Models and Actuals

Last week I read 2nd Machine Age, which pointed out that Moore’s Law, that computing power per cost doubles approximately every 18 months and has been chugging along for 60 years, is not a law, but the sum of thousands of heroic breakthroughs, a lot of people doing good work. Every time some theoretically imposed boundary was reached, someone else would come up with a different solution, eventually improving chips, architecture, software, communication and other workarounds to maintain the progress of that “law.”

There have been numerous opinion pieces announcing the end of Moore’s Law for every impending reason, mostly from people who didn’t understand ESR’s Linus’ Law,  that “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”

I was thinking about that as I was reading some analytrash about the end of prosperity. Seems to me that there is a whole class of mumblers who create their place and prestige by predicting, “You’re gonna drop it!”

That’s not a bad prediction, because once the ball is in the air, one of two things is going to happen, and if the ball is caught, who’s going to remember the prediction? Fans care about accomplishment.

It’s also a good bet that the predictors shouting “You’re gonna drop it!” are not the ones sprinting to make the catch, so I guess it’s their best contribution.

What bothers me is the “woe is we” troupers often seem to be backing themselves into positions of political power in a variety of organizations, with truly embarrassing results.

I read someplace that one of the precursors of the Renaissance was the Black Death, which killed a third of the European population, largely in the populated centers of power, which opened up a lot of positions that were filled by people too inexperienced to know who couldn’t succeed.

Success is not some overarching trend. It’s a group of people who find a way to create value in a specific situation. As much as those in authority would like to control success, that is not their function. Or it shouldn’t be anyway.

Dune Leadership Lessons. FTW!

One True Expert

David Weinberger is one of my heroes. He was one of the four who wrote The Cluetrain Manifesto, which laid out the “why” of social media. He has a hot blog The Journal of Heuristic Organizations (JOHO), and he has a new book, Too Big To Know, one of several recent books defining how information, education, learning, and society are being changed by the hyperlink.

I really like David because he writes about important ideas and makes them useful in many ways. As you can see from that hyperlink hyperlink, he can be a bit of a smartass, meaning he finds shareable humor everywhere he goes. What would you expect from a guy who was a writer for Woody Allen?

Over the weekend, I enjoyed a 58 minute video, Authors @ Google: David Weinberger (Thanks Google!) where David explains parts of his new book. It was a two pages of notes presentation, which means I got a lot of value per minute. This is new thinking, not sit back entertainment, so I wrote the ideas, so I could think about them later.

I think a lot about models, (Reality is too complex to parse in real time, models are simplified versions of reality. Don’t confuse the model with the reality), so one of the best bits in the video was the platypus. 

After we noticed animal-vegetable-mineral, scientists set up an organizing system, or taxonomy, so they would know where things fit in relation to each other, and why a tomato is a fruit.

The platypus didn't fit the classification requirements of the taxonomy, so the most common solution was the platypus couldn't exist. Wonder who told the platypus' mother? 

Taxonomies are a way to put everything in their one right place. That is important if you're filing your data in libraries and books. The one right place no longer matters in a hyperlinked world. Louie, Louie shows up on every rock playlist without being diminished.

Building on how hyperlinks change single point filing methodologies, Weinberger then notes the value of having one true expert. 

Since knowledge is so hard to find, let’s certify specialists in specific disciplines, so we can ask them the hard questions and get a quick answer. What we notice next is one expert is an authority, two experts is a disagreement. The hyperlinked world allows anyone who cares to look at the original data, and I find the experts usually recommend a suboptimal solution for my need.

Now that hyperlinks let each of us look at the original material, finding and understanding what we need is different than relying on the one true expert. And that is why hyperlinks have changed our world.

Your thoughts?

Please join us 6 pm, March 13^th, at the Capital Technology Management Hub, where Sales Lab’s Jack Gates presents Rainmaker 12, Lessons from Makers, followed by the featured CTMH Presentation, Sales Lab’s Dick Davies speaking about The Direct Economy, How to Profit from The Most Lucrative Market in the History of the World!