Wednesday, June 04, 2003

Self-repairing computers. Scientific American has an article about self-repairing computers. Sounded promising, but instead it illustrates how we're in dire need of a paradigm change in computer design. The thinking of the researches mentioned in the article is that reboots usually fix things, but it takes too long, so we need micro-reboots, where smaller portions of the system can be rebooted by themselves. Well, sure, that's maybe a good thing, but if that's the best we can look forward to in terms of fault-tolerant computers, that is incredibly lame. Then Microsoft can come up with a micro-reinstall that will reinstall parts of your system several times each second.What would be more interesting would be to rethink the way we do most of our technology. Most devices we use have single points of failure, and we've somehow ended up designing our software in a similar fashion. Your computer is full of tiny little copper wires, and a great many of them would cause the computer to stop functioning if you cut even one of them. The answer, if you send it to repair, would be that you'll buy a new motherboard. Even if you don't break anything, but you just cut power for 1/10 second, your computer will go down. And as far as the software goes, a misplaced comma, or a zero that should be a one, that's often enough for bringing down the whole thing. It just seems so primitive.Compare with organic life forms. Look at anything that is alive and you'll find that it is self-repairing and extremely fault-tolerant. Most animals will keep going even with missing limbs, wounded, being fed crap, and in unfamiliar circumstances. The only thing that will bring an oganism down is some kind of systemic failure. Not just losing a few million cells, but a bunch of big things at the same time that will sabotage how the whole thing coordinates its activities.Why can't I have technology like that? Why can't I use programs like that? Stuff that keeps working, even with heavy damage. Well, as a programmer I can of course start answering that. We don't know how to do that. We know how to do it on a small scale. We can make servers that have multiple hot-swappable power supplies. We can with some effort set up mirrored servers that will take over for each other. We can set up battery backed power supplies that take over when the power goes. And in software we can divide the functionality into "objects" that each will check and double-check everything, and try to recover from problems. But it isn't any pervasive philosophy, and it is built on a fragile foundation. If we are concerned about something needing to always be up, we might put in two or three or a certain component. But even when that mostly works, it is a very feeble attempt of fault-tolerance. Nature's way seems to be to have thousands or millions of independent but cooperating units, each having a knowledge of what needs to be done, but each going about it slightly differently.Translated to the software world, does that mean we ought to write all programs as a large number of independnet agents or objects or even viruses, that somehow work together in getting things done? Or would neural networks do the trick? I wish I knew. [Ming the Mechanic] Maybe the issue is "efficiency"? Nature builds in redundancy in most systems. We have two kidneys etc. Our folly is to think that the world is stable and hence design for efficiency for one process. This is surely why the internet is so stable. Our rational mind demands that we can plan for everything and hence, we set up these single points of failure. Two areas seem less captured by this sillieness. The US Army whose key doctrine is that your plan is guaranteed to go wrong the moment you make contact with the enemy - my experience is that the plan goes wrong the moment we crossed the start line. And some bankers - mainly the older & wiser ones. I recall talking years ago to Don Fullerton, then the chairman of CIBC, about loan risk. We were going down big time with our exposure to real estate. He told me that no banker could be smart enough to foretell the future, we could only have enough spread of business on the books to cover the losers when they inevitably happened. Oh yes his other advice - when I asked him  about the possible value of having a good loan agreement - was that "It's all about character. It is not whether he can pay us back but whether he will". We put so much value in single points of failure such as legal agreements. 11:31:19 PM    comment []

The Support Economy - Capturing the Value in the relationship and not merely the transaction Relationships -  Where we capture our value Traditionally we capture value in the transaction. A car salesman works in an environment where he gets no credit for me buying six cars from him over time – but that is my potential. The car salesman gets no credit for all the service work that I could send him – but that is what happens with a good relationship. The car salesman gets no credit for the referrals I give to my friends who buy the  same car – but this is what happens. So the cars salesman can easily screw me and lose all of this value. This is the main business model of our time. It misses the point that the right type of relationship can drive much more value than a single transaction. In eBay or Amazon the core is the right type of relationship. In Amazon, the customers run the sales side of the store by being the review committee. In eBay the customers run every aspect of the store and have tightly knit communities of say stamp collectors, sports car enthusiasts or golfers.   If you think of this, you will see that such a focus on the transaction as the sole source of value pushes the seller into an adversarial relationship with the customer. Each individual transaction will trend toward maximization. The customer has to get screwed in the end and the relationship will be lost.   Relationship value is not a new-age term. Every small business owner has known all about this. A small shop keeper or business man knows that it is not just the deal today that is important but the stream of deals with this customer. The small owner seeks to maximize the value of the relationship over time. He truly serves the customer and the customer feels this. What the small owner lacks is the price and the variety that a large chain can off. This is why he has been put out of business by the production model.   So our task is to combine the power of the large to offer price and choice with the feel of the small where the customer relationship comes first. If we do this then we will execute our main intent which is to run a big company like a small one.   Why will this appeal to customers today? We know that people today demand a high quality of direct participation and influence both in the workplace and as consumers. They do not want to be treated as a segment in a mass market or as a cog in an industrial  process but as individuals whose identity is affected by what they do and with whom. They want real and human relationships and will be attracted to them as employees and as customer.   11:14:11 PM    comment []

The support Economy - What is the nature of the new model for capitalism? Some thoughts this week after finishing the "Support Economy" Culture – The new method of competition When Henry Ford introduced mass production at the beginning of the 20th century, he not only changed how things were made, he changed the culture of the workplace. In this production culture, head office was the organization’s brain and it decided everything. Products were conceived, designed, produced and then marketed and sold. The enterprise pushed out from the centre. This model has taken over all aspects of organized life today. At its heart is a need to control the core process. Everything and everyone had to be “managed”. It was successful during a long period of relative stability.   We are so imbued with this model that we mainly fail to see it for what it is – only a model which has had a life of about 100 years. Today, we have reached the design limits of this model. More efficiency cannot be squeezed out of it and the business, social and technology environments are now changing so fast that such a model cannot react fast enough.   A new model is emerging. It is the reverse of the production model. In this new model, which we can see in the actions of new adopters such as Wal*Mart, Amazon or Dell, the flow is reversed. The customer sets the product agenda. It is the customer who decides what they want and who drives the production process back into, not simply one organization, but into a network of suppliers organized by the host company. The new model works deliberately to eliminate, or significantly reduce, inventory, such as eBay, Dell or Southwest, or to carry inventory in a distributed form in the supporting federated system such as Wal*Mart and its suppliers. With very low or no inventory, they have a compelling cost advantage.   All have remarkably sensitive customer interfaces where, at best, individual customer profiles, preferences and accrued activity and trust are maintained in real time such as by Amazon, eBay and Dell. Or, profiles are held in aggregate, where community profiles are maintained such as at Wal*Mart.   This is not simply a re-engineering of the process but a shift in culture. It involves the giving up of the idea that the market can be controlled by head office. Head office in these organizations does not pretend to be able to predict customer behaviour, instead it works to have the best sensory system possible. It uses this acutely sensitive information system to track trends and to react immediately.   As a result, the customer experience has been transformed from an outward push to an inward acceptance. It is fun to fly Southwest as well as being inexpensive. Amazon provides a community of book reviewers that pulls the customer into the primary sales position in the firm. Wal*Mart greats each customer and so on. The customer gets what they want rather than only what the firm will give them.   In a world where most of have all that we need, in terms of things, this putting the customer into the driver’s seat give them the potential for the experience of control and participation that the old system prohibits.   This is the key to understand the new model. Its value is in the experience of control and participation given to the customer. For the first time, the customer is in control and not the corporation. Once customers have experienced this, they do not go back! Conversely, in the new organization, to give the customer control and participation, head office has had to give the front line control, and participation as well. Once employees have had a taste of this they too do not want to go back.   To pull this off, these organizations have pushed a remarkable amount of decision making power out to the front line. Floor clerks in Wal*Mart can move material around the store and each store has a computer assisted re-order model that enables the store to track orders to the unique preferences of its own community. At Dell you speak to a real person who then tracks your order all the way to set up. At eBay the buyers and sellers deal direct.   If you are a competitor of one of these new model firms and you are still using the old model, you will fail. You cannot deliver the costs and you cannot deliver the customer experience.   So we see the icons of the old model struggling or even moving into bankruptcy. United Airlines, AMR Air Canada; Kmart, Home Depot; and most small booksellers and  Indigo and Chapters. eBay is on track to dominate the second hand car market. Dell can take on any competition and is moving into other sectors beyond PC’s.   In the old model, you could compete by applying a simple concept – more money. By gaining access to more resources, you could use increased scale to push prices and costs down and use your increased hegemony to have power over the consumer. This is why the trend in the old model is for more scale. But now scale will not help United Airlines or Home Depot. The new model demands that you kill off your old culture, the culture that made you successful and which you know so well.   11:08:18 PM    comment []

Education - Summerhill - The wisdom of A S Neill I was referred the other day to the story of Summerhill school in England - an alternative school founded by A S Neill. This school is structured on the basis that children have an innate sense of what they need. There are some links on my weblog. But I would like to add a few quotes here from Neill whose belief is that our current model crushes children into conformity and prepares them for a robotic world of industrial work and obedience. Neill feels that fear blocks development and learning. "Summerhill has shown the world that a school can abolish fear of teachers and deeper down fear of life" "There is no necessity for a gulf separating pupils from teachers...Teachers want to be little gods protected by dignity. They fear that if they act human, their authority will vanish and their classrooms will become bedlams. They fear to abolish fear" "Obviously, a school that makes active children sit at desks studying mostly useless subjects is a bad school. It is a good school only for those that believe in such a school for those uncreative citizens who want docile, uncreative children who will fit into a civilization whose standard of success is money" "When my wife and I began the school, we had one idea: to make the school fit the child - instead of making the child fit the school" "Whether a school has or has not a special method for teaching long division is of no significance, for long division is of no importance except to those who want to learn it, And the child who wants to learn it will learn it no matter how it is taught" "The function of a child is to live his own life - not the life that his anxious parents think he should have, nor a life according to the purpose of the educator who thinks that he knows best, All this interference and guidance on the part of adults only produces a generation of robots" From Summerhill Scool - A New View of Childhood by A S Neill edited by Albert Lamb 10:55:41 PM    comment []

Finding a Doctor? - Maybe we need a community group more David Sifry is looking for help in finding a doctor Today at the Formosa a group of PEI Bloggers talked about the power of groups of fellow sufferers to provide us with the best health information. Here is an old link that I found back last year from Dr Marc Pierson - what it shows that our Doctors are the poorest source of information and that self help groups are the best. Is there not a wonderful opportunity to use Social Software to meet this need? 8:59:57 PM    comment []