The invisibility problem is a huge issue for most organizations. Making information visible to the right people at the right time is a challenge that is not easily addressed. The reality is that most information that gets digitized is invisible. You can’t see the bits and bites that are encoded Read more…
The conventional wisdom is that information scales well. While data and information can scale, knowledge and context don’t scale at the same pace. There is lag time when either the data changes or the context changes. How do you know if it is just a blip or if it is Read more…
Most information practices are consistently inconsistent. While applications can enforce rules during data entry, it is still possible to have information that is not consistent. Information processing requires a bit of judgement. Some information is relatively stable and doesn’t require too many judgement calls. Information is subjective. In a lot Read more…
It is time to stop relying on computers to manage information. Computers do a terrible job of it. Computers don’t necessarily expand the human mind, they shut it down in many ways. The job of thinking has been outsourced to a machine. While this may seem like a way to Read more…
Too many things in this world are hard coded. Change is only acceptable within a certain range of actions. However, these actions only represent a subset of the possible scenarios. So code is built on the premise that things will stay the same, but the truth is things don’t stay Read more…
The problem with productivity tools is that they rarely make you more productive. There is a ‘story’ of productivity behind these tools and some of them even seem plausible. In some ways, I think that we are still working with Lotus 123 as the dominant productivity paradigm. The features of Read more…
While some information stabilizes over time to become a Body of Knowledge (BOK), most information is not static enough. Naturally, the dream is to have a dynamic BOK, but that has all kinds of trouble written all over it. The BOK creates its own vocabulary that gives rise to professions Read more…
What you think is important is… Probably not as important as you think it is at the moment. We are all victims of some kind grand illusion of our own importance and the importance of things that we think are important. And information technology is no exception to the delusion Read more…
Seriously people, it is really hard to get information right and it is just as difficult to get the right information. Yet, here we are constantly thinking that we can solve the information equation. This tool is going to do it. This is the tool that is going to put Read more…
There are five easy pieces for an organization to keep in mind to thrive in the information age. Empathy Entropy Ergodicity Encoding Encryption Looking at the five Es individually they are not necessarily related. It all starts with empathy. The ability to put yourself in someone else’s place is critical Read more…