“It’s like the weather. A commander does not need to know the barometric pressure or the winds or even the temperature. He needs to know the forecast. If you get too caught up in the production of information, you drown in the data.”

- Paul van Riper, in Malcolm Galdwell’s Blink

(If you want to put this quote and the speaker in context, but don’t want to read the book, there’s an article here explaining how in a war game Riper outgunned the best of the US Military Decision making technology at JFCOM.)

January 27th 2005 | Comments(4) | Notes on information, leadership, overload Quotes

Joyce Wycoff is running a quick survey to see what (if anything) we might replace the phrase “think outside the box” with. [Hat tip to Heath]As she says,

“Think outside the box” became a cliche because it was a great way to call for creativity … urging people to breakthrough the pre-conceived notions and outdated rules that were limiting their thinking. It encouraged them to challenge their assumptions.

Somewhere along the line, however, it lost its punch and became a meaningless exhortation to be wild and crazy and ignore all the rules.

Now it’s pure, unadulterated prejudice, but I have a gut reaction against these sorts of phrases. If I was up one particular creek without a paddle, and you said “hey, what we need to do now is think outside the box/do some creative abrasion/fire up a thought storm …” - well after a small but beautifully-formed bout of rage I’d probably weep long and hard at being stuck with you. Or not.

The act of naming any process constrains it, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s fine to say in retrospect “two people were up a creek and they, er, thought outside the box and sorted out a happy ending”. But actually to be in that situation, and to be asked to think “now I have to think different” seems to me to be the easiest way of ensuring you don’t.

No. If I were up a creek, I’d want someone to say “fancy a cuppa” or “I never liked that paddle anyway”.

[UPDATE: That said, for Joyce’s survey rather than “thinking outside the box”, I plumped for a return to the old-fashioned virtues of musing on a problem.]

Couldn’t sleep. I started thinking about grid thinking. Then started thinking about grid computing (which exists). And then started thinking I’m a dolt …. there must be more options for gridding your PC than just SETI?

And there are. A quick search found Grid.org, who do a variety research projects (though just two at the mo). Anyway, my eye was caught by Graham Richards (a family friend) singing the praises of a system for helping in Cancer Research. If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.

So I’ve clicked a link very much like this -

- and have joined up. The agent took about 2 minutes to download and install, and with a diagram very much like this -

- I can now see how much my now rather clapped out laptop is contributing. [Sorry - no click to enlarge at this site].

Grid.org also has an option for teams, so you and your company/organisation/friends can pool resources. I think I’ll see if I can get one started at Templeton, but thought that for my home set-up, I’d keep one for bloggers and the like,. Anyway, I’ve set up a team for anyone who finds it and feels like chipping in. [Details below]

At the moment, I’ve processed 9 out of 30 Ligands. Erm, I’ve no idea yet quite what that means, but it can’t help but give me sweeter dreams. Night night.

(If you want to join, you need to download the agent by clicking on either of the images above and then click here. I’m afraid I struggled for a name that was in anyway original so I called it “A Social Network”. Ho hum.)

January 25th 2005 | Comments(3) | Life on cancer, charity grid computing

John Quiggin over at Crooked Timber has sparked off an interesting chat about autonomy. His cues are a book called The Status Syndrome : How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity by Michael Marmot and a post by Bill Gardner. Essentially, if I understand it, Marmot looked at the British Civil Service over a period of 30 years, and came to a surprising conclusion. The health of people at the top of a hierarchy - any hierarchy - is better than that of those at the bottom.

As Bill says,

From the Marmot perspective, the inequality of autonomy and social participation is itself a cause of poor health. There would be positive feedback on the total amount of health — and thus of social welfare — if we reduced social inequality. This is, I think, a new and strong argument for egalitarianism.

John goes on to point out that

One way of increasing your autonomy is by reducing that of other people, for example by moving up an existing hierarchy at their expense. But autonomy is not a zero-sum good. Some social structures give more people more autonomy than others.

Brings up lots of questions. What social structures? is, I suppose, the first question, and then maybe how to instill them? Also, are “healthy” companies those that make efforts to maximise employees’ autonomy and social participation?

And, erm, given the mens sana in corpore sano school motto I grew up with, how about this for a dodgy syllogism for ten:

• group structures that maximise member autonomy and social participation confer on those members healthier bodies,
• healthy bodies entail healthy minds
• So, group structures that maximise member autonomy and social participation confer on those members healthier minds?

Right. This is fatboy signing off with a cough - I’ve got a bugger of a hierarchy - but do read Bill and John’s posts.

January 19th 2005 | Comments(2) | Notes on groups, health, hierachy, politics structure

John Porcaro recently commented that it was

Funny that there’s still this black and white distinction between the people who work for the company, and the company itself. Among bloggers (or any who’s caught a clue-train), we know that a company is made up of individuals–indeed, it’s humans who made every single aspect of any successful (or unsuccessful) product or project.

[Thanks Johnnie] I like the refocus. Companies are on people like you and me, rather than weird, corporate behemoths of faceless grey corporates, and I think John’s right to point that out.

In fact, nowadays I sometimes think that the main divide is between people who work for the company and are on the payroll, and people who work for the company and aren’t.

That said, I’m a little uneasy at getting rid of the divide altogether. I’d like to think a company can be more than the sum of its parts. Dunno why. Hmm.

January 18th 2005 | Comments(4) | Notes on business, cluetrain People

Here’s a question: what, apart from laughs, do we lose when we communicate through medium that doesn’t allow for comic timing?

Answers on a postcard, please.

January 18th 2005 | Comments(2) | Asides on comedy, communication questions

Writing the last post, got struck how I was linking more than normally to previous things I’d written. Now on the one hand this is good, because when that prayed for day comes that allows me to make sense of these random scribblings with a visual tool, those links will be like gold dust.

On the other hand it is bad, because - sigh - it seems like a sign that my head is disappearing up my arse.

If you haven’t seen this before, here’s an olden but golden experiment that’s well worth doing if you’ve got a moment. [Thanks Andrew for the original link, and Marginal Revolution for the research refs]

1. Follow this link
2. Ignore the team in black who are trying to confuse matters, and try to count the number of passes made by the team in white T-shirts
3. Check below to see if you got it right

[Update: It’s worth doing the experiment before reading on :)]
read on »

January 17th 2005 | Comments(3) | Notes on Brains, Creativity, focus specialism

Emergence is not necessarily “a good thing”
(see rashes, South Sea Bubble, Neo-Nazis … )

Evolution does not necessarily favour the “best solutions”
(see Betamax, President Bush … )

Looks like Anjo has gotten off to a flyer in 2005 - he’s done some really interesting work on visualising (weblog) communities and isolating the unique characteristics held by individuals in those communities.

It’s worth reading the posts for details on how he’s gone about it (and some of his caveats) - but it’s a neat possible way of navigating communities.
read on »

January 12th 2005 | Comments(1) | Thoughts on community, conversation, social computing visualisation

Right. I was a little bit late on the lost child thing - so sorry if your time was wasted. His name is Hannes Bergstrom, and he was reunited with his dad over a week ago after his Uncle Marko spotted a picture from the email blitz.

The full story is here at Sky news. As they say,

“many people remain unaware of the development and are still expressing their concerns via email.”

Anyway, at this end I’m very happy to say this thread is closed.

January 07th 2005 | Comments(2) | Life on help tsunami

Chances are you may have already had this via email, but thought this was still worth a shot. This child is still looking for his family

The boy about 2 years, from Khoa Lak is missing his parents. Nobody knows what country he comes from. If anyboy known him please contact us by phone
076-249400-4 ext. 1336, 1339 or e-mail:

info_AT_phuket-inter-hospital_DOT_co_DOTth

Thank you!

God knows why - it’s ridiculous - but I’m always slightly suspicious of these types of things. Anyway, I thought this one was worth it

January 06th 2005 | Comments(2) | Life on help tsunami

Belated best wishes for 2005!

January 04th 2005 | Comments(1) | Asides, Life on new year