Another christmassy sentiment is the spirit of giving. At Christmas you give a gift to your loved ones in order to make them happy. It has recently become popular to give charity gifts. Like a goat to an African family. But that really fucks up the whole system. Who is realy giving? and who is receiving? At Christmas you become happy because you receive a gift, because someone have thought about what would make you happy. But when the gift is charity, that is in effect a gift to someone else, the basic premise of Christmas is violated. I can’t see a lot of people becoming genuinely happy. (Although you could argue that the system is already severely “off track” since we are giving each other gifts in honour of the birthday of someone who is long gone)

Happiness and money are two central concepts of Christmas. We usually assume that money is directly proportional to happiness. The more expensive the gift, the more happy the receiver will be. If I get a 1000 dollar tie I will be 10 times more happy than if I get a 100 dollar tie. Most people will probably agree that this view is at best “simplified”. It is however a central tacit assumption  in the modern world: more money – more happy. We rank countries in terms of how much money they make: Gross Domestic Product. An indicator of how a country is doing is the growth of the gross domestic product: how much more we made this year compared to the last. Just as we realise on Christmas eve, the bhutanese king Jigme Singye Wangchuck realised in 1972 that this view was “simplified”. What matters is not the amount of money, but the happiness of people. This resulted in his creation of a new measure called the Gross National Happiness. This in turn has resulted in the development of scientifically more stringent measures pursued in a number of research projects, which investigate the GNH in different countries of the world .

So, we should reconceptualise the value we measure Christmas gifts by. The true value is the amount of happiness it creates, but we should not stop there in our revamping of value. When we invest money we also have a typical measure: The Return on Investment (ROI). This measure describes how much more money we got relative to what we put into it. Rather than Return on Investment we should measure the Happiness of Investment HOI: This measure describes how much more happy we became as a result of the investment. If I buy a tie for a 1000 dollars would that make me more happy than an ipad 3 and dinner with my family. That is essentially asking where is the HOI greater: investing in a 1000 dollar tie or an ipad 3 and dinner with family.

The spirit of Christmas shows us that we fundamentally want to be happy. By using measures such as GNH and HOI we get a measure that is more valid. The experience of Christmas gifts tells us that there is not a linear correlation between money and happiness. That is why we should always go “right to the heart of the matter” and look at how happy money and stuff makes us. I think no one has put it more precisely (and high pitched) than Geddy Lee (the singer of Canadian progressive rock band Rush):

Right to the heart of the matter

Right to the beautiful part

Illusions are painfully shattered

Right where discovery starts

In the sacred wells of emotion

Buried deep in our hearts

from the track “Emotion Detector”  by Rush

So, after the fall from grace of my previous favourite Christmas song, I hereby reveal my new favourite:

Happy Christmas!!

Instead we should try to frame the problem differently. Let’s say we are redesigning a park. There are a number of beautiful sculptures scattered around the park. These sculptures are portraits of the royal family. And the sponsor of the entire park project also happens to be the royal family. The royal family expects people passing through the park to see all the sculptures, but people just follow the straight route through the park. It is not very efficient to put up signs stipulating turn left, turn right etc. or having park rangers patrol incessantly. If the park is a grass lawn it is easier to just go straight through. What to do? Well maybe you could make a rubble path, plant bushes and trees along this path, so that people are naturally lead this way. It is still possible for them to pass through the bushes and trees, but not the easiest way. You use the landscape to make it easier to take the wanted path along all the beautiful statues.

How does that translate to the adoption of our splendid new system? If you have a new system you have to make sure that it is the easiest path to use it. So, what can you use as bushes and trees? Here are a number of different methods that you can try:

Controlled Subversion – Tell every single employee that their colleague has been known to secretly use the system, although he will openly deny it. Subtly imply that it is in order to get that promotion that your employees are competing for. Go and tell every single employee exactly the same thing.
The Kafkan Shortcut – Make it possible for the users to do whatever they want as long as it is engulfed in excruciating administrative procedures. For example, make them fill out forms that make no sense/cannot be found and submitting them to persons that have not been informed about the procedure.
Brute Force – install a bug on the PC that makes the computer crash every time the employees try to access the old system. Remember also to inform IT support, so the incident will be given absolutely minimum priority.

Bottomline is: if you want to effectively lead change, the most important is to make it easier to use the new system than the old.

Convore: next generation of group chat.
Like.fm: a social music site that tracks what you listen to online. It’s like an upgraded version of last.fm
Moki.tv: an easy-to-use tv guide for the streaming video era.
inPulse: a watch that displays emails, tweets and other info
LikeALittle: a service that lets you flirt and chat with people who happen to be near them.

When angel investors invest it is much like the gold rush. They hope to strike gold, but are they aiming for a panning operation for small nuggets of gold or are they systematically searching for a mining operation? It seems that they all hope to strike gold mining style and discover the new google. Do the above mentioned examples really warrant that kind of optimism? In order to understand why let us look briefly at innovation, since all these companies are innovative in one way or another.

According to Clayton M. Christensen there are two kinds of innovations: sustaining innovations and disruptive innovations. Sustaining innovations are small incremental improvements like a faster CPU, purer insulin, or cleaner steel. Big companies with large R&D units have an advantage here, since they can have many people working on fine tunings and experiment with what works and what doesn’t. Today google, amazon and yahoo are in this class. An example of a sustaining innovation is the google Chrome, where google has made a faster browser, and they continue to make it faster. A sign that you are dealing with a sustaining innovation is that you can put “A better/faster/cheaper way to…” in front of the product.

On the other hand we have disruptive innovations. These are innovations that fundamentally change the game. They are frequently a lot better on one attribute, but worse on most others. An example of this is cellular phones. They were initially not as stable as fixed line telephones. You could risk not having connection or maybe run out of battery. But they had the important property of being mobile.

This special attribute makes it attractive to a niche initially (business men for the cell phone) and through sustaining innovations the disruptive innovation reaches the competing products. This is also what happened for google with search. The results they could produce initially were not as good as the edited ones by yahoo. But google excelled on one parameter, how much content could be indexed per employee, since it was done by an algorithm and not by a human. When in 2000 the then dominant yahoo wanted to outsource their stage-two searches, that is searches that were not in their directory, google won the contract ( “Planet google”, p.67). The search traffic that yahoo led through google helped them to continuously improve their results until they reached a level that matched what yahoo’s manually indexed product did. Eventually they superseeded the competition.

The big succesful companies we see today are all disruptive:

ebay – a new way of trading between people
facebook – a new way of communicating with your friends
amazon – a new way of buying books
skype – a new way of talking with friends and relatives
Paypal – a new way of paying

The sign that you have a disruptive innovation is that you can put a “new way of…” in front of the product.

But what about our batch of “the new google”. Are they disruptive or sustaining?

Convore: next generation of group chat. is a sustaining innovation of chat.
Like.fm: a social music site that tracks what you listen to online. It’s like an upgraded version of last.fm. Is a sustaining innovation of music tracking technology
Moki.tv: an easy-to-use tv guide for the streaming video era. Is a sustaining innovation of tv guides.
inPulse: a watch that displays emails, tweets and other info. Is a sustaining innovation of the watch.
LikeALittle: a service that lets you flirt and chat with people who happen to be near them. Is a sustaining innovation of chat.

All of them seem to be sustaining innovations that do things a bit better. It seems more like panning operations that will produce they occasional nugget of gold than mining operations that will truckloads of gold. The amount of cash they were able to raise, however, indicated a disruptive potential. It is of course never easy to spot the new google, but it should at least be a disruptive innovation if this is your goal.

So, if you know any angel investors, next time you hear them humming “North to Alaska” remind them to listen attentively after phrases that contain the words “a new way to…” in the salespitch and  move on as soon as they hear the phrase “an improvement of..” .

The riots and lootings were hard to comprehend for brits as well as for foreigners. Indeed the rioters did not seem to follow any common agenda. Some seem to have taken the chance to demonstrate against the governments cut down on well fare, while others were indulging in anarchistic joy and yet others sought to enrich themselves.

After the riots Prime Minister David Cameron made it very clear that the cause of the riots was criminality pure and simple. He promised severe punishment to anyone who had participated in the riots and would use any means to come down hard on rioters in the future. Deputy Prime minister Nick Clegg made clear that it was a top priority to punish the criminals, and he would also consider longer terms for rioting.
But are these riots just caused by criminality pure and simple and would more severe punishment actually help?

The question is far from new in British political thought. The philosopher Thomas More touched on this problem in one of the classics of political philosophy “Utopia” already 500 years ago. Utopia is hailed as one of the key inspirations of the modern well fare states, such as the British. In the book utopia is an island just recently discovered with a very just society. Many interesting thoughts on the constitution of society can be found here. It is however not in the description of Utopia that we find the key. It is actually before the description of Utopia in the first book. Here we find a dialogue about the present state of the British society under King Henry the Eighth. the subject under discussion was theft. Allow me to quote the passage in full here:

“It happened one day when I was dining with him there was present a layman, learned in the laws of your country, who for some reason took occasion to praise the rigid execution of justice then being practised on thieves. They were being executed everywhere, he said, with as many as twenty at a time being hanged on a single gallows. And then he declared he could not understand how so many thieves sprang up everywhere when so few of them escaped hanging. I ventured to speak freely before the Cardinal, and said, “There is no need to wonder: this way of punishing thieves goes beyond the call of justice, and is not in any case for the public good. The penalty is too harsh in itself, yet it isn’t an effective deterrent. Simple theft is not so great a crime that it ought to cost a man his head, yet no punishment however severe can restrain men from robbery when they have no other way to eat (..) you (..) seem to imitate bad schoolmasters, who would rather whip their pupils than teach them.” (p. 15-16)

While I don’t intend to push the analogy too far (rioting is obviously different from simple theft), there are some interesting observations that can be extracted from this passage:
1) No matter how hard you punish, there will still be this crime.
2) People commit this crime because they are pushed towards it by circumstances in their lives.
3) It feels better to punish the offender than to educate him.

I think the reaction of Cameron and Clegg shows that they have not realized any of these three points made by their compatriot 500 years ago. They call for harder punishment and do not accept that there is a deeper reason for these riots and most notably: they do not look to measures that could improve the situation. They take the stance of the bad school master who would rather whip than teach. So, maybe Cameron and Clegg should pause for a moment and look to the good school master instead and turn their attention to educating the people. Only thus can we strip the tune by Kaiser Chiefs of its prophetic qualities and merely succumb to the energetic and melodic qualities.

When you drive a car and you want to make shift lanes it is not enough just to look at what is right in front of you. You orient yourself and look behind to see whether another car is there. But there is a blind spot in which you cannot see other cars although they do see you. Similarly when you communicate to an audience on facebook you look at who is in front of you. But on the internet everything is virtual and nobody is really in front of you. So your minds eye conjures up an image of you in a conversation with your 10 or 20 REAL friends. You communnicate as if they were in front of you, but the social blind spot doesn’t let you see the remaining 200 other people who are also ”in the room”.

That may or may not be a problem depending on what you are communicating. But it may be a risk you are not aware of. Just as driving without checking the blind spot most of the time goes well, because no one was there, it is mostly harmless to communicate on facebook. But sometimes it does go wrong. One example of this are burglaries committed on the basis of status updates from facebook another is this Israeli woman who put a photo of her posing in front of palestinian prisoners with the text “The army, the best time of my life.” her 10 or 20 REAL friends would understand; not so the rest of the world…

When you take driving lessons you are trained to be aware of the blind spot and learn how to avoid infelicitous encounters with other motorists. But noone necessarily teaches you about the social blind spot. Thus you are not trained to avoid infelicitous encounters with burglars, the media future employers or what have you.

We need to create awareness about this potential risk and learn techniques to accomodate them. It may be that social services like facebook should find ways to show you who you are actually communicating to and take steps to help people acknowledge the social blind spot.

To understand this let us look at how cloud computing works. If we look at the most prominent verison of cloud computing: Software as a Service or SaaS, chances are that most people are using it in one version or another already. Examples for private persons are Google docs, hotmail, dropbox and flickr. Enterprise wise prominent examples are salesforce.com, surveymonkey and responsys. SaaS solutions are popular and current fashion dictates that every system must have a SaaS deployment option. It is easy and convenient, you don’t need to maintain the systems or the servers, you have little investment and just pay as you go.
It is no problem making use of a few SaaS solutions for well defined and isolated areas. The problem will arise when the few turns into many, and the isolated areas become “dis-isolated” and  need integration with other areas. Suddenly it is necessary to move data from here to there. More and more point to point integrations will be necessary, but they will be more difficult because every integration point has its own rules. Cloud computing is so new that no agreed upon standards are in place. It is not a big problem to integrate from one point to another, but the problem is that if nothing is done the integrations needed increase linearly: the first system (B) is one integration: from present system (A) to B. The next system (C) also needs t be integratedso we build two new integrations A to C and B to C. no sweat! Then comes the third new system (D) and suddenly we have four integrations: A to D, B to D, C to D
So, quite literally the forecast is spaghetti if no structured approach to cloud adoption is in place. Add to this the volatility of SaaS providers where one supplier may be out of the market in a couple of years. If this happens you need to untangle all your spaghettis and put them somewhere else.
I therefore predict that in 2-5 years time we will see cases of cloud extraction, where companies have to redesign large parts of their cloud architecture, because it has become so entangled that further development is not possible. We are still among the first adoptions where you can afford to build ad hoc integrations.
What to do about this. Well, industry wise I would recommend development of industry wide standards, and portability. Neither is something the industry has a natural proclivity towards.  As for the customers I recommend the development of architectural guidelines addressing integration and portability demands and the guts to say no to a splendid system if it does not live up to these demands, but excells in all the other areas.

Epilogue – the cloud ucovered

This cloud buzz made me want to explore the magnitude of the hype. So, I went to google trends. Here I had to find some sort of reference in order to understand the magnitude of the buzz. I thought that David Beckham would be a good comparison. I also chose spaghetti since I realized that an even more universal comparison would be appropriate, and because it is related to the other point I made. The analysis showed that In january 2011 Cloud Computing was more frequently typed in searches than David Beckham, but still less than one third as frequent as spaghetti. According to my calculations, assuming present rates, Cloud computing will not “out-hype” spaghetti until 2233. That made calm down a bit. My long term forecast, however, is still that the clouds will already meet spaghetti already in 2015.

Du samtycker till att vaskade pengar inte, under några omständigheter kommer att användas till välgörenhet,
solidariska aktiviteter för socialbidragstagare och arbetarklass, eller något, som på något sätt lämnar eller kan uppfattas lämna ett socialt och / eller ekonomiskt positivt avtryck för medelklass och underklass.

In English translation: “You agree that the washed money will not under any circumstances be used for charity, solidarical activities for people who collect social benefits and the working class, or anything that will in any way positively affect or be seen as affecting the middle or lower class economically”

Critical comments have not lacked. Accusations that it is a meaningless waste of money and idiocy have been the unanimous reaction by commentators. I will not argue that it is not, but just that it is not meaningless and that it may be slightly hypocritical.

This phenomenon is well known in anthropology under the name of Potlatch. A potlatch is a kind of feast traditionally held by North West Coast Indians of Canada and the US. Sometimes as part of these feasts rival chiefs would burn expensive property on a bonfire. This practice also appeared meaningless to contemporaries and was banned for periods by the colonial powers.

In his classic study “Essai sur le Don” or “The Gift” in English, this is what starts Marcel Mauss off investigating the nature of gift giving. According to Mauss the nature of the Potlatch is a competition, where the destruction of expensive property signals superior status compared to the rival chief.

Consequently, if the purpose of the potlatch is not meaningless, but rather to signal superior status in the face of a competing chiefs, Champagne wash is not either. It may just be a way to signal superior status, maybe not between competing chiefs, but definitely between people of high status.

So, is burning off money just something for people of high status? Maybe not. Consider buying a Louis Vuitton bag. It’s utility is to carry stuff. If you buy a Louis Vuitton bag like this one you will spend 2000 dollars. Buy a Hello Kitty bag like this one and it will cost you 40 dollars.
I know you will say that the “Louis” one is of far superior quality and lasts longer. Let’s say it lasts 5 times as long as the Hello Kitty bag. Then the total price of the same utility of the Hello Kitty bag is 200 dollars. That is still 1800 dollars less than the Louis Vuitton one. Consequently, If you buy this one, you will burn 1800 dollars, that is, about four times as much as the champagne wash. These 1800 dollars similiarly carry the guaranty that they will not “(..) under any circumstances be used for charity, solidarical activities for people who collect social benefits and the working class, or anything that will in any way positively affect or be seen as affecting the middle or lower class economically”

So, if you subscribe to the view that a champagne wash is meaningless, then buying a Louis Vuitton bag is 4 times as meaningless.