Sunday, September 07, 2003

POWER TO THE PEOPLE: Some friends in Washington sent me a link to an article on the decentralization of services in post-war Iraq early last week. Kevin Werbach also provides some supporting context in his posting of last week. The stories demonstrate, in a non-information technology context, some of the key drivers that went into the Groove architecture. Groove was architected and built with an eye towards providing adaptive systems at the edge, where human networks form rapidly to address a need. Mosul, Iraq resident Ammar Jaber, with a few of his in-laws is flexing power at the edge, but not with information technology. Given that the centralized authority is having difficulty in establishing consistent, pervasive services, Jaber has taken it upon himself to provide power to 1000 of his neighbors. While this is not an IT story, it is most certainly one that demonstrates the notion of self-forming systems driven by social dynamics: People swarming at the edge to provide speedy solutions where a centralized function can't, or won't. 10:04:32 AM