The Hall of Awesomeness

No.  Why not?  In my limited experience there comes a time when you have to make choices that will benefit the corporation and hurt people.  You can only go so far before you will be required to sell your soul to get ahead.   There might come a time when the organisation is ‘restructuring’ or ‘changing direction’ and guess who they call on as the toe cutter?   Your choice?  To keep your job, you have to tell them who to get rid of.  One person I know once had to sack a group of people, one who was a good friend and dying of cancer, because shareholders didn’t have enough money.   It takes a lack of heart to do things like that, and a small piece of you dies when you do it.

Call it corporate objectives, call it ‘profit’, call it what you like, but the minute you put money and the corporation ahead of human decency you have sold your soul to the corporation and you have become it’s property.  Just wait until the wheel turns and it’s your turn to be crushed into powder.

There is a dog, a proud member of the canine species called the Chihuahua.  Some of the uneducated call these wonderful creatures, ‘rats’ or some such pejorative, which portrays the Chihuahua as ugly or evil.  There are big raggedy dogs, loyal but stupid, that most people cling to as if they were Lassie or a member of the four-legged elite.  They lick you and jump around as if they can’t work out you are right in front of them and to a certain extent they are lovable..two full stops here! Yet there is only one Chihuahua.  This breed stands as the most wonderful and loyal of all companions a man or woman could have.

I remember a dog that was in our family, owned by the most annoying of all relatives, that was large, ungainly, smelly and loud.  When you saw him for the first time in a while, he would rush at you wagging his tremendous tail, knocking over vases, cups, small children and whatever stood in reasonable distance.  He was clumsy and would overpower you with his weight for that bizarre licking ritual that big dogs like so much.  When that happened you would wind up being covered in saliva, waving your arms about like a helpless moron and wondering why you made the journey to said relatives place in any case.  To say that big dogs are ugly and annoying is not fair because you can’t blame the dog for its form. You just have to except it.  And yes, a big dog is very loyal  (Loyalty, a quality absent from most organisations and sadly from most people) but the Chihuahua offers more than any of the other species of dog.

You could be under attack by a swooping bird (and I have been many times) or a Doberman and at the risk of all that is reasonable or even ‘worth it’ for most dogs, your Chihuahua would come running at the speed of light to ‘save’ you from the would-be assailant.   I remember once that my late Chihuahua attacked a dog at least twenty times his size, only to be picked up in the bigger dogs mouth and spat out, simply because he felt his owner was threatened.  When my first child was brought home, he sat there faithful watching over to make sure nobody could come near her, he was her ‘protector’.  Such is their loyalty, they will defend you and be there no matter what, even if it means their own hide.

Many years ago I used to have the privilege of visiting a farm for horse riding.  I was very lucky considering that people in my socio-economic class were lucky to even see a horse let alone sit on one.  I remember that the lady, a close friend of my mothers, had a little Chihuahua named ‘Garlic’.  A horse was taken by this little dog and thought it a novelty and placed its giant nose over the dog to see what it was.  I was surprised when the small, three-kilogram, dog jumped up and bit the horse squarely on the nose.  The horse was so shocked that it took two steps backward in utter dismay at the small creature that had dared to bite him.  Not only is the Chihuahua loyal, but they have attitude.  Most dogs are dumb, sad to say, and will run around chasing Frisbees or copulating with anything that looks even remotely doable.  A Chihuahua, despite the relative size of its brain, is cunning. You only need to realise that they can make you believe that it’s your fault for biting a horse, that you know this to be true.  If the little dog could speak it would have said,

‘I’m sorry but what the hell was the horse doing near me anyway, this is my space not his!’

Another thing a Chihuahua brings to a relationship is a sense of knowing which assholes not to let into your life.  They are excellent at detecting people of poor character.  I remember one time my aforementioned dog (may God rest his soul), would constantly attack a woman that would visit.  For no reason in particular, he would launch and begin biting her furiously[1].  My wife and I were left with no idea as to the reason for this violence. (Perhaps she wore a scent that made him think). Then a few years later, through the grapevine, we found out that she had abandoned her husband and taken to sleeping around with more than one person, and left him largely in the lurch with a small child they shared custody of.  Our dog knew she was a slut long before we did!  Incredible to think that a beast, no taller than a workman’s boot, can sense evil when it sees’s it.  This was not a singular affair either, it was on many an occasion.  One time we had to work hard to get rid of the problematic person but we eventually did it, long after my little Chihuahua had passed on. Yes, I have lost even more friends because my dog didn’t like a particular person and to this end it has always worked out for the best.

The final and most important part of having a Chihuahua is the love they offer in return for your companionship.  You will have friends that will dessert you, your dumbass relatives will fight with you but no matter what you do to your poor little Chihuahua, they will never leave your side.  You could be engulfed in flames or dying on a floor from a gunshot wound and your dog would defend you and sit there beside you.  You could hit the dog with a rolled up newspaper and they would forgive you, almost instantly, because they know what loyalty means.  Most people I have had the displeasure of spending time with, want something from me and aren’t interested in me or what I have to say.  It’s not about companionship, loyalty or friendship with most people, it’s about what’s in it for them.  With a Chihuahua they ask for your trust, love and companionship right to the very end of their short, meaningful little lives.  Their eyes never betray you for an instant, they never really have a secret plan to steal your job, or go behind your back to take something from you because they love you, unconditionally.

They never ask you for money or take advantage of you, sure they might steal your pillow or your seat when you rise to grab a coffee or to go the toilet, sure they are cunning, but that’s part of their spirit and I like that.  They don’t want to borrow or beg, unless of course ham is involved.  They need us and we them and put simply that’s why the Chihuahua is a wonderful dog: they exemplify what a dog should be… a true companion.

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[1] Now I should point out at this stage that the dog didn’t actually bite her, he was merely offering a warning by gumming her.  Although on at least one occasion he made her bleed.

Recent articles like this one and this news article raise a very important point about file sharing.  Namely, that people like my good self you are interested new internet business models based on file sharing: are asshats.  In particular, we are thieving, stealing asshats.  Without once again dragging up the rhetoric surrounding this debate let me quote noted singer James Blunt:

“The music business is made up of thousands of jobbing musicians, producers, mixers and engineers creating and shaping popular music and culture, but illegal file-sharing is cutting off the income from their work. Without the revenue from established artists, record labels cannot fund emerging musicians.” Quote taken from here.

I do not wish to argue the case here except to say this: What a load of crap.  The music business is made of layers of people who never make real money and hardly any of them actually get paid.  This has turned me off buying any more music from a mindless twat like James Blunt.  Mind you, I never listened to that soppy crap anyway (I hate that song… prefer Weird Al’s version).  This is what annoys me about his statement: as if he cares.  He is a superstar and does not represent musicians in general.  You want to see the people he is talking about?  Go to the places where these emerging artists are?  Well and truly before piracy artists where getting reamed up the pipes by industry.  Long before, LONG BEFORE Lars Ulrich put another million dollars in the bank.  Heres my key point:

Making music for a living is not a right, it’s a privilege.

You know why?  Most people who write songs, paint paintings, write novels make no money.  James Blunts of this world are far and few between (less than 0.0001% I would argue).  Even the people who appear on independent radio stations make little or no money from their art.  Is this because of piracy?  No, it’s because the industry has extremely high barriers to entry and high competition.  In essence, it’s the perfect business model.  You don’t have to create new talent often, just find a hit from the cream of the crop to support all your failures and presto!  You have a business model.  It reminds me of something I read about the death of the midlist… but that’s another post.

So why did file sharing make me who I am?  Almost all of the papers I read to do my PhD were given to me by others, or shared with me.  Programs I needed but couldn’t afford and so on and so on.   I could have done none of this without file sharing.  But that aside, there is a key element in file sharing that made me who I am and it can be summed up by this word: sharing.  The fundamental human trait that those who are successful fail to remember.  Your fans are paying for your mansions, your clothes, your cars and that ridiculous haircut.  They like your music and pay for it to support you.  In droves!  So why are you turning on them?  Don’t you already have enough?  Emerging artists?  If you believe so much that it’s hurting them why not go and find them and help them by introducing them to your friends in the record industry? In 1960 there was a very high barrier to get in, was this because we listened to the radio?  Bullshit!

In closing my argument (if you can call it that) let me add that file sharing isn’t the real issue.  The issue is: finally we may have an opportunity to create balance in an industry that is horribly one-sided and over compensates popular artists more than any other.  This is critically unfair and needs to change.

I recently took a little time out to see District 9.  Now, I am slow when it comes to the latest trends and usually miss things because I am too busy with my head up my ass (or some equivalent).  Usually I don’t recommend movies because my taste is incredibly different than most.  For instance, I liked the Adventures of Ford Fairlane when I was a kid.  I refuse to watch it now because it may suck.  That said, District 9 is a movie you have to see to believe.  The main reason I liked it so much was not really the social commentary or the special effects but this:  I couldn’t guess what would happen next.

I always spoil movies because I make statements like, ‘you know what’s going to happen…’ then add what I think… and it’s usually right.  I’m no genius, it’s just movies are so predictable these days because filmmakers and movie studios are too focused on audiences and familiarity instead.  Other movies like this are: Blue Velvet, Weekend (Godards one) and to a lesser extent the Usual Suspects.   I love a movie that surprises me!

I think that every now and then that someone comes along who is what we might call a ‘thorny’ character. De Soto, might be put in that class by some people but for me… I admire his practical attitudes and courage, even though I may not agree 100% with his politicals. I would urge you to watch this… there are some interesting points made about global politics and the way in which we can make a difference. That and you can learn about this interesting man.

My faculty is going through a movement.  Yes that kind of movement.  They are looking for ways to get rid of the information systems discipline. This got me thinking… how can we have business without systems?

The picture above is Hal – the AI from 2001 – A Apace Odyssey.  As a young (at heart) information systems lecturer, I have always felt marginal.  It was like the management and business people knew they needed us, but couldn’t see the point.  The IS (information systems) area has been in steady decline in most regional non-big city areas since about 2002 and indeed with the exception of a few big IS centres, it remains to be seen what the future of IS holds.  As for me, I may be found *coughs* “surplus to requirements”.  What a horrible HR phrase that is!  In short, I might be in line to “get the arse”.

To be “surplus” as I call it, means that you are no longer required, not needed.  Kaput.  I remember when Operations Research died and became IS (actually I don’t – it was relayed to me by retired people) in Australia, and I remember thinking about how I needed to escape the fringe ‘sub-disciplines’ of the business school.  Herein lies the core of my problem, systems are not sub-disciplines.  They are not even fringe, they are core and essentially to business strategy.  It took me a long time to realise that and herein is the issue: the IT enterprise does not have what it takes to make for good business strategy.  IT people generally are not exposed to management strategy until they become managers.   Programmers are not very good leaders… although I have met many that are. I digress.

The re-imagining process

When something fails or goes to the poop factory like IS has, the thing to think about is why?  Why has there been a steady decline?   My view is that people need it, but because technology has so masterfully woven into the discipline by academics they have accidently wedded the discipline to technology.  What a tragic mistake that was.  Why do that?  Technology changes, is superceded and moves on.  IS should be about themes, concepts and meaningful things that are useful in any application.  Not simply a subset of business or IT… but a set of concrete ideas that are useful in many areas.  And herein lies the problem: IS never formed a coherent body of thought outside of technology.   We got as far as the technology acceptance model – they we set up camp at MISQ and realised this is it, we have made it.  The problem?  Our discipline had promise, it had themes, now it’s a bad joke based on old concepts that have been stolen back by management scholars and IT people.  What I am saying here doesn’t even matter because I could argue about why the IS school is miles apart from IT.  I could.  But, if you don’t already understand what I am saying and it’s not obvious then we as scholars have failed.  Yes we have failed, just like e-commerce models from 1998, FAILED! So I have decided to re-imagine systems in my own world and think about what IS means to me.

IS is a core body of ideas centred around information and it’s purposeful use in a wholistic way.  It captures: systems thinking, information flow, data resources and most importantly how to solve problems for humans by humans with technology.   It’s about humanising IT (hat tip: Richard and Tristan).  It’s not software engineering, it’s not information technology, it’s not business process management.  IS, is simply put the human and social and technical systems and how they cohrently form to make wholes and why that is important.  Yes, IS is about people, activity and lastly technology and how the intertwine.   Now let’s throw that away, it’s dead.

What would we have if we could have anything?

Firstly, a set of ideas not tied to technology.  So we have to ditch the word ‘systems’.  It’s BS anyway, and too many people think systems = computers.  I no longer have the energy to point them to Senge, Churchman, Ackoff, Checkland, Mingers, Jackson and many MANY others to prove my point.  You win, it’s your word.   What about the idea of information?  No, this too is too commonly associated with computers.   The core idea is that people solving problems and acting in a strategic way (without the implications of studying strategy from the dominant finance point of view), thus it has an applied pragmatic focus.  The phrase ‘problem solving’ has been stolen by educators so we can’t even use that, people almost always bring up the staircase and that makes me violently ill.  No no –> we need a new concept.  Hmm.

I have it, let’s take the four core concepts and see what we can make:

1. Information flow

2. Systems Thinking

3. Human Activity

4. Problem Solving/Design/etc etc etc etc (probably should be IFSTHAPSEEE)

How about ‘ISHP’ (note: this is a working title perhaps SHIP?).  So that way we could borrow from arts, management, science technology and design science disciplines and NOT have to make it about technology. That way we could study how people form social groups and if they use technology great!  So scholars in this field (ISHP scholars) focus on how systems thinking impacts human activity problem solving and how that in turn impacts on the way information moves around an organisation.  THEN once we have established ISHP as a theoretical framework for analysising and synthesising human problems (not computer ones) and how they solve them we introduce technology as a byword.  That way, we are always relevant and always interesting because we have new and useful ideas all the time about stuff that matters.  You could tell a colleague, ‘ISHP’ do you want to look at how the global economic crisis emerged and what can be done?  Then talk to ISHPs… they know, they know it all, because they know how to synthesise information for forge new interactions with the world and they know how to make NEW knowledge that works.  Oh yeah, ISHP it’s the BOMB.

ISHP Faculty

We could have a faculty with social psychologists, next to education people, next to problem solving experts, next to HR people, next to mad scientists and designers!  Imagine what we could achieve if we put technology into the background and focused on themes.  We could create a transdisiplinary environment of scholars who create new concepts from their disciplines,  it would really work well.   ISHP is a discipline where we focus on key issues to do with people, places and things… from a strategic/systems level NOT from a granular.     In theory, we could not publish in each others journals informing people of new ideas and concepts around social groups, explaining emerging phenomena from a comprehensive ‘systems’ perspective.  We could leave the mining up to the management scholars, accountants, and like-minded disciplinarians.  I want a department where we can collaborate on each others projects to create new ‘meta’ knowledge without those disciplinary constraints.

ISHP the future?

I doubt that, but to survive IS needs to be reimagined.   It’s way too scrugged (a word meaning ‘shotgun’ approach to concepts – blast you in the face with a whole heap of stuff with no depth) at the moment.  Thoughts?

Recently I was handed what is probably the most disturbing news I have heard since someone I know died.  You are ‘surplus to requirements’.  Well, it’s not official yet … it may never be official.  You see, I am part of a Business School that has no place for Information Systems people anymore.  They have told us that they will be ‘discontinuing us’.  Shoving us off, moving us away and so forth.  Is it a crisis or an opportunity?  A failure or the seeds of success?  I can’t tell.  What I do know is that I am thinking dark thoughts and reflecting on what is to date twelve years of my life (two more if you include the year I did at TAFE and in the other university up the road) in the discipline of information systems.  IS is dead IS is DEAD LONG LIVE IS!

Instead of offering a scowl, which I am entitled, I felt I should reflect on the key thing that IS failed to do over the last decade.  It failed to be what other people wanted it to be.  It failed to present coherence because systems thinking is the search for comprehensiveness and complexity which the micro-managing dot finders in management schools are typically trying to find, is not coherent.  This causes this, they say, that causes that they say.  Bullshit, I cry, nevertheless it falls on the hardest of ears.  The sound of my own voice reverberates back to me, ‘We can’t just analyse, we need to ‘synthesise’ because drilling down only works sometimes (Hat tip: Dewey and Rorty).   Why do we need ‘systems’ anyway?  Why do we need ‘systems’ thinking?  What a steaming load, you say, that’s academery of the worst kind.  Looking for comprehensive, complex explainations of things, instead of simple cause and effect (WMD).  Honestly!

Instead of quoting an endless stream of scholars from Europe (Checkland, Ulrich, Jackson, Flood, Mingers, Stacey) and the United States (Ackoff, Churchman, Senge) I will say this: What a shame that Australia is still trying to be like everyone else and ignoring it’s own ecclectism.   In essence these things are now: surplus to requirements.  They don’t fit in the conception of business education anymore, even though I believe they should.  No doubt, we will see the next edition of Harvard Business Review or MIT Sloan waxing lyrical about ‘mobile technologies’ or ‘complex problem solving’ but they won’t be from my neck of the woods because it’s being chopped down!

In ending this short reflection, I am reminded of my own position in the university system and my right to express my feelings about it.  It’s failing.  Badly.  My parting shot is this:  You cannot have business without an understanding of systems, and you cannot have systems without an understanding of business.

I read Techdirt as do thousands of other people and recently they were discussing this ruling.  I am wondering about PR at a time like this when I too have become a victim of managerial-ness where I work (that’s another story).  I would have thought that even though people have strong opinions about downloading music and file sharing that surely it wouldn’t come to this.  What about testing the means?  What about sussing out a process by which to identify lost income?  The latter would support the premise that there is no lost revenue, no way no how.

I find my self agreeing with the post above about legal counsel.  Having watched an organisation I am involved with go through a legal battle of it’s own to take something that is rightfully theres, I have to say without a shadow of a doubt, it’s a long drawn out painful process.  In situations like these nobody wins.  It’s lose-lose.  The PR for the record industry falls through the floor and it does nothing to solve the mutual problem of connecting new fans who are accustomed to file sharing with newer ideas about the businesses.  Yet, in this we have to mindful that as Kuhn told us, when one paradigm shifts and moves, it has to recreate itself to emerge anew!

The record industry, for the sake of it’s own PR needs to find it’s innovation capacity.  Instead of suing everyone and hoping we will eventually retreat to the CD store to buy music again, they need to reframe this issues so the emerging users needs are met.  Otherwise, this situation will continue to plague us for years and it won’t be the last time we hear about such strange behaviour.  To me, the best answer it always a new interpretation, not the same old same old.  Do you have an opinion?