Clue Three: Mad Men

I was watching Morning Joe (a news commentary show on MS NBC) one morning a few months ago and they had a guest on who was the script writer for the very popular TV show Mad Men. The discussion, around the table, was about the early 1960's era and why that time period resonated so much with audiences today. As the discussion developed examples started popping up of instances they could remember of people who were part of the Mad Men era that could not deal with the changes that would occur later in the decade. I think it was Joe Scarborough who said that his father liked the early Beatles but by the time Rubber Soul came out he no longer understood was was happening. When he said that, the wheels began turning.

The transition from Mad Men to Woodstock was a period of major cultural upheaval in this country and many others as well. For most Baby Boomers it represented the defining moments of their lives. For the sake of simplicity I am going to reduce this to a larger pattern and that is - the old giving way to the new. In this case the Mad Men represented the old culture and Woodstock represented the new.

Now we are approaching a similar transition only the Baby Boomers represent the old and the rising Millenials represent the new. I believe that the show resonates with Baby Boomers because they subconsciously see themselves in Mad Men - people riding high in a belief system that is about to crash. I think it also resonates with Millenials but for a different reason. For the Millenials it is a reminder that their day will come.

Going back, for a moment to this idea of normal times vs chaotic times we can see the pattern once again. When the old way is the default world view we have normal times. When the new replaces the old we have chaotic times. When the new becomes the default world view we have normal times again.

Clue Two: Thomas Kuhn

As I mentioned earlier, clues are not given to you by some guiding force. And clues are not discovered along the way. Clues are merely ideas or patterns that resonate with what we are thinking and help us put form to those nagging fuzzy ideas in the backs of our minds. So, my second clue seems even more unrelated than the first one.

I have been working on a very difficult paper on the philosophy of information systems. Earlier in the data gathering stage I was reviewing a lot of books and articles that I though might be useful in helping me write the paper. I went off on several side roads which is not at all uncommon in these pursuits. One of those side roads was into the philosophy of science. I was wondering, at the time, how the philosophy of science might be different for research in information systems than it is natural or social sciences. As I was pondering this I picked up some classic works by Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn along with a variety of lessor known books that I felt might be useful.

While pondering Kuhn, the idea of "normal science" kept ricocheting around in my subconscious. At the risk of over simplifying this idea allow me to explain it in a very cursory manner. Most of the time, in a scientific field, there is a fair amount of agreement on what problems it is trying to solve, what methods lead to legitimate results, what counts as evidence and so on. The questions appear to be answerable. And the methods appear to be adequate for answering the questions. This is what is referred to a "normal science". Then a disruption comes along. There are anomalies that cannot be explained or important questions that cannot be answered.

When this happens, the field must adjust. New ideas and methods must be considered as scientists attempt to account for the anomalies or make progress on the unanswered questions.   Over time some of these new ideas will become mainstream and the field will settle back down to "normal science"

Now, I did not intend this post to be a short lecture on the philosophy of science. But, I needed to explain that in order to explain how it became a clue.It occurred to me that my goal setting behavior was disrupted because it was not clear to me what was important to achieve. I could not fix on a goal or set of goals because things were in such a state of flux - that not only were the targets moving but what qualified as a target was changing as well. Thinking about Kuhn's concept of "normal science" I thought the pattern fit well to the social, economic and political spheres as well. There are normal times when you know what your are trying to achieve and how to achieve it. In normal times you can set goals and pursue them. However, in the times between normal times, the times I refer to as "chaotic" things are in a state of flux and it is difficult to set goals in order to make progress. 

Clue One: The Folly of Goal Setting

I am almost pathological in my goal setting behavior. I have a five year plan and a ten year plan. I don't actually write these down. But, I do, generally, have a pretty good idea what I would like to accomplish in various time frames. I can't say that I always accomplish everything as I have goals at varying levels of important. There are must do goals, goals that I would like to accomplish, and goals that might be fun if I get around to them.

Every year I make News Year's Resolutions which I do write down. I actually check the resolutions periodically to see if I am on track for the year. I don't always accomplish all of these either. Most do get accomplished to some degree. One or two might be bumped to the next year. And there are those that I abandon after reflecting on them and deciding that that are not worthy goals.I set goals for each month and have a To Do List everyday. The same applies to these as far as accomplishing them. 

I am not revealing all this to convince your that I should be on some sort of OCD medication. Rather, it is to establish the fact that goal setting and goal driven behavior is just a part of my nature. That is, until just a few years ago.

I usually start working on my list of New Year's Resolutions in early Fall. I do this because I want to have time to think through the goals that I will be dedicating my time to in the following year. I'll jot them down, reflect on them, and revise them so that I have a pretty solid list when the New Year shows up. But, when I began to ponder my initiatives a few years ago, I found that I was incapable of identifying any reasonable goals. This was a huge problem and I began to give it some pretty serious thought.

After reflecting on this for a while, I realized that the reason why I was having trouble setting goals was that the future was in a state of flux. I am usually pretty good at predicting, in general terms, what is likely to happen. I do not have any clairvoyant talents. I just know a few tricks. I ramble on about these in another one of my sporadically attended blogs Patterns and Predictions which you can look at if you feel so inclined.

Nonetheless, I realized that with the future largely opaque to me we must be in an unusual time. And that was my first clue.

Normal Times vs. Chaotic Times

Here is something I have been thinking about a bit lately. It seems like there is something different about the times we are currently in. Everybody that I talk to seem to feel it somehow. But nobody can put it into any context. We have been in an extended recession. The usual economic rules don't seem to be working. Nobody seems to know what to do. We have a great deal of global unrest punctuated by crises like the Ebola epidemic. The US Congress can't seem to get anything done. There is great political division across the US. And, it is not limited to political and economic realms. In their personal lives, people seem to be unsettled and no longer deriving the satisfaction they once derived. People used to feel that if you worked hard and pursued your goals, you would get somewhere. Now that seems to be fanciful musings from the past. Something is different. If I had to summarize it in a sound bite, I would say that nobody seems to know what is going on and nobody seems to know what to do about it. So, I began thinking about what is going on.

I have been getting clues now for several years and those clues are beginning to fall into a pattern. I will describe some of the clues in future posts. For now, I will just provide a general description just so you don't think that the clues are coming from voices in my head.

Let's say that you are working on a problem in the back of your mind. Somebody says something that resonates greatly and seems to provide some insight into the problem you are puzzling over.  This is a clue. It may have had nothing at all to do with your problem. But, because it provided needed insight, it is a clue. I will expand on this later.

For right now I am going to cut to the chase and lay out the answer. We have gone from a period of normal times to a period of chaotic times. And understanding that helps us make sense of what is going on and what to do about it. If that peaks your interest, stay tuned, or keep reading as the case may be. I will explain all in upcoming or subsequent posts.

Taking a Break

The academic year is coming to an end. My last class is Wednesday. And then I coast into summer mode. I have some things to work on which will require a lot of attention. So, I will be taking a break from blogging. If you wish to be notified when I start again you can follow me on Twitter. My account is DrJohnArtz. I don't tweet much so you won't get a lot of traffic. But, I will send out a tweet when I start blogging again. Enjoy the summer. I will be thinking deep thoughts. ;)

Ethnography

A colleague of mine suggested doing an ethnographic study of an organization where he is doing some consulting work. Somehow, the idea of learning more about ethnography caught my attention. I am not sure how this happened. I ignore most things. But, now and then, an idea will get stuck in my head and I can't get it out.

The term ethnography comes from two Greek words which translate, roughly, into writing about people. It is probably better known as cultural anthropology. What an ethnographer does is to move into a foreign culture, attempt to understand it from the inside, and then document that understanding. Historically, the was done by people who wished to understand other cultures from large countries to small isolated tribes. More recently, organizational cultures have attracted attention as well.

The philosophical justification for this approach is articulated in Martin Hollis' The Philosophy of Social Science One of the dimensions that divides the assumptions made by researchers is Explanation vs. Understanding. Those who seek explanation looks for relationships between variables in describing a culture. For example, money spent on one's self versus money spent on others might be a metric to describe a society. Further, if there is a relationship between money spent on others and longevity, then those who seek explanations have found what they are looking for. But, what is it like to live in a culture where one spends more money on others? Those who seek explanation cannot answer that. For that we need understanding. And ethnography is a means of achieving understanding. While researchers holding different sets of assumptions might have harsh words for those holding other assumptions, it really isn't a matter of right or wrong. Different sets of assumptions yield different knowledge. And one can only argue that a set of assumptions is more or less useful in obtaining certain knowledge.

I found ethnography appealing for three reasons. First, the quantitative/technical part of my brain gets tired and  ethnography provides a way to use a different part of my brain when the other part needs a rest. Second, unlike many academics who drill deeper and deeper into a niche, I am quite the reverse. I want to know about everything. Finally, I believe this approach might have great value in studying certain aspect of Information Technology. For example, there are definitely software 'cultures' that produce information systems and those cultures need to be better understood. Further, we see unique cultures developing in virtual worlds and massively multi-player role playing games. And those unique cultures would bear some scrutiny as well. In addition, I think I might be uniquely qualified to do that as it is easier for an expert in IT to learn ethnography than it would be for an ethnographer to learn information technology. So, I am off on another tangent.

Presenting, Sequential Art, Archetypes and Abstrations

I mentioned a whole flock of books on presenting that came out in the past 5 or 6 years. My favorites include  The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting by Stanley K. Ridgely and HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations  by Nancy Duarte both of which emphasize the use of stories as the backbone of a presentation.

But, when it comes to advise on how to construct a story, there is precious little help. We get such tired heuristics such as Beginning, Middle and End. But, that is not particularly useful to one trying to figure out a narrative argument to bolster their presentation. So, how does one construct a compelling narrative? Once again, graphic novels come to the rescue. For example Will Eisner the man who coined the term "graphic novel" provides two works Comics and Sequential Art
and Graphical Storytelling and Visual Narrative which do provide some structure.  If we think of a presentation as sequential art they provide a framework for thinking through the storyline.

Another benefit that the graphic novel format provides is the use of archetypes. Archetypes are symbols for bundles of human behavior that tend to occur together. Archetypes provide us with a high level of intellectual economy where we don't have to read long passages which describe behaviors that we have to infer character traits from. Instead we are given an archetype with which we are familiar that is customized for use in the story. One might argue that this is a response to the short attention span that we have developed in this age of text and distractions. But, I see it as stepping back another level of abstraction in our knowledge

To understand this level of abstraction consider a simple cognitive function of counting. First we count on our fingers, then pencil and paper where numbers represent quantity, then on a calculator where the computations are done for us and finally on a computer where the computations are embedded in a procedure. As our knowledge grows it become increasingly important to organize our knowledge base into levels of abstraction and select the level of abstraction that is necessary for educating us with the things we need to know. It seems like graphic novels may be the next level of abstraction for a rapidly expanding knowledge base.