Dan Gillmor points to an article by John Gilmore which outlines the absurdity of copy protection schemes in hardware. I was amazed at some of the examples he came up with. Certainly not unthinkable scenarios if any of the proposed legislation actually becomes law.

Then it hit me.  I live in Holland. US laws don't apply. We make computers here too.    [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]

Hey, the weather in Holland is much nicer than Texas, isn't it? This is part of the USG's attempt to destroy next gen tech dev in the US. Between bans on cloning and potential mandatory DRM, we are poised to kill the golden goose. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Check out the Gilmore link in particular. Then ask what it is about large organizations (Intel, MPAA, etc) that causes them to be so completely disconnected from the real world.  This is not a rhetorical question. Large, powerful, organizations all seem to run into this phenomenon of perceiving the world as they would like it to be rather than as it is. Most troubling, they cannot seem to grasp the feedback loops between what they wish for and the trouble they create for themselves (not to mention the rest of us) when they appear to get it.

8:39:27 PM •  • comment  

The Economics of Information Goods. "Information Rules" (1999, Harvard Business Press, $29.95) was written at the height of the dotcom craze as an antidote to the IT industry's hyperbolic declarations and muddled thinking. Clearly, not enough people read it. Authors Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian, distinguished professors in both economics and business at Berkeley, set forth the key economic principles that underpin the exchange of information goods. This is a not a dense economics text however. It is a practical guide to the information economy written for the business leaders and MBA graduates who were to revolutionize society. As such they use clear examples, short sentences and small words. [kuro5hin.org]

Information Rules has to be one of the half-dozen books on your must-read list if you're interested in information and knowledge based business issues. This is the first part of an extended review of the book that is also worth the time.

10:23:06 AM •  • comment  

Tacit knowledge and software usability. I spent some more time last night sorting out my friend Larry's weblog. He's a psychologist who specializes in Asperger's Syndrome. Larry's really interested in open-sourcing his ideas and would eventually be an ideal candidate to run a Radio Community Server that would be a knowledge exchange for the AS community of interest. So I've been watching his experience with Radio very closely. ... [Jon's Radio]

It's hard to comment on Jon's materials because, as usual, he's spot on. Here's an extended reflection on the tacit knowledge that goes into using all software effectively. Current marketing practices focus so much on "out-of-the-box" experience that they obscure the tremendous importance of tacit knowledge in using any tools. software included, effectively.

Apprenticeship works. That's the fundamental truth underneath communities of practice. Etienne Wenger and Jean Lave have demonstrated this powerfully in their work at IRL, which is well documented (Situated Learning , Communities of Practice, and Cultivating Communities of Practice). It works because it appears to be one of the most effective ways to unlock tacit knowledge.

Technology skill appears to be about explicit knowledge, yet is no more so than any other area of skill. Using technology effectively depends thoroughly on tacit knowledge accreted over time.

Why don't more organizations pair up technologists and business thinkers? For one thing, it can be a painful experience for both parties. We actually followed a strategy along these lines at DiamondCluster. We would staff strategy projects with both a regular business strategist and a technology architect. Moreover, we did not set one in charge of the other, but kept them as co-equals (easier said than done of course). Our most effective results came from those partnerships that were forged, precisely because it forced the two to begin to unpack their tacit knowledge.  We also had our share of partnerships between techie and strategist that crashed and burned.

Here, though, I'm thinking of a slightly different partnership. One of two knowledge workers paired to improve their overall capacity for knowledge work by apprenticing to each other.  The key is that the pair must see the pairing as an opportunity both to improve immediate performance and to learn.

10:18:18 AM •  • comment