James Drogan

This post is prompted by a front page article in the May 13 edition of the New York Times titled "Bush to Unveil Plan to Tighten Border Controls."

Two parts of the article struck me.

The first

"demands to stem the inflow of undocumented workers across the border with Mexico and the desire of American employers to have reliable access to a low-wage work force."

and

"The White House was awaiting word from the major networks as to whether they would all carry his address on Monday evening during their crucial sweeps rating period used to set advertising prices. NBC and Fox have agreed to take the address, as have the cable news networks; CBS and ABC are still considering whether they will upset their schedules to take the address."

I am reminded of the Emma Lazurus poem that says

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

In the first case it would seem the providing opportunity for people to improve the quality of their lives is no longer a core part of the American values.  We are forgetting that we, for the most part, are immigrants or descendents of immigrants.  We are forgetting that which has made us great.  We have embraced hubris and are becoming one, large, gated community.

Is this really the image we wish to project to the world?  Is this really the way to spread the democratic ideals we espouse?

In the second case we seem to be allowing the media to decide how and when the government will communicate with the governed.  This, particularly the reason given in the article, is simply outrageous.  I am for freedom of the media, but I also demand responsibility of the media.

The April 22 issue of The Economist contained a special report "Among the Audience: A survey of new media" that is recommended reading.

It seems to me that the report has an underlying focus on the relationship of media to the person and how that relationship is changing as media and the person undergo transformation caused by, on the one hand, technology, and on the other hand, learning and changing expectations on the part of the person.

But I wonder how this changing relationship will impact the businesses and organizations of which people are part.

I abstract a business management system for my students as

The new media, it seems to me, can dramatically affect this abstraction.  How that can occur and the resulting consequences would make for good discussion in my business classes.  Students be warned. 

The April 22 print edition of The Economist contained an article titled "Universal service?" featured a lead line that

"Proponents of 'software as a service' say it will wipe out traditional software."

My 40 years of experience in the information technology industry suggests to me that this statement may be a bit overblown.

Ten years ago I worked on a project that consider this issue.   A graphic emerged from that project that can serve as a basis for continued discussion.

Software as a Service The notion here is that there applications of information technology that provide a competitive differentiation in the marketplace.  These are the pyramids.  It is difficult to see how software as a service provides any value for those companies for which this approach to competitive differentiation is critical to success.

The question is whether this approach to competitive differentiation will becomes more or less critical as time goes by.

Competitiveness changes over time, of course, and one can expect that those applications that once provided the competitive difference may no longer do so.  That is, they migrate to the box of applications that do not differentiate.  It is this box that that is apropos to software as a service.

The article takes up this notion of a combination of boxes and pyramids as a "hybrid model."  So, I'm not providing any particularly new insight, but only arguing that software as service is not a particularly new idea.

The interesting thing to me about all this is the dynamics of the marketplace that promote or inhibit the movement of application assets from the pyramids to the boxes.   Another interesting issue is what one does to remain viable in a market when all the pyramids go away. 

In a prior post I mentioned that I was once again going to participate in the Sixth Annual Symposium on Communication and Communication Intensive Instruction sponsored by The Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute at Baruch College.  

Preparatory notes for the conference will be found here.

Graduation at Maritime College was yesterday.  It marked the end of a very intensive period of activity centered that took time from the myriad other things I like to do.

Other then some tidying up to do on a number of issues associated with Maritime, I expect to lift the quantity, if not quality, of ranting and raving I do on this forum.

This ought to last until July 10 when my summer graduate class on MIS in Transportation begins.

On July 15 the new Director of the Graduate Program begins his duties and on August 15 I return to POT (plain old teacher) duty. 

Re Conversations with Dave

Some time ago I read, probably in the MIT Technology Review, of a set of autonomous "net-bots" or "tech-bots" that were introduced and activated in a relatively small contiguous area. The bots were unaware on one another at the time of activation. Shortly thereafter, however, they had established contact with one another and were exchanging information about the environment. As I recall, included in their program was a set of rules that allowed them to pick one of their number as the control point of the network.

There is a very strong parallel here with the notion of self-organizing teams.

This is an interesting development, ripe with opportunity for good, and for evil.

I'm reminded here of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics:

1. A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Re Conversations with Dave

I read this article and wondered about his point.

"At the risk of enabling, does the Internet mean that all the rest of us are being made unwitting participants in the personal and political life of, um, crazy people?"

Well, Henninger hasn't forgone choice here. He, and we, are only unwitting if we decline to exercise choice.

"But researchers note that the isolation of Web life results in many missed social cues."

This is perhaps my greatest concern, not only about blogs, but about the 'net. I'll presume that Henninger would agree.

Little in the way of social skills, beyond CAPS versus lowercase and emoticons, is developed over the 'net.

On the other hand, some of my students do not speak in class for a understandable reasons. On the 'net, however, they become eloquent and make significant contributions to the quality of the learning environment. I had a Chinese student tell me how involvement in the on-line discussions in my class helped her to overcome her shyness.

Perhaps a value of blogs and the 'net is that it provides a low stakes way to develop personality and self-esteem. We should not, I think, discount this.

From the MarEx Newletter comes an item which calls into question congressional knowledge of, critical thinking about, and willingness to take decision on America's maritime security.

From Slashdot comes this item regarding use of search results.

"The BBC reports on a study saying that, despite the depth of content internet search providers offer, most people stop at page 3 or earlier." From the article: "It also found that a third of users linked companies in the first page of results with top brands. The study surveyed 2,369 people from a US online consumer panel. It also found 62% of those surveyed clicked on a result on the first page, up from 48% in 2002. Some 90% of consumers clicked on a link in these pages, up from 81% in 2002. "

There  is substantial data, information, and knowledge on the internet that may go begging because of the user's short attention span.

This year I will once again participate in the Bernard L. Schwartz Annual Symposium on Communication and Communication Intensive Instruction.  I would expect the discussions to be informed by the BBC report.

Cunning Realists brings this item regarding the congressional effort. If we applied the same scrutiny to congressional pay and associated benefits as we do to executive compensation, what would we conclude?

I don't know the figures, but I will advance the hypothesis that they're overpaid for what they deliver.