education – Page 27 – Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord

Model code

In the race to get everyone and your grandmother (but in particular, ‘youth’) to code as that would be the new literacy, this here piece arrived quite in time.
In which Chris Granger explains that modelling the world around us (and taking it in), is the new literacy. [Read the article; it’s a full stretch more intricate than that actually.]

Right. With a number of sideline qualifications. But I don’t have the time right now to elucidate… They’re in the order of “But then, calculus and basic reading skills are required to understand the world and be able to deal with it. So it’s not that the old forms of literacy will go away (on the contrary; dismal education globally (sic) should be repaired, in particular numeracy) but they will be augmented. This will require a massive, huge! upgrade of about all teachers at all levels – which will not happen anytime soon. And programming skills are only the basics one needs to be able to analyse, model, and design the world around us, much like + and – are required to understand one’s income – assuming one has or needs money to live – or even money, or society’s functioning.
Let alone understand culture. Isn’t culture what is being transferred in Education ..?”

And so on. But as said, time limits… See this, too. Hence:
DSCN7557
[Baltimore is old. ?]

Span (out) of Control

How is it that for a long time we were used to managerial spans of control being in the 5‑to‑10, optimal (sic) 8 range, whereas what we had in the past couple of decades so often was spans of control in the 2‑3 range ..? [Duh, exceptions and successful organizations aside…]
Because I came across some post on Forbes where there’s an early simple statement that a span of control of 10 would not only be normal, but outdated as well, as the span could be at 30. Well, I doubt the latter, as this would conflict with a lower ‘Dunbar’ number which indeed is about 8, with ramifications for informal control as outlined in Bruce Schneier’s Liars and Outliers.

Oh yes now it springs to mind the 8 figure was developed by the military, the ultimate built‑for‑survival organization, through the ages to be the optimal span of control, aligning with the apparently natural Dunbar number. It was then taken over to business for its apparent effectiveness, and its apparently attractive all‑business‑is‑war metaphor – where the attraction is there only for those not really exposed to the gore of war, I guess. From which the fearful, the accidentally pushed into management roles clueless managers, tried to do what they thought was the gist of managerial literature: fight all uncertainty that might threaten your career. Through micromanagement, through requiring all data to be reported. Not to use it wisely, but to just pretend to be in control. And, if you don’t understand, just do with less direct reports to shrink what’s coming at you.

[Intermission:

That man on the pole was quite a good leader it seems.]

But whether it’s 8, 10 or 30, the optimal span of control clearly is larger than the common today’s practice. Which has implications:

Too low a number will inevitably lead managers to seek to have something to do. Busywork, in their role leading to excessive micromanagement (yes pleonasm but on purpose) and/or excessive meeting behavior, in particular with their underlings and/or likewise trapped colleagues. A bit like an AA group. Which burdens the underlings by taking time away from actual content work and creating the need for action item lists and reporting blub. Thus losing time off colleagues with all sorts of, what actually is, whining.
Too low a number and the micromanagement leads to extreme (far overextended) controls burdens on the ones who’d actually produce anything of value. Instead of producing (net) negative value with all their externalities that managers may commonly do. This burdening then leads to ‘process’, ‘procedures’ etc., to ‘standardize’ (otherwise, understanding of actual content would be required; the horror for petty middle managers!). Thus hollowing out even further the value of any work done. As in the abovementioned Forbes article; the Peter Principle will reign.
Too low a number and the standardization will drive out the creativity (required in customer service and in product/service design, production and delivery). Where that is ever more essential than before to counter the ever more changing environment. As I typed this, this article arrived…
Colleagues (or rather, underling staff) will be demotivated due to having less and less time to do the work they’re assessed and valued for by the organization, and having to produce ever more TPS reports for overhead purposes. This will bring down performance, both directly and indirectly. And by the way, all the controls will also suffer by staff demotivation leading to less effectiveness or even full evasion. With equally rising risks for performance.

An extension to ten, or even twenty or thirty would be very well possible as well, in these times of massively improved information and reporting options. The latter aligns quite well with the increased need to at least have a little oversight left.

Though that would require much more empowerment (again) of your employees. That are the knowledge workers par excellence, right? If you don’t have those yet, you may have an entirely different but even more pressing problem… Have the real knowledge workers left, don’t they want to join anymore, or have you unconsciously but actively numbed them into sully drones? Whatever the cause, the real knowledge workers know better than their manager how to do their work – that’s why they do it and not the manager. If it were the other way around, it would be beneficial for the organization to have the manager do the grunt work. And no, micro management is something else.

The empowerment should go hand in hand with different styles of leadership, direction and oversight. Not based on ‘objectives’, made ‘smart’(not) for Pete’s sake, but based on truly smart KPI’s that leave employees room to do their business in ways they see best fit. Not rails, but guiding rails, and no yard-by-yard route directions but some A and B and a road (?) map. Or, well, a good navi system – or would you the manager want to pull the steering wheel for every correction? Reporting can similarly be made smarter anyway, or is that wishful thinking. In times of smart analysis with big data or not, this should be feasible.

And keeping just a little oversight is enough already for a good manager, and quite different from total(itarian) ‘control’. The former is needed to lead and direct, the latter is paralysis through total suppression and denial of a capricious reality.

And oh, for the record, some form of hierarchy will always be needed, even in fully horizontal network organizations with 360° feedback and what have we. Just re-read Flat Army by Dan Pontefract; without collapsing to a free‑for‑all hippie group, there are quite many ways to manage more humanlike. There just are so many ways to flex- and telework from home or anywhere, and a mature manager and her/his organization will pay for performance not mere attendance over performance.

So yes, we all need to focus on upping the number. To counter stalemates. To counter bureaucracy heavens. To regain flexibility. Still, still, this could only work IF, very very big if, ‘managers’ (not to address actual managers, that I value enormously!) can loosen their frantic, fear‑of‑death‑like Totalitarian Control and compliance attitude. Which I doubt. Maybe we should start to let such managers pursue other careers elsewhere, those that are specialists in sticking to their own chair by sacrificing all capacity and performance in times of cost savings. Then, the ones that are not good at that because they really try to achieve something for their organization wouldn’t have to be let go by the numbers and restore some positive balance of managerial capabilities.

But then, organizations relying on the control freak managers (whether already or after they will have crowded out the actual managers via the Peter Principle and acolyte behavior) will lose out to the upstarts that do keep the mold out. There’s hope.

Your ASI-MBTIFuture

With all the discussion on the future of work, and how finally! we would be able to do ‘only’ creative, (physically/mentally!) non-repetitive work and/or where and how jobs for that could be craeted or would we all be doomed to be some (un/underpaid) Leisure Class, I suddenly realised:
The future of work depends very much on your myopia of what all ‘workers’ would want.

As about 60%+ of ‘workers’ at all levels of intelligence at/of work including pure mental, knowledge workers, would prefer simple 9-to-5 type jobs, with the predictability and security it brings (requirement…). Established per hard science. Only 40% or less actually wants the wild, the change, the uncertainty-is-beautiful.
So, will 60%+ not be able to make the transition or only not want to and maybe be able to after sufficient pressure is applied ..?

Which brings me to the find I did. Myers-Briggs.
Yes, yes, it indeed is discredited by some, to some extent. But it’s still the most recognised, most recognisable and easily applicable method to establish one’s own interests [with inclusion of the caveats and recognition of its time dependency and outcome variability]. I mean,
MyersBriggsTypes
Is easily assessed (though I’d recommend the more extended questionnaire versions, e.g., from some books). And personally attempted-falsified.

Some take it to the limit. Resulting in:
myersphilo
but really I’d say that’s pushing it, and why?

To which above type ‘scores’ there’s also career advice, also in books and on-line. Like:
MBTIjobChartSmall
Note the remarks at the bottom. Variants apply, like this one which is skewed to sales/marketing business, I think..

But nevertheless, the overall trend is clear: When you’re an I, and/or S type in particular, and maybe too much of the T and J into the mix, you may find it harder and harder to adapt to the on-going exponential (?) fuzzification of work. If you’re in any of the ‘typical’ trades, you may either become the Expert of Experts, retreating into an ever smaller corner until retirement, if you can hold out that long, or bring your characteristics to other trades (remember, yin and yang both have an element of the other within them – this applies here as well), or retrain yourself psychologically to better fit the trades that may be left until ASI overtakes us. [As in this post]

If you can …

I’ll leave you with:
DSCN6848
[For no reason – or, how many trades have come and gone in this environ… Sevilla]

Middle secretaries

Two points to make:
* Middle management will be.
* Secretaries should be.

The discussion regarding middle managers being superfluous or not had a slight uptick the past couple of months. With the latter voice having been a bit too quiet. Yes, middle management is under threat. It has always been; only the (history-)ignorant will have missed that. And Yes, all the Disruption things and similar empty barrel half-baked air by a lot of folks who have hands-on experience in the slim to none bin with (real) management altogether let alone this kind, have predicted over and over again that the disruption by Server-with-algorithm-app-that-schedules-day-laborers will make middle management redundant, as the believed task was only that.

Quod non. And as if just an algorithm will capture the full complexity (and incoherence, inconsistency, internally and externally contradictory ..!) of the requirements and work of the middle manager.
OK, we’re not discussing the drone administrative clerk that has Manager on his card (huh?) and sits in an office passing top-down orders and bottom-up reports back and forth. We’re talking the real, 24/7 problem firefighter here. The coordinator of chaos. The translator of lofty (other would say, ‘airhead’) ‘governance’ (quod non) mumbo jumbo into actual work structure and tasks, and translatereporting back. That survives and in doing so, shows great performance. The other ones, will be weeded out anyway, every time there’s an economic cycle downturn. [If the right ones would be kept, and the wrong ones ‘given growth opportunities elsewhere’. Seldomly the case; offing is by the fte numbers, and the wrong ones have being glued to their seats as their core competence, through sucking up or otherwise.]
So, the middle manager stays for a long time to come as (s)he does the kind of non-predictable work that will remain longest. If start-ups don’t have them, see them grow: They will.

Secretaries deserve a come-back. In similar vein as above, the vast majority of ~~managers~~ office clerks (from the shop floor (even if of knowledge workers…) all the way to near the top) these days have to do their own typing, scheduling, and setting up socializing things. Whereas before, economies of scale were many, and there were additional benefits because the good (sic, again) secretaries would e.g., know the best, unrenown restaurants all around and could get you a table even when they would be fully booked, and they would manage (massage away) some internal friction as well, often very discreetly and efficiently. Now, vastly more expensive (by hourly rate, productivity (think switching costs in the managers minds …, and utilisation), cost of ineffectiveness (sic again) and opportunity costs re their actual objectives (if these would be achieved; good/bad manager discussion again)) managers must manage their way around. An impoverished world it is indeed.

To bring back some joy:

[Some colour, but it’s down there… Zuid-As]

Kraftwerk or De Kooning ..?

With all the talk about how, in the end, all of our jobs may be taken over by automatons, and us being left with nothing but idleness (as, e.g., this and many other posts on this blog), and erratic behavior as our core competence, what direction will art take ..?
I mean, we all studied the relevant literature, didn’t we ..?
And we all concluded that either times change slower than some predict, as invariably is the case (whereas the more profound effects play out even more profoundly than predicted, in the long run – discuss the time point cut-offs between short, middle and long run),
Or we’re doomed.

As an intermission:
DSCN1420
[The erratic as style. Toronto, of course.]

But still, in that scenario where all the boring routine business (either physical or mental!) has been taken over by machines and algorithms, and the combination has become human-like in the sense that nobody cares anymore whether ‘intelligence’ concerns all of our [someone’s] mental capabilities – no human is perfect in all these elements, distributions vary enormously and everyone falls short on the majority …! (?) – combined into one, or it concerns only aspects of that all, we are left with the outer fringes of tasks that have some element of randomness that cannot be captured in algorithms – yet.
Where the boundaries will be pushed ever further. True randomness … hard to get. But look how dismal humans are with ‘randomness’, in this. What if machines outpace us at this one, too ..?

And, when we all will be pushed to the limits of creative work, will it pay enough ..? Probably not. That’s not how the world turns, with oversupply competing for buyers ever less ability to pay; vicious circle.

And, on the core note of this post: What direction will the art that we have so much time for, take? Will it be the art that sits well with the machine age, catering to the machines’ (!!!) needs in e.g., music by Kraftwerk [that recently got pimped to be the original and sole driver of electro[pop|music] but they’re in an admittedly very small pantheon together with, at least, their art-uncle/father Jean Michel Jarre..!] or similar ..?
Or will the art play on the core comparative strength of us, resulting in De Koonings, Rothkos, Pollocks even ..? I know I’d like that….
Either way … Are you educating your children already to live and work in such a world, or are you still aiming at all (sic) their education being outdated as soon as they have to stand on their own feet – with the required skills and mind being trained out of them ..? With the caveat that they’d still would need the most top-notch of education in everything; to be able to communicate with machines and to be able to handle (the complexity of) the world as it is then, including e.g., power failures … But? And? remember president Truman’s “I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.” Or are you chasing your kids for this on Coding as the new literacy (that I pointed out in the above education link) ..? Or this:
B-Bh4SbCMAAWijN
But we’re running off-topic now (?).

I’ll leave you now with maybe the one other take-away: What solution to mass joblessness is there in that ‘comparative’ ..? Which I meant in a Ricardo’an way ..! (As explained here) Think that through … Contra the above hypercompetition, is there salvation in there ..!?

To agree

One cannot not agree with this GF: Every student in any school should learn ~~to program~~ informatics – the extension is essential.

Elke leerling in elke school moet de kans krijgen om informatica te leren: http://t.co/YCLivQW2Sw

— Gideon Folkers (@gideonfolkers) February 2, 2015

As noted in this here post, and this one, ensuring all know about informatics in general (and can program!) is such a vital element in keeping at least one creative edge over the machines that’ll rule (otherwise?) & ndash; as clearly admitted even by, on the whole, almost (?) unwarranted overly optimistic types like Bryjolfsson/McAfee.

Enough for now. Enjoy:
Photo2-4
[Somewhat relevant, if you think about it; FLlW at Racine of course [Analog to digital]]

Aggregation is stripping noise; close to emergence but …

Still tinkering with the troubles of the aggregation chasm (as in this here previous post) and the hardly visible but still probably most fundamentally related concept of emergent properties (as in this, on Information), when some dawn of insight crept in.
First, this:
Photo11g
[Somewhere IL, IN, OH; anyone has definitive bearings? JustASearchAway found it. WI]

Because I’ve dabbled with Ortega y Gasset’s stupidity of the masses for a long time. Whether they constitute Mob Rule, or are (mentally to action) captives of the (or other!) 0.1%, or what. My ‘solution’ had been to seek the societal equivalent of the Common Denominator – No! That may be in common parlance but what is meant here, much more precise, is the Greatest Common Divisor.

Since that is at work when ‘adding’ people into groups: Through stripping differences (as individuals have an urge to join groups and be recognized as members, they’ll shed those) and Anchoring around what some Evil Minds may have (consciously or not) set as GCD-equivalent idea, the GCD will reinforce itself ever more (immoral spiral of self-reinforcement), mathematically inherent through adding more elements to the group for GCD establishment and (not ‘strictly’) lowering. [The only difference being the possibility of a pre-set GCD to center around; just make it attractive enough so the mass will assemble, then shift it to need ..!] Where the still-conscious may not want to give up too much of their individuality but may have to dive under in their compliance coping cabanas just to survive (!?).

So, aggregation leads to the stripping of ground noise which may lead to patterns having been pervasively present but covered by that noise, to emerge. Like statistically, a high R² but with a low β – but still with this β being larger than any of the others if at all present. This may be behind the ‘pattern recognition’ capabilities of Big Data: Throw in enough data and use some sophisticated methods to ensure that major subclasses will be stratified into clusters and be noise to the equation. [That GMDH, by the way, was the ground breaking method by which I showed anomalous patterns in leader/follower stock price behavior (Shipping index significantly 2-day leading one specific chemicals company; right…) in my thesis research/write-up back in 1994, on a, mind you, all hard-core coding in C on a virtual 16-core chip from mathematics down to load distribution. Eat that, recent-fancy-dancy-big-data-tool-using n00bs..!]

By which all the patterns that were under the radar will suddenly appear as patterns in Extremistan DisruptiveLand would; staying under the radar until exploding out of control through that barrier (but note this). As emergent.

But just as metadata is not Information but still only Data, the Emergent isn’t, really. Darn! Close, but no Cuban.
As the pattern is floundering on the research bed when the noise around it dries up, it is not necessarily part of every element in the data pool and potentially can only exist (be visible) at aggregate level. But can and ex-ante very much more probable be part in one or some or many elements of the pool, which would be methodologically excluded from the definition of Emergence / Emergent Characteristics (is it?). And, if the noise is quiet enough, would already be visible in the murky pool in the first place as characteristic not ‘only’ as emergent as the definition of that would have it.

So, concluding… a worthwhile thought experiment, sandblasting some unclarity, but still, little progress on understanding, felling-through-and-through, how Emergence works; what brings it about. But we should! It is that Holy Grail of jumping from mere Data to Information ..!
Joe Cocker just died a couple of weeks ago. Fulfill his request, and little help this friend here, with your additional thoughts, please…

HTTP status 418 against unpersonation

Though we’re halfway towards granting legal person rights to animals (as this and this show), and you know a lot of co-workers for whom this presents a nice little bit of progress, I’d say we have also moved great strides in the opposite direction.
Which is far more dangerous.

It all started, throughout the ages over and over again, with the already-responsibility-deprived weasels (a.k.a. ‘mere employees’ and ‘leaders’) wiggling out from under the burden of guilt for, e.g. most recently, the Sony hack, the financial crisis; you name it. With excuses ranging all the way from “I wasn’t important enough to had been able to make any noticeable difference anyway” to “If I hadn’t done it, someone else would have and at least now it was me with still some consciousness that did it” – where one’s character speaks through one’s actions …
Which in sum total, through a particularly nefarious twist of aggregation and emergence (read back this little badly unnoticed gem and you’ll get it) leads to … dehumanization of these speakers, and corporations seeking personhood as well.
Which is far more dangerous.

All of you that behave this way: You’re not underestimating the dystopian version of the Singularity, but actively bringing it on … by degrading your own independence, freedom (of mind and action!), identity, humanity, and value. By suppressing any questioning of the Überbureaucracy, actively, by frowning of much worse on those that want to remain human and social (i.e., exchange ideas). Etc. To no end.
To the end of letting the force of nature, the beast within, to explode out through the most deviant, unthinkably inhumane, behavior in particularly with the ones that were most and first in line with ratio, bureaucratic petty rules, i.e., the ones holding sway over all others including you. With the explosion hitting you, too – and you have no answer either now or then…

Complexity, of the world, of societies, of your immediate environments (Sloterdijk’s spheres, yes), of yourself, is no excuse to shut down. It should be a wake-up call, a call to arms, a sacrifice … not to ritually celebrate past developments, but to progress out of the complexity …!
My fabourite option: a healthy dose of status code 418 for all, not always, but every now and then, here and there. Life is too important to always take seriously!

Well, I’m off to some very dense prose, where mere text lines are ever more narrow in their description of the richness of the ideas and constructs to be discussed. Hence will part ways, with:
DSCN1441
[Bam! Out explodes the force of nature]

Not yet one IoTA; Auditing ‘technology’

[Apologies for the date/time stamp; couldn’t pass.]
First, a pic:
20140226_113554
[Classy classic industrial; Binckhorst]

Recently, I was triggered by an old friend about some speaking engagement of mine a number of years back. As in this deck (in Dutch…).
The point being; we have hardly progressed past the point I mentioned in that, being that ‘we’ auditors, also IT/IS auditors!, didn’t fully adapt to the, then, Stuxnet kind of threats. (Not adopt, adapt; I will be a grammar and semantics n.z. on that.)
As we dwelled in our Administrative view of how to control the world, and commonly though not fully comprehensively, had never learned that the control paradigms there, were but sloppy copies of the control paradigms that Industry had known for a long time already, effectively in the environment of use there. As in this post of mine. Etc.

But guess what – now many years later, we still as a profession haven’t moved past the administrative borders yet. Hence, herewith

A declaration of intent to develop an audit framework for the IoT world.

Yes, there’s a lot of ground to cover. All the way from classification of sensors and networks, up to discussions about privacy, ethics and optimistic/pessimistic (dystopian) views of the Singularity. And all in between that auditors, the right kind, IS auditors with core binary skills and understanding of supra-supra-governance issues, might have to tackle. Can tackle, when with the right methodologies, tools, attitude, and marketing to be able to make a living.

Hm, there’s so much to cover. Will first re-cover, then cover, step by step. All your comments are welcomed already.
[Edited to add: Apparently, at least Checkpoint (of firewall fame oh yes don’t complain I know you do a lot more than that yesterday’s stuff; as here) has some offerings for SCADA security. And so does Netop (here). And of course, Splunk). But admit; that’s not many.]