Recently, I have been thinking a lot about time; the fact that it has been a long time since I have added to this blog; that way in which time incrementally unravels; its constancy in the calculation of value; and the manner in which it continuously, and unerringly chronicles our transition from inception to cessation.
Increasingly complicated machines help to measure time with more precision and accuracy. As our scientific cultures advanced through the ages, we replicated and miniaturized the orderly procession of heavenly bodies once used to track the progression of time; cycles of moon phases replaced by cycles of mainsprings replaced by on-off circuits of semiconductor technology.
The increased resolution of our time-lens has worldly implications. As time is a component of every process, greater detail in our picture of time provides greater information about the event of interest. We are not being merely metaphorical when the CERN Large Hadron Collider is referred to as a time machine; it is a clock of grand proportions able to measure events increasingly close to time zero.
Is there a place where time begins? People with much higher IQ's than I have considered that mathematical potential. However, I prefer to see time as a circle, rather than a line. Like the infinitesimal calculus, as we look more closely at the ultimate limit, we find ourselves never really getting closer to the beginning; the tapestry of life continuously unravels with constant and unending detail as we dive deeper into the Mandelbrot set of knowledge.
But what does it all mean? Why does it matter?
In spite of the infinite nature of time, each of our personal, "this lifetime", experience with time is clearly and unavoidably limited. We exist as we are, far too briefly. Yet we sometimes spend time with abandon, perhaps on frivolous activities, unable to balance the value of living in the present versus planning for the future. For sure, it is not easy to spend time wisely.
There is no "answer" to these questions, but there is a suggestion: be thankful for the time you have been given to live. By taking a few moments each day to acknowledge this limitation, you provide the impetus to savor the day, hour, second, or moment as it arrives, and then passes into the past, offering the opportunity to more greatly appreciate your personal time horizon.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
The Price of Profit
Much of our professional life is spent quantifying success. Every business is involved in some aspect of sales in the sense of exchanging dollars for product, so the "bottom line" way of assessing productivity - that is to compare revenue versus expenses - is the universally established way to measure success. Clearly, the greater the profit, the healthier the company. Or is it?
As witnessed by the recent BP disaster - one that is by no means an isolated event - has the business model singularly fueled by profit become too hazardous to our health? At the risk of oversimplifying, the public company model that values profit above all else supports the kind of cost-cutting that places men and environment at too great a risk. I am sure many more details will be uncovered regarding cost-cutting strategies that provided short-term profits to investors and other stakeholders. Tragically, the long-term risks of these policies were ignored.
It is easy to cast BP as an environmentally corrupt company, but to be fair to BP and thousands of other companies who operate within the public company model, the constant pressure to generate profit above any other value supports the kind of reckless behavior recently (and historically) witnessed. Oil producing companies probably do need greater rules, restrictions and safeguards (banking industry too?), and we and our environments do require greater assurances that oil can be mined without undue risk - given that we can accurately compute the risk of such complex conditions.
However, "the problem" if you will, is much greater than BP. I am not referring to the politics of oil, or coal, or any of the other dirty industries upon which our culture and lifestyle depend. I am referring to the standard business model whose sole emphasis is profit. Even so-called "green" companies must sustain a profit in order to continue in their noble causes. The corporation is an organism without a conscience; a conceptual machine driven by humans who in turn drive machines, other animals, consume resources, and produce profit for stakeholders. It is not surprising that when we look we find abuse proliferating in the corporation.
Unlike the criminal who defends his actions as the result of an abusive childhood, the corporation offers no defense for its actions. In spite of concise mission statements and media campaigns heralding community values, the true mission of any corporation is profit, and any action that increases expenses without offsetting profit is strongly reconsidered. Undoubtedly, BP managers made bad decisions regarding cost-cutting and our environment will pay the price for many years to come - in addition to the men whose lives were lost. However, when we take a moment to examine the reasons that BP and any other company make the decisions they do, it is to maximize profit, often at the expense of long-term interests.
It is the nature of public companies for stakeholders to make such demands on corporate personnel. Certainly CEO's have a choice: to comply, or find a different job. Would they find a company that truly values their employees, the environment, contribution to public welfare, etc.? Well, maybe there are some companies that do this, but the core value proposition of a company of profitability places altruism in direct conflict with the genetic predisposition of a corporate entity - that of generating profit.
Only when the profit motive changes will the behavior of the company change.
As witnessed by the recent BP disaster - one that is by no means an isolated event - has the business model singularly fueled by profit become too hazardous to our health? At the risk of oversimplifying, the public company model that values profit above all else supports the kind of cost-cutting that places men and environment at too great a risk. I am sure many more details will be uncovered regarding cost-cutting strategies that provided short-term profits to investors and other stakeholders. Tragically, the long-term risks of these policies were ignored.
It is easy to cast BP as an environmentally corrupt company, but to be fair to BP and thousands of other companies who operate within the public company model, the constant pressure to generate profit above any other value supports the kind of reckless behavior recently (and historically) witnessed. Oil producing companies probably do need greater rules, restrictions and safeguards (banking industry too?), and we and our environments do require greater assurances that oil can be mined without undue risk - given that we can accurately compute the risk of such complex conditions.
However, "the problem" if you will, is much greater than BP. I am not referring to the politics of oil, or coal, or any of the other dirty industries upon which our culture and lifestyle depend. I am referring to the standard business model whose sole emphasis is profit. Even so-called "green" companies must sustain a profit in order to continue in their noble causes. The corporation is an organism without a conscience; a conceptual machine driven by humans who in turn drive machines, other animals, consume resources, and produce profit for stakeholders. It is not surprising that when we look we find abuse proliferating in the corporation.
Unlike the criminal who defends his actions as the result of an abusive childhood, the corporation offers no defense for its actions. In spite of concise mission statements and media campaigns heralding community values, the true mission of any corporation is profit, and any action that increases expenses without offsetting profit is strongly reconsidered. Undoubtedly, BP managers made bad decisions regarding cost-cutting and our environment will pay the price for many years to come - in addition to the men whose lives were lost. However, when we take a moment to examine the reasons that BP and any other company make the decisions they do, it is to maximize profit, often at the expense of long-term interests.
It is the nature of public companies for stakeholders to make such demands on corporate personnel. Certainly CEO's have a choice: to comply, or find a different job. Would they find a company that truly values their employees, the environment, contribution to public welfare, etc.? Well, maybe there are some companies that do this, but the core value proposition of a company of profitability places altruism in direct conflict with the genetic predisposition of a corporate entity - that of generating profit.
Only when the profit motive changes will the behavior of the company change.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Effective Learning
How may times have you attended a "training program" and at the end of the presentation wondered if you had actually learned anything? I know I have. It wasn't because I was daydreaming that I did not learn as much as I had hoped, it is that the modern business culture has confused "presentation" with "education." There is a big difference between the outcomes of a presentation and an effective educational experience; a presentation only suggests learning, but education requires learning as a core purpose and outcome. I believe one reason for this confusion stems from the ease of which we are enamored by visual stimuli. In other words, when someone makes a nifty multimedia slide presentation we assume that its apparent complexity promotes efficient information transfer. Unfortunately, the visual appeal of a presentation is much less important than the "function" of the presentation.
An educational program has only one function - to provide employees with a systematic experience with new rules enabling the application of those rules to new or diverse situations. If this function does not occur the training program is not educational. It might be entertaining, enjoyable, and even thought provoking, but if the program does not influence your behavior in meaningful ways, the educational process has occurred.
Demonstration of learning is an often overlooked feature of the educational process. How many times have you received a "certificate of training" for sitting in your chair and staring forward for a few hours? The only certification of this style of learning is that you were physically present in the room. Real education requires demonstration of skill. While the practical problems of individual demonstration of learning are considerable, especially in large groups, the fact is that until we see evidence of improved action, we have no valid measure that learning has occurred. It may appear relatively easy and efficient for a presenter to deliver a training program to large groups of people, but the efficiency is illusory as no evidence of any real education has occurred.
It is easy to malign the standard presentation process. But what can be done to make education more effective while retaining its efficiency?
When you really want your employees to learn something, divide the material into small modules so that employees can complete each module in less than twenty minutes. Ask employees questions that provide a reasonable indication that they can apply this knowledge to new situations. Time the test so that they must demonstrate a reasonable level of fluency with the information. Use a variety of question formats, such as fill-in the blank, matching, exclusion, etc., as each kind of question demonstrates a different kind of understanding. If you really want your employees to learn, you need to validate the educational process by observing and recording your employees' behavior on an individual basis.
An educational program has only one function - to provide employees with a systematic experience with new rules enabling the application of those rules to new or diverse situations. If this function does not occur the training program is not educational. It might be entertaining, enjoyable, and even thought provoking, but if the program does not influence your behavior in meaningful ways, the educational process has occurred.
Demonstration of learning is an often overlooked feature of the educational process. How many times have you received a "certificate of training" for sitting in your chair and staring forward for a few hours? The only certification of this style of learning is that you were physically present in the room. Real education requires demonstration of skill. While the practical problems of individual demonstration of learning are considerable, especially in large groups, the fact is that until we see evidence of improved action, we have no valid measure that learning has occurred. It may appear relatively easy and efficient for a presenter to deliver a training program to large groups of people, but the efficiency is illusory as no evidence of any real education has occurred.
It is easy to malign the standard presentation process. But what can be done to make education more effective while retaining its efficiency?
When you really want your employees to learn something, divide the material into small modules so that employees can complete each module in less than twenty minutes. Ask employees questions that provide a reasonable indication that they can apply this knowledge to new situations. Time the test so that they must demonstrate a reasonable level of fluency with the information. Use a variety of question formats, such as fill-in the blank, matching, exclusion, etc., as each kind of question demonstrates a different kind of understanding. If you really want your employees to learn, you need to validate the educational process by observing and recording your employees' behavior on an individual basis.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Intelligence
What is intelligence? It is interesting that a phenomenon so pervasive can be so difficult to define and quantify. Surely you are familiar with IQ (Intelligence Quotient) tests. Of the many purposes of creating IQ tests and administering these tests to countless persons is the benefit of being able to predict future outcomes. After all, knowing that someone is intelligent is not particularly valuable when isolated from the effect of intelligence in producing a meaningful outcome. Thus one benefit of IQ scores comes from being able to predict that an intelligent person will perform well in certain work scenarios, etc.
While determining a person's IQ score seems useful as it provides us a discrete value to compare to other scores, as a practical matter, the IQ score does not predict future outcomes as well as we would like. Not surprisingly, there are other factors that overcome the predictability of IQ scores. For example, motivation and cultural factors play important roles in success, and of course a more fundamental issue with IQ scores concerns its generality or applicability to diverse situations outside of the test scenarios. For example, someone with a high IQ score may in fact be a very bad electrician. It is not that electricians do not need to be smart, in fact, I would suggest that intelligence is very important to success as an electrician. However, there are many other important skills that are relevant to this trade, such as color vision, manual dexterity, physical strength, attention to detail, understanding complex instructions and procedures, etc.
Intelligence tests can be important when the skills tested are relevant to the work situation. Using this perspective, one could conceivably develop an intelligence test for each job classification, a generally useful idea. More generally, we can consider that there are a seemingly infinite number of different kinds of intelligences, and a truly comprehensive intelligence assessment might require literally thousands of different kinds of questions and demonstrations of skill.
A behavioral perspective on intelligence suggests that each action demonstrates a multitude of intelligence, and each of us posses varied skill (intelligence) with regard to these intelligences. For example, a wonderfully skilled pianist may be substantially deficient in being able to give someone a decent haircut. Certainly the pianist could learn how to cut hair if motivated to do so, but at the time of measurement, the tested pianist did not have that skill and his deficiency would be noted. Once the pianist learned to cut hair he would no longer possesses that deficiency
There is considerable overlap between the concept of intelligence and the emergence of behavior. Moreover, each behavior demonstrates intelligence, and the more behaviors we can demonstrate in diverse situations, the more intelligent we are. Intelligence is not usefully described as a capability. While we can speak of intelligence in the abstract, unused intelligence is not behaviorally valuable. Intelligence observed as behavior is valuable because it effects a meaningful outcome.
While determining a person's IQ score seems useful as it provides us a discrete value to compare to other scores, as a practical matter, the IQ score does not predict future outcomes as well as we would like. Not surprisingly, there are other factors that overcome the predictability of IQ scores. For example, motivation and cultural factors play important roles in success, and of course a more fundamental issue with IQ scores concerns its generality or applicability to diverse situations outside of the test scenarios. For example, someone with a high IQ score may in fact be a very bad electrician. It is not that electricians do not need to be smart, in fact, I would suggest that intelligence is very important to success as an electrician. However, there are many other important skills that are relevant to this trade, such as color vision, manual dexterity, physical strength, attention to detail, understanding complex instructions and procedures, etc.
Intelligence tests can be important when the skills tested are relevant to the work situation. Using this perspective, one could conceivably develop an intelligence test for each job classification, a generally useful idea. More generally, we can consider that there are a seemingly infinite number of different kinds of intelligences, and a truly comprehensive intelligence assessment might require literally thousands of different kinds of questions and demonstrations of skill.
A behavioral perspective on intelligence suggests that each action demonstrates a multitude of intelligence, and each of us posses varied skill (intelligence) with regard to these intelligences. For example, a wonderfully skilled pianist may be substantially deficient in being able to give someone a decent haircut. Certainly the pianist could learn how to cut hair if motivated to do so, but at the time of measurement, the tested pianist did not have that skill and his deficiency would be noted. Once the pianist learned to cut hair he would no longer possesses that deficiency
There is considerable overlap between the concept of intelligence and the emergence of behavior. Moreover, each behavior demonstrates intelligence, and the more behaviors we can demonstrate in diverse situations, the more intelligent we are. Intelligence is not usefully described as a capability. While we can speak of intelligence in the abstract, unused intelligence is not behaviorally valuable. Intelligence observed as behavior is valuable because it effects a meaningful outcome.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Don't Delay
In this blog I would like to discuss a behavioral law, extensively studied in the research laboratory, that affects the value of every employee-customer interaction. It will be summarized as follows: the value of an outcome depends on the delay to that outcome.
Here are four important implications of this law:
1. Once a customer has identified their need, the more quickly it is delivered, the more valuable will be the customer’s perception of the outcome. For example, the faster you deliver the camera, resolve the complaint, complete the repair, produce the print, etc., the greater will be its perceived value.
2. As delay to a desired outcome increases, the value of that outcome decreases. No matter how elaborate your personal justification of the reasons for delayed action, procrastination systematically degrades a customer’s evaluation of your resulting hard work.
3. If you cannot meet an agreed upon action deadline, tell the customer when you will have it done, and be sure to alert the customer when it is done. If you wait for the customer to call, you have measurably diminished the value of your service. If you need more time to complete the transaction, alert the customer and re-establish agreement on the completion time.
4. Given two choices with the same outcome, a customer will choose the one with the shortest delay to obtain the outcome.
The law of delay is like the law of gravity, in that awareness does not negate its effect. For example, while you are free to personally disagree with the law of gravity, this offers no advantage in freeing yourself from its constant influence. The law of delay is equally non-negotiable. You may indeed provide to your customer an elaborate and highly believable justification for your delaying in providing some form of service, but the effect of delay always diminishes the value of your service compared to presenting that service with less delay.
It is important to note the effect of delay is relativistic. We remember how photo finishing businesses prospered in the era of one hour processing. Reducing the time of film processing and printing from several days to a mere 60 minutes offered customers an opportunity to substantially reduce the delay to receive their finished prints. Plus, in many cases the individualized attention facilitated by small batch processing allowed quality to increase. A lot of money was made by capitalizing on the behavioral effect of reducing delay for photo processing services.
While the philosophical debate continues to rage whether or not the world contains absolutes, the world of retailing is defined not by the absolute best retailer, but by the better retailer among competitors. It is convenient to say the quality of your photo finishing is better than your competitor’s quality, as there continues to be no independent tool to measure photo finishing quality. Indeed, this measurement loophole continues to offer a significant promotional advantage. However, it is considerably more difficult to promote the advantage of purchasing a camera or some other hard good from your store when the competitor’s store offers the same item. Lowering your price is a well known strategy to motivate a customer’s purchase, but this strategy comes at great expense.
A much more economical strategy is to enhance the value of making a purchase at your store. By systematically decreasing delay you can meaningfully increase the level of customer service. Here are some examples:
1. Answer the phone after fewer rings, return voice-mail, email, and all other actions related to your communication system as soon as possible – especially for customer complaints.
2. Complete all services when due.
3. Open the door to your store at the appointed time.
4. Place special orders as quickly as possible and follow-up with the warehouse to ensure the order is shipped according to plan.
5. Whenever possible, complete a customer’s request while they are in your store.
6. Quickly welcome customers as they enter your store with a non-business greeting, e.g., “Good morning, nice to see you again.”
7. Process refunds quickly.
I am sure that you and your employees can find additional ways to reduce delay in achieving customer service. Once you have established with your employees this dimension of customer service, they can apply this concept to all future situations they may encounter. Some enterprising store owners might consider employing delay as a direct measure of customer service. That is, the longer it takes, the poorer the customer service. This concept is utilized in automobile repair shops where the time to complete a repair has been well established. You might consider measuring the length of time necessary to resolve a customer complaint. How long should it take? Each store will establish their own standards, but the best stores will minimize delay in delivering customer satisfaction.
Here are four important implications of this law:
1. Once a customer has identified their need, the more quickly it is delivered, the more valuable will be the customer’s perception of the outcome. For example, the faster you deliver the camera, resolve the complaint, complete the repair, produce the print, etc., the greater will be its perceived value.
2. As delay to a desired outcome increases, the value of that outcome decreases. No matter how elaborate your personal justification of the reasons for delayed action, procrastination systematically degrades a customer’s evaluation of your resulting hard work.
3. If you cannot meet an agreed upon action deadline, tell the customer when you will have it done, and be sure to alert the customer when it is done. If you wait for the customer to call, you have measurably diminished the value of your service. If you need more time to complete the transaction, alert the customer and re-establish agreement on the completion time.
4. Given two choices with the same outcome, a customer will choose the one with the shortest delay to obtain the outcome.
The law of delay is like the law of gravity, in that awareness does not negate its effect. For example, while you are free to personally disagree with the law of gravity, this offers no advantage in freeing yourself from its constant influence. The law of delay is equally non-negotiable. You may indeed provide to your customer an elaborate and highly believable justification for your delaying in providing some form of service, but the effect of delay always diminishes the value of your service compared to presenting that service with less delay.
It is important to note the effect of delay is relativistic. We remember how photo finishing businesses prospered in the era of one hour processing. Reducing the time of film processing and printing from several days to a mere 60 minutes offered customers an opportunity to substantially reduce the delay to receive their finished prints. Plus, in many cases the individualized attention facilitated by small batch processing allowed quality to increase. A lot of money was made by capitalizing on the behavioral effect of reducing delay for photo processing services.
While the philosophical debate continues to rage whether or not the world contains absolutes, the world of retailing is defined not by the absolute best retailer, but by the better retailer among competitors. It is convenient to say the quality of your photo finishing is better than your competitor’s quality, as there continues to be no independent tool to measure photo finishing quality. Indeed, this measurement loophole continues to offer a significant promotional advantage. However, it is considerably more difficult to promote the advantage of purchasing a camera or some other hard good from your store when the competitor’s store offers the same item. Lowering your price is a well known strategy to motivate a customer’s purchase, but this strategy comes at great expense.
A much more economical strategy is to enhance the value of making a purchase at your store. By systematically decreasing delay you can meaningfully increase the level of customer service. Here are some examples:
1. Answer the phone after fewer rings, return voice-mail, email, and all other actions related to your communication system as soon as possible – especially for customer complaints.
2. Complete all services when due.
3. Open the door to your store at the appointed time.
4. Place special orders as quickly as possible and follow-up with the warehouse to ensure the order is shipped according to plan.
5. Whenever possible, complete a customer’s request while they are in your store.
6. Quickly welcome customers as they enter your store with a non-business greeting, e.g., “Good morning, nice to see you again.”
7. Process refunds quickly.
I am sure that you and your employees can find additional ways to reduce delay in achieving customer service. Once you have established with your employees this dimension of customer service, they can apply this concept to all future situations they may encounter. Some enterprising store owners might consider employing delay as a direct measure of customer service. That is, the longer it takes, the poorer the customer service. This concept is utilized in automobile repair shops where the time to complete a repair has been well established. You might consider measuring the length of time necessary to resolve a customer complaint. How long should it take? Each store will establish their own standards, but the best stores will minimize delay in delivering customer satisfaction.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
The Employee's Perspective
In managing others we should consider two groups of people, those who think they are the best in their job, and those who know they are skirting the system. Let's consider the first group, those who think that they are doing their job better than anyone else in the company. These people have a difficult time understanding why they are not receiving greater recognition for their hard work. From their point of view, their contributions are largely ignored and they tend to resent their supervisor's ambivalence. Worse, they resent the attention their supervisors give to others for work seemingly inferior to their work. Do not be surprised if one day this employee decides that he is seeking greener pastures, needs to goes back to school, or some other seemingly reasonable endeavor. The real reason he is leaving is that in his mind you have not met his expectations for feedback.
Feedback is critically important, and will be considered in more detail at another time. For now, let's focus on the core experience of unfulfilled expectation for feedback from the point of view of the employee. He truly believes he is working to full capacity, and from his unique perspective, he is doing a great job. After all, no one has told him otherwise, so he is free to derive his own assessment of the quality of his work. An important issue that we must contend with, even as we begin to provide this employee additional feedback on his performance, is that the employee truly believes that he is meeting or exceeding the expectations for the job. When you take the time to provide "constructive criticism" the employee may view your coaching efforts as overly critical and unappreciative of his hard work. Such can be true even with the worst performing employees. All perspectives are derived from a point of view. The poor performing employee may be making a reasonable self-assessment based on his perspective. He cannot see things as you do, and thus he believes that he is performing well.
When you begin to help this under-performing employee be sure to obtain his self-assessment. If he believes that his performance is exemplary, but it is not, (and the employee is worth keeping) it may be beneficial to set smaller goals. If you inform the employee of the true state of affairs, that he is for example the worst performer in the company, the sudden loss of personal value may be too much for him to handle, significantly increasing the likelihood of leaving the company.
All of this may seem overly gentle, as if you are coddling the poor performing employee. Not so. You are managing the employee on an individual basis and recognizing that while performance standards have been fairly set for all employees, the steps one must take in reaching those standards must remain flexible. Without doubt there is a bright line to be drawn between evolving excellence and accepting deficiency. When you provide a corrective action to an employee, acknowledge the value of his current efforts, and then raise the bar slowly, decisively and consistently, so that your employee can acquire the necessary skills and perspective to achieve excellence as you have defined it.
Feedback is critically important, and will be considered in more detail at another time. For now, let's focus on the core experience of unfulfilled expectation for feedback from the point of view of the employee. He truly believes he is working to full capacity, and from his unique perspective, he is doing a great job. After all, no one has told him otherwise, so he is free to derive his own assessment of the quality of his work. An important issue that we must contend with, even as we begin to provide this employee additional feedback on his performance, is that the employee truly believes that he is meeting or exceeding the expectations for the job. When you take the time to provide "constructive criticism" the employee may view your coaching efforts as overly critical and unappreciative of his hard work. Such can be true even with the worst performing employees. All perspectives are derived from a point of view. The poor performing employee may be making a reasonable self-assessment based on his perspective. He cannot see things as you do, and thus he believes that he is performing well.
When you begin to help this under-performing employee be sure to obtain his self-assessment. If he believes that his performance is exemplary, but it is not, (and the employee is worth keeping) it may be beneficial to set smaller goals. If you inform the employee of the true state of affairs, that he is for example the worst performer in the company, the sudden loss of personal value may be too much for him to handle, significantly increasing the likelihood of leaving the company.
All of this may seem overly gentle, as if you are coddling the poor performing employee. Not so. You are managing the employee on an individual basis and recognizing that while performance standards have been fairly set for all employees, the steps one must take in reaching those standards must remain flexible. Without doubt there is a bright line to be drawn between evolving excellence and accepting deficiency. When you provide a corrective action to an employee, acknowledge the value of his current efforts, and then raise the bar slowly, decisively and consistently, so that your employee can acquire the necessary skills and perspective to achieve excellence as you have defined it.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Time Machine
The idea of building a time machine continues to fuel the minds of science fiction writers. In the popular movie series, "Back To the Future" we learned about the "space-time continuum" - whatever that means, and in "The Terminator" the computer chip responsible for the future was destroyed so that the machines could not become "self-aware," and so on. Time travel is so useful to writing science fiction because it interjects a counter-intuitive viewpoint, especially when the future is changed by the past. Of course, when these scenarios are analyzed, our typical linear style of thinking is considerably challenged. For example, in the Terminator the machine was destroyed. How, then did it ever come to be? We cannot fully consider these sorts of questions, in the same way that my dog cannot understand the past - it is simply beyond our computational construction to consider events that have parallel outcomes.
What I find interesting about all of this, is that most of us already possess several kinds of very effective time machines. One such machine is our camera. When we take a picture, it freezes in incredible detail a moment in time, one that we can revisit whenever we want. In my closet I have several thousand photographs of my family, and we love to go back in time when our family was younger and relive those great moments in time together.
The same can be said for home movies. Capturing real-time movement on movie film used to be a fairly expensive proposition. With the advent of modern digital video cameras, we can inexpensively record and review memorable passages of our lives. Of course, this has led a new challenge - making videos that are interesting to review. Home video making now shares the same problem with other nearly perfected tools - the quality of the product depends on the skill of the user. Somewhere along the line, video camera manufacturers have forgotten to teach consumers how to make interesting movies.
There is much more to say about photography, and these musings will appear in future segments of the blog. But for now, I would like to turn the discussion of time machines to another wonderful technology - the book.
At some point in your life you have probably been asked to identify the famous person you would like to go back in time to meet. I know I have been asked that question on several occasions. Let's say that we have indeed constructed a time machine and we go back in time to meet Sigmund Freud. (You can select the famous person you would like to meet.)
So, we power up the "flux capacitor" and end up sitting on Freud's couch. (We will assume we speak German.) We spend a hour with Freud, talk to him about his theories and then return home a better person, right? Perhaps so, but we can do much better with a book.
Many of the great people you might want to meet would likely be able to spend a limited amount of time with you. They were busy with their careers, public engagements, etc. Meeting your favorite famous person would be very nice, and shaking their hands and holding a vibrant conversation with them would be great, but it is their thinking that hold the real excitement, and the real promise of the time machine. When I read a book by Freud or any other great intellect, I am not only going back in time, I am co-mingling with their minds - a real life example of the Vulcan "mind-meld." (Spock did it with his fingers, I do it with my eyes, or ears if the book is on CD.) Written words, laboriously penned before the advent of word-processors, aided only by bird feathers dipped in ink, provides a view of incredible clarity not only about the past, but about the process of advanced thinking, one that can be now studied in real-time, unfettered by the linear distance in the space-time continuum.
The economy of this kind of time machine is startling; for a few dollars I can purchase a book by any great author, containing the exact thinking that this person wanted me to have, to study and to make my own; priceless information written by the person who originated those ideas. The book is a time capsule of incredible power and I cannot think of a more valuable invention for the benefit of human civilization.
What I find interesting about all of this, is that most of us already possess several kinds of very effective time machines. One such machine is our camera. When we take a picture, it freezes in incredible detail a moment in time, one that we can revisit whenever we want. In my closet I have several thousand photographs of my family, and we love to go back in time when our family was younger and relive those great moments in time together.
The same can be said for home movies. Capturing real-time movement on movie film used to be a fairly expensive proposition. With the advent of modern digital video cameras, we can inexpensively record and review memorable passages of our lives. Of course, this has led a new challenge - making videos that are interesting to review. Home video making now shares the same problem with other nearly perfected tools - the quality of the product depends on the skill of the user. Somewhere along the line, video camera manufacturers have forgotten to teach consumers how to make interesting movies.
There is much more to say about photography, and these musings will appear in future segments of the blog. But for now, I would like to turn the discussion of time machines to another wonderful technology - the book.
At some point in your life you have probably been asked to identify the famous person you would like to go back in time to meet. I know I have been asked that question on several occasions. Let's say that we have indeed constructed a time machine and we go back in time to meet Sigmund Freud. (You can select the famous person you would like to meet.)
So, we power up the "flux capacitor" and end up sitting on Freud's couch. (We will assume we speak German.) We spend a hour with Freud, talk to him about his theories and then return home a better person, right? Perhaps so, but we can do much better with a book.
Many of the great people you might want to meet would likely be able to spend a limited amount of time with you. They were busy with their careers, public engagements, etc. Meeting your favorite famous person would be very nice, and shaking their hands and holding a vibrant conversation with them would be great, but it is their thinking that hold the real excitement, and the real promise of the time machine. When I read a book by Freud or any other great intellect, I am not only going back in time, I am co-mingling with their minds - a real life example of the Vulcan "mind-meld." (Spock did it with his fingers, I do it with my eyes, or ears if the book is on CD.) Written words, laboriously penned before the advent of word-processors, aided only by bird feathers dipped in ink, provides a view of incredible clarity not only about the past, but about the process of advanced thinking, one that can be now studied in real-time, unfettered by the linear distance in the space-time continuum.
The economy of this kind of time machine is startling; for a few dollars I can purchase a book by any great author, containing the exact thinking that this person wanted me to have, to study and to make my own; priceless information written by the person who originated those ideas. The book is a time capsule of incredible power and I cannot think of a more valuable invention for the benefit of human civilization.
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