Innovation, economics, society at large – Page 50

More valid today than in 2008

Because everyone and their dog noted the Good Ol’ Days of housing price ridiculousness have returned and the bwankers’ moronity has never gone away, the following vids are of more import than ever:
Part 1: here;
part 2: here;
part 3: here;
part 4: here.

That’ll be all for now; recovering from my Abrams birthday party still. And:

[Trend’s just a matter of perspective. Mo’ money, no problem equals Zuid-As Amsterdam]

RCSA is close to BAU

Close, as in no cigar yet (has the US ban on Cuban import been lifted already?).
But definitely, Risk Control Self-Assessments would, if carried out properly, be that major part of management’s daily (sic) chores that wouldn’t need annual get-togethers coaxed by outsiders (sic) but would be Business As Usual in operational practice. Maybe needing some periodic (weekly? monthly? certainly more than as now weakly annually) departmental review gathering but not a stage show as if this is the holy grail of business information flow. After which the ‘second line’ (as the back not even middle office function) receives the (right) info and acknowledges that the ‘first’ line has so much better sensors since they’re the first line par excellence, integrates the info into the upward report flow and reverts to fine-tuning the tools they provide to first-liners, and furthermore does … nothing. Second line is helpers, not dictators-by-soft-smothering. When it would turn out that all the high-quality hence qualitative (the reverse for quantitative) risk pics cannot be easily integrated into one pic, that’s too bad for the integrators but an appropriate (!) reflection of reality.

And if, on the other hand, first-liners need to be taken away from their actual productive work to sit in some song-and-dance by second-liners because it was so decreed by ‘governance’ levels (emperor’s clothes!), the very objectives will not be achieved. Since the ‘do something’ by deep-lying incompetence has lead to the wrong turn into a blind alley whereas the broad avenue (something like Younge Street) between wilderness and high (?) culture.

[I scheduled this post a couple of weeks ago for release in a couple of weeks but new developments seem to speed things up. For my many posts against Form over Substance … just search this blog for ‘TLD’ or bureaucracy …]
Won’t rant (too much) on; keep it to RCSA = BAU + quite some ε still, and:

[Distorted? Only your picture is, here for a change, by standing too close; true reality is not at the Edinburg Royal Mile!]

One IoTA FYI

To close off [almost, since @KPN fraud themselves away from bankruptcy by series of outright lies to customers and tort] the year with a wild shot, ahead:
There is value in the information analysis in IoT, as described in Gelernter and many since, of the two-way flow of information. One, flowing up are information in the form of answers as aggregations or pattern matched tuples(ets); the other going down, being both commands and inquiries/questions.

This fits the IoT world snugly, and should be taken into account when developing IoTAuditing frameworks:
What we’re after of course in all of auditing — and this we consider self-evident or else go back to study auditing fundamentals, from agency theory! — is the controls that keep the quality of the back/forth i.e. down/up information flows within (client-!)required margins. No more! But be aware of who the client really is, not the one doing the actual paying. So, we may focus on the integrity of the information flows first and foremost, then the continuity (availability), and then confidentiality as an afterthought.
With neat break-downs to isolation, appropriate input/output buffering (anyone still aware of the difference between an interrupt and a trap? If not, take a hike and learn, and weep), integrity controls above all. And some thing on (establishing) the quality of aggregation and of the questions being pushed down — when the wrong questions get asked e.g. by lack of understanding of the subject matter (sic), as is so very commonplace in the vast majority of organisations today, the wrong results will turn up from within the data pool (reporting ‘up’wards).

And of course there’s the divide between
the operational world where actual business is done (either administratively in offices though one could argue (i.e. proof beyond recovery) that this isn’t actually doing anything worthwhile, or producing stuff), and
the busybodies world ‘above’ (quod non) that, which thinks (wrongly) to be able to ‘control’ and ‘steer’ the productive body, sometimes rising itself into the thin air levels of absolute ridicule (by) branding itself ‘governance’.
But do re-read all of last year’s posts and weep. But do also see the implications for variance in the integrity, availability, and confidentiality needs at various (sub)levels.

And:

[The 2016 way is up; Cala at Barça]

3D printing hinting at breakthroughs

As 3D printing will see more of ‘breakthrough’ developments in 2016 … hold it, I mean, hope and want.
Since, there’s still no clarity whether and when.
Because reasons. One of them being: There’s no iPod of 3D printing yet. And people see, and fear, the cartridge costs; more so when you consider your need for many more than just ink in colours but also all sorts of hard-to-keep(?)-plastic plastics et al. And there’s space issues, 3D printers playing out in 3D space even more than the 2Ds did, especially when you’d want to print larger stuff.
And, not to forget, the major, almost overriding difficulty still on the design side of things; versatility biting and choking ease of use.

Oh you may say that the larger stuff will be printed elsewhere, like the A0s you have now (but you don’t unless you’re a design agency). Which would also take care of the cartridge part. Indeed, as it will also take care of the closeness-, tailoring, and versatility parts. Middle grounds… may be off the balance sought.

So, a moron-usable cheap but effective and high-quality contraption could help. But isn’t near the horizon yet. A fool-proof design interface could help. But fools are so ingenious…

Hope certainly helps, for the time being. And:

[Pray the way you please, Oak Park again but oft missed]

Mobile vision

Twas bryllyg, and ye slythy toves / Did gyre and gymble in ye wabe
The brilly side has deteriorated, unfortunately, due to the great many that don’t avail themselves of the proper tools for the proper usage. [A CEO with you, is still a CEO]

No, really: when the ultrahyperventilating crowd decided to warp-speed run after the ‘any platform’ and subsequently ‘mobile first’ crazes (duly so identified), they forgot that when something’s meant to be visually interpreted, all the visual clues need to be clearly enough visible in the first place. Which goes better on a large screen than on a little one, unescapably. In the same way that the humongously dumbed-down ‘models’ that bankers and like w…kers use, are over by a stretch in their simplification of reality (and, stupidly, then taken as normative, prescriptive rather than descriptive in intent), visual interfacing for the mob-ile users are oversimplified to the uselessness side. Why??

Because [ I say so ] and [ hypes go that way ]. Lazy evaluation.
Which leads to: Not one size is too small to fit any, but all sizes are made fit for the content purpose. Maybe not even display when the deep message can’t be captured in too small a message display ..?

A bit deep, or dense, maybe. Hence:

[Circus, b/c you need bread; Oak Park old analog pic]

Golden oldie pic of the day

Yup it’s time for one of those again:

[For this year: Be brave; dare!]

Somehow, related to Big Data analysis and actions

… Where Rembrandt had an idea of a painting in his head, and executed it in his peculiar way on canvas (after which it became relatively immutable — or paint it over), we now see tons of Big Data (i.e., tons of < whateveryou’dwanttocallit >) and we have to abstract the ideas from it.

So, a reversal. Comparable to the induction/deduction false (sic) counterpoints. The sic since BD gurus don’t seem to ‘get it’ when it comes to nuance over induction’s value.

Yes, I’ll close out for now already. Fireworks approaching, plus:

[Almost-formless blobs, or this? Prefer this direction of design for the/our future… Van Nelle Rotterdam, of course; great architect’s name]

Swinging and chattering

Sorry, couldn’t resist to share with you this other nugget of insight and metaphor (well, rather; comparison, of apples with apples) in Mirror Worlds that, opposite of my previous optimistic post about ‘managers’, might not be taken to be cheerful to all: (p.53) ” … Its significance is denigrated by the run-off-the-mill hacks, bureaucrats and cadres who swing chattering from detail to detail like monkeys in branches, never sensing or caring about the forest at large. Such people more or less run the world.”

Alas. And with the new year approaching of course there’s hope. Some of it, hopefully. And:

[All houseboats are alike; but some are more modern that others; Amstel]

Big Data, Little Decision-making

Are you ready for the coming revolution? That is in the wings by way of the data deluge that will cripple your ability to accomplish anything because you’re overwhelmed with data (“information” quod non!) to act upon in masses so vast you can’t even begin to use actionable results from analysis of it in a way that actual decisions are reached, communicated, and put into actual action.
Yes, yes, some of you will say that AI will arrive just-in-time to save the day. But that is much more wishful thinking out of fear than realistic futuring. And no, the exponential growth of data cannot be caught up with by exponential growth of AI capabilities and -spread before you’ve drowned.

Anyone see a way out, other than just ignoring or stifling data growth until by the skin of our teeth we can continue..?

Oh well, this:

[Reckon you’ll win ..!? in Berlin]

Gelernter on Management

Turns out that the seminal Mintzberg’s Managing (as here), has an updated version in the almost off-hand remark by David Gelernter (in this) that we should have been dealing with an “‘organization engineer’ (otherwise known as a ‘manager’)” (p.75) all along, with a focus on the ‘uncoupling’ of the manifold different (sic) tasks to be completed to be doled out to the (relative) specialists in the department. Freeing the latter of switching (time) costs and effectiveness losses, along with freeing them of concurrency resolution.

Which indeed deserves a HT for putting it so clearly: The manager uncouples, doles out, and then awaits the results to be consolidated whilst catering to the external-defense and facilitation needs of the department staff.

Which is also key to understanding that yes managers need to have the best of insights into what the total-tasks and subtasks entail. Hence no more generic-managers over specialist knowledge workers, but task-dedicated super-insight managers. Remunerated for their superior results, not for their babble and chair-stickiness.

Let’s keep it cheerful, for once, for the coming two days and beyond. And:
DSCN8391
[Once, a world trade center: Edam]