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Calming Down the Information Storm (table of contents)
Just to let you know I am currently working on a chapter about Slow IT for an upcoming (Spanish) book about Slow Culture. Will be writing the materials in the forthcoming days, but in case you are interested, here is the table of contents:
Calming Down the Information Storm
Impact and opportunities of Slow Technology in marketing and communication
Ing. Ron Tolido
VP and Chief Technology Officer, Capgemini Application Services.
Director, The Open Group.
Management Summary
1. The Information Storm
a. Trends in technology
b. Information trends
c. Social Enterprise
d. Connectedness
2. The consequences and challenges of Shallowness
a. Attention Span
b. Real-time urge
c. Empty foundation
d. Mega Multi Tasking
3. Slow Technology: four different ways to deal with the overload
a. Mindful Management
b. Observation
c. Technology-supported
d. Unplugged
4. Marketing and communication scenarios that leverage Slow Technology
a. Mindful Management
b. Observation
c. Technology-Supported
d. Unplugged
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The Best Part of any Computing Device
Traveling back home from holidays in Italy, we were painfully reminded of our sometimes empty-headed, uncritical reliance on real-time information and automated support. Our Flemish speaking on-board navigation system guided us – as usual – through unknown territory. This time however, it disappointed us twice, which was most instructive. First, it insisted we could pass through a very narrow passageway in a remote mountain village where even a trimmed-down Smart would have gotten desperately stuck. Yet, just seconds before impact we realized the system was wrong and I hit the brakes. Second, it sent us right into the centre of Zurich (lovely city by the way) where we should have passed it on our way to Basel and then France. We actually knew this – had travelled there before – but still the system was so convincing and insisting that we followed its wrong directions.
The big insight came when we decided to shut the navigator off for the remainder of the journey. A trivial decision that soon felt like being liberated.
The friendly owner of our last stop towards home – a charming hotel near the Vosges mountains – explained a route through the woods to us that turned out to be much nicer than the system would have ever come up with. Combined with a short, but careful study of the main milestones en route we were equipped with all we needed to get back home. While on the road – with no display to monopolize our attention with a flow of directions, distances and maps – we were clearly more aware of our surroundings (the lovely Lorraine countryside for example) then before. The journey thus felt more relaxed, more like a true experience and all in all more gratifying.
Let’s face it: more than ever, we rely so much on the availability of information and technology that we slowly but surely forget what the essence is of the activity we are trying to support. Data and tools become the new objective, the altar, the addiction. Sometimes with disastrous results, as illustrated by a ‘new breed of flight accidents’ that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) contributes to abdicating responsibility to automated systems – such as the autopilot – resulting in weaker flying skills.
It happens within the enterprise as well.
We all know the false illusion of control the spread sheet has been providing to managers, biding time behind their desk rather than managing their business and people on the work floor and outside. We may have the coolest CRM tool imaginable (let’s say a cloud-enabled Salesforce.com app with social extensions running on an iPhone 5 that popped up in a bar) but it may not help us a bit building a better, warmer relationship with our clients, especially if we prefer frequent, face-to-face contact with a smartphone above the client.
Nicholas Carr shows in his book The Shallows a blood-chilling image of the way “connectedness” changes our very brains. Abundant real-time data and tools encourage the rapid, distracted sampling of small chunks of information from many different sources. As a result, we become much faster and handier in getting exactly the support we need. It’s even addictive, as our brains become hungry for these delicious short, frequent bursts of information and events. What we are losing in the process is our ability to concentrate, contemplate, and reflect. Eventually, the essence of what we are doing thus becomes a vague and distant memory, something you have tagged and then archived in the cloud for later, unlikely to show up again.
What can we do about it? Certainly, real-time information and devices will not go away. There will be more. But we can be mindful about the way and moments in time we apply them. We can reaffirm their role as supporting and enabling tools, rather than as our main source of energy and the meaning of life. We can train ourselves to observe dense flows of information, rather than process it all (apply this to Twitter, for a start). We can even use technology to deal with technology, in order to filter out what we really don’t need or want to absorb: in the end, the best technology is invisible.
If all else fails, there is still – at least metaphorically speaking – a crucial, highly effective component of any computing device. It’s called a plug. Try pull it out every now and then.
You’ll love it.
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Wax On, Wax Off
There is something symbolic about it: organising an IT conference in the Central Hall in London. Right next to the Big Ben and Westminster Abbey, The Open Group’s Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference takes place in one of the landmark buildings of the protestant Methodist church. Established in the 18th century by John Wesley, the Methodist movement consists of people that aim to live a devout, serious life. Not some noncommittal philosophising about the heavenly glory and all that, but practicing faith every dag again, through dedicated, hard work. It’s only when you share your meal in the soup kitchen with the underprivileged of this world, that you start to experience the real essence of faith, so the Methodists believe.
Interesting thinking and at the very least, it gives an extra dimension to the panel discussion on the podium. The topic today is the eternal tension between the long term and the short term. In the panel team we find enterprise architects, IT strategists and a market analyst (no, not exactly the underprivileged). The hypothesis discussed is that the shallowness of today’s economic climate asks for a more careful, architected approach. That way, the requirements of the business can be much better aligned with solutions and it will be easier to achieve – and demonstrate – the value of IT.
A politically correct argument that nobody can really oppose to.
But one of the panel members, the CIO of Transport for London, is in no mood to be politically correct. “Yes, architecture and strategy” he pronounces these words with just the subtlest hint of disdain “all of that is absolutely crucial, but if the buses don’t run tomorrow because of a computer error nothing else matters much anymore; let’s make sure we master the basics first”. Being a seasoned manager of quite some IT departments, he is proud to tell the audience that he brought back the size of his architects team to just one fifth. “Anybody who doesn’t truly understand what happens in the everyday operations or fails to bring direct value to it, is of no use to me”.
Now that warms up the audience. John Wesley would be proud of it: how spiritual and high-aiming our ambitions may be, we can only truly live up to them through the sobering experience of daily practice. Dreaming about Business/IT fusion, perpetual innovation and Web 2.0? Fine. Just make sure my workstation functions every morning first.
And the one does not exclude the other. Having an extraordinary good grip on infrastructure and core applications motivates: it generates exactly the positive energy that is needed to explore new ways over and over again. The foundation of change therefore is in repetition, routine and control.
Wax On, Wax Off, as another spiritual leader would say. Change yourself, but always with both feet firmly on the ground. For that, you don’t need to be a Methodist to say hallelujah.
First published on Capgemini’s CTO blog
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Slow IT and the Fifth Conference
Please find underneath the results of an interview I did with The Fifth Conference about the concepts of Slow IT and Simplicity.
Most hesitant consumers of fast food will agree that the Slow Food movement has a point. That burger may look very appealing initially but seldom does one feel fulfilled afterwards. As Ron Tolido sees it, the consumption of technology can leave a similar feeling of dissatisfaction. We may consume a vast amount of information daily, but did we learn anything useful or valuable? In fact, did we actually even ‘think’ today? Today’s technology and communication tools have obvious benefits, but have we thought through how we best interact with that technology? A similar line of questioning can be levelled at the producers of technology, since it is they who are creating the IT equivalent of fast food. According to Ron Tolido, too many CIOs are losing sight of strategy and architecture, and instead are caught up in a never ending rat race to keep up with the latest hype. Technology products also often miss the point. Winning products do not necessarily have the most features and functions. On the contrary, their appeal is often rooted in their simplicity.
You are writing a book entitled ‘Slow IT’; what do you mean with slow IT?
It is an idea that needs to seen in context of the broader Slow movement. People may be familiar with the Slow Food movement that began in Italy, in protest to the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in the Piazza di Spagna in Rome. Since then, this concept has been embraced by people in other areas, such as design, business, travel, even sex. I’m a big fan of Carl Honoré’s book ‘In Praise of Slow’, wherein he describes the rise of the Slow movement and the way its principles can be applied to so many aspects of our lives.
It is important to note that Slow doesn’t necessarily mean being slow in the literal sense of the word. Slow is about doing things with the right timing, the right concentration, the right approach. It is about using good quality materials or resources, and if necessary, taking your time. And it also refers to the way we consume, or eat: slow eaters take their time to savour the meal, to experience the flavours, as opposed to stuffing yourself in quick tempo. Consider the difference in eating culture between the US and Italy. Dinner in the US is a one-hour business. Therefore when Americans spend time in Italy they really suffer. First they have to wait until about 9 o’clock for dinner time and then they have to stay put at the table for hours. In a way it highlights a cultural clash between the Anglo Saxon world, which is all about speed and a ‘just do it’ attitude, versus the Rhineland model which is more contemplative and reflective. Not that the one is better than the other off course. The Anglo Saxon approach tends to be more dynamic and innovative while in the Rhineland model we can get stuck in endless discussions.
I come from the IT sector so in a way we helped create the fast, chaotic world we live in today. Clearly there is opportunity to reflect on the way we interact with technology, both on the side of the producer and the consumer. As consumers we are bombarded by impulses. But also at the producer side we often run ahead of ourselves. At Capgemini we increasingly receive requests from clients to produce fast, for the short term. There is no time anymore for strategy, for vision and architecture; when these elements are so important.
Related to the Slow movement is the idea of simplification, which is also something I am trying to tackle in my book. You can make things as complex as you like, but it is via simplification that you create rest and peace. That point is so well illustrated by the iPad. Again, what a clash of culture! When the iPad was launched the geeks criticised it because it didn’t have enough specifications. No flash, no multitasking—how archaic! But I think it succeeded because it is so simple. Within two minutes of using your iPad you forget that you are using technology. You’re not even aware of the fact that there is no multitasking because you’re so engaged with the task at hand. And you can sit in your sofa and actually relax while you interact with IT—that’s amazing. The iPad isn’t the only example that illustrates the power of simplicity.
One of the best selling IT authors in the world today, Nicholas Carr, is about to release his third book entitled ‘The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.’ Basically, he is arguing that the internet is changing the way we think. You can clearly see that in the way young people think. They’re very good at finding information quickly, online obviously, but they lack depth in understanding. The internet offers access to a huge amount of information but we tend to use that information very superficially and that is gradually turning us into superficial thinkers. These are fascinating arguments. That’s why I’m interested in technologies like the e-readers because they counter that superficiality. People are experimenting with all sorts of tools in that regard. For example, there is an Apple app called ‘Freedom’ that forces you offline for a specific time period per day. Sometimes you just need that, to focus on your task. Otherwise you’re always tempted to check your emails or your Twitter or Facebook feeds. Think about it: how many apps do you have running simultaneously on your laptop? It’s absolutely frenetic. That’s why I’m fascinated by such tools. Another example is Ommwriter, a minimalist, full-screen word processor. Here’s a tool that confronts you with your text, only your text. It blocks out all the toolbars and has no formatting functionality—no time wasting trying to make your text look nice.
Look, I’m not saying that Twitter is wrong. Such tools are useful. I certainly find them useful to network with people. Sometimes I meet people at conferences who I have known for some time via Twitter and it is amazing—it feels like you have known them for years. That is great. And I guess we’re becoming more aware of the world around us. But on the other hand we’re becoming hyperventilated users of superficial information, who have the attention span of a millisecond. There are no easy answers here. I certainly don’t want to make any judgement, but I do believe that we need to be more aware about the information and people that we interact with. There are real human beings behind those Twitter accounts.
In the book I also look at the CIO’s perspective. Also there you can see these types of tensions. If you look back at the past few years then the key trend has been the demise of the large IT project, the project by the waterfall method. Today, Agile IT is all the rage, which entails a more flexible and iterative way of working.
Here the point is to work with smaller modules, to show results relatively quickly, and to subsequently fine-tune as you go, and in the process work very closely with the client and users. Compare it to cooking a good stew. You get it going, lift the lid to taste, add herbs, taste again, and so on. Agile IT is an important shift, and a good one, but there is a danger that it is used as an alibi to just ‘do it’, without analysis and thought. I see that happening more and more. Developers are not doing decent analysis anymore because they’re reasoning that the client will want something else anyway within a few months. Everything changes constantly so why do strategy? Therefore that attitude; ‘just do it’. But then you’re just being kicked around by circumstances and will soon have the look of wounded prey. It is amazing. Even when companies are prepared to think about strategy, then that process is still constrained by our hyperventilated state of being.
For example, I often sit in on strategy sessions with clients and am always amazed to see how half the group arrives late while emailing or phoning or twittering or whatever else they do. And during the session too, they’ll be checking their emails and if a phone rings you’ll see a wide eyed exec bolt out the room in panic. It’s hilarious, when you think about it. A similar thing is happening in conferences, in the way delegates all pull their laptops out during the keynotes.
Absolutely, everybody has become a blogger—or twitterer. Are they still able to concentrate? And whose show is it? In a way they’re trying to create their own show; they want to be the show. Also, the impatience of people is getting out of hand. People get claustrophobic if they have to sit down for a 60 minute presentation. I went to a recent conference in Scandinavia recently where the organisers had arranged a room where 6 simultaneous sessions were broadcast live on 6 screens. What a success! Here’s an area where you can simply zap between the 6 sessions, a bit like watching TV with nothing on.
I’m my book I’m trying to confront readers with these types of issues. Technology is tremendously useful, no doubt, but we also need to reflect on the way we interact with technology, on its impact on the way we think and how it influences our social interactions and social norms. I’m trying to make an appeal for more depth, for more reflection, and that sometimes we should just unplug.
First published by The Fifth Conference.
(Very) Slow Blogging
Once upon a time I used to write complete books. Quite a lot of work, I can assure you. I remember writing a book about iterative development which took me an entire, very hot summer in the attic of my house. It seemed to last forever and even now, when I occasionally thumb through the book, I get visions of sticky, sun-drenched days that I witnessed passing by while writing, thinking, writing, thinking and writing.
Later, I started to fancy creating articles. Yes, the content was a bit more shallow. But it took me less work, typically a day or so, and it allowed me to cover more subjects in a shorter period of time. Then, several technology magazines asked me to become a columnist. I taught myself to deliver crisp messages every month in nothing more than 600 words. You end up writing very short sentences, getting rid of all details and focusing on just one key insight per column. Yet again a bit later, a business magazine invited me to write a weekly column for managers, and I constrained myself further to 400 words, apparently being the maximum amount of content a typical business executive can absorb in one read. I essentially produced sound bites with some stage-setting around it.
Then came the period of blogging. We all learned that a good blogger writes very, very short items and does not really care about style or aesthetics. A blogger does not explain or describe anything. You just link to other sites (thank God for Wikipedia, the source of all truth). And now, we have Twitter. I find myself thrown into a universe in which 140 characters – roughly 30 words – have to tell it all. Even hyperlinks are abbreviated in order to save space. On Twitter I don’t write anymore, I stick to the management summary of the introduction of a first, draft idea.
So I thought this is the right time to introduce some counter activities. If only to remind myself, I have introduced the concept of Slow Blogging. A Slow Blogger takes all the time that is needed to write an item. And the blog readers get to follow it step by step. To illustrate the principle, I have introduced three new blogs. On ‘One Blog Item A Year’ I will produce exactly one item every year. Every week, I will add one sentence to the item, resulting in an item of 52 sentences at the end of every year. Too dynamic? I also have started ‘One Blog Item A Decade’, which build up with one sentence every month, resulting in a final piece of 120 sentences every 10 years. And yes, finally I have also created ‘One Blog Item A Life’ and I will add a sentence to the one and only item on that blog every year.
Not sure how many sentences that final piece will contain, but I am not aiming for just a synopsis, rest assured.
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You’ve Got Mail. Almost.
Your worries are over.
Now there is Real Snail Mail, the worlds first webmail service using live snails. The good people at boredomresearch, Bournemouth University, take care of a well-trained staff of 8 snails that each carry a 20mm RFID tag on their shell. Incoming messages are collected at the dispatch centre at one end of their closure. Once a message is loaded on the chip, it will be carried around by the assigned snail until it happens to reach the drop off point. Here the message is collected and forwarded to its final destination. The fastest average delivery time is currently achieved by Francis, a gorgeous brunette snail that only needs 2.22 days to bring the message across. This is in sharp contrast to the pathetic 10.43 days of her macho colleague Sean (codename ‘Agent 007’, guess his glory days are a bit over indeed).
As I said, further discussion is useless. Just think about Real Snail Mail the next time you start up your e-mail program, and it may already help you to approach things just a little bit differently. Then again, you could consider to actually use this brilliant, very contemporary service (after all, it’s RFID, it’s cloud and it’s definitely green) in real life. Send yourself and your team members the project plan, IT strategy outline, specifications document or design through Real Snail Mail and take the time in between to contemplate your results. The results can only improve, because you have injected the right dose of ‘slow’ to take some distance and look into the matter from different perspectives.
I sure hope that the success won’t put too much pressure on those poor snails. Already, their bosses are thinking about scaling up. This will no doubt introduce the concept of industralised snail farms and before we know it management consultants will be applying Lean Six Sigma to eliminate even the last minute of waste in the tank. For now, champion snails like Agatha (agent 006) and Reginald (agent 012) couldn’t care less. One of them may be carrying my e-mail right now, but that freshly placed marigold looks so much more tasteful. Could be another hour of just bites, rather than bytes.
First published on Capgemini’s CTO Blog and SlowPlanet
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