Author: Maverisk

IoT starts at the right end

of the products scale. As in #5 of this post.
#1 would be no surprise, by the way.

And, I’d also not be surprised when you(r company) haven’t considered similar changes. Isn’t IoT something that would not touch your business for decades to come, until you’re blown off the market in lees than five years; either by doing something stupid which you could always do, even today, or by some competitor that has dreamt up some game changer in their garage already yesterday ..? Go ahead and sleep ’till you’re no more. Change isn’t painless, sitting still is. Or isn’t it sleep, just being burnt out (as a company) (link in Dutch) ..?

I’ll leave you with this:
20140917_092605[1]
[At The Factory, indeed, Utrecht]

Short note: Büro muss sein

Yet again, there was clarification re the demise of organizational culture … into totalitarian bureaucracy, greenwashed in ‘modernity, coolness and hipness’ with some doublespeak / newspeak and beards.(in Dutch >:-|):

Which would be nothing new for you if only you had been reading up on this blog over the past year…

But you didn’t, and maybe I can’t blame you – despite wanting to.
To add to the above, it seems to have escaped many that in the Netherlands, there is no such thing as ‘working’. Oh well, a few underlings do that, apparently. But the masses, and us the elite (quod non), rather dabble in ‘managing’ and ‘leading’ to the extent feasible without being accountable for anything. Because the anything will be failure, and we know that, but just don’t want it to happen on our watch après nous le Déluge. Whereas worker time is preferably continuous without disturbance in particular not with useless meetings, manager time is meetings. Meetings is ‘work’. Hence, to work really hard, one has to meet really hard. All the time. And since there would be a danger in doing anything useful during those meetings, like having accountability shoved onto one, one would rather just demonstrate to be really good at managing, i.e., meeting. Through not doing anything useful in them… A modern manager’s job description is to have meetings, isn’t it ..?

Alas, this will mean totalitarian bureaucracy will reign, where following procedure is far more importanter than doing any work. Meeting procedure in particular.
Whereas we would want:

But as long as the managers have it, rules will rule and being effective is a threat to the status quo that benefits the ones who can only perfect their being bureacrat also to prevent being found out about incompetence to do anything useful. It is just collateral damage that this blocks you from doing the best you can, and also all new flex work from home (Why? Why not a tropical beach?) schemes can not be made to work (sic), as the ones who would let us (not: lead us..!), lose too much by letting us.

This story to be continued…

[Edited to add:

  • BTW 1: Don’t take me for a misanthropist on this issue; I really do expect an Age of Aquarius breakthrough after IoT has delivered the Singularity
  • BTW 2: The above, isn’t new. My brain reminded me of this masterpiece of masterpieces, to be read nay studied in its full, 2-part/volume extent.]

[Edited to add, too, two data points in this here blog post that bear out my idea(s), big if you could call them that.]

Players, sides, too many – where’s the (over)view?

Apart from the #ditchcyber aspects, in the (sometimes somewhat sportsy, even) battle about control, or is it temporary one-upmanship, over the world’s communications, so many parties play a role, in such varying sizes, and operating for so many sides, sometimes multiple sides at the same time, sometimes without even knowing that, with the interactions playing at various topics and levels of abstraction and with varying scopes, time horizons, strategies and plans (quality), I could really do with some clarity. Some mapping, interactive or not.
Which all was triggered by this post on yet another singleton developer taking on, inactively!, some well-funded TLA.

Will have to dive into the detail of it all, but know that I’ll end up losing the helicopter view. How many similar developments are out there, known or not? What stages of development, of deployment, of maturity, of starting to crack and leak are they all ..? It’s a hard life, this keeping up thing.

Hence, you deserve:
DSCN8926[As if moulded by a genetic algorithm, Porto]

Steve and Tim went up the hill…

Aren’t recent developments around, through, by the brand just an amusing (?) sign of the times – the times being the same as ever: A (single?) sinus wave (or multiple smaller ones, stacked on a larger one (bigger wavelength and amplitude); wavelets sales) –, as in this piece and this one ..?

As the latter quotes: “This is not [irrelevant reference to a musicological drama; ed.], and should instead be remembered primarily as a monumental blunder by the tech industry.”
to which:

But the details aside, why didn’t many enough see this coming? Why did anyone expect continued excellence from any company, in particular one so hyped, so turned into a dangerous cult already ..? Whereas so far, every co has demonstrated to have a serious Best Before / use By / Sell By issue. Except the rare exceptions, noted for the exceptionality.
As in:

Adn also don’t forget these twelve wineries… Yes some are so common and/or famed still that you wouldn’t think they’d be so old and still be in the same line of business… [Thanks Wine Turtle for the post]

So, the expectance that something(s; probably multiple, of varying error sizes and (distinct) impacts) might go wrong in any near future, would have had to be raised already, and rise still further. Note that through fuzzy logic, this isn’t offset I think by lowered probabilities of doing things well…! This is just how fuzzy (business) logic works, sometimes…
[Edited to add: And then we find this… Strangely not built into the corp system]

So, Steve and Tim went up the hill to have their little fun, then Tim forgot by taking the blue pill and now…

DSCN2435[What a once great name … Reims. Yeah, look it up, I’m not going to spell it out for you]

Errrm, how to brick your car/office…

Though it was inevitable, this has arrived. The FourSixteen. Details and official pics here.
Which is of course all good; especially for the trickle down from the insane yet moneyed (re: the price tag) – note that I don’t mention ‘wealthy’ as that would refer to cultural development or common ethics and decency, that anyone seriously looking into this vehicle wouldn’t have – to the shop workers and onwards.

But in these Maker times … How would one go about modding one’s Prius ..? And how would one call a less-than-successful job at that? Bricking your ride..?

Anyway, totally (un)related, I’ll leave you with your mobile office:
20140917_144502[1]
[Yes it does have an office work bench for you. And wifi, once you plug in (??) a router]

Note (bank-, bankable); ICYMI

Hmmmmm… Who would be able to mine the easy pickings already, in the Bitcoin world ..? Who has sufficient resources, old-money wise and miners wise ..?

As the firsts through the gate may gain an insurmountable head start at the game of the future. Also, re this on the as yet ill-understood, hardly visible / overseeable spin-off world. DACs are just one part. When incumbent countries’ / nations’ and supra-governments find themselves competing not only with each other but also with anon societies existing virtually (non-geographically – though in the end, physical servers will have to be somewhere), will the latter be re-invented like wheels, with or without preventing the failures of history …?

Since it will be very interesting, sociologically, but still years away (I think…), this:
??????????[Guess where. Netherlands]

Balloons, for joy and instruction

Anyone having an inkling of what the Second-Biggest G is about, knows about their conferences, about their ‘magic’ quadrants (despite the debunking of late; apparently one could pay oneself to the top right…), and about their infamous Hype cycle.

DSCN6170[What one needed to fight Siegfried King of the Netherlands of Xanten]
Bam, there’s your daily pic again, not unexpectedly I hope.

Well then. About hype cycles. You know them. And maybe have a laugh. Or not, and study them for the buzzwords you didn’t know yet.
But would you believe them; would you trust the predictions inherent in them? Probably not. And would you check on the predictions of years past ..? Probably not, also.

Turns out… Yours Truly was busy doing that, collecting data all the way back to 2008, and figuring out a way to graph the data. Which didn’t work too smoothly so I wanted to revert to first analyzing the data I had.
Turns out… Someone else already did the collection part, and the analysis part, too. As in this post; recommended reading.

After which I dropped it; no need to analyse. But to synthesize, there’s still a bit on the table:

  • Why do so and how many ;-| still ‘believe’ the hype cycles, look into them, and cheer when their favourite hypes are listed, somewhat ‘faithfully’..? Probably because the visualization is so strong, capturing so much essence in one pic. And because apparently people need such guidance ..?
  • How come so many of the hypes mentioned, fall flat ..? Or is it a matter of a lot of buck shot in the air, hoping a duck may fly through it ..? Which may also not be a bad thing if this would be clearer, as a caveat. Oh; I already found part of the answer in this Tim Harford post. This one on maps, too.
  • Why can’t people pick up the hypes much faster, as there’s obvious business profit in many of them ..? In particular, when so many fall off the radar, one would expect vigilant companies to profit from such new developments falling off their competitors’ radars. Just find a way to make it all work, for which you could even take a couple of years in skunk works, and then reap the benefits. Oh … – of a first mover; which may be too little too short to recoup the ploughing-through-development investments. As first movers are so often outdone by second-and-(much-)improved movers.

And yet, stil I feel there’s much more left on the table than one would need or certainly want to leave there. Once progress is identified, it better be brought on as quickly as possible.
At the scale as things are on the hcycle. Because the ethical ramifications play at a bigger scale. Wouldn’t 2nd-biggest G be interested to make a cycle of those issues ..? Think self-driving cars, ubiquitous/ambient data collection & storage & analysis, Bitcoin-et-al’s subversion of geography-based governments. You name it. A lot to cover &nndash; maybe requiring much more research into what’s at play and how the discussions progress, but still, very much worthwhile I guess. Beyond the tech hype’lets that fall off the bandwagon so easily. Towards prediction proper of where society’/ie’s heading…

At least, you can have your PIA

Privacy Impact Assessments are treated much too much as an assumption in (new European regulations’) privacy-anything these days. Yes, PIAs are a critical step, on the very critical path towards compliance in substance. Since when they aren’t done well if at all done with any true attention and intention, your compliance effort will fail, if not formally then in practice – with equal serious break-your-business high-probability risks.

First, this:
20140905_201502[Heaps upon Sea again indeed]

The point being; PIAs should be done with an actual interest in privacy (of stakeholders) protection. When done less than full-heartedly, the results have hardly any value. Because that would demonstrate one doesn’t understand the ethic imperatives of privacy protection in the first place. From which would follow all required (other) policies and measures would be half-hearted, ill-focused, and sloppily implemented ‘as well’. Which isn’t the stretch of reasoning you picked up on first reading this…

And then, a great many organisations don’t even start with PIAs, they just jump in at all angles and steps. With PIAs still being required, not full-heartedly carried out somewhere during or after the fact,where all the rest is implemented on assumptions that will not be met.

To which I would add: In the above, ‘you’ regards the ones in control (“governance”, to use that insult) at organisations that would have to be compliant. Not you the advisors/consultants, internally (in 2nd and 3rd LoDs) or externally, that push organisations. [Don’t! Just tell, record, and after the disaster ‘told you so’ them. There’s no use at all kicking this dead horse.]
But oh well, why am I writing this? Why am I hinting at ethics in your governance? That’s an oxymoron at your organization – do you claim to have the one or the other?

Feel free to contact if you’d like to remedy at least this part of your Privacy non-compliance…

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord