Category: Innovation (technologicallly driven)

Wired / Tired / Expired, March 2014 edition

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[Up, floating almost free at La Défense]

So, here’s the March edition of my Wired / Tired / Expired jargon watch overviews:

WIRED TIRED EXPIRED
UX Viral versus A/B Lean / Customer Excellence
Current front runner in the Sell theme: User eXperience, that’s what it’s all about. User-centric, user-enjoyment, user-will pay. Desperately trying to be hip and failing, or just giving up and using the old hand methods. Fire all that appear to not add to the customer’s sale, then find out only all the deadwood remained. Unethical idiot.
Caring about people Caring about the Olympics Caring about sports on TV
Whoever, wherever, whenever. Just one-to-one, bottom-up John Doe to John Doe help. Helping out. Because they’re over, again when you read this. Aaaand … they’re forgotten. Ermmm, “TV” anyone? You mean vids on mobile? Why watch others sweat?
Classics Hybrids
(non-full-E)		 The business bunch
Take these:
jaguar-xjs-convertible-06
654_436_lotus-esprit-s1
De_Tomaso_Pantera_GT4lamborghini-miura-p400-s_key_17
1967_Maserati_Ghibli_ORCthreeAM		 See previous Wired/Tired/Expired. Too bad the GT cabrio, Quattroporte or if all else fails, the new Ghibli aren’t in this class. Mercedes: Sorry, your tail lights are übergay. Volvo (V70 in particular): Ah, builders (qua finesse and estetics) and lumberjacks (qua ethics) pretending to be toffs but falling through by their road (mis)behaviour. Audi: Civil servants of the calcified kind, or salesmen of secondhand wire coat hangers; believing they’re invulnerable in their ‘tanks’ (quod non) because aeons ago their brand made Quattros. BMW: small-time corner drug dealers; ugly rims. VW: Phaeton is OK, as you demonstrate to not care what other people think, the very right way (à la Feynmann). Too bad the GT Coupé’s backside looks like a Frisian thouroughbred.
DIY Apple vs Samsung Mac vs PC
Build your own browser. As in: The many variants of Open Source, or BigCorp’s versions on various platforms.
Or even hipsterer: Build your own device.		 The definition of Tired. Still lingering in the background(s) but I don’t want to hear of it. Really? Mac won, and isn’t relevant on the desktop, that isn’t relevant anymore, and the PC’s still around and alive (see The End of XP).
Crypto-systems Phone data trawling et al. Infra/SCADA security
Not only Bitcoin and online voting but also, moreover, DACs. Now that Edward S. is also a threat to Anon, apparently, he might as well get his pardon for realz. Turned out it was just backlog work; still not done, though, by far not enough. Risks remain but aren’t newsworthy.
Really good new bands Bands you love to hate Just in Bleeper
Just for the in-crowd, still. But you wish them the success. E.g., this one. You know you still love them, secretly. Why is Nickleback on that list in the first place …!? Good riddance.
Blogs Tweets White papers
You’re reading this. Blogs have made a triumphant come-back from all the way back in 2003, 2004 or so when they first arrived, then disappeared after only a few got really famous. Now, they’re the medium of choice for all sorts of op-eds, ‘columns’, curated opinions, etc. Still valid currency to pass news and sound bite opinions; not for any serious pertinent information. Haven’t seen too much of these, as they had turned into marketing materials; two-pager flyer-like.
May linger in the background, in the original form of not-refereed-to-death ‘scientific’ articles – and as such, valuable, also for the record of summarising pop-scientific progress as published in allsorts blogs. If for this, should be in the W column…

OK, any suggestions for next month’s edition ..?

Books, over ebooks

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[Once new, new york]

Was challenged about the virtues of the old-style paper books over eBooks. Just give you this hint (warning: if you’re one of these victims, you may not be interested). #3 in particular is one which is often overlooked. See, e.g., the first lines of the quote in this piece. There was even some scientific proof somewhere a couple of months ago about how touchable books were more like landscapes to the brain, enticing to explore the full meaning of the text in all its non-linear relations, whereas ebooks only appealed to the most dumbed-down rational functions of character processing with only a thin line to semantics extraction. Link requested.

Which is similar to what Bruce Schneier indicated (see under Privacy, anonymity, authentication in this summary) about human interaction.

So, for the uninterested traveller who wants to travel light and is bored by not caring to really look around and learn from the environment, ebooks may be handy. For those interested in preserving elements of high culture, caring about good print (and other physical quality aspects), and caring for one’s books, is a quality of the person. If you want flat info, join the Shallows. Your identity will be lost after the Singularity moment has functionally passed. If you’re enthousiastic about anything new that dumbs you down even further, do not assume everyone will want to join or everyone wants to be dumbed down to your levels just for the sake of keeping up. There’s many that don’t rush head over heels into destruction or disruption before it has been established to bring improvement and only after some little time find out somethings irrecoverable were lost!

Three shorties

Just to drop it; two and a half links to interesting articles. According to me, as I determine what goes here… and in a positive mood.

First, a picture for your viewing delight:
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[Njagra folls, yes]

OK, one on invention, innovation, in a very useful way: This, on blood testing.

And one that links quite nicely to some other post of mine.

And the other, lighter fare which is about you the baboon goes under the title of Mehhhh …

Because reasons:
Masterpiece

Battles; aren’t we over them?

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[Yes that actually is a watch – well, sundial but still]

Hmmm, just when I thought that manufacturer battles had gone out of style (would’ve been something for these lists), here we go again: Wired’s take on the next one.

Mehhh Practice

Mehhhdrid
[Mehhhdrid?]

This appeared:

Nicely summing up a widespread complaint. E.g., against ISO 2700x. One should be forbidden to call those ‘Best’, as they are average, at best.
Because they’re adopted by the ones with no imagination of their own so implementations will fall short of average, thus in mass lowering the average even further.

And Best has never been Best in the first place. ‘tWas a compromise, as it had to cover so much, over so many contributors at its inception already. Remember, BS7799 ..!? And on and on in review rounds, committees decided over changes. A camel is a horse designed by a committee. And it all had to be applicable to as many industries as you can dream up. Another flattener par excellence. Standards work, where there is little variation required. Here, much variation, tailoring to each and every implementation over and over again, is a prerequisite for any success. I might continue.

Luckily for you, the new ISO27001:2013 of last October, is a huge improvement…. To the panic of the knights of busywork, one cannot anymore rely on following the herd as described, prescribed, because, at last, the prescription tends to Use Your Own Brain. Principle-based at last ..! For some elements. Tuning required, not by the (C)ISO (office) (only), but by the Business itself. Oh dear! The implementation efforts… Consultants’ dreams.

Well, get the lowdown of this, from experts [disclaimer: don’t own anything of them]. Just wanted to post the tweet and my take on it.

The librarian wave

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[Had this as my cubicle, a long time ago]

There seems to be a silent undercurrent wave of librarians entering our (not) field of information processing. If you think their thinking might be stale, think again. This here piece, for example, is clear and bright in its contributions towards better …, well, calling it flatly what it is, ‘data’ management. Flatly, as that’s what one gets by approaching it from the IT side only. ‘Processes’ add only so much. I.e., so little.

Just one pic from that blog post to demonstrate the clarity of thought:
1_yFGlNKuOFQ8_X_14pODgwQ

How’zat for clarity ..?

I’ll pick this one up in full, later, when extending the stuff on ‘information’ in light of the one overarching Book on it all that I still have as a plan, if only I had the time to work on it full-time …!

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord