The getting of wisdom … one day

Posted on January 28, 2012 by anni

The getting of wisdom ... one day

“To be a human being is to have the almost unique opportunity of getting to know oneself and the world in which one lives.  It is sure shortsighted to disregard this opportunity and confine oneself solely to the business of living.”

So said Ervin Laszlo and this has always been a guiding philosophy for me.  Life is that wonderful opportunity to observe, to learn and to change and grow.  And it always has a way of throwing curved balls at you to ensure that you have that opportunity.

For me the “festive” season offers an opportunity to read, reflect and ruminate on the year that has passed and the one about to begin.  It is also a great time to read and this festive season I have been reading two books which have set up some of my thinking for the year ahead, and especially in terms of some of the opportunities and challenges that are facing us all as we slowly learn to navigate and manage in the digital/physical world.

The first is Michio Kaku’s “Physics of the Future“, which brings together his ideas as a physicist with those that he wishes to express as a social being.  Kaku is renown for his broadcast work in the sciences together with his work as a physicist, and this book explores what he feels are the potential short, medium and longer term futures in the areas of the computer, artificial intelligence, medicine, nanotechnology, energy, space travel, wealth, and finally, humanity.

What I found most interesting in reading Kaku’s writing is that regardless of his humanistic approach he remains a physicist through and through.  His perspective, whilst it seeks to bring in the socio-technical, is underpinned by a fundamental belief  about what is technically possible, and what as a scientist he knows can potentially be achieved.  He talks about cybernetic implants, self-driving cars, robo-doctors, the potential of replacement bodies and the potential for human immortality, all of which he believes are in the pipeline now.  As I read the book I had this nagging feeling of discomfort, of a potential excitement about what human science can achieve coupled with an unease as to whether this would be a future that I would actually want to live in.

I actually like driving a manual car, I’m not sure I want to be a cyborg, and the concept of living forever is not something I have as yet  contemplated, nor believe that I am able to.  All of human existence thus far has been based on the evolution of our species within a time-frame where we have at least some time for reflection and thought.  The path to the future that Kaku describes seems to be to be based on the development of technologies at speed which will rapidly outpace our ability to think through the implications and have time for our behaviours to evolve.  I actually found Kaku’s comment that by 2100 humans may be able to become “the gods of mythology” somewhat troubling, because many of the “gods” of mythology were themselves highly unevolved as spiritual beings, far less as wise ones.  In all of the technological splendour I wondered where the real people were and what the impact on our humanity would be.  Kaku does touch on this, but as a physicist, not a humanist.

Which brings me to my second reading for the holidays, Donald Norman’s “Things that make us smart”.  Norman is credited with being amongst the first to articulate the concept of “affordances”, or possible functions of the tools and artefacts that we humans construct to help us make sense of, navigate and shape our world.  Norman describes human cognition as being both experiential (the state in which we perceive and react to events around us, efficiently and effortlessly) and reflective (the ability to compare and contrast, to create thoughts and make decisions and from there develop new ideas and novel responses).  He states that whilst we create artificial extensions of ourselves through the technologies that we create, it is the inter-relationship and interaction between the physical world and our own senses and sense-making of that world that makes us human and enables us to do what we do.  Norman comes from the school of “user centred design” and cognitive science.  His work brings in the psychological approach to how people actually use technologies, not the technologies for their own sake.

So, back to Kaku, and the key question of whether the machines and artificial intelligences we create will be able to do this better than we can, and should we continue to develop them in that direction?  He sees the limits of artificial intelligence being in two areas:  common sense and pattern recognition, both of which humans do innately and much better than any machines thus far.

“The tyranny of the ‘or’, and the power of the ‘and’ ”. (Jim Collins)

The one thing that I believe we need more of is a holistic and multi-discliplinary perspective towards all human endeavours, to continually bring in the “and”.  Reading Kaku I was conscious of the fact that just because science can achieve these marvellous things doesn’t mean that it should.

As Isaac Asimov said

“The saddest aspect of society right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”

It is this wisdom that we seem to still be lacking, despite all of our clever inventions, and it is the getting of wisdom that remains one of our greatest challenges.

In all of the writing I have done about the inter-relationship between the digital and analogue worlds I have been trying to focus on the “and”, the need to bring together wisdom with science, humanity with technology, and to have the courage to stop and reflect rather than rush forward and follow just because that is what others expect or where the momentum is leading.

Herbert Simon, a keen observer of the technologies of human and artificial systems, said that

“Amost everything that has happened, and its opposite, has been prophesised.  The problem is always to pick and choose among the embarrassing riches of alternative projected futures; and in this, human societies have not demonstrated any large foresight.”

My hope is that if we are wise about using some of the tools that are emerging, and if we are brave enough to view them from within a predominantly human framework, then we may be able to create a future which is about choice and freedom, not the one postulated by so many where the humans come off second best.

Posted in Analogue, Digital, Education, Futures | Comments Off

So, bring on 2012!!

Posted on January 8, 2012 by anni

This was meant to be my last post for 2011 but it is in reality my first for 2012.

2011 was a challenging year on many fronts, both personal and professional, but those challenges have set up a number of key platforms upon which I will be focusing my energies in 2012.  They also ensured that I learnt a great deal.

The three intentions of Intersticia are to work with people and organisations as they:

  1. Seek to understand and live within an increasingly Digital Society;
  2. Embrace and develop new methods of digital-analogue literacy, learning and education;
  3. Develop new modes of leadership which can support, empower and embrace new modes of digital and analogue human interaction.

As such 2012 will be a year which sees Intersticia focus on three core activities which support these.

Research

There are two main areas of research with which we are involved.

1.  “Circles of Sustainability” – our second ARC funded research project into the evolution of semantic technologies as a key enabler for better information management.  2012 will see the culmination of the three year programme with published papers, an online software programme to demonstrate the utilisation of semantic technologies for more effective sustainability reporting, and the testing of the research outcomes with key stakeholders around the world.

2.  My own PhD research into the implications and outcomes of developing a digital brand for organisational form, governance and key processes.  This forms the foundational platform upon which the concept of the digital brand will be explored from the socio-technical perspective bringing together trust and transparency.

In December 2011 I passed through a rite of passage in the academic world with the Confirmation of my PhD Candidature (CoC), and was given licence to go and explore those questions with the formal approval of the university.  This means that the concepts I have been exploring for the past decade – from initial ideas around knowledge workers in graphic media (emanating from the C2C project); to examining Fuji Xerox Australia as a local operating company within a a multi-national environment; to linking emerging web technologies with innovation in Australia – will now come together as an exploration of how the changing communications landscape is impacting upon organisations as they redefine their identity in the digital world.

To be awarded a PhD, by definition, demonstrates a “substantial original contribution to knowledge”.  2012 will determine the value of that contribution by gathering the necessary data from which to create a model by which it is hoped a greater understanding can be gained of the digital brand itself, and how it is impacting on organisational interactions.

This is a socio-technical question, and links to the second platform that we have built in 2011 upon which to expand in 2012.

The IMM (Institute of Metadata Management)

I wrote about the launch of the NSW chapter in a previous post, and have also given an overview of the launch of the Victorian chapter and our South Australian events on the IMM website

The IMM has taken on the challenge of bringing together three conversations crucial the future of information management in the digital world:

  1. how data and information is created, managed and stored;
  2. the publication and presentation of that data and information via digital publishing technologies, including the web; and
  3. the combination of the “social” and “semantic” where the producer and consumer of data, information and knowledge take a more active role in its curation and management.

In 2012 the IMM’s flagship conference, “Meta 2012” will focus on bringing these conversations together and as the programme develops more information will be published on the IMM website.

The IMM is evolving from the ground up, we are still defining who we are as we increasingly interact with people who see the value in what we’re trying to do, and from that are coming a number of opportunities in both research and education that support Intersticia’s core intent.

Education and Knowledge

For the past two years we have been working with ANZSOG to more comprehensively include digital interaction technologies as part of the communications landscape.  We contributed to the “Managing Public Communications” programmes in both Melbourne and Sydney, and, working closely with Peter Thompson, have helped deliver various versions of these programmes in both Perth and Hobart.  2012 should see the expansion of some of this initial work and in particular helping to educate public sector communicators on how to more effectively utilise all types of communications tools more effectively.

This also links to the work we have been doing with Fuji Xerox Australia over the past decade.  Fuji Xerox Australia is not only a key research partner in the ARC Circles of Sustainabilty project, but it has been exploring the incorporation of semantic technologies into some of its own products and services.  It is hoped that in 2012 some of these will move from pilot concepts to marketable products, and the key to this will be through the education of both the market and emerging clients who are becoming increasingly aware of Web 3.0 and the potential it has to help solve some of the challenges of digital information management.

So, 2012 promises to be an equally challenging, but it is hoped very rewarding year for us.  Hopefully it will be for you too.

Posted in Communications, Education, Fuji Xerox Australia, Governance, IMM, Research, Semantic technologies, Trust | Comments Off

Farewell to a best friend

Posted on December 22, 2011 by anni

This is the text as delivered at my mother’s funeral on 22nd December, 2011, St Mark’s Anglican Church, Darling Point, Sydney.

The one word that resonates with me when I think of my mother is “ever-present”, she was just always there.  She was on the end of the phone, the end of a text or an email, and always available for a cup of tea or a gin and tonic.  I told her everything, and I had the first brutal realisation of not being able to do so this week when I came home from a meeting.

My early memories were of a beautiful, elegant, dark-haired woman with piercing blue eyes and a steely will.  Dad and I were both a bit unpredictable, more emotional, and could go up and down.  Mum was always calmly consistent … she was always the same, and she never waivered in her core.  Even last week as Sam, Lock and I were blubbering away in the hospital she just looked at us in that reassuring way, and I knew that she was totally in control, as always, right up to the end.

When I was young my Dad was my God, I went to him when I was upset, I played around in cubby-houses and billy-carts that he built, and I got dirty in the bush with him.  I rarely cooked cakes, never played with dolls, and never played at being ladies with make-up.  Mum must have been a bit disappointed with that in some ways, but at least she had some relief when Susan came along, and I will always remember meeting people in the Woden shops who’d look at Susan and say “so this is your daughter”, whilst I stood awkwardly on the side.

It was Mum who called the shots at keeping me in boarding school when Dad would have pulled me out;  it was Mum of whom I was terrified when I got suspended and sent home for a week; it was Mum who I always had to convince of things because I knew I’d get Dad’s approval.  But it was Mum who made my friends feel welcome and opened our home to all and sundry who came to visit.  It was also Mum who gave me the wonderful blessing of having two mothers with Joanie taking care of me at school.

My relationship with Mum changed from being purely mother-daughter to becoming real friends when I lived in Europe, and I made a surprise visit to their hotel in Paris.  Whilst Dad read his book in the hotel Mum and I wandered the streets of the world’s most beautiful city in which we had both lived, separately and together, and we shared our favourite galleries and coffee shops.   She always loved to travel and she and Joanie had many trips, both with Dad and on their own.  My only regret is that I didn’t get her to India, but as Mum would say

“Darling, if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.”

It obviously wasn’t.

During our time at GH Mum very much held the fort whilst Dad and I rebelled – he used to go “AWOL” to the hardware shops in the city and get the police all in a panic; I held lots of noisy tennis and dinner parties and a number of you here share those memories of climbing flagpoles and skinny-dipping in the pool, often whilst Mum and Dad held an official function in the ball room.

Mum knew it all of course and quietly let us proceed with what my friend Kiloran described as

“a classy, relaxed warmth with no pretensions of grandeur, just a humility and innate understanding.”

Things changed again when Dad died and this is the only time that I ever saw her even slightly unhinged, but I never saw her cry.

In the last twelve years she found her own voice and become a successful woman in her own right, on many fronts.  She was in every sense “Chairman of the Board” and she proceeded to combine a canny business nous with an innate curiosity that meant she was always interested and, yes, “ever present”.

Whenever I had a dinner party, to which she was always invited, and always a central figure, she’d say

“And mother comes too!  Darling, you don’t want me there all the time!”

To which the answer was always “of course I do!!”  And so did everyone else.

In the end it was the Christmas ham that signified it all.   I suddenly realised that I had forgotten to ask her where she’d ordered it from, and whilst Joanie’s detective skills eventually solved the mystery I can see her laughing and saying

“Well, it’s NMP – not my problem!”

It’s all of these things that I will miss desperately, and as we talked last week I said to her “Mum, you can’t go!  You’re my best friend!” …

She just looked at me and said

“You’ve got two new best friends now, you need to focus on them.”  

Mothers and daughters (Anonymous)

You can see it in their eyes,

in tender hugs and long good-byes,

a love that only mothers and daughters know.

You can see it in their smiles,

through passing years and changing styles,

a friendship that continually seems to grow.

You can see it in their lives,

the joy each one of them derives,

in just knowing that the other one is there…

To care and to understand,

lend an ear or hold a hand,

and to celebrate the memories they share.

Posted in General | Comments Off