Small incident, small village, big insights

Monday morning, after dreadful terrorist attacks around the world.

Walking in a small village, noticing someone lying on the floor.  Possibly a drunk person.

Walking back, now there is a small crowd, providing some encouragement to the person and asking questions.

I join the crowd and ask the person how s/he feels.  S/he looks back and asks for us to call his/her partner.  

One of the crowd member says we have to wait for an ambulance to come.  The person in question reacts angrily.  Other members of the crowd say it is better for this person to let the paramedics check him/her.

I offer to buy a coffee, the person refuses.  It seems we are not listening to the individual in question. 

And then the interesting bit (that motivated this post):  Someone else joins the crowd and asks if we can give a mobile phone number.  So the paramedics can call directly.

At this point I leave the crowd.  Not because I become disinterested.  But because the crowd dissolves.  The person walks out, asks to be alone, no apparent injury noticed.  

But also because now all of us feel we need to stop being a crowd and become what we are: individuals.

The paranoid data seeking state in which we live in (you can check my previous post) breaks crowds, dissolves masses, it can make us rethink our own values and walk away. 

Yes, health/ social services needed a mobile phone, they need the individual to stand out from the crowd.  My previous experience with health and social services in the country where I live is that data requests will come after the individual(s).  

A log has to be created.  A record needs to exist of the incident.  So that someone in distress (or with criminal behavior) enters our sophisticated data systems. So that someone who also reported the incident can be contacted later.

I am not an expert on health or social services.  But what I see is that data is taking over common sense, if it has not done so already.  

Addiction to data collection

I was recently attending a planning meeting outside university.

The aim was to provide some input as a user in a project to establish a new public service to be provided by private and public organisations.

It felt as if we were having a good discussion, and I was feeling somehow proud to have been able to convey some key ideas on how the new service should run.

And then the question that unconsciously I was dreading to hear came:

• So what sort of data are we going to collect from service users? 

Followed by its natural sibling:

• How can we make sure that the data collection is not intrusive? 

We live in a time where data is the uninvited but essential guest.  Like the lost relative that always shows up to spoil the party.

We have become addicted to data.  And to collect it.  But all in an almost secret manner.  

We need data to keep a trail, to know who is doing what, to infer why they did or did not turn up. 

And we act like the browser cookies. 

I am sure a good number of jobs have been created in for profit and non-profit organisations in order to manage the data.  In these jobs essential requirements are the ability to capture and analyse data, followed by the ability to sum up data and present it to key decision makers.  

I hope the data analysts that are reading this post forgive me.  Nothing wrong with the job.  What seems to be wrong in my view is the addiction processes that keep feeding this and other jobs.

So the discussion in the meeting turned into a kind of design of how the management of data was to proceed.  Naturally (yes, naturally) then the next question that followed was:

• How can we capture the data using existing systems?

Because yes, there could be more than one system that already captures some data.  And we don't want to duplicate efforts.  We cannot afford to do so.  

Listening to the last question, I almost jumped onto the conversation to say that I had a few ideas about databases and information systems.  

But I stayed silent.  

Because it takes a supplier to keep the addiction going on.  

All I can think now to tell my students is that if data emerges, let it emerge, but don't force its collection or analysis.  If there is someone who is keen to collect data, then there is a hidden motive. Try to get to the bottom of this.  Try to block the cookies if you see what I mean.  

The data to be collected should serve a much higher purpose than just keep a memory of what goes on.  

Mind the mobile

I have recently become interested in meditation and mindfulness.

Mindfulness, or focusing our attention in the present as it is, offers a way of dealing with worries and anxieties.  

There are lots of mobile applications that can help people enhance their ability to be mindful.  

Some of them can give access to whole networks of users and electronic resources.  They also offer different exercises. 

And there are other applications to help us relax, balance our energy and so on.  

A few weeks ago I I tried headspace which is a very popular application.  After ten (10) free sessions I was then invited to pay an annual membership and continue enjoying the benefits of guided meditation and other aids.  

This is just an example.  I enjoyed using it.  However I still need to see more 'real' practice.  Because I tend to think that on my own I need to be 'excellent' in what I have to do. So I get anxious and impatient. 

This is a personal trait.  I am a perfectionist.  And with this type of mobile applications I have not found a way of telling them or my mobile who I am.  There is a kind of forced routine I had to have. And worst of all I had to start paying for it! 

Is this the illusion of mobile apps, inviting you to be better at what you do? What to do with people like me who get anxious if we cannot achieve it? 

For sure in the future there could be applications that could measure my level of anxiety and help me manage it.  Other applications could be designed for people like me.  No need to 'get better'. 

I think it is important for IT designers and users to better understand how we can deal with our own issues.  There is no point in flooding the market quickly with lots of apps if we don't pause and listen to the user.  

So mind the mobile.  It could be helping you and it is great if it does.  

But if not, mind who you are, listen to yourself and act accordingly.  

From second class to no class - we have been boxed!

The world is upside down...

The Internet, the network of networks is becoming just a bunch of silos.  

We have stopped sharing links, opening up to diversity and dissent.  

We have been boxed into belonging to Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, etc. 

We have been persuaded to like things or go against them...in a few characters.  If we disagree then we cannot say much.  

It is like becoming a no-class citizen.  No way to even know who we are, or what we can do about things.  Reality is created daily as a series of feeds.

We keep missing what happens in our lives.  We need to stay connected, tuned, we need to be online.

We need to take pictures, and they had better be happy.   

We even lost track of what it means to have a second class deliver of a letter or a parcel.  Either you pay for premium or first class or you don't know when things are going to be delivered.  Only premium services can be tracked.  Only those can give you some certainty. 

Why is this? 

Maybe it is because we have left to intelligent systems and intelligent companies decide what it is best for us.

We have stopped questioning what online engines suggest we should read first and second.  We have stopped complaining when we don't understand how they operate.  

We just click to accept the endless lists of terms and conditions.  

We have been defined what counts as real and important.  

As Ellen Rose said once,  it is about time we consider ourselves intelligent and smart technology users, and take responsibility for our inactivity and for our choices.  Even if those choices means going against the tide of mainstream opinion or trend.  

Or even if these choices involve fighting addictions to the technology itself.  

Myself I am still guilty of checking work emails at night; guilty of believing stories about technology like the ones I have criticised in previous posts here in this blog.  I am guilty of doing online research for the sake of it.  I am guilty of often taking things at rank value (face value according to engines).  

I'm guilty of continuously checking my bank accounts online and checking my google scholar citations as if they were bank accounts too ! 

So I confess.  

I am believing more in the online world than in the real world that I have in front of my eyes. 

I need to get out of this way of thinking, get out of this box. 

What about you? 

Better stories about IS and IT

Recently I was reading Jonah Lehrer's book "Imagine: how Creativity Works".  Am still thinking of some of his ideas, in particular those relate to the importance of collaboration and honest brainstorming (plus-sing as he calls it).

Then he presents the case of Pixar, the digital animation company that was co-founded by Steve Jobs. The success of computer animated movies, it seems, rests on having a good story.  And when the story is not good (as it was going to be the case with Toy Story 2), then you have so start from scratch.  Even if this hurts.  

So plus-sing helps people to be (brutally) honest whilst being constructive when taking part in a design effort.  The rest is given by providing a good environment for people to interact with others they are not used to.  

And so we land in information systems territory.  For years we as educators in this field have been used the story of competitiveness (you can read my previous blog on it) to entice and motivate students to gain an appreciation of the role of information systems In organisations.  Not so much in society in general.  

This story in many cases does not reflect what we do as people using information systems.  If we were to walk the talk then we would have to see what universities do with IS and IT.  And then we would discover that we don't really know what goes on.  In this type of organisations the story of IS/IT is far from clear let alone easy to grasp or to tell.  

But universities are not the only ones that don't fit into the competitiveness story.  Many organisations would be more akin to be related to a story of a vision.  Someone saw potential to do things with IS/IT (not sure if they were driven by gaining competitive advantage) and went for it.  

Pixar could well be one of those organisations, and as Lehrer says, technology was in its infancy hen they started.  IT was not fast enough to make filming easier.  It would take ages to film a short sequence.  Not only that, but funding was always at risk.  Having s good story for a film was essential. Stories that would captivate children but also adults.  

So what other stories can we think of to drive the efforts with IS/IT? And what stories can we use to replace the almost out of age story of competitiveness when it comes to educate people in this field? 

I can think of a few.  The story of how vendors gained an IT contract and then cleared off.  The story of how a piece of software made the living of an entrepreneur until s/he sold it or until s/he lost it all when the company could not rely anymore on cheap graduates.  The story of how a company had to replace  its donated legacy system because these systems had been built for a different type of company.  

Or the story of how two banks became one after unsuccessfully installing two versions of the same foreign software for years.  Or the story of four smart kids who ended up locked and working non-stop in a garage in California after being deceived with the promises of the Silicon Valley.  Or the story of a female analyst who with her long life friends and a couple of good mentors (but also against her boss) built academic information systems out of virtually nothing. And succeeded.  

Am sure you and I know stories like these...

It is time to look for simpler and more humane stories with and about IS/IT.  Not all stories have to involve the drop out kids, the graduates working non-stop in their dormitories.  There are stories IS/IT enchanting people in supposedly the wrong place and the wrong time.  Stories of coincidence and chance.  

It is time to think of simpler ways of conveying what we know about IS/IT.  This story of the Internet does not have to be told for instance as a story of the military trying a new defence system but as a story of some guys having deep conversations about humanity.  The story of software does not have to be a story about conquering the world with an operating system or the best computer in two but as a story of a computer club where everyone tried to positively impress others.  

So maybe we need to do some plus-sing of the stories we use in our field.  

Or maybe we need to rewrite the whole thing as a series of children stories.  

Maybe we need some wizards here and now.  

The blind leading the blind : IT and economic growth

For some reason today I remembered my participation in an international event a few years ago.  The theme was e-government in small (commonwealth) states.  Not that I know much about the commonwealth, or e-government for that effect.  But then I was invited to talk about my research.

The opening discourse made it clear a link between IT and economic growth.  In other words, invest in IT and somewhere along the line of time, there will be economic benefits.  Success stories from some countries seem to confirm this.  If you want to be more specific, then think of IT as a new source for business creation, tool to  achieve of efficiencies, sharing and dissemination of knowledge, and ultimately a leveraging point to improve quality of life. 

It is at this point though where the magicians (aka the blind people) appear to guide the rest of us (the rest of the blind people).  Those experts with knowledge to translate the effects and impacts of IT in economic terms.  The same experts that then go on to claim IT as a somehow gift from heaven, pervading every aspect of life, and making it better.  The latest chapter of this story is being edited by claiming that IT can help you and I live longer, so that we know what we can be living or dying for in the future given our bodily data.  

I am not an expert in economics as said before.  But cannot digest entirely this link between IT and economic growth.  If the link was so evident, why is that we have different success and failure stories? Whilst IT can indeed become a way to create industry, a way to innovate, and a way to disseminate information (not sure about disseminating knowledge either), why is it that we still think that it is people (managers, policy makers, students, entrepreneurs, housewives, house husbands, unemployed or failed graduates among many others) the ones who make the difference between success and failure? 

We can end up comparing the hardworking, visionary and organised people with the more lazy and less outspoken (I include myself in this latter group). I personally hate comparisons of character.  Perhaps I could live with comparisons of skills.  But then the debate would be limited to education or training, something I also think is misleading.  

As a good friend and former boss said to me once, we are betting on an ideal when we invest in IT.  We are unconsciously hoping that the success story will become true (you can read a previous blog post on the nice story about IT).  We are putting millions in the casino.  

All because of a link.

And of course we are hoping that people will do their bit, even in the darkest hours, when the link appears elusive.  

We need more meta-studies to ascertain more clearly what really IT is generating.  We need to decide how IT is really impacting in our societies, as well as how we want IT to be conceived of and used. 

Open government, love and care, and Greece

Many of us have been guilty as academics or practitioners of believing that the key to achieve better government is by ensuring free flow of information and with it public participation in government affairs.

This belief is like a nice story, but needs love and care if we are going to live it in the real world.

I have become convinced that information is the result of and not the precondition for action.  For open government, free flow of information requires opening up discussions on the meaning of terms like 

development, democracy, transparency, accountability and the like.  

The problem is, we don't like fuzzy terms like these.  When they show up, we are quick to jump to the typical answer that one thing is governance, and the other is whatever we think we do with information systems.  We limit ourselves to say that we create conditions for anything to emerge.  And we leave others (politicians, policy makers, aid agencies) the responsibility to define these terms.   We let them do whatever they like to do with these.   For us, the important thing is the information system, the technology, the new and quirky stuff like architectures, repositories, big data analytics, interoperability between systems, federations of systems, affordances of systems, user satisfaction, systems success, technology transfer, etc. 

Separating the technology from its surroundings is a typical, elegant, off the hook answer that I keep getting from academics and practitioners.  For the sake of being practical, and delivering systems on time and within budget.  

Open government is as much as making data available as building or rebuilding systems to make this happen.  A deeper discussion on the meaning for instance of transparency can lead us to ask ourselves tricky questions: whose transparency are we talking about? 

We could end up with discussions about why we really need IT investments, or why international aid agencies have to decide on what counts as a project to be implemented.  

Those parties that we delegated to define fuzzy terms could explain bit more what they want to do.  They could also explain better how is that they are trying to help governments.  

Open government in Greece has apparently gone very well according to official reports from the open partnership and from initiatives focusing on monitoring government decisions.  So the flow of information seems to have improved.  And the government is still committed to build more efficiency, participation, transparency and accountability in their affairs.  

But the country is once again in a very difficult situation, and there seems to be little hope in promoting more IT investments and with them better inter-operability, information quality or social media use.  

Living the story of open government requires money, but there is little of it.  

Open government has some bearing of responsibility in having lost an audience who does not seem to believe anymore in what has been promoted.  

The audience needs less of technicalities and more love and care, it needs to be listened to, not just being treated like an online channel.  

So where is the camera and who owns it?

Am currently hooked on watching "breaking bad" TV series.  End of fourth season and the main characters have execute an almost perfect plot.

It is almost perfect, except they forget they have been recorded on camera.  And they need to get rid of the evidence that implicates them.

Modern and post modern life is instantly recorded.  Or at least we should assume so.  The mobile conversations, the emails, the video footage, we leave our trail.  Something I already mentioned when I talked about our digital footprint in a previous blog post. 

Together with this trend about recording life, we are now assuming that everything needs evidence.  Before we argue for something, or we defend ourselves.  And this evidence is somehow a combination of digital footprint and other stuff.  So the writing in the napkin and the DNA in it still has some value and that can also be on the increase.

We, the humans, are not that perfect.  Our human camera, our memory, our word, our trust lies continuously in tatters.   We need to back it up.   

Bit of sad news to have to become mediators, prosecutors, detectives, lawyers and defendants.  In my academic world that is increasingly the case.  We cannot just assume students did all their work by themselves.  We have to check it with a plagiarism detection software.  Students on the other hand have their own devices to get information quickly.  Good for the good ones, and good for the not so good.  And we have to be careful with how we deal with important content (exams).  We have to be careful with allowing people to film our lectures.  

Why? Because we need to avoid fraud, foul play.  

And because in case of any dispute parties have to recur to evidence.  So we need to have it whilst others should not.  

It is a game of who owns the camera and who uses it and for what purposes.

I wonder if the same happens in other organisations where they do not have academics but employees, and they do not have students but customers.  I wonder if we have become trapped by this game of evidence and pressure.  

Who is to win this game? Is this a daily game, a minute by minute one? What purposes does it suit? 

Maybe the good news is that like Foucaultvian power, we have bit of freedom to protect ourselves and be savvy.  We still need good friends who know how to win disputes. And we also need good cameras.  

And we can be ethical in this game, whatever this means to us and whatever this happens to mean in a given moment and time.  

It is a nice story, but that is all!

Have been marking exam papers these last few days.  The preferred question chosen by students of this particular exam is that of Michael Porter's model of five forces to gain advantage through the use of information systems and technologies (IS).

Students now write about how IS helps gain competitive advantage.  They know famous examples about companies that reduced costs or increased their intimacy with customers.  All by using IS.  

They also know that social media is really important.  And that it can help companies gain knowledge about customers.

So these are parts of a same story that now has a story beginning in the 1980s and cruising through the 90s and the year 2000 to come today...

It is a nice one, it appeals, it is simple yet powerful.  Like good stories tend to be. 

But it is only a story.  It is one version of reality.  What I call the official version.  

The one that offers hope to students that someday they will get their dream job by carefully aligning their knowledge with what a company needs, and in the process using some technology to help themselves and others. The one saying that if you do what it says in the tin, you will succeed.  

The official version is of course plausible and possible.  

And we all like to believe in cause and effect, as children. If you eat your cereal you will grow strong.  

What the Porter story does not say though is that in reality we do not fully control what happens with technology, we are not the only group of people that contribute to what goes on.  Even if we like to think we do.  There are many forces, many of which are hidden, sudden.  Decisions happen almost by chance.  And so outcomes.

Am personally trying to better understand how as an individual I use this story to convince myself I can be someone and so can my students.  Someone with a purpose in life.  Someone with causes and effects

As if life had only one story to tell.  Or as if our lives depended on it.  

Difficult to write other histories when everyone likes the official version.  

But anyhow, we can produce our own stories.  Mine at the moment is about letting go of causes and effects.

So if you are reading this because you are / were one of my students, friends or relatives let me say this: technology can help, but do not put your life and your mind, even your happiness, to depend on it.  Do what you want with or without IT in the best possible ways. And remember there is always something to learn from success or failure.

The imperfection is there, can we live with it?

Technology is artificial.  It runs against nature.  By studying it and its impacts, we can contribute to reinforce it, even if we claim we try to be socially conscious.  

I have stopped teaching e-business, but still in the back of my mind there is a temptation to find better ways to help people gain someone from the online world.

A key challenge though is that we cannot control technology.  We cannot foresee all its effects.  We cannot ensure fairness, participation, better quality of life.

Because we r playing with the artificial.  And we expect ourselves and nature to fully embrace it.  

Can we add a sense of uncertainty, a sense of humbleness, a sense of humanity, so that we do not fully believe on the transformative power of technology? 

How can we infuse this sense in our children? 

How can we still enjoy our research and practice, and coexist with others that believe in other panaceas including the power of marketing, finance, prediction, economics, and even those that discuss how to live a good life? 

Some food for thought...

Teaching creativity, making the most of the present time

So this year I am teaching a new course on creativity and problem solving.

So far it has been fun.  Reading some books, planning exercises and encouraging students, six (6) of them, to think of creativity as a way to become happier in our lives.  We are now taking the course step by step, trying to decide together what could come next.  

It has also been stressful, as I need to recruit more students if the course is to survive.  

Together with an initial desire to use systems thinking, the stress and anxiety have taught me that we all need to keep things simpler and clearer.

Problem is, as academics we usually become complex, mono thematic, isolated.  We also raise our level of expectations about our students. Currently I am struggling with setting expectations that will be ok for students and myself.  

Am also learning to acknowledge that I have some of these expectations which are different to everyone else.  For example, I initially wanted to use this course to write a book as way of being creative and also productive (mind you research expectations are still there and on the rise after last government assessment).  So far, this expectation has subsided a bit, because it is impossible to do both things (teach and write). So I have settled for keeping a diary with thoughts and ideas, which I might check in the future.  I keep thinking of nice journal article titles without success.  

Student expectations about this course and life in general are also very new to me.  Some students just want to learn more about their new cultural environment. Others see education as a way of increasing their chances to get a dreamed internship or job.  To both, I think creativity can help them, to try something new and to learn from it.  Expectation about developing creativity as a transferable skill sounds nice, but impractical.  If it is a skill, then the obvious question is: Creativity for what? The answers might not take us anywhere.  I have preferred to relate creativity to individual happiness. So we are all in the same page, my students and me, looking for something we can relate to albeit in different ways. 

For some reason I also want to encourage my students to be flexible, so that they can combine their plans with new opportunities, and also accept failure.  Failure is not something I am used to, but am learning to accept it.  So far creative people are able to fail 'in private', and to try things in a safe environment.  So students can still learn positive things.  And they can venture to explore life out there, outside the classroom. Because life is everywhere, not only at university.  

In organisations failure is often not tolerated.  Even at universities, we must succeed at once.  So this course should have been a better success.  It was not axed because of a kind of duty of care towards the 6 people that signed up for it.  I have been given another chance.  Lucky me.   

For creativity to work, almost any effort undertaken by individuals should be praised, even if that is considered a 'failure'.  And if you are creative and believe in your ideas, you must defend them, but also listen to feedback.  It might tell you that either you are wrong and need to accept it, or that maybe you are in the wrong place.  Only feedback I have got so far is: low student numbers.  Do something about it. My students keep saying they took this course because they want to be different from anyone else, that is more positive feedback I think. 

So even if creativity is praised and becomes the norm at work, we need to be careful to institutionalise it.  Creativity also happens in very unexpected ways, when we are not thinking or being forced to think about new ideas, but when we are enjoying life.  Creativity is complex, systemic, it can result in unexpected results and ways of working, and I also want to believe it can positively change those people who want to venture and be creative.  Myself I wanted to try new things.  Maybe next time I could do it in other ways, not only by proposing and running new courses. M

A good environment can help, although it should not be the only thing.   Mentors, teachers, colleagues, loved ones, competitors, they all help or challenge you as a creative individual.  Good habits like for instance having a goal to be surprised by or surprise others everyday can also help as well as having some good mental and physical space to be creative.  Personally I would love to have bit more of institutional flexibility, for instance to have some assurances that the above course could run next year even with the same student numbers.  I have some ideas on how to change it (for instance calling it creativity and innovation).  

All these factors suggest that creativity is a systems phenomenon.  As such, it requires continuous learning about what works best for each individual and each organisation.  We need to see the wider system in which creativity initiatives are to be developed or nurtured. 

Many systems thinkers have relied on the use of systems methodologies to help them and others be creative.  This is good but only part of the story about creativity if we are going to treat it as a systems phenomenon. We should broaden our horizons on this regard.  Systems methodologies for creativity (and problem structuring or problem solving) can become prescriptive and ignore both the individuals and the context in which they are used.  

To my students on creativity, I would like them to enjoy more the present moment, be mindful, critical but also realistic, to weigh evidence and make informed decisions.  Myself, I would like to be more flexible and open even if I think I am being creative.  Some of these insights come from my reading and practice of ideas on creativity that come from complexity theory, psychology.  In the near future I would also like to learn more about creativity from art. 

So far students and me seem to be able to be open to what the present has brought us.  I hope we can make the best of it before we all become more controlled or routinised in our quest to learn about or practise creativity.