Posts Tagged ‘Tim Berners’

About the Next Wave of the Kondratiev Cycle

Thursday, April 17th, 2014

The Future Center Smart Systems will be launched, 23-4-2014 in the Hague.

To prepare for the interactive part of the meeting this document has been written to provide some Food for Thought.

What is a Future Center?

A Future Center is a place to connect and innovate. We want to create an environment that facilitates interaction and stimulates collaborative action. We want to support cross-innovation and make it possible to make new combinations. Last but not least we want you to challenge Science to produce valuable insights at the right time and the right place.

A Future Center is a Smart System. At this moment it is an interaction system that helps Humans to innovate. In the Future we wil automate the Future Center and automate the innovation-process itself.

What is a Smart System?

A Smart System looks like a human being. It is equipped with a Sensory-Motor-System, a Mind, Imagination and Emotions.

Smart Systems senses the outside (and his inside) world with much more sensors-types than the five sensors of his human look-a-like.

A Smart System is able to react very fast with its predefined processes on a event that is detected by its sensors.

A Smart System is an adaptable system. It is able to analyze and improve its behavior, communicate with a human being and other Smart Systems in an understandable way.

Smart Systems are there to compensate the human biases. Smart Systems are able to transform and optimize everything that contains some kind of structure.

Smart Systems  can optimize software, data and content using software/data/text-mining, analyze patterns, predict the short and sometimes the long term.

Smart Systems are perfectly suited to provide the knowledge needed and answer the questions humans ask. They are able to train humans in an almost real situation using simulators.

Smart Systems can be fun to play with.

About Cycles

In 1931 the US Department of Commerce assigned Edward Dewey the task of discovering the cause and underlying dynamics of the Great Depression. Dewey created a special institute called the Foundation for the Study of Cycles that is still in existence.

The most interesting observation of Dewey is that Cycles restore themselves all the time and are connected by a Harmonic (“Musical”) Pattern. Dewey discovered that we cannot control the Cycles.  Ups and downs are a fact of life.

The most researched Cycle in history by far is the Kondratiev-Cycle named after the Soviet economist Nikolai Kondratiev. The Kondratiev Cycle has a periodicity of 52 years.

The Kondratiev arises from the combination of basic innovations that launch technological revolutions that in turn create leading industrial or commercial sectors.

In the year 2000 the Kondratiev was at his top and is now in a decline that will take 26 years.

Currently we are in  the Kondratiev Spring Phase. It is the time of what Schumpeter, a big fan of Kondratiev, called Creative Destruction.

The old structures are dying and the new structures that will start the new upward wave are created.  It is a time of tremendous disruptions.

About the Software Factory

The last wave that started around 1950 was dominated by the rise of the centralized computer.

This computer was based on the factory-model of Henry Ford and Frederick Winslow Taylor of the previous wave.

Between 1950-2000 isolated creative programmers united in big software factories that are controlled by unified standardized methods and processes. Between 1950-2000 the programmers automated their own processes.

The methods are now transformed into standardized (BPML-)process-models that are abstracted into standardized (VDML-) business models that are filled with Industry-Models. An example is the ARTS-model that covers Retail.

Creative programmers are now replaced by creative business-modelers.

About the Next Wave, The Network of the Human Mind

On Christmas 1990 Tim Berners-Lee working at CERN published the first version of The World Wide Web. He launched the theme for the next wave, The Network.

From 1950 until 2000 the causal linear manual processes were automated but now the next level, the network of the human mind is at stake.

At the end of this wave around 2040 or much earlier as some people predict, the machines will imitate and surpass the human because they will unite in a global brain that can be connected to our Brains if we want that to happen.

At this moment we are creating the memory-banks of the Global Brain by producing billions of connected parts that contain complete human life’s, theories, music, movies, measurements and much more that we are now unable to imagine.

A Short Scenario for the Next Forty Years

It is clear that the Business-Domain-Models will speed up the process of value-chain-integration and value-chain-reversal.

This means that the customer will be in control of the value-chain en there will be direct contact between customer and producer. Value-chain-integration will in the end remove all the intermediaries in the value chain.

Value chains will finally converge into one standardized value chain. Best-practices of separate value-chains will become leaders in the new value-chain. Cross-innovation, combining the best of all worlds, is the way to move on.

To give customers control of the value-chain producers have to simplify their products and make it possible for the customers to create their own version of the product they want.

Products have to become configurations of simple building blocks that can be split into variable parts and infrastructure.  Product-configurators will connect to other configurators. This makes it possible to create completely new combinations.

In the next step the data that is produced by the systems will be analyzed and processes will not be controlled by human made models but by models that are created by statistical pattern recognition tools. The systems will understand humans and predict human behavior and adapt themselves to the human needs.

In the last stage the software will produce an image that reduces the complexity of its whole. It will create a virtual human world that gives us the illusion that we are still in control.

At that time most people will play and not work.

Challenges

The most important question you have to ask yourself is if your company is part of the “old world” that will finally be destructed by creativity or is already part of the new wave.

The big problem is change management,  how to move from the current state to a for most companies and institutions unknown future. Companies, Institutions and People have to transform their collaboration patterns,  their software, their data and their expertise.

The change process is accelerating. Almost all companies and institutions (and governments) are stuck in their installed base of software and their hierarchical organization structure that is not created to respond fast to the challenges that come from the outside word.

LINKS

About Smart Systems

About Enterprise 2.0 and the New World of Work

Sunday, May 17th, 2009

At this moment there is a lot of discussion going on about the New World of Work. In the New World of Work the new developments of the Internet 2.0 (Social Networks, Blogging, Twittering, etc) are used to Speed up the Work of the Knowlegde Worker. The infrastructure to make this possible is called Enterprise 2.0.

Enterprise 2.0 is : A System of Web (2.0)-Based Technologies that provide rapid and agile Collaboration, Information Sharing, emergence and integration capabilities in the Extended Enterprise. An Extended Enterprise is a Supply or Value Chain.

The definition of Enterprise 2.0 is constantly changing because Enterprise 2.0 is still a Concept. Many people are now struggeling to move from the concept/idea-stage to the realization-phase.

The main issue behind de term “Web 2.0” is the move from a Sender/Receiver-model, the One-Sided Website, to a more Collaborative use of the Internet (Discussions, Social Networks). According to the Inventors of the term Web 2.0 the “new web”, is a Collaborative Web.

For some reason they have forgotten that the World Wide Web (WWW) software of Tim Berners Lee was part of a Collaborative Platform to support the scientists that Participated in a Network called DARPANET. This network was created by DARPA, the Technological Think-Tank of the American Army in 1957!.

What is the definition of the term “Collaboration”?

The word “collaborate” comes from the Latin “Collaboratus” meaning “Work (Labore) together (Col)”. The term “to-gather” comes from the term “gadurojan” which means “in good fellowship” or “United“. When you Collaborate you are not working Alone but with Others United in Good Fellowship.

The Potential to Collaborate is an Aspect of the Personality.

The Personality Types of the Human Being can be described with two variables Agency and Communion. Comm-Union is the capability to Col-Laborate, to accomplish a Union. The variable Agency describes your relationship between the Self and the Other.

When you are High in Communion and Low in Agency you are suffering from a Dependent Personality Disorder. This disorder is characterized by a pervasive psychological dependence on other people. You always want to Collaborate and are very Emotional.

When you are High in Communion and High in Agency you are suffering from a Histrionic Personality Disorder. People with a Histrionic Personality Disorder have good social skills, but they tend to use these skills to manipulate other people to become the Center of Attention. They are very Imaginative.

According to Interpersonal Theory a “normal” person is able to Combine Two or More Interpersonal Faculties.

There are two Disorders left called Paranoid (High Agency, Low Communion) and Schizophrenic (Low Agency, Low Communion). Paranoid people have a big problem with their Expectation. They want to control the Future and Every Person in their Context. Schizophrenic people are completely influenced by their mostly Visual Senses. They See what they Want to See.

If you combine the Four Interpersonal Faculties (Emotions, Imagination, Expectations and Senses) Twelve Interpersonal, Collaborative, Patterns emerge. A good example is the Master(Paranoid)/Slave(Dependent)-Relationship (Expectation/Emotions). Some People Love to be Dominated by the Other.

Interpersonal Faculties can be combined into Collaborative Work Patterns.

In my blog about Vocation I showed that work is an Expression of the Personality. If you believe this is True and you believe Interpersonal Theory is True you have to admit there are Twelve Types of Work.

When you are highly Imaginative and Sensitive (You Believe Your Own Eyes, You are Realistic, Factual) you are an Entrepreneur, You want to bring An Idea into Reality. To Find the Facts you need an Information System to Investigate what is Happening. The Internet with all its Sources of Information is a beautiful tool to use.

To bring an Idea into Practice you have to Realize the Idea. In this case you need a Designer (Transform Ideas into Models) and a Maker (Bring Models into Reality). A Maker is not a Collaborative person (Low Communion). Makers want to work Alone.

When you create a Team of Makers to Realize your Idea the Team will fail. To avoid Competition the Designer has to define a Model (An Architecture and a Project Plan) in which all the Lonesome Workers are able to do their Specialized Job.

I hope you believe we are able to define a complete (meta)-Architecture and a (meta)-Plan to move around in the (meta)-Work-Space.

What is the Relationship between the Work Patterns and Enterprise 2.0?

An Enterprise is a combination of many people with many Collaborative Work-patterns. We could Specialize an Enterprise to perform one kind of Pattern. If we Specialize an Enterprise we have to combine many Enterprises in an Extended Enterprise to do Everything we Want to Do.

We need a Designer Company, A Sales Company, Visionairs, Entrepeneurs and other Roles to cover the Complete Spectrum of Work. If We want to Produce we always need the Makers. The Makers need a well defined Structure (A Hierarchy), a Plan and an Architecture, to operate in.

At this moment Enterprise 2.0 is nothing but a Concept. Somebody of High Agency and High Communion (A Creator) has gotten the Idea that the new 2.0 Internet is able to support an Enterprise.

 He hopes that the new tools will break down the Hierarchical Structure of the Organization of the Makers. Creators don’t like Hierarchies. They love Networks. If Creators are One-Sided, Histrionic, they want to Stay in the Center of Attention of the Network.

What Creators don’t realize is that Makers, the Majority of the Human Beings,  don’t want to use Collaborative Tools. They want to work Alone in their own Specialized Compartment of the Beehive.

Enterprise 2.0 is a Concept to support Innovation. Someday the Innovation has to be Stabilized. If we want to do that we still need Enterprise 1.0, The Factory until we find another Solution (The Robots?).

Don’t forget the Worker Bees. They Bring in the Honey.