I wonder what the world’s biggest database is? Is it Facebook? Is it Amazon? Is it Google? Microsoft? Maybe it is Oracle or Salesforce? Maybe it is the credit bureaus or credit card companies? Or is it some government agency? I could use Google to try to find the answer, Read more…
I have been listening to Cal Newport’s latest book entitled, A World Without Email. The premise is that we need to change our working patterns to reduce our reliance on distracting and often unproductive email and other electronic messaging tools. At this point in time, it is hard to imagine Read more…
One of my longest running information technology dilemmas has to do with database fields. In the early days of databases, there was always the desire to solve everything just by adding another field… If you were using a generic database program like Ashton Tate’s Dbase at the time, you could Read more…
To say that there is a lot of bad behavior on the Internet is an understatement. And I am not just talking about the disingenuous and unnuanced commentary. While those issues carry over into the general use of technology, there are other behaviors on the Internet that also carry over Read more…
The amount of IT clutter is enormous. And I am not just talking about about IT hardware clutter that is sitting in storage somewhere. The are just so many files, accounts, databases and other forms of digital clutter. It can be online, it can be archived and it can be Read more…
Structure is so much more useful than unstructured data. Structured data on the hand is often too rigid and inflexible to account for reality. While there have been advances in using unstructured data in recent years, it still feels chaotic and less than helpful. The dream has been to allow Read more…
Information technology can be incredibly unforgiving. In all the effort made to error trap on data entry, software can be overbearing.. Yes, on one hand, thank God there is built-in error checking. Preventing the preventable…and automating that which can be automated… But, sometime it just goes too far. Maybe the Read more…
The concepts of entropy and ergodicity are very different, but they are very much related in my mind. I think they are similar because both of these concepts explain why things that are supposed to happen don’t happen. Entropy has to do with loss due to complexity, while ergodicity has Read more…
I used to think that better upfront information would lead to better decisions and help to prevent mistakes further downstream. To a certain extent that is true… But experience has taught me that this is not always the case. There is more information to know and at some point you Read more…
The complexity of our world is seemingly infinite. And chance of anything really happening seems to be about zero when you think of all the things that have to go into to make it work. In the digital world we are confronted with thousands of settings that interact with each Read more…