April 28, 2005
the thingamy
Sig comments on the “technology vs culture” thingumy:
Software in general represents/is a model of the real world.
And enterprise software is a bit particular in that it models some other model: Management theories, marketing, hierarchies and a few others. Accounting software is conceptually built for how it’s done in the finance department, CRM is built to support the current (and old) ways of the marketing department and so on.
What then if the model the model is based upon is wrong? Would then not the software-cementing-culture be highly unproductive, even inhuman?
Time to revisit the underlying models I say. Let the technology solutions follow.
This would explain why Sig’s company is also called “Thingumy”. Anyway, so I’m having a good ol’ time trying to figure out what I’m doing in the “Middleware” market, besides looking rather confused.
[NOTE TO SELF:] Stick to cartooning. This is so out of your league.
C’mon Hugh, you’re most definitely in the right league: Cartooning is conceptualizing reality, so tries software — only diff is one is fun and better at it, the other is..eh.. seen as boring
Because technology is an amplifier, whenever you automate a screwed up model, all you do is create a faster, more efficient screwed up model, no? Revisiting the underlying models, however, is so conceptually and emotionally taxing that almost no one ever really does it.
“Middleware” is highly relevant to the whole long-tail discussion, so it is definitely worth thinking about.
Look at it this way:
Software isn’t perfect? Say it isn’t so.
Recent post over at gapingvoid is talking about the fact that software often codifies a body of knowledge, say accounting, and that the assumptions and practises that are thereby codified are quite often counterproductive or wrong.
Couldn’t agree more witrh Sig. Enterprise software is “electronic concrete” poured over business processes that increasinglky will have to flex and change more and more, as the electronic grains of sand represented by microcontent and links keep on eroding the concrete.
Big integrated systems often (usually ?) still follow the blueprints of the organization’s hierarchical top-down org charts more than is responsive or friendly to customers, and by extrapolation, the markets made up of those customers.
Thingamy
The true geek that I am, I’m intrigued [via gapingvoid]…
BTW .. don’t agree you’re out of your league. I think you’re more like the artists who use the “art naif” genre, often cutting through to the essence in light-hearted ways. keep it up .. it used to be about technology and the technological infrastructure .. more and more, it’s about the sociology, psychology and employing truth instead of smokescreens.
Yo understand what’s going on .. it’s the big shakedown at the OK Corral between accepted management/organizational science and theory and the dynamics of interlinked real-time sociology. There’s a reason why blogging has grown so rapidly, and continues to grow .. it’s real and it works.
The trouble with playing in the “right league” is that you kinda have to fit in or fuck off, reciting and regurgitating the conventional wisdom for mega-bucks (most of which go to the partners who created the brand that proffers the advice which gets bought). This is both the mainstream advertising and the mainstream consulting game, no?
Typically, although not always, those partners made it to such elevated staus on the back of ideas and concepts that as often as not are either obsolete, fading in significance or just plain farked but got bought a lot by previous clients.
“Art naif” or court jester? — only the fool can tell the king he’s naked.
I wholeheartedly agree with the thought that monolithic software can only, by definition, represent an out-dated model (“Any program, once working, is obsolete”). Where the middleware (and I don’t agree that it is boring BTW) fits in is making it possible to fit changing modular pieces together to support (create?) new business models which disrupt the integrated, monolithic models currently extant — check out Clay Christensen’s thoughts about this: http://www.claytonchristensen.com/.
Open source software helps here because it is increasingly possible to get “free” (as in speech, and often as in beer) middleware, making it possible for the ‘long tail’ programmer (like Alan Gutierrez http://engrm.com/blogometer/2005/04/11/living-the-long-tail.html
to fashion systems from the building blocks scattered around the internet.
Good points, Ric. Looks like the future to me … plus,. accordinmg to IBM advertisements, it’s invisible
More wirearchy raw material, surrounding and penetrating us (figuratively) and what we do (literally)