Technology

information & communication technology

leave the hierarchies to the algorithms

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What happens when you connect unthinking computer programs with a culture of obedience and compliance? Algorithms run much of society and business today, from applying for a mortgage to determining which passengers to eject from an overbooked aircraft. Coupled with authoritarianism, algorithms can produce devastating results, says John Robb at Global Guerillas.

“If a corporate algorithm yields a terrible result, smart organizations admit the failure. They admit it didn’t work to both your customers and employees. Algorithms don’t have feelings. They won’t cry if you talk trash about them. Also, smart organizations don’t punish employees for raising the flag on a broken algorithm. One last thought. Smart organizations know what their algorithms are (or that they even exist) and how to fix them. Dumb organizations see the process as inviable. It should be easy to spot the difference between these organizations by the number of disasters seen online,” —John Robb

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7 essential facets for enterprise knowledge sharing

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Most large organizations today have some suite of social tools to share information and knowledge. But how do they know if they have the optimum tools for their context? Too often the tools are selected and then the workers are left to figure out how to use them. Based on work with several clients over the past few years, I have identified seven essential facets for enterprise social networks.

The objective of these networks should be to help capture knowledge, encourage sharing, and enable action. This is the business value proposition implicit in these enterprise social networks — to make better decisions on which to take action.

There are three levels that must be aligned:

  1. empowered individuals
  2. appropriate tools
  3. organizational processes

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tetrads for sense-making

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first we shape our tools and then they shape us

I use Marshall and Eric McLuhan’s laws of media to ask better questions about how technology affects those who use it. In the following presentation I have put together a number of tetrads, or hypotheses on the possible impact of social media, the internet, and other technologies. In summary, the laws of media state that every medium (technology) extends a human property, obsolesces the previous medium (& makes it a luxury good), retrieves a much older medium & reverses its properties when pushed to its limits.

every medium extends a human property, obsolesces the previous medium, retrieves a much older medium, & reverses its properties when pushed to its limits McLuhan's Laws of Media tetrad of gpt-3 social media tetrad McLuhans laws of media McLuhans tetrad for print

online privacy and security

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As the internet becomes an essential part of lives — enabling us to access government services, connect with friends, and earn a living — there are frustratingly few ways to maintain privacy or security online. Companies that control a large part of the web traffic — Google, Facebook, Amazon — can pretty much do whatever they want with our data. And now American internet service provides can sell customer information to the highest bidder. Since most internet traffic flows through the USA, this affects the rest of the world as well.

I am not a programmer but I try to stay informed about information technology through my professional social networks. Here are a few things I do to thwart government and corporate interests that may not have my privacy foremost in mind.

I use a password manager, Canadian-made 1Password. It creates a unique, long, password for every site I use. Each one is different so that when the site inevitably gets hacked, I only have to change one password, and the hackers do not get access to my other sites.

I use three different browsers. One is used to access Google services and LinkedIn only. I know that these sites track me so I don’t do anything else on this browser. I have another browser kept clean and seldom used, as a backup or if I need to access something that is blocked by my main browser, Firefox. On Firefox I have installed HTTPS Everywhere, Ghostery, Privacy Badger, CanvasBlocker, and uBlock Origin. I have also uninstalled Adobe Flash, a known point of vulnerability on any computer. I realize that this is probably not enough but it gives me some defence against prying eyes.

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the arts in perpetual beta

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Next month I will be facilitating a workshop at The Arts in a Digital World Summit, hosted in Montreal by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Among other things, the summit will be a chance to share knowledge, mobilize – and possibly even incubate projects. We’ll consider our digital reality as an opportunity to:

  • develop innovative approaches
  • re-imagine how artists and arts organizations engage with citizens
  • seed collaborations within the arts community, and with other sectors.

It will bring together over 250 artistic and administrative leaders, digital experts, and strategic thinkers selected by the Canada Council to represent the vast diversity of the sector and to contribute to the testing and understanding of its new Fund for the arts in a digital world. The event will be by-invitation however many parts of it will also be accessible online.

My workshop is entitled The Arts in Perpetual Beta. This is how I describe the 90 minute session: We live in a networked world. Automation and connectivity are changing how we work and learn. How does the digital surround affect how human knowledge and creativity are shared? Join this workshop to discuss some key trends, understand knowledge networks, and critically examine the technologies we use.

I intend to focus on network thinking, machine augmentation, and the tetradic effects of technology. I’ll also talk about learning like an artist.

I would be interested in the perspectives of anyone working in or with the arts. I am especially curious how their work has changed in the past decade or so as a result of automation or connectivity.

  • Has the internet been a positive force for your art?
  • What do you see as major challenges to do your art or to get it known?
  • Do you have a generally positive or negative outlook on the future of your art?

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tribal values are not democratic

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David Ronfeldt, originator of the TIMN framework (Tribes + Institutions + Markets + Networks) has written a series of posts on what current political changes mean from this perspective.

“— From a TIMN perspective, the reasons for ‘American exceptionalism’ lie mainly in our approach to the T form. We have welcomed immigrants and found ways to enable people from all backgrounds and orientations to live together. Trumpish tribalism will undermine that basis of American exceptionalism, especially if he and his cohorts claim to be restoring it.

— TIMN implies that malignant tribalization will make our society far more vulnerable to information warfare. The ultimate goal of strategic information warfare at the societal level, whether waged by foreign or domestic actors, is to tribalize a society, the better to divide and conquer it.

— According to TIMN, America is moving into a new/next phase of social evolution — it’s evolving from a triform into a quadriform society. Just what the addition of a +N sector will mean is far from clear, and this is not the place to elaborate. But I do want to note that Trumpish tribalism, if it doesn’t abate, seems likely to imperil the prospects for getting to +N for years to come (though I can also see opportunities arising in some respects). ” —David Ronfeldt

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mediated relatedness

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I gave a presentation on ‘Understanding Media for Learner Engagement’ to the UNL Extension network yesterday. It was based on McLuhan’s laws of media which I have discussed many times here since 2004 (communication in evolution) and more recently (taking back our society).

One effect of the network era, and its pervasive digital connections, is that networks are replacing or subverting more traditional hierarchies. Three aspects of this effect are access to almost unlimited information, the ability for almost anyone to self-publish, and limitless opportunities for ridiculously easy group-forming.

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understanding our tools

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“We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” —Father John Culkin (1967) in  ‘A Schoolman’s Guide to Marshall McLuhan’.

If every medium influences communication, then what effect does that have on our own learning as well as how we help others to learn? We choose our tools, and then they take us in a certain direction, of which we may not be conscious.  Knowing which tool to select becomes critical, especially in communications. Email can be terse, while Twitter is short and lacks nuance. The printed word does not have the emotion of the spoken word. Video can be all emotion and little substance. Consider the power of Riefenstahl’s 1934 film, Triumph of the Will for Nazi Germany. It was all about emotion and imagery, with almost no narration.

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to retrieve or to extend

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It seems that ‘millennials’ in America do not have a lot of confidence in their institutions and markets. According to a 2016 Vox survey, corporate America, governors, and news agencies ranked the lowest. The status quo is not faring well. This is not surprising if we look at the major shift in how we humans are organizing, which is only the fourth in history. The TIMN model shows how each shift created a new dominant form of organizing people: first in tribes, then through institutions, and later in markets. And now we are beginning an age of network dominance.

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valued work is not standardized

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Does automation result in job loss?

“Consider, for example, the effect of the automated teller machine (ATM) on bank tellers. The number of fulltime-equivalent bank tellers has grown since ATMs were widely deployed during the late 1990s and early 2000s (see Figure 1). Why didn’t employment fall? Because the ATM allowed banks to operate branch offices at lower cost; this prompted them to open many more branches (their demand was elastic), offsetting the erstwhile loss in teller jobs (Bessen 2016).” —WEForum: James Bessen

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