James Burke

James Burke is best known for a series called Connections that he did in the the 70s and again in the 90s. The central theme to these shows was to demonstrate how seemingly inconsequential things led to things of great consequence by examining how they are connected. His latest project is called ‘the Knowledge Web’.

Burke’s vision is rather grand. He believes that formal education is structured mostly to make it easy for the teacher. By reducing things, by placing things in well defined boxes it becomes (relatively) easy to teach them. Examination of any school’s curriculum bears this out. Burke’s point is that the world, that knowledge is much more complicated than that. By being reductive we manage to lose a lot. In Burke’s words:

“The Knowledge Web counters the tendency of modern education to encourage specialized learning and thinking. With formal education today, learners may study either history or physics, or perhaps only Renaissance history and astrophysics,” says James. “People tend to become experts in highly specialized fields, learning more and more about less and less.

“Unfortunately, so much specialization falsely creates the illusion that knowledge and discovery exist in a vacuum, in context only with their own disciplines, when in reality they are born from interdisciplinary connections. Without an ability to see these connections, history and science won’t be learnable in a truly meaningful way and innovation will be stifled.”

Interesting stuff.

Gartner Sued Over Magic Quadrant

This is worth reading through. This sort of thing has long been contentious in the analyst world and does merit further thought. Part of the challenge (and I am not asserting this is the case with respect to the Gartner thing) is that some vendors actively work on the ‘I am not telling you anything because I don’t trust you’ basis. While I understand the possible merits of this approach (at least I think I do. I still believe that the analyst community is an important part of the ecosystem), I find it a little hard to swallow when the same vendors often turn around and wonder why the analyst community is not paying them any attention, or why the analyst community is inaccurately representing them. Having a rock solid analyst relations program in place is a start to getting this stuff sorted out…

Hat-tip to sagecircle for pointing me to this….

Update: another link

Is this a good thing?

The CRTC has made its recommendations re: traffic shaping and the like. Essentially the big boys get to throttle ’some types’ of traffic (both retail and wholesale) during peak times, provided they warn consumers 30 days in advance and wholesale customers 60 days in advance of what they are going to do. The CRTC was clear that they want this to be a last resort, with preference being given to economic solutions (i.e. more money equals no throttling?) Apparently Bell Canada already throttles traffic between the hours of 4:30 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. so I am not sure how this changes things in today’s market. At least the carriers are prevented from revealing any info regarding the type of traffic gleaned from monitoring customer activity, which is a bit of a net neutrality safeguard I suppose.Given the CRTC has opened the door to appeals, I suspect that we have not heard the end of this.

Cisco making waves…

This time it is Starent for $2.9 billion. And there is still a lot of cash in the kitty. I suspect that we will see a lot more from them in the coming months.

Wired Magazine – The Smart List

Check this out. Some thought provoking stuff. The Robert Gates piece stands out, mostly because it is in motion.

Hattip to Vinnie Marchandi for pointing me to it.

This is mind bendingly cool…if it is real!

Check this out…

IDC likes the Cloud

Read this http://blogs.idc.com/ie/?p=543. The CAGR works out to over 26%. This represents significant growth to say the least. The hype machine keeps on hyping. When I read numbers like this, I am pushed back in time to consider other markets and forecasts. Unified communications, which the Yankee Group dubbed ‘the 0 billion dollar market’, stands out as a good example. Plenty of promise, but a market that seemed to have trouble getting traction. The cloud may well be different, but there is always a danger with forecasts like this…

Margaret Wente on Roman Polanski

I mostly have little time for Ms. Wente, but this is an exception.

Sometimes you just have to shake your head at the way people think. Interesting to see what the Swiss will do with him.

Cisco spending more money

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/technology/companies/02cisco.html?_r=1&hpw

This is brilliant!

http://expenseasteak.com/index.php