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Re: [ba-unrev-talk] CASE STUDY - The Newest Warfare Tool: Collaboration


> Going back to my tricycle/bicycle analogy, it is clear that for an
> unskilled user, the tricycle is much easier to use.  But, as we know,
> the payoff from investing in learning to ride on two wheels is enormous.    (01)

To direct organization and society according to Doug's ABC model,
(1)We have to train all the people to be able to ride on a tricycle
   to excute our organizational mission effectively, and the tricycle
   has to be improved(A and B activities in Doug's ABC model).
(2)We also need bicycle communities to improve the quality of our
   environments(C activities).
Then;
(3)We need an educational process and tools to transfer the knowledge
   obtained by (2) into (1).    (02)

Doug's presentation in Singapore gave me more clear idea of his ABC
model. I feel the process of (3) is non trivial matter which we are
strugling in Japan. If we have some vision in this process, I feel
people will accept bicycle environment much better, because they know
it helps improve tricycle environments too. Sorry, I do't have one yet.    (03)

Hirohide Yamada    (04)


On Mon, 06 May 2002 21:49:49 -0700
"John J. Deneen" <jjdeneen@netzero.net> wrote:    (05)

>           "The World will not evolve past its current state of
>           crisis by using the same thinking that created the
>           situation." - Albert Einstein.
> 
>           "Revolutionary fire needs air," he said. "One should
>           let the flames dance for a while to see how they
>           will change the landscape before jumping in to
>           smother them out of fear that they will destroy all
>           that we have built before." - Michael Powell, FCC
>           Chairman, tells U.S. Chamber of Commerce regulatory
>           barriers stymie Internet progress. (4/30/02)
>           <
>           http://www.fcc.gov/Speeches/Powell/2002/spmkp205.html
>           >
> 
>           "Greater even than the greatest discovery is to keep
>           open the way to future discovery." - legendary
>           scientist John Jacob Abel
> 
> What happen?
> 
> On October 2001, technologyreview.com published as interesting article
> about DARPA's Disruptive Technologies: It gave us the Internet and the
> mouse. Today, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency remains
> a powerful engine driving ...
> <  http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/talbot1001.asp >
> 
> Then, on  1/15/02, DARPA issued a press release: Special Operations
> Command invite scientists to help America.
> <  http://www.darpa.mil/body/NewsItems/wordfiles/socomconferrelease.doc
> >
> 
> But, on Feb. 7, 2002 Information Week reports:
> 
>                "The U.S. Navy's deployment of Lotus's
>                Domino server and Sametime application
>                have been such a hit that the
>                collaborative tools have been--and are
>                continuing to be--extended to allied
>                forces.
> 
>                With so many of the world's nations united
>                in the antiterrorism campaign dubbed
>                Operation Enduring Freedom, coordinating
>                military efforts is key. Recognizing the
>                importance of collaboration, the U.S. Navy
>                is working with Lotus Software to extend
>                its on-ship collaborative capabilities to
>                British, Canadian, German, and New Zealand
>                forces." ...
>                <
>                http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20020207S0020
>                >
> 
> As Doug remarked*: "Doesn't anyone ever aspire to serious amateur or pro
> status in knowledge work?" ...
> 
> *April 27, 2002 - Improving our ability to improve: A call for
> investment in a new future
> Keynote address, World Library Summit, Singapore
> by Douglas C. Engelbart, The Bootstrap Alliance
> < http://www.fleabyte.org/#rf-x >
> [Continued: <  http://www.fleabyte.org/eic-11.html#q > The rewards of
> focusing ...]
> 
> Highlights relative to this case study - The Newest Warfare Tool:
> Collaboration:
> 
> Oxymoron: "Market Intelligence"
> "One of the strongly held beliefs within the United States is that the
> best way to choose between competing technologies and options for
> investment is to "let the market decide."  In my country we share a
> mystical, almost religious kind of faith in the efficacy of this
> approach, growing from Adam Smith's idea of an "invisible hand"
> controlling markets and turning selfish interest into general good.  The
> "market" assumes the dimensions of faceless, impersonal deity, punishing
> economically inefficient solutions and rewarding the economically fit.
> We believe in the wisdom of the market and belief that it represents a
> collective intelligence that surpasses the understanding of us poor
> mortal players in the market's great plan."
> 
> The seductive, destructive appeal of "ease of use."
> "A second  powerful, systematic bias that leads computing technology
> development away from grappling with serious issues of collaboration -
> the kind of thing, for example, that would really make a difference to
> disaster response organizations - is the belief that "ease of use" is
> somehow equated with better products.
> 
> Going back to my tricycle/bicycle analogy, it is clear that for an
> unskilled user, the tricycle is much easier to use.  But, as we know,
> the payoff from investing in learning to ride on two wheels is enormous.
> 
> We seem to lose sight of this very basic distinction between "ease of
> use" and "performance" when we evaluate computing systems.  For example,
> just a few weeks ago, in early March, I was invited to participate in a
> set of discussions, held at IBM's Almaden Labs, that looked at new
> research and technology associated with knowledge management and
> retrieval.  One thing that was clearly evident in these presentations
> was that the first source of bias - the tendency to look solely to the
> invisible hand and intelligence of the market for guidance, was in full
> gear.  Most of the presenters were looking to build a better tricycle,
> following the market to the next stage of continuous innovation, rather
> than stepping outside the box to consider something really new.
> 
> But there was another bias, even in the more innovative work - and that
> bias had to do with deciding to set aside technology and user
> interactions that were "too difficult" for users to learn.  I was
> particularly disappointed to learn, for example, that one of the
> principal websites offering knowledge retrieval on the web had concluded
> that a number of potentially more powerful searching tools should not be
> offered because user testing discovered that they were not easy to use."
> 
> 
> 
> Moving from "invisible hand" to strategy
> "The good news is that it is possible to build an infrastructure that
> supports discontinuous innovation.  There is no need at all to depend on
> mystical, invisible hands and the oracular pronouncements hidden within
> the marketplace.  The alternative is conscious investment in an
> improvement infrastructure to support new, discontinuous innovation
> (ref. 5).
> 
> This is something that individual organizations can do - it is also
> something that local governments, nations, and regional alliances of
> nations can do. All that is necessary is an understanding of how to
> structure that conscious investment.
> 
> ABCs of improvement infrastructure. - The key to developing an effective
> improvement infrastructure is the realization that, within any
> organization, there is a division of attention between the part of the
> organization that is concerned with the organization's primary activity
> - I will call this the "A" activity - and the part of the organization
> concerned with improving the capability to perform this A-level
> function.  I refer to these improvement efforts as "B" activities.  The
> two different levels of activity are illustrated in Figure 1." ....
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>     (06)