A Political Teddy Bear

Thought this was an awesome photograph.

Taken on the Washington, D.C. Mall...

You can see the Capitol of the United States in the background.

The gate is surrounding the construction being done.

On the fence is a Teddy Bear--representing so many of our national challenges--sort of just hanging there helpless.

This political bear looks like he's clutching for dear life, but unfortunately he is left hung out to dry as we just keep chugging away...but where is the real progress? 

- ISIS and radical Islam is still growing stronger.

- Iran continues building toward a nuclear WMD.

- China and Russia are "becoming [ever more] aggressive as they perceive U.S. pulling back."

- North Korea achieves capability for a "nuclear ICMB."

- Cyber insecurity is a "real and growing threat."

- There is a growing danger of a catastrophic EMP attack with a "staggering human cost."

- Immigration crisis remains in "limbo."

- Economic growth is "grinding to a halt."

- National deficit is "projected to skyrocket over next decade." 

- American economic competitiveness is in ongoing "slow decay."

- U.S. education "still lagging" significantly in science and mathematics. 

- Life expectancy in U.S. ranks 26th, "right behind Slovenia."

This doesn't mean that good things aren't continuing to happen especially with innovation despite all the gridlock...there is the Apple Watch (ok, the jury is still out on that one too).

Why don't we let the bear down gently please. ;-)

(Source Photo: Minna Blumenthal)

A Political Teddy Bear

Ever Feel This Way?

I took this photo of an advertisement for the "I'm With Stupid" Minions movie released on February 2. 

Sadly, I think this sums up how I am feeling about current world affairs rapidly devolving into chaos, with little to nothing happening to bring it back from the brink:

- Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine forcibly take over the besieged city of Debaltseve in Ukraine, after the ceasefire that was agreed to last week.

- China builds four new fortress artificial islands in the South China Sea projecting it's military might in disputed waters.

- Iran threatens gas embargo on U.S., suicide missions on U.S. Navy, missile attack on Israel, and nuclear enrichment expansion while negotiating for a lifting of sanctions.

- Syrian fighting leaves over 250,000 dead and includes their "systematically" using chemical weapons. 

- ISIS burns another 45 people alive in Iraq, beheads 21 Coptic Christians abducted from Egypt, and commits mass "brutal and abnormal sex" on female captives.

- Boko Haram attack leaves another 2,000 dead in Nigeria (the world's 4th largest democracy) with "bodies scattered everywhere."

- Radical Islamists conduct terrors attacks in Europe in both France (Charlie Hebdo Magazine and a Jewish grocery store) and Copenhagen (a free speech event and a Synagogue).

- Dangerous terrorists apprehended and put away in the Guantanamo detention facility are then released with about 28% (or more) returning to their chosen terror professions. 

Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal points to this sorry state of affairs and our retrenchment in world affairs, as a serious misalignment between the age-old guns and butter debate.

Maybe time for some smart people to get in on things. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Ever Feel This Way?

The Bigger Smaller Navy

So our Navy is shrinking for real, but growing on the books.

Steve Cohen writes in the Wall Street Journal how the "U.S. Navy is stretched too thin."

And we are down to just 283 ships, but for reporting purposes it's 293--that is--because we now include hospital ships, small coastal patrol vessels ("lightly armed [with machine guns]...and not true oceangoing"), and a high-speed transport in the calculus.

Moreover, "only 35% of the U.S. Navy's entire fleet is deployed, fewer than 100 ships, including just 3 aircraft carriers."

According to the Heritage Foundation, gone is the promise of a mighty U.S. with a formidable 600-ship navy, and instead "U.S. naval leaders are struggling to find ways to meet a new requirement of around 300 ships...with "predictions [that] show current funding levels would reduce the fleet to [just] 263 ships."

Sure, today's fleet is comprised of ships more capable than predecessors, but our enemies are also not resting on their laurels. 

China is now building its 2nd aircraft carrier, and Russia has formally secured Crimea home to it's Black Sea fleet. 

The function for military readiness includes not only capability of each, but numbers available to fight. 

There are times that less is more, but less can also be less. ;-)

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Jon Olav)

The Bigger Smaller Navy

China's Dangerous Socioeconomic Malaise

Fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal today on China's "Left Behind Kids."

While we hear about China as the rising Asian economic powerhouse, we do not often contemplate the socioeconomic impact of what is occurring there on Chinese families. 

As China rises to economic superpower status, more than 250 million migrant workers pour from the poor rural parts of China to the cities to supply the  relatively cheap labor to keep manufacturing humming and the economy brimming with growth.

Those left behind are 61 million Chinese children, who are growing up without one or both parents. 

One in five Chinese children haven't seen their parent(s) for at least 3 months.

But laws in China prevent children from coming to the cities with their parents in order to stem the flow of migration from rural areas. 

Chinese parents are saying, "We'll go wherever we can get the highest pay,"

Children are saying, "What's the big deal of having no mother anyway? I can grow up without a mom."

So while smog and pollution is spoiling beautiful China cities and harming people's physical health, the greater concern is that children are missing out on the loving, bonding, caring, and guidance that comes with a regular parental presence and good sound parenting from them. 

Understanding that strong parent-child relationships are critical to the formation of mental, emotional, and spiritual health of the children, the numbers and severity of Chinese children that are missing out on this is of great concern. 

While some children may be okay under the care of able grandparents along with regular visits or calls by parents, many others children, who don't have this, could end up having serious mental and emotional problems.

Already "more than 70% of children in rural China show signs of mental health problems such as anxiety and depression."

And as is often the case, anxiety and depression turn into resentment and anger.

With tens of millions of left behind children being forced to fend for themselves and hundreds of millions of migrant parents living in "dormitories, tents, or bomb shelters" away from their families and homes, what we have here is a bonafide socioeconomic ticking time bomb. 

Political pundits often point to the concern of China's power elite that the people will rise up against them and the Communist Party,
but I think the far bigger concern is to those outside of the system altogether. 

In my mind, the destruction of the core family will ultimately result in a tsunami of frustration, anger, and a weakening of social values.

Moreover, this  could very well spillover and lead to a dangerous rise of militancy, where people do not want to lash out against their political system or leadership, but rather against everyone else who took the goods that left them economically richer, but poorer in just about every other way. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

China's Dangerous Socioeconomic Malaise

Imprisoned and Reeducated

China always seems like such a beautiful and mystical land to me. 

The innate beauty of this huge, yet sort of remote country, a homogenous people who have a raw brilliance yet type of innocence about them, and the ancient practices of natural medicine and martial arts, and a meditative demonstration of inner tranquility. 

In contrast to this image, I have read about forced labor and tough punishment on people in various Asian countries, with a poignant focus on the North Korean camps with untold horrors. But recently, there seems to be more information being shared about forced labor camps in China as well. 

First, I read about the notion by China's ruling elite that the individual is nothing, and the State is everything. Therefore, the sacrifice of one or tens of millions of individuals for the sake of the greater country and those in power is acceptable, perhaps even desirable. This aligns with an extreme of utilitarianism--the greatest good for the greatest number, but irregardless of the effects on the individual. 

This is very different than Western Countries, which have a tremendous value that is put on each individual--their voices and opinions, their rights and freedoms, and the protection and safeguarding of each person's life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. There is emphasis on the individual and the social contract that exists between them and their government. In this system, the whole (State) is greater because of the sum of it's parts (of individuals), not in spite of it. 

Last Friday, I read about the consequences of these differences in political philosophy in an article in the Washington Post about the grim conditions in Chinese labor and reeducation camps. 

What struck me the most was the opening of the article that described one of the Chinese reeducation camps.

"For the first weeks, Shen Yongmei was told to sit on a rough plastic stool from 6 a.m. to 8. p.m., her back absolutely straight, her hands on her knees, and stare in silence at three sentences painted on a wall.  

- What is this place?
- Why are you here?
- What attitude are you going to employee in order to comply with the police?"

The 55-year old women was told to contemplate on these and any slackening could result in a beating. 

After this, the women went through months of "reeducation through labor"--screwing on the plastic plugs on ballpoint pens--a quota of 12,000 a day. 

All this to wash clean her "disobedient thoughts"!

In Judaism, there is a teaching that we don't really get punished for thoughts, but for actions. A person can't fully control where their thoughts stray, although we can take steps to control our wondering eyes, mischievous speech, gluttonous eating, and so on. 

Similarly, in America, we are not punished for having a bad thought, but for committing a criminal act. 

Yet, in China just being suspected of harboring disobedient thoughts can get you (and your family) into a whole lot of trouble and necessitate your rehabilitation through coercion. 

For the last week, I have not been able to stop thinking about the image of the lady on the stool for 14-hours a day starting at those three questions in order to reform her. 

Treating people like misbehaving children who are put in a quiet corner of the classroom for a short time and told to think about what they did and when they are ready, they can come back and join the rest of the class. 

But these are not misbehaving, they are not children, they are not in a classroom, and it is not contemplative for a short time, but punitive and threatening of much worse to come if they don't comply. 

There are so many horrors out there that can be inflicted on human beings--not even for doing something wrong and violent, but for simply not agreeing with those in power. 

Of course the state is important. But perhaps it is not a state, but a prison, if the people are forced to consent both in body and mind?

I would suggest that we can learn from the Chinese that a hedonistic, near-constant focus on the "I" and immediate gratification does not achieve long-term, well being for the "us". And that there is an important place for individual self-sacrifice for the greater good.

This reminds me of the Jewish saying from Ethics of Our Fathers, where Hillel says that "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself what am I?"

Perhaps, a balance of looking after oneself and giving generously to others and the Nation can provide for both personal growth and satisfaction as well as a higher, long-term, purpose for the survival and advancement of the collective. 

My belief: Education and not reeducation is the answer. Good jobs with fair pay and benefits and not labor camps is the answer. Self-determination and sacrifice and not State protectionism is the answer. 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Imprisoned and Reeducated

Hold The Pickles, Hold The Lettuce--BABIES!

Remember, the catchy old Burger King commercial about "Have it your way"(where you can order the burger any way you want, no problem!)?

Now, we are reaching the point with DNA testing, where we can have it your way and order up babies the way you want them.

According to the Wall Street Journal, by getting genetic profiles of egg or sperm donors, you can search for a match with the genetic profile of the would-be parent to have a higher likelihood of desired traits (e.g. blue eyes) or lower likelihood of undesirable ones (e.g. heart disease). 

23andMe, a DNA company (Note: humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes) that sells home testing kits for $99, has patented a process for analyzing DNA and providing information on health and ancestry, and this could be used for system screening of egg or sperm donors through a tool called a "Family Traits Inheritance calculator."

Calculating better babies by choosing desired matches at fertility clinics is only steps away from actually making marriage decisions based on genetic make-up--in that scenario love is only one factor in choosing a mate and maybe not the primary any longer. 

The idea being to screen potential couples before marriage to yield "the best" potential children--smartest, athletic, good-looking, etc. 

There are already genetic banks for screening and capturing genetic information on potential couples to avoid genetic diseases such as Tay-Sachs and others. 

While bioengineering children for better health is one thing, creating a blue-eye and blond-haired race was the Nazi's concept of an Aryan nation as a superior race that would dominate the world. 

The ethical questions of how to screen out illness without creating a situation like in China under a one-child policy, where male offspring are considered superior and so we proverbially tilt the odds in favor of what we think is best even if it may not really be. 

Neither a homogeneous superior race, nor a customized bioengineered baby is the answer--rather, we need to value healthy diversity in children, where each is a miracle and a blessing in their own right. ;-)

Hold The Pickles, Hold The Lettuce--BABIES!

Welcome To The World

What a welcome to the world this baby in China got.

According to Discovery News, the baby was flushed down a toilet...alive!

Residents heard the cries of the baby from the 4th floor bathroom. 

Firefighters sawed away sections of a 10 cm pipe with the 2-day old baby inside. 

The baby had been in the pipe at least 2 hours--I am amazed it didn't drown. 

The baby was brought to the hospital and put in an incubator and luckily, the baby survived. 

I am sorry for the parent(s) who you'd think must've gone through hell before doing something this drastic. 

And while I don't like to judge or be judged, however unwanted this pregnancy or unprepared the parents were for this new child--there has got to be better ways to deal with it than this. 

 An early abortion or giving the child up for adoption is just two options, and struggling to keep the child is a third. 

Maybe the parent(s) thought they could save the baby from even a worse fate living in poverty, born out of wedlock, or violating the one-child per family policy--but it is still hard to imagine taking an innocent, helpless infant and doing something so cruel and disgusting.

How will this child grow up, knowing it was thrown away like this by its own parents?  What type of self-worth will it have?  How will it feel and act towards others in society having been acted on this way?  

There are so many monsters out there...killers, rapists, abusers (many serial)--do we wonder where they came from? 

I remember learning people are product of nature and nurture--in this case, there was certainly no nurture, quite the contrary...and it will take at least a normal new home, where they are treated like children and not waste products for this child to have a fighting chance. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Welcome To The World

This Tape Will Self Destruct In Five Seconds

Ever since the 1960's airing of Mission Impossible, where each episode started with the instructions for a dangerous mission on a tape recording, which ended with "This tape will self-destruct in five seconds," have we all recognized the need for self-destructing devices to safeguard information. 

This message has been honed over the last three decades with compromising security incidents:

1979: Iranian demonstrators stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and according to UMBC "the incinerator broke" as personnel tried to destroy sensitive documents and they had to revert to shredding. 

2001: A Chinese J-8 fighter aircraft collided with a EP-3 U.S. Intel aircraft which according to CNN was "likely equipped with highly sensitive equipment" and landed on the Chinese island of Hainan providing China the opportunity to board, disassemble, and study the equipment before it was returned three months later. 

2011: Iran captured an RQ-170 Sentinel Drone and USA Todayreported on Iran's claims that "all files and boards of the drone were copied and used to improve Iran's unmanned aircraft." Also in 2011 in the assault on Osama Bin Laden, a secret stealth helicopter that took a hard-landing had to be destroyed before special forces pulled out--however according to the New York Times, "a surviving tail section reveal modifications to muffle noise and reduce the chances of detection by radar" was left behind providing others the opportunity to learn about our sensitive technologies.

Additionally, as ever more advanced technology continues to enter the battlefield the threat of its capture and exploitation becomes increasingly concerning. 

In this context, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced the start up of a new program on 28 January 2013 called Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR).

VAPR is intent on developing technologies for "transient electronics...capable of dissolving into the environment around them."

The goal is that "once triggered to dissolve, the electronics would be useless to any enemy that comes across them."

According to Armed Forces International, along with the destruction of the electronics would be "taking classified data with it." Thereby preventing the enemy from using captured information to develop countermeasures or reverse engineer their finds. 

Transient electronics are intended to be rugged on the battlefield but able to be destroyed on command, perhaps by biomedical implants that release "a few droplets of [a self-destruct] liquid" or other means. 

Whether self-destructing in five seconds or slightly more, the need to preserve our sensitive battlefield technologies and the intelligence they contain has never been more vital. ;-)

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Mike Licht)

This Tape Will Self Destruct In Five Seconds

Great Balls Of The Apocalypse

So the Chinese have invented an amazing life-saving device for whenever a great life-threatening catastrophe strikes.

Rather than an ark, this lifeboat is a giant ball of steel, concrete, and fiberglass--two layers thick and weighing four tons--they are advertised as waterproof, fireproof, ice-proof, shock-resistant, and they stand upright and float in water. 

In case of a tsunami, earthquake, shipwreck, or other major crisis, these can be you lifepod to safety. 

CNN reports that they can hold 14 people (video says up to 30 people) and can store food, water, and oxygen for two months. 

The pods also have a propeller for the craft and seatbelts for your added safety--should things get a little rough on the water of Armaggedon. 

The inventor says the next generation survival pod will be made of stronger steel and have more comfort gadgets--although, I imagine he can't mean a flat screen TV. ;-) 

Great Balls Of The Apocalypse

Boy Loses Arm, Girl Loses Memory

I had the opportunity to watch an absolutely brilliant movie called Aftershock (2010) about the 1976 Tangshan earthquake (7.8 on the Richter scale) that leveled the city and killed more than 240,000 people in China. 

The movie is beautifully filmed and the events recreated with tremendous clarity--I could feel as if I was there and I literally cried for the these poor people. 

In the film a women is saved in the quake by her husband who dies trying to go back into the falling building to save their children--twins, a boy and a girl, age 6--who themselves end up buried under the rubble.  

The mother begs others to save (both) her children, but a rescuer tells her that when they try to move the concrete slab that's pinning them down--this way or that--it will mean that one of her children will die.

She cannot choose, but at the risk of losing both children, she finally says "save my son."  

The girl hears her beneath the rubble--and tears are running down her face with the emotional devastation of not being chosen by her own mother for life.

The mother carries what she believes is her daughter's dead body and lays it next to the husband--she weeps and begs forgiveness.

The story continues with rebirth and renewal...the boy survives but loses his arm in the quake and the girl also lives but loses her memory (first from post-traumatic stress--she can't even talk--then apparently from the anger at her mother's choice).

Each child faces a daunting future with their disabilities--the boy physically and the girl emotionally, but each fights to overcome and ultimately succeed.

The boy who is feared can never do anything with only one arm--ends up with a  successful business, family, home, car, and caring for his heart-broken mother. 

The girl who is raised by army foster parents struggles to forgive her mother--"it's not that I don't remember, it's that I can't forget"--and after 32 years finally goes back and heals with her.  

The mother never remarries--she stays married in her mind to the man who loved her so much and sacrificed his life for hers.  And she stays in Tangshan--never moving, waiting somehow for her daughter to return--from the (un)dead--but she is emotionally haunted all the years waiting and morning--"You don't know what losing something means until you've lost it."

The brother and sister finally find each other as part of the Tangshan Rescue Team--they each go back to save others buried in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake that killed almost another 70,000.

Some amazing themes from the movie: 

- "You're family is always your family," even despite wrongs that we do to each other, we are challenged to somehow find forgiveness and to love and extend ourselves for those who have given so much to us. 

- "Some people are living, others only suffer." After the earthquake, as with any such disaster, the living question why they survived and other didn't. Similarly, we frequently ask ourselves, why some people seem to have it "so good," while others don't. But as we learn, each of us has our own mission and challenges to fulfill.

- Disabilities or disadvantages--physical or emotional--may leave others or ourselves thinking that we couldn't or wouldn't succeed, but over time and with persistence we can overcome a missing arms or a broken heart, if we continue to have faith and do the right things.

I loved this movie--and the progression from the horrific destruction of the earthquake to the restoration and renewal of life over many years of struggle was a lesson in both humility of what we mortals are in the face of a trembling ground beneath us or the sometimes horrible choices we have to make, and the fortitude we must show in overcoming these. 

(Source Photo: here)

Boy Loses Arm, Girl Loses Memory

A Shift in Time

SHIFT HAPPENS (a.k.a. "Did You Know?") are a series of terrific videos that illuminate the amazing times of social and technological change we are living in.

(This is one of the videos)

We are fortunate to be alive today!

But we must be aware of all the change happening around us and PREPARE ourselves for a very different future.

Some interesting tidbits from this video that should make you think:

- China will soon be the #1 English-speaking country in the world.

- The 25% of India's population with the highest IQs is greater than the TOTAL population of the U.S.

- The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010, did NOT exist in 2004.

- Today's learners will have 10-14 jobs by the age of 38!

- 1 in 4 workers have been in their jobs LESS THAN a year.

- We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist, using technologies that haven't been invented yet, in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet.

- The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the TOTAL population of the planet.

- There are 31 billion searches on google every MONTH.

- 4 EXABYTES of unique information will be generated this year.

- A weeks worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a LIFETIME in the 18th century.

- By 2049 a $1000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the ENTIRE human species.

All in all, the world is shifting eastward, jobs are becoming more tenuous, information is EXPLODING, and technology is SURPASSING all known boundaries.

What will the world be like in 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 years? Marvelous to be sure!

But are we prepared for all the change is that is coming LIGHT SPEED at us?

Are we getting out in front of it--can we?

It strikes me that either we harness the POWER of all the change or else we risk being OVERCOME by it.

Shift happens, YES--These are great and challenging times for us to manage to and an awesome RESPONSIBILITY.

A Shift in Time

What China’s Bullet Trains Can Teach Us About Governance

One of the foundations of this great country is that we believe in respecting the rights of the individual. This belief is founded on the Judeo-Christian doctrine that every life is valuable and the loss of even one life is like the loss of an entire world.

The rights of the individuals are enshrined in the Bill of Rights that establishes what we consider our fundamental human rights, such as freedom of speech, press, religion, due process, eminent domain, and many others.

The flip side of the protection of individual rights—which is sacred to us—is that it may occasionally come at some “expense” to the collective. This can occur when those individuals who may be adversely affected by a decision, hinder overall societal progress. For example, one could argue that society benefits from the building of highways, clean energy nuclear plants, even prison facilities. Yet, we frequently hear the refrain of “not in my backyard” when these projects are under consideration.

In my neighborhood, where a new train line is proposed, there are signs up and down the street, of people adversely affected, opposing it—whether in the end it is good, bad or indifferent for the community as a whole.

So on one hand we have the rights and valid concerns of the individual, yet on the other hand, we have the progress of the collective. Sure, there are ways to compensate those individuals who are adversely affected by group decisions, but the sheer process of debate—however valuable and justified, indeed—may slow the overall speed of progress down.

Why is this an especially critical issue now?

In a high speed networked world with vast global competition—nation versus nation, corporation versus corporation—speed to market can make a great deal of difference. For example, the speed of the U.S. in the arms and space race with Soviet Union left just one global superpower standing. Similarly, many companies and in fact whole industries have been shut down because they have been overtaken, leapfrogged by the competition. So speed and innovation does matter.

For example, in the field of information technology, where Moore’s Law dictates a new generation of technology every two years of so, the balance of speed to modernization with a foundation of sound IT governance is critical to how we must do business.

Fortune Magazine has an article called “China’s Amazing New Bullet Train (it leaves America in the Dust!)”

China’s new ultra-modern rail system will be almost 16,000 miles of new track running train at up to 220 miles per hours by 2020. China is investing their economic stimulus package of $585 billion strategically with $50 billion going this year alone to the rail system. This compares with the U.S. allocating only $8 billion for high-speed trains over the next three years. Note: that the high speed Amtrak Acela train between Boston and Washington, DC goes a whopping average speed of 79 mph.

One of the reasons that China’s free market is credited with amazing economic progress—for example, GDP growth this year projected at 8.3% (in the global recession)—is their ability to retain some elements of what the military calls a “command and control” structure. This enables decisions to get made and executed more quickly than what others may consider endless rounds of discourse. The down side of course is that without adequate and proper discussion and debate, poor decisions can get made and executed, and individuals’ human rights can get overlooked and in fact sidelined. (Remember the shoddy school construction that resulted in almost 7000 classrooms getting destroyed and many children dying in the Earthquake in China in May 2008?)

So the question is how do we protect the individual and at the same time keep pace—and where possible, maintain or advance our societal strategic competitive advantage?

It seems that there is a cost to moving too slowly in terms of our ability to compete in a timely fashion. Yet, there is also a cost to moving too quickly and making poorly vetted decisions that do not take into account all the facts or all the people affected. Either extreme can hurt us.

What is important is that we govern with true openness, provide justice for all affected, and maintain a process that helps—and does not hinder—timely decisions action.

We cannot afford to make poor decisions—these are expensive—nor do we have the luxury of getting caught up in “analysis paralysis.”

Of course, there are many ways to approach this. One way is to continue to refine our governance processes so that they are just to the individual and agile for our society by continuing to simplify and streamline the decision process, while ensuring that everyone is heard and accounted for. Recently we have seen the use of new information sharing and collaboration technologies, like those provided through social media—wikis, blogs, social networks and more—that can help us to do exchange ideas and work together faster than ever before. Embracing these new technologies can help us to pick up the pace of the vetting process while at the same time enabling more people than ever to participate.

Perhaps social media is one of the only things faster than China’s new bullet trains in helping us to progress how we do business in the 21st century.

What China’s Bullet Trains Can Teach Us About Governance

Identifying a Phony and Enterprise Architecture

Part of what distinguishes a good enterprise architect from a mediocre one, is the ability to discern fact from fiction and the important from the mundane when it comes to the state of the enterprise. Having the skill to do this is critical to being able to establish viable targets and transition plans. A mediocre architect may collect information, but can’t spot the true nature of the enterprise, what is right and wrong with it and how it needs to course correct. The truly talented architect can make those distinctions.

Recently in the news there was an item about a doctored photo of a Tibetan antelope running harmoniously alongside the controversial high-speed train developed by China in the animals’ Himalayan habitat. When first released, this photo was accepted as genuine and only upon analysis was it discovered as a fake.

Just like with the photo of the Tibetan antelope, as enterprise architects, we must a look with circumspection and fine tuned analyses at the information presented, so that we can come to valid conclusions and not just accept everything at face value.

MIT Technology Review, 17 March 2008, reports that “new tools that analyze lighting in images help spot tampering.”

One MIT researcher states: “lighting is hard to fake…even frauds that look good to the naked eye are likely to contain inconsistencies that can be picked up by software.”

Similarly, in enterprise architecture, we need to proverbially shed light on the information we capture in the architecture to discern its meaning to the organization—are there really gaps or in our capabilities or does some executive just want to have the latest technology gadget to showcase? Are the redundancies identified in the enterprise needed for backup purposes or are they truly superfluous? Is a process efficient or is this just the way things have been done for so long, that no one really knows differently or wants to change? Is an opportunity really advantageous to the organization or is it fool’s gold?

These are tough questions and answered incorrectly, could lead the organizations down the wrong path and result in costly mistakes, such as unsatisfied customers, lost market share, wasted time and effort, and demoralized staff.

The MIT Technology Review article states: “many fraudulent images are created by combining parts of two or more photographs into a single image.”

Similarly, in enterprise architecture, facts are often misinterpreted or distorted by combining pieces of information that do not go together or by omitting information from the puzzle. For example, user needs and technology solutions can be combined as touted as the ideal solution for the enterprise, but in fact the solution is mismatched to the requirement. Or an IT investment may be heralded as the be all and end all, but critical information was not examined such as the security of the product, the vendor support and training available, the true cost including operations and maintenance in the out years and so on. So just as with photographs you can have errors of commission and omission.

Cynthia Baron, associate director of digital media programs at Northeastern University and author of a book on digital forensics states: “it’s amazing to me, some of the things that make their way onto the web that people believe are real. Many of the things that software can point out [as fraudulent], you can see with the naked eye, but you don’t notice it.”

This is the same with the information that enterprise architects analyze—so much of it is can be misinterpreted—but with a little more attention and a skilled architect, you can find the true meaning behind the data.

In the end a good enterprise architect can be worth their weight in gold to the organization.

Identifying a Phony and Enterprise Architecture

Weather Engineering and Enterprise Architecture

In enterprise architecture (EA) we plan business processes improvement and technology enablement to engineer the business, drive results of operation, and manage change and transformation. We do this for both core mission functions as well as mission support and business support function in our organizations. But how far can our organizations go in architecting change and results?

For the Olympics this year, China will literally be engineering the weather!

MIT Technology Review, 25 March 2008, reports that “the Chinese plan to modify the weather in Beijing during the Olympics using supercomputers and artillery.”

Here’s the architecture plan for how this will work—it involves technology and fine-tuned choreographed processes to achieve the target weather desired for the Olympics:

“To prevent rain over the roofless 91,000-seat Olympic stadium …the city’s branch of the National Weather Modification Office…will track the region’s weather via satellites, planes, radar, and an IBM p575 supercomputer…that executes 9.8 trillion floating point operations per second…then using their two aircraft and an array of twenty artillery and rocket-launch sites around Beijing, the city’s engineers will shoot and spray silver iodide and dry ice into incoming clouds that are still far enough away that their rain can be flushed out before they reach the stadium. Finally, any rain-heavy clouds that near (the Olympics stadium)…will be seeded with chemicals to shrink droplets so that rain won’t fall until those clouds have passed over.”

China’s national weather-engineering program is also the world’s largest, with approximately 1,500 weather modification professionals directing 30 aircraft and crews, as well as 37,000 part time workers—mostly peasant farmers—who are on call to blast away at the clouds with 7,113 anti-aircraft guns and 4,991 rocket launchers.”

How successful is China’s weather modification program?

“The state run news agency Xinhua claims that between 1999 and 2007, the office rendered 470,000 square kilometers of land hail-free and created more than 250 billion tons of rain—an amount sufficient to fill the Yellow River, China’s second largest, four times over.”

“Although they possess the world’s largest weather modification program, the Chinese point to the Russians as being the most advanced. In 1986, Russian scientists deployed cloud-seeding measures to prevent radioactive rain from Chernobyl from reaching Moscow.”

What’s our weather modification program like in the U.S.?

“During the 1960s and ‘70s, the United States invested millions…simultaneously the U.S. military tried to use weather modification as a weapon in Project Popeye, during the Vietnam War…[but] a 2003 report from the National Academy of Sciences concluded…‘there is still no convincing scientific proof of the efficacy of international weather modification efforts.’”

Other meteorologists disagree and say “the evidence that it works in certain situations is very compelling.”

For thousands of years, mankind has looked to gain dominion over the environment. From mere charlatans to professional engineers and architects, human beings seek to control the world around them and in essence, their very fate. With modern technology and science, supported by planning and governance, we no longer need to rely on witch doctors or rain dancers to effect change. G-d has given us the resources and the tools to try and make the world a better place.

Weather Engineering and Enterprise Architecture

Democracy and Enterprise Architecture

A society that is open to thoughts, ideas, and expression is free to grow and mature. This is democracy.

The Wall Street Journal, 5 December 2007, reports that the Chinese government’s repression of ideas is being challenged through the widespread use of social and networking technology, including the use of the internet, blogging, messaging, and so on.

Generally speaking, without the ability to think and express freely, Chinese society’s development has been stifled. One Chinese blogger shares this parable to describe the effect of repression on Chinese society: “There was a kind of fish that lived deep in the ocean. It did not use its eyes very often, since it was used to the darkness there. So its eyesight degenerated gradually, until one day it became blind.”

While 162 million Chinese use the internet, the government continues to try to stymie their freedom and movement toward democracy. For example, the “Great Firewall of China”—the Chinese government’s filtering software—is used to censor website access.

In addition, there is the Chinese “mental firewall,” which is a form of self-censorship, based on “China’s Confucian values [that] teach respect for authority and the subordination of the individual to the family and state. In China’s rigid education system, young people rarely are encouraged to express their opinions. And people have learned to keep quiet as political orthodoxies changed with the wind over the decades…finding yourself on the wrong side could lead to punishment, including exile and jail.”

However, the power of technology to open societies—even those as entrenched as China’s—to free thinking and expression is compelling. Many “think that over time, the social-networking capabilities of the Internet will help Chinese people become more assertive about speaking their minds. Young Chinese have already made the Internet an integral part of their lives. It opens opportunities for them to express individuality and emotion in a way that didn’t exist before.”

In one survey, “73% of Chinese Internet users age 16 to 25 felt they could do and say things online that they couldn’t in the real world.” The Internet is opening up real possibilities for freedom and democracy that could only be dreamed off earlier.

From a User-centric enterprise architecture perspective, we as architects apply technology to solve our organization’s greatest business challenges in order to improve mission execution and drive results of operation. However, the use of technology goes way beyond our organizational boundaries and outcomes. Modern technologies based on the Internet are a major disruptive force that brings down the “great firewalls” and “mental walls” of China and other countries with similar restrictive regimes and traditions, and enables the free expression of ideas and the democratization of billions of peoples around the world. Therefore, while EA can be applied at an organizational level to drive enterprise outcomes, it can also be used on a macro-geopolitical level to drive political change, freedom, and human rights. The foundational principle of information-sharing and accessibility in enterprise architecture can be an important lever to drive social change.

Democracy and Enterprise Architecture