Monday, July 03, 2006
The metaphor between gene, cell and social
expression à [217]
On Formal verses Natural systems à [206]
Link to education commons à [***]
Generative Methodology Glass Bead Games
(edited note off line – edited to remove the personal references)
I am interested to find others had issue with the CIO Council. I was doing work for the DOT CIO who was the head of the CIO Council for a time while he was the DOT CIO. Many of his actions were well intentioned, but the people whom he chose to do the work did not have basic understandings of the medium they were working with.
With the implementation of a CMS (content management system) he turned down one of the best in the industry who lead the best stakeholder interview for pre-CMS implementation I have ever seen or heard about. It was perfect. The expert was turned down and CIO chose a friend of his who said the right things but did not have understanding, who then brought in another group that really did not understand the web, best practices, or CMS, but they could install Vignette on a server (well it took many weeks to do this). This group was getting recommended to do installs across the Federal government.
I watched work across DOT get shifted to companies with ties to the people making the decisions, which saw security and system stability degrade.
And ...
I now understand your post. Oddly, I have a very similar blog post that has been sitting for a long time on understanding technology when it mediates human communication and human interaction. The signal is no longer pure and part of the message is lost.
Developers and designers must understand how people think, how people interpret the medium being used, and what part of the message is lost or compromised. Those making decisions in the government do not seem to understand this simple concept or do not respect it. I am deeply sorry I did not give support on this front as I do deeply and passionately agree.
Link to FCC situation à [the National Debate]