Time.  Computer automation, recessions, and white collar work.  The new economy rush towards productivity continues.

>>>But until now there has been no holistic approach to networks — just efforts to make storage or servers more efficient on their own, Horn says. And though the recession has shrunk technology budgets, financial constraints often encourage this kind of enhancement to efficiency. "The biggest demand for automation often occurs in economic downturns," he says. "I can't go to a company that doesn't say, 'I need to automate. I've got to get my costs down.'"

To some extent, computers and other machines already "sweat," after two generations of automating blue-collar jobs. And technology keeps climbing the occupational ladder. Asked how firms are making money by implementing new technology, Chris Meyer says, "There is a simple answer: the automation of white-collar work." Already, travel agents and stockbrokers have seen their business eroded by online travel and trading sites. Meyer adds that as the professional-services technologies improve, other occupations — including doctors and lawyers — may join automation's hit parade.<<< [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Attacking the productivity of knowledge work is the right target, but automation is the wrong weapon. Now, more than ever, we need to be careful about the language we use to think about and talk about how productivity applies in the realm of knowledge work.

The best starting point is Doug Engelbart and his notion of augmenting human intellect. The challenge is to improve how we think about how we think and to then look for how tools, techniques, and technology can improve the outcomes.

Automation is the wrong concept on two grounds, at least. First, automation contains the notion that our goal is substitution of technology for people. While these opportunities do exist, they aren't the most important ones. Moreover, when you think in terms of automation, the result is such horrors as the mindless scripting of call center interactions. That's a poor strategy for improving productivity in the long term no matter what the short-term payoffs.

Second, thinking in terms of automation shifts attention away from the highest value-adding opportunities. These come from thinking hard about how technology can be used to redefine the task in ways that leverage the distinct strengths of both people and technology. If you don't take the time to do that thinking--if you apply technology as an automater that can be substituted for human thinking--you risk doing what my old friend Benn Konsynski used to call "speeding up the mess"

5:37:49 PM •  • comment  

Darwin Award. This may seem a bit off-topic, but it isn't: we need to be clear about the difference between real venalities and gargantuan cluelessness. What Eisner, Rosen and Valenti want to do to the Net verges on the satanic. What Knight-Ridder did to their their papers' Web sites, including all their journalists' blogs, was just flat-out fucking clueless. It deserves a corporate Darwin Award. [Doc Searls Weblog]

The scariest part is that it is particularly hard to kill an organism without a so the more clueless the organization the more resilient it is likely to be.

3:50:15 PM •  • comment  

Most CRM systems help you capture data about customers. Few help you move that data up the quality scale to information, and knowledge. So I don't know how far this thread will take you.  

Personally, I'm all for Ignorance Management.

[a klog apart]

Let's hear it for ignorance management!

1:52:11 PM •  • comment  

Onramps, offramps, Groove, and blogs. Jeroen Bekkers demonstrates that the membrane separating blogspace from groovespace is already more permeable than you might think: ... [Jon's Radio]

Time to go back and take another look at Groove. I was briefly part of the tail-end of their original beta-process (along with lots of others). At the time, Groove was intriguing but too resource intensive unless your workgroup had lots of bandwidth. I've heard that has improved substantially.

Jon also has several interesting notions that I need to dig into, such as "horizon of observability"

1:44:14 PM •  • comment  

Radio: A Personal KM Tool.

As a follow-up to the last post about personal KM challenges, I thought I'd share this e-mail I wrote to the TechnoLawyer list several weeks ago. (It still hasn't been distributed to the list for some reason, so at least now it has a home.) Might help some out there who are reading these blogs but not using the software understand why some of us are so excited by the possibilities.

Keep in mind that this is just one piece of what programs like Radio do for us, but it's certainly a big piece.

[tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog]

Rick's email is a very nice summary of Radio as a personal knowledge management tool.

1:36:45 PM •  • comment  

DanB at 10:49 AM [url]:

More from Kevin Marks

Reacting to a variety of blogs pointing to him (including my post below), Kevin Marks has lots more to say about connectivity and how networks should be architected. He points to Stuart Cheshire's "Laws of Network Dynamics" which make interesting reading. Stuart gives many examples of when "optimizing" a network for a particular purpose you get a worse network.
[SATN.org: Comments from Frankston, Reed, and Friends]

A couple of good resources on how networks and connectivity decisions matter. The subtext is if you don't understand how the technology works you are at the mercy of those who do. Moreover, those who do understand rarely have your interests in mind.

11:39:45 AM •  • comment