Posted 00:10 by Mark Federman permanent link
So Long, And Thanks for All the Fish

I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later. As regular readers of this blog know, I have reported on my view of the world through a McLuhan lens, and have never (well, almost never) pulled my punches. I feel it is vitally important for each of us to observe our small part of the world with whatever clarity we can muster, in order to be fully cognizant of the effects that emerge.

Last week, a member of the McLuhan Program took great exception to the comments I made about the McLuhan Lecture on exhibits, despite the many emails I received congratulating me for calling that lecture as I saw it. In fact, a concern was raised that my summaries of the Lectures would be considered the "official" responses of the McLuhan Program, and this might be problematic for some.

Rather than compromise voice (not to mention academic and personal integrity) I decided that I would change blogging locations and move my voice over to New Digs at What is the (Next) Message? If you have enjoyed my commentary over the past few years, why don't you come on over to the new neighbourhood? The new RSS feed is here.

It's been an interesting exploration until now, and will only get more interesting as I have an opportunity to share more of my own research and work. I hope you'll join me at my new blogging home.
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Posted 07:29 by Mark Federman permanent link
Best Line in the Karl Rove Scandal

...comes from today's Globe and Mail: "For Bush to get rid of Rove would be like Charlie McCarthy firing Edgar Bergen."
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Posted 12:39 by Mark Federman permanent link
The Labour Tango

Toronto is not having a garbage strike, the same way that we did not have a transit strike a month ago. When the TTC workers set their Friday deadline, the good folks of this good burg did their good chicken little thing, clucking to the press about how awful a transit strike would be. The deadline passed, and a tentative settlement - later ratified by both the politicians and the union membership - was agreed to by the real deadline of the Sunday evening news.

When the outside workers set their Friday deadline last week, the good folks of this good burg once again did the chicken little dance, clucking to all and sundry about the last garbage strike that lasted 16 days, and oh, my, this coming week is going to be another heat wave! And once again, the deadline passed, and a tentative settlement was reached - a tad too hastily, in my view - since they were done by the noon news on Sunday.

Welcome to the Toronto School of Labour-Management Dance. By understanding the power of reversal in management - and particularly the reversals that are occurring throughout the corporate landscape - we can begin to understand the changed relationship among labour, management and the public at large, in which all parties participate to create the experience, or event, of labour negotiations.

Historically, in the model of "workers as machine components" that characterize the industrial-age, factory model of corporations that we are all used to, the worker's ultimate option with respect to perceived management intransigence was to effectively stop the machine, that is, withdraw their labour. The theory in this production-oriented model was that the company would lose production, and hence money, and therefore be pressured to settle with the workers. Although the workers would lose income, the union's reserve fund - the so-called strike warchest - would cover expenses. But times have changed, and so has the nature of money, business and technology.

Now, a business's sources of revenue are diverse and often indirect, so that workers' withdrawing of labour is not as effective as it once was in hampering a business's ability to do business. As well, technological efficiencies often allow fewer management personnel to temporarily replace larger number of workers. Finally, with arcane financial instruments, companies can effectively insure themselves against financial loss when labour unrest looms, lessening the impact of a work stoppage. But neither side completely reckoned with the effects of the reversal of consumers to producers.

This seems to be especially true in the case of municipal employees, as the Toronto example demonstrates. Both labour and management engage in a very well choreographed tango, designed to ultimately avert the strike, but with great drama. The reality of a municipal strike of any important services is that both sides lose. Politicians lose whenever the citizenry are unhappy, and nothing makes citizens unhappy like a kaput transit system or stinking garbage. Workers lose money during a strike, and that is never recoverable. And both sides lose if an arbitrator is brought in, since it is almost never the case that an arbitrated settlement gives either side what they want. Inevitably, an arbitrated settlement is never as good as what could be agreed-to through negotiations.

What is needed to complete the dance is the music provided by the hand-wringing and the lamentations of the citizens. Someone apart from the direct labour negotiations has to care in order for the complex choreography to work. That explains the delayed start to serious negotiations, the final Friday deadline, the over-the-weekend talks, the repeated calls for the mayor to intervene, and his well-scripted phone conversations with the labour leaders, while refusing to actually sit down at the table. It also explains the "real" deadline that is set for the Sunday news timetable. After all, people have to know that they're going to work on Monday.

This also explains how the NHL owners and players blew it big time. They overestimated the loyalty of their fans. Simply put, with no one really caring about the existence of professional hockey, the players and owners were left to their own devices, and both sides took adequate care of their fiscal houses. No public interest means no chorus means no dance means no resolution when the consumers become producers in a very interesting way. They are the ones who both pay the piper, and call the tune for the Labour Tango.

All of this is fodder for my latest research on the changing nature of the corporation that began with the changing nature of employee engagement and intrinsic motivation. "Role*" is a new way to look at what motivates us as individuals, and has proven to be tremendously effective in helping workers make sense of their work situations, and managers make sense of motivation issues in their teams. Interested in learning more? Just ask!
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Posted 10:30 by Mark Federman permanent link
The End of Innovation - For Now

New Scientist has an interesting article that suggests we are Entering a dark age of innovation.

According to a new analysis, far from being in technological nirvana, we are fast approaching a new dark age. That, at least, is the conclusion of Jonathan Huebner, a physicist working at the Pentagon's Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, California. He says the rate of technological innovation reached a peak a century ago and has been declining ever since. And like the lookout on the Titanic who spotted the fateful iceberg, Huebner sees the end of innovation looming dead ahead. His study will be published in Technological Forecasting and Social Change.

Huebner plotted 7200 major technological and scientific innovations that were identified in a recently published book, The History of Science and Technology, as a function of human population. What Huebner found was that the rate of technological development per billion population is the same today as it was in 1600.

The article is worth reading, as it discusses various ways of measuring "rate of innovation." Innovations per population is one way of looking at an innovation rate among others, but it is an interesting one, since it seems to include the factor of interconnectivity and communication, which is the basis of the thinking of the Toronto School of Communication. As people who have heard me speak recently will know, I have been playing with the "300 year" meme, that is it has taken about 300 years for one of the major iconic accelerations of communications - phonetic alphabet, Gutenberg press - to become "ground" in society, that is, for them to be so pervasive in their effects that we think their effects are a law of nature, rather than an artefact of humanity. The most recent nexus point, the invention of the telegraph, is still working its way through society; as I see it, we still have about 140 years to go. Relative to Gutenberg's history-changing invention, circa 1450, the year 1600 looks a lot like 2005 in terms of technological, and cultural, epochal shifts.

While a compare and contrast exercise might be a bit simplistic to hang one's hat on, it certainly does bear noticing. It also suggests that in terms of disruptive change and adoption, we are at the peak in our epoch, and therefore should be looking ahead in an attempt to foresee what world we are creating for our great-great-great-grandchildren, a century or so from now.
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