In 1776 Adam Smith published his classic book The Wealth of Nations which introduced a new way of thinking that would eventually become economics. In this book, he introduced, among many other things, the idea of the specialization of labor. Specialization of labor allows one to focus on one task and perfect it.
In 1912 Frederick Taylor published a landmark book entitled The Principles of Scientific Management. In it he laid out the principles that ultimately transformed craftsmanship into manufacturing. Over the course of the 20th century, manufacturing became more refined. Taylor added to Smith's idea of specialization of labor the ideas of idealizing task structures and measuring outcomes. It ultimately led to a revolution in manufacturing.
This transformation in manufacturing lead to most of the products that we take for granted today. For example, if we were still in the craftsmen days most products including cars, computers, dvd players, wireless internet connections, blenders, electric can openers, etc. etc. would be way too expensive for the average consumer if they could be made at all.
That revolution never can to white collar work. There is very little specialization white collar work. I should mention for the sake of clarity that white collar work is different from professional work such as law or medicine where specialization is more common. White collar work is what happens in the offices that make up private corporations and government agencies. Nor only do people who do white collar work rarely specialize, the pressures are often in the opposite direction. You must be flexible, a team player, or one who can pitch in and do what is needed.
Most people who do white collar work are unclear about what they really do. If you ask a white collar worker what they do they will probably mention the company or agency that they work for or attempt to explain what they do by stating their title.
Enter data warehousing and the world begins to change. To put this into perspective, consider the impact of the relational data model over the past few decades. Relational databases are inherently categorical and their implementation has led us to think of the world in terms of categories. Data warehousing, on the other hand, Is process oriented; measurable processes to be specific. We model business processes in a data warehouse with the intent of improving them. We routinely think of what categories we fall into - employee, customer, voter, etc. Soon we will think of our work as consisting of measurable processes. This, in effect applies Taylor's ideas to white collar work.
If this catches on it will transform the way business operates. Everybody will know exactly what to do in order to be productive. And, if this all works out, people will actually be paid for being productive. Too often in today's world people get paid for showing up or gaming the system in various ways. There are many implications of this which I will save for another day so I can get to the point which I am trying to get to.
An epiphenomenon is that people will be able to work remotely as productivity will be the only factor. So, where you show up at the office or not will no longer matter as long as the work gets done. And since you only get paid for the work done nobody will really care how or where you do it.
I said 'if' earlier because there are competing views of the data warehouse. The competing view, and the more traditional view, is that the data warehouse is merely a large historical store of data. Which way will things go? It is hard to tell. But, in this question is a teaching point about predicting the future. The future is anything but determined. But, we can establish contingencies and say if A occurs then here are the likely consequences. If B occurs something else will likely happen.
Friday, February 28, 2014
Friday, February 21, 2014
The Changing Nature of Work
One of my more outrageous claims about the future is the changing nature of work. In this post I will lay out some ground work for the claims. In the next I will explore implications. And in the following one I will return to the current theme and look at the nature of work in the rear view mirror.
Let's begin with another backward looking technique I introduced earlier. Imagine it is fifty years into the future. Your grand kids are sitting on your lap asking what life was like back in the early part of the 21 century.
"Well, one thing that was very different," you begin, "is that everyone got up in the morning and drove an hour or so to get to work. Most of the drive was in dense traffic which is why it took so long."
Your grand kids squirm and giggle and ask "why did everyone do that?"
"Well," you reply, "you had to be in the same building as everyone else in order to do your work."
"That's silly," they reply. "Why don't you just talk to them with your computer like everyone else?"
You start to reply but you don't have time. They slide off your lap giggling, thinking that you are teasing them. They go on to the next thing that grabs their attention as you ponder how very different things are now.
Why are they so different? There are several forces that have come together to create a massive change. As I have mentioned before, one way to detect likely changes is when there is a convergence of forces. In this case I would single out, but not not limit it to, five factors: 1) data warehousing; 2) virtual worlds; 3) wikinomics; 4) positive psychology; and 5) all of the usual problems associated with cars, traffic, fossil fuels and air pollution.
First lets take on data warehousing.There are competing views on data warehousing but I am a strong advocate of the view presented by Ralph Kimball. In this view, the data warehouse models measurable business processes. To cut to the chase here, modeling measurable business processes allows us to improve them and forces a discipline on white collar work that was previously only achievable in manufacturing. Certainly one of the implications of this is that people in white collar jobs might spend more time working and less time on other silly business around the office such as meetings and sucking up to the boss. Another implication might be that people actually get paid for the work they do rather than paying everyone around the same amount regardless of the disparities in productivity.
Second, virtual worlds will make location irrelevant. In the same way that web technologies made the location of documents irrelevant, virtual worlds will make your location irrelevant. So, instead of hopping in a car and going some where, you can just log into a virtual world and meet with others regardless of where they are located.
Third, wikinomics, or the study of mass collaboration, suggests that in the future we will all become independent contractors working in collaboration with each other in dynamic teams rather than having to work for a company and show up at a building to work with others.
Fourth, positive psychology suggests that work is most productive and most satisfying when you are working at what you do best. Wikinomics will allow this, and economic forces will drive it.
Finally, our current approach with way too many cars, way too much driving, way too much wasted time, and way too much pollution is not sustainable. We have to do something. So these changes will come about through a combination of need and possibility.
How is this all going to work? We, I admit that what I have provided is a bit sketchy. So, stay tuned as I explain it in more detail.
Let's begin with another backward looking technique I introduced earlier. Imagine it is fifty years into the future. Your grand kids are sitting on your lap asking what life was like back in the early part of the 21 century.
"Well, one thing that was very different," you begin, "is that everyone got up in the morning and drove an hour or so to get to work. Most of the drive was in dense traffic which is why it took so long."
Your grand kids squirm and giggle and ask "why did everyone do that?"
"Well," you reply, "you had to be in the same building as everyone else in order to do your work."
"That's silly," they reply. "Why don't you just talk to them with your computer like everyone else?"
You start to reply but you don't have time. They slide off your lap giggling, thinking that you are teasing them. They go on to the next thing that grabs their attention as you ponder how very different things are now.
Why are they so different? There are several forces that have come together to create a massive change. As I have mentioned before, one way to detect likely changes is when there is a convergence of forces. In this case I would single out, but not not limit it to, five factors: 1) data warehousing; 2) virtual worlds; 3) wikinomics; 4) positive psychology; and 5) all of the usual problems associated with cars, traffic, fossil fuels and air pollution.
First lets take on data warehousing.There are competing views on data warehousing but I am a strong advocate of the view presented by Ralph Kimball. In this view, the data warehouse models measurable business processes. To cut to the chase here, modeling measurable business processes allows us to improve them and forces a discipline on white collar work that was previously only achievable in manufacturing. Certainly one of the implications of this is that people in white collar jobs might spend more time working and less time on other silly business around the office such as meetings and sucking up to the boss. Another implication might be that people actually get paid for the work they do rather than paying everyone around the same amount regardless of the disparities in productivity.
Second, virtual worlds will make location irrelevant. In the same way that web technologies made the location of documents irrelevant, virtual worlds will make your location irrelevant. So, instead of hopping in a car and going some where, you can just log into a virtual world and meet with others regardless of where they are located.
Third, wikinomics, or the study of mass collaboration, suggests that in the future we will all become independent contractors working in collaboration with each other in dynamic teams rather than having to work for a company and show up at a building to work with others.
Fourth, positive psychology suggests that work is most productive and most satisfying when you are working at what you do best. Wikinomics will allow this, and economic forces will drive it.
Finally, our current approach with way too many cars, way too much driving, way too much wasted time, and way too much pollution is not sustainable. We have to do something. So these changes will come about through a combination of need and possibility.
How is this all going to work? We, I admit that what I have provided is a bit sketchy. So, stay tuned as I explain it in more detail.
Friday, February 14, 2014
Looking at Education in the Rear View Mirror
Following on the thread that I brought up in the last note, we can apply this idea of looking at technological change in the rear view mirror to education. Currently, there is a lot of interest in distance education, which, I believe will do to the education industry what the web did to the newspaper industry. Yet, as always, there are those who refuse to believe that this will happen. And they have their talking points, an earmark of futile resistance that I have discussed before. Most of those talking points center around the virtues of face to face interaction. If you have been reading this blog for a while, you might see some parallels between the arguments for face to face interaction as arguments against virtual worlds and the arguments for face to face interaction as arguments against distance education. They are basically the same and can be summarized as "what I am used to is better".
Nonetheless, I should give them a fair airing. Distance education skeptics will point to the fact that in the classroom you can see the students faces and they can see your face. Since you can see their face, you can tell if the are confused by what you have said and try explaining it a different way until the light goes on. Since they can see your face, it gives you another channel of communication by which you can emphasize points or provide nuance. One could also argue that being in a classroom provides a sense of group cohesion and makes learning a social experience as well as an intellectual experience.
I actually agree with all these points and utilize them routinely in my face to face classes. But, I would also raise three questions. First, how uniformly and effectively are they applied? Second, are their other ways in which the same thing could be achieved? And, third, does distance education provide any benefits that the current approach does not?
On the first point of uniformity and effectiveness, I would point out that teachers are not uniform in their ability to read their audience. Some miss audience feedback entirely. Some misread it. Some are simply not interested in it. While there are, admittedly, some teachers who really connect with the audience, this is far from universal. So, holding it up as an essential feature of today's education system is a bit like attributing the surge in the number of baby boomer to drive-in movies. It certainly is a factor, but probably less common than one might think.
On the second point, we are assume that audience feedback can only be achieved in face to face interaction. Not only is this not true, it could be argued that real time feedback is inhibited by face to face interaction. Some students are shy. Others do not want to appear stupid by asking a question. Some do not want to appear interested as dispassionate detachment is often seen among college students as a virtue. Technologically mediated interaction can even be preferable as we have seen in Group Decision Support Systems.
On the third point, I could go on at length, but will just summarize a few points to spare the reader. First, in distance mode students can view their lessons at convenient times, and review them as needed. Their is less variation in quality between classes as the classes can be refined as needed. In today's environment there is a tremendous variation between teachers and ever variation from one class to another with the same teacher. Finally, distance education allows us to adjust to learning styles more effectively and utilize multimedia and advanced technologies more effectively. So, face to face education is far from the only approach and, arguably not even the best.
Now, let's look in the rear view mirror. Imagine a scenario a hundred years into the future. All education is done online. Applying the manufacturing model of constant refinement, the classes are nearly perfect after a century of accumulated incremental improvement. Students are effectively educated in all areas where education is needed from basic job skills, to life skills, to the intellectual skills needed for good citizenship. And, then... something happens. The Internet goes dark. The reason for the Internet going dark is not important. But, if you are one of those people who cannot get past certain details, let's say it was a solar flare or a comet passing too close the earth creating electrical disturbances.
With the Internet dark for the foreseeable future we have to figure out a way to continue educating the population. Somebody suggests going back to the way it used to be done. We can put them in a room, thirty people at a time, at an assigned time, and have somebody stand in front of the room and tell them what they need to know. How well do you think that would work? My guess is - not very well. We do things the way we do them today, not because it is the best way to do them, but because we are making the best of a bad situation. Trying to make that bad situation noble is nothing more that a lame attempt to hang on to what you are used to.
Nonetheless, I should give them a fair airing. Distance education skeptics will point to the fact that in the classroom you can see the students faces and they can see your face. Since you can see their face, you can tell if the are confused by what you have said and try explaining it a different way until the light goes on. Since they can see your face, it gives you another channel of communication by which you can emphasize points or provide nuance. One could also argue that being in a classroom provides a sense of group cohesion and makes learning a social experience as well as an intellectual experience.
I actually agree with all these points and utilize them routinely in my face to face classes. But, I would also raise three questions. First, how uniformly and effectively are they applied? Second, are their other ways in which the same thing could be achieved? And, third, does distance education provide any benefits that the current approach does not?
On the first point of uniformity and effectiveness, I would point out that teachers are not uniform in their ability to read their audience. Some miss audience feedback entirely. Some misread it. Some are simply not interested in it. While there are, admittedly, some teachers who really connect with the audience, this is far from universal. So, holding it up as an essential feature of today's education system is a bit like attributing the surge in the number of baby boomer to drive-in movies. It certainly is a factor, but probably less common than one might think.
On the second point, we are assume that audience feedback can only be achieved in face to face interaction. Not only is this not true, it could be argued that real time feedback is inhibited by face to face interaction. Some students are shy. Others do not want to appear stupid by asking a question. Some do not want to appear interested as dispassionate detachment is often seen among college students as a virtue. Technologically mediated interaction can even be preferable as we have seen in Group Decision Support Systems.
On the third point, I could go on at length, but will just summarize a few points to spare the reader. First, in distance mode students can view their lessons at convenient times, and review them as needed. Their is less variation in quality between classes as the classes can be refined as needed. In today's environment there is a tremendous variation between teachers and ever variation from one class to another with the same teacher. Finally, distance education allows us to adjust to learning styles more effectively and utilize multimedia and advanced technologies more effectively. So, face to face education is far from the only approach and, arguably not even the best.
Now, let's look in the rear view mirror. Imagine a scenario a hundred years into the future. All education is done online. Applying the manufacturing model of constant refinement, the classes are nearly perfect after a century of accumulated incremental improvement. Students are effectively educated in all areas where education is needed from basic job skills, to life skills, to the intellectual skills needed for good citizenship. And, then... something happens. The Internet goes dark. The reason for the Internet going dark is not important. But, if you are one of those people who cannot get past certain details, let's say it was a solar flare or a comet passing too close the earth creating electrical disturbances.
With the Internet dark for the foreseeable future we have to figure out a way to continue educating the population. Somebody suggests going back to the way it used to be done. We can put them in a room, thirty people at a time, at an assigned time, and have somebody stand in front of the room and tell them what they need to know. How well do you think that would work? My guess is - not very well. We do things the way we do them today, not because it is the best way to do them, but because we are making the best of a bad situation. Trying to make that bad situation noble is nothing more that a lame attempt to hang on to what you are used to.
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Looking at Changes in the Rear View Mirror
For reasons that I do not fully understand, people resist the notion that things will change in the future. This is odd because if you were to ask someone if they thought the world would be static for the remainder of their life, they would dismiss the question as being silly. If you ask what they think will change, they will probably offer ideas that are not really changes, rather extensions of what is already going on. I think their is some interesting psychological research in this idea. Why do people resist the idea of change. What kinds of changes are acceptable. And so on. But, the problem is - how do you get people to allow for the possibility of change when those changes are not ones that they would readily accept?
A technique that I use, which seems to be somewhat successful is what I call looking at change in the rear view mirror. Instead of have a person evaluate the likelihood of changes in the future, have them imagine being in the future looking back. I have introduced this technique before when I told about having students imagine they were grandparents talking to their grand kids about changes that occurred in their past in the scenario, but in their futures for real.
Here is a simple example. There has been some talk on the television about cars that park themselves and brake themselves if a car in front has braked. These are both fairly safe examples so their is not much resistance. But, if you roll things ahead a bit and talk about self driving cars where the person merely goes for a ride and has no control over the car people start getting nervous. I think it is the lack of control and the belief that these cars will not really work so the person still needs to be able over ride the car's autopilot. This is actually silly when you think about it. This would be like having an over ride switch on your anti-lock brakes that would allow you to eliminate their interference when you slam on the brakes.
To put this into perspective, imagine a future as far out as you need to in order to accept the reality of self driving cars. Imagine that everyone uses self driving cars and that they have been around for decades virtually eliminating traffic accidents while conserving fuel and allowing the riders to do other productive tasks. Then imagine some catastrophe that makes self driving no longer viable. Perhaps the Internet is destroyed, or sunspots knock out GPS, or some sort of virus has destroyed the driving chips. What ever the reason, cars can no longer drive themselves and people have to switch to manual driving mode in order to get around. What kind of chaos would that bring?
We tend to see the ways things are as the best way that things could be rather than seeing the way things are as merely making the best of a bad situation. When we look at it in the rear view mirror, things look a little different.
A technique that I use, which seems to be somewhat successful is what I call looking at change in the rear view mirror. Instead of have a person evaluate the likelihood of changes in the future, have them imagine being in the future looking back. I have introduced this technique before when I told about having students imagine they were grandparents talking to their grand kids about changes that occurred in their past in the scenario, but in their futures for real.
Here is a simple example. There has been some talk on the television about cars that park themselves and brake themselves if a car in front has braked. These are both fairly safe examples so their is not much resistance. But, if you roll things ahead a bit and talk about self driving cars where the person merely goes for a ride and has no control over the car people start getting nervous. I think it is the lack of control and the belief that these cars will not really work so the person still needs to be able over ride the car's autopilot. This is actually silly when you think about it. This would be like having an over ride switch on your anti-lock brakes that would allow you to eliminate their interference when you slam on the brakes.
To put this into perspective, imagine a future as far out as you need to in order to accept the reality of self driving cars. Imagine that everyone uses self driving cars and that they have been around for decades virtually eliminating traffic accidents while conserving fuel and allowing the riders to do other productive tasks. Then imagine some catastrophe that makes self driving no longer viable. Perhaps the Internet is destroyed, or sunspots knock out GPS, or some sort of virus has destroyed the driving chips. What ever the reason, cars can no longer drive themselves and people have to switch to manual driving mode in order to get around. What kind of chaos would that bring?
We tend to see the ways things are as the best way that things could be rather than seeing the way things are as merely making the best of a bad situation. When we look at it in the rear view mirror, things look a little different.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Vegans of the Mind
In the period of time just after World War II food was plentiful and nobody would think twice about having eggs and sausage for breakfast, a cheeseburger with fries for lunch, and a steak with a baked potato stuffed with butter and sour cream for dinner. People did not think very much about the relationship between food and health. After all, there were a lot of starving people in the world. So, anyone who had plenty of food must be well off, and, as a derivative, healthy. This model of excessive consumption does not even address the vast number of cigarettes that were smoked, at the time, nor the rivers of alcohol that were consumed. And nobody thought of this as anything but healthy. To be fair, I suppose I should as that nobody thought of it as unhealthy, which is a little different.
But, as we moved into the 1960's we began to see some evidence that what you put into your body in the way of food did, indeed, have an impact on your health. In the decades since then we have turned that around as we become ever more compulsive about eating healthy. You could say that we have gone a little overboard with our obsessions with second hand smoke, sugar free drinks, starvation diets, and all manner of questionable supplements. I think in the future when, all this sorts out, we will looks at the food obsessions we have today like obsessions in the past where women stuffed themselves into unbearably tight corsets in order to have the proper figure and men dripped with sweat wearing hot suits to look professional and proper. But, I will leave that there as my point for this piece is something entirely different.
We are on a new exploration of good health that is analogous to the previous one, only we are now beginning to understand that well being and mental health are, indeed, realted to the things you put into your mind. Many of our beliefs and values are the cognitive equivalent of junk food. Salt and fat taste good so we eat it. Ridiculous ideas feel good so we adopt them.I am not going to mention any specific ideas that constitute ridiculous thinking as that would invite readers to defend ridiculous beliefs missing the point of this post. But, I will say that there have been amazing advances in the past couple decades in cognitive science, positive psychology, and the functioning of the brain which address happiness, well being, optimal living, will power, self delusion and a host of other related topics. As these studies advance our understanding, ridiculous, dysfunctional and counter productive ideas will begin to recede.
But, as we moved into the 1960's we began to see some evidence that what you put into your body in the way of food did, indeed, have an impact on your health. In the decades since then we have turned that around as we become ever more compulsive about eating healthy. You could say that we have gone a little overboard with our obsessions with second hand smoke, sugar free drinks, starvation diets, and all manner of questionable supplements. I think in the future when, all this sorts out, we will looks at the food obsessions we have today like obsessions in the past where women stuffed themselves into unbearably tight corsets in order to have the proper figure and men dripped with sweat wearing hot suits to look professional and proper. But, I will leave that there as my point for this piece is something entirely different.
We are on a new exploration of good health that is analogous to the previous one, only we are now beginning to understand that well being and mental health are, indeed, realted to the things you put into your mind. Many of our beliefs and values are the cognitive equivalent of junk food. Salt and fat taste good so we eat it. Ridiculous ideas feel good so we adopt them.I am not going to mention any specific ideas that constitute ridiculous thinking as that would invite readers to defend ridiculous beliefs missing the point of this post. But, I will say that there have been amazing advances in the past couple decades in cognitive science, positive psychology, and the functioning of the brain which address happiness, well being, optimal living, will power, self delusion and a host of other related topics. As these studies advance our understanding, ridiculous, dysfunctional and counter productive ideas will begin to recede.
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