James Drogan

A month ago my wife and I traveled to the Midwest for a reunion of my high school class.  In my kit I had packed a new iPad intending to see whether it and I could develop a meaningful, working relationship.  I had previously blogged about the acquisition of the device in Yep, I Have One.

The title of this post is from a presentation I did some time ago. In A Small View of a Possible World I raise the question whether being always on, always connected, always transacting  is a good thing.

Here, as you can see, I'm wondering whether it is even possible.

The only browser available on the iPad is Safari.  One of the important sites I visit on a regular basis is the Norwich University School of Graduate and Continuing Studies Virtual Campus.  The reason for that is explained in Back to School.  Unfortunately, this site requires Firefox.  So, while I can, from the Midwest, be always on and always connected, I cannot be always transacting.  There are other sites that have the same preference for one browser or another.

The browser wars continue and the collateral damage is at the user level.

Now I admit to increasing technological naiveté, but I'm not, on the whole, too shabby in this regard.  Perhap there is a fix for this of which I'm unaware.

The lesson here is that claims of connectivity need to be verified.  And the onlye way to do that is to do that.

Here's some good advice from the Financial Times for those of you who make presentations.

Here's one of my efforts at minimalism in a presentation.

I muttered and mused over this device for a considerable period of time.  How would I use it?  What value would it add to the way I work?  Yes, I really did ask these questions.

I didn't need to answer because I received it as a gift.

I am a content creator in addition to being a content reviewer.  Can I create content on the device?  Yes, but a laptop is much, much better for this.  However, if you need a device that an fill in on occasional basis, this may work fine.  We've  four day trip coming up next weekend and I need to be connected.  This will be a good test.

All the practical aside, what a gorgeous piece of technology.  That it is part of a larger, architected system makes it even better.  It's not technology anymore, it's the user experience.

In a 2003 presentation (How to Use Computers and the Internet in Daily Transactions) I concluded with the words in the title.  This morning brings us more musings on technology by Nicholas Carr, Does the Internet Make You Dumber?

Carr, as he always does, provokes us to examine our assumptions and to question accepted wisdom.  As educators, we may bemoan the open smart phones and laptops in our classes and rightly so for some of the reasons given in the Carr article.  But as citizens of the larger world, and mindful of the recent major mishaps associated with the deadly combination of technology-cum-creativity-cum-hubris, our concerns should be broader.

This is a new graduate elective that will be taught Fall 2010 as part of the Masters of Science in International Transportation Management program at SUNY Maritime College.

This course examines issues of current or emerging significance in international transportation management through the lens of contextual analysis.  Clear identification of the issues, an assessment of their importance within the global context, and recommendations of resolution are important capabilities for the global executive.  This course provides the opportunity to learn the essential and relevant underlying skills.  An understanding of the socio-political-economic realities of the world, and the development of ethical, critical thinking and communication skills are features of this course.

In Fall 2010 the focus will be on the reconfiguration of international transportation management (ITM) caused by four sets of forces:

1. Geoclimatic; widening of the Panama Canal, Chinese port development
2. Systems; equipment and facilities, management
3. Human resource; culture, education, diversity
4. Socio-economic-political; corporate social responsibility, sustainability, international relations/law/economics

Topics 1 and 2 will last three weeks each; 3 and 4 will last four weeks each.

Each topic will be examined in terms of the nature of the forces, their impact on ITM, the actions that ought to be taken to manage the impact.

These are contemporary issue affecting ITM today and in the foreseeable future.  The objective is for the student to have an awareness of these issues sufficient to provide value to organizations that must deal with these matters.  This awareness constitutes understanding of and contemporary thinking about the issues, knowledge of the key players and sources of information, a demonstrated capability to think critically about the matters at hand, and the capacity to put forward the results of this thinking in a clear and compelling manner.

In many of my classes we take up the issue of complexity in systems.  For example, in supply chains,what are the conditions that would lead one to prefer a system comprising multiple simplex systems versus a single complex system?  Or the converse?

Today's New York Times brings an excellent op-ed piece by David Brooks on this matter of complexity (Brooks, D. (2010, May 28). Drilling for Certainty. The New York Times, A23. New York) set within the context of the Deepwater Horizon explosion.  Brooks writes:

Over the past decades, we’ve come to depend on an ever-expanding array of intricate high-tech systems. These hardware and software systems are the guts of financial markets, energy exploration, space exploration, air travel, defense programs and modern production plants.

These systems, which allow us to live as well as we do, are too complex for any single person to understand. Yet every day, individuals are asked to monitor the health of these networks, weigh the risks of a system failure and take appropriate measures to reduce those risks.

Systems spawned by the latest in technology in the minds and hands of innovators often draws a veil over the complexity of the system.

In this graphic (Drogan, J. (2007). Managing the Business. fig. 21) the veil is represented by the vertical line through the oval representing the business system.  Technological progress tends to move the veil to the right, concealing more of the system.  Yet, technology can only be applied if we can write rules for how it should behave in certain circumstances.

However, as has been made evident by the Deepwater Horizon, when one is operating on the frontier, the rules are not always known.  Complexity of situations and the speed at which they develop increasingly depend on the knowledge, skills, and experience in the human mind for resolution.  To do that, the veil must be pushed back to the left.  What's required is a fine balance between man and machine.

This matter of trusting too much in technology has long been on my mind since the early 1970s when I was involved in discussions of how to automate crew calling in the railways.  It is an issue that finds its way into much of my teaching and writing.  It's not clear to me that the rise in complexity can be stopped by anything short of catastrophe.  Nor do I think it can be substantially slowed.  Indeed, it may well be that to continue to sail on Spaceship Earth we must develop increasingly complex systems to make better use of the resources available to us.  We can, however, pay more attention to what, how, and why of what it is we do.

For an interesting read on this subject of complexity see Weick, K., & Sutcliffe, K. (2001). Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.

"Finally, show some humility. There are anonymous bloggers out there, some self-taught in economics [and other disciplines], who may know more about the functioning of a modern economy[and other disciplines] than you do."

The above is abstracted from An Outsider's View of Modern Macroeconomics that, in turn, was pointed to by A "Must Read" from Rajiv Sethi on Modern Macroeconomics from Maxine Udall (girl economist).

There is unappreciated value in humility.

The title of this post comes from the summary slide from a presentation I did in the spring of 2003.  I was reminded of it by this extraordinary post on the FastCompany blog.  What strikes me first about the post are the results of Fischer's efforts.  There is a real, but in another way abstract beauty in these results.  Represented here is another way to communicate a massive amount of information in a small space in a very short period of time leading, quite possibly, to otherwise unattainable insight.

I hope my friends at BLSCI take note for this is a side of communications we talk little about.

Tokyo couple married by robot in rooftop wedding.

My Thinkpad R60, which had served me well, even surviving a fall off my office desk, finally succumbed. It didn't stop working, but rather "ran out of gas."  Too slow, not enough memory, hard disk running out of space; all the things that happen from time to time.  Apparent failure in the USB ports; autoplay not autoplaying.

I replaced it with a ThinkPad SL510 and began the process of putting the soul into the new machine a couple of days ago.  It's amazing, really, to think about how one tailors, over time (four years in this case) a piece of technology to align with the way one works.  It's not reinstalling the major chunks of software (e.g., Firefox) that is the most fascinating,  but rather the little things that I added in almost a subconscious manner in the continuous effort to make the machine part of me (or is it the other way around).  I continue to discover these little things.

There is the need to get used to a slightly different layout on the keyboard and a slightly different display interface (e.g., the Windows 7 taskbar).  I'm reminded here of the notion that if it isn't broke, don't fix it.  Ah, well, compulsion for change is doubtless in the DNA of the technologist.

The title of this post is suggested by Tracy Kidder's great book, The Soul of a New Machine, now some 28 years old.