The Ignorance of Crowds

Nicholas Carr, ever the optimist, uses Eric Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar [PDF], to sermonize on the limitations of the open source model for innovation, in strategy+business magazine. If you're not familiar with Raymond's paper, Carr summarizes it as follows:

Traditionally, sophisticated programs had always been "built like cathedrals, carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation." An open source project, in contrast, was the product of a large and informal community of volunteers who in aggregate "seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches." What was amazing, Raymond wrote, was that "the Linux world not only didn't fly apart in confusion but seemed to go from strength to strength at a speed barely imaginable to cathedral-builders."

With the advent of the Internet, an efficient vehicle for information exchange, the bazaar took off. Innovation didn't need to be pursued in isolation. Individuals connected real-time, could share ideas and evolve products. And here's where Carr thinks the limitations lie. The open source model -- the bazaar of the internet -- has only proven itself adept at evolving ideas that already exist. It's an optimization model, whereas new, truly innovative ideas, tend to come from individuals, or small, intimately connected groups.

The approaches of the cathedral and the bazaar really need to be intertwined. The individual wizard is much more capable of begetting original creations, unhindered by limitations. The bazaar, while appearing chaotic and democratic, is really a platform of focus, discipline and autocracy -- best suited to optimize, and squeeze efficiency and value out of the original creations of the wizards. From a business perspective, Carr writes:

So if you're looking to bolster your company's creativity, you should by all means look for opportunities to harness the power of the crowd. Just don't expect the masses to take the place of the lone wizard or the band of mages. The greatest breakthroughs will always begin, to quote Eric Raymond once more, with "one good idea in one person's head," and the greatest products will always reach perfection through the concerted efforts of a highly skilled team.

What the Hell is Putin Smoking?

Russian dictator-in-the-making, President Vladimir Putin, is stirring up international unrest by laying claim to large portion of the Arctic in order to secure rights to untapped oil, gas and mineral wealth. Putin has been pushing his luck lately, as his one party state has gained more international confidence due to its new found oil wealth. While it's always fun watching someone mess with George Bush, as Putin did during the last G8 summit, this latest move is going far beyond pissing off Bush -- it has the potential to wreck havoc on one of the last pristine environments left in the world, and give the finger to the international community. What's with the mental midgets that continue to make the world a dangerous place?

Business of War

Why is America shipping military gear to Iran? A good question that should be asked, since America has been rattling sabres since GW got tingle for Mahmoud. The answer is not one that most Americans will care to hear, nor interested in doing much about. It comes down to the mixing of commerce and war. When the two meet, only horrible things can result. America's defense department apparently has a lot of surplus and legacy equipment -- the over capacity no doubt a result of defense contractors pushing Uncle Sam to buy more. Through a series of third parties, the defense department moves equipment out to civilian hands, from where it skips the country and tend to end up in the hands of the highest bidder.

Playing this out to ultimate end will find surplus American military gear in the hands of enemies on a battlefield. American made equipment being used to kill American soldiers, fighting wars triggered by politicians, at the behest of military contractors. If the present trend of contracting the military continues of course, the defense contractors themselves would ultimately supply the soldiers. So, defense contractors build weapons, ensure they end up in the hands of all combatants, and hell, maybe even supply the combatants, and profit from the chaos that result. All funded of course, by the taxpayers, who are too lazy to do anything about it. Brings new meaning to the words collateral damage.

Wars are unfortunate in civil societies, and are a necessary evil -- an instrument of good -- in dealing with uncivil societies. The business of war and warmongering however, is morally wrong for civil and just societies.

Vinyl Code

Back in the day, when fighting music piracy wasn't the primary goal of record companies -- record companies actually liked their customers. Liked them so much, that in some vinyls released in the 1970s and 80s, they included bonus material. The bonus material that came shipped on the rare vinyls were computer code embedded in audio, to run on the Sinclair Spectrum home computer (my first computer was the Timex Sinclair). Some of the code that was secreted on vinyls, included simple computer games. As Kempa.com points out, some of the games and emulators to allow you to play them on your computer, are available. If you missed the gems the first time around, you can still give them a spin.

Masters of the Breakthrough Moment

Group work in the business world wouldn't have been if it wasn't for Edith and Charlie Seashore. Since the 1950s, the Seashores have been espousing the value of the group in solving problems and bringing change to organizations. Chances are, you've practiced some of the techniques they pioneered with like-minded fellows of the National Training Laboratories:

... giving feedback, conducting "check-ins" to begin meetings, sitting in circles, using flip charts, scribbling on big pieces of paper taped around the room, collaborating on visions for the future, and forming "fishbowls," or groups set up in the center of a larger circle to interact while those around them observed what they were doing.

If you throw a group of people together, conflict is inevitable. Hiding from conflicts however, doesn't make them go away. Instead, they fester, and eventually infect those around them. The Seashores teach that good leaders don't avoid conflict, but see opportunities in them. They are self-aware, and know how their behaviour affects those around them.

Edie and Charlie Seashore have been developing and honing the subtle art of helping people learn from difficult conversations. [They are] advocates for the art of the breakthrough moment. Productivity and creativity in the workplace in their view, occur when members of a group or team wade together into the muck of confusion and unspoken assumptions in order to surface concerns and conflicts that get glossed over in the rush of daily life.

Says Edie Seashore:

"Organizations can't change unless people change, and the most efficient and powerful way to help people change is in small groups. You can affect the whole system if you work with the group."

Today's shrinking world, globalization, accelerating changes and advances, has made the business playground precarious. Organizations are being driven to adopt practices of speed, agility, creativity and innovation in response. Hierarchical organization no longer guarantees success. Semi-autonomous, high-performing teams have better chances of hitting success. Effective groups are so because they are open and honest in their communication.

[The Seashores] see this practice as a way to cultivate not just capability in organizations, but democracy -- the spread of skills, power, and decision-making authority throughout an enterprise.

... decentralized authority, although it is messy and difficult to control, continues to thrive because it works. But it is always under pressure from leaders who fall into authoritarian habits, even if they pay lip service to change.

Organizations need to change according to Charlie Seashore, and change management isn't the answer. OCM talks about change, but doesn't change anything.

"What is really needed is to create enough managerial agility to enable people throughout the organization to keep learning so they can adaptto an unpredictable environment. And the way you do that is in groups."

The Seashores have problems with how some of their pioneering work on groups have been morphed over the years in organizations. Charlie Seashore takes aim on teams:

"Teams are a way of making groups more comfortable for men by adapting the language of sports. Groups were about collaboration and learning, but teams can be focused just on winning. This appeals to organizations focused on the bottom line, but the ability of people to make breakthroughs is compromised."

Edith Seashore meanwhile, have issues with personal coaches and diversity:

"Individual coaching is the death of the group. Working with a single person, you can't see how his behavior affects the whole system. And giving people evaluations rather than creating situations where they can learn to evaluate themselves doesn't really raise their awareness. Do you change just because your coach tells you to? Also, the coach is usually the instrument of hierarchy, a way of asserting behavioral control from the top."

"Diversity is a way of not talking about race or gender, by putting unthreatening language around something difficult and painful. Calling it 'diversity' makes it sound manageable and nice, something we can all agree on. You can write an uplifting mission statement about diversity. But really, it's just a way of avoiding hard truths -- the kind of hard truths that always come out in the group."

Related reading:

• How to Talk About Work Performance: A Feedback Primer [PDF]
• Organizational Culture & Leadership [DOC]
• Toward a Theory of Organizational Socialization [PDF]
• Organizational Culture [PDF]
• On Dialogue, Culture, and Organizational Learning [PDF]
• The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement [PDF]

The Heresy of Pi

The Bible defines Pi as 3. A whole number, as pointed out at the Gospel of Reason. So just how do fundamentalist Christians reconcile the Biblical proclamation with Mathematics? Well, a helping hand. I Kings 7:23-26 references something "circular in shape" -- not a circle. So really, it wasn't a circle. Just more evidence of God testing the faithful.

Are You Prejudiced?

Harvard has an Implicit Association Test (IAT) online, to measure the association with white and black Americans. The IAT is used social psychologists "to measure the strength of association between mental representations of objects in memory. The IAT requires the rapid categorization of various stimulus objects, such that easier pairings (and faster responses) are interpreted as being more strongly associated in memory than more difficult pairings (slower responses)." The aggregated responses from those who've taken the test online is captured in the image above. Take the test and see where you land.

The result doesn't necessarily reflect racial prejudices towards whites or blacks -- but definitely a bias -- although there is controversy in the use of the test.

World's Most Polluted River

The Citarum [PDF] is the garbage dump for nine million living in Jakarta. Their household waste; their factory refuse. The river is so polluted, you can't see the water. Garbage covers the entire river surface. Below the garbage covered surface, the river is poisoned by chemicals flowing from factories -- most of them textile factories. The river flows into an irrigation system that supplies water to rice paddies and local families. The Citarum is the story of human desecration of the planet. We should be ashamed of ourselves. Just before you think you're innocent of this travesty, you should check your closet to see where your clothing comes from.

The Peopling of the World

Humans have had a short and spectacular history on this planet. Short. Extremely short. To some of the species we're busily taking to extinction, we've just barely blinked into existence. We're quite the surprise for the planet. Follow this link for an animated view of how we took over the planet. In a brief period of time, we've forced frightening changes on our world -- but the planet has seen its share of disasters. It has bounced back from mass extinctions. It will survive the one we're bringing. Will we?

Melanized Microorganisms Hunger for Radiation

In research just published, scientists have found that microorganisms with the melanin pigment, have a natural hunger for radiation, and may be using the pigment to consume radiation in much the same way that chlorophyll converts solar radiation in plants. Organisms studied, the fungi Cryptococcus neoformans, Cladosporium sphaerospermum and Wangiella dermatitidis, all consumed high levels of ionizing radiation, resulting in exponential growth – sometimes even when they were not in a nutrient rich environment.

The ability of melanin to confer protection against radiation is well known. Melanin is responsible for our skin pigmentation, and has been found in organisms inhabiting extreme environments. Melanized microorganisms have been found in high altitudes, Arctic and Antarctic regions, and recently, colonizing the walls and surrounding soil of the damaged Chernobyl nuclear reactor. There is also fossil evidence that suggests that melanin has been around for some time, conferring protection to plants and animals.

This finding could have numerous applications. The obvious is cleaning up after radiation accidents or as a way of neutralizing spent nuclear fuel. Space travel however, could also benefit from radiation eating fungi. There's a lot of radiation out there, and the ability to convert it from something dangerous to useful could be boon for astronauts on long-haul missions. It also makes me think that all those bad B-movies, in which radiation creates monstrous goo that oozes everywhere devouring people, may not be that far off the mark.

LibriVox

LibriVox is a cool site for both the literati and the podcasters. The site's mission is the "acoustical liberation of books in the public domain." For the podcast generation, this is one great community powered project aimed at introducing books in the public domain to those who would not otherwise indulge and engage their minds. In addition to providing free audio books, the project also looks for volunteers who would like to lend their voices to the cause. If you fancy yourself an orator, love books and have some free time to spare, check out the site and volunteer.