Tuesday, July 04, 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
Seth
I wanted to thank you for your interest in my work. [231]
You know that not everyone is a businessperson, and yet the businessperson type has come to make the rules for social discourse and to enforce these rules. The evidence is in certain types of behavior we see over and over again.
You see this, I am sure.
One of my colleagues recently wrote a long private note to me and then edited it down to:
In this short note is given an analysis of the current behavior of communities of business people. Even without the references to his name, this individual felt afraid to give this analysis in public.
The social "rules" that we saw in your e-forum - and for which you responded in a positive way - create and re-enforce a ubiquitous set of behaviors such as my colleagues described:
"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
(content management system), 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."
Bold italic mine .
There are two effects of these, well documented, US Federal CIO Council cultural behaviors.
1) As my colleague pointed out, the work of the government degrades while large sums of money are poured into business relationships rather than adequate solutions.
2) The wrong capacities are developed in those businesses that are needed to support the refinement of information science and information technology. Government contracts build loyalty to business associations rather than actual understandings of capacity and needs.
Is there a great deal of difference between this specific effect of capitalism on our social discourse, and the effect of communism on the social discourse in the former Soviet Union? Yes, of course. But having this type of ubiquitous inhibition of analysis is not consistent with our previous sense of who we are as a nation. The marketplace of ideas becomes controlled by those whose primary focus is on making profits from federal IT contracts.
The American public now consistently feels that we live in a period of history that is unfamiliar and is not what we expected. The institutional behavior of the CIO Council is only part of the mechanisms that continues the construction of a false reality, a reality that pushes aside the notion of merit, and elevates the acceptance of transparent stupidity – such as is commonly observed in business oriented e-forums and in the government IT procurement practices.
Related FCC situation à [the National Debate]
Related CIO Council
situation à [[236]]