____________________________________
Reed E. Hundt, You say you want a revolution, 2000 [ ]
p.131
Ann Lewis
“The Vice President has persuaded people to feel positively about technology,” she said. “This is a big change. Technology causes unpredictable change, and people don't like that. Change threatens jobs, produces anxiety. The elites believe in the benefits of innovation, but voters do not. Al has turned those attitudes around. He has increased America's confidence in the future.”
(Hundt, Reed E., 1948─, You say you want a revolution : a story of information age politics / Reed E. Hundt, 1. united states. telecommunications act of 1996., 2. telecommunication policy──united states., 3. information superhighway──government policy──united states., 4. internet (computer network)──government policy──united states., HE7781.H88 2000, 384.3'3'0973──dc21, 2000, )
____________________________________
Kevin Kelly, What technology wants, 2010 [ ]
p.194
Often we will invent a machine for a particular and limited purpose, and then, in what Neil Postman calls the Frankenstein syndrome, the invention's own agenda blossoms. "Once the machine is built," Postman writes, "we discover, always to our surprise——that it has ideas of its own; that it is quite capable not only of changing our habits but ... of changing our habits of mind." In this way, humans have become an adjunct to or, in Karl Marx's phrase, appendages of the machine.
p.196
In 1997, I interviewed [George] Lucas ... . ... [...] ... I asked him, "Do you think technology is making the world better or worse" Lucas's answer:
If you watch the curve of science and everything we know, it
shoots up like a rocket. We're on this rocket and we're going
perfectly vertical into the stars. But the emotional intelligence
of humankind is equally if not more important than
our intellectual intelligence. We're just as emotionally illiterate
as we were 5,000 years ago; so emotionally our line is
completely horizontal. The problem is the horizontal and
the vertical are getting farther and farther apart. And as
these things grow apart, there's going to be some kind of
consequence of that.
I think we underestimate the strain of that gap.
(Kelly, Kevin, 1952—, T14.5.K45 2010, 303.48'3—dc22, copyright © 2010)
(What technology wants / Kevin Kelly, 1. technology—social aspects., 2. technology and civilization., )
____________________________________
Charles Perrow, Normal accidents : living with high-risk technologies, 1999 [ ]
Risks from risky technologies are not borne equally by the different social classes; risk assessments ignore the social class distribution of risk.
p.310
Baruch Fischhoff, in a thoughtful examination of cost-benefit analysis (the article has the engaging title, “Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”), notes another consequence of the monetarization of social good by economists.14 Cost-benefit analysis is “mute with regard to distribution of wealth in society”, he notes. “Therefore, a project designed solely to redistribute a society's resources would, if analyzed, be found to be all costs (those involved in the transfer) and no benefits (since the total wealth remains unchanged).” Risks from risky technologies are not borne equally by the different social classes; risk assessments ignore the social class distribution of risk.
( Normal accidents : living with high-risk technologies / Charles Perrow, 1. industrial accidents., 2. technology--risk assessment., 3. accident., HD7262 P55 1999, 363.1--dc21, 1999, )
____________________________________
Vaclav Smil, Transforming the 20th century, 2006 [ ]
p.293
These new risks included many forms of environmental pollution (ranging from exposures to gases and particulates released by combustion of fossil fuels to contaminated water and long-lasting pesticide residues), the already-described transportation accidents (motor vehicles, airplanes, crude oil tankers), and the chance of major malfunctions of complex technical systems (radioactivity from nuclear electricity-generating plants, failed high-voltage transmission networks instantly depriving tens of millions of people of electricity).
At the same time, the overall level of everyday risks faced by an average citizen of an affluent country had substantially decreased.
(Smil, Vaclav., Transforming the 20th century: technical innovation and their consequences / Vaclav Smil., 1. technological innovation ── history ── 20th century, 2006, )
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Reader's digest., Family guide to natural medicine : how to stay healthy the natural way, 1993
Sometimes after 1960 the idea of a technological utopia faded, as people in developed countries began to see that science and technology created as many problems as they solved.
pp.8─15
introduction
why a book on natural medicine?
Dr. Andrew Weil, chief consultant for Family Guide to Natural Medicine, explains why alternative therapies are attracting so much attention, and how they mesh with orthodox medicine.
Healing is a natural process, common to all life. Wounds heal by themselves in people just as in animals and plants. If we want to foster healing and promote health, we should pay attention to the ways of nature and learn to encourage the body's own, innate mechanisms of self-repair. This is the basic principle of natural medicine. Regrettably, orthodox medicine has moved away from nature.
p.8
Sometimes after 1960 the idea of a technological utopia faded, as people in developed countries began to see that science and technology created as many problems as they solved. We were also forced to confront the limitations of our power to change many human ills. For example, as medicine succeeded in reducing the amount of sickness and premature death caused by infectious illness, it had to deal with more difficult kinds of illness prevalent in an aging population, such as chronic degenerative diseases and cancer. Orthodox medicine has no magic bullets for these conditions. Nor does it have effective treatments for viral infections, allergies and autoimmune diseases, mental illnesses, metabolic diseases, and functional and psychosomatic diseases.
(Family guide to natural medicine : how to stay healthy the natural way / Reader's digest., 1. alternative medicine., includes bibliographical references and index., R733.F36 1993, 615.5─dc20, )
____________________________________
"The shallows : what the Internet is doing to our brains" / Nicholas Carr.-1st ed.
[pp.210-211]
... "We shape our tools," observed the Jesuit priest and media scholar John Culkin in 1967, "and there after they shape us." 19
19. John M. Culkin, "A Schoolman's Guide to Marshall McLuhan," Saturday Review, March 18, 1967.
(Carr, Nicholas G.; 'The shallows', © 2011, 2010, [612.80285-dc22], published by Norton, )
____________________________________
Tim Wu, The Master Switch, 2010 [ ]
p.289
In Hindu mythology, deities and demons assume different incarnations to fight the same battles repeatedly.
p.289
It is the old conflict between the concepts of the open system and the closed, between the forces of centralized order and those of dispersed variety. The antagonists assume new forms, the general change, but essentially the same battles are fought over and over again.
pp.290-291
In 2006, Professor Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard made the startling prediction that over the next decade, the information industry would undertake a determined effort to replace the personal computer with a new generation of “information appliances.”18 He was, it turned out, exactly right.
18. These predictions form the thesis of Jonathan zittrain, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).
p.293
Tom Conlon of Popular Science
The owner of an iPod or iPad is in a fundamentally different position: his machine may have far more computational power than a PC of a decade ago, but it is designed for consumption, not creation. Or, as Conlon declared vehemently, “Once we replace the personal computer with a closed-platform device such as the iPad, we replace freedom, choice and the free market with oppression, censorship and monopoly.”
(Wu, Tim, The master switch : the rise and fall of information empires / Tim Wu., 1. telecommunication--history., 2. information technology--history., 2010 )
(The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, Tim Wu, 2010.)
____________________________________
1:25:12
College Lecture Series - Neil Postman - "The Surrender of Culture to Technology"
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=173
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=173
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlrv7DIHllE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlrv7DIHllE
College of DuPage
Published on Jun 3, 2013
A lecture delivered by Neil Postman on Mar. 11, 1997 in the Arts Center. Based on the author's book of the same title. Neil Postman notes the dependence of Americans on technological advances for their own security. Americans have come to expect technological innovations to solve the larger problems of mankind. Technology itself has become a national "religion" which people take on faith as the solution to their problems.
7 questions
1. what is the problem to which this technology is a solution?
2. whose problem is it?
3. suppose we solve this problem, and solve it decisively, what new problems might be created because we have solved the problem?
4. which people and what institutions might be most seriously harmed by a technological solution
5. what changes in language are being enforced by new technologies?
what is being gained and what is being lost by such changes?
6. what sort of people and institution acquire special economic and political power, because of technological change?
this question needs to be asked, because the transformation of a technology into medium always results in a realignment of economic and political power.
7. what alternative uses might be made of a technology the one proceeds here by assuming that any medium we have created is not necessarily the only one we might make of a particular technology
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=1035
1. what is the problem to which this technology is a solution?
now this question needs to be asked, because there are technologies that are not solution to any problem that a normal person would regard as significant
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=1440
2. whose problem is it?
but this question, whose problem is it, needs to be applied to any technologies. most technologies do solve some problem, but the problem may not be everybody's problem or even most people's problem. we need to be very careful in determining who will benefit from a technology, and who will pay for it. they are not always the same people.
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=1521
3. suppose we solve this problem, and solve it decisively, what new problems might be created because we have solved the problem?
the automobile solves some very important problems for most people
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=1740
4. which people and what institutions might be most seriously harmed by a technological solution
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=2259
5. what changes in language are being enforced by new technologies?
what is being gained and what is being lost by such changes?
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=2746
6. what sort of people and institution acquire special economic and political power, because of technological change?
this question needs to be asked, because the transformation of a technology into medium always results in a realignment of economic and political power.
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=2925
7. what alternative uses might be made of a technology the one proceeds here by assuming that any medium we have created is not necessarily the only one we might make of a particular technology
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=3037
1. what is the problem to which a technology claims to be the solution
2. whose problem is it
3. what new problems will be created because of solving an old one
4. which people in institutions will be most harmed
5. what changes in language are being promoted
6. what shifts in economic and political power are likely to result
7. what alternative media might be made from a technology
automobile, television, computer
the same blindness, no one is asking anything worth asking
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=3629
60:29 Tocqueville says in democracy in America
____________________________________
pp.78—79
Effective knowledge is professionalised knowledge, supported by a restricted acquaintance with useful subjects subservient to it.
This situation has its dangers. It produces minds in a groove. Each profession makes progress, but it is progress in its own groove. Now to be mentally in a groove is to live in contemplating a given set of abstractions. The groove prevents straying across country, and the abstraction abstracts from something to which no further attention is paid. But there is no groove of abstractions which is adequate for the comprehension of human life. Thus in the modern world, the celibacy of the medieval learned class has been replaced by a celibacy of the intellect which is divorced from the concrete contemplation of the complete facts.
——Alfred North Whitehead
(Quotations of wit and wisdom: know or listen to those who know / John W. Gardner & Francesca Gardner Reese, copyright © 1975, 808.882, ——, pp.78—79)
____________________________________
Evelyn Fox Keller, A feeling for the organism : the life and work of Barbara McClintock, 1983
pp.205-206
In McClintock's view, too restricted a reliance on scientific methodology invariably leads us into difficulty.
“We've been spoiling the environment just dreadfully and thinking we were fine, because we were using techniques of science. Then it turns into technology, and it's slapping us back because we did't think it through. We were making assumptions we had no right to make. From the point of view of how the whole thing actually worked, we knew how part of it worked .... We didn't even inquire, didn't even see how the rest was going on. All these other things were happening and we didn't see it.”
She cites the tragedy of Love Canal as one example, the acidification of the Adrirondacks Lakes as another. “We didn't think [things] through .... If you take the train up to New Haven ... and the wind is from the southeast, you find all of the smog from New York is going right up to New Haven .... We're not thinking it through, just spewing it out .... Technology is fine, but the scientists and engineers only partially think through their problems. They solve certain aspects, but not the total, and as a consequence it is slapping us back in the face very hard.”
(A feeling for the organism : the life and work of Barbara McClintock./ Evelyn Fox Keller., 1. McClintock, Barbara, 1902- ., 2. geneticists──united states──biography., QH439.2.M38K44 1983, 575.1'092'4, 10th anniversary edition, 1983, )
____________________________________
"The shallows : what the Internet is doing to our brains" / Nicholas Carr.-1st ed.
[p.33]
"We become, neurologically, what we think", echoing the first line in the work, "AS A MAN THINKETH" by James Allen, over one hundred years ago.
THE aphorism, "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he," not only embraces the whole of a man's being, but is so comprehensive as to reach out to every condition and circumstance of his life. A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.
[pp.28-29]
...
The New York University neuro-scientist Joseph LeDoux explains in his book 'Synaptic Self' that nature and nurture "actually speak the same langauge. They both ultimately achieve their mental and behavior effects by shaping the synaptic organization of the brain." 21
[p.29]
"Neurons seem to 'want' to receive input," explains Nancy Kanwisher of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research: "When their usual input disappears, they start responding to the next best thing." 23
[pp.211-212]
Even a tool as seemingly simple and benign as the map had a numbing effect. Our ancestors' navigational skills were amplified enormously by the cartographer's art. For the first time, people could confidently traverse lands and seas they'd never seen before--an advance that spurred a history-making expansion of exploration, trade, and warfare. But their native ability to comprehend a landscape, to create a richly detailed mental map of their surroundings, weakened. The map's abstract, two-dimensional representation of space interposed itself between the map reader and his perception of the actual land. As we can infer from recent studies of the brain, the loss must have had a physical component. When people came to rely on maps rather than their own bearings, they would have experienced a diminishment of the area of their hippocampus devoted to spatial representation. The numbing would have occurred deep in their neurons.
[pp.210-211]
... "We shape our tools," observed the Jesuit priest and media scholar John Culkin in 1967, "and there after they shape us." 19
19. John M. Culkin, "A Schoolman's Guide to Marshall McLuhan," Saturday Review, March 18, 1967.
Marshall McLuhan, who was Culkin's intellectual mentor, elucidated the ways our technologies at once strengthen and sap us. In one of the most perceptive, if least remarked, passages in 'Understanding Media,' McLuhan wrote that our tools end up "numbing" whatever part of our they "amplify." 20
20. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extension of Man, critical ed., W. Terrence Gordon (Corte Medera, CA: Gingko Press, 2003), 63-70.
When we extend some part of ourselves artificially, we also distance ourselves from the amplified part and its natural functions. When the power loom was invented, weavers could manufacture far more cloth during the course of a workday then they'd been able to make by hand, but they sacrificed some of their manual dexterity, not to mention some of their "feel" for fabric. Their fingers, in McLuhan's terms, became numb. Farmers, similarly, lost some of their feel for the soil when they began using mechanical harrows and plows. Today's industrial farm workers, sitting in his air-conditioned cage atop a gargantuan tractor, rarely touches the soil at all--though in a single day he can till a field that his hoe-wielding forebare could not have turned in a month. When we're behind the wheel of our car, we can go a far greater distance then we could cover on foot, but we lose the walker's intimate connection to the land.
(Carr, Nicholas G.; 'The shallows', © 2011, 2010, [612.80285-dc22], published by Norton, )
("The shallows : what the Internet is doing to our brains", Nicholas Carr., 1. Neuropsychology, 2. Internet-Physiological effect., 3. Internet-Psychological aspects., © 2011, 2010, [612.80285-dc22],)
____________________________________
Mind is the Master power that moulds and makes,
And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes
The tool of Thought, and, shaping what he wills,
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills:—
He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass:
Environment is but his looking-glass.
(The Project Gutenberg EBook of As a Man Thinketh, by James Allen)
(google or bing 'project gutenberg, as a man think' for online version of this TEXT)
____________________________________
____________________________________
Noam Chomsky
We live in a highly indoctrinated society where elementary truths are easily buried.
United States invaded South Vietnam
The military system, to a substantially extend, not totally, is a mechanism by which the general population is compelled to provide a subsidy to high technology industry.
____________________________________
Tim Wu, The Master Switch, 2010 [ ]
pp.9-10
But this book will focus on chronicling the turning points of the 20th century''s information landscape: those particular, decisive moments when a medium opens or closes. The pattern is distinctive. Every few decades, a new communications technology appears, bright with promise and possibility. It inspires a generation to dream of a better society, new forms of expression, alternative types of journalism. Yet each new technology eventually reveals its flaws, kinks, and limitations. For consumers, the technical novelty can wear thin, giving way to various kinds of dissatisfaction with the quality of content (which may tend toward the chaotic and vulgar) and the reliability or security of service. From industry's perspective, the invention my inspire other dissatisfactions: a threat to the revenues of existing information channels that the new technology make less essential, if not obsolete; a difficulty commoditizing (i.e., making a salable product out of) the technology's potential; or too much variation in standards or protocols of use to allow one to market a high quality product that will answer the consumers'dissatisfactions.
When these problems reach a critical mass, and a lost potential for substantial gain is evident, the market's invisible hand waves in some great mogul like Vail or band of them who promise a more orderly and efficient regime for the betterment of all users. Usually enlisting the federal government, this kind of mogul is special, for he defines a new type of industry, integrated and centralized. Delivering a better or more secure product, the mogul heralds a golden age in the life of the new technology. At its heart lies some perfected engine for providing a steady return on capital. In exchange for making the trains run on time (to hazard an extreme comparison), he gains a certain measure of control over the medium's potential for enabling individual expression and technical innovation--control such as the inventors never dreamed of, and necessary to perpetuate itself, as well as the attendant profits of centralization. This, too, is the Cycle.
(Wu, Tim, The master switch : the rise and fall of information empires / Tim Wu., 1. telecommunication--history., 2. information technology--history., 2010 )
(The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, Tim Wu, 2010.)
____________________________________
p.xxviii, p.217, p.218
p.xxviii
... When the performance of two or more competing products has improved beyond what the market demands, customers can no longer base their choice upon which is the higher performing product. The basis of product choice often evolves from functionality to reliability, then to convenience, and, ultimately, to price.
... [...] ...
In their efforts to stay ahead by developing competitively superior products, many companies don't realize the speed at which they are moving up-market, over-satisfying the needs of their original customers as they race the competition toward higher-performance, higher-margin markets. In doing so, they create a vacuum at lower price points into which competitors employing disruptive technologies can enter. Only those companies that carefully measure trends in how their mainstream customers USE their products can catch the points at which the basis of competition will change in the market they serve.
p.217
A product becomes a commodity within a specific market segment when the repeated changes in the basis of competition, as described above, complexly play themselves out, that is, when market needs on each attribute or dimension of performance have been fully satisfied by more than one available product. The performance oversupply framework may help consultants, managers, and researchers to understand the frustrated comments they regularly hear from salespeople beaten down in price negotiations with customers: "Those stupid guys are just treating our product like it was a commodity. Can't they see how much better our product is than the competition's?" It may, in fact, be the case that the product offerings of competitors in a market continue to be differentiated from each other. But differentiation loses its meaning when the features and functionality have exceed what the market demands.
p.218
Consider, for example, the product evolution model, called the 'buying hierarchy' by its creators, Windermere Associates of San Francisco, California, which describes as typical the following four phases: functionality, reliability, convenience, and price. Initially, when no available product satisfies the functionality requirements of the market, the basis of competition, or the criteria by which product choice is made, tends to be product 'functionality.' (Sometimes, as in disk drives, a market may cycle through several different functionality dimensions.) Once two or more products credibly satisfy the market's demand for functionality, however, customers can no longer base their choice of products on functionality, but tend to choose a product and vendor based on 'reliability.' As long as market demand for reliability exceeds what vendors are able to provide, customers choose products on this basis — and the most reliable vendors of the most reliable products earn a premium for it.
But when two or more vendors improve to the point that they more than satisfy the reliability demands by the market, the basis of competition shifts to 'convenience.' Customers will prefer those products that are the most convenient to use and those vendors that are most convenient to deal with. Again, as long as the market demand for convenience exceeds what vendors are able to provide, customers choose products on this basis and reward vendors with premium prices for the convenience they offer. Finally, when multiple vendors offer a package of convenient products and services that fully satisfies market demand, the basis of competition shifts to 'price.' The factor driving the transition from one phase of buying hierarchy to the next is performance oversupply.
(Innovator's dilemma, by Clayton M. Christensen, copyright © 1997, 2000, 658.4 Christen, p.xxviii, p.217, p.218)
____________________________________
Nathan Rosenberg, Inside the black box: technology and economics, 1982
pp.142-143
p.142
This paper, then, is a kind of preliminary reconnaissance, the beginning of an attempt to develop a conceptual framework that will improve our understanding of the connections between science and economic performance.
p.142
In view of the obvious and compelling importance of this subject, I offer only a token apology for the fact that this paper is, at best, only the first small step on a long intellectual journey. I will argue that technology influences scientific activity in numerous and pervasive ways. I will attempt to identify some of the most important categories of influence and to sharpen our understanding of the causal mechanisms at work.
p.142
Of course, the influence of certain technological concerns on the growth of scientific knowledge has long been recognized. Torricelli's demonstration of the weight of air in the atmosphere, a scientific breakthrough of fundamental importance, was an outgrowth of this attempt to design an improved pump.2 Sadi Carnot's remarkable accomplishment in creating the science of thermodynamics was an outgrowth of the attempt, a half century or so after Watt's great innovation, to understand what determined the efficiency of steam engines.3 Joule's discovery of the law of the conservation of energy grew out of an interest in alternative sources of power generation at his father's brewery.4
pp.142-143
Pasteur's development of the science of bacteriology emerged from his attempt to deal with problems of fermentation and putrefaction in the French wine industry. In all these cases, scientific knowledge of a wide generality grew out of a particular problem in a narrow context.
p.143
elemental point: Technology is itself a body of knowledge about certain classes of events and activities.
It is a knowledge of techniques, methods, and designs that work, and that work in a certain ways and with certain consequences, even when one cannot explain exactly why.
p.143
gives only a very limited sense of the nature and extent of the interplay between science and technology. Indeed, that sense is totally suppressed in the prevailing formulation of our time,
p.143
it is common to look at causality as running exclusively from science to technology, and in which it is common to think of technology as if it werereducible to the application of prior scientific knowledge.
p.143
Thus, it seems to be quite worthwhile to examine the science ─ technology interaction with greater care.
p.144
As a result, technology has served as an enormous repository of empirical knowledge to be scrutinized and evaluated by the scientist.
p.236
The point is that in certain areas, such as alternative energy or anti-pollution technologies, industry may simply lack sufficient R&D resources or the necessary market-generated incentives. In many industries and areas of substantial social need, we simply do not have the basic knowledge of scientific and technical phenomena to proceed intelligently; our limited understanding of such complex ecosystems as San Francisco bay, for example, or of the effects upon human health of long-term exposure to certain industrial wastes, greatly hampers the development of optimal antipollutant technologies and regulations. It is important to understand that the record of postwar American technical dynamism is a direct outgrowth of scientific and technical research in a very few areas (such as electronics), often funded and justified by defense requirements. This knowledge is clearly transferable in certain cases ─ semiconductors are an obvious example ─ to the civilian sector, but it is limited in its range of applicability. Integrated circuits will not immediately eradicate urban blight.
(Inside the black box./ Nathan Rosenberg, 1. technological innovations., 2. technology─social aspects., HC79.T4R673 1982, 338'.06, first published 1982, )
____________________________________
John Bartlett.──17th ed., Bartlett's familiar quotations, 2002
p.300:7
p.300
Giovanni Battista [Giambattista] Vico
1668─1744
7 The nature of things is nothing other than that they come into being at certain times and in certain ways. Wherever the same circumstances are present, the same phenomena arise and no others.
Scienza Nuova [1725]1
1 translated by Jules Michelet.
p.366:1
p.366:2
p.366
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1749─1832
1 Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.
Proverbs in prose
2 Doubts grows with knowledge.
Proverbs in prose
p.648
Émile Auguste Chartier [Alain]
1868─1951
3 Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when it's the only one we have.
Libres-propos
( Bartlett's familiar quotations : a collection of passages, phrases, and proverbs traced to their sources in ancient and modern literature / John Bartlett; edited by Justin Kaplan.──17th ed., rev. and enl., 1. quotation, English, PN6081.B27 1992, 808.88'2──dc20, 2002, )
____________________________________
____________________________________
May 14, 2012 Issue
When Giants Fail
What business has learned from Clayton Christensen.
By Larissa MacFarquhar
.... ... ....
“In the steel industry, as in your industry, there are tiers in the market,” he said. “At the bottom of the market is concrete reinforcing bar”—rebar. “Anyone can make rebar, but steel used to make appliances and cars”—sheet steel, at the top of the market—“is really tough to make. In the beginning, the mini mills were making steel from scrap, so the quality was crummy. The only market that would buy what the mini mills made was the rebar market, because there are almost no specs for rebar, and once you’ve buried it in cement you can’t verify if it made them anyway, so it was just the perfect market for a crummy product.
“As the mini mills attacked the rebar market, the reaction from the integrated mills was, man, they were happy to get out of rebar, because it was truly a dog-eat-dog commodity, and why would they ever want to defend the least profitable part of their business when, if they focussed their assets on angle iron and thicker bar and rod, the margins”—twelve per cent—“were so much better? So, as the mini mills expanded their capacity to make rebar, the integrated mills shut those lines down, and, as they chopped off the lowest-margin part of the product lines, their gross-margin profitability improved.”
The integrated mills and the mini mills were happy with each other until 1979. “That was the year that the mini mills succeeded in driving the last of the integrated mills out of rebar,” Christensen said. “Bam!—the price of rebar collapsed by twenty per cent. It turned out that there was a subtle fact that nobody had thought about, and that is that a low-cost strategy only works when you have a high-cost competitor. As soon as the integrated mills fled upmarket, it was just low-cost mini mill fighting against low-cost mini mill. So what were these poor suckers going to do? One of them looked upmarket and said, ‘Holy cow, if we could make better steel, we could make money again!’ So they attacked the next tier of the market. And the integrated mills? Man, were they happy to wash their hands of that business. Because it was truly such a dog-eat-dog commodity business, and why would you ever defend a twelve-per-cent-margin business when you could focus your assets upmarket on structural steel, where the eighteen-per-cent margins were so much more attractive? And so the very same thing happened again. And as the integrated mills lopped off the lowest part of their product line their profitability improved.
.... ... ....
Some people said that Christensen was a man with a hammer to whom everything looked like a nail. But he wasn’t the only one who saw nails everywhere. Not long after “The Innovator’s Dilemma” came out, Christensen got a call from William Cohen, at that time the Secretary of Defense under President Clinton, who asked him to talk to him and his staff about his research. Imagining a few second lieutenants and interns, Christensen was startled to see, upon entering Cohen’s office, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretaries of the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, and their Under-, Deputy, and Assistant Secretaries, all waiting to hear him. Bewildered, Christensen told his story about the integrated steel mills and the mini mills, until the chairman of the Joint Chiefs interrupted him and said, “You don’t have any idea why you’re here, do you?” Christensen admitted that he didn’t, and the chairman explained that, for him and his staff, the Soviets were sheet steel, terrorism was rebar, and they needed to figure out how to reconfigure their organization to capture the low end of the market. (Later, the government decided to set up an independent spinoff terrorism branch, in Norfolk, Virginia.)
.... ... ....
source:
https://www.textise.net/showText.aspx?strURL=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/05/14/when-giants-fail
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Robert M. Gates., Duty: memoirs of a secretary at war, 2014
p.551
The problem with the defense budget, as I saw it, is not its size but how it gets spent. It's not that we have too many planes, warships, submarines, tanks, and troops; rather, we load up every possible piece of equipment with every possible technology, and then they are so expensive, we can buy only a small number. Defense is not disciplined about eliminating programs that are in trouble, overdue, and over budget. The Pentagon spends far too much money on goods and services that make only a tangential (if any) contribution to military capabilities ── overhead, or “tail”.
p.552
health care costs alone have risen in a decade from about $2 billion to nearly $60 billion.
(Duty: memoirs of a secretary at war / by Robert M. Gates., 1. gates, robert michael, 1943─, 2. united states. department of defense──officials and employees──biography., 3. cabinet officers──united states──biography., 4. iraq war, 2003-2011──personal narratives., 5. afghan war, 2001──personal narratives, American., 6. war on terrorism, 2001-2009──personal narratives, American., 7. united states──military policy──decision making., 8. civil-military reations──united states──history──21 century., 9. united states──politics and government──2001-2009., 10. united states──politics and government──2009-, E897.4P48B76 2012, 355.6092──dc23, 2014, )
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p.73
“diagnosis of problems and opportunities, rather than recommended actions”.
For Marshall, the focus on diagnosis rather than solutions was especially significant.149
basis for diagnosis.
do we have problems?
if so, how big is it?
is it getting worse or better?
what are the underlying causes?
p.83
Pedagogically, Marshall believes that allowing others to work out how to do a net assessment is preferrable to him trying to explain it to them.
that of a shepherd guiding others' intellectual growth to help them arrive at their own conclusions through an intensive process.6
It must be learned experientially.
p.38
intellectual comfort zones rather than address harder questions.
pp.38-39
Observing this approach reinforced an enduring lesson for Marshall: mediocre answers to good questions were more important and useful than splendid answers to poor questions.114
source:
John Schutte, ‘Andrew W. Marshall and the Epistemic Community of the Cold War’, 2015, http://www.au.af.mil/au/aupress/digital/pdf/paper/dp_0016_schutte_casting_net_assessment.pdf
dp_0016_schutte_casting_net_assessment.pdf
Schutte, John M., 1976
Casting net assessment : Andrew W. Marshall and the epistemic community of the cold war / John M. Schutte, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF.
1. Marshall, Andrew W., 1921─ 2. United States. department of defense. director of net assessment ── biography. 3. united states. department of defense ── officials and employees ── biography. 4. rand corporation ── biography. 5. united states ── forecasting. 6. military planning ── united states ── history ── 20th century. 7. military planning ── united states ── history ── 21st century. 8. united states ── military policy. 9. strategy. 10. cold war.
title: Andrew W. Marshall and the epistemic community of the cold war.
UA23.6.S43 2014
355.0092 -- dc23
local filename: casting net assessment.txt
alternative short-cut: Andrew W. Marshall and the epistemic community of the cold war (2)
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Adam 1 and Adam 2, David Brooks
The lonely man of faith, 1965
Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik
7:00
An Architecture of the Soul: Adam I and Adam II
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKT9TApCYn0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKT9TApCYn0
K12 Education Program
May 6, 2015
“We live in a society that encourages us to think about how to have a great career but leaves many of us inarticulate about how to cultivate the inner life.”
David Brooks, “The Road to Character”
8:33
David Brooks - Adam 1 and Adam 2
https://youtu.be/PN8Yzxy11X0
https://youtu.be/PN8Yzxy11X0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN8Yzxy11X0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN8Yzxy11X0
My Water
Nov 9, 2015
David Brooks (author, NY Times columnist, Professor at Yale) delivers a compelling blueprint for the gamut of moral genius, drawing lessons from: Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Nietzsche, George Catlett Marshall, Jr., David Foster Wallace and other greats.
It is worth noting that although David Brooks has given this speech a dozen times he chooses to read from a paper.
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