Posted with permission. Provided by Dr. James Spohrer in response to a request from Phi Beta Iota for a “snap-shot” overview of the “soul” of IBM going into the 21st Century.
1. Cities: here is a short IBM video (YouTube 4:15) on cities as the nodes in the planetary system of systems
Features Mike Wing, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Julia Grace. Cities as planetary accupunture points of intervention. Cities are HUMAN–computers cannot handle the unpredictable. Dominos analogy–everything is interconnected and knowledge or information are the “energy” being exchanged among individual people, the HUMAN element. It is the mixture of people and hardware, and software that is so elegant and exciting.
2. Universities in Cities: My current job at IBM builds from the notion that universities are the knowledge batteries of city/regions… see slide #34 in this presentation on Service Science: Progress and Directions (64 Slides), connected with Handbook of Service Science (Springer, 2010). NOTE: Downloading presentation enables viewing of Notes for each slide.
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Overview of IBM University Programs focusing on 5 R's (Research, Readiness, Recruiting, Revenue, Responsibilities); Quality of Life balance between local and global optimization; Ecology–study of all things in relation to all life forms; and Holistic Service Systems with cities and within cities, universities, and the fundamental “intelligent” building blocks. Emphasis on information information exchanges and life-long learning. Slide #34:
3. Connecting Universities and Cities Locally and Globally: My global team at IBM University Programs is funding connecting the universities locally with their cities, and globally with each other – networked improvement communities in Doug's language… Really connecting service systems, see Slide #16 in this presentation.
For years, Alison and I have been hearing glowing reports of Tunisia from fellow sailors. We finally sailed there and spent five weeks in Tunisia last summer (August and early September). To our surprise, the local people struck us as the least welcoming of those in the Arab countries we have visited over the last five years (which included Morocco, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon).
In general, the living conditions in the towns seemed poorer and in some cases more squalid than in the other countries we visited. Syria, for example, is much poorer than Tunisia, with half the per capita GDP, but I did not sense the widespread squalidness in 2008 that we saw in Tunisia in 2010. But, we were only in Syria for a few days and saw only the western part north of Damascus. Tunisian people seemed more religious and mosques seemed more crowded than in the other Arab countries we visited, but I saw nothing suggesting radicalization. In retrospect, it did seem that there were more police in evidence in Tunisia than in the other Arab countries and that people were more fearful of the police, although I did not draw that conclusion at the time. Bottom line: I saw nothing that suggested Tunisia was on the cusp of a political meltdown — I simply did not like the place as much as the other Arab countries I visited — which was quite surprising, given our expectations.
But, as the attached report by Professor Juan Cole shows in Attachment #1 below, there there was a lot of discontent bubbling beneath the surface. Moreover, as opposed to this dumb tourist, our diplomats on the scene appreciated the drivers of the discontent. But, once again, the US government in Washington chose to ignore the warning signs and support a corrupt status quo. And once again our government was blindsided by an inordinate fear of radical Islamism, and in so doing, may have helped to create conditions favoring its spread.
Robert Fisk, in Attachment #2 below, The Brutal Truth About Tunisia, places the American and European propensity to ignore warning signs, and then being blindsided by developments, into a regional perspective. He is, therefore, not sanguine about the future.
The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten released a series of US diplomatic cables from 2006 on massive and pervasive corruption and nepotism in Tunisia and its effect on economic development and social problems. The cables show that the United States government was fully aware of the dangerous and debilitating level of corruption in Tunisia, and its anti-democratic implications.
Bloodshed, tears, but no democracy. Bloody turmoil won’t necessarily presage the dawn of democracy
By Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent
Independent, 17 Jan 2011
The end of the age of dictators in the Arab world? Certainly they are shaking in their boots across the Middle East, the well-heeled sheiks and emirs, and the kings, including one very old one in Saudi Arabia and a young one in Jordan, and presidents – another very old one in Egypt and a young one in Syria – because Tunisia wasn't meant to happen. Food price riots in Algeria, too, and demonstrations against price increases in Amman. Not to mention scores more dead in Tunisia, whose own despot sought refuge in Riyadh – exactly the same city to which a man called Idi Amin once fled.
Phi Beta Iota: For some time now, since reading Ambassador Mark Palmer's superb inventory of all the dictators on the planet, we have been concerned about the degree to which the US Government, “in our name,” actively collaborates with and even funds dictators, not just in the Middle East but everywhere. In fact, only two are criticized: North Korea and Cuba. It can fairly be said that US diplomacy and national security are neither strategic nor moral, at the same time that both are arguably not in the best interest of We the People.
It might be about the size of the screen and whether or not you're standing up.
Start at the bottom. For the first five years of the Internet, the most used function was email. Email remains a bedrock of every device and system that's been built on top of the internet, though sometimes it looks like a text message or a mobile check in. This is the layer for asynchronous person to person connection, over time.
Moving from left to right, we see how the way we use the thing we call the internet has evolved over time. We also see how devices and technology and bandwidth have changed the uses of the net and, interestingly, how a growth in mass has led to a growth in self-motivated behavior.
Early online projects were things like Archie and Veronica and checking in changes to the Linux code base. You needed patience, a big screen and a sense of contribution.
Layer on top of this a practice that is getting ever more professional, which is creating content for others to consume. Sometimes in groups, sometimes using sophisticated software and talented cohorts.
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As we move to the right (and through time) we see the birth of online shopping. Still to this day, most online shopping happens on traditional devices, often sitting down.
The sitting down part is not a silly aside. Ted Leonsis theorized twenty years ago that the giant difference between TV and the internet was how far you sat from the screen. TV was an 8 foot activity, and you were a consumer. The internet was a 16 inch activity, and you participated. I think the sitting down thing is similar. You're not going to buy an armoir while standing on the subway.
Moving over in time and device and intent, we see the idea of consuming content. While tablets get their share of shopping, this is where they really shine. I think 2011 is going to be the year of the tablet, from the Kindle to the iPad to the thing we used to call a phone.
It's in the last two categories that these other devices, things that don't involve sitting down, are superior, not just a mobile substitute. The social graph is a very low bandwidth, peripheral attention interaction, perfect for this audience and this medium. And the last category–tell me where I am, where to eat, who's near me, what's the weather, get me a cab right now–is all about me and now and here.
I don't believe this is a winner take all situation, any more than one bestselling book makes all other books obsolete. I think different pillars work for different devices, and there will continue to be winners in all of them.
Phi Beta Iota: Ric is the author of Rethink–A Business Manifesto for Cutting Costs and Boosting Innovation. Below we list only the eleven companies with links, and one additional reference. His complete posting with full paragraphs on each as well as context on GroupOn, Facebook, and Microsoft, is a tremendous overview.
The USAF claim that the tragic killing of 23 innocent Afghan civilians last February by one of its Predator UAVs was due to “information overload” reflects an appalling lack of critical thinking on the part of senior Air Force officers. General Mike Hayden (USAF ret.) when director of the NSA used regularly entertain the U.S. congress with the same complaint again reflecting the same lack of critical thought.
The problem for both the USAF and the NSA is that both seem to be following collection and processing strategies that belong to the Cold War era before the information revolution.
The Soviet Union may have been the most incompetent super power in world history, but it was extremely good at information denial. When the NSA could actually find and collect a signal containing exploitable information emanating from the USSR, it was common practice to collect and process everything from that signal 24/7 because it was such a rare occurrence. Because of the Soviet practice of immediately shutting down any signal that there was even as hint had been comprised the material so obtained was compartmentalized and distribution was tightly controlled. All this was possible because the information collected from such a signal at best was miniscule by today’s standards. In the same manner before such neat things as down linking digital images, the number of images to be processed were absurdly small and scarcely time sensitive. So again ‘full take’ was the best, and indeed, the only option.
Interesting, but also fails to mention we do not train our analysts on the
basics, know your enemy……we are so focused on technology we forget
that the basics are still the best way to view the situation…..
When military investigators looked into an attack by American helicopters
last February that left 23 Afghan civilians dead, they found that the
operator of a Predator drone had failed to pass along crucial information
about the makeup of a gathering crowd of villagers.
When military investigators looked into an attack by American helicopters last February that left 23 Afghan civilians dead, they found that the operator of a Predator drone had failed to pass along crucial information about the makeup of a gathering crowd of villagers.
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But Air Force and Army officials now say there was also an underlying cause for that mistake: information overload.
