What would the romans say ?

I sit down among tables crowded with tourists, their background chatter a friendly babbling brook of conversation in a variety of languages. Each engulfed in their own private back and forth banter, most of them still reviewing the exhibition they just went to. Somehow its fitting that I write this very article here. Here .. in the museum of the oldest city in my country. The floor of the cafeteria submerged underground, literally and figuratively surrounded with ancient history. The Gallo Roman Museum in Atuatuca (The town now known as Tongeren) houses award winning exhibitions about the times when man first walked these lands, to the rise and demise of the roman empire that founded this very city. Having recently visited that permanent exhibition and thus discovering this very cafe in my own backyard.. I bring you a lament about the over connected lives we lead.

 

I close my eyes and try to imagine what it must have been like in these lands, where, 500 000 years ago neatherthal men roamed the prehistoric forests and hunded for deer, rabbit and Mammouth upon the very grounds I walk upon today. As the Homo Sapien mysteriously ‘replaced’ this species, our lands have seen the first man made tools, have seen the demise of the hunter gatherer, the rise of the first farmer and the forming of the tribes of Gallians, who most of you know from Asterisk and Obelix cartoons. I recall the exhibitions items on the arrival of the first Romans, the founding and later demise of this very city, the war with the Germanic tribes and the collapse of the roman cities. But what strikes me the most is not the history itself, but the sheer scale of it. 500 thousand years . FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND years we have walked these very plains. For thousands of years they used the same tools, lived the same kind of lives and where completely clueless about the rate and pace of evolution.

 

I take a look at the caveman that dwells these lands today. A man trapped in a reality that moves at an alarming pace. Compared to the frequency of new inventions and revolutionary technology in the past .. we live in a lightning fast blur of events, inventions and revolutions. But still , man is the same.

 

It makes me aware of the very fact that, technology these days is moving much faster then mankind realises. Sure, our intellect is perfectly capable of building invention upon invention, laughing at Moore’s law as we once again double the number of circuits on a single chip .. But what about the caveman on the inside ? How is he affected ? And does he even realise it ?

 

As I walk through the muddy fields where battles between Romans and Gallians plunged hundreds of skulls into the dark brow earth .. I carry in my pocket devices that they would consider sheer magic. Magical tools of communication that enable us to talk to everyone on this planet (and the 5 guys we have in orbit) with our very fingertips. No longer does it require the push of a button .. For those buttons are now extinct, replaced by touch screens and voice interfaces. I imagine trying to explain what my gadgets do, what my life looks like , and how I am constantly connected to an infinite source of knowledge and information and I wonder what his responce would be.

 

What if his reaction was a single question : WHY ? Not how fast, not how cheap, not with what … But WHY ? could we answer ?

 

Could we truly answer, in the light of 500 000 years of evolution that mankind has reached a spot where he has the technology to change the world, but has done so for the worst ? Where we have come to a place where we check in on foursquare just to be the fictional mayor ? Why it is we miss a sunset on our own horizon because we where looking at pictures on our phone of a cat playing the banjo in Shanghai ?

 

Our technology has evolved at an alarming speed , and in many ways it has changed our lives and in more ways it has changed our planet. But wether that is a good thing is questionable in the eyes of the roman soldier facing me now. We have come so far, have gained so much. But the question what we DID with this rapid evolution aside working hard on our own extinction .. is debatable.

 

So in many ways only our tools have changed but deep inside our minds we are still that neolithic Neanderthal man. Our cave paintings have become power-points, we hunt information instead of Mammoths and our latest Android phone is the new axe .. but mankind is still used to the 500 000 years old pace of true evolution. But we could make the argument both ways. Have we ever truly evolved .. and will we get another 500 000 years to give it a try ?

 

Read Full Post »

Shrodingers cat and all that.

I think there is nothing more fascinating then quantum mechanics.  Yes , that might sound incredibly geeky .. no NERDY to say the least. But ever since I was a kid , I’ve been interested in all things that had to do with outer space an science. Its in your basic DNA when you are going to become a geek when you grow up. After reading ‘ a short history over nearly everything ‘ by Bill Bryson (great book about the history of modern science) and of course Stephen Hawkings ‘ A brief history of time’ .. I’ve been baffled by the beauty of things like the general theory of relativity an the uncertainty principle. Both of them would take a little time to explain, and i’m not going to bore you with that .. So just take my word for it : They rock !  The wonderful relation between time, gravity and light .. and between the fact that everything is uncertain has prompted some pretty poetic writings from me to my beloved wife. Yes … we are geeks. But still. The uncertainty principle gives you a little idea of how we ourselves as the ‘observer’ have a direct influence on the world around us. Somehow it takes away things like ‘ absolute truth’ and gives you more ‘options’ then  you thought you had. This uncertainty principle can be found not only in boring science books but all around us. Any of you ever read ‘the secret’ ?  : thats the uncertainty principle right there. That our thoughts , our state of mind might have an influence on the outcome of events .. That reality is some kind of cosmic catalogue you can order from .. thats Heisenbergs relativity theory explained in new-age terms. Or how about some Star Trek ? The episode where Worf meets up with thousands of alternate reality versions of himself. Each reality representing a different state of events : Uncertainty principle .. right there 🙂   One of the cool thought experiments we might all know from popular science is Shrodingers cat. Its a classic example that the act of observation determines the outcome of the experiment. It might sound silly .. but the video below is one of the cool examples how you can explain it to a lamen.   … what can I say .. I love Youtube .. or I don’t .. Depends on when you ask me .. or IF you ask me .. the act of ASKING me determines the outcome of my state of mind. Until that moment I both love and hate Youtube .. its like the cat … Shrodingers cat.

Read Full Post »

Grandpa ? What’s an “IT-Guy” ?

 Just close your eyes for a second and imagine sitting in your rocking chair with one of your grandchildren on your lap. As she absently plays with her holographic Nintendo DS66 she asks you a very odd question : “Grandpa, what’s an IT GUY ? ”  You look up startled, momentarily distracted from the Yahoo-Tube video you where watching on your transparent digital contact lenses … sigh and start telling the story of the old days .. When we still had “IT Guys”.

Although this example may look like science fiction,  the Yahoo / Youtube merger is actually the more implausible factor in my example. The DS, The transparent contacts AND the question , are one day to be very very real.

In my 15 years on the job i’ve seen many changes in the landscape of the IT profession. From the time where single programmers wrote up an entire suite of bookkeeping software for a company ( and holding that company ransom  later because they where the only ones who knew how it worked) to the aftermath of the dot.com bubble where everybody with a keyboard and a Geocities account suddenly became a “webmaster” or “web designer”. I remember the time where I pondered wether or not I needed to get my MCSE certification or where I franticly tried to find the right pins on a motherboard to attach the cable or the powerswitch. In those 15 years a lot has changed. Not only has my career moved along , I started out as a Tech/Salesguy at a small computershop and am currently holding a position as Demand Manager for New Technologies at a Dutch multinational, the landscape we work in has also changed. 

When I used to ponder about the future, I thought us ‘tech heads’ would become the predominant group in the workforce of the future. As I saw IT technology grab hold of society and sink its digital teeth into the soft underbelly of our communities, I wondered how many “techies” we would need to keep it all running … Lots of them .. right ? But perhaps I was wrong.  As It integrated our daily lives more and more, the techies started to vanish. Where at first every company still had “his own IT Crowd”, nudged away somewhere in the basement (yes, I’ve been there) and given the task of keeping the servers up and running while also taking care of the fish in the company pond (yes, i’ve been there too) , the first generation of outsourcing was taking its toll.  I have seen Helpdesk departments go extinct, gradually replaced by outsourcing partners on the floor. And in time,  I walked the floor of companies where they did not have any techies inhouse whatsoever. Every server was housed somewhere in a datacenter. Every user was remote supported and once in a blue moon you would see a nerdy looking guy with white patches around the knee section of their jeans, linger by the coffee machine. Only by those “white kneecaps” could you recognise a field engineer ( The white kneecaps are a result of kneeling down on carpets a lot to fix computers .. i too have been there). Coming from an age where the ‘inhouse’ IT guys where revered or hated by the entire company , but where everybody knew your name .. it changed to a workfloor where some strange kid you don’t know comes by to fix your computer. 

But even the “White Kneecaps” will start to go extinct someday. As we start using computers that don’t “open up” anymore and use (mobile) operating systems that do not require reinstalling .. the roll of our system engineers is starting to dwindle away. As we slide down (or should I say ascend) into the world of cloud computers, there services, and those of their brethren taking care of our servers in a datacenter .. are becoming obsolete. Hard disks fail ? The data is in the cloud. Network goes down ? I’ll just pop in my 3G dongle. Laptop eaten by dog ? I’ll just pick up a fresh one, all I need to do is configure my account.

With the consumerisation of IT, The second generation of outsourcing, the migration to the cloud and the fundamental change in how we approach and use technology … things will change for the “IT guys”. In my own career  I have found I have become a diplomatic liaison between technology and users. Assessing their needs and seeing what can be used to meet their demands. Although I still have a technical background it are more my communication skills and creativity that  help me find a solution, then actually popping open a case and yanking out some wires. I too am a fallen angel that now walks between the users. My jeans are a deep blue (even around the knees) and my hands are no longer scratched from the sharp edges inside PC casings. As I look to the future I wonder what interesting times lie ahead for us in the IT business. How our roll, that I’ve seen evolving from “bookkeepers” to “engineers” will go more and more into the realm of digital diplomats. Where we wield knowledge and insights about technology we might no longer truly understand.

I once said that a computer should be like a toaster. Easy to operate and possessing the simplicity of an appliance. As I punch in this blogpost on my Ipad , I realise that my prophecy has come true. My Ipad is a toaster. It just works and there is nothing to ‘fix’. And we don’t need IT guys in the next room to fix a toaster .. or do we ? 

 

Read Full Post »

The drudgery of email.

 A little while ago I was confronted with a very peculiar remark. ” In the office you don’t have your email client open all the time like the rest of your co-workers ”  When i heard the sentence I had to turn it over in my  head a couple of times. My initial reaction was one of defence.  Like somehow I had been scolded or that there had been a vague insinuation that I wasn’t working as hard as my co-workers because I did not spend all of my time in my email client. But as I sat down in the car for the drive home, I mulled the request over in my head over and over again, and came to the conclusion that it was absolutely absurd.

Not the remark itself  of course. It was a valid comment to make. When somebody deviates from the norm he stands out and his behaviour is noticed by the rest of the group. That is a matter of common group dynamics. What, after some phylosophical pondering, did surface, was the absurd realisation that “Email” is considered a valid form of occupation these days. The more mails you answer , the harder you work. Somehow, in the crazy group mind of the cubicle work bees , the quantity of communication has become the norm of productivity .. not the quality of that communication.

Where does this bizarre mindset come from ? If we take a look at our modern history, the roots of this way of thinking can be found in the industrial revolution. Back then workers had to come to the factory and produce X amount of goods in order to meet their quota. As you where sowing together ladies cosets or smashed a piece of raw iron into the shape of a bolt beneath a giant weld .. the more pieces you churned out the harder you worked. But those days have come and gone and still their echo remains. As we march towards our office building and sit inside the cubicles of our “conveyor belt of ideas” we try to find meaning in this new landscape where we no longer produce anything tangible.  ” I’ve been running around all day long and it feels like I didn’t get anything done today”. I take it that all of us (including you AND your boss) have murmured this sentence to their beloved at some occasion. It is a symptom of the fact that our technology has changed our way of working at a pace that our brain cannot keep up. And i’m not talking about the pace of life or the speed at which we interact. I’m talking about the fact that we are no longer sowing together corsets but are ‘welding together’ abstract procedures, ideas or workflows that no longer give us anything tangible to show for at the end of the day.  So the human mind goes in search of patterns it recognises in this new factory of thoughts. “Numbers of meetings attended” , “Number of calls received”,  “I got 14 voicemails today”. “Look at the 45 business cards I got from the conference” “Today I had over 150 emails to get through”. Everywhere we can, we try to count ‘quantities’ of work, to give us hold on this completely abstract work environment.

So how many emails does it take to be a good office drone ?  It’s a valid question. Back in the 1900’s your foreman gave you a quota to meet : 500 bolts by the end of the day. And that would be something you could ‘DO’ .. You could ‘Make’ the bolts, “Count” the bolts and SHOW your foreman the bolts at the end of the day. Life was easy. You know when you were behind and had to speed up, you knew when you were ahead and could slack off a little .. But these days its not like that anymore. But if quantity of emails processed is “the new bolt” , I challenge you to step up to your manager and ask for  that quota. “How many emails a day is the quota for a good office worker ?” The question is utterly absurd, but if we take a look at the way we still seem to “count” emails … its a valid question nonetheless.

If we all want to meet our quota , where does it end ? Because you have to face it. If we all want to meet our virtual bolts quota we need to push out some emails.. Don’t tap your co-worker on the shoulder, EMAIL him.. even if he is right next to you. And please , put as many co-workers in the CC field as you can. Because the good thing about email is that you can not only “punch out your virtual bolt”, you can also share your hard labour with your co-workers to “keep them up to date”. In the process you send THEM virtual bolts to count … and on the end of the day we are just one big emailing swarm of office bee’s that have produced a 1000 virtual bolts .. but didn’t get anything done.  There was a time where communication was a supportive process of the production process. Somewhere along the line .. communication has become a goal on its own. 

And the one thing that makes me crack up when I think about this , are lines like : ‘ I wanted to get so much done today , but all i did was trying to get through my emails” Its hilarious. Somehow handling mail has become more important then handling work. This can”t be right  ? Can it ? 

So, If you want to step away from the virtual “conveyer belt of bolts” .. Try to reason with yourself the next time you want to hit send.

“Do I need to send out a message to the co-worker sitting next to me” : If he is within spitting, slapping, talking, shouting or walking range : DONT ! It will do both your debilitated physical condition and your deteriorating social skills some good to get the frack out of your seat and walk over.

“I’ll send him an email, otherwise he will forget”. Unless you are working in the Alzheimer office for terminal Alzheimer patients, there is a small but feasible chance that your co-workers ARE ABLE to remember stuff. Unless of course we write EVERYTHING down in an email and then SWAMP eachoter with emails .. Yes .. That will help. Perhaps its your personal visit to his or her office, or just the sweat staines your co-worker noticed on your shirt, that will MAKE them remember what you asked them. 

“I need to cover my arse” Oh yea please ! Let’s all go office Gestapo on each other and by emailing every single detail, underline the fact that you trust absolutely no one at face value. The fact that YOU need to send out every critical (or non critical) event in an email , also says a lot about how trustworthy you feel about yourself. There are important things that need to be formally communicated, but for the love of god, lets not bury ourselves in more burocracy.

“Sorry, I don’t have the time, I have a lot of emails to get through”. That one happens to me too sometimes. But its bizarre ? Unless you work at a Russion spamming factory, “doing emails” is not your main task I hope. 

To round it up, I can conclude with a simple logical deduction that even Spock would find enlightning. If we ALL spend less time doing email and more time just getting things done, we will get LESS email, and so E-spiral (that just sounds wrong , right ?) is broken for all of us.

 

Read Full Post »