Organisation is a process, not a structure – Esko Kilp, May 2012
An increasing number of companies trying to become social businesses are now becoming aware of the technical barriers and structural bottlenecks that hinder or totally prevent cooperation that is not planned in advance.
What we still have not understood is that people need to have access to information that no one could predict they would want to know. Even they themselves did not know they needed it – before they needed it. Thus the organization can never be fully planned in advance. When information is transparent, different people see different things and new interdependencies are created changing the organization. The context matters more than ever. The easier access people have to one another and to (different) information, the more possibilities there are.
The feedback economy – Alistair Croll, O’Reilly Radar, May 2012
[Military Strategist John] Boyd’s genius was to realize that winning requires two things: being able to collect and analyze information better, and being able to act on that information faster, incorporating what’s learned into the next iteration.
Companies that get themselves on a feedback footing will dominate their industries, building better things faster for less money. Big data, new interfaces, and ubiquitous computing are tectonic shifts in the way we live and work.
The efficiencies and optimizations that come from constant, iterative feedback will soon become the norm for businesses and governments. We’re moving beyond an information economy. Information on its own isn’t an advantage, anyway. (You have to be able to act on it.) Instead, this is the era of the feedback economy.
Intranets need social to survive – ZDNet, May 2012
…legacy corporate intranets will have “a hard time revamping themselves into enterprise social networks”. “Coupled with the latest advancements in social technologies, there is an unprecedented opportunity to transform outdated intranets with technology that is social, engaging, productive, and encourages collaboration.”
The questionable value of the real-time web – Daniel Tenner, Nov 2009
At its core, the concept of “real-time web” must be about the immediacy of information flow. Something happens and you find out about it immediately (or nearly so).
Clearly, real-time updates are useful in some circumstances. For example, if you depend on information to do your work, real-time updates are not just useful — they’re an essential competitive advantage. When you’re [collaborating] with someone, real-time feedback else can save you from having to have a live, in-person meeting with them.
What about real-time updates about things that have nothing to do with work? What’s not debatable is that real-time information has a very real cost: our attention. Constant interruptions of our attention on one set of things harm our ability to concentrate on another set of things.
Why information is its own reward – Ed Yong, Science Blogs, July 2009
…a new study suggests that the same neurons that process the primitive physical rewards of food and water also signal the more abstract mental rewards of information. Humans generally don’t like being held in suspense when a big prize is on the horizon.
Dopamine neurons are thought to be involved in learning about rewards – by adjusting the connections between other neurons, they “teach” the brain to seek basic rewards like food and water. Bromberg-Martin and Hikosaka think that these neurons also teach the brain to seek out information so that their activity becomes a sort of “common currency” that governs both basic needs and a quest for knowledge.
Data Tools
- The Archivist – MS Research, Twitter archiving and visualisation tool
- Wordle
- Twitter Sentiment
- Twistori
Data Sources
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