I had previously mentioned Marshall McLuhan’s work in the context of forecasting for the elearning industry. A quick review of McLuhan’s Laws of Media tetrad:
Obsolescence. What does it make obsolete? When an old medium enters its obsolescence phase, it becomes more ubiquitous, often changing from a utilitarian to a recreational role (e.g. fountain pens).
Reversal. When something is extended beyond the limits of its potential, its characteristics are often reversed. For example, cars which promote greater freedom, when multiplied to the extreme can result in gridlock.
Retrieval. What medium that was previously rendered obsolete does the old medium retrieve from the past? This is usually something from the distant past.
Mark Federman shows how these laws could also be used as a metric to measure organisations:
Organizational effectiveness can then be expressed (as a percentage or any other appropriately scientific measure) as the degree to which effects deemed desirable can be achieved, those deemed undesirable can be avoided or mitigated, and effects that were originally unanticipated can be anticipated prior to their occurrence and achieved/avoided as appropriate. Thus, with this conception, effectiveness measures the leadership’s ability to anticipate, execute, and perform the inevitable mid-course corrections as new information becomes available. Seems pretty effective to me!
So the measure of effectiveness could be whether an organisation was able to identify when its technology product was "extended beyond the limits of its potential" and shifted its focus to a new product or service. For instance, has Learning Management System technology become extended so far that it no longer manages training and educational requirements, and now hinders the sharing of learning experiences? Would an effective organisation shift away from a reliance on pushing this technology?
McLuhan’s tetradic lens judges everyone in the same way.
