Google, China, Innovation and Western Corporations

James Fallows has some terrific posts on the Google-China issue.  One has a comment from a reader that gives a remarkable perspective on the history of innovation. I hope they don't mind me sharing it.

"Analogously, in the information revolution following the introduction of the printing press, censorship in Catholic countries (especially Spain) had a similar "non-effect" initially because there was an active black market in banned books. However, in less than 50 years, in the Protestant countries, where the press was not controlled, people of the crafts-producing class were able to become literate and change the way they produced goods. Over time this new way of producing goods became capitalism.

"In Spain, Italy, Portugal and to lesser extent France people of the crafts-producing class did not become literate. They continued producing goods in the same way as they had in the past. Soon they were out competed by Holland and then England where better goods were produced more cheaply. Over time this had a profound economic impact on the wealth and power of the various countries.

"Innovation by the "out group" based on access to the benefits of the new information technology that creates new sources of wealth and power. I would conclude, therefore, that China, having made Spain's decision to control information, is now out of the running for world leadership."

My question is this.  What do Western corporations think they are doing when they impose China-like restrictions on their employees? They are killing the use of information technology and innovation.  The corporate firewall is an effective form of deathwish. Will they learn from the Google  fight with China? What fight?

Cloud dystopia

Good piece on the coming 'favela chic' at The Register. Welcome to the out-of-control decade.

Thinkin' about the future

Courtesy of Engineers without Fears, I found Katie Chatfield's visualisations of a talk by Bruce Sterling.


The talk is good (though quite long). However, I think the visualisations do more than convey the talk, and can be looked at quite quickly. Favela chic does not really appeal, I'm afraid. (Actually, the latter part of the Bruce Sterling talk had some very interesting insight and advice about what we should do as individuals, but this did not relate to 'where did the future go?')

Courtesy of Tony Collins, I read a piece on NHS IT's local future. The whole piece is good, but this extract shows that there are some signs that the wider context of use is starting to be recognised.

...The Tories made headlines recently by proposing personal health records - allowing patients easily to access, alter and control information about their own health on the internet.

Integrating a user-friendly interface with the rest of the NHS, as suggested by their name-checking of Microsoft and Google as potential providers, is likely to be some way off.

But many in health IT are convinced a solution must be found to enable the level of preventive and self care required to balance the NHS books in coming years.

Great Ormond Street’s work with children with rare and complex long term conditions often requires many parties, from families to a large range of health and social care professionals, to be kept informed.

David Bowen [of Great Ormond Street] says it had spent a long time looking for technology to aid the process but had found little inspiration within the NHS, and in the end turned to other sectors.

It is hoping systems such as corporate social networks will allow a set of authorised individuals to quickly contribute to and share information about a patient.

He says: “The implications of this are terrific. If we are going to afford healthcare in the future then patients and families have to do a lot for themselves.”

We know from Drucker that the customer is the place to start organisational change.

The Cognitive Edge community has a number of people involved in health care, because it has to change on funding grounds.

Vorsprung durch Technic

Fifty years on, CP Snow's 'Two Cultures' is alive and well. Technology is too important to be left to the technologists. It is also too important to be left to people with no knowledge and blind faith in technology = progress.

This post by Leg-Iron at Old Holborn is really scary, and well worth reading (it is short). The ease with which DNA evidence can be faked undermines the complete faith that people have in it.

For those too young to know CP Snow, the following quote may help.
"A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative."
C. P. Snow, 1959 Rede Lecture entitled "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution"

Big system drivers - The Silent Dictators

The wonderful Hazel Courteney wrote a paper with the title 'Project Requirements: the Silent Dictators' , inspiring the title for this post.
Testimony by Dr Robert Zubrin included the following:

"Over the course of its history, NASA has employed two distinct modes of operation. The first prevailed during the period from 1961-1973, and may therefore be called the Apollo Mode. The second, prevailing since 1974, may usefully be called the Shuttle Era Mode (or Shuttle Mode, for short).

In the Apollo Mode, business is conducted as follows: First, a destination for human spaceflight is chosen. Then a plan is developed to achieve this objective. Following this, technologies and designs are developed to implement that plan. These designs are then built, after which the mission is flown.

The Shuttle Mode operates entirely differently. In this mode, technologies and hardware elements are developed in accord with the wishes of various technical communities. These projects are then justified by arguments that they might prove useful at some time in the future when grand flight projects are initiated.

Contrasting these two approaches, we see that the Apollo Mode is destination-driven, while the Shuttle Mode pretends to be technology-driven but is actually constituency-driven. In the Apollo Mode, technology development is done for mission-directed reasons. In the Shuttle Mode, projects are undertaken on behalf of various internal and external technical community pressure groups and then defended using rationales. In the Apollo Mode, the space agency’s efforts are focused and directed. In the Shuttle Mode, NASA’s efforts are random and entropic.

...

Comparing these two records, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that NASA’s productivity in both missions accomplished and technology development during its Apollo Mode was at least ten times as great as under the current Shuttle Mode."

H/T to Shlock Vaidya.

Ergonomics and the precautionary principle

From Euractive via CCNet

A David Zaruk is pointing to the cost of the precautionary principle e.g. in REACH and environmental matters. "Before, scientists could develop an innovation and market it, after it was up to others to prove and test that it is dangerous. Now, you need to prove something is safe before it can be marketed."

"Precaution was created as a tool for policy, by those who think science has gone too far," Zaruk argued.

"Precautionary logic entails that not being right is not the same as being wrong. In other words, if you use the precautionary principle, you are never wrong," he continued, stressing that "for policymakers, it is much more attractive to never be wrong than to take the risk and be right."

"We need a little bit of political courage. Precaution is a policy tool for cowards, because if you are never wrong, you don't have to take risks or be responsible for any indirect negative consequences." But while it is easy to hide behind precaution when making difficult decisions, "you affect people when you stop research" by denying them potential future benefits of nanotech research, for example, he said.

Given the uncertainties around human variability and adaptability, it is easy for ergonomics to fall into an illusory 'better safe than sorry' approach e.g. pursuing safety control at the expense of using people to make safety. This is likely to become more of a concern unless the anti-science anti-risk culture changes.