Craig in feed form

Steve Culley asked (by email) for my views on an article in the Guardian titled, I Google, therefore I am losing the ability to think. A related article, Hits and misses, was contributed by Mansur Darlington.

Personally, my memory for simple facts has been degrading and that has been noted by my friends and family… I don’t think I’m yet at a point where I can put that down to my age. I can, however, still enjoy losing myself in a book, or following an article or report through its arguments. I don’t agree that the consequences of Google include the degradation of our ability to think or really pose some fundamental threat to our intelligence.

I’ve always thought one of the most fundamental tools humans possess is extelligence. Is the WWW as an information carrier fundamentally different to the older methods: books, scrolls, tablets, stele and cave walls? I would say it has just become easier to rely on – more accessible.

The ability to assess the validity and bias of sources, interpret arguments and construct concepts is separate to that. The WWW (and current search technology) make it harder by increasing the potential sources by several magnitudes. I think that just argues for better teaching of soft skills. At no point in my education have I been instructed on how to search any form of information, I have never been taught how to classify, I have never been taught the importance of providing a chain of references. I think it is usually assumed that the individual should pick this up in the course of their education… I think most people do, but many do not. The greater the field of information to draw on the more crucial these skills become.

Why do people insist on naming everything? We seem to have an underlying need to give things unique names. We do this even for things which are not being explicitly marketed, are only used within one context and do not have to compete with other things providing the same function (Although I have just stated quite a few constraints on what I am talking about there are still quite a lot of things covered by it). Let me clarify what I am complaining about with an example:

I just ran a cropper of this problem when trying to request some changes be made to my university’s central address book. The maintainer seemed quite confused by my referring to it as “the university address book”… apparently I should have known to call it Person Finder. Silly me! One email simply reads:

It’s called Person Finder.

What is wrong with “Address book”, that is surely what it is to most people? Perhaps I am different, do most people think in terms of names or what something actually does or is? Other than being memorable, what is the point, and if that is the only point does it really help us remember or communicate about a particular thing?

The two extremes of this might results in my being called “vegetarian engineer from Guisborough” or, on the other hand, Person 728692. Although many of our names did once reflect key identifying traits, we just got lazy or sentimental when it came to changing them… I should really be living in a loft-house below a cliff face. A person is something which must clearly be named in a global context which lends more weight to a numbering system…and I do not think I am something which already has a widely accepted name nor can I be easily and intuitive described! We are all different things to different people after all. There are clearly circumstances where naming is the most desirable solution but I feel we take it too far!

This post started off which a clear intention to rant about something very specific… it turned into just a amble with a particularly aggressive tone.

In the papers and articles I read in the information management realm there seems to be a great love of stating the obvious. I would like to share some examples which have had me giggling at my desk this morning:

[The] importance [of plan implementation] cannot be overstated, as without plan implementation the planning exercise may be thrown into question.

Planning outcomes have typically been operationalised as the extent to which key planning objectives have been fulfilled.

The last quote had three references! Perhaps I do not yet understand the principles of writing quality papers but I really do not understand the need for such trivial statements? In some ways I actually admire the author’s ability to express fundamental truths so carefully – and so seriously.

Now that I’m doing real paid work I have less time to even think of things I might like to write in my blog. Here I am anyway though, blogging in my lunch break.

As far as work goes I’m still slogging away on the same project. Battling with conflicting interests and bloody politics… The project would be a doddle if we weren’t all so infuriatingly human about everything, but alas I don’t see any progress being made on that front for a long time. As I fear is the case with all knowledge management work, the project involves simplifying and making understandable and usable the complexity that is society (society in what ever form you happen to be looking at).

The first random thing I’d like to write about is probably another item in a growing catalogue of evidence that I’m obsessed with everything Google. For a while now I’ve been using their mapping tool (cunningly named Google Maps) to find my way about and for all those other occasions one needs to reference a map. Obviously one of the big uses is getting directions from one place to another. One aspect of which annoys me across all mapping tools is the inability to customise your route… when you know what they have suggested is just plain wrong! Well Google have done it again, now you just click on the route and drag it to another road, it will recalculate the route for it.

Along similar lines of “things you’ve always wanted”, I’ve started thinking about how to make my own piece of writing software. You might shout angrily that it is a silly idea because so many already exist… and you’re right. Unfortunately none of them really suit the way I like to write. I want to be able to separate out the ‘content’ I produce from the document and from any kind of presentation. I want a semantic writing tool. I’ll write more about it in time, as my ideas come together.

Well then, I’ve finished my degree. I was awarded a 2:1 for my masters in Aerospace engineering, which I’m pretty pleased with. I’ve now accepted an offer to undertake a PhD at Bath in Information in Engineering Design.

By ‘Information’ I mean pretty much all the data/knowledge bound up within the processes that go into producing a real live piece of engineering. One of the ideas that has been floated in my direction centres on “Information push”. This is trying to provide people with the information they need before they realise that they do.

Related to all of this I’ve been lucky enough to be able to start a project to map the skills within a large engineering company. I’ve been told not to broadcast this, so I won’t mention names here. There is potential that this might lead into a sponsored PhD which might mean the direction following the wishes of the company but (besides the extra money) there would be huge advantages to having a ‘real’ aim for the project and someone with a vested interested in my work.

I came across a Dilbert cartoon strip the other day which struck a rather nice chord given some of the responses I get when I become a little too enthused about my chosen subject: