The Darker Side of Analog-Digital Convergence

I performed the ultimate computer science move on my Ford Focus today: My radio stopped working. so, at a Red light, I turned the car off, started it up and, voila, the radio worked again. I don't know why and I venture a guess that Ford would not know why, but there you have it. Coincidentally, as I drove off, there was a story on NPR about how Farmers are now having to jailbreak their tractors to perform repairs that they have otherwise been doing in the past, but are now precluded from doing by John Deere, as only authorized dealers have a USB key loaded up with the right software to unlock the system for repairs and testing. This blending of analog and digital worlds is disconcerted. What if the zipper on my pants encounters a buffer overflow error when I have to pee? Will I suffer a personal buffer overflow? ;-)

Baby Poop

I have been trying to figure how to describe the new brand of poop that Nicholas has been selling over here. When we first brought him home he was producing a winter formulation: diesel. Then, he quickly, if not prematurely, switched over to a summer formulation: gasoline. Now that we are entering the festive months of Primavera, he has switched over to a more appropriate formulation: Pesto (I can just taste that fresh basil, pine nuts and parmesan!) How can I describe this new version of poop? I imagine a closed-circuit video of me strolling along a crowed subway platform in NYC. I pause, look around, and slowly pull out a zip lock bag with what appears to be a dirty diaper in it. I slowly slip on a small gas mask and goggles, then open the bag and let the diaper slip behind a trash can. I walk away calmly but expediently. 5 minutes later, would be passengers start collapsing, with foam coming out of their mouths :-/

Support Not Illumination

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The other night on NPR's Intelligence Squared, a modern day marvel of civil debate that I highly recommend, someone quoted Andrew Lang (1884-1912), albeit incorrectly attributing the quote to Mark Twain, as a caution against relying too heavily on statistics. Lang stated that we should use "statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts – for support rather than for illumination." This concept can and should be extended to the modern day combination of big data, AI and algorithms, though by the time the virtuous cycle of ingesting, analyzing and automating through algorithms has been created, the analogy has gone way beyond lampposts to the very sidewalk under our feet, which gives us great confidence and comfort as we stroll along said sidewalk, until a 1970 Buick Skylark comes careening off the road and runs us over ;-)

AT&T's Workforce 2020

I am duly impressed by AT&T’s Workforce 2020, wherein the Company identified the skills it needed to compete in the future, and created a blueprint for sourcing them ***internally*** This entailed collapsing 250+ traditional roles into 80 more integrated future roles, and clarifying to employees that they had first dibs on those roles, provided that they spent their own time (sometimes money) to acquire the skills for same. This is a brilliant strategy, because hiring for skills in an age where technology evolves so rapidly would be futile, and engaging in traditional training and skills development would be prohibitive. It also aligns with the idea that we are all responsible for our skills and careers, and companies can only provide and environment to for us to exercise that responsibility, nothing more. In the long run, this type of approach might return us to the so-called 'golden age' of employment, where you could potentially spend your entire career with a single company, because the internal ecosystem within the [sufficiently large] company will approximate the external market in terms of creative-destruction and related opportunities for advancement.