In2SciFi

“The sum of human knowing is beyond any one man; any thousand men.”

Isaac Asimov, Foundation, Bantam Dell, 2004, p37.

“Q. You do not consider your statement a disloyal one?
“A. No, sir. Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty
“Q. You are sure that your statement represents scientific truth?
“A. I am.

…

“Q. Can you prove that the mathematics is valid?
“A. Only to another mathematician.
“Q. (with a smile) Your claim is then that your truth is of so esoteric a nature that it is beyond the understanding of a plain man. It seems to me that truth should be clearer than that, less mysterious, more open to the mind.
“A. It presents no difficulties to some minds. The physics of energy transfer, which we know as thermodynamics, has been clear and true through all the history of man …, yet there may be people present who would find it impossible to design a power engine. People of high intelligence, too. …”

Isaac Asimov, Foundation, Bantam Dell, 2004, p32.

“It was childish to feel disappointed, but childishness comes almost as naturally to a man as to a child, …”

Isaac Asimov, Foundation, Bantam Dell, 2004, p6.

Ever heard of SMART Goals? I’ve seen several variations on the title, but it’s used something like this:

S - Specific
M - Measureable
A - Achievable
R - Relevant
T - Time dimensioned

Most people think of them as important for things like life goals or large projects, but you need to think about them even for small projects.

There are times when it seems that people just don’t realize how important goals like this are. If you have a communications project that you’re working on, take some time to develop SMART goals and you’ll find that everything goes smoother.

Let’s consider how we might want to apply this to a real situation. Suppose we need to build a presentation that’s important to get funding for a project we REALLY want to do. Let’s see how each piece applies:

• Specific - What EXACTLY do you want to achieve in the presentation? What is success? What is failure? Be CONCRETE. Be EXACT.
• Measurable - How will I know I’ve been successful? How can I tell that my presentation has been successful? Are there questions I can ask that will give me an indication of the level of support?
• Achievable - Is the funding I need to get possible? Does it go beyond what the company has normally done? Is it realistic that the company will DO what I want it to do?
• Relevant - Does this REALLY matter to ME? Am I passionate about this or is this something that I’m expected to do for someone else? If it’s not personally important to me, then it’s probably not relevant.
• Time Dimensioned - What’s the deadline? You’ve got two here: FIRST for the presentation, everything has to be ready to present at the right time; SECOND for the project, even if you sell the project successfully, will you be able to meet the time constraints of the project itself?

Don’t take this as a need to build some sort of formal goal structure. That’s not necessary, but some goals even informal ones are important to success.

Once you can clearly see your goal and you know that you’re passionate about it, you know that it’s really achievable, then get to work and make it happen!

If you’re a SciFi fan, you probably remember the quote from Asimov’s Foundation Novels. It’s worth remembering as we see so much violence around the world, some initiated by us.

As we so incompetent that we can’t see how all of the violence we’ve spawned hurts us? Is incompetence becoming endemic in the world where so much hate fills people with the need to express themselves in violence?

CHANGED: To post later

I’ll be moving in the next week, so there will likely be some interruption in my posting schedule. I’ll try to get some posts ready to go, but no promises.

If you find this interesting, try these

• Writing for Techies - my collected notes and thoughts on writing, speaking, and communicating in general
• Antennas, Modeling, and More - Antennas, Propagation, and Low Power operation are my interests in Amateur Radio. Here is where I talk about them
• Customer Facing Systems - I’ve spent much of my career building and running systems that interact with customers. Here is the collected insight I’ve gained
• Obesity and Me - My thoughts on losing weight

Since I started this blog, I’ve been trapping spam and rejecting it before it gets posted. I’m amazed at how much there is targeting blogs like this one. There is no discrimination, no attempt to get it to any sort of right place. Further, there is no apparent concern that it doesn’t get posted, just that it gets submitted. It’s hard to believe someone pays for this stuff, but obviously they do.

I’ve got to ask myself WHY? Why would someone PAY to have someone do this?

The stuff they’re trying to post isn’t just ’spam’, it’s junk. There’s no relation to the topic, just get some links out there. The worst ones are the ones that are trying to social engineer by posting something that LOOKS OK superficially. They have embedded links to questionable locations that have nothing to do with the topic or the words in the post.

So why? It’s simple really. People are making money at it. In fact, people are making millions of dollars doing this.

WOW! I didn’t see this one coming, but it’s been too long in coming ” … there are too many technologists in technology”. I found this in the article ‘Memo to Vendors: Here’s How to Build a Winner‘ by Mike Elgan of Computerworld writing for PCWorld.

Elgan lists the following important points:

• Consistency
• Simplicity
• Performance
• Stability

In his words, all of these boil down to the issue of Control. Who is in control of the application? He goes on to discuss the flaws in usability testing ad the sort of issues that concern the people running them, but his point, and mine as well here, is that it’s more about how the person FEELS than the goal they’re trying to achieve.

When your customer faces your system, what do they see in their minds eye and what do they feel? Do they seem to see a technologist staring back at them explaining things in arcane language and getting upset when they do something wrong? Or do they see a friendly, helpful interface that gives them control over their destiny?

My contention is that too many systems are built by technologists without any understanding of the customer’s point of view. Not just what they’re goal is, but how they FEEL about your company as they’re dealing with you.

Ever heard of Nassim Nicholas Taleb? Most people haven’t. But his perspective on rare and improbable events goes a long way towards making the current financial crisis understandable. Two of his books deal with the assumptions made in financial risk models and the inadequacies that are inherently part of these models.

These books came back to mind when I opened up an article online called ‘Risk Mismanagement‘ published on the 2nd of January 2009 in the NY Times.

This article (all 10 pages of it) discusses risk management on Wall Street and the blinders that people had on regarding risk. People become reliant on risk measures that couldn’t deal with the possibility of a crisis like we’re facing. Taleb has been speaking out loudly about these risk measures for years. Take a look at Taleb’s home page which makes it clear how much he enjoys watching what’s going on. “My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves & the quality of their knowledge too seriously & those who don’t have the courage to sometimes say: I don’t know….” he says right at the beginning.

Taleb is fond of saying that he has made money only 3 times in his life, during the 1987 crash, during the bursting of the tech bubble, and now. In fact, he’s made millions on these events.

If nothing else, the events now going on in the financial markets should make people listen to Taleb more closely. However, we shouldn’t just listen to him about financial matters. The phenomenon of ‘The Black Swan’ applies to anything and we might just find out to our misery that there’s a Black Swan waiting for us somewhere else.

For example, have you read about the recent swarms of earthquakes beneath Yellowstone National Park? This has ‘just the facts’, but for those who don’t see the significance, read the US News & World Report’s story. Still asking why this is important, you can get more of the history of the Yellowstone Supervolcano with other references from Wikipedia. The essential point here is that on average the supervolcano has been erupting roughly every 600,000 years and the last eruption was 640,000 years ago. Even at that, it’s a highly improbable event, very unlikely to occur in our lifetime. Another Black Swan!

The real problem with risk models and risk assessments is that we believe the numbers and don’t think critically about what they really mean and how applicable they are. Wall street fell in love with a risk number that expanded until everyone used it, but they failed to use judgment to interpret it. Worse, many of the decisions makers didn’t really understand it anyway and just took it as a reliable measure of their risk exposure. It wasn’t.

Academicians who teach risk management always talk about the limitations. The ‘Quants’, people steeped in the mathematics of risk management are willing to admit that it isn’t perfect. So why did everyone not see problems on the horizon? Why did people keep saying there’s no problem? Why has the unlikely event nearly destroyed us? Read Taleb, it’s interesting stuff, but expect heavy going.

Black Swans exist in many places, but we never see them coming and don’t prepare for them. On wall street, this has led to a melt down we’re just starting to feel. Where else will we find a highly improbable event occurring that will affect us all?