Knowledge Rocks!

One of my favourite magazines is MIT Technology Review.

“Each year, Technology Review selects what it believes are the 10 most important emerging technologies. The winners are chosen based on the editors’ coverage of key fields. The question that we ask is simple: is the technology likely to change the world?”

This year’s list contains three technologies that caught my eye:

• Real-time search — search engines wrestling to make sense of streams of real-time information from sources like Facebook and Twitter
• Social TV — remember all of the talk about interactive TV? Seems we have arrived there given the use of social media tools as a back channel for conversations amongst friends watching TV (same time / different place). But there is research underway to enhance this.
• Cloud programming — featuring research from those working on better programming tools for cloud computing

Worth the read.

I came across this story in Scientific American about how a group of mathematicians work together to solve (math) problems. Two cases are presented: the case of French mathematicians working together; and the other a more recent Internet-based collaboration:

From the April 2010 Scientific American Magazine

Problem Solved, LOL

Blog comments point to a new, faster approach in math
By Davide Castelvecchi
In the mid-20th century the encyclopedic works of French mathematician Nicolas Bourbaki traced every mathematical concept back to the subject’s foundations in the theory of sets—the stuff of Venn diagrams—and changed the face of his field. Like many of his notions, Bourbaki existed only in the abstract: he was the pseudonym for a tight-knit group of young Parisian researchers. The Internet-age version could be D.H.J. Polymath, another collective pseudonym who could define a new style of mathematics.

This is another example of an expertise network in action. Also, an excellent example of why collaboration matters. If this works for mathematicians, why not for others? Why is this just a ‘faster approach for math’?

“If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

~~ attributed to Benjamin Franklin

Business Week had an excellent article on the new Google home page (did you notice the changes yet?). The article reviews a number of design considerations and the design process. It highlights some of the subtleties that go into good design. You should also look at this graphic for a better understanding.

I was directed to the CICA’s 20 Question series by a colleague recently. What an excellent resource of carefully thought out assessment instruments.

Check out:

• 20 Questions Directors Should Ask about IT; and,
• 20 Questions Directors Should Ask about Governance Assessments.

I also found their IT Advisory Committee page. Here are some of the additional resources they have there:

• 20 Questions Directors Should Ask About IT Projects (2007)
• 20 Questions Directors Should Ask About the Information Technology Aspects of Business Continuity Planning (2005)
• 20 Questions Directors Should Ask About Information Technology Outsourcing (2005)

Thanks Jerry!

I came across an article in the April issue of Wired, Clive Thompson on the Cyborg Advantage.In this article, Clive tells the story of how, after having been beat by IBM’s Deep Blue, Garry Kasparov observed that “(H)uman smarts and silicon smarts work in very different ways” — “which gave Kasparov an intriguing idea. Instead of competing, what if humans and computers worked as a team?” So Garry …

“… created what he called advanced chess, in which players are assisted by off-the-shelf software. Each competitor enters the position of their pieces into a computer and uses the moves that the program recommends to inform their decisionmaking.

At a “freestyle” online tournament in 2005, where any kind of entrant was allowed, such human-machine pairings were absolutely awesome. In fact, the overall winner wasn’t one of the grandmasters or supercomputers; it was a pair of twentysomething amateurs using run-of-the-mill PCs and inexpensive apps. …”

Clive notes that

The most brilliant entities on the planet, in other words (at least when it comes to chess), are neither high-end machines nor high-end humans. They’re average-brained people who are really good at blending their smarts with machine smarts.

And …

As we face that trade-off, figuring out how to integrate machine intelligence into our personal lives becomes the key challenge. When should you rely on online tools to fill you in on the news or your friends’ lives? When should you forage on your own?

There’s no one answer — and there never will be, because everyone is different. It’s a personal quest. But there’s also no avoiding the question, because it’s clear that serious cognitive advantages accrue to those who are best at thinking alongside machines.

Ultimately, the real question is, what sort of cyborg do you want to be?

This article is worth reading. It leads to the conclusion that the answers to performance (personal or organizational) lie not in ‘either | or’ trade-offs but rather in how we combine the power of machines and humans.

I had the great fortune to listen to Steve Podborski, the first non-European World Cup Champion (1982), of the Crazy Canucks (CCs) ski team speak at a dinner a few years ago. I was reminded of this watching their story on the bio channel.

I remember Steve talking about one thing that made the CCs a team – their willingness to share what they knew and learned each and every day. You see, downhill skiing was (and in someways today still is) viewed as an individual sport not a team sport. The sport was dominated by Europeans. The Swiss and Austrian skiers of that time saw each other, including the teammates from their own countries, as competition. The CCs changed the way ski teams operated. Using technology (two way radios) the skiers that went down the hill ahead of you would call back up the hill with reports of the specific conditions a teammate was going to face.

As Steve puts it in the biography show, it was like saying “here’s how to run the course better – here’s how to beat me.” This collaboration contributed to their success on the world stage and accelerated their climb towards the top of the competitive field. Collaboration allowed them to accelerate their learning as a team and to change their pace of learning; out-pacing the competition. This helped them climb quickly through the ranks of world class skiers.

In our organizations today, sharing knowledge like this could greatly enhance our performance; even when we are in similar competitive positions. What if we turned our solo practices into team like the CCs did? What if we were as selfish?

In an article related to the Digital Health counterpoint in Business Week, the role of physicians and their status is examined [Doctors' Pride: A Hurdle to Digital Medicine -- A forerunner in New England found that some physicians would sooner cut ties than see their elite status threatened].

It seems that a number of physicians in this health network were not keen on the new egalitarian roles presented by the hospital network. Physician roles (indeed all health provider roles) are key to any successful integration across the system. It is not sufficient to mandate integration in IPC.

Business Week publiched an article challenging the broad asumptions concerning the benefits of digital health initiatives. It is worth reading along with the sidebar article highlighting Newt Gingrich’s Health-Care Mission.

In a nutshell, this article provides links to research and cases where the promise of electronic health has not been realized. It is always good to see the other side.

Business week maintains a good collection of health IT articles worth browsing. You may want to check on this periodically.