I’ve thouroughly enjoyed reading the speech of Justice David H. Souter at Harvard’s 359th Commencement. You can find the full text here and the two paragraphs I liked the most are echoed her:

So, it is tempting to dismiss the critical rhetoric of law making and activism as simply a rejection of at least some of the hopes we profess to share as the American people.  But there is one thing more.  I have to believe that something deeper is involved, and that behind most dreams of a simpler Constitution lies a basic human hunger for the certainty and control that the fair reading model seems to promise.  And who has not felt that same hunger?  Is there any one of us who has not lived through moments, if not years, of longing for a world without ambiguity, and for the stability of something unchangeable in human institutions?  I don’t forget my own longings which heartily resisted the pronouncement of Justice Holmes, which I read as an undergraduate, that certainty generally is illusion and repose is not our destiny.

But I have come to understand that he was right, and by the same token I understand that I differ from the critics I’ve described not merely in seeing the patent wisdom of the Brown decision, or in espousing the rule excluding unlawfully seized evidence, or in understanding the scope of habeas corpus.  Where I suspect we differ most fundamentally is in my belief that in an indeterminate world I cannot control it is possible to live fully in the trust that a way will be found leading through the uncertain future.  And to me, the future of the Constitution as the Framers wrote it can be staked only upon that same trust.  If we cannot share every intellectual assumption that formed the minds of those who framed the charter, we can still address the constitutional uncertainties the way they must have envisioned, by relying on reason that respects the words the Framers wrote, by facing facts, and by seeking to understand their meaning for the living.

Google announced it’s new service Wave. You can see the key-note here.

For sure it’s a great set of services and many blogs and news sites are really excited about it. I have no doubts that it will for sure bring social media and communications to the next level. It’s a milestone in human communication efficiency.

However, I think Google missed one really big aspect of it, it may have been a conscious decision or it may have been the lack of understanding of the largest portion of corporate communication.

Basically I’m making a distinction here between collaborative communication and transactional communication. Collaborative communication are things were constant interaction increases the value of a piece of work. This is mainly true in a very creative and innovaive environment. New concepts, new business models, innovative ideas  all immesly benefit from collaboration.

Transactional communication instead is used on a huge amount of business processes, where a pretty certain amount of defined steps need to be taken to get to an end result (i. e. wiring money from one account to another or creating a defined dashboard report).

Google’s Wave will be an amazing tool for coolaborative communication. Againl, it’s going to bring this type of interaction to new heights and with that will provide tremendous value to the world.

But then there is still a huge lack of support for transactional communication and equally to what Google said in the key-note it’s true that we use the same, old tools to process transactions. Here’s where we’ve gone down the route to use email for a large portion of transactional communication, a big mistake, and one that’s costing us billions of dollars.

So, let me give you an example: some manager wants his team to update a project dashboard. What happens? He sends an email to the team. He’s using a tool that is completely free-form to request something very specific. Would it not be better if the request in and of-itself was a very specific work request asking to fill a specific piece of information.

I know there are workflow applications and transactional database systems, but my point is that still largely requests and answers that should be very specific are not (see the idea of Wolfram’s Alpha search engine, same thought?).

I think the next big thing in computer technology is going to be a system that rethinks how to do email for transactional communication. For sure this would be a killer-app for enterprises. I’ll give it a go at http://publicprocess.org whenever I’ll get to it.

The key innovation of Apple’s iPhone I think is often missed. It’s said it is its stylish design, its usability or simply the fact that it is from Apple.

To me this is all secondary, the real big step to me is the introduction of realism to user interfaces. Over our lifetime we acquire the skills to interact with our environment. From early childhood we learn for example that things have a mass, making them more or less resistant to our physical forces.

When you look at the interactions with the iPhone software you will not only see that most functions have been mapped back to these relatively simple understood interactions, but more subtly that lists would scroll past their end or beginning. This more physical like behavior to me is an underestimated aspect of a user interface. It will not give you a message saying that you are at the beginning of the list nor will it simply defy your command, but it will show you by its behavior that you are trying an interaction that is not meaningful.

Now, Microsoft has come out with its Surface technology probably based on Jeff Han’s thinking (good video at TED) and it sure looks interesting. However, I think it is missing the actual essence of what it should be about: based on real life objects.

So far the efforts were mainly focused on visual elements such as pictures, videos and simple interactions. Where to me the story becomes interesting is taking this concept to more complex functions such as word processing (or actually the purpose of it: exchanging data, information, knowledge and wisdom).

Dale Herigstad has some really good thoughts on using complex gestures (here‘s a link to a video podcast episode of 3sat neues, a German technology magazine). Basically he’s suggesting to look into sign language as a potential means to improve the human-computer communication, but still stay somewhat connected to realism.

I’m sure that future Operating Systems will move into this direction, I can’t wait.

I’m currently working on yet another project to standardize business processes; what’s striking me is that I know so well, what to do and why we are doing these projects and yet there’s something in me revolting to the idea of having a standard approach.

My working hypothesis is that if you have really intelligent people sharing the same culture and values you can do without process; well, so let’s look at car traffic. You would want some standards and rules as you simply don’t have the time to discuss potential conflict, regardless of how intelligent the agents are. Let’s look at programming: you would want to have some rules and some standards to ensure that a team can collaborate better. My working hypothesis does not work!

It really comes down to efficiency again and what the ultimate objective is: for highly innovative work (meaning doing new things or doing things in a new way) you will have few standards and processes; for highly routine work, it is the more efficient approach: well, that was to be expected.

Now, what if you take an area that requires highly innovative work and you create some processes and rules? You’ll probably lose the real top edge, the ability to get a 1% rare idea due to limitations to a process and you may be loosing some of the people due to dissatisfaction due to the lack of freedom. You probably have to pay less on average and have some sort of a dial to quickly adjust a broader approach by changing the processes and rules.

Objectives, required level of innovation and efficiency drive the level of standardization you want to create.

The most interesting dimension in this context is quality: how does standardization and process relate to quality? To me there is no simple connection to this and it is closely linked to the type of people you have involved.

At low levels of quality, standardization and processes help a lot; a high levels of quality they are a hindrance and need to be replaced and complemented by top staff.

Biotechnology without any doubt is the technology of the coming centuries. Computer Science, as essential and impactful it is for us today, was really just a babystep compared to the scope, impact and challenges biotechnology has in store for us. In this context a question that resonated a lot with me was: What’s the next Intel and the next Microsoft? 

Biological Systems are not only all around us, in fact we are a part of biological systems. It will help us to achieve a level of self-consciousness like never before. 

Imagine having a set of building blocks that are so fundamental that you can build cells, bacteria, viruses, a worm. Similar to the computer revolution where we have created fundamental building blocks on both the hardware and software side we are now at a stage where we are embarking on building those fundaments in Biotechnology. In other words, we are starting to create an abstraction layer to the fundamental biological processes and thus life itself. We will likely have building blocks to transform chemicals and energy, create moving parts and very likely even mental functions.

We will see a gradual replacement of computers by biological systems, that are highly efficient and will for sure change the chemical and medical industry from ground up, but will eventually evade all other industries. This will also free designers and engineers from so many constraints relating to size, function, layout and structure. What an exciting outlook!

In this context, the next Intel or Microsoft as a provider of a generic platform would be analogous to a biological system that already contains a set of highly usable characteristics that then can be further customized by programming. My guess is that these characteristics will especially evolve around interfaces to humans and our immediate environment. To me one really interesting question deeply connected to the Microsoft question is Ethics. Imagine you can engineer a technology that just has enough mental capacity to basically provide a speech recognition function for computer systems. Where will we draw the lines between life and technology? Will we allow our children to experiment with different biological systems and then throw them away?

We need to push for advancing our understanding of morale much faster to keep up with the pace of technology. 

Interesting Twit Podcast: Biotech Singularity

TED: Craig Venter

Words matter and they drive the perception of many. So: Rationality, what a misconception. As if rational thinking is a mechanical, non-human process. It’s the opposite my dear economists, psychologists and scientists. People act fully rationale, all the time. That’s the idea behind being rationale and it covers emotions. How else do people function?

There’s plenty of scientific evidence that really decision making is down to psychology, down to a person weighting benefits versus costs. This includes all tangible and intangible, emotional costs and benefits.

McKinsey in almost every single one of their Quarterly Podcasts fall for the same mis-definition: they claim people don’t act rationale. Can anybody tell me what rationale actually means? People always act for the greatest benefit, this could mean money, emotions, status, wisdom and in this sense everyone is rational.

Let’s replace rationality with consciousness. Let’s say people don’t always behave consciously. That’s what people mean when they say rationality.

It’s killing me. Design is so commonly misunderstood and undervalued and bad design is so common and accepted.

Design is the best form and the best function. I’m hearing engineers talking about look does not matter, but safety does. How wrong!

Violence is mainly understood to be physical, i. e. the application of a physical force against the will of someone. Interestingly the general understanding completely misses out on psychological violence in any sort of relationship and also violence in virtual environments.

Violence describes a large spectrum from starting with clear physical force, such as hitting someone to subtle psychological force. Regardless which consequences you measure violence by, you’ll find no consistent set that would support a distinction between physical and non-physical violence. In fact, certain physical violence would surely impact the receiver less than applied psychological violence.

The main reason why our socienty at large is in agreement with limiting violence to the physical world is that it supports a black and white view of condemning violence. It allows us to generalize violence as morally not permissible and easily and quickly judge actions with a simplistic morale blueprint.

As soon as violence is freed from its physical scope, freedom of thought and speech starts to interfere with the belief of non-violence. What was morally agreeable due to its non-violent nature (expressing ones opinion for example), could now become an issue of morality as it will exert a violence over another individual. The stake of disagreeing with one’s manager in some cases could be as high or even higher as being robbed or hit.

The only way to resolve questions of the application of violence and with that the importance of force and insertion is to adjust and rebuild a consistent morale system that is based on a more objective foundation and that integrates the application of force and with that violence into its scope. Violence plays such an essential role in nature that our morale systems have to include a proper and inclusive view. This in no way advocates or downplays violence as a legitimate means, actually by integrating it into our morale system it will require thoughtful justification and a much more conscious way of acting.

One important discourse can’t be left out of this discussion: why is violence usually perceived as being morally questionable? Simply because the impact of violence in a society that invests a huge amount of resources on individuals is negative. In a society where each individual’s value has been funded by huge resources it is a waste of these to severly impact this individual. We do see in societies where either the life-expectancy, the investments into the individual or other value-factors are low that the level of violence is strongly correlated.

There’s an interesting video from Steven Pinker at TED about the decline of violence available here. Also, an interesting correlation revealed by Emily Oster also at TED between AIDS and life-expectancy can be found here.

What decides right and wrong? Who is the judge of concepts, arguments and decisions? It is reality. As simple as it sounds, as difficult it is to accept and as difficult it is to integrate the consequences.

No person in the world could decide what works and what does not. They all need to rely on compliance with reality and all outcomes will be ultimately judged by reality. However, we are fortunate, reality follows rules, many of which we consciously know: consistency, integrity and efficiency.