There is nothing noble in being superior to some other man.
True nobility is being superior to your former self.
Nov 232010
Nov 232010
Each year, U.S. State Chief Information Officers compile a list of what they feel are the important trends for the coming year. I always find it interesting as it generally speaks to the unique perspective of government technologists. As a result, it has closer relevance to my work here in Ottawa.
A. Priority Strategies, Management Processes and Solutions: Top 10 Final Ranking
1. Consolidation / Optimization: centralizing, consolidating services, operations, resources, infrastructure, data centers
2. Budget and Cost Control: managing budget reduction, strategies for savings, reducing or avoiding costs, activity based costing
3. Health Care: the Affordable Care Act, health enterprise architecture, assessment, partnering, implementation, health information exchange, technology solutions, Medicaid systems (planning, retiring, implementing, purchasing)
4. Cloud Computing: as a service delivery strategy; models, governance, service management, provisioning, security, privacy, data ownership
5. Shared Services: business models, sharing resources, services, infrastructure, independent of organizational structure
6. Governance: improving IT governance, data governance, partnering
7. Security: risk assessment, governance, authority and executive support; budget and resource requirements; insider threats; third party security practices as outsourcing increases; and security frameworks
8. Broadband and Connectivity: strengthening statewide connectivity, public safety wireless network, telehealth
9. Legacy modernization: enhancing, renovating, replacing, legacy platforms and applications, business process improvement
10. Data and Information Management: enhancing the role of data, information / intelligence, knowledge management
B. Priority Technologies, Applications and Tools Top 10 Final Ranking
1. Virtualization (servers, storage, computing, data center)
2. Cloud computing (software as a service, infrastructure, applications, storage)
3. Networking (voice and data communications, unified communications)
4. Legacy application modernization / renovation
5. Identity and access management
6. Document/Content/Records/E-mail management (active, repository, archiving, digital preservation)
7. Security enhancement tools
8. Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics applications
9. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
10. Social media and networking (Web 2.0 services, wikis, blogs, collaboration technologies, and social networking)
Nov 222010
“Many people feel that mass acceptance and smooth socialization are desirable life paths for a young adult… Many people are often wrong… Don’t bother being nice. Being popular and well liked is not in your best interest. Let me be more clear; if you behave in a manner pleasing to most, then you are probably doing something wrong. The masses have never been arbiters of the sublime, and they often fail to recognize the truly great individual. Taking into account the public’s regrettable lack of taste, it is incumbent upon you not to fit in.”
From her book Feel This Book co-written with Ben Stiller
Nov 222010
Tim Berners Lee:
The Web as we know it, however, is being threatened in different ways. Some of its most successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles. Large social-networking sites are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web. Wireless Internet providers are being tempted to slow traffic to sites with which they have not made deals. Governments—totalitarian and democratic alike—are monitoring people’s online habits, endangering important human rights.
If we, the Web’s users, allow these and other trends to proceed unchecked, the Web could be broken into fragmented islands. We could lose the freedom to connect with whichever Web sites we want. The ill effects could extend to smartphones and pads, which are also portals to the extensive information that the Web provides.
Why should you care? Because the Web is yours. It is a public resource on which you, your business, your community and your government depend. The Web is also vital to democracy, a communications channel that makes possible a continuous worldwide conversation. The Web is now more critical to free speech than any other medium. It brings principles established in the U.S. Constitution, the British Magna Carta and other important documents into the network age: freedom from being snooped on, filtered, censored and disconnected.
Yet people seem to think the Web is some sort of piece of nature, and if it starts to wither, well, that’s just one of those unfortunate things we can’t help. Not so. We create the Web, by designing computer protocols and software; this process is completely under our control. We choose what properties we want it to have and not have. It is by no means finished (and it’s certainly not dead). If we want to track what government is doing, see what companies are doing, understand the true state of the planet, find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, not to mention easily share our photos with our friends, we the public, the scientific community and the press must make sure the Web’s principles remain intact—not just to preserve what we have gained but to benefit from the great advances that are still to come.
Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality: Scientific American.
Nov 212010
Gertrude Bell. The Arabian Diaries, 1913-1914. Edited by Rosemary O’Brien. Syracuse University Press. 0815606729
Janet Starkey and Okasha El Daly, eds. Desert Travellers: From Herodotus to T.E. Lawrence. University of Durham. 0953970000
Dauril Alden. Charles R. Boxer: An uncommon life: Soldier, historian, teacher, collector, traveller. Lisbon: Fundacao Oriente. 9727850235
– Boxer (1904-2000) was a polymath whose life could be made into a book. And a great romance at the heart of it as well with the American Emily Hahn. Emily Hahn herself would make a fine biography. A note to myself is to search for her writings in the New Yorker and her book China To Me.
Lafcadio Hearn. Two Years in the French West Indies. Oxford. 1902669177
Isabella Tree. Sliced Iguana: Travels in Unknown Mexico. Hamish Hamilton. 024114051X
– this title got quite a good review in TLS (2001-07-27).
Mary Ashley Townsend. Here and There in Mexico. Ed. Ralph Lee Woodward Jr. Unviersity Press of Alabama.