Law is basically managing information

In the past few years I have come to develop a strong sense that the practice of law is basically an act of managing information....(click here for full text of this post)...

[Ernie the Attorney]

An interesting review of technology and law from the trenches. Law is a curious example of knowledge work because it is craft work that essentially has skipped over the industrial revolution directly into the knowledge economy. Meanwhile, most of the default thinking about the application of technology to work has been rooted in an industrial model. Little wonder that the average lawyer can't see the connection. There isn't one that makes any sense in an industrial model.

The kinds of technology uses that do add value to legal work are the same kinds of uses that will add value to any other kind of knowledge work. Notice that the value gets added around the core process, not in the core process. Knowledge work processes are too simple to benefit from the kinds of reengineering uses of technology that make sense for industrial model processes. You need to target aspects of the craft work where information management does help.

Essentially you need to follow a strategy of augmentation instead of automation. The best place to start looking at augmentation strategies would still have to be Doug Engelbart's work. The Bootstrap Institute would be the starting point. His AUGMENTING HUMAN INTELLECT: A Conceptual Framework is still worth reading.

9:34:29 PM •  • comment  

Where's the Beef in Web Services?

You're reading it.  It's personal publishing.  Web Services are being used to reinvent the world of personal publishing.  What is personal publishing good for?  Knowledge management, small business, news publishing, and much more.  A combination of markets worth a boatload of money (personal Web publishing can even take a bite out of the $8 b a year Microsoft makes from Word sales).  In addition to the potential opportunity, personal publishing is a sexy use of Web Services that provides immediate, tangible results. 

So why don't journalists cover it?  Advertising dollars.  The big company's going after Web Services are spending lots of money on advertising to promote their view of Web Services (their view is that Web Services are best used to build corporate infrastructure).  These ads are placed in magazines that write articles that promote Web Services as they see them.  Given the current downturn in advertising, the news organizations are doing what a businesses do:  they are following the money.  The analysts at the big research firms (Gartner and Forrester) are following the money too (45% of research firm revenues are from technology vendors).  All their reports follow the party line on this. 

What does the personal Web publishing market get in terms of coverage?  Stories about weblogs that equate them with CB Radios.  Essentially crap.  No stories about the innovations made, the lives changed, the business launched, and the fun experienced using these new products.  There is a whole new layer of the Web being built today that will change the lives of half a billion Web users in the next decade. 

Personal publishing deserves respect.  It deserves decent coverage by an objective press not dismissive of small companies with big aspirations.  Here's the beef in Web Services. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

All true - but now we can route around the ignorance the same way that the internet can route around an outage. When the PC started being used inside organizations it was largely ignored as well. The power structure is always blind to grassroots phenomena; that's what gives them time to take root.

I would just as soon let the power structure miss the point for a while longer. What is going on now is fundamentally subversive, as Dave Weinberger has been arguing for a long time. Let's be mindful about how and when we trigger corporate immune responses. We want to reach a healthy symbiotic partnership not kill the organism or ourselves. The question is not where's the beef so much as when do we want "them" to get it.

9:12:47 PM •  • comment