This journal
holds a trace of my journey of
discovery
(at least the part thereof that has
nothing directly to do with work with clients).
I write to think, to learn,
to nudge ideas around and find the insights they were hiding...
So, a new characterization for my Trace
emerges -- this is my own personal "maker" space, where what I am building
through exploration, discovery and experimentation is myself, my point of view
on architecture and being an architect. This is, then, a learning
lab/playground of a curious mind... hence it is, well, messy! Consider
yourself warned! :-)
Point of view? My PoV is: where I see from, what I
(seek out and) look at, and what I stand for.
Roll on Watson, there'll be a new apple of the media's eye:
"Make no mistake: Apple’s
‘mainstreaming’ Artificial Intelligence in the form of a Virtual
Personal Assistant is a groundbreaking event. I’d go so far as to say it
is a World-Changing event. Right now a few people dabble in partial AI
enabled apps like Google Voice Actions, Vlingo or Nuance Go. Siri was
many iterations ahead of these technologies, or at least it was two
years ago. This is REAL AI with REAL market use. If the rumors are true,
Apple will enable millions upon millions of people to interact with
machines with natural language. The PAL will get things done and this is
only the tip of the iceberg. We’re talking another technology
revolution. A new computing paradigm shift."
I like this alternative wording for relationship platform: (experience-based) engagement platforms (CEOs
Must Engage All Stakeholders, Venkat Ramaswamy and Kerimcan Ozcan,
October 4, 2011).
Relationship platform leaves the concept open to encompassing
relationships between systems as well as engagement or relationships
among people and groups or entities, so perhaps it is better for my
purpose. Still, engagement platform conveys a defining element well.
“The second key is to see yourself
not only as a fierce competitor, but also as a broad collaborator. Don't
get me wrong: Competition is essential as a spur to innovation. But in a
world of increasingly interdependent systems ... the Wild West of
competition needs to be complemented and tempered by far more
collaboration across old boundaries. Across academic disciplines ... and
industries ... and nations ... and even among competitors.” --
Irving Wladawsky-Berger
Just kidding! Low hanging humor fruit... But there is a point with
respect to user interfaces in that gestural and voice interfaces will
find ever more application, not just on mobile devices (though arguably largely
driven by such devices because the interaction surface is so small).
And then, the biggie that was missed -- AI redefining search and
serve. That has to be on the radar, at any rate. Big mucky data meets
intelligent assistant and the world changes! I can't believe how ho-hum
the reaction to the iPhone 4S has been. Ok, Steve Jobs wasn't there to
rub the iPhone and have its genie appear, but really! Where's the
imagination? Think about it -- Apple has given Wolfram/Alpha a voice on the iPhone. Among other things
-- like context awareness, machine learning, natural dialog. This holds promise! This low-key
introduction is ... downright foreboding! [First they serve and
enable us, then they replace us!] And exciting! [First they serve
us. ;-) ] We'll have
to get our hands on one and see how far along it is on delivering on
that promise. 10/12/11: The big question is -- will we recognize that
Apple mainstreaming AI on a consumer device was Steve Jobs
astonishing-achievement-capping swan song, and did Steve die thinking we
were idiots not getting it, but also knowing we will, in time?
And of course there's Watson. Watson -- Doctor Watson to you, Watson
to Sherlock Holmes -- the archetype of a sidekick, and a (medical)
doctor at that. What a perfect name. A serendipity, since it was named
for the founder of IBM, and perhaps also prescient -- as Watson's
derivatives emerge, Watson will surely find a role as the intellectual sidekick to many a
professional. First up, a physician's assistant.
Kinect helps us see Microsoft as interesting beyond the
"productivity" space, but... Apple and IBM sure have the innovation
limelight and its all about AI. Google decided it was all about social,
so they're going to have to scramble... Although... you know I'd like an affordable robot to taxi my kids, clean my
house and keep my yard in order. Who's working on that? Yes, as cars go,
Google. But humanoid robots seem to be coming
out of Asia...
In the US, we've focused on software that serves mind treats (social,
search, Watson and Siri). But there is plenty of room for engineering of
stuff, creating tangible products that would make people's lives more
the way we want them to be... Smarter stuff -- ecologically and in
the sense-respond and sense-inform sense too.
I know that's not an enterprise app... but just translate that to
sensors and pulling the finger off the trigger on algorithms that sink
stock markets... Not enterprise significant? How about commodities
markets? Hm, word of social net and production forecasting? Ahhh. It's
all in the analogy dear Watson. :-) The other day I joked to Dana
that the Ruffian[-inverse]-Turing Test will be: when humans don't
understand it but a robot can, we'll know it's a robot. I think that
will go for analogies too. We're getting more binary and AI deals better
and better with fuzzy and unstructured.
All told, we're hurtling through revolutions in how we conceive of
our humanity (neuroscience, behavioral economics and more are revealing
our stunning perceptual inaccuracies, among other flaws), extended
humanity (digital information, AI), and ... replacements for humanity
(manufacturing robots, digital assistants, ...)
We have to get our house in order with respect to sustainability, but
there is so very much to be done, there's so much to be optimistic
about! If we can just get the full workforce employed and spending... on
sustainable lifestyles, of course...
Besides:
"When you wonder where all the
youthful creativity is; where good old “Yankee ingenuity” has gone, it’s
still here. But not in formal education. Anyone who is looking to find
the next generation of engineers, technologists and free-thinkers need
only go to one of these Faires or visit the thousands of Hacker Spaces
springing up across the country. It will leave you breathless…and
hopeful."
Ok, so I totally know the chances are good that this post is a tad
exaggerated... but whether experience with the 4S proves the
promise of Siri or not, we know that this is an unstoppable direction
and we may as well get excited about it so we see what possibilities it
holds. And we may as well get excited about regrooving for
sustainability because it will create jobs, save money, and leave less
impact on the planet and all its lovely creatures. (Uh, you may as well
get excited. I'm bleeping terrified. ;-) Or I would be, if you didn't
get excited. So let's all get excited and change this world!)
10/10/11: IBM has Watson, and a primary focus on vetted knowledge
sources. Apple has Siri giving voice to Wolfram/Alpha -- though I expect
the relationship will have its trials... It will be interesting to see
what else Siri does, AI wise. Google trawls everything i-way with
impressive diligence -- imagine what that could turn into! Amazon's Silk
approach is interesting.
Our software culture is so black-and-white (I like to say binary, 'cos
I'm a geek -- not so's you'd notice, but non-geeks do) that we miss a
lot of the in-between shades. Like red. ;-) What am I on about? Oh yes.
My point! Well, it's like this, see. We get our knickers in a knot
because 'construction" is a bad metaphor for software because it is
creative, inventive, exploratory, entails discovery even of what we're
about (you know, "requirements" that emerge as we develop the system).
And we get our knickers in a knot about applying the "engineering" term
to software development because we build schlocky systems that "real"
engineers would disassociate from. See a problem? It's staring us in the
face! We need to be doing "real" engineering because we're developing
production systems -- systems that will "go live" and have if not lives,
the economic productivity and vitality of our companies and communities
dependent on them. But we're experimenting our way to them. We think we
can test our way to engineered excellence, but we don't know what the
"real" requirements are, and sometimes we have but the scantest clue how
we're going to accomplish the "requirements" we "know" we have. And yet
we need to deliver code into "production" -- into situations where our
systems
need to be dependable.
If we recognize that we
have threaded two processes together and then turned a blind eye to
their different needs, we have the chance to do something about it! Two
processes?
Invention and
discovery, not just of user needs but of approaches or mechanisms
for addressing those needs -- discovery of how to make it work.
And engineering of a
system with integrity.
Going from the messiness of our discovery-oriented process to the
well-factored, tested integrity of our engineered system shouldn't be
considered rework or waste! Unless we leave it until after it has sorely
impacted users and our business viability. That is waste.
As we proceed in the fog of uncertainty, entropy grows -- and
produces more fog! Under uncertainty we "give things a try"; accept good
enough, and try the next thing. As entropy grows, it introduces its own
uncertainty...
A certain Professor Alexander told us in his strategy class that
managers don't read, so use short sentences, short paragraphs, and write
brief briefs. I broke every one of his rules. Got an A. Flout
confining expectations. Break rules made to level. I did and still do. I break rules of grammar.
When it suits me. I nest. Clauses. I iterate, and conceive in parallel.
And expect you to too. I don't try to be colorful. But shucks (the
word of the day today on Twitter; getting old already), no-one at all
would read this Q<= were I not colorful! There are just too many bases
on which to discount me. Oh. Right. I am discounted. Few read here.
Rats. Short sentences then. That'll do it! Right? Oh.
The biggest key to success as a writer is not short sentences. It is
writing. And living an interesting mind-life, so we have grist for our
thought mill. An architect as writer needs to have something interesting
and important bubbling under the surface. So interesting and so important that she -- or he
-- cares enough to write it out, think it through, improve and learn how
to pitch it. Or pitch it. Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen both write, and
walk away. From a lot of what they write. Writing is to learn. To
conceive. To frame.
To draw out. So we learn what we know, what we have within us melded
from our experience and interacting with other's minds and their
experience and sense-making. So we see what is important -- useful and a priority to
draw attention to. And how to express it. Thinking it through shapes how
we draw it. How we talk about it. What we draw attention to. And explain
or justify and persuade others to help us do, or to do differently.
Our audience is busy. Much to attend to. So sure, simple factors. And
being interesting and meaningful. And relevant.
Make your own rules, but don't feel you have to start from scratch --
here's a collectionand a reminder:
As essayist, programmer, and
investor Paul Graham has written, "Writing doesn't just communicate
ideas; it generates them. If you're bad at writing and don't like to do
it, you'll miss out on most of the ideas writing would have generated."
--
And sure, code counts as writing. But code tends to obfuscate
architecture and we need to set architecture in bold relief so that we
can study and improve it, test it out not just in our mind's eye (with
that so-limited working memory) but with the interaction of our and
other minds on it.
The sad news reminds us of our mortality. We could not hold onto
Steve Jobs, nor he onto life, despite all the will and money in the
world. There are many ways we can make a difference and one of them is
to see the great in what others do. If there is anything I admire Steve
Jobs most for, it is that. The more greatness we see in the world, the more we have to draw on
to make something new -- something "insanely great." But first to see
and appreciate. Combining an aesthetic appreciation, the ability to
wonder at, with a sense of possibility, the ability to wonder. Then to envision a new concoction of greatness to make
something fantasmically new in the world. And then to demand greatness
in execution of the idea, making tough choices to retain the essence
that is great, and to appreciate it enthusiastically, even child-joyfully, as it comes to
fruition.
Children by the tens of thousand are dying from the tortures of
famine -- "a
tragedy unfolding" (thanks for the pointer
Daniel). Drought-induced famine that is complicated by
war. We can do something immediate -- the
Red Cross, UNICEF and WorldVision, among others, are providing aid
in the drought-hit region.
If climate change goes the way scientists are predicting, horrors
like this will mount. Our neighbor is an environmental physicist. He has
installed solar, cycles to IU, and drives a hybrid. His actions match
his words. Our tastes and priorities are changing, but
I feel like
conspicuous consumption and climate evil personified driving an SUV. We
are changing habits and purchasing choices, but on a budget some just
take some time to roll over. But. Too many "but"s. We have to get past
"but"!!
Humor
is constructed from surprise. A map that disorients? To more effectively orient.
The UNC
"disOrientation" maps that Peter Bakker pointed us to are at once a
wonderfully playful and a serious but vivid delivery vehicle, designed to
communicate UNC's embedding in and relationship to broader life, culture,
geography and more.
Yesterday I did a sketchnote mind-storm on what Conceptual
Architecture is good for (the why or motivation for a
conceptual
architecture view):
Today I see that Doug Newdick
illustrated what Conceptual Architecture is good for --
a Conceptual Desktop Architecture. Great post
Doug! And (serendipitously) well timed!
Aside. I like Doug's use of
hand-sketching on his diagrams. They are very useful
illustrations that really add to his text. And the
hand-drawn conveys the human touch so eloquently.
I believe Doug
is right about Conceptual Architecture being
important. And right that it is a
neglected view. But not in
our book. Well, our book is under substantial
(complete!) revision. Which is why, among other
things, I'm trying to get the framing (more) right
-- or at least as right as it can be given the
current set of understandings we (the field) have.
So thanks for the carrying the conversation
along -- even though Doug wasn't aware of my piece of
the conversation/this Trace entry [which I have
trimmed down now that it served its purpose, after
its own fashion].
10/25/11: Thanks to
Stuart
Boardman for helpful questions
and suggestions -- I integrated some responses and
have more still to do, but the
conceptual
architecture write-up is getting better. Oh, it still needs work, including
trimming away redundancy... so, suggestions welcome.
They don't even have to be gentle, but...
I liked this (very short) animated
video: The Ride -
by King & Country. These Rube Goldberg-styled
"machines" so make me think of visualization of
executing software, and this one is even more
delightfully apt as it is a fantasy world with
allusions to the real world -- a construction of the
(analogical) mind, as software is.
And the visualization (right), from
the video, of a system as interacting mechanisms is
wonderful!
Isn't that just what our systems
would look like, if we could take the skin off?...
:-) Well, as I see it, it would have various defense
shields. But our systems have to survive in a
hostile world.
#
Frequency of updates to the enterprise architecture
Now, would frequent updates be an
indicator of goodness or badness?? Good --
responsive to emergent need. Bad -- was way off base
to begin with... but good if responsive enough to
fix it... And so it goes.
Well, indicators are just that --
signals to look deeper. Just so long as management
understands that.
Not all decisions are equal (in
import, scope of impact and consequence). The
architect needs to be able to assess (and given the
authority to decide) which are architecturally
significant, and when to make* those that are. Some
need to be made early, just to get ground under the
feet to move forward on.
"a long and rapid succession of suboptimal design decisions taken partly in the dark."
-- Philippe Kruchten, "The Architects -- The Software
Architecture Team," Proceedings of the First Working IFIP Conference on Software
Architecture (WICSA1). Kluwer Academic Publishing 1999
* collaboratively, of course, but
with the authority to make a decision if the
collaborative/consensus process stalls.
Tim O'Reilly held Google to its
declared best self in his "What Android can learn from Steve
Jobs" keynote address at
Android Open -- in the most gracious way, of
course. His address was a mix of what Google
is doing well -- where it expresses and aligns with
its soul -- and a call to do more of that. It was a
courageous (ok, Tim can afford to be more courageous
than most, but still he didn't try to protect
powerful relationships by pulling his punches) and
inspiring keynote and I'm glad I was able to catch
it on livestream (even though it puts me seriously
behind on today's commitments!). The slides are
here, but I recommend
the video (scroll down to get to it) -- along
with the slides.
The address is more pitched at Google
than the (rest of the) Android community, but we can
see Tim really set out to speak for the
community, to call Google to be its best self, to be
true to its stated, projected image -- to do no
evil, to not be closely controlling and so close off
others from leadership roles in the Android
ecosystem.
It is a wise talk, full of strategic
savvy, and I highly recommend it to architects
wondering what strategy means to technologists. :-)
By extensively quoting the "founding
fathers" of Google, Tim not only made his intended
points, but built the image of the evolving
"creation story" of Google, strengthening his "be
true to the self you project" call. We do, after
all, want to be known for the best we see and value
in ourselves. As Tim points out (quoting Kurt
Vonnegut's "You are what you pretend to be, so be
careful what you pretend"), by stating how we want
to be seen, we call upon ourselves to live the image
we project. If we do not strive to live up to that
projection, the world calls us on the disjunction,
and we are seen as inauthentic and lose trust.
This, from a slide in Tim's talk, is
an inspiring -- and daunting (will we fix the
environmental mess, or make it worse) -- way to
position what we're about:
The "hardship for us all" is a bit
jarring coming from Sergey Brin, but he does make a
good point all the same!
12/7/11: I don't know how much cash
Google had socked away by 2008, but with
$43 billion in cash in 2011, "hard for all of
us" leaves the taste of disingenuity in one's mouth.
More
than a week after Stalin’s death, Eisenhower was
talking with speechwriter Emmet Hughes about the
address. “Look, I am tired—and I think everyone is
tired—of just plain indictments of the Soviet
regime,” Ike said. “I think it would be wrong—in
fact, asinine—for me to get up before the world now
to make another one of those indictments. Instead,
just one thing matters. What have we got to offer
the world?”
to Jobs' key point in a presentation
to Apple employees in 1997 (via Tom Graves):
"To me, marketing is about
values. This is a very complicated world, it's a very noisy world. And we're not
going to get the chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is.
So we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us." —
Steve Jobs to Apple employees, 1997
Me-too products (simply copying
others' feature sets) lead to more complexity with
no distinctive meaning and value, forcing a battle
on price leading to ever more tightening of cost
reduction screws.
What is common to those two
Eisenhower and Jobs "great speeches", is the call to
find and be true to distinguishing value.
Aside: I like
the image of the "bite" out of the Apple apple
that is Steve Jobs' profile, and the way the apple
logo itself suddenly now seems to be a candle! Who
did that? It's really impressive!
Looking again at modularity, I
discovered by a neat serendipity that
Bill
Shackleton tweeted a set of links to very useful
papers on modularity last night! Timed that well, he
did! :-)
Here's a
set of modularity links I pulled together earlier this year (extending
a set I'd pulled together last year, which also addresses related topics
of cohesion and such).
for its implications as we move to less hierarchically
composed organizations. The section on modularity theory is a wonderful
trace of (some of) the history.
My interest in modularity is from a software and
system perspective, but I got pulled off course for a spell by Carliss
Baldwin's article which intrigued me because we think that organizations
will move in a direction that is more networked and "podular" with more
fuzzy boundaries which raises interesting questions about transaction
costs. Peter Bakker pointed to the wikipedia entry on
community
structurewhich is
interesting.
It is interesting that we have moved
from Douglas Engelbart's conception of
augmented human intellect more to
human-computer symbiosis (with roots in
Licklider's work, but a referent, for example, in
Tim OReilly's articulation of a network-mediated
global mind). That is, implicitly and I think
unselfconsciously, we have shifted from computing as
enhancement to computing as peer. The next step in
the trajectory -- human-augmented computing?
In important ways, we're already
there. For example, in software visualization, we
more sensibly depict system structure derived from
dependency and semantic analyses (algorithms) when
we factor in the (human) understanding of the team.
That is, we're moving into the sphere where our
(so-far uniquely) human proclivity for 'hunches,
cut-and-try, intangibles, and the human "feel for a
situation"' (Douglas
Engelbart) is needed to augment the powerfully
"rational cogitations" of compute intelligence.
Of course, all this is in service of
humanity (environmental catastrophes aside). For a
while yet. At least. ;-)
"The point is that tools are always going to be used
for certain things we don’t find personally
pleasing. And it’s ultimately the wisdom of people,
not the tools themselves, that is going to determine
whether or not these things are used in positive,
productive ways."
Our
What it takes to be
great paper played a cornerstone role in our field, building recognition
that architects are not uni-dimensional technologists. I think the
Getting Past ‘But’: Finding Opportunity and Making It Happen
paper was likewise a scene-setter, but more, it is one of those inspire and
enable pieces. It puts together story and group graphics, concurrent
development, model-storming and sketch prototyping with its fail
early/cheap/learn kind of agility, and more.
As covered in the paper, agile
architecting prefaces development iterations
with an extreme-agile approach that iterates on the
system concept and its architecture, exploring
initial approaches and creating sufficient context
for the unfolding adaptive development of the
system. That's not the end of agile architecting,
which continues throughout the life of the system.
But contrast this approach with setting out on a
development path that relies on the miraculous
vision of a product owner who somehow internalizes
not just what the system should be but what it will
take to build it. Hm.
It's an important paper. I
would write it a lot differently today. But that
doesn't make it irrelevant or not worthwhile.
I enjoyed Alistair Cockburn's
Effective Software Development presentation (although I had to forward
through the certification bits, and such; not enough time in a day for every
distraction... oh yes, and work)! I wonder if Alistair adopted the accent
intentionally, or if he just has a talent for absorbing context?
'“architecture is experienced
habitually, in a state of distraction.” Architects must then weave ways to flow
people and resources through built environments' -- Danzico,
Enforced
Listening Moments, Dec 1, 2009
Isn't this what your system needs:
Chopin's
for Dummies, Jeremy Denk, Nov 30, 2009? Well, of course, not exactly that,
but that kind of enthusiastic and acute-but-sensitively informed telling of the
meaning and import and intent of its structure and mechanisms?
Interesting piece of visual art history:
100,000-Year-Old Art Studio Discovered, Cynthia Graber, Scientific American,
October 13, 2011 (via Maria Popova/@brainpicker)
Dennis Ritchie died on October 8. It
makes
news today? Now that was a life that made a difference! Funny how we don't
think of it that way, until it's in the rear view mirror. Well, it's humbling
and enriching to think of what Dennis Ritchie gave us. Unix and C. And all that
stood on the shoulders thereof.
Of note: he doesn't take away from Steve Jobs to give to
Dennis Ritchie. This is not a competition among dead heroes for our worship!
This is our huge shout (and sad sigh) of thanks, and an expression of wonder at
having lived when these men lived and made a difference --
changed the world, even!
Mortality sucks. But it reminds us to care for and appreciate
one another because we blaze for such a short time. We have this chance -- this
short lived opportunity -- to feel the presence of others in our lives. To
connect through the rare act of seeing -- of putting aside the huge mirror of
self that prevents us from seeing -- into the mind and heart of another. And by
seeing, by putting our great big oofish self aside, we are enriched, in our
view, our empathy, and the material we have to draw on to make fresh
connections, lovely in their unique composite form -- more lovely because they
drew from beyond the limits of our self.
We can choose how we see ideas and the people who associate
themselves closely with their "thought children." We can see them as threats to
our dominion, or we can see them as they are, especially as they are in their
best light. I suppose we need warriors -- not convinced, mind*. But I do so much
more lean to those who are compassionate, kind and generous. They make the world
better in our experience of it.
Reading
"What unites the CIRTL Network
universities is a commitment to developing a national STEM faculty better
prepared to teach, through three core ideas: teaching-as-research, learning
communities, and learning-through-diversity," -- Robert Mathieu, ACM Newsgram,
10/14/11
I was struck by that last:
learning-through-diversity.
I realized that I have an opportunity I wasn't valuing highly
enough -- being in a distinct minority, everyone I work with is very different
from me. That's a learning-through-diversity opportunity of huge proportion!
Right? I get more opportunities than you do to work in contexts where styles and
viewpoints are very different than my own. Rats! I should be so much better at
this than I am. All that opportunity 'n all.
* Given that there are warriors, we need warriors, but
what if we were free of warriors?
I enjoyed doing a tutorial at SATURN in 2010, but
unfortunately the conference overlapped with Ryan's graduation (the culmination
for most in his class of 9 years at the Montessori School, so a big deal -- with
speeches!) so I missed the chance to sit in on other presentations and
tutorials. Linda Rising, Rod Nord and George Fairbanks sat in on mine. Rod Nord
is beyond compare -- wise yet child-open and joyful at discovery. He enriches
experience, and it was a privilege! I've since watched Linda Rising on youtube,
and she's the Ellen Degeneres of software, or something like that! I mean, she's
an engaging and dramatic speaker.
Yeah -- Tell Meg!
\
And HP could make it happen! Turn them engineers loose on
defining the future! Tell Meg Whitman I said so. That'll have some influence.
;-)
I mean, I love Apple and Asia and all, but the future needs
options.
There's so much opportunity! To something like Watson or Siri,
add
Computing has so far to go, even when we only take into
account what we already know! Just think -- the "not your father's PC" of the
future will not just sit there on your desktop, mute and inert! Between here and
there, there's a whole lot of innovation to conceive, realize and popularize!
Or going the other direction (from more human-like computers
to more computer-like humans), imagine adding
this to
something like this!
It doesn't have to be like this. Makes Kinect
look passé doesn't it?!
I know that's a far cry from the cut-throat business HP's computing
business is in today. But competition is only cut-throat if you can't imagine -- and
execute on -- beingcompelling!
Ryan told me he came across this (I'm paraphrasing) on the i-way
yesterday: "With Lion, Apple reveals that it has given up on dragging us into
the future, and has left without us."
Being visionary isn't all about going into the future
and yanking the rest of the world into it. But it is important to have a sense
of identity that is tied up with a sense of a destiny worth making happen. More
tangibly and in the nearer term, what we know is that in the "Internet of
Things" computing value network know-how is going to factor big. And there's
invaluable know-how that you get from doing it, and then doing it better!
10/27/11: Oh, I like
Microsoft's version --
especially the pen (image left
from the video)! Ok. I
want that now! Pretty please. :-) (via Bill Shackleton)
"Any time you do something big,
that’s disruptive — Kindle, AWS — there will be critics. And there will be at
least two kinds of critics. There will be well-meaning critics who genuinely
misunderstand what you are doing or genuinely have a different opinion. And
there will be the self-interested critics that have a vested interest in not
liking what you are doing and they will have reason to misunderstand. And you
have to be willing to ignore both types of critics. You listen to them, because
you want to see, always testing, is it possible they are right?"
--
Jeff Bezos,
Amazon Shareholder Meeting, June 7, 2011
Read the whole transcript -- lots of lessons!
Follow Up Required
Note to self: need to follow up/verify this.
10/15/11: That is, I wanted to look up the PopSci reference --
here it is:
Stuart Boardman's
Monet Revisited post makes points
that overlap synergistically with some I've made; besides he writes with eloquence and
style (of the kind I think is iconically captured in the
xkcd hat guy) and a unique slant lighting
new insights! :-) So, yeah, sure, I
droll on about the value of sketchy (double entendre intended) and hand rendered
in a very technology-glitzy and implicitly mechanically prescriptive world. And,
of course, Stuart's wonderful post goes further too, to survey other innovations in
terms of how we conceive and practice EA (and the very enterprises themselves).
Because I think what Stuart was saying in
Monet Revisited is complementary to, and enhances, enriches, expands,
deepens, provides a different angle on, some of the points I've made, I'll quote
myself to add to the conversation -- by which I mean, I'm not trying to say "I
told you so" but rather, I'm trying to say this is an "and" world, where we
brighten each other's conceptions by holding conversations (albeit
asynchronously and using our blogs as avatars that speak for us). In that spirit
then, this from my
Trace on July 5, 2011:
This, from an earlier entry in my journal (2/21/11), prompted by a
pointer (thanks Daniel) to the artist
Constantin Brâncuşi:
"Though just an anatomical
study, it foreshadowed the sculptor's later efforts to reveal essence
rather than merely copy outward appearance." --
wikipedia
"There are idiots who define
my work as abstract; yet what they call abstract is what is most
realistic. What is real is not the appearance, but the idea, the essence
of things." --
Constantin Brâncuşi, wikipedia
I thought that was interesting. Software architecture is like that, isn't
it? About finding and expressing the essential structure and nature of
the thing. So we struggle with how to talk about it -- abstraction,
compression, ...? To me, in advance (of the built system) we could say
it is
abstract (as in the mechanism of neo-modern art) though by reference or
allusion (metaphor/analogy/symbol/imagery, ..., patterns) we draw in
potentially huge influence and experience so compression plays a very
important role. Once built (at all, and as the system evolves),
compression (the very real, actualized meaning of whole chunks of the
system gets compressed into the elements and mechanisms we represent)
and abstraction (selectively eliding and occluding detail to reveal the
essential) figure. In any event (expressing design intent or reflecting
design as built), abstractions are central. I suppose, if I must, I
could dance on the head of a pin and say these abstractions (entities in
essential form) are compressions (they draw into compact form
much meaning).
The
neat thing is that whole fields of representation (including aesthetics
and semiotics) swoop into relevance. :-)
Brâncuşi was, I gather, objecting to bundling his work into a class of art for
which there is no evident relationship between what is real and the art; rather,
he protested, his work captures the essence or the idea of the thing. It
cleaves away the inessential and compresses the essential into a
powerful expression of the essence of the reality.
In other words, rather than convince me that his
work is not abstract, Brâncuşi defined abstract for me, at least in so
far as it applies to his work. For Brâncuşi was very much after
identifying and capturing the essential identity and form (with its implications for
function) of the thing he was sculpting.
(See, for example, the
evolution of his Bird in Space.) In discovering software
abstractions, we can go from concrete instances to a generalization,
eliminating detail from the concrete to find the more general, more
abstract common form. But seeking the idea, the essence of the thing,
supports more degrees of freedom in realizing concrete forms that retain
the essence.
I
was pitching that at software architecture. But, about a dozen years
ago, when our IT architect clients were urging us to help them figure
out what to do in the Enterprise Architecture space, they made the point
that the way we think about architecture of systems speaks, with a
context shift of course, to other kinds of systems -- those that are
more software-intensive and others that are software-complemented-wetware
intensive (the wetware, in my use, being a reference back to that Merkle
piece).
I alluded to Brancusi, and Stuart to Monet, to make the point
that detail, inherent in realism, obfuscates. My points are shaded differently
than Stuart's, so, as I said, they are complementary, and add up to a more rich
view.
What pops out freshly for me, from revisiting my thinking
extended and freshly nuanced by Stuart's points, is that there is huge value in
that "room for interpretation" that more
abstract representation rather than
less rigorously detailed specification leaves open. This also harks back to one
of our earliest principles -- that of minimalism (see
here
and
here). We want to fix in detail only what we need to, to focus on and enable
strategic outcomes. For the most part, we want to simply set sufficient context
so that we enable good, right things to happen. Where "good" (in our good,
right, successful sense) is technically sound, and "right" is from a stakeholder
point of view -- meets stakeholder needs, goals, alleviates frustrations,
delights them, makes their lives more the way they want them to be, creates and
fills aspirations, provides meaning, and so forth. Which also relates to the
Fractal and Emergent which probably bears a closer reading now... ??? ;-)
Talking through some related ideas, Dana said
"That's why Jesus taught in parables." In other words, stories play a
similar role.
Key points I take from the interweaving conversations then:
there is something powerful in creating aligning context,
without going into tightly prescriptive detail, shaping an enabling space in
which the team is free to be creative, to be innovative and draw on their
expression and interpretation yet be aligned and in harmony and concert.
there is something powerful in focusing on the essence of
the expression, rather than all the myriad details of reality -- "reality"
in our experience of it, is more vivid and better understood as a result of
this "amplification by simplification" (quoting Grady Booch quoting Scott
McCloud).
And some other stuff. (I thought of a 3rd point while off
line... that "memory almost full" phenomenon or the impact of just 4 hours sleep
last night???)
Well, I could pull out other pieces (of my long and arduous
conversation with myself that is this Trace) that relate to this vein
of conversation, but onward! New fields to plough!
Aside: Remember that the
Less is
More paper was written in 2002. I would write it differently now (so don't
be too critical of dated wording), but it still is ahead of many people's
thinking about architecture...
Above and below -- studies in networks of influence. Both
abstract. (Dana took the photo below in Canada a few weeks ago.)
Yep, Dana's been traveling here there and every where -- just
in the past two months he's been in Africa, Canada, variously in the US, The
Netherlands, etc.
But... Dana needs to go back to South Africa -- we're about
out of rusks.
10/17/11: Daniel, most valued and awesome scout that he is,
pointed to this piece
on Gertrude Stein which well fits this thread. You know, Gertrude Stein of
The World is Round, and other things. ... I suppose I have either
irreparably sunk or redeemed myself in your estimation by
drawing on
children's literature in the context of computing and enterprise
architecture. Sunk...? Oops. Well, at least... I'm .... courageous. ;-) But
The World Is Round has a poignant message in this world where the frenzy of
social connection is ... um... deep and important post could be written...
but... busy!
10/1/11: But,
Philip Hellyer is quoting Lemony Snicket, so I'm in good company. :-)
Our Visual Architecting Process poster (below) has
always been hand-drawn, reflecting our values around communicating organically
and in high human-simpatico terms. Dana never turns the projector on most
workshops, and I'll go days without turning it on. A few people hate it, being
concerned we aren't "covering the material," but for the most part that
responsive-to-the-moment works well -- for people who will give up the need to
have some kind of paper control and trust the instructor to set context and
create that learning crucible so that the architectural thinking lessons are
drawn out and practiced.
Strategize -- thinking abouthow to solve the
puzzle
Architect -- drawing the big picture view
Politics -- relationships (involves, like, taking showers and
communicating and stuff)
Politics -- shielding the team from organizational crud
Just a taste of some of the flavors of the role. Not
exactly/entirely representative. But enough to cure most developers of
architect-envy. ;-)
Uh. Actually, that's just a page from some sketchnotes I took
back when. I have no idea what I was thinking at the time, so I came up with
some words that seem to fit. Oh, yeah? Like you never do that?
Ryan was wondering who we have now, to fill the gap John
Cleese left. I relayed some of Michael Feathers tweets of late. I was reminded
of that, when I saw this:
I think Michael would take that as a compliment of the highest
order. Certainly it is intended as such.
When I quoted "It's raining diligently?" the chortle was
delicious. So (sur)real. It's that amplify thing taken to the kind of peak where
exquisite and excruciating meet. Um. Um. No. I didn't mean that. Or... maybe I
did.
"It just shows you people have no
idea what they are doing." --
John Cleese
This brain-of-brains thing we've created with the internet has
the potential to shift the state of humanity -- in good ways, sure. But also in
bad. There are concerns that we and our interpersonal lives are becoming more
shallow. We flit through zingy morsels of brain treats served up on the i-way,
rather than reading books. We text and tweet rather than conversing and writing
letters. We watch youtube on our computers and don't support live performing
arts, pressing them to evolve away from their classical roots to be more
electrifying. Our tastes shift to satisfying an addiction to the buzz of lots of
little eurekas.
I think there's an alternative way to see what is happening,
at least in part. Which is to say, for example, we communicate more frequently
and across more channels, so if you look at any one channel, it will appear more
"thin" but it's just a slice -- diced, moreover, into smaller chunks. But is the
communication shallower or more rich, taken across all the parts and allowing,
too, for emergence? Are we reading more shallowly, or are we following our
interests more passionately, going deep but also leveraging the facility the i-way
has given us to tie together sources that bring the everyman into the state of
being a polymath or
Renaissance man? Are we interacting less, or more with people with like
interests, distributed globally, who encourage and fuel our thinking?
I think the potential is
there. But we have to make better use of it.
I so liked Jeremy Denk's "Love
is Complicated" post -- and Janet's wise comment (August 17), along with
bratschegirl's (August 26), in response.
You might want to take a note of bratschegirl's observation
(quoted below), bearing it in mind when next you're discussing your architecture
with the management team:
"In the orchestra world, we have a
similar phenomenon when it comes to contract negotiations. It’s the inevitable
discussion of dress code. Janice Galassi had a wonderful take on this some years
ago, and what she said basically boils down as follows: Board presidents often
don’t understand the ins and outs of multiple doubles or why the principal horn
needs an assistant on a program containing the complete orchestral works of
Richard Strauss. But clothing? That they get, and therefore they bring it up.
Once it’s all over, of course, it’s rather amusing to recount such things as the
objection to velvet onstage because it’s “too black,” but it’s rather
tooth-gratingly hard to get through with a straight face at the time." --
bratschegirl, comment on Jeremy Denk's "Love
is Complicated" post
"You can see a lot just by
looking." -- Yogi Berra
When I heard that, I thought about software visualization and
how it enables us to see a lot (anomalies, patterns, relationships, etc.) just
by looking. But, seeking the context in which Yogi Berra was supposed to have
said that, I found this:
She
Was Seeing At Me, Mark Lieberman, Feb 9, 2008
The cartoon connects nicely with the Howl's Moving Castle
reference (which I eliminated from this facade). The snippet from
A Scandal in Bohemia is also
marvelously architecturally significant!
Sometimes we look without seeing, and see without observing.
And sometimes we're not even looking, until someone changes how we view
something, and then we see. Like code we know like the back of our hand. But
really, how well do you know the back of your hand? Its structure and texture,
anomalies and emergent... omw! ;-)
DDT (huh? development driven testing -- the new big thing! It's even
-Driven and has a 3 letter acronym...)
One of the Mythbusters declared "It was more messy than I
thought it would be." The rejoinder? "That'll be the title of your biography."
And an apt subtitle for my Trace!
pointed me to Greg Wilson and Jorge Aranda's article in the
American Scientist titled "Empirical
Software Engineering." And that article pointed me to this wonderful
paper on sketching in software development, and the use of diagrams to
understand, to design and to communicate:
Now I do think that
reflecting on the results of
one study done internally within one company
and treating UML as a closed matter is... unfortunate. That the company was
Microsoft is at least interesting, given rivalries and NIH... If the company
studied had been an active user of UML, the motivation for and use of sketching
may have been about the same, but the notation used less ad hoc. An interesting
study would be to compare the retention and evolution of design diagrams in
companies where UML is used versus those where it is not. And to compare
measures of structural integrity over time.
One might further ask if the "awkward result" we should attend
to is the rampant problem of the erosion of code quality over time, and the
failure to instill a design discipline that values designs enough to evolve
designs in lock-step with code -- maintaining designs and their context and
rationale as first class citizens of the software body of work, valued for their
contribution to more simple, more sustainable code bases.
Useful design
views mind you. Which is to say, as far as compute rendered visualization goes, we need to be
able to zoom in and out on levels of abstraction and drill into mechanisms with more
levels of control over what is depicted -- and animated.
It is unfortunate that we, as a field, got so enamored with
the tool-as-shiny-object thing, and then so disenthralled with the overload of
class-level models that we swung the pendulum the other way. Pragmatism and
balance doesn't lie at the extremes of either-or. Clearly we need to attend
more, and more responsively, to software designs. Clearly visualization in
design is powerful, and a language that enables us to leverage the visual
through various phases of system design maturity and evolution is useful. We use UML in a
lightweight way for simple sketches, and it would be useful, I think, if
software designers were widely taught to match model rigor
-- not to mention
levels of abstraction -- to the demands of the occasion
they face.
We talk about the design of our systems being primarily held
in the tribal memory of our teams, but some tribes have a more cohesive shared
view and others have more fragmented views where the "tribal memory" is a
diffuse aggregation of many individual mental models of the system and its
demands. We can expect structural and conceptual integrity to suffer in the
latter case.
Now, in close cohesive teams, a shared view is attained
through organic communication relying on conversations with informal sketches --
using these means to brainstorm designs and design changes, to get buy-in and
onboard team members. In teams of teams, more attention -- with more formal
ceremony, if you like, complementing informal communication -- is needed to
scale essential communication to fit the needs of more technical and
organizational complexity.
The conversations are important. The sketches drawn
organically to support these conversations are important. But it is also crucial
to recognize that there is something absolutely vital to the judicious
conversion of these conversations into less transient forms.
The text and the visuals in our documents (in a variety of
forms, not just "the" architecture specification) provide ground -- we can
cognitively push against them, question and test them, better understand them,
transmit them, search them. We can engage with the design as design, we can drop
into the fine
detail of the code where that suits our need, or work with the design in abstract terms where detail merely
obfuscates and clouds the issues we're grappling with. We're enabled thereby to create better
designs, to better share the design intent, and better evolve the
designs. In all of this, we want to maintain the "personality"
-- the point of view -- of those organic conversations. That is, sterile
context- and argument- (in the sense of explanation and justification) free
forms entail a huge cognitive burden, asking the person trying to understand
them to second guess what makes them make sense, and misses the point, really,
because "decisions" we don't understand will be interpreted in a hit-and-miss
sort of way.
Sure, modeling language tools led us, generally speaking,
somewhat astray in this regard, focusing on the diagram and what we can express
in notation, but ignoring or de-emphasizing the rationale and the thinking that
went into other options that were considered but not selected. As tools go,
there's the cognitive load of object and class-level detail that is not so far
removed from the detail of the code, and at any rate vast -- even a moderate
1300 class system is hard to grok at the
level of class boxes
and lines, for example. But the conversational context setting, assumption
clarifying, elements are also largely missing from model-focused drawing tools.
The "architecture as decisions" counter movement (counter, that is, to the
architecture-as-structure -- and expressed in diagrams -- base) is in danger of
being one-sided in the other direction. Designs encompass decisions about how to
make the system more the way we want it to be. And we express in designs the
shape of the system -- if we're disciplined, describing the shaping forces we
took into account. We delineate the parts, the arrangement thereof and their
interconnections. And in the case of dynamic systems, designs show how the thing
works or is intended to work (depending on whether we are dealing with design as
intent or design as reflection of what is, in preparation for design evolution
or leverage), focusing on key mechanisms -- selectively focusing, that is, to
accommodate our bounded rationality and limited powers of system groking when
presented with unfathomable detail (like stories-high piles of code).
It is not all about diagrams or models. That's sterile and
misses too much of the motivating and explanatory grist and connective tissue of
narrative. And it is not all about decisions documented on (textual) templates,
for that is sterile in a different way, missing the key context which is design!
And it is not about creating a document and expecting it to be the be-all and
end-all of design communication. Or end-all it will be!
This is all about enhancing what we do, gaining more cognitive
and social traction, and gaining more cognitive and social control over the
integrity of the product of our labor. So we need to be sensitive to what helps
us achieve those outcomes, and what thwarts them. And it is going to differ,
depending on the technical and social challenges of the project in question.
Anyway, it is not about all visual. Or all textual. All
document. Or all conversation. It is about the blend that is textured and
adapted to the team (of teams) and their context and unique qualities and
challenges. "Just enough" is a powerful concept, but requires a degree of savvy
in interpreting what it means!
* the personality
link obviously makes some directly relevant points, but largely needs
translation to design beyond the skin.
10/21/11: Just as TED2012 is looking to leverage
technology-extended communicative options, we need to embrace more textured ways
to interact with, explore, communicate and enliven our architectures.
Tom Graves "architecture as story" post today makes a synergist
point, with an EA focus.
10/22/11: As we push more complexity into the technology
stack, through abstractions we leverage via higher level programming languages,
frameworks and libraries, the technology stack choices gain ever more
architectural significance. In effect, we're pushing more of the design into
abstraction layers that we leverage, impacting our designs second-hand through
the platform (stack) our designs are built upon. If we hold user-facing
functionality constant, but add a more demanding environment -- for example, if
we open the system to outside influence (integration into systems of systems,
allowing distance "health" monitoring and updates, etc.) or simply scale the
system -- we add complexity. How we have designed the system to accomplish its
functional demands has significant, but not sole, import in terms of our ability
to meet these environmental demands. But we will also need mechanisms to deal
with these "non-functional" demands relating to system properties like
scalability and resilience, some we'll design and implement, but often we'll
leverage "middleware." So, our platform substrate or "technology stack" choices
matter significantly too, and hence are "architecturally significant" and
documented in architecture decision descriptions (so decision templates and tool
support for decision capture, use, and update are important). I'm just saying,
in this post, that it's not one or the other -- not structure (and dynamics)
or decisions, but structure that encompasses decisions along with choices we
make about what to include in the technology stack we leverage and build in
terms of, as well as guidance for downstream (more locally focused, more narrow
impact) design work (in the medium of code, too). And the narrative (oral and
textual, visually sketched and more formally modeled) too.
Drawings from an old sketchbooklet (well, not that old,
because Archman only came into being some 3 years ago.)
Alternative views of the architect role... Just to balance out
all those "ivory tower" and "architecture astronaut" views... (in case my lines
don't convey... arch-superman is getting time back... knight of the holy grail
shielding the system ... against bugs and bugbots... and robin arch-hood... is
redistributing attention so sustainability debts don't jeopardize all... all are
wearing the system properties kiviat as their insignia...)
A lot of people in our industry
haven’t had very diverse experiences. They don’t have enough dots to connect,
and they end up with very linear solutions, without a broad perspective on the
problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better
designs we will have.” ~ Steve Jobs, Wired, February, 1996
I
thought of that quote in relation to
Doug Newdick's use of a line from a Gang of Four song (in the post) and allusion to Pierce
and Wittgenstein (in the comments). We expand our experience base by doing.
Yeah. Obviously. But also by reading. We
gain expansive life experience by pouring ourselves into life, and also into the imaginatively
created worlds of great novels. We perceive things differently by exploring the mental
models and thinking of some of the greats that have graced our world stage,
advantaging ourselves of the investigating, questing, sense-making of
great
explorers of ideas and insight, makers of history, machines, and frameworks for
thinking, conceiving, understanding, connecting.
Sure, our physical experience and in-the-flesh emotional encounters
are crucial but I think it is misleading to count only our direct experience --
though, apart from its direct merit, it does also give us the
base on which to evaluate and "reality check" these other experiences. Still, it is the whole
mass of lived through and lived in that develops in us unique material to draw on.
Each advance in products and knowledge spaces raises expectations
of further sophistication, more connections, with greater variance all yielding
more complexity. The key, perhaps, when it comes to
innovation and addressing complex problems is to have enough of the "requisite
variety" internalized, in turn demanding of us both greater diversity of
experience and greater empathy. Empathy is what allows us
to move imaginatively into another's experience, to function effectively at an
emotional level. And through it, we accumulate
diverse experience without having to be in all those places to gain all those
experiences. And diverse experiences enable us to develop principles and see
patterns, accumulating know-how and -what and -when, but also further developing empathy and imagination. Both
giving us the ability to shift perspective.
So we develop our distinctive point
of view, our aesthetic and sense of what we stand for and principles that guide
us on the path our values impassion us to take. But by exercising empathy and imagination
and actively pursuing curiosity, we become more flexible. Cognitively. And
socially.
The diverse experience I have in mind is both
technical and non. The technical, from an architecting standpoint, is crucial,
but the singularly linear trajectory of acquiring deep expertise is what Jobs
was pushing against. You've
no-doubt come across the term "t-shaped" but by diverse experience I don't just
mean an axis of depth and an axis of breadth, but a
multi-dimensional curiosity that
dives deep in many areas not always with a clear preformed notion of the
"win."
Flexibility is an asset in so many ways. Flexibility in how we deal with situations
-- allowing us to push against but also to lean into, to balance, and to pivot.
Flexibility -- a wider span of options for interpreting and dealing with
problems, converting them into opportunities. Flexibility doesn't mean being a
kowtowing push-over. Flexibility requires enormous strength, but it is not a
rigid sort of strength. It is the sort we need to be creative. Innovative.
Agile. Responsive. Adaptive design is possible iff we have good sensors to
detect points of relevance and shifts in context even in ambiguous shadowy emergent form; we have the
imagination to acutely sense the meaning and import of the shifts; a broad
compass of options to connect, meld and adapt to the emerging demands we
collaborate in creating; and a mutable design base. That is, if we and our
designs are flexible. Including flexible enough to dance well with others, to
hold and be held, to balance, to give and to take focal attention, to
complement. To extend what we can learn and do through analogy, and know when to
move on. ;-)
Flexible enough, even to recognize when we are wrong, and do
an about-face:
5. Changing your mind is a
sign of intelligence. When Apple launched the iPhone, Jobs thought apps were
a bad thing; you never knew what they were doing to your phone. Six months
later, Jobs realized apps were the way to go – and suddenly his mantra became,
“There’s an app for that.”
-- Guy Kawasaki,
What I Learned from Steve Jobs, October 8, 2011 (via
KrisMeukens)
This post was inspired by a conceptual framework Dana is exploring around how we
orient ourselves to situations. Flexibility was one of the sliders, if you will,
or axes, if you won't. :-) Anyway, I was excited about the idea, and did
my own riff on it 'cos it's fun to think with my fingers in on the act.
Even though you think I keep track of too many things that
flit by, I so often regret not jotting down something that caught my eye... For
example, I remember a snippet along the lines of "the moment we get what
we want, we're on to wanting the next thing" and I can't remember where I read
that... It's that Give a Mouse a Cookie thing I've mentioned before, but
it occurred to me to wonder what's next on the iPhone? I mean, now we have Siri,
what do we want next?
"The problem is that leadership
isn't about being the person with the answers, it's about being the person with
the questions. You have to shift your mindset from answering questions to asking
them, even when faced with questions." -- Dan Pritchett,
I'm Still Here, September 24, 2011
Having the experience and smarts to ask useful questions
factors.
Steve Jobs -- the autobiography by Walter Isaacson -- goes on sale
tomorrow. So, it's easy to guess what you'll be reading on your iPad Kindle
reader tomorrow! :-) You know, it's
critical technology intelligence work that architects just have to do.
Hardship though that is. ;-)
(Image source: book cover, Amazon)
Looking Back, and Seeing Forward
Tim O'Reilly's
survey
of his impressive contributions to the technology field provides a valuable
view. Valuable for him, for looking back, one gains perspective on what one
values. And valuable for us -- we tend to see people in terms of just the slice
that intersects with the span of our attention, and it is heartening to see all
that Tim has helped initiate and shaped with his influence and foresight.
Well, now that I have your attention, let's rather talk about
ballet. ;-)
Clay Shirky says that "good collaboration is structured fighting." Steven
Pressfield applies his US marine background to creativity with The War of Art.
Oliver Burkeman calls him on this: "Does it really make sense to view
creative work as a battle?" Ah, is this not structured fighting? Well, that's a
macho way to position the way we approach the tensions in creativity and
collaborative creation. Whatever floats your boat I guess... Though if you're
reading here, you're at least open to the notion that collaboration can be more
of a dance than a fight!
Which is what the "structured fighting" -- or the dance -- is
much about, is it not? Pushing against. Finding and fixing the weakness in our
conceptions and approaches because they are challenged, and advancing the state
of our art and practice.
I've long been talking about the bigger jobs threat being
"outsourcing to silicon and steel" but I see there is now a book for that:
Race Against the Machine.
What did I say? So nice of you to inquire! Why, last year
I wrote:
We, dear software/technology people, are obsoleting humans as fast as we
possibly can, and so far the despair and vitriol from lost jobs is being focused
on jobs going overseas and immigrants coming here. But perhaps one of these days
we are going to wake up to a firestorm of wrath when people realize where so
many jobs really went (absorbed into IT systems and taken up by
I-do-what-I'm-told and no-worries-about-benefits-and-unions robots).
But that was foreshadowed by earlier posts, like the one
where I coined "outsourcing to silicon" and an earlier one titled "Silicon
Gobbles Jobs."
This article about Steve Jobs' prototypical hero -- Edwin Land
-- is wonderful:
The Man Who Inspired Jobs, Christopher Bonanos, October 7, 2011
Jobs saw, and Jobs understood:
“Not only was he one of the great inventors of our time but, more important, he
saw the intersection of art and science and business and built an organization
to reflect that.”
Prototypical hero? You know, the prototype on which Steve Jobs
styled himself.
Speaking of gold -- I went for a glorious spirit lifting hike
with my thinking partner today. It was way too lovely to work all day,
and soon the leaves will be down and the long leafless winter will begin.
Dana took a break from his coding project, and had fun with the Photosynth app on his iPhone, though he
hasn't uploaded anything yet. Oh, and we were very impressed with the new iPhone
camera interface. The touch interface on the camera is so intuitive and powerful
-- touching what you want to focus on, and using gestures to zoom -- that has to
redefine cameras right there!
Aside: I can't believe that HP just threw in the towel on
tablets. There's so much to be redefined, and Jobs wasn't the only person able
to put will behind imagination! Besides, I just wish iTunes was as great as
Apple's devices! Apple is awesome. But Apple
doesn't have a total lock on
awesome. What Apple had and hopefully has, what Google has, is the imagination
to see what is possible and the will to make it so. Transplant CEOs have no
founder's halo and... sadly... too seldom have the ability to see greatness for
the company they lead.
As for books, I've been reading
David Bohm's On
Creativity. It was a surprise, and not. It is very much about how Bohm
thought about systems.
I suppose this Trace is worthwhile to me, as I learn so much
in reflection. But is it worth your time? Well, that you stop by here, is worth
so much to me, for it bolsters and encourages me -- which is vital to the other
work I do. Thank you.
And, it gives me an excuse to pull together some of my past
posts on the theme, to add to the "generative soup" from which more rich
conceptions and understandings arise. :-)
This month's post on "connecting
impressions" and the
conceptual
architecture rewrite I've been working on are related, in so far as they
deal with sketch prototyping. Other posts on pretendotyping and prototyping
include:
There's not much that is truly new under the sun, but as ideas
swirl about us, we make new connections, forming new idea and product blends,
with new --
hopefully
more helpful -- presentations to the world. Sometimes the idea just
needs a few more cycles of the earth round the sun, to find its time to take
root -- allowing for some changes in technology and our receptivity.
Uh Oh
Software faulted:
Jaguar recalls 18,000 cars over cruise control software fault, Leo King,
Computerworld UK, 24 October 11
"Although we’d always seen
ourselves as rational creatures—this was our Promethean gift—it turns out that
human reason is rather feeble, easily overwhelmed by ancient instincts and lazy
biases. The mind is a deeply flawed machine." -- Jonah
Lehrer,
Is Self-Knowledge Overrated?, October 25, 2011
Transience
Well, we're counting our blessings and oh are we blessed with
color! In this moment. Tomorrow, more rain. The leaves are coming down fast --
rain all last week, and breezy these past two days. So today we ducked out for a
lunchtime ramble.
If art is about something else, don't you think there's a
visual poetry in
trees--
that maple yellow, giving back the sun's glow. It is
at once about itself, and a life well lived. Again and again through its
seasons, and its seeds.
Dana Bredemeyer, Steve Jobs and Grady Booch were
all born within months of each other. It reminds our kids to appreciate Dana,
knowing that Steve Jobs' kids don't have him physically present to them any
more. I do so feel for Jobs and Pausch and other fathers, and mothers, who have
to leave their kids. Cancer is cruel.
So, more world travel in the forecast. We're happy to be busy.
And busy, being busy! Each of the four of us does way too much! But. Life is
short. There's so little time to make a difference, to have our presence felt.
To matter.
Design As If We Mean It
Booch on Twitter!
Perhaps I should explain my response:
"I think, therefore I am"
neglects something important -- we are known, cared for, connected with, and in
that community we are. So being heard, to me, is the important complement
to "I tweet, therefore I am."
Aside from being a founding father of visual design in
software (and systems), Grady Booch's
on
architecture series is setting a high bar for our field with ~8 minute
chunks of architecture insight, conveyed with great artistry and wisdom. Oh, I
am quite unabashedly the self-designated chief cheerleader in Grady's fan club.
Of course I'm also the self-designated chief cheerleader in your fan
club.
Well, go ahead. Follow
the man. You make me look like I
have no influence if you don't! And we don't want that, now do we? Oh. Right. I
have no influence. Sigh.
10/25/11: Ok. I was wrong. In this case, happily! I do so much
like Peter's quick sense of humor! And his kind words about my sketches led to
more kind words, which took me absolutely by surprise! My sketches?! "Great" and
"refreshing perspective" applied to my sketches is so totally a first and MADE
MY DAY! Ok, my sketches are undeserving but it is wonderful that anyone
would be
generous-kind about them.
Funny. I was just being "good neighborly" to Grady, and
I got good neighbored. :-)
Grady Booch's tweet reminds me of this slide and the notes from my "The Art of Drawing
People In" tutorial at SATURN 2010:
The attribution that is cropped is to Sir Ken Robinson's TED
Talk "Schools Kill Creativity." Sir Ken. And
[language warning] Descartes.
I really did that whole thing -- the tree falls,
software dinner party... the lot. :-)
Okayyyy. Perhaps you had to be there... Instead of introducing
myself in the usual pedigree-establishing way, I then went on a quick survey of what I think about,
that defines me. Like this:
Etc. I do things which on the surface seem dismissably simple,
but of course you know that is my art. ;-)
Let me back up. These were the first 4 slides:
Yes, Daniel, I played the beginning of The Emperor's Club
--
thank you.
So where did I go with that? To Hugh MacLeod's cartoons (this
one -- something amazing -- and
this one --
something to believe in) and
And
The point? Beginnings of social constructions are not about
"I" but about "we" -- about drawing people in, connecting them into the social
co-creation process. We're taught by life and business that we need to establish
credibility and sell, depending on the ethos and logos legs of Aristotle's triad
of rhetoric and we so often neglect pathos and meaning. Moreover, it is so much
more powerful to involve people. Sure, we can't create by committee, but we can
"draw people in." Literally (drawing them in our pictures), concerning ourselves with the meaning of what we
are creating for people. But also figuratively. Involving them in establishing
that compelling meaning. Yes, we need a strong model of what it means to lead
and follow, with followers willing to delegate ultimate judgments about design
integrity to the leader and the leader willing to empower and enable followers
to be superb, to create something amazing.
I should put that on Slideshare so you don't have to wear your
finger out scrolling down? Sorry. ;-)
We tend to waive being better at beginnings off, thinking
we're not often at the beginning of anything. But really, there are so many
beginnings. So many fractal pools of leadership. And so many false starts,
needing a new lease by gaining traction in meaning.
But don't listen to me! I'm bad at beginnings, and middles,
and .... Still, you might want to consider how bad I'd be if I didn't rely on
others to make the experience ever so much better! :-) We're in this together.
The moment of dying, of passing out of this life, is alone. We may feel lonely
along the way. But we are great only if others take us into their minds and
hearts and lives. And so being "I" depends very much on others. On you!
Blah blah blah. Pictures. Dan Roam said so. You don't
have to believe me. Although, I believed David Sibbet, back when (in the 90's,
when my HP peers dragged me into visual facilitation and group graphics). And he
has a new book -- Visual Teams.
"The most prevalent software
architecture style is still "The Big Ball of Mud." Restructure101 for .Net from
Headway Software is a superb weapon in our continuing battle against
architecture entropy. Restructure101 parses an application and outputs a
graphical dependency map of the components, classes and methods, in a format
called Levelized Structure Maps (LSM). The LSMs provide a layered, drill-down/up
structure that immediately reveals cyclic dependencies which Restructure101
presents as tangles."
Good questions are more or, well, at least as important as
good answers! And this is a great one:
What is not going to change?
It is one of those "ground under our feet" things (using a
phrase Dana introduced into my lingo). Dana insists we put assertions on
context maps. :-)
As we face
climate change, it is an even better question! At least, the answer set may
be quite small... Ever since our neighbor, an environmental physicist,
told us that his predictive models have the mid-west becoming a desert, I've
looked at our trees differently. It's sort of like being told your loved one has
cancer and you see them differently. I do so love our forests! And our world has
cancer!
So, change has a timeframe element. Our planning horizons tend
to be short enough not to see the catastrophic effects of all the changes that
combine and mass together, self-organizing into something new that is deadly to
the old order, but the portal to a new order. The question is, will humans be
part of the new bio-physical order that establishes itself in the wake of the
destruction we unleash?
Hm. Cancer. Steve Jobs wished he'd sought treatment earlier.
We're going to wish the same for the planet, if we don't become extraordinarily
concerted in our determination to reduce our environmental footprint...
There is a yin and yang here, and our brains don't do very
well seeing yin when they're looking for yang, and vice versa. But when we look
for opportunity, what persists, what is stable, is important. And it is very
much about values. What we value, that we want to "fight" -- or at least make
sacrifices for, work hard for -- to retain. Not because we're resistant to
change, but because whether we embrace it or not, over time, much will change.
I love good questions! Good questions open up scope for
exploration. Good answers are important at some point, but a good answer to a
misplaced question is a huge resource sink. It is, after all, what so many
failed projects are made of. I, likely as not, got something entirely different
out of Kris's good question than
Kris had in mind.
And yes! What is not going to change gives us points of
leverage -- what do we already have in place, what do we already know how to do,
what can we count on to be true, to be valued, to be meaningful? That ground
under our feet.
Good questions serve to knock us out of our bias ruts, so we
explore some -- just enough -- down different tangents. Because after the fact,
we're going to value what we did (even if we only get to call it a learning
experience) and self-justify our choice as
the better path. (How many
people, do you think, fall prey to Robert Frost's self-(d)ef(f)acing satire
there? And then, the joke's on us.)
"The client hires you, so the
client is the priority. But you can’t just build a building based on what the
clients say, because their vision is based on what’s normal. How do you get out
of the normal? You’ve got to question everything. Spend time with the user
group. Glean all the information you can. And then throw it all away and begin
to play."
The web is so powerful it even fast-forwards us into the
future -- I love reading future publications today, don't you? (Thanks for the
Gehry pointer Daniel.)
We value questions. But questioning can be deflating. I drew
the sketch some time ago, thinking about two kinds of questioning -- the
friendly kind, and the unfriendly kind.
"But researchers reporting in Plos One say that unequal upper and lower beak
lengths and spongy, plate-like bone structure protect the birds' brains.
...
More quantitative studies are
necessary to answer this interesting problem, which would aid in applying the
bio-mechanism to human protective device design and even to some industry
design."
Conceptual architecture isn't just about defining "the
language" of our system. Oh yes, it is that. Concepts are understood within
frames, and conceptual architecture creates a framework of defined organizing
concepts and determines their relationships to one another. In that sense, it
establishes the meaning not just of primary elements of the system, but also of
the system. But we're inventing and evolving the notions of a dynamic system.
Which is to say we're not just conceiving the structures of the system, but how
it will function, and how it's major elements will function, and function
together, not just to deliver the system capabilities it offers to users, but
also the mechanisms by which it sustains and protects itself. You know. How its
not going to get brain damage when it bashes its head against walls. Ok. Not
that exactly. Um...
In Conceptual Architecture we're just sketching out the design
of key mechanisms. Early on we do this to give us that "just enough" sense of
what to go after, to understand more thoroughly (yes, we get to code here).
Later, we can reflect design precision in Logical Architecture, but we use
Conceptual Architecture as a "grok guide" to the system and don't mire it down
in detail -- we're leveraging that "amplification through simplification" brain
lever.
"But Bach had that way of using
passing tones so that you could meditate on the passing-ness of things, what it
is to pass, to move on, to leave beauties behind … of labeling the labels with
meaning, breathing life back into the most basic, even the most unassuming,
words." --
Jeremy Denk
10/28/11: You're wondering about my sketch? How kind you are!
Well, the parafoil (for soft landings) also doubles as a defense shield. Archman
is monitoring what is going on (the binocs) and putting goodies (pickles
perhaps) into a
handy canister... up there... you know... in the cloud.
What, you didn't see all that? Hmpf! I suppose it would help if you could read
my scrawl. Oh well.
More mechanisms (using biomechanisms and with biomimicry
potential):
In software please? My shelf is buckling under patterns books;
isn't yours? It's not the solved problems we need answers for, it's the unsolved
or poorly solved problems. We keep pushing the envelope of complexity, and,
well, Nature, for example, has
been there, done that... often more elegantly
than we conceive without Her..
10/28/11: I overcame a severe case of denial and got reading
glasses (just 1.0 but wow, I can read expiry dates again ;-) so hopefully my
sketch 'n scrawl will get ever so much better! :-)
So, I see that #longread has become a meme. Applicable to this
Trace.
Does it say something remarkably good or devastatingly bad
that you're reading here? You still read -- longreads? I'm so glad some from the
longread era survive... for now. But, ... it's ... good exercise for the scroll
finger... even if you use the calendar to jump to today... ;-)
10/28/11:
A network of minds. And I have you asking if that's a good
thing? Well, at least I served one useful purpose!
I just, you know, copy down stuff Serendipity says... I think
this is what Storify was made for, but I don't feel like resurrecting my
password... Besides, no-one will find this at the bottom of zifty pages of October
entries. ;-)
Well, TMI has also become a meme (more than just a pop flash, but
encoding and diffusing a too-busy-to-care mindset), but the most colorful use
was when a kid was talking about the gunk between her toes after pointe class
and another told her that was "too much information." I suppose she was
channeling her mother. Whaaaat? TMI? See, it's useful around me! ;-)
#longread... TMI... there's fast-massing cultural antibodies
to everything I represent.
We're pretty taken with emergent, although my goodness, think
of the rattletraps we put good men into orbit about this earth in! In the light
of today's technology, it seems quaint that we put brave men in rockets and
blasted them into the sky. Human intentionality achieves some gosh-darn amazing
things! As years create distance and technology advances, they get even more
amazing -- for their remarkable daring and audacity -- in hindsight. So, as we
give "systems thinking" more sway, acknowledging emergence and paying more heed
to our puny handle on complexity, it is just as well to also tip our hats to
human audacity, courage, and, even, be rather grateful to what we have bumbled
our way to accomplishing! :-) And then get on with being appalled and ashamed
and motivated to get to grips with both more human applications of technology
and ethics in practicable terms, because that genie is busy!
Jim Coplien writes that he was urged and inspired by Richard Gabriel (my
brain always pulls Peter--who's
reimagining himself to awesome effect--in conjunction with Gabriel!) to write
each email as a piece of literature. I've never had such a rule. (I'm not a
rulesy person. Although, man, I'm so with Steve Jobs on that simplify life all
the way down to not having to think about what to wear.) But I do try to "show
up" with only words to present me. So it was that I subject lined an email "intentional
and emergent" and began the email "well, not
exactly a choice as emergence has a mind of its own." TMI? No. I mean
consider what I just did there! I think art is a medium through which we sense
meaning before we science it. Emergence. A mind of its own.
If we can't embrace paradox and mate analogies we're sunk!
I knew my tendency to mixed metaphor would serve me well...
some day...
I enjoyed and got a lot from Jurgen Appelo's
Complexity
Thinking slideset. He has a bunch of non-self-reflective peacocks falling
over themselves to declare they're magpies. It's a good thing I hadn't seen that
or I would have had to
head
September differently! And I'd have had to change this post
in April and this
in May. Now remind me never to call my mind a magpie again. Of course you're
thinking I'd do well to be less self-reflective, less of a magpie, and less of a
bragging peacock.
Well, scary only if we don't figure out how to cope with the genie we've
unleashed into the world. When I was enmeshed in a bout of self-doubt at one
point, I expostulated to myself "You know what? I think the Greek myth got it
wrong. I don't think it was Hope at the bottom of Pandora's Box. It was DENIAL."
With that thought, Hope returned. [Hey, it's not everyone who has the chutzpa to
go up against Greek myths. That has to be worth something. ;-) ]
I know. Sometimes my writing can just be too artsy for anyone.
Me included!
Sigh. One day someone will declare that art goes with
architecture and its actually ok that someone writes about architecture
artistically, sensitively, sensibly, presciently and intelligently.
That someone will probably be me. Writing about someone else.
Sigh^3. Sigh cubed? You know, a sigh that's wide and deep and
high.
We're all exhibitionist peacocks. Or we could not be leaders.
For all our introversion, when we feel compelled to lead, in that arena anyway,
we will stand out. Passion displays itself. Even Mother Theresa stood out. And
we're all magpies or we would have little to connect. It's all complex because
there are no closed systems. But we gain traction by acting as though we can
isolate and regard systems as closed, and we proceed as though we can impose our
intentionality upon the interactions among their parts under the assumption of
only conscribed interactions with the environment. And we get lucky often enough
to put a man on the moon and to have Siri serve us dinner suggestions. And we
mess up. Big time. And our messes mount and mount. And then some new order
emerges. Because emergence has a mind of its own.
And so we cycle.
Shall I do that hope denial thing again? Oh, you don't like
the idea of denial masquerading as hope at the bottom of Pandora's Box?
My kids love Minecraft. Ryan was torn between being Steve Jobs
or a creeper for Halloween. Sara either wants to go as a robot or a porcelain
doll. She's zeroing in on the doll. Why? She can't think of anything that will
scare her friends more! :-) (Oh, no, it's nothing like Nightmare on Elm Street
-- not that I would know. It's just that to girls who want to be quantum
physicists, porcelain dolls are scary cute...)
It's... no wonder
Plato's Cave has renewed interest...
I had to resurrect it. "Art is a
delivery system for worldviews" is a great insight! But the point I was
making, is that a great artist pulls together what is "in the air" in new ways,
so we begin to make sense of it, through the fresh connections and striking
presentation of the artist. Ryan (who grabbed our copy of Steve Jobs to
be the first in the family to read it) tells us that Steve Jobs said (or quoted)
"The great steal. Others merely copy." Great artists make ideas their own, by
doing something new with them. They see what is ahead, because they see that
"today is pregnant with tomorrow" and they are among the first to birth what
will become. Which is to say, advancing what is possible within a worldview.
Sometimes. And being part of what replaces a worldview, making new connections
between pieces from which a new worldview is shaped. Or simply offering a
tremulous trembling insight about our frail human condition -- a condition we're
still far from fully understanding, even if the likes of Dickens knew how to at
once tenderly embrace and, in holding up a mirror to ourselves, chastise it.
The great artist's mastery of their medium begs our attention,
but if we didn't feel that we could conspire with the artist to find meaning in
their work, our attention would simply remain at the level of appreciation for
the craft. Because the artist, often simply because they are a conduit for
Serendipity (but a conduit Serendipity favors because they have rich thought
lives), has created something that unfolds meaning in teasing glimpses and
revelations. It invites us to join the artist in an adventure, rewarding our
brains more subtly than an action video game.
'In September of 1968, in what he jokingly termed “E.
Gorey’s Great Simple Theory About Art,” Gorey wrote these Yodaesque words: "This
is the theory… that anything that is art… is presumably about some certain
thing, but is really always about something else, and it’s no good having one
without the other, because if you just have the something it is boring and if
you just have the something else it’s irritating.”' -- Maria
Popova in BrainPickings
"The skill of writing is to create a
context in which other people can think." -- Edwin Schlossberg (quoted in
"Books That Have Shaped How I Think" by Tim O'Reilly)
Creating a context, yes. Rich with ground from which to build
meaning, to advance conception, and hence what we can make possible in the
world.
'Cezanne believed that light was
only the beginning of seeing. “The eye is not enough,” he declared. “One needs
to think as well.” Cezanne’s epiphany was that our impressions require
interpretation; to look is to create what you see.' --
abstraction becomes the new realism, Jonah Lehrer
Advancing context, you might say. So delivery in the birthing
sense. Not just in the conveyance sense.
Clarke's Second Law: The only way of
discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a
little way past them into the impossible.
"Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of
Imagination" in Profiles of the Future (1962)
Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced
technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Profiles of the Future (revised edition,
1973)
Clarke's Law of Revolutionary Ideas: Every
revolutionary idea — in science, politics, art, or
whatever — seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They
may be summed up by the phrases:
(1) "It's completely impossible — don't waste my
time";
(2) "It's possible, but it's not worth doing";
(3) "I said it was a good idea all along."
All truth passes through three stages.
First it is ridiculed.
Second it is violently opposed.
And third it is accepted as self-evident.
As quoted in Seeds of Peace : A Catalogue
of Quotations (1986) by Jeanne Larson, Madge
Micheels-Cyrus, p. 244
And this:
“After two decades in animation,” he said, “I was
spontaneity-starved.” ... The film had scope and humor and gusto, and you could
feel a bounding imagination at work." --
Second Act Twist, Tad Friend, October 17, 2011
And this:
"I
don’t think we should lose sight of the fact that architecture is more than just
building, but we have to rethink the relationship of architecture to building in
such a way that the building is not considered a defective mode of a discourse."
-- Dialogue: David Adjaye, Jorge Otero-Pailos, & Nikolaus Hirsch, On
Architecture and Authorship: A Conversation, 10.24.11
That conversation is really exciting and inspiring, its points
of controversy and dialog relating well to software and enterprise (and other
systems) architecture.
And this is a good reminder to architects and other leaders
and parents alike:
Tim O'Reilly stepped up to the leadership plate for our field and declared today
Dennis Ritchie Day. Gratitude is a grace that blesses the grateful with mind
opening, and for Unix and C, we have a
lot to be grateful to Dennis Ritchie for -- directly, and indirectly through
everything they influenced and enabled.
There were giants indeed! And many of the giants -- that would include you
-- of today, build on what Dennis Ritchie built and made possible.
It is also true that giants have more than one side, and this
story makes that point touchingly:
A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve
Jobs, Mona Simpson, October 30, 2011
It occurs to me, that an unspoken giant is Laurene Jobs -- a
giant who is dearly loved, adored and personally admired is all the more able.
And Steve Jobs was loved by many, but with the greatest forbearance and
enablement by those closest to him.
Too Slow
Too many images this month. It's time for November! We'll just
skip Halloween, ok?
No? Well, then...
I guess this all-on-one page business is too much... but...
it's a journal -- a Trace of a journey, and journeys happen with adventures
threaded and interwoven, to be sure, but still across time.
But... those who are put off by load time would be put off by
the words -- the very muchness of them and the... how-should-we-characterize-it
content of it... So... should I worry?
Besides... it's kind of like falling with Alice... down down
down... then... finding you're too big for the door... then... etc... then...
`Would you tell me, please, which
way I ought to go from here?'
`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
`I don't much care where--' said Alice.
`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
`--so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.
`Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, `if you only walk long enough.'"
"`But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
`Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're
mad.'
`How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
`You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
Alice didn't think that proved it at all; however, she went on `And how do you
know that you're mad?'
`To begin with,' said the Cat, `a dog's not mad. You grant that?'
`I suppose so,' said Alice.
`Well, then,' the Cat went on, `you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags
its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when
I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.'"
-- Lewis Carroll, Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland
If I don't warrant an exception to rules, why... I shouldn't
be part of your flexibility regimen. ;-) How often have you seen other
people just quote the I
don't much care where--' said Alice. `Then it doesn't matter which way you go,'
said the Cat stuff? Ha!
But if you like images that tell a story that makes you
hunger, even if they are slow to load...
try this. Seriously
wow. And we've been there! I've seen a number of those scenes! Makes me want to
go back! It so feels just like that! Scenery that rebirths spirits!
Isn't that what great art should most do -- make us hunger to
be more ourselves? Taking us beyond ourselves. Inspiring us. Challenging us. Inviting us to care, to
understand, to empathize, to marvel, to yield, to be vulnerable, to wrestle with
our demons and doubts, to listen to our angels, to discern, to advance our
limits, to be great. By
doing, by creating something meaningful (and relationships count as the most
meaningful), by living our own very unique beautiful life experienced as only
the singular "I" of our own self can, we create our best work. It has its
manifestations in the world, but the fullest expression of it is our own
mind-spirit. And so great art that compels us to discover, to build, to learn,
to connect, to discover truth, is art that makes us hunger to be more. Hence more ourselves. That's
not what it is about, not what it tries to do. But that is the effect.
Going to school this morning, Ryan was telling stories from
Steve Jobs -- dressed as Steve Jobs, for his school Halloween parade. Taken
with the stories, Sara decided she'll read that when she has to read a biography
later in the school year. Ryan mentioned the "Think Different" Apple commercial
(which he and I watched many moons ago), and I remarked that Steve Jobs is going
to make being different the new cool. Sara responded to the effect that while
everyone is the same in all their effort to be different, she would just stay
the same, and hence she'd be different.
But think about it. I've been combining "art and technology"
here for nearly 6 years, and now it has the chance to be "cool." To ride the
wave of "different"... ;-) I know my sketches are schlocky... It's a too full --
not Spartan -- grab-bag of brain treats... of the really hard to chew
kind...
Ok. Whatever else it is, I'll say this: Those who I know read
here with some frequency are architects I much admire. I mean, aside from the
strength of character it takes to read here. :-) They are interesting, deep
thinking and effective people -- and optimistic too. :-) And they lead and
empower me, and I am so grateful! And because of them I am optimistic too.
Ok, wrong holiday. Thanksgiving is next month. Halloween. Oh yeah. Grateful
praise .... you don't get much more scary than that. ;-) So, two holidays
done -- I get to skip ahead to Christmas, right?
Hey, at some point, reading here might become, like, a
badge
that signifies "resilient -- tenaciously dedicated to a tough mind flexibility
regimen; ...; curious -- incorrigibly so, ..." You know, putting my Trace
on your blogroll would be like putting an Apple sticker on your car... A "think
different" marker that doubles as an intellectual "iron man" award...
Feedback:
I welcome input, discussion and feedback on any of the topics in this
Trace in The Sand Journal,
my blog, and the
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A
Trace in the Sand
Roll on Watson, there'll be a new apple of the media's eye: 
Relationship platform leaves the concept open to encompassing
relationships between systems as well as engagement or relationships
among people and groups or entities, so perhaps it is better for my
purpose. Still, engagement platform conveys a defining element well.
I know that's a far cry from the cut-throat business HP's computing
business is in today. But competition is only cut-throat if you can't imagine -- and
execute on -- being compelling! 
I
was pitching that at software architecture. But, about a dozen years
ago, when our IT architect clients were urging us to help them figure
out what to do in the Enterprise Architecture space, they made the point
that the way we think about architecture of systems speaks, with a
context shift of course, to other kinds of systems -- those that are
more software-intensive and others that are software-complemented-wetware
intensive (the wetware, in my use, being a reference back to that Merkle
piece).
Key points I take from the interweaving conversations then:
So we develop our distinctive point
of view, our aesthetic and sense of what we stand for and principles that guide
us on the path our values impassion us to take. But by exercising empathy and imagination
and actively pursuing curiosity, we become more flexible. Cognitively. And
socially. 
