Many people talk about "technology" as if this word needed no definition or explanation. They imagine there is a clear boundary between "technology" and other stuff, and they perhaps also imagine that all technology-literate people have a common view as to where this boundary sits.
For example, I have recently been following a debate between Andrew McAfee (originator of the term "Enterprise 2.0") and several other bloggers, including Tom Graves and Oscar Berg. They complain that McAfee's definition of the term focuses on the software devices rather than on the emerging working practices (possibly supported by these software devices).
Both McAfee and his critics appear to use the word "technology" to refer to the software devices independently of their use. McAfee refers to something he wrote a couple of years back entitled It’s Not Not About the Technology, in which he criticizes two different versions of the statement "It's not about the technology". He argues that it is dangerous to ignore the details of a given piece of technology, and I presume he is referring to the software device. Berg complains that McAfee's definition is technology-centric, and McAfee's response is that his definition refers to people AND technology, from which I infer that he accepts a notion of "technology" that doesn't include people-using-technology.
This is an extremely common view of technology, but it is also highly problematic, as social critics of technology have long argued. Lewis Mumford preferred to talk about Technics, and Albert Borgmann has produced an extremely well-argued analysis of what he calls the Device Paradigm.
In my own work on technology adoption, I have always placed equal emphasis on assimilation (tuning the devices to fit the organization) and accommodation (tuning the organization to fit the devices). (The concepts of assimilation and accommodation come from Piaget via Leonard-Barton.) I don't find it helpful to think of software existing in some purely abstract shrink-wrapped world independently of being used, and I draw a more nuanced notion of technology and its development from sociologists such as Latour and Bijker.
In his latest post A comment to McAfee's "A Defining Moment", Oscar cites some statistics on social media and asks "How much would you attribute to technology for this development, and how much to human attitudes and behavior?"
But this question only makes sense on the assumption that we can cleanly separate "technology" from "human attitudes and behaviour", and I challenge this assumption. Graham Hill quotes an extreme example of how technology is inextricably intertwined with human attitudes and behaviour. "The mobile phone is the most personal of devices. It's like entering the customers bedroom. So brands need to be very sexy!" In other words, the mobile phone is not just a "piece of technology", it is a socially constructed artefact, what Latour calls a "black box".
By the way, I don't agree with everything written by Bijker, Borgmann, Latour and Mumford, and I don't expect you to either. But I wish more people had read them, and I wish more people were prepared to think a bit more deeply about the nature of technology.
Here's another example. In New Swimming World Records: Technology or Training?, Carlos Gershenson classified fancy swimsuits as "technology" but better techniques and understanding of fluid dynamics as "training", points out that different policies (regulations) apply to the two categories, and (rightly) asks where to draw the boundary?
Friday, August 28, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Crude Categories
@snowded is wondering when people will give up on crude categories like Gen X/Y? @gbrettmiller adds that it's the ever present problem of "us" and "them"; unfortunately many people think in terms of these categories or, worse, labels.
I suspect Dave already knows the answer. This could be a rhetorical question, expressing frustration and despair with the fact that people find these crude categories so attractive. Surely he cannot be hoping for some collective epiphany, in which people throw all such crude distinctions onto a Bonfire of the Categories?
Implicit in Dave's question is a distinction between "crude" categories and some other kind of categories, perhaps "refined". Perhaps crude categories are those we use without deliberation or reflection. So what would "refining" or "refinement" look like?
Many of the categories Dave is referring to are polythetic ones - dependent on an overlapping set of characteristic features rather than a single defining feature. Therefore one of the characteristic features of the refined use of such categories is to remind ourselves that a simple category label stands for a complex set of overlapping attributes, not all of which may be present in any given situation. Any conclusions we might try and draw from these categories should be regarded as unreliable until they have been verified by unpacking the category into the complex observations of which it provides a simple summary.
Next practice doesn't mean discarding labels and categories, but it should probably mean being a little more self-aware about what Maturana calls "languaging" - including one's use of labels and the conclusions one draws from them.
Further reading:
I suspect Dave already knows the answer. This could be a rhetorical question, expressing frustration and despair with the fact that people find these crude categories so attractive. Surely he cannot be hoping for some collective epiphany, in which people throw all such crude distinctions onto a Bonfire of the Categories?
Implicit in Dave's question is a distinction between "crude" categories and some other kind of categories, perhaps "refined". Perhaps crude categories are those we use without deliberation or reflection. So what would "refining" or "refinement" look like?
Many of the categories Dave is referring to are polythetic ones - dependent on an overlapping set of characteristic features rather than a single defining feature. Therefore one of the characteristic features of the refined use of such categories is to remind ourselves that a simple category label stands for a complex set of overlapping attributes, not all of which may be present in any given situation. Any conclusions we might try and draw from these categories should be regarded as unreliable until they have been verified by unpacking the category into the complex observations of which it provides a simple summary.
Next practice doesn't mean discarding labels and categories, but it should probably mean being a little more self-aware about what Maturana calls "languaging" - including one's use of labels and the conclusions one draws from them.
Further reading:
- Vincent Kenny, Life, the Multiverse and Everything: An introduction to the ideas of Humberto Maturana (1985)
- Ernst von Glasersfeld, Distinguishing the Observer: An Attempt at Interpreting Maturana
Monday, August 24, 2009
Don't Be Surprised ...
"If you keep doing what you're doing", says @JohnIMM "don't be surprised if you keep getting the same results! Nothing changes without change!"
@j4ngis objects: "Lots of thing changes when you do the same thing. If you every day yell at your wife your marriage will (likely) change."
However, the key phrase in John's remark is "don't be surprised". If you yell at your wife every day, you can be astounded (and thankful) if your marriage nonetheless improves.
By the way, "don't be surprised" is one of those phrases that is very easily overlooked: this is a phenomenon that is often utilized by hypnotists and NLP practitioners. This is how it works. If the hypnotist simply told you "You will be able to relax before your exam", your natural response might be "I doubt it, that's never happened before". But if the hypnotist tells you "Don't be surprised if you should find yourself able to relax before your exam", the statement gets split into two pieces for separate processing. One part of your brain will go "You are wrong, I will be very surprised", while another part of the brain goes "Okay, so I should relax before my exam". Thus you can achieve the desired outcome (relaxation) without actually obeying the hypnotist.
Coming back to the question of change: @j4ngis continues: "purpose of a change is to change a system or keep status quo of (some aspect of) the system." But there's a twist, as Kevin Kelly wrote (as the last of his Nine Laws of God in his book Out of Control): Change Changes Itself.
Or perhaps we should say: "Don't be surprised if change changes itself".
@j4ngis objects: "Lots of thing changes when you do the same thing. If you every day yell at your wife your marriage will (likely) change."
However, the key phrase in John's remark is "don't be surprised". If you yell at your wife every day, you can be astounded (and thankful) if your marriage nonetheless improves.
By the way, "don't be surprised" is one of those phrases that is very easily overlooked: this is a phenomenon that is often utilized by hypnotists and NLP practitioners. This is how it works. If the hypnotist simply told you "You will be able to relax before your exam", your natural response might be "I doubt it, that's never happened before". But if the hypnotist tells you "Don't be surprised if you should find yourself able to relax before your exam", the statement gets split into two pieces for separate processing. One part of your brain will go "You are wrong, I will be very surprised", while another part of the brain goes "Okay, so I should relax before my exam". Thus you can achieve the desired outcome (relaxation) without actually obeying the hypnotist.
Coming back to the question of change: @j4ngis continues: "purpose of a change is to change a system or keep status quo of (some aspect of) the system." But there's a twist, as Kevin Kelly wrote (as the last of his Nine Laws of God in his book Out of Control): Change Changes Itself.
Or perhaps we should say: "Don't be surprised if change changes itself".
Friday, August 14, 2009
Next Practice
Why do we need next practice? Because the old thinking (received wisdom) and the old practices (best practices) are still struggling with the old problems, let alone the new challenges.
The paradox of “demanding solutions” is that the delivery of a given solution (such as six sigma) never gets any easier. Although the delivery team may get more experienced with a given approach and may accumulate reusable patterns and components, and although the tools and platforms may get more sophisticated, this is counterbalanced by the fact that the easy opportunities (the so-called “low-hanging fruit”) have probably already gone. In such an environment, the solution itself generates further demands.
old thinking, received wisdom
Large organizations have often looked to industry analysis firms for generic advice on technology strategy and related matters. But these firms sometimes seem little more than an extension to the marketing function of the large technology vendors, helping to invent and promote an array of new jargon, and producing a series of pseudoscientific classification. One senior IT manager told me recently that he looked to industry analysis to help him “spend wisely on IT”. That’s an excellent objective, but you might need a little more than curves and quadrants.old practice, best practice
Traditional consultancy can sometimes suffer from the following risk. A significant amount of consultancy work is involved in delivering tried-and-tested solutions to known problems. For example the client may have a process problem: this is quickly diagnosed as a “six sigma” problem, so you put together a team of six sigma experts and software experts and process management experts and a strong project manager to deliver a “six sigma” solution. Although there may be an exploratory phase at the start of an engagement, allowing for a more open-ended investigation of the nature of the problem, this is typically carried out by a small elite of the most experienced consultants using adhoc methods; consultancy firms generally experience commercial pressure to conclude the open-ended exploration and start the delivery phase as quickly as possible. But such delivery projects are vulnerable to a number of risks, for example- that the solution may interact in unforeseen ways with other aspects of the business organization, or with other solutions being developed elsewhere
- that the solution may require clever and complicated mechanisms to work effectively, which add to the overall complexity of the business and its processes
- that the chosen solution may actually not be the most appropriate way of addressing this problem at this time
- that the solution fails to deliver the promised benefits
The paradox of “demanding solutions” is that the delivery of a given solution (such as six sigma) never gets any easier. Although the delivery team may get more experienced with a given approach and may accumulate reusable patterns and components, and although the tools and platforms may get more sophisticated, this is counterbalanced by the fact that the easy opportunities (the so-called “low-hanging fruit”) have probably already gone. In such an environment, the solution itself generates further demands.
next thinking, next practice
So what does it take to become
- creatively rigorous and rigorously creative?
- analytic and synthetic, evidence-based, results-based?
- reflective and self-critical?
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