December 29, 2006: Organizational "Health Maintenance"

I would like to continue to explore the point I raised on December 26 to the effect that enterprises need "health maintenance," rather than "illness treatment." Obviously, if an organization is in a pathological state, then that pathology needs to be treated; but there are (at least) two aspects of health maintenance that are likely to facilitate treatment.

1. There is the need to cultivate an awareness of pathologies, since, as if often the case with human patients, it is often (frequently?) the case that the organization does not know when it is in a pathological state.
2. There is also the need to cultivate preventative measures: An organization that is aware of a potential pathology is better equipped to "nip that pathology in the bud," dealing with it before it has a serious impact.

So how do we implement such measures for an organization? In medicine we know about the physical examination and the frequency with which it should be performed (having now "graduated" to an age where I have to have mine annually). However, this time scale is to coarse for the world of business. An enterprise functions on the basis of ongoing business processes, and those processes need to be monitored in the course of their functioning. IT is now in a position the make sure that such processes are running reliably and accurately; so this is the first step towards making the health maintenance metaphor "work."

However, such monitoring cannot be conducted for its own sake. The data generated by monitoring drives the formulation of hypotheses that address detecting, diagnosing, and treating pathologies. Some rather interesting visualization technology has gone into "driving" dashboard displays that deliver monitoring data; but the hypothesis data generated by managers at all levels of the enterprise are equally important to health maintenance. When a hypothesis is posed, it will (almost?) always need to be vetted by several managers throughout the enterprise; so we need some kind of "dashboard visualization" to provide awareness of the current "state of the hypothesis space" and facilitate the vetting process.

How can all of this take place? In his book Images of Organization, Gareth Morgan addressed this question by bringing another metaphor into play:

The formal analysis and diagnosis of organizations, like the process of reading, always rests in applying some kind of theory to the situation being considered.

In other words the real purpose of visualization, of both monitoring data and hypothesis spaces, is to enable managers to read their organization, a concept that inspired the subtitle of James Taylor's fascinating book on organizational communication. I would further argue, to draw upon another previous discussion, that we are talking here about a literary approach to reading, rather than any kind of objective or analytic one. In the context of another favorite theme, managers should be able to think about the people in an organization as subjects rather than objects. The danger of visualization is that it serves up abstractions that entail excessive objectification, but this danger is more likely to add to any looming pathologies than to deal with them.

This then leads to my final point, which is the recurring question of whether or not tools such as Wikipedia and Google are eroding our skills for being critical readers, whether of texts or of organizations. We are more interested in tools that deliver answers, and reading is not necessarily about delivering answers. As I previously suggested, sometime one has to go "roundabout" the questions; and literary reading enables such "roundabout" thinking. This may take more time that finding an answer from a search result or a Wikipedia entry; but, where the health of an organization is concerned, getting to the most effective answer is more important than getting there "efficiently."

December 01, 2006 (1): It's the People, Stupid!

Elise Ackerman has a great article in today's San Jose Mercury News, now available through E-Commerce Times. It is basically a "report from the trenches" on how Google Checkout is being received as a potential threat to PayPal. One of the major punch lines has to do with what happens when things go wrong. Dallas comedian Amelia Klaymann hit one of those speed bumps and ended up getting charged five times for a computer monitor. Needless to say, she responded with a sense of urgency, only to discover that there was no help desk she could call: all communication was conducted through electronic mail.

Now, in all fairness, if Google Checkout is providing electronic mail communication with customer support, then at least they are ahead of Amazon.com in this game, who only provides you with a rather limited form to fill out. If you have a problem with Amazon.com and you have screen shots to support your claims, there is no way you can pass that information to them. So, if Google Checkout lets you send "real" electronic mail, complete with whatever attachments may be useful, such as screen shots or scans of paper receipts, they are at least better than some of the other players.

However, the other punch line has to do with how Ms. Klaymann finally managed to communicate with Google. She wrote up her experiences in her blog. More specifically, she wrote, "It turns out Google does not have anyone you can talk to in real life -- only via e-mail;" and, as fate would have it, a Google manager happened to read her blog (which happened to be hosted by Google's Blogger service). So Ms. Klaymann ended up getting the $20 incentive credit for using Google Checkout in the first place and had all five charges voided, meaning that she got her monitor for free.

Before we write this off as a happily-ever-after story, though, we should ask a couple of questions:

• If Ms. Klaymann had not used Google Blogger for her blog, would any Google manager has seen it? (Hint: I have given the URL for this blog to Google Blog Search and have yet to find anything on it with their search tool. So much for me keeping my blog in "enemy territory!")
• Has Ms. Klaymann's experience had any impact on Google Checkout operations; or, for that matter, has Ms. Ackerman's report of those experiences had any impact?
• When will the purveyor's of e-commerce recognize that there are all sorts of things that the "e" can facilitate; but, as soon as things go wrong, people want to talk to people willing to take the time to listen, understand, and act?

November 23, 2006: Tracking Down a Source

It began when I found the following quote attributed to Plotinus:

Τό γάρ ϊχνος τόυ άμόρφου μορφή

I had two problems:

1. I wanted to track down the translation
2. I wanted specific source information

The Perseus online Greek dictionary helped me with the first. Once I got from ϊχνος to "trace," I was able to home in on a translation of the phrase: "Form is only the trace of that which has no form." I also had a specific location in the Enneads: VI, 7, 33. The only problem was that the phrase was not in my copy! It was only after a Google Book Search led me to Plotinus Or the Simplicity of Vision, by Pierre Hadot, that I was able to track the source to a specific line. I then discovered that, while my copy had the same translator that was cited for the phrase (MacKenna), that copy was a newer translation. In the new edition the phrase came out as: "Shape is an impress from the unshaped." I do not think I could have solved this problem with Google, but it was still a tough fight!

October 18, 2006: Teachers and Students

Yesterday, CNET News.com ran a story from Washington with the headline: "Google CEO: Techies must educate governments." So much for trying to address questions of reality and fiction! Admittedly, the report does not include any direct quote invoking this language. However, it is clear that Schmidt feels that our government needs such education ("The average person in government is not of the age of people who are using all this stuff"); so it seems to follow that it is up to the techies to correct this deplorable state of affairs. This is all very well and good to say from the splendid isolation of the Googleplex or the podium; but it does not seem to have occurred to Schmidt that the best education is always a two-way street. Thus, it has probably not occurred to him that it is as important for "those in the know about technology" to become better educated about the nature and working of governments as it is to inform others about the Internet's role in society. Did it even occur to him that the best teachers are the best listeners, rather than the best performers in front of a mass audience? Socrates knew this sort of thing and was very good at it, but my recent experience has shown that techies do not have much time for Socrates. If Schmidt does not watch out, he will find that the adversarial relationship in which he is already engaged will only get more adversarial!

October 12, 2006: Citizen Page; Citizen Brin

Charles Foster Kane's Declaration of Principles (from a 6/19/40 revision of the script)

1. "I'll provide the people of this city with a daily paper that will tall all the news honestly."
2. "People are going to know who's responsible."
3. "And they're going to get the news -- the true news -- quickly and simply and entertainingly."
4. "And no special interests will be allowed to interfere with the truth of that news."
5. "I will also provide them with a fighting and tireless champion of their rights as citizens and human beings."

It seems as if every time I make another visit to the "Ten things Google has found to be true," I keep flashing back to the scene in Citizen Kane where Kane forges his declaration in front of Leland and Bernstein. Why do I keep visiting this site? I suppose the main reason is to remind myself how such "declarations of principles" can be corrupted, as much in word as in deed. Anyone who knows the "ten things" knows that "don't be evil" isn't there; what the "thing" actually says is, "You can make money without doing evil." I am too much of a literary analyst to view this as picking nits. As a point of grammar, an injunction is not a "thing found to be true;" but it is still nice to know that, at least as far as their philosophy is concerned, Google is not trafficking in injunctions.

Citizen Kane, of course, is a study in the corruption of principles. Leland keeps a copy. When he finally walks out on Kane, we learn that he made a check on his copy each time one was violated. Will this happen to the "ten things found to be true." At the very least, we might want to reclassify them as "ten things worthy of serious debate;" but I suspect that such an attitude would not resonate with the Google lifestyle. Still, someone ought to be reflecting on that list. Maybe that someone will also be the someone who eventually does unto Google what Google is trying to do unto Microsoft!

September 05, 2006 (1): The Bøyg

A variety of different paths have been leading me to think about the Bøyg. This is an episode of a fight in the Seventh Scene of the Second Act of Ibsen's Peer Gynt play (which does not seem to get performed very much, probably become of the overwhelming demands it makes for production). (Grieg wrote music for the Bøyg scene, but it was not included in either of the suites he later compiled.) According to the script, the Bøyg should be realized as a disembodied voice. In my translation, Peer describes it as follows:

Not dead, not living; all slimy, misty. Not so much as a shape! It's as bad as to battle in a cluster of snarling, half-awakened bears!

As a matter of fact, when Peer tries to lunge at the Bøyg, he succeeds only in cutting himself.

One of the paths that led me to the Bøyg is the current Confused of Calcutta discussion about Wikipedia and "Brickipedia" (i.e. the traditional multivolume print-version of an encyclopedia). I did a free association of Wikipedia with the shapelessness of the Bøyg. (By the way, Wikipedia does not currently have a "Bøyg" entry!) I realize that some may argue with Peer's description, at least to the extent that Wikipedia is living, in contrast to any "dead" printed artifact; but, to my own critical eye, Wikipedia seems to have certain zombie-like qualities (although I would not accuse it of being slimy)!

The important lesson from this scene, though, is the Bøyg's advice to Peer: "Go roundabout!" Peer wounds himself when he tries to confront the Bøyg head-on, ignoring this advice. After that, he is more inclined to listen; and this advice turns out to impact how the rest of the story evolves. My point here is that, where information is concerned, this can also be an important piece of advice. A direct path taken through Wikipedia or Google may take us quickly to the answer to a question; but the context-free nature of that answer may end up cutting us (a bit like the joke about the Swiss Army Knife that has a tool for anything you want to do: the problem is that, when you try to get the tool, you cut yourself on one of the blades)! If there are still people out there trying to distinguish the difference between "information" and "knowledge," I would offer up the claim that, because knowledge is always intimately tied to context, we can only arrive at it by going "roundabout!"

August 14, 2006: "Du Descriptif"

I have chosen to appropriate today's title from Philippe Hamon's treatise on the text type of description. (To the best of my knowledge, this book has not been translated into English.) I see that the current Wikipedia entry for text types is still in stub form. Perhaps I shall do something about that, but not right now. What Wikipedia does say is that description is one of four text types, the other three being narrative, exposition, and argumentation. The path to my current concern with description is a bit circuitous, so bear with me.

Two of my recent entries (August 9 and August 11) were inspired by my reading the survey paper, "Emergence of Communication Networks," by Peter R. Monge and Noshir S. Contractor and written for the second edition of the Handbook of Organizational Communication. (Yes, I know I said this on August 11!) While it should be apparent that this paper triggered a variety of thoughts while I was reading it, I still have to confess that the act of reading, itself, was quite a slog, to say the least. By the time I reached the "Conclusions" section and was informed that "additional work is required to reduce or eliminate the extensive redundancy that exists among the different theoretical perspectives," I felt like screaming at the authors, "Isn't that what a survey paper is supposed to do?" In ignoring the very possibility of organizing their content to reduce, if not eliminate, all that redundancy in the existing literature, the author's reduced their paper to yet another instance of Winston Churchill's definition of the writing of history: "One damned thing after another."

This could be an excellent excuse for me to get back on my hobby-horse about the deleterious effects of excessive specialization in education, the corrupting force of techno-centrism on today's writing, or just a rant on why writing is more important to an academic career than whether or not what one writes ever gets read. Instead, however, I would prefer to address the question of why survey papers are such formidable intellectual challenges, so much so that it is rare that we run across a really good one. In a way the survey paper is the magnum opus of the descriptive text type, just as the novel is the magnum opus of the narrative text type, the topic-based essay is the magnum opus of the expository text type, and, I suppose, the hard-clad forensic text is the magnum opus of argumentation. The challenge is so great that it is a wonder that surveys get written at all, except that the demand for them has been so heavy in the past. The result is that almost none of them count for exemplars of good descriptive writing.

This is more than a little sad, particularly when we take into account to ancestry of the descriptive text. After all, if we want good examples, we can go as far back as the Homeric epics to find passages such as the description of the shield of Achilles; so we know that good descriptions have been around at least as long as good narratives. So is this just another case of our losing our touch as writers, of those authors who once knew better words now using only four-letter words? (Anything goes, indeed!)

I would argue that this problem is a bit more complicated; and now I have to take a jab a techno-centrism! See, in a world that is now driven by all the databases that store our "knowledge" (those are scare quotes, by the way), we tend to be deceived into flipping the coin around and thinking that knowledge is what we store in databases. So the object of descriptive writing is just that: an object. As database designers will tell you, an object is described in terms of its attributes and its relations to other objects. This is a nice, neat abstraction, so nice and neat that it often can be most conveniently illustrated by a directed graph; and, invoking language that Donald Knuth introduced into our vocabulary, one can then describe the object by traversing the graph that represents it. In other words, if you can represent your description in the abstract form of one of these directed graph, then you should be able to formulate a text description by stringing together smaller textual units for the nodes and edges of that graph. Of course when you do that you get exactly what aggravated Churchill: one damned thing after another. It usually does the reader a greater service to just illustrate the graph and keep the text to a bare minimum.

Needless to say, such a description is not a literary composition; but the prevailing counter-argument is that people who read survey papers are not reading them for their literary value. Granting that, we should still honor the fact that those people are still readers. Even if you are not expecting the quality of Lattimore's translation of the description of the shield of Achilles, shouldn't you expect to take some satisfaction in your act of reading? I suspect that the answer is, "Not any more;" and this, too, has a reason.

One way to view a survey paper is as a reference resource; and we no longer seem to expect literary quality when reading reference resources (even if this used to be a sign of the best of them). This gets me back to the problems I have with invoking the World Wide Web as the ultimate reference resource, be it for Wikipedia, Google, or even that wonderful composite, A9. The thing is that we do not really read these resources. We consult them, often in a highly fragmented manner. (How many times to you get your answer from Google in the excerpt from the hit, rather than actually linking to the hit itself?) We have come to believe that this is all we need; and, if a survey paper is a dry traversal of "one damned thing after another" that happens to be on-line, then Google will find the paper and then the find command will let us find the fragment of text we need. Why should the old-fashioned approach to reading be of any use any more?

One good reason is that the above scenario works best for experts. The people who still have a need for enough literary quality to make the act of reading worth while are the ones trying to come up to speed on a new topic. They often have a need for expository and descriptive texts that really are worth reading (and may be so through the skilled incorporation of argumentation and narrative). This is why "Dummies" guides are actually some of the best examples of writing currently on the market. The people who edit those series realize that their readers need to be provided with reading matter that is as good as the content being covered by the text. Nevertheless, I cannot help but fear that even these resources will eventually get sucked into (ensnared by?) the World Wide Web and lose that quality of writing style that made them so successful in their past. Then, unfortunately, we will have little more than Wikipedia and Google; and I cannot help but believe that our knowledge will suffer for it.