James Drogan

From a Harvard Business Review e-mail of June 27.

 "The world is facing a global leadership crisis. Seventy-seven percent of leaders think they do a good job of engaging their people, yet 88 percent of employees say their leaders don’t engage enough. There is also a high level of suffering in the workplace: 35 percent of employees would forgo a pay raise to see their leaders fired. To solve this crisis, organizations need to put people at the center of their strategy. They need to develop managers and executives who lead with three core mental qualities: mindfulness, selflessness, and compassion."

Twenty or so years ago I was introduced to the subject of Symbiotic Decision Support Systems by the late Prof. Marvin Manheim of Northwestern University.  Over the years this concept has found its way into my notes and presentations usually accompanied by the following illustration.

A recent post by Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Human-Machine Work Teams, reminds me of this earlier work and suggests that "Decision Support" needs to be scrapped as a modifier.  We need, particularly within the context of the productivity paradox, to think differently about this pairing of technology and the human.

A ship’s markings may look like hieroglyphs, but to industry insiders they tell an important story.  You will find the interesting story and photographs here.

I've been dabbling a bit in this area.

One of my dabblings considers the limits to human cognitive capacity.

Into this mix comes Robin Hanson with Prediction Machines. 

I was thinking about things today and was drawn to writing A Philosophy of Teaching describing what I do and why I do it.  In a way I was interested in auditing myself.  Furthermore, it wasn't clear to me that I could articulate this if asked.

I consider this a first draft.  As I mull it over and, in particular, use it as an assessment tool, changes are likely to result.

Two laws apply here:

Law Five: If you continue to think what you have always thought you will get less and less of what you always got.

Law Eight: Old dogs that don't learn new tricks end up dead dogs.

Information Management students and I are engaged in a discussion of IoT and the attendant issue of complexity.

In response the following was posted.

"The growing complexity of the technological systems, their reach and range, the speed of development suggest the need for new approachs to systems design, implementation, vetting, and operation.

Perhaps our design goals should change, moving away from large complex systems, to a network of small systems with appropriate safeguards in the network connections and an ability to disconnect a small system from the network very rapidly.

We might learn from nature.  Yesterday's feed from Fermat's Library brought me the following.

"You may wonder: Why is nature constructed along these lines? One can only answer that our present knowledge seems to show that nature is so constructed. We simply have to accept it. One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe. Our feeble attempts at mathematics enable us to understand a bit of the universe, and as we proceed to develop higher and higher mathematics we can hope to understand the universe better."
- P. A. M. Dirac

This is a quote from this week's paper "The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature" published in 1963 by P. Dirac, one of the brightest minds of the 20th century.

Which reminded me of Bejan, A., & Zane, J. P. (2012). Design in Nature: How The Constructal Law Governs Evolution In Biology, Physics, Technology, And Social Organization (1st ed). New York: Doubleday.

We understand parts of nature, but not all of it.  Nature has withstood the tests of time and man.  Maybe if we understood nature's design better we could design better systems.

I'm going off the reservation here, but maybe we need to go off the reservation."

This came across from The Download (MIT technology Review Download March 5).

To what extent does this promote the writing of sloppy code?

I write a lot.  I prefer to write on matters that interest me and I do so to clarify my thinking on the subject.  I've authored several undred items over the course of my career.  Some are posted here in droganbloggin, Lecture Notes, and Other Information and Ideas (available through the navigation panel to the right.

I've a number of items in progress.

1. Drogan, J. (2017a, September 10). Learning from the Future (WIP).
2. Drogan, J. (2017b, September 15). AI: Two Questions (WIP).
3. Drogan, J. (2017c, September 29). Integrating Academic Activities: Research, Education and Real Life Problem Solving (WIP).
4. Drogan, J. (2018a, January 28). Improving Performance in the Supply Chain with Bloackchain (WIP).
5. Drogan, J. (2018b, January 31). Philosophy and International Business (WIP).
6. Drogan, J. (n.d.-a). Commentary on The Shipping Industry (WIP). August 26, 2017.
7. Drogan, J. (n.d.-b). Other Thinking About Spatial Literacy (WIP).