Some Relevant Quotations
| “If you have a vision of someday, you can use this to guide what you
do Monday. Without such a vision, technology tends to be used for making incremental
changes rather than remaking the way things are done.”
Seymour Papert (Professor of Education and Media Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) |
| "Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not
enough; we must do."
Johann von Goethe (1749 - 1832) |
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Data Dyspepsia The quantity of information flowing into your office on a daily basis has reached an officially indigestible level, says Gartner, which reports that 90% of companies are suffering from data overload to the point where it's affecting their productivity. Gartner estimates that businesses will spend as much as $30 billion this year alone on information management systems in the hope of digging out, but it still may not be enough to improve the signal to noise ratio in most offices. Surprisingly, Gartner found that the most useful information employees receive comes from personal contacts, contact with friends and colleagues and e-mails, rather than the corporate Intranet. The company has therefore recommended that businesses encourage more social interaction -- in cafeterias, lounges and around the water cooler -- while at the same time implementing workflow tools that can help stem the tide of useless information. (The Register 15 May 2002) |
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"The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village." Marshall McLuhan (1911 - 1980) |
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No Time to Think Do we have anything more important to say to one another at these astonishing speeds than we did when information transfer occurred by smoke signal, by forest drum, by simple shouts into primitive air?... Sometimes it seems as if we have fallen in love with speed for the sake of speed. It's not that I don't appreciate the hugely more efficient speed of the cable modem I have on my home computer today compared with the 300-baud modem on my first computer nearly 20 years ago. I do. ... But I wish we devoted as much energy improving and expanding the content of what we're uploading and downloading as we do to the speed with which we do those tasks. The problem is that thinking more deeply, offering more profound conclusions, arriving at more useful insights requires time. But time to think is the one thing that faster and faster technology never seems to give us. Bill Tammeus (Columnist, Kansas City Star) |
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"An optimist is a person who sees only the lights in the picture,
whereas a pessimist sees only the shadows. An idealist, however, is one who
sees the light and the shadows, but in addition sees something else: the
possibility of changing the picture, of making the lights prevail over the
shadows."
Felix Adler (1851 - 1933) |