Of Vision and National Infrastructure
It is with great interest that I have listened to the ongoing debate surrounding the development of a National Broadband network in Australia - and here I should note that I have no particular leaning to either of the major political parties. I think that both are far more driven by dogma than by national interest and the needs of the voting public.
However, the decision to build a national broadband network is the right thing to do. It is very disappointing, therefore, to hear the Liberal party question this initiative on the basis of whether or not it will make a profit. When did it become the responsibility of the Government to make a profit - particularly on national infrastructure. Today the claim is that the Government has no mandate from the Australian voting public to build such an infrastructure. Hmmm - I wonder whether any Government has ever had a specific mandate to build roads or rail networks. The national broadband is a key capability to enable effective development of Australian industry. Our current national network is archaic.
Sustainability as a Principle
I was recently pondering a range of initiatives which have been either stopped as a consequence of questions of sustainability or which were framed to achieve enhanced sustainability. In all cases that I have looked at there appears to be a strong skewing to one aspect of sustainability - the natural environment.\
As a systems thinker I have often been struck by the fact that sustainability is generally only seen in terms of the natural environment. I think there is a more holistic view of this issue of sustainability.
I believe there are three distinct aspects to sustainability:
Sustainability in terms of the natural environment
Sustainability in terms of human performance; and
Sustainability in terms of the human enterprise.
The Role of the Enterprise Architect
I recently sat in a meeting where a group of Information System architects were discussing their experiences with developing Enterprise Level architectures. During the discussion and in the period following, I have contemplated the travesty that the information technology industry has made of the concept of an Architect. During the discussion there were questions about catalogues of terms, management of repositories etc.
The intent of this brief discussion is to suggest that a focus on these things, the province of the engineer, suggests a total lack of understanding regarding what it means to be an architect.
Human Philosophy and Architectural Design
I was recently asked by an Architect what I thought I was doing as an IT geek looking at issues of building design. I tried to relate my thinking around the relationship between human behaviour, human performance, human values and the design of work and living spaces. He indicated that he felt that these things were not relevant to the design of modern office buildings. This discussion led me to ponder my own views on this question.
Several years ago I was lucky enough to go the Balkans and Wien (Vienna, Austria) for work. As I always do, I spent a great deal of time understanding the societies in which I was working. One of the questions that was high in my mind at that time was the relationship between the Medieval Christian church and the people. I was lucky enough to have several experiences that helped me understand this.
Of Accountants, Project Managers and Long Term Thinking
During the past week I was asked to sit in a value management workshop for the design of a new facility for emergency management. While sitting in the workshop I was struck by the short term viewpoints which seem to dominate our thinking as a society. As discussed elsewhere in this website, the design of new working environments needs to incorporate human considerations in its design. There is a fine balance between form and function and the need to provide work environments in which humans can act and work effectively for sustained periods of time. This is no more evident than in the context of emergency management centres where high information workloads are combined with long hours and high impact decision to create difficult working environments.
During the workshop I was struck, however, by the dominance of short term thinking which seems to dominate our present modes of thinking.
Where Will the Children Play
Last weekend I was visiting my family at Portland in Victoria. While I was there an extremely large school of tuna was passing to the South of Portland and fishermen from many miles away had come to fish for Tuna. The spectacle of the entire fishing wharf area of Portland covered in boats and boat trailers was quite a sight to see. But amidst the sight was a sad reality.
There have been questions over the total fish stock left in Australian waters for a long time. The size of the catch seemed to indicate that perhaps stocks are recovering as a result of recent initiatives. However I could not help but wonder if there was something wrong with what was happening. As boat after boat came in laden with tuna it became obvious that this school was going to be significantly depleted if not destroyed by the level of fish take. Whilst individual fisherman may observe bag limits etc, the aggregate catch was probably more than the school could bear. On Saturday evening as I watched the catch being processed by the fishermen I was informed by a council worker that they had already taken over 160 tonnes of tuna waste to the tip. And the fishing went on for several more days.
Of Dragons and Lions
In discussing some of the concepts of human thinking with a friend recently, I was drawn back to the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and the challenge of human transformation and development. One of the things that Nietzsche spoke about in "Thus Spake Zarathustra" was what he referred to as the "Three Stages of Metamorphoses".
On Being Human
So much of what we do in EcoThought revolves around understanding how to design environments to create sustainable human living environments, that I could not help but take some time out to consider what it actually means to be human.
Setting aside belief systems as a basis for defining what it means to be human, one rapidly comes to the bedrock that Descartes encountered when he coined the well known phrase "cogito ergo sum" - (I am thinking, therefore I exist). From this bedrock Descartes rebuilt his philosophy on the basis of his belief in a "perfect, all-powerful, all-knowing God". In a global society, however, where for many a belief in such a God is not a part of their existence, how do we move from this bedrock to understand what it means to be human.
Modern Business and the Online World
As a result of recent business experience, I have started to ponder whether people think email is a formal method of communication or not. All modern businesses rely on email as the basis for communicating with other companies, organisations and individuals. Traditional mail has significantly decreased in its usage, and in fact has been tagged as "snail mail" which conveys a sense that it is not capable of responding to the needs of the modern business or person.
If, however, it is so critical to modern business, then perhaps we need to be clear about what is "appropriate" behaviour in the use of email. For example, should emails be subject to a moral obligation of response (excluding spam of course)? I have encountered a number of individuals with whom I have worked over the last three years for whom ignoring an email is the standard response, particularly if replying will require some level of thinking or some action on their part. Maybe this is appropriate behaviour. If the same individual received a hard copy "snail mail" letter, would they feel more obligated to respond? Or perhaps it is just a sign of our times that ignorant behaviour is normal.
Trust and the Online Environment
This is more in the line of a hypothesis which I have been pondering.
The transmission of information between humans has been a characteristic of the human species since we began to form communities on the plains of Africa. We have developed ever more sophisticated means to transmit information between individuals, groups and generations allowing us to not only develop the tools for survival, but to make life more comfortable. This has in turn provides us, as a species, with the luxury of time to exchange esoteric ideas about subjects as broad as the origins and purpose of life, the development of meaningful existence and the role of relative moral basis for life.
Prior to the industrial revolution, these ideas were frequently spread within reasonably confined areas. The transmission of oral myths and legends were transmitted by the storytellers who shared with their audience a common set of beliefs and a largely shared worldview. From those times, right down to the industrial revolution ideas were generally shared and understood on the basis of common belief systems and worldviews. Interpretation of “scripture” for instance, was undertaken by the select few and the results proffered to a grateful community who frequently accepted said interpretation without question.
As the industrial revolution empowered the movement of people across the world, ideas were encountered that were foreign, that required deep consideration in order to understand how these new ideas impacted belief structures. A branch of specialists arose who acted as the translators between the new ideas. They provided an interpretation, and in many cases, a buffer which maintained a sense of “them and us” with respect to outside communities.
And then along came the World Wide Web. Individuals could scan ideas from anywhere in the world and integrate them into their own thinking / belief systems etc.
In recent joint civil / military exercises based on large scale disaster response scenarios, observers noted that the development of trust between representatives of culturally disparate organisations appears to be a necessary step in the development of a shared basis of action to respond to exercise situations. Behaviour such as sharing family photographs, life experiences and world views provided an opportunity for individuals to build a cultural understanding from which they could establish a sufficiently robust relationship to work through the issues and challenges associated with the scenario.
A similar behaviour may be perceived in the rise of the so called Web 2.0 phenomenon. As shown in the figure below, a range of capabilities have been developed to share information between individuals and groups. The base layer of the triangle shows examples of the types of technologies developed to share information through the transmission of hard copy media, stories and pictures.
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