Posts Tagged ‘decadence’

Things you Cannot Buy

Wednesday, July 25th, 2007

To define a long term strategy, we have to predict the future. To predict the future we have to understand the past. The longer we look back, the better we can look forward.

Everything is determinated by cycles. A well know cycle is the Kondratiev. This is the cycle of Innovation. Its cycles-time is about 53 years.

Fifty years ago a new innovation in computing was emerging, the IBM 360. The 360, the All Purpose Computer, became a standard in computing.

A hundred years ago the big factories of Ford and Taylor were dominating the world. It is not difficult to see that the IBM 360 was the next step in the ideal of Taylor to produce a fully mechanized production-facility.

Funny enough the most important innovation of our time, The Internet, can be seen as an IBM 360 where the connectors between the processors (now called servers) are far away.

The capacity of the current network, transporting the standardized (XML-)messages from server to server is so enormous that is it almost possible to work real-time.

Does this mean that the next step of Innovation will be one central operating system that is controlling the Internet?

To find out what will happen we have to look at a new long term cycle, the cycle of Culture. Its periodicity is about 250 years. 250 years ago we are in the time of the French Revolution.

The bourgeoisie (the new entrepreneurs) hated the decadent Kings and the people took over the Power (Liberté, Égalité, and Fraternité). In the end the Centralized State, its centralized institutions, and finally the Centralized Companies were created. At this moment we are in a comparable situation.

The Central State en the big companies are, just like the Kings in the 18th Century, loosing their power. The People, now called customers, are looking for an alternative.

The big Companies are showing ‘decadent” behavior. They are wasting valuable resources ((tax) money) and are delivering a low quality of service. The customers (and the citizens) are highly dissatisfied. If nothing is done the possibility of a new Revolution is not zero.

In software, we see the rising of the Open-Source Movement. It is a rebellion against the power of the big software companies (especially Microsoft). We are in a time of reconstruction and it will take many years before the new stable infrastructure will arise (called Web 2.0).

Of course Google will be a certain winner. It will be one of the major worldwide Powers of IT for a long time. They are centralizing the Internet.

If we look for the short term we can use the Juglar cycle (10 years). This cycle predicts a movement from Individuality (I do it Myself) to the Collective (Let’s do it together). 

Collaboration will be a major issue the next ten years. Google is utilizing this trend by buying many companies that are offering “sharing services”.

The interesting question is Will Google win or will the Open Source Movement win?

My intuition tells it will be the last one. The Open Source Movement is much more flexible in their response. Google is rich and will become richer. The Open Source Movement is not based on money but on enthusiasm (Spirit) and E-motivation (Soul) and a very important point Craftsmanship. These are things you cannot buy.

Hahahaha Dadadada: About Childisch behavior and Decadence

Wednesday, June 13th, 2007

This evening I talked with a friend of mine. He runs a business in Knowledge Management Tools. His brother-in-law is very rich and he was invited to visit him in Spain (Valentia). His brother-in-law owns six cars, a big house and a very expensive sailing ship but he is not able to sail.

My friend is an expert in sailing and he is helping his brother-in-law to sail his ship to Alicante. This weekend a huge sailing event is taking place. It is organized by Switzerland. They needed a sea so they made a deal with Spain.

Organizing the whole events costs 2.000.000.000 Euro (Tax money). To develop a sailing boat an investment of 20.000.000 Euro is necessary just to experiment. Building the ship costs much more (200.000.000 Euro).

Winning the race gives you status in the network of rich people. Larry Ellison the owner of Oracle is one of the persons who is investing billons just to win and another Russian billionaire is doing the same. Anderson made his money by creating and selling software to big companies and government agencies. The Russian billionaire just grabbed everything he could get in Russia. He not only owns a expensive ship but also the most important Soccerteam in Brittain (Chelsea).

Normal (poor) people can watch the race on television and rich people don’t even watch. They have their private parties and my friend is invited. I advised him to find somebody that would buy his environment just for fun.

His Sister-in-Law shows strange behavior. She is wasting enormous amounts of money (six cars) but she also looks at the small things. She is “pound foolish and pennywise”. Her main interest is faking the luggage system of the airplane. She does not want to pay more than the normal fair and she has developed numerous tricks to fake even the customs. She is an expert in smuggling. She acts like a big child and she does not knows she is playing with fire.

My friend is an analytic observer and he observes the same thing in government projects (also tax money). His tools are very cheap and very advanced (Open Source) but Government Agencies and especially Government Research Organizations are spending billions to create something that is already available for free.

Rich people don’t pay a lot of taxes. They pay advisors to find holes in laws and the advisors advise governments to create holes. If they don’t do that the rich people move to other places in the world. Switserland is the expert in “helping” rich people. Banks are doing everything you want to do secret things with your money.

Last night I was asked to help the sun of a friend. He was having troubles with mathematics. I am a mathematician. (Not) to my surprise I found out that his problem was not insight but just doing something at school. He was spending all his time with friends, making fun in school and he did not spend a minute to listen to the teacher or to read his book. I couldn’t do anything to help him.

My friend also wanted to talk about the “career” of his sun. He had to make a choice and after some debate I found out that he wanted to become a banker. I have worked for a bank and I explained him what bankers are doing. He wanted to work in the money-market. I told him economics or mathematics is needed. He understood that his behavior in school was not helpful. After some debate I found out that he did not want to become a real banker. Banking was about doing nothing, driving big cars, nice suits and having fun. He just wanted to be rich.Unfortunedly his father was not a rich person so the only thing that was left for him was to play the lottery.

What is happening?

What is happening is called decadence. We are so rich that we don’t know what to do with our wealth.

But we are also very stressed. Why? Because we are convinced we have to work to make money.

To employ people we give them fake-jobs. Many jobs are about advising the advisor. This is a well know play in the Netherlands. Behind every teacher (we have a shortage, it is not paying much) twenty people are advising. Behind every nurse (and we have a shortage, it is not paying much) there are twenty advising. And it goes on. There are advisor to advisor and at a certain point they create a loop. This loop causes complexity and we employ advisors to make it simple and a new complexity arises. In the end we don’t know what is happening, we get stressed and we employ advisors (ok I stop).

It’s like a strange dream and the dream can turn into a nightmare when the system collapses (and it is collapsing) and suddenly we don’t have enough electricity (Fall-outs happen) and the trains are not running (They do).and computer systems are going out of control (They do) The advisors know that the reason is complexity but they don’t know how to solve it.

Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in neutral Zurich, Switzerland during World Ware I and peaked from 1916 to 1920. The movement concentrated its anti-war politic through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti art. The movement influenced later styles, movements, and groups including Surrealism, Pop Art and Fluxus.

The artists created art out of junk and shit and made a fool of the governing class. Surrealism uses the Dream World to show how the elite is behaving. The “leader” Andre Breton was trained in medicine and psychiatry. He used the psychoanalytic methods of Freud with soldiers who were shell-schocked. He admired anti-social attitudes and disdain for established artistic tradition. He hated them and wanted to show the fake and the nightmares of poor innocent people that were fighting a useless war that was all about Power and Status.

Now the rich persons are paying millions to buy a piece of shit of Dada.

Andre Breton is laughing in his grave and the rich people are laughing also because they also have fun.

Hahahahahaahahaha

Dadadada. Childisch Behavior.

Decadence.

Are we watching the End of Western Civilisation?

I don’t know.

The rich have all the money and therefore the power to stay in power.

The children watch the Jet-Set on Television and also want to be rich.

If they are very poor they Join the Army.

Loop.