New New Story

The industrial age is over, and so is the information age.

2009-08-02T07:39:00.001-05:00

The industrial age is over, the information age is over too, we are comfortably in the knowledge age but most enterprises still operate like they are in the Industrial revolution. The industrial revolution is over a hundred years in the past. Frederick Winslow Taylor and his scientific management are obsolete. Taylor was wrong then and is still wrong today. He was an elitist academic who caused more harm to business and enterprise than is accepted. His ideas took the most sophisticated device known in our world, the human brain and reduced it to a dumb cog. Managing enterprises is not scientific as any successful leader will tell you. Managing processes can and should scientific but we have very limited information about what the formal method for managing enterprises should be. Any management “expert” today is probably another random liar selling snake oil. There are no experts in an area where each situation is completely different. Even previous experiences don’t matter because managing a widget factory and a consulting firm can never be the same no matter what the “experts” would like you to believe.

The information revolution really referred to the move from factory-punch-the-clock type thinking that information technology ended in the last decades of the 20th century. The concept of an information age portends the end of industrial age thinking. This also means the end of professionalism and the complete and utter debunking of experts. In a world with infinite information and equal access to all, there are no experts. We have infinite information because the barriers to entry for information creation are none existent. Anyone, anywhere, anytime can create information just like i am doing right now without having to get approval from anyone. Before the end of the decade we shall all have equal access to all the information available to everyone. Almost instant retrieval and effective presentation of that information will mean that we won’t need experts to advice us on obvious choices that we have to make. That is the knowledge age. Everyone given all the required information will always make the pragmatic decision. You can only imagine how productive and effective we would all be under these circumstances. This is the promise of our species.

Why are most enterprises including government still behaving like we are at the beginning of the 19th Century instead of the 20th Century? Because we were reared by people that had accepted the inevitability of a world with limited information. To convince older people that you can have more information than your expert is almost impossible because it sounds counter intuitive, but you can because it’s all information. That’s what is different between you and the expert, they have invested time in understanding the discipline, but that doesn’t matter any more because there is now an infinite supply of information because it is being created by everyone continuously and in real-time. What matters today is being able to use the tools for Fast information retrieval and presentation. The information age is over and the knowledge age will bring progress and advances that are unbelievable and unimaginable. That vision is hard to see when most people alive are uninformed and hopeless.

Journalism and Print media not dying.

2009-07-31T11:51:00.001-05:00

The problem with Journalism and print media is that they do not know what they are any more. Somewhere, probably after Nixon they lost their credibility, more recently after the Iranian crisis they lost their relevance.

The truth of the matter is that newspapers are not about news and they were never really mass media, they were mostly portable bill-boards that realized that they could also distribute relevant information next to their advertising. Distributing relevant information currently has no barriers to entry and the most effective informers are real biased people with no organizational affiliations. That’s what recent events have shown. We can get relevant information from the actual participants and impartiality and accuracy are a myth that Journalists would love us to believe in but we won’t.

CNN is not News just like News is not CNN, though Google says it is. News is the communication of information on current events which is presented by real people to a third party or mass audience. News is the story of each person as they see it and as they want to share it. That is not what Journalism and print media are. They are stale and biased information mongers masquerading as News. Their usefulness in a world where everyone has the same knowledge is none. They might survive as entertainers for a while but even that has no future. In a world and a time when the most abundant thing is knowledge and information, they are not only ineffective as purveyors of information but they are dangerous to freedom too. They have no role other than to confuse and incite. That’s why nobody cares about them any more. Journalism and Print media is not dying, they are already dead

The Iranian crisis has highlighted a new source of information: the non-professional journalist. This new species, equipped with a cell phone, a digital camera and access to the Internet and using blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms have provided raw data about events in ways which professional journalists, by virtue of their fewer numbers, never could. It’s not the first time non-professional journalists have been the first and perhaps only source of events in distant places. Images of the December 26, 2004 tsunami which swept through beach resorts in Thailand showed what was possible, when for the first time in history, ordinary people captured striking images and video of events which would otherwise have gone unrecorded.

from Blogging tools

Mass media is a term used to denote a section of the media specifically designed to reach a very large audience such as the population of a nation state. It was coined in the 1920s with the advent of nationwide radio networks, mass-circulation newspapers and magazines, although mass media (like books andmanuscripts) were present centuries before the term became common. The termpublic media has a similar meaning: it is the sum of the public mass distributors of news and entertainment across media such as newspapers, television, radio,broadcasting, which may require union membership in some large markets such as Newspaper Guild, AFTRA, & text publishers.

from Mass Media on Wikipedia

The day culture died

2009-04-21T16:42:00.001-05:00

Culture as we perceive it is dead and this time we are going to leave it in the past. It seems to me that it probably died on August 5, 1858. That was the day that Cyrus West Field ,the force behind the first transatlantic telegraph cable completed a practical transatlantic cable. Culture in its many forms depicts an us vs. them scenario and it focuses on location and locality. This was motivated by the differences in people from different locations. The internet and instant communications have ended those differences. We are not really very different. Homo-sapiens seem to be the same every where and the short sighted and simplistic view that we are better than them is eventually going to go the way institutionalized chauvinism went.

Culture as in excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities does not make sense in a world where everyone has access to the same knowledge, it is simply a bourgeoisie way of looking at the world that is mostly motivated by ignorance and insecurity. There are no excellent tastes, there are individual preferences and given enough knowledge everyone prefers the practical preference.

Culture is also defined as an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning. Knowledge is the same everywhere no matter how its codified. People everywhere want to make the same choices, often for the same reasons.

Culture as a set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group ended when Nationalism died. Nations as many people have recently noticed are an inadequate way to solve modern problems. Patriotism is meaningless if you spend most of your time on social networks and consume products from all over the world. Your Nation is not important to you any more, it might have been important to your parents but now its just another form of ignorant unnecessary discrimination. Local issues are now global issues unless you are so dumb as to believe that the rest of the world exists so that you can exist.

Nationalism is still a popular way of looking at the world because most people are pessimistic about our common destiny. Nationalism in all its forms is the last hold out in the war to preserve culture. A war that is doomed to fail because human progress does not move at anybody’s time table. The progress that is in our future will not happen where we want it.

Culture is dead and we are all going to be better for it. We all begun as one group that was different from all the other apes in Africa. It has taken over a thousand centuries for us to populate the planet. It will take us less than a century to populate the solar system and ultimately someday the galaxy will have homo sapiens in every corner of its expanse. That is our destiny and that is why culture had to die, it has served its purpose and it was slowing us down.

According to both genetic and fossil evidence, archaic Homo sapiens evolved to anatomically modern humans solely in Africa, between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, with members of one branch leaving Africa by 60,000 years ago and over time replacing earlier human populations such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus. –see Wikipedia

Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate")^[1] is a term that has different meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions.^[2] However, the word "culture" is most commonly used in three basic senses:

excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities

an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning

the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group.

When the concept first emerged in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, it connoted a process of cultivation or improvement, as in agriculture or horticulture. In the nineteenth century, it came to refer first to the betterment or refinement of the individual, especially through education, and then to the fulfillment of national aspirations or ideals. In the mid-nineteenth century, some scientists used the term "culture" to refer to a universal human capacity.

In the twentieth century, "culture" emerged as a concept central to anthropology, encompassing all human phenomena that are not purely results of human genetics. Specifically, the term "culture" in American anthropology had two meanings: (1) the evolved human capacity to classify and represent experiences with symbols, and to act imaginatively and creatively; and (2) the distinct ways that people living in different parts of the world classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively. Following World War II, the term became important, albeit with different meanings, in other disciplines such as sociology, cultural studies, organizational psychology and management studies.

On Culture From Wikipedia

Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.

Max Planck

The Devil himself had probably re-designed Hell in the light of information he had gained from observing airport layouts.

Anthony Price

When did blogging die?

2009-04-21T16:01:00.001-05:00

Image via CrunchBase

Seems like Blogging has been dying a long slow death for the past five years. We don’t know who killed it, some people say Scoble killed it, nobody can’t tell for sure. What i do know is that it has been dying slowly and surely for as long as I can remember. Like many things Blogging never died, it evolved and is evolving. It became micro blogging then social networking and later real-time something ….I don’t know what blogging is today but I know it never died.

Predicting the death of blogging

Peter Black AM: The end of blogging?

The end of blogging? This morning's Western Mail poses the question: 'Is this the end of the blogger?' I have to accept some of the blame for this rather ...
peterblack.blogspot.com/2008/08/end-of-blogging.html - 65k -

Tim Lucas Video WatchBlog: The End of Blogging Days - A Rumination

Could the End of Blogging Days be upon us? So soon? Fortunately, my friend -- the Best Man at my wedding 33 years ago -- did survive his operation. ...
videowatchdog.blogspot.com/2008/05/end-of-blogging-days-rumination.html -

DemConWatch:: The end of blogging as we know it?

What is blogging? As a noun "blog" is defined, at base, as a web-based diary, with the verb form relating to making entries, adding material, ...
www.demconwatchblog.com/diary/1321/the-end-of-blogging-as-we-know-it -

2007 Prediction: Blogs will be replaced « Messaging….. Technology ...

Even though some (wrongly) predicted the end of blogging and Facebook’s immediate demise — both are still here … going strong and gaining [...] ...
joshuamaher.com/2006/12/18/2007-prediction-blogs-will-be-replaced/ -

This blog is dead! ORLY?

I see a few people are talking about the death of A-list blogging. Including my blog in that as evidence.

Actually you’ll see me blogging more and social networking less. Why? Cause I’m starting to have longer thoughts again. Might have something to do with not being able to drink Diet Coke anymore due to my kidney disease.

I can’t wait for Dan Lyons to predict the death of Facebook or Twitter because I’m blogging again.

Anyway, I think Twitter is blogging. When I go back and look at my blog back in 2004, for instance, it looks a whole lot like Twitter. Short item with a link. So some of that content behavior has moved elsewhere. Big whoop.

But now that I’ve done 18,000 tweets I find I’m getting bored there and want to play around with longer blog posts again. Mostly because I find I’m having something to say.

Welcome back to the dead. :-)

The time line of all the main events in the history of the Universe

2009-04-21T10:26:00.001-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

Below is a time line of all the main events in the history of the Universe. (via historyoftheuniverse)

The Stories in date order are:

15 Billion Years ago: Alpha Particles Atom Big Bang Cosmic Background Radiation Cosmos Electric Charge Electron Expansion of the Universe False Vacuum Field Gas Gravity Higgs Fields Inflation Interactions Macrocosmos Neutron Nuclear Fusion Particles Positron Proton Radiation Beta Radioactivity Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking Universe
13 Billion Years ago: Clusters of Galaxies Disc of Galaxy Galaxies Globular Star Cluster
12 Billion Years ago: Binary Stars Birth of a Star Galaxy Problems How a Star Works Milky Way Galaxy Open Star Clusters Spiral Arms Stars
11 Billion Years ago: Black Holes Cosmic Dust HONC Atoms Hydrogen Bond Ice Molecules Neutron Star Nova Red Giant Supernova Water White Dwarf Star
4.7 Billion Years ago: Earth Earth Origin Planets Solar Disc Solar System Solar System Model Sun
4.5 Billion Years ago: Earth Magnetic Field Earth Structure Radioactive Dating Radioactivity Alpha Radioactivity Volcanoes
4 Billion Years ago: Amino Acid Chains Amino Acids Base Pairing Biological Environment Causes of Ice Ages Climate Continental Drift Dry Joining Early Atmosphere Enzyme Enzyme breaks target Evolution Genes Genetic Problems Greenhouse Effect Ice Ages Life Liquid Water Making Protein Meteorite Era Mutation Nucleic Acid Nucleic Acid Bases Nucleic Acid Message Origin of Life Process of Life Protein Rain Reproduction Sunlight Weather Weathering of Rock
3.9 Billion Years ago: Cell Membrane Cell Wall Fermentation
3.8 Billion Years ago: Cell Division Chromosomes
3.5 Billion Years ago: Energy Crisis Archaebacteria Bacteria Bacterial Spores Nitrogen Cycle Photosynthesis Viral Diseases Viruses
3 Billion Years ago: Blue Green Bacteria Oxygen Poisoning
2 Billion Years ago: Ozone Respiration
1.5 Billion Years ago: Algae Eukaryotes Fertilization Mitochondria Protozoa Sex Symbiosis
1 Billion Years ago: Air Colony of Algae Death Ecosystem Fungi Hormones
700 Million Years ago: Continental Drift Movie Earth 700 my ago Sponge
650 Million Years ago: Earth 650 my ago Jellyfish
600 Million Years ago: Earth 600 my ago
570 Million Years ago: Ancestral Flatworms Animal Groups Arthropods Mollusk
550 Million Years ago: Earth 550 my ago
500 Million Years ago: Bone Earth 500 my ago Fish Immune System Immune System Diseases Jawless Fish Vertebrates
470 Million Years ago: Moss
450 Million Years ago: Bony fish Earth 450 my ago Lichen
400 Million Years ago: Earth 400 my ago
390 Million Years ago: Lobe Finned Fish Ray Finned Fish Sharks
380 Million Years ago: Insects
350 Million Years ago: Amphibians Earth 350 my ago Ferns Invertebrates onto Land
300 Million Years ago: Earth 300 my ago Gondwanaland Invertebrates Free From Water Reptiles Seed Plants
250 Million Years ago: Dinosaurs Earth 250 My ago
200 Million Years ago: Earth 200 my ago Fruiting Plants Invertebrate Reproduction Mammals
150 Million Years ago: Birds Earth 150 my ago
100 Million Years ago: Earth 100 my ago
65 Million Years ago: Meteorite
50 Million Years ago: Earth 50 my ago Grasses Horse Family Primates Spread of mammals
40 Million Years ago: Cow Family
3 Million Years ago: Homo Erectus Recent Ice Age
700 Thousand Years ago: Fire
200 Thousand Years ago: Neanderthals
100 Thousand Years ago: People
11 Thousand Years ago: Farmers Nomads
6 Thousand Years ago: Cities
5 Thousand Years ago: Kings and Peasants
3 Thousand Years ago: Empires Iron Middle East Migrations
2 Thousand Years ago: China Greeks India Roman Empire South America
1.6 Thousand Years ago: Byzantium
1500 Years ago: Dark Ages
1400 Years ago: Islam
1000 Years ago: Middle Ages
550 Years ago: Colonialism Renaissance
450 Years ago: Copernicus
350 Years ago: Science
250 Years ago: Industrial Revolution
225 Years ago: Capitalism Democracy Law
200 Years ago: Industrial Growth
150 Years ago: Communism
100 Years ago: New Industrial Nations
75 Years ago: Industrial Wars Totalitarian Dictatorships
55 Years ago: Fascism Nuclear Weapons
50 Years ago: Other Technology The Past 50 Years
Today: Climate Threats Computers Futures Longer Term Threats Modern Technology National Governments Opportunities Pollution Poverty Social Strengths SWOT Analysis Threats Trade War Weaknesses
20 Years in the future: Future of Medicine
200 Years in the future: Future of Energy
2 Thousand Years in the future: Future of Climate Future of Humanity
10 Thousand Years in the future: Future of Computers
10 Million Years in the future: Earth 10 my in future
20 Million Years in the future: Earth 20 my in future
30 Million Years in the future: Earth 30 my in future
40 Million Years in the future: Earth 40 my in future
50 Million Years in the future: Earth 50 my in future
60 Million Years in the future: Earth 60 my in future
70 Million Years in the future: Earth 70 my in future
80 Million Years in the future: Earth 80 my in future
90 Million Years in the future: Earth 90 my in future
100 Million Years in the future: Earth 100 my in future
110 Million Years in the future: Earth 110 my in future
120 Million Years in the future: Earth 120 my in future
130 Million Years in the future: Earth 130 my in future
140 Million Years in the future: Earth 140 my in future
150 Million Years in the future: Earth 150 my in future
160 Million Years in the future: Earth 160 my in future
170 Million Years in the future: Earth 170 my in future
180 Million Years in the future: Earth 180 my in future
190 Million Years in the future: Earth 190 my in future
200 Million Years in the future: Earth 200 my in future
250 Million Years in the future: Future of Earth
5 Billion Years in the future: Future of the Sun
10 Billion Years in the future: Future of Galaxy
1000 Billion Years in the future: Future of Universe

About this blog

2009-02-02T12:34:00.000-06:00

Every so often, the world changes, sometimes quickly,sometimes very slowly but sometimes unnoticeably fast. Change is constant and constantly changing. There is no timetable and you cannot predict or trend the unknown but you can change with it as quickly as it evolves. That's what this blog is about. The new new world that is unfolding right now. Human habits have usually evolved to manage change and to nurture stability because its feels less dramatic but our story is a story of inevitable chaos and randomness. Change is inevitable, Chaos is part of the Universe. We cannot create stability and we shouldn't even try. If you could go forwards in time or backwards for about 4 million years you might see how random the human story is. Our less than 100 years lifetimes make the randomness seem counterintuitive because we are so focused on controlling the current. Clocks and Calendars, a fairly modern thing also give us a sense of order that is false. Many people even President Obama believe that we can control the chaos, because it seems like the drama is created by the Fed messing with interest rates. We can’t control the chaos. Random change is the way the Universe works. We can learn to respond to it but we can get the stability that we wish we had. That’s what this blog is about the new new normal created by random and chaotic events that change everything, everyday for all time.

Which is part of the reason why, in addition to dealing with the banking crisis, it is so important that we put the economy on a sounder footing. We've got to get past this bust and boom-- or-- or this-- this boom and bust approach to economic growth. And what we've got to do is to start making things again. We've got to get our health care system on track. We've got to make sure that we are leading in the clean energy economy and not trailing other countries that are moving ahead of us. And we've got to educate our kids.

Below is a time line of all the main events in the history of the Universe since humans

3 Million Years ago: Homo Erectus Recent Ice Age
700 Thousand Years ago: Fire
200 Thousand Years ago: Neanderthals
100 Thousand Years ago: People
11 Thousand Years ago: Farmers Nomads
6 Thousand Years ago: Cities
5 Thousand Years ago: Kings and Peasants
3 Thousand Years ago: Empires Iron Middle East Migrations
2 Thousand Years ago: China Greeks India Roman Empire South America
1.6 Thousand Years ago: Byzantium
1500 Years ago: Dark Ages
1400 Years ago: Islam
1000 Years ago: Middle Ages
550 Years ago: Colonialism Renaissance
450 Years ago: Copernicus
350 Years ago: Science
250 Years ago: Industrial Revolution
225 Years ago: Capitalism Democracy Law
200 Years ago: Industrial Growth
150 Years ago: Communism
100 Years ago: New Industrial Nations
75 Years ago: Industrial Wars Totalitarian Dictatorships
55 Years ago: Fascism Nuclear Weapons
50 Years ago: Other Technology The Past 50 Years
Today: Climate Threats Computers Futures Longer Term Threats Modern Technology National Governments Opportunities Pollution Poverty Social Strengths SWOT Analysis Threats Trade War Weaknesses
20 Years in the future: Future of Medicine
200 Years in the future: Future of Energy
2 Thousand Years in the future: Future of Climate Future of Humanity
10 Thousand Years in the future: Future of Computers

You can also see the entire timeline of the universe