December 23, 2006: What Business Schools SHOULD Teach about Service Science

During this week's escape to Death Valley (where even a dial-up connection to the Internet is not very reliable), I took along my used copy of Decision Support Systems: An Organizational Perspective, by Peter G. W. Keen and Michael S. Scott Morton. The more I looked into this "time capsule" from the mid-seventies, the more I realized that the service science evangelists were doing themselves a great disservice by ignoring it. The authors even go so far as to say that decision support technology should not be viewed as a product that a technical team installs and then goes on to the next client. Instead, the team has a service obligation to the client to familiarize the client with the technology, bring the client up to speed on how that technology may best be used, and even update the technology to accommodate newly discovered client needs. Could it be that we knew more about service 30 years ago than we do today (and may I be contentious enough to suggest that we owe our "acquired ignorance" to the social beings we have become by virtue [sic] of the Internet)?

One passage in the final chapter of this book has stuck with me with regard to all the quibbling over creating an "academic discipline of service science." It is in a paragraph in which the authors discuss how those managers who are most likely to benefit from decision support technology should learn about that technology:

The best education for them is the building of a relationship with an effective DSS developer and, most importantly--the insistence on being committed and involved in the design an implementation process. A skilled manager who has flexibility of mind can and almost certainly should play a major role in the design of any DSS that she or he sponsors.

In other words what counts most on the managerial side is that "flexibility of mind" that will support a rich and profitable engagement with the developers trying to bring a new technology into play. This is as true today as it was thirty years ago. You would think we would know this by now; but, as the cliche keeps saying, "The Internet changes everything." Perhaps that crack about "acquired ignorance" has more to it than fiesty contentiousness!

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!

September 27, 2006: Generation M in the World

The discussion on libraries and search continues vigorously on Confused of Calcutta. JP Rangaswami continues to champion the "unvarnished selves" of Generation M and the wisdom of crowds of such minds. Fortunately, John Dodds was keen enough to recognize the difference between unvarnished and untouched (which I think was part of the story that the above issue of Time was trying to tell). JP's response was to invoke Clarence Fischer and Judy Breck, almost as if they were cultural icons. Since I have always tried to be an iconoclast, you can imagine how I react to cultural icons! However, the stuff that Clarence Fisher does come "from the trenches;" and, to invoke Dodds' terminology, if anyone knows how to “touch” Generation M, Fisher is a likely candidate and, if I am to believe what I have read about him, one who deserves all the awards and recognition he has received. Unfortunately, he is only one person; and that has two implications:

1. First, I suspect that his skill in “touching” is inversely proportional to the number of people he has to “touch;” and it remains to be seen how “reproducible” (to invoke Giddens' language) that skill is.
2. Secondly, as my father has always delighted in saying, “One is not a statistic!”

To develop that point, I really cannot figure out, for the life of me, just how good Judy Breck’s Golden Swamp is at “touching.” I do not need to be sold on how cool it is, but that may be the problem. To invoke another metaphor, my concern is that Golden Swamp may be one of the best circuses on the Web at a time when we have all those students (and probably plenty of teachers, too) hungry for bread. (All those jokes comparing the Bush Administration to the Roman Empire are finally beginning to register with me!)

Don’t get me wrong. It is not my intention to disparage cool. However, just as there has never been a Royal Road to Geometry, there will never be a “Superhighway to Being in the World.” I am not just concerned that Generation M may be untouched by teachers who can guide without disrupting those “unvarnished selves;” I am concerned that the extent to which they perceive the world through their media experience may be leaving them untouched by the world itself!

Zen Flesh, Zen Bones includes a story about the master teacher of Zen, Gasan (an unvarnished self if ever there was one). The story goes that he was visited by a university student who brought along a copy of the New Testament and read him passages from the Sermon on the Mount. After hearing the text, Gasan said, “Whoever said that is not far from Buddhahood.” If we cannot communicate with Generation M through today’s classrooms, can we at least figure out how to “touch” them as the student “touched” Gasan?