Most interesting. Sounds like an old artist's maxim,
"you either can do it or you can't."
Now how do you learn to do it?
Is it the small bits of information like numbers,
writing or other academic standards arrived at
through the necessity to teach mass education to
massive groups of people? Or is it the large
synergistically derived experiences from the
kind of ensemble processes that take members
of small groups into a greater universe in their
thought?
I suspect the most massive failure, of which
Hubbell's flaw was the harbinger and Y2K is the
most inclusive effect, is in the education of the
business disciplines. The perceived truth is
and was that the market was like a machine that
is self regulating if you remove external regulations.
Warfield's discussion of the cause of the Savings
& Loan scandal was the failure of economists,
political theorists, self-serving businessmen and
both Reagan and the U.S. Congress to COMPREHEND
the results of their actions. A failure of competence.
Now one will say that economics is an exact
science but cutting that mirror for Hubbell was. What
could have possessed the businessmen and scientists
involved in that process to believe that they could get
away with putting such a flawed mirror into orbit? One
could also say that NOT putting it into orbit could have
scuttled the whole project but that is just the politics of
funding. It does not address the issue of why the mistake
was made and why they didn't rectify it with the second
mirror that had been cut as a back-up to the first.
Incompetence and greed.
So much for competence rising to the surface of
competition. That is obviously too complicated
a situation to be so simply explained. There is such a
thing as incompetence and there is, in spite of western
science's love of simplicity (they call it "elegant") such a
thing as "over simple."
Which brings us to Y2K. The report says that it will demand
the kind of excellence in thought that is required of a concert
pianist or a member of the Super 300 International Opera
Ensemble. Considering that it is considerably easier for almost
anyone to finish a physics degree( when compared to the millions
who train and apply for that group of 300 chosen from worldwide
competition and judged by the openness of public performance)
one would think there would be more American physicists.
But Americans have found that physics is too hard for
a people whose role in the world is to create
consumption and we are now hiring Chinese and
Russian physicists and pretending surprise when others
have the bomb as a result. I think this is the reason that
Clinton let it go on for so long. How surprising to find himself
once more blamed for doing what TJ Rogers and the other
genius businessmen of silicone valley had been urging all
along. Now they are super-funding the governor from TEXAS!
They didn't want American physicists, they were too
expensive, better to have a leaky Russian or Chinese. Better
still to have a Democrat to blame that on before you flood the
market with Russian immigrants.
(By the way, it is only the Russian scientists who come
cheap. Their artists are hard bargainers and many have
priced themselves out of the market to the American
Singers good fortune.)
So I find the Naval report to be too optimistic. I think
the seductive power of cafe talk on the web and a general
impulse to laziness portends something much more
serious than just incompetence.
Instead I think it smacks of a "Doctor making his
patients sick with medicines meant to cure them so
his practice will continue." That for me is the gist of
most of this future of work talk. I don't think much of
the intent of most human endeavor. Especially the
"free" market.
So I believe that the money will continue to define the
difference between classes and that psychology and
political intrigue, politely called connections, will have
a great deal more to do with the future than just not
knowing how to stop mistakes.
(Remember it is only poor Indians whose mother's
drank that have fetal alcohol syndrome. The NY
City elite and their group all admit to drinking
themselves silly while Diana was pregnant and yet
their children write books and work in business
and academia. That probably is because Indians
were "less immune to European alcohol" or
it means that we have mentally compromised folks
running the country because of family ties. Will it
change? Not as long as the "French drink.")
But I hope the report is true, however I fear that it is
just another instance of military projections.
Wars are easy, they destroy things to make it necessary
for their replacement and stimulation of jobs. Sort of like
building your hospital in the middle of Tornado Alley like
Oral Roberts has done in Tulsa. Sooner or later probability
will overcome hope and wishful thinking. It probably comes
from not having to earn all of those donations that built his
school and teaching hospital in the first place. Come to
think of it, a teaching hospital funded by a faith healer is
an oxymoron anyway.
This is a strange world even for the non-Cherokee. Even
the military are putting on a happy face.
REH
REH
Steve Kurtz wrote:
> A most interesting website IMO.
>
> Steve
>
> - - - - -
>
> http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Thinktank/6926/y2krep.html
> Conclusions of the US Naval War College Year 2000 International Security
> Dimension Project Report
>
> Conclusion #1�
> How You Describe Y2K Depends on From When You View It
>
> People who describe Y2K as "different in kind" from anything humanity
> has
> ever experienced, or something that is unique, tend to look at the event
> from the perspective of the past century. But those who look at Y2K from
> the
> perspective of the coming century, exhibit the exact opposite
> tendencies:
> they tend to describe Y2K as only "different in degree" from the sort of
> system perturbations humanity will increasingly face as we become more
> interconnected and interdependent on a global scale. In their minds,
> then,
> Y2K is a genuine harbinger of next definitions of international
> instabilities or uncertainty, in effect a new type of crisis that leaves
> us
> particularly uncomfortable with its lack of a clearly identifiable
> "enemy"
> or "threat" with associated motivations.
>
> Our bottom line (paraphrasing Rick in Casablanca): We'll always have Y2K
>
> Conclusion #2�
> Y2K Moves Us From Haves-vs-Have Nots to Competents-vs-Incompetents
>
> Success at dealing with Y2K has a lot to do with resources, and anyone
> who
> believes otherwise is painfully naive. And yet, defeating the challenge
> of
> Y2K says as much or more about one's competency than it does about one's
> wealth. The rich can survive Y2K just fine, but only the truly clever
> can
> thrive in Y2K, which IT competents tend to view as a sped-up market
> experience within the larger operational paradigm of the New Economy.
>
> The rise of "virtual tigers" such as India's software industry,
> Ireland's
> high-tech manufacturing, or Israel's Wadi Valley, tell us that it
> doesn't
> necessarily take a wealthy country to succeed in the New Economy, just a
> very competent one. Y2K may well serve as a microcosmic experience that
> drives this new reality home to many more around the planet: it's less
> about
> what you have than what you can do.
>
> For in the end, Y2K is less about vulnerability and dependency, then
> dealing
> with vulnerability and dependency. You can buy your way toward
> invulnerability and independency, but you can also work around
> vulnerabilities and dependency.
>
> Our bottom line: Competents will thrive, while incompetents nosedive.
>
> Conclusion #3�
> Y2K As A Glimpse Into the 21st Century:
>
> Divisions Become Less Vertical and More Horizontal
>
> The 20th Century featured an unprecedented amount of human suffering and
> death stemming from wars, and these conflicts came to embody humanity's
> definition of strife -- namely, state-on-state warfare. The divisions
> that
> drove these conflicts can be described as "vertical," meaning peoples
> were
> separated--from top to bottom--by political and geographic boundaries,
> known
> as state borders.
>
> If the 20th Century was the century of inter-state war, then the 21st is
> going to be the century of intra-state or civil strife. Divisions of
> note
> will exist on a "horizontal" plane, or between layers of people that
> coexist
> within a single state's population. These layers will be largely defined
> by
> wealth, as they have been throughout recorded history. But increasingly,
> that wealth will depend on competency rather than possession of
> resources.
>
> Y2K will help crystallize this coming reality by demonstrating, in one
> simultaneous global experience, who is good at dealing with the
> NewEconomy,
> globalization, the Information Revolution, etc., and who is not. And
> these
> divisions will form more within countries than between them, as borders
> will
> become increasingly less relevant markers of where success begins and
> failure ends.
>
> The coming century of conflict will revolve around these horizontal
> divisions.
>
> Our bottom line: We have met the enemy, and they is us.
>
> Conclusion #4�
> Y2K Will Demonstrate the Price of Secrecy and the Promise of
> Transparency
>
> Those who are more open and transparent and share information more
> freely
> will do better with Y2K than those who hoard information, throw up
> firewalls, and refuse outside help. Secrecy will backfire in almost all
> instances, leading to misperceptions and harmful, stupidly
> self-fulfilling
> actions. Governments must be as open with their populations as possible,
> or
> suffer serious political backlashes if and when Y2K proves more
> significant
> for their countries than they had previously let on. People's fears
> about
> "invisible technology" will either be conquered or fed by how Y2K
> unfolds.
>
> This is a pivotal moment in human history: the first time Information
> Technology has threatened to bite back in a systematic way. In a very
> Nietzschean manner, Y2K will either "kill" us or make us stronger, and
> the
> balance of secrecy versus transparency will decide much, if not all, of
> that
> outcome.
>
> Our bottom line: The future is transparency--get used to it!
>
> Conclusion #5�
> Our Final Take on Y2K:
> As It Becomes Less Frightening, It Becomes More Profound
>
> The more you accept the notion that Y2K represents the future and not
> some
> accident of the past . . . the more you see it as different in degree
> than
> in kind from the challenges we will increasingly face . . .and the more
> you
> realize that it's part and parcel of the globalized, IT-driven New
> Economy
> than some exogenous one-time disaster, then the more profoundly will Y2K
> loom in your psyche even as it becomes less frightening with regard to
> the
> 010100-threshold.
>
> Why? Because the more it becomes associated with the broader reality of
> our
> increasingly interconnected and interdependent world, the more
> inescapable
> it becomes. In short, you can sit out the Millennium Date Change Event
> and
> all the hoopla surrounding it, but there's no avoiding Y2K in the
> big-picture sense, because the skills it demands from humanity are those
> same skills needed for our not-so-collective advance into the brave new
> world of the 21st Century.
>
> Our bottom line: There's no escaping Y2K.
>
> _________________
