creation, and yet, the story being conveyed by the media is focused on the false narrative of "compromise" narrowly averting disaster (a pyrrhic victory, if there ever was one).

And count on this: when the next set of bleak economic numbers come in, they will again be presented as "surprising," as opposed to predictable from a mile (and many quarters of data) away.

It's a case of Spin, Cycle and Repeat.

What's the Definition of the Situation?

In 'Why This Crisis Isn't Going Anywhere--And What To Do About It,' Umair Haque frames the problem as being just as much a case of a failure to properly diagnose what ails the patient, the US Economy, as a case of malpractice:

What's going on here? Why continued stagnation, and perhaps more interestingly, why is the status quo always "shocked" by it, every dismal quarter? Here's what it suggests, in no uncertain terms: they're struggling to discern what this crisis is yet.

As noted in my earlier piece, 'The Great Reset,' he's right. There is a disconnect.  This is no ordinary cycle that just needs to bide its time until the sun magically rises again. 

Rather, we are in the midst of a systemic disruption that is, at a minimum, as significant as the stifling days of Stagflation in the 70s, and on the cusp of the true horror that was The Great Depression.

The Innovator's Dilemma and the US Economy

I won't recite the Whats and Whys of my analysis -- read the piece if you'd like -- but I will say this.

As a student of disruptive innovations, I would argue that the pattern that we are seeing is a textbook example of the principles espoused in Clayton's Christensen's, The Innovator's Dilemma.'

Let me explain. In 'Dilemma,' Christensen shows how smart enterprises can make catastrophically bad decisions by using the following, seemingly sound, logic:

1. Does the innovative approach have a compelling return on investment?
2. Does our core constituency want this innovation?
3. Does this innovation leverage our core competencies?

In the PC era, we see how Microsoft outflanked much bigger companies, IBM and DEC, specifically because the PC was disruptive to the mainframe and minimcomputer.

IBM's best and brightest using the above litmus test, could "easily" evaluate the logic of trading in historically-proven product sales that were measured in the millions of dollars per sale for speculative ones that would be measured in the thousands of dollars per sale, and conclude that there was no "there" there economically speaking.

Moreover, their best customers could tell them plainly that the last thing that they wanted was an undepowered machine that couldn't be centrally managed.

Finally, back then, all of IBM's bones, muscles and sinew were designed for selling vertically integrated, proprietary solutions, something that a more horizontally oriented PC harnessing commercial-off-the-shelf components was to be an anathema to.

The moral of the story then, as now, is that disruptive technologies often serve a different audience, start off as small opportunities, and bit-by-bit, work their way up the stack until they destroy the incumbent's position.

Upstarts often win these battles because they have no base to protect, and thus, can think and act outside the box.

Flash forward to the present. We are in an economy absolutely gasping for new jobs and, at the very least, a "fig leaf" of hope.

What are your priorities, Mr. President, Mr. and Ms. Congress? Do you disrupt big business by taking away favorable taxation? Do you tighten governance so squishy lines of business go away? Do you play chicken with the companies that make up the Fortune 2000, risking jobs and the stock market?

After all, YOU are the incumbent, and the ultimate return on investment is getting re-elected, right? Your best customer tells you repeatedly via lobby and specific interest group that he/she absolutely does not favor any new products (taxes, legislation) that promise short-term pain, even at the cost of long-term gain.

The market doesn't reward it, the electorate doesn't reward it and the media only tells stories with binary narratives.

Plus, your core competency is taking pork and making it into sausage.

Such is the Innovator's Dilemma. That, and the hard truth that one should never under-estimate the ability of people to convince themselves of anything when their livelihood depends upon it.

Related Posts:

1. The Great Reset: Why tomorrow may not be better than today
2. A Contract to Fuck America: Ruminations on Good Governance and Corporate Irresponsibility
3. Getting Real: On Doomsday, the Demise of So-Called Experts and the New Arbitrage
4. Assessing the Internet: Great Creator or Better Destroyer?