It is not the critic that counts,
Nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled,
Or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man, who is actually in the arena,
Whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
Who strives valiantly;
Who errs and comes short again and again;
Who knows great enthusiasms, great devotions;
Who spends himself in a worthy cause;
Who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement?
And who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly,
So that his place shall never be with those timid souls
Who know neither victory nor defeat.
- Teddy Roosevelt
Friday, December 14, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
Its been such a wonderful time...
I has been such a long time since I last updated my blog.
There's been a lot of things going on. I joined a facebook to expand my social network. You can drop by and check it out at facebook.com.
Iam also busy doing some research on a social enterprise website. I created another blogsite zenduse.blogspot.com. ZendUse is not in production, im still gathering enough support and buy-in from different groups. I dont want to waste money putting up a portal that is not sustainable and will not make money at all.
I will continue my discussion about "Paperless Society". Just give me sometime.
There's been a lot of things going on. I joined a facebook to expand my social network. You can drop by and check it out at facebook.com.
Iam also busy doing some research on a social enterprise website. I created another blogsite zenduse.blogspot.com. ZendUse is not in production, im still gathering enough support and buy-in from different groups. I dont want to waste money putting up a portal that is not sustainable and will not make money at all.
I will continue my discussion about "Paperless Society". Just give me sometime.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
10 Information Security Domains for Paperless Recipe
Above image illlustrates the 10 areas of focus for information security courtesy of NCS.Double-click on the picture to see clearly.
By the way, its a course syllabus if you really are interested to become a Certified Information Systems Security Professional. NCS provides the requisite training and certification.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Can I Trust The Internet and Care About The Future?
The question that I asked myself is, can i trust the electronic transactions? How can i be sure that my privacy, the privacy of my personal information will not be compromised against possible cyber theft or intrusion into my electronic records? How secure is the technology infrastructure in a paperless environment?
Above picture says "Insurance goes paperless". Here is an excerpt from the said article:
"Two years ago, Singapore’s leading insurance company, NTUC Income Cooperative Limited embarked on transformative exercise to convert its 40 million pages of insurance policies and related documents into digital images. At the same time, it started working on the technology infrastructure and work processes to go fully paperless. Now, it is ready to give its agents the power to underwrite policies out in the field, with Intel® technology-based solutions."
I mentioned in my previous blog that Digital Signature Legislation is essential core in the paperless society. In fact it is the tipping point in the campaign to go paperless.
The second ingredient in our recipe for success is the readiness of the technology infrastructure and work processes to go fully paperless.
This is still a big challenge to the technology providers. Even an image copy of legal document you scanned and archived today, 10 years from now there may not be anymore compatible software to re-opened them again and view using another version of pdf viewer or MS Word. Your latest copy of MS Word today tomorrow they are already rendered obsolete.
In my next article I will be discussing about information security and information security management system in a shared data center context.
This is a dragging topic and full of technical jargons, but this is also a very important topic. Information security and security awareness is a topic that is less understood by so many people and yet this is the future.
Do you care about the future?
I am already thinking of organizing free information security awareness training for everyone and for every organization who are willing to listen.
Honestly, Im still figuring out how to make this complex topic simple, concrete and easy to understand.
This is coming up in next...
Friday, July 20, 2007
Paperless and Inkless Signature: Will it Stand In Court?
Digital signature is the essential core or the heart of paperless society and digital signature legislation is the "tipping point" in the campaign towards paperless.
Imagine the following situations:
Case 1: John Doe applied for membership in one the prestigious members club in town. His passport and other personal documents are scanned and stored in a document repository. His application is approved, and he can enjoy the privileges of a member.
A year later, someone disputed the authenticity of the document. They started to question the validity of the electronic document that was previously scanned. It is not valid because the electronic document is not admissible as evidence, it could be a fabricated document or tampered that cannot stand the test of legal scrutiny.
Without a law that guarantees the validity of electronic documents, John Doe or the Member's club chance of winning a case before the bench is slim.
Case 2: Company A and Company B entered into a contract for company A to buy from B a piece of land worth $1M and for B to deliver the said land after a lapse of one year. Company A clicked the submit button for approval and company B clicked accept button, the witnesses also clicked on the witnessed by button as well as the notary officer clicked on the button that says "notarized". All parties received an electronic copy of the contract. It says "This is a computer generated document no signature is required"
A year later the land is not delivered and the case landed in court. One of the parties argued that the contract is void from the start because it does not conform to the provisions of the statute of fraud which says for certain contract with amount greater than say for example '$5000.00" to be valid it must be in writing, signed by both parties and they also swear before a notary public that the contents are true, blah blah blah, blah blah blah.
Without a law that guarantees the non-repudiation of an electronic transaction or contract, and without a legal framework for enforcing it, company A's case in civil court is dead on arrival, or it will be a long and costly battle in the court of law.
I said, its a tipping point whenever a country has already enacted a law, such as the "Electronic Transaction Act" of Singapore, that will guarantee the legality of electronic documents and the validity of paperless and inkless signature. The reason is quite obvious, some companies or even individuals can be swayed to go paperless because they know that their rights are protected by law. Another reason is, sometimes laws or regulatory requirements dictate where companies and individuals are supposed to be going. The digital signature law adds more weight and pressure for societies to accept paperless initiatives.
I need more cases or scenerios to build up. This will enable the law makers make intelligent decision and come out with quality legislation.
Any volunteers? I believe we need people to voice out more possible cases of disputes arising out of the digital signature law or so called "Electronic Transaction Act" and introduce incremental improvement.
By the way, here is an article about the signing of the "Millennium Digital Commerce Act of 2000" written sometime on 30 June 2000 from Domino News:
By Eric B. Parizo, Asst. News Editor
U.S. President Bill Clinton signed the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, more commonly known as the digital signature bill.
The new law will fully legalize contracts signed over the Internet, using public and private key-encryption technology, primarily featuring XML code, to identify users by unique digital signatures.
Digital signature technology is nothing new to Lotus Notes and Domino users, but Domino product marketing manager Paris Vakili said the government is catching on to what her company has known for some time.
"With a lot of e-commerce activity, it would be good to have a definitive, around the clock ability to secure documents and take advantage of technology that exists today," Vakili said.
Notes and Domino users have had the ability to include digital signatures within documents for over six years.
The technology works like this: A user can add a signature to a document, using the high-level encryption within the Notes/Domino environment.
If the document is sent in or as a mail message, another user can then digitally verify the document's signature by examining the sender's private key information and the electronic trail, or hash, that is sent along with the document.
Unlike other applications, Vakili said the way Notes and Domino are designed, users can utilize digital signature technology at the most basic levels.
"I believe that most applications do provide digital signatures, but again, with Notes and Domino, because our collaborative environment, you could actually take this level of security to the field and section and document level," she said.
The new law has been seen mainly as a boost for e-commerce at a time when many dot-coms are struggling. Domino users will find it beneficial as well.
For instance, if multiple Notes users in varied locations needed to securely sign a database document, not only does the environment allow for it, but the gray area of legality has also been removed.
"If you're creating a workflow application, your database designer would be able to take advantage of this technology and design the workflow application around it," Vakili said.
While viruses are a constant threat, and some speculate the new law does not take virus attacks into consideration, Vakili said Notes users have few reasons to worry.
"Actually, [with] Lotus Notes, because of our integrated security... any virus would not be able to work around the security, in a sense that it would be able to prevent any mail message from being validated," she said.
Mobile security is also of little concern. Mobile devices with the ability to access a regular Domino server can not only submit and receive digital signatures, but also feature the same virus protection.
Today, the big question is, what happend to Lotus Notes/Domino now? Im just curious. :)
Imagine the following situations:
Case 1: John Doe applied for membership in one the prestigious members club in town. His passport and other personal documents are scanned and stored in a document repository. His application is approved, and he can enjoy the privileges of a member.
A year later, someone disputed the authenticity of the document. They started to question the validity of the electronic document that was previously scanned. It is not valid because the electronic document is not admissible as evidence, it could be a fabricated document or tampered that cannot stand the test of legal scrutiny.
Without a law that guarantees the validity of electronic documents, John Doe or the Member's club chance of winning a case before the bench is slim.
Case 2: Company A and Company B entered into a contract for company A to buy from B a piece of land worth $1M and for B to deliver the said land after a lapse of one year. Company A clicked the submit button for approval and company B clicked accept button, the witnesses also clicked on the witnessed by button as well as the notary officer clicked on the button that says "notarized". All parties received an electronic copy of the contract. It says "This is a computer generated document no signature is required"
A year later the land is not delivered and the case landed in court. One of the parties argued that the contract is void from the start because it does not conform to the provisions of the statute of fraud which says for certain contract with amount greater than say for example '$5000.00" to be valid it must be in writing, signed by both parties and they also swear before a notary public that the contents are true, blah blah blah, blah blah blah.
Without a law that guarantees the non-repudiation of an electronic transaction or contract, and without a legal framework for enforcing it, company A's case in civil court is dead on arrival, or it will be a long and costly battle in the court of law.
I said, its a tipping point whenever a country has already enacted a law, such as the "Electronic Transaction Act" of Singapore, that will guarantee the legality of electronic documents and the validity of paperless and inkless signature. The reason is quite obvious, some companies or even individuals can be swayed to go paperless because they know that their rights are protected by law. Another reason is, sometimes laws or regulatory requirements dictate where companies and individuals are supposed to be going. The digital signature law adds more weight and pressure for societies to accept paperless initiatives.
I need more cases or scenerios to build up. This will enable the law makers make intelligent decision and come out with quality legislation.
Any volunteers? I believe we need people to voice out more possible cases of disputes arising out of the digital signature law or so called "Electronic Transaction Act" and introduce incremental improvement.
By the way, here is an article about the signing of the "Millennium Digital Commerce Act of 2000" written sometime on 30 June 2000 from Domino News:
By Eric B. Parizo, Asst. News Editor
U.S. President Bill Clinton signed the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, more commonly known as the digital signature bill.
The new law will fully legalize contracts signed over the Internet, using public and private key-encryption technology, primarily featuring XML code, to identify users by unique digital signatures.
Digital signature technology is nothing new to Lotus Notes and Domino users, but Domino product marketing manager Paris Vakili said the government is catching on to what her company has known for some time.
"With a lot of e-commerce activity, it would be good to have a definitive, around the clock ability to secure documents and take advantage of technology that exists today," Vakili said.
Notes and Domino users have had the ability to include digital signatures within documents for over six years.
The technology works like this: A user can add a signature to a document, using the high-level encryption within the Notes/Domino environment.
If the document is sent in or as a mail message, another user can then digitally verify the document's signature by examining the sender's private key information and the electronic trail, or hash, that is sent along with the document.
Unlike other applications, Vakili said the way Notes and Domino are designed, users can utilize digital signature technology at the most basic levels.
"I believe that most applications do provide digital signatures, but again, with Notes and Domino, because our collaborative environment, you could actually take this level of security to the field and section and document level," she said.
The new law has been seen mainly as a boost for e-commerce at a time when many dot-coms are struggling. Domino users will find it beneficial as well.
For instance, if multiple Notes users in varied locations needed to securely sign a database document, not only does the environment allow for it, but the gray area of legality has also been removed.
"If you're creating a workflow application, your database designer would be able to take advantage of this technology and design the workflow application around it," Vakili said.
While viruses are a constant threat, and some speculate the new law does not take virus attacks into consideration, Vakili said Notes users have few reasons to worry.
"Actually, [with] Lotus Notes, because of our integrated security... any virus would not be able to work around the security, in a sense that it would be able to prevent any mail message from being validated," she said.
Mobile security is also of little concern. Mobile devices with the ability to access a regular Domino server can not only submit and receive digital signatures, but also feature the same virus protection.
Today, the big question is, what happend to Lotus Notes/Domino now? Im just curious. :)
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Paperless Society:Recipe for Success
"Philo Farnsworth invented television in 1927, but it was David Sarnoff who created television broadcasting to bring black-and-white television to the consumer in 1939. He developed a successful business that put together television, cameras, broadcast stations, program content, and advertising. Farnsworth invented a device, while Sarnoff was the innovator who put all the pieces together to create an industry." - Curtis R. Carlson,et.al. 1
In today's period of global warming. In today's era of knowledge-based organizations and in today's world of discontinuous change, all the ingredients necessary to achieve a paperless environment are already in place. We just need to develop a business model to put the scattered pieces together and create an industry.
The following ingredients are necessary to make this dream a reality:
1. Digital Signature Legislation
2. ISMS Certified Data Centers with Shared Paperless Services audited twice a year by ISO/IEC 27001:2005(E) certified auditors
3. Self Service Portals for Paperless Transactions (with push and/or pull mechanisms)
4. Workflow System and Document Management Systems in every office
5. Federated Workflow Engine for Supply Chain Integration (for Logistics and Communications Social Networks)
6. Convergence of New Media Technologies, Knowledge Management Services, and webcast services ( for Knowledge Sharing, Problem Solving and R&D Social Networks)
7. Personal Paperless Systems in every home and office
8. Communities of Practice
I will discuss each one of the above in my next blog.
Erratum:
It was Paul Nipkow who first invented the television in 1884.
Footnote:
Curtis R Carlson & Willliam W. Wilmot, "Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want", page 23
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Coming up next....
What are the necessary ingredients to make paperless society a reality? What are the procedures to mix and blend the ingredients and generate a desired business outcome?
Personal Paperless Systems
I mentioned in my previous article on "Butterfly Effect" that there are two ways of initiating small changes that could possibly evolve into big and meaningful outcome over time, one is through corporate paperless initiatives and the other one is through personal paperless systems.
I already discussed two initiatives that I worked on as part of my process study consultancy work, and now they are in the development stage. The customer portal for 1-NET is launched recently, its backend workflow engine is a work-in-progress. The other one is the Members Club Paperless Office Project which i believe is now in the second phase.
Personal Paperless Systems is something new. Something that does not exist at the moment although the enabling mechanisms are all in place. Im thinking of setting up another blog exclusive for this topic.
Creating a customer need from scratch and take lead is not easy because in the first place the customer does not have needs for it, society doesnt care about it. So the only way for the need to surface is to articulate how it can add value to the customers - to create a compelling necessity to use it and exponentially, and dramatically become a necessity. Something that is challenging and risky for investors as well.
When someone asked a Revlon salesman on what he is actually selling, the salesman replied "We are not selling cosmetics, we are selling hope". Probably hope that one day, an ugly face will turn into an angel face. (lol)
Similarly, if you ask me what is this Personal Paperless System that I am selling, my answer is quick and easy, I am not selling a gadget or another technology or software, what I am selling is a reassurance. A reassurance that when we move on to paperless society we make sure that we dont go back to our old habits - our addiction to paper. This is what the personal paperless system is all about. A system that I hope will become a consumer product not for entertainment and for daydreaming but a system that will guide anyone who uses it. A paddle and a canoe that you can use to navigate the digital corridor in a paperless way.
I will discuss this in great detail in another blog site. Meanwhile I will continue my discourse on paperless society. The necessary components to make it happen and prepare a recipe for success.
"When we wake up in the morning, we have two simple choices. Go back to sleep and dream, or wake up and chase those dreams." - pravsworld.com
I already discussed two initiatives that I worked on as part of my process study consultancy work, and now they are in the development stage. The customer portal for 1-NET is launched recently, its backend workflow engine is a work-in-progress. The other one is the Members Club Paperless Office Project which i believe is now in the second phase.
Personal Paperless Systems is something new. Something that does not exist at the moment although the enabling mechanisms are all in place. Im thinking of setting up another blog exclusive for this topic.
Creating a customer need from scratch and take lead is not easy because in the first place the customer does not have needs for it, society doesnt care about it. So the only way for the need to surface is to articulate how it can add value to the customers - to create a compelling necessity to use it and exponentially, and dramatically become a necessity. Something that is challenging and risky for investors as well.
When someone asked a Revlon salesman on what he is actually selling, the salesman replied "We are not selling cosmetics, we are selling hope". Probably hope that one day, an ugly face will turn into an angel face. (lol)
Similarly, if you ask me what is this Personal Paperless System that I am selling, my answer is quick and easy, I am not selling a gadget or another technology or software, what I am selling is a reassurance. A reassurance that when we move on to paperless society we make sure that we dont go back to our old habits - our addiction to paper. This is what the personal paperless system is all about. A system that I hope will become a consumer product not for entertainment and for daydreaming but a system that will guide anyone who uses it. A paddle and a canoe that you can use to navigate the digital corridor in a paperless way.
I will discuss this in great detail in another blog site. Meanwhile I will continue my discourse on paperless society. The necessary components to make it happen and prepare a recipe for success.
"When we wake up in the morning, we have two simple choices. Go back to sleep and dream, or wake up and chase those dreams." - pravsworld.com
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Corporate Paperless Initiatives: A Paperless Office Case for a Members Club in SG
My first experience in projects involving the implementation of paperless office is that of a private members club in Singapore. This was my first external engagement as project manager of 1-Net Singapore Pte Ltd. It took almost one month to complete the entire study between the period from August and September 2006.
For the stakeholders of the club, the main goal is to do away with the voluminous paper-based forms that piles up every year, archived and retained in the storage for at least seven (7) years and occupies huge storage space.
Their objectives in going paperless consisted of: (a) streamlining the process of form submission for the key processes identified, eliminating waste in the form of non-value adding activities, minimizing non-value adding paper handling cost, reducing cycle time, and eliminating redundant activities; and (2) reduce the amount of paper-based forms generated by various processes minimizing costly office space specially so when the cost of office space in Singapore is not cheap.
The study is completed in one month and there were two significant results: (1) we were able to surface all those processes and procedures both documented and undocumented. Undocumented processes are tacit knowledge that employees may have kept in their minds and sometimes employees (not particular to the organization) tend to have limited understanding of their process; and (2) a business requirements statement that spells the business justification for going paperless e.i. the minimum and maximum investment cost that the company may choose to incur in going paperless, the benefits in terms of cost savings and return on investments.
Some of the members of the management committee raised valid concerns in going paperless. The first of these concerns is the practicality of implementing it across all processes, e.g. (a) Do we need to use online form submission just to request for a purchase of 1 rim of A-4 size computer paper when its value is only SGD6.00? (b) Supporting documents, such as passport, which comes along with the membership application form, is it legally acceptable to submit it in electronic image format? (c) Other issues such as what will happen if the business becomes heavily dependent on computerized system, what if one day the system just bogs down, how do we go back to manual process?, and (d) the cost of maintaining the application over a period of 5 to 6 years before it reaches its zero book value and its requirement for upgrade.
For this purpose, I reserve my own personal comments to the above questions and leave it to the succeeding discussions. Meanwhile, the result of my presentation to the board was very successful. Most of the committee members agreed to embrace paperless and accepted the process study outcome. The next step for them was to look for vendors on workflow system with document management capability and development work integrating the workflow solution with their existing portal and finance applications. They will use the BRS document as requirements specification for their vendors. As of this writing, the club already engaged the services of one the software services company in Singapore for the next phase of the project and that is the implementation of the paperless office according to the specifications that the team prepared in phase I.
For our part, the scope of our work is limited to the process study. Thanks to my green belt Six Sigma training from 1-Net, I used the DMAIC methodology as framework in facilitating the understanding of their ‘as-is’ processes, mapping the ‘to-be’ processes and prepared the cost-benefit analysis which is basically the business justification in going paperless.
For the stakeholders of the club, the main goal is to do away with the voluminous paper-based forms that piles up every year, archived and retained in the storage for at least seven (7) years and occupies huge storage space.
Their objectives in going paperless consisted of: (a) streamlining the process of form submission for the key processes identified, eliminating waste in the form of non-value adding activities, minimizing non-value adding paper handling cost, reducing cycle time, and eliminating redundant activities; and (2) reduce the amount of paper-based forms generated by various processes minimizing costly office space specially so when the cost of office space in Singapore is not cheap.
The study is completed in one month and there were two significant results: (1) we were able to surface all those processes and procedures both documented and undocumented. Undocumented processes are tacit knowledge that employees may have kept in their minds and sometimes employees (not particular to the organization) tend to have limited understanding of their process; and (2) a business requirements statement that spells the business justification for going paperless e.i. the minimum and maximum investment cost that the company may choose to incur in going paperless, the benefits in terms of cost savings and return on investments.
Some of the members of the management committee raised valid concerns in going paperless. The first of these concerns is the practicality of implementing it across all processes, e.g. (a) Do we need to use online form submission just to request for a purchase of 1 rim of A-4 size computer paper when its value is only SGD6.00? (b) Supporting documents, such as passport, which comes along with the membership application form, is it legally acceptable to submit it in electronic image format? (c) Other issues such as what will happen if the business becomes heavily dependent on computerized system, what if one day the system just bogs down, how do we go back to manual process?, and (d) the cost of maintaining the application over a period of 5 to 6 years before it reaches its zero book value and its requirement for upgrade.
For this purpose, I reserve my own personal comments to the above questions and leave it to the succeeding discussions. Meanwhile, the result of my presentation to the board was very successful. Most of the committee members agreed to embrace paperless and accepted the process study outcome. The next step for them was to look for vendors on workflow system with document management capability and development work integrating the workflow solution with their existing portal and finance applications. They will use the BRS document as requirements specification for their vendors. As of this writing, the club already engaged the services of one the software services company in Singapore for the next phase of the project and that is the implementation of the paperless office according to the specifications that the team prepared in phase I.
For our part, the scope of our work is limited to the process study. Thanks to my green belt Six Sigma training from 1-Net, I used the DMAIC methodology as framework in facilitating the understanding of their ‘as-is’ processes, mapping the ‘to-be’ processes and prepared the cost-benefit analysis which is basically the business justification in going paperless.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
The Butterfly Effects
It is not an easy campaign to change a global mindset over night, even if we want to change twice. We can only introduce small meaningful changes that may eventually have butterfly effects.
The term butterfly effect refers to the idea that a butterfly’s wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that ultimately causes a tornado to appear (but not prevent a tornado from appearing). The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to a large-scale phenomenon. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different. 9
The butterfly effect supports the theory of strong outcomes base on small initial conditions. Small changes evolve into big and meaningful change over time.
This paper prescribes two ways of initiating small changes that could evolve into big and meaningful outcomes over time: (1) Corporate Paperless Initiatives - as a corporate programme by aligning process improvement with paperless office, and (2) Personal Paperless systems - as individuals by changing old habits of consuming papers and using a system of managing information or knowledge at personal level and in a paperless way.
I will be discussing them in details in my next blog.
Reference:
9. http://www.answers.com/topic/butterfly-effect-2?cat=technology
The term butterfly effect refers to the idea that a butterfly’s wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that ultimately causes a tornado to appear (but not prevent a tornado from appearing). The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to a large-scale phenomenon. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different. 9
The butterfly effect supports the theory of strong outcomes base on small initial conditions. Small changes evolve into big and meaningful change over time.
This paper prescribes two ways of initiating small changes that could evolve into big and meaningful outcomes over time: (1) Corporate Paperless Initiatives - as a corporate programme by aligning process improvement with paperless office, and (2) Personal Paperless systems - as individuals by changing old habits of consuming papers and using a system of managing information or knowledge at personal level and in a paperless way.
I will be discussing them in details in my next blog.
Reference:
9. http://www.answers.com/topic/butterfly-effect-2?cat=technology
The Process called "Changing Twice"
I don’t want to sound philosophical and too academic but I feel that this is the only way for us to understand the reality of our addiction to paper, and from here we develop a strategy for change.
In his book “The Forgotten Half of Change: Achieving Greater Creativity Through changes in Perception”, Luc De Brabandere discussed in great detail the concept of change, people’s resistance to change, and the principle of changing twice as popularized by the Palo Alto School. I would like to paraphrase and quote Luc De Brabandere in his inspiring knowledge works and relate his discussion of change to our discourse on change towards paperless society, here it is: 8
“According to Palo Alto School, there are two kinds of change. The first change has to do with reality. This kind of change called type 1 is produced within a system that stays the same. If it modifies a component, it still follows the rules. Retroactive feedback protects the system and helps it keep its balance.”
“The second change, however, is the one that really counts, the change in perception. For it to happen, at least one of the rules of the system – a hypothesis, a judgment, or a stereotype – has to be broken. This Type 2 change is sudden, sometimes unforeseen, and leads to a new representation of reality.”
“These two types of change are totally dissimilar. Type 1 is continuous, type 2 is discontinuous; we tend to go on seeing things in the same way until one day, quite suddenly and with a mental rupture, we see it differently. Take a personal relationship, for instance. It may deteriorate slowly over months or years without your being aware of any change. Then suddenly it hits you: its over. How often have you said that a child is growing up quickly when, of course, those extra ten inches were not just added the night before.”
“One change is possible without the other, but Palo Alto went a step further. If you want to change, you have to change twice. You not only need to change the reality of your situation, you also need to change your perception of this reality.”
The following examples are illustrated:
“If a president of a bank wants to merge with another bank, he has to organize a double change. The president can start by merging reality – computers, accounting system, and so on, which must be compatible (type 1). But its not enough. As long as the employees still see themselves as ex-employees of the old banks, the new bank doesn’t exist (Type 2).”
“Similarly, a company is not a world company unless everyone sees it as one company, not a company of diverse national offices drawn together under one banner. The efficiency of a computer system is a matter of the quality of the system multiplied by the desire of a people to use it. The quality is a reality, the desire is a perception; If one of two is missing – if you have an excellent system no one wants to use, or the other way around – you have a failure.”
I took cognizant of this fundamental principle or shall I say “social psychology of change”, or the two-steps process of change, and reflect on my previous research on paperless society being just a myth.
If we want to change the reality of our addiction to paper and begin on a serious journey to a paperless environment by reducing our dependence on it, we also need humanity to change its perception that paperless society is not a “myth”. The constant threats of global warming, climate change and rising sea levels are all indications that sooner or later the cost of pulp and paper will shoot up to an irreversible level and, one day quite suddenly we are forced to accept the inconvenient truth- no more papers to consume.
Reference:
8
8. Luc De Branbandere, "The Forgotten Half of Change",Dearborn Trade Publishing.2005.
In his book “The Forgotten Half of Change: Achieving Greater Creativity Through changes in Perception”, Luc De Brabandere discussed in great detail the concept of change, people’s resistance to change, and the principle of changing twice as popularized by the Palo Alto School. I would like to paraphrase and quote Luc De Brabandere in his inspiring knowledge works and relate his discussion of change to our discourse on change towards paperless society, here it is: 8
“According to Palo Alto School, there are two kinds of change. The first change has to do with reality. This kind of change called type 1 is produced within a system that stays the same. If it modifies a component, it still follows the rules. Retroactive feedback protects the system and helps it keep its balance.”
“The second change, however, is the one that really counts, the change in perception. For it to happen, at least one of the rules of the system – a hypothesis, a judgment, or a stereotype – has to be broken. This Type 2 change is sudden, sometimes unforeseen, and leads to a new representation of reality.”
“These two types of change are totally dissimilar. Type 1 is continuous, type 2 is discontinuous; we tend to go on seeing things in the same way until one day, quite suddenly and with a mental rupture, we see it differently. Take a personal relationship, for instance. It may deteriorate slowly over months or years without your being aware of any change. Then suddenly it hits you: its over. How often have you said that a child is growing up quickly when, of course, those extra ten inches were not just added the night before.”
“One change is possible without the other, but Palo Alto went a step further. If you want to change, you have to change twice. You not only need to change the reality of your situation, you also need to change your perception of this reality.”
The following examples are illustrated:
“If a president of a bank wants to merge with another bank, he has to organize a double change. The president can start by merging reality – computers, accounting system, and so on, which must be compatible (type 1). But its not enough. As long as the employees still see themselves as ex-employees of the old banks, the new bank doesn’t exist (Type 2).”
“Similarly, a company is not a world company unless everyone sees it as one company, not a company of diverse national offices drawn together under one banner. The efficiency of a computer system is a matter of the quality of the system multiplied by the desire of a people to use it. The quality is a reality, the desire is a perception; If one of two is missing – if you have an excellent system no one wants to use, or the other way around – you have a failure.”
I took cognizant of this fundamental principle or shall I say “social psychology of change”, or the two-steps process of change, and reflect on my previous research on paperless society being just a myth.
If we want to change the reality of our addiction to paper and begin on a serious journey to a paperless environment by reducing our dependence on it, we also need humanity to change its perception that paperless society is not a “myth”. The constant threats of global warming, climate change and rising sea levels are all indications that sooner or later the cost of pulp and paper will shoot up to an irreversible level and, one day quite suddenly we are forced to accept the inconvenient truth- no more papers to consume.
Reference:
8
8. Luc De Branbandere, "The Forgotten Half of Change",Dearborn Trade Publishing.2005.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Paper Consumption Survey in Singapore
by Spire Research and Consulting
In August 25, 2005, Spire Research and Consulting came out with a press release entitled “A Paperless Society – A Distant Dream?” It says only 12 in 100 companies in Singapore says paper consumption dropping, almost 90% have no guidelines on paper use. Here I quote:
“Despite the proliferation of document management technologies and increasing public awareness of the environmental costs of de-forestation, paper consumption in Asia is rising at a steady pace. Within the next five years, this region is expected to account for one-third of global consumption. A recent survey of 100 companies in Singapore conducted in May-June 05 by Spire Research and Consulting, the leader in Asia-Pacific strategic market intelligence, found that:
1. Only 12 percent of offices noticed a drop in their paper consumption in the last two years
2. 37 percent noticed that paper consumption had remained at the same level during this period
3. 51 percent noticed that paper consumption had increased during this period
The sample consisted of 37 companies with staff strength less than 30, 31 companies with staff strength between 30 to 100 and 32 companies with staff strength of above 100. Survey respondents consisted of executives with knowledge of and/or responsibility for paper purchasing patterns in each company.
The survey also revealed that paper-purchasing behavior is similar irrespective of the size of the organization. Individual departments, each with up to 25-30 personnel, order paper independently. Rarely do paper-conservation initiatives seriously impact ordering behavior.”
Conclusion on "Paperless Society literature survey"
After foraging about 37 articles from the World Wide Web and other reading materials from the libarary, I came to conclude that there are three reasons why paperless society is a myth and will continue to be so: (1) People still don’t trust the internet or the computer systems – they believe that personal privacy will be compromised if we depend too much on computers for our daily information needs (information security is a major concern), (2) We are addicted to Paper, and (3) Technology is not cheap when two-third of the world’s population is not yet reached by electricity.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Words of Wisdom for Entrepreneurs
It is not the critic that counts,
Nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled,
Or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man, who is actually in the arena,
Whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
Who strives valiantly;
Who errs and comes short again and again;
Who knows great enthusiasms, great devotions;
Who spends himself in a worthy cause;
Who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement?
And who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly,
So that his place shall never be with those timid souls
Who know neither victory nor defeat.
- Teddy Roosevelt
Nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled,
Or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man, who is actually in the arena,
Whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
Who strives valiantly;
Who errs and comes short again and again;
Who knows great enthusiasms, great devotions;
Who spends himself in a worthy cause;
Who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement?
And who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly,
So that his place shall never be with those timid souls
Who know neither victory nor defeat.
- Teddy Roosevelt
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Knowledge Works at the Velocity of Light
I wrote this article sometime back in August 2005.
I copied and paste it from my long forgotten blog with url: knowledgewerks.blogspot.com
I find this relevant to my discourse about Paperless Society. Why? Because I say so.....
Here you go:
Introduction
Electronic documents, paper-based records and journals, emails, images, voice and video recordings are today’s most critical sources of actionable information. They are assets scattered around your company, your employees’ drawers, mail boxes, shared folders, Internet, PDA’s and even hand phones. How to get into those drawers without your employee accusing you of lurking into her privacy or even if you succeed in surreptitiously capturing her hidden knowledge, understanding its context and transforming it into useful and actionable information for your particular use is definitely another challenge.
Even documents that reside in shared folders can get lost physically, or lose in its context simply because the meaning attached to it may no longer be understood in the same level of thinking when it was first created – the event that triggers the creation of such information is incomprehensible in the current applicable context (a natural barrier to knowledge acquisition and transfer).
Explicit knowledge can travel at the speed of light into your thoughts and echoes on into the company’s boardroom swift and easy.
But for that to happen and to achieve such feat, the company’s organizational memory must be designed and organized in such a way that the mechanical components that exist in between the automation boundaries must be mitigated if not totally eliminated.
Designing and managing organizational memory (explicit knowledge) requires six areas to work on:
How you manage your electronic documents
How you manage your emails
How you manage the information you retrieved from the web.
How you manage your existing communities of practice and workgroups.
How you manage your “hard-copy” records, journals and legal documents; and
How you manage and integrate the above into your evolving and ever-changing business workflows.
Organizational memory can be compared to a computer’s critical component called RAM. Bytes of information travel at gigahertz speed or nanoseconds. But once, the data goes into the computer’s hard disk, the speed slows down significantly. Why? Hard disks are mechanical parts of the computer and all mechanical objects are subject to the laws of physics (friction, gravity, force, surface tension, etc). RAM chips are pure semiconductor components of the computer – no moving mechanical component so that bits and bytes of information travel at light speed.
Organizational memory is the RAM chips of an organization. But like any other RAM chips it needs the right INPUT in a well designed and categorized manner, a logical stream of processing such input (pass through work flows, business logic, algorithms etc), in order to produce desired OUTPUT instantly.
An individual is said to have achieved unconscious competence in doing certain job, if the thought processes and judgment calls linked to the mechanical parts of his body such as his hands and feet can move swiftly in a coordinated fashion and achieve the desired output in no time at all. If he spends more time thinking, doing disorganized memory recall, organize his thoughts, dig information from all over the place, learn and digest it before making a decision and deliver the output, that means he hasn’t achieve such level of competence.
Similarly, gigabytes of valuable information are created everyday and travels across the organization through your network, and goes into your mail boxes, personal and/or shared folders, databases, in the same way that physical records, journals and legal documents goes into your desks, and deposited into the store room until they may finally go to garbage bin, and when these information are needed, you spend time thinking on how and where you stored them in your shared folders, inbox, outbox, databases, etc. Then, once you found them you spend another hours figuring out how to make use of such information to get on with the task or issue at hand.
Failure to know what you already know is even worst, your company does not know what it already knows and keeps on reinventing old wheels. Opportunities vaporize quickly just because vital information required for decision-making is not available on a timely manner. They exist in the storage area but you don’t know that they are just there.
The worst case scenario is: current daily procedures and workflows are so dynamic, keep on changing depending on business needs, and threatened by uncertainties surrounding the business environment including external factors such as compliance with government new legislation and regulations, company mergers and acquisitions. The disturbance in existing workflows and business processes and changes in corporate standards are chaos that always impacts the organizational memory. Documents and records changes in form, substance and template from time to time and stored somewhere in the never known drives and lost its meaning, this includes employee turnovers and the knowledge that goes with them.
Managing change in the business landscape, processes, procedures and workflows while at the same time managing the company’s vital sources of knowledge assets requires a powerful document management and workflow system integrated tool to help you organize and design your collective thinking process.
Such software tool helps you manages ad-hoc and complex workflows at all levels of the organization including company standards and management reporting procedures optimizing the company’s organizational memory by minimizing if not eliminating the slow and redundant mechanical touch points.
The following are two of the most powerful workflow-integrated design concepts for organizational memory that supports knowledge-intensive work processes.
Designing Event-Driven Distributed Execution Workflow Engine
Managing events/activities as they unfold right into your organization is one of the priority areas where knowledge works can be made to flow at the speed of light.
The advantage is two-folds, (1) events define the context in which knowledge is created, captured, and used, thus, by linking the vital information with the event that triggers its creation you are assured that it will never lose its context wherever such knowledge may have been stored, archived and retrieve for knowledge re-use, and (2) events have no meaning other than the meaning that we choose to give it, thus, imagine an organization that does not agree on the interpretation of every event that unfold right before its eyes – the result is chaos and confusion at the ground level. A well-designed event-driven distributed execution workflow will minimize if not eliminate the occurrence of such an unfortunate scenario because the engine clearly defines a set of records-linked activities for every workflow.
Every interesting situation or surprises that occur in an organization can be classified either as threat or an opportunity to the business. Such situation can be expressed as event that can trigger either an ad hoc or complex workflow. The distributed workflow can be designed so that the operation of all the component systems including processing entities can react swiftly, concurrently, and decisively to event occurrences.
Further, the document management capability of the workflow system ensures that every electronic document, physical records, databases, web-published documents, competitor information and government issuances, and digital images, including emails are created, captured, filtered, categorized, stored and destroyed or archived in a time-definite manner. Organization need not reinvent old wheels if such event recurs because its historical antecedents are available in real time mode.
Lessons are learned so an organization can avoid repeating the same mistake over and over again. Best practices are modeled (as opposed to being imitated), as they are re-echoed in every corner of the organizational memory.
The conceptual model and detailed design of the distributed execution workflow engine depends entirely on the nature of the company’s knowledge-intensive business processes and activities.
Designing Federated Execution Workflow Engine
Whilst event-driven distributed execution workflow engine works internally within the organization- managing the smooth execution of workflow that is triggered by internal/external events; federated workflow engine provides extension to the outside world - a framework for managing open innovation and integration with the customers especially in the “e” sphere. The key objective is to integrate and develop a solid handshake with customers without necessarily cannibalizing existing core application systems, i.e. to provide another layer of integration using collaborative workflow engine.
Achieving cost leadership is the main focus of event-driven distributed execution workflow engine guarding the business against threats of increasing cost while always looking at the opportunity to reduce cost.
The main focus of federated execution workflow engine, on the other hand, is to achieve product/services differentiation and/or push for innovative customer integration through e-business, tracking and capturing customer knowledge at every event execution.
The key in designing federated execution workflow engine is to be able to document and track down customer knowledge assets by product line or market segment and identify key influencers. The workflow engine defines the events on how you acquire, retain, grow, migrate, or even how you have lost existing customers – each event defines a certain role required to act decisively based on available real-time information.
You retain existing customers and acquire more by attracting them to co-design and co-create collaborative platform that opens the door for the company to obtain and capture customer knowledge and make them accessible across the enterprise (a federated workflow layer just above your existing core applications and your customer’s application systems).
Mass customization of products/services through configuration management, integration with customer’s existing products/services and collaboration with ancillary services are ground breaking technological innovation that presents unlimited opportunity to the business. A complete and integrated document management, records management, emails management and workflow management solutions necessary to elevate your business to the next level of competition.
Conclusion
Knowledge is situated in the activities of people. You cannot simply gather all the documents in your company and put them all in a repository without losing their contexts, in the same way that a particular activity cannot be interpreted in isolation without having to refer and relate it to other events or activities that came before it. It is only by linking information to the activity that triggers its creation and tracking it through the workflow engine that you preserve its context and enables knowledge to travel through the organizational memory at light speed.
Designing organizational memory using integrated workflow with document management system software requires the following criteria for success:
1. It must be driven by business process reengineering and/or continuous improvement, and innovative use of technology.
2. It must have both end-user and management buy-in. Project implementation using proven methodology such as the Six Sigma quality management program/problem solving methodology is the best approach to any knowledge management initiatives.
3. Must impact bottom-line value such as productivity improvement, cost savings, increase revenues, product enhancements, improved customer service, and quality of service.
Knowledge is actionable information. Information sources such as documents, physical records, databases, emails, web-published materials and informal group discussions must be captured and stored in the organizational memory along with the events the triggered its creation and re-use.
The second generation of KM initiatives now focuses on workflow engines as a way to reduce the stickiness of knowledge in business processes thereby enabling knowledge to flow across the organization just as RAM chips operates at light speed.
This trend in KM initiatives defines the next level of competition that rests in the ability of global companies to implement workflow execution models in all their branches worldwide simultaneously and synchronously.
I copied and paste it from my long forgotten blog with url: knowledgewerks.blogspot.com
I find this relevant to my discourse about Paperless Society. Why? Because I say so.....
Here you go:
Introduction
Electronic documents, paper-based records and journals, emails, images, voice and video recordings are today’s most critical sources of actionable information. They are assets scattered around your company, your employees’ drawers, mail boxes, shared folders, Internet, PDA’s and even hand phones. How to get into those drawers without your employee accusing you of lurking into her privacy or even if you succeed in surreptitiously capturing her hidden knowledge, understanding its context and transforming it into useful and actionable information for your particular use is definitely another challenge.
Even documents that reside in shared folders can get lost physically, or lose in its context simply because the meaning attached to it may no longer be understood in the same level of thinking when it was first created – the event that triggers the creation of such information is incomprehensible in the current applicable context (a natural barrier to knowledge acquisition and transfer).
Explicit knowledge can travel at the speed of light into your thoughts and echoes on into the company’s boardroom swift and easy.
But for that to happen and to achieve such feat, the company’s organizational memory must be designed and organized in such a way that the mechanical components that exist in between the automation boundaries must be mitigated if not totally eliminated.
Designing and managing organizational memory (explicit knowledge) requires six areas to work on:
How you manage your electronic documents
How you manage your emails
How you manage the information you retrieved from the web.
How you manage your existing communities of practice and workgroups.
How you manage your “hard-copy” records, journals and legal documents; and
How you manage and integrate the above into your evolving and ever-changing business workflows.
Organizational memory can be compared to a computer’s critical component called RAM. Bytes of information travel at gigahertz speed or nanoseconds. But once, the data goes into the computer’s hard disk, the speed slows down significantly. Why? Hard disks are mechanical parts of the computer and all mechanical objects are subject to the laws of physics (friction, gravity, force, surface tension, etc). RAM chips are pure semiconductor components of the computer – no moving mechanical component so that bits and bytes of information travel at light speed.
Organizational memory is the RAM chips of an organization. But like any other RAM chips it needs the right INPUT in a well designed and categorized manner, a logical stream of processing such input (pass through work flows, business logic, algorithms etc), in order to produce desired OUTPUT instantly.
An individual is said to have achieved unconscious competence in doing certain job, if the thought processes and judgment calls linked to the mechanical parts of his body such as his hands and feet can move swiftly in a coordinated fashion and achieve the desired output in no time at all. If he spends more time thinking, doing disorganized memory recall, organize his thoughts, dig information from all over the place, learn and digest it before making a decision and deliver the output, that means he hasn’t achieve such level of competence.
Similarly, gigabytes of valuable information are created everyday and travels across the organization through your network, and goes into your mail boxes, personal and/or shared folders, databases, in the same way that physical records, journals and legal documents goes into your desks, and deposited into the store room until they may finally go to garbage bin, and when these information are needed, you spend time thinking on how and where you stored them in your shared folders, inbox, outbox, databases, etc. Then, once you found them you spend another hours figuring out how to make use of such information to get on with the task or issue at hand.
Failure to know what you already know is even worst, your company does not know what it already knows and keeps on reinventing old wheels. Opportunities vaporize quickly just because vital information required for decision-making is not available on a timely manner. They exist in the storage area but you don’t know that they are just there.
The worst case scenario is: current daily procedures and workflows are so dynamic, keep on changing depending on business needs, and threatened by uncertainties surrounding the business environment including external factors such as compliance with government new legislation and regulations, company mergers and acquisitions. The disturbance in existing workflows and business processes and changes in corporate standards are chaos that always impacts the organizational memory. Documents and records changes in form, substance and template from time to time and stored somewhere in the never known drives and lost its meaning, this includes employee turnovers and the knowledge that goes with them.
Managing change in the business landscape, processes, procedures and workflows while at the same time managing the company’s vital sources of knowledge assets requires a powerful document management and workflow system integrated tool to help you organize and design your collective thinking process.
Such software tool helps you manages ad-hoc and complex workflows at all levels of the organization including company standards and management reporting procedures optimizing the company’s organizational memory by minimizing if not eliminating the slow and redundant mechanical touch points.
The following are two of the most powerful workflow-integrated design concepts for organizational memory that supports knowledge-intensive work processes.
Designing Event-Driven Distributed Execution Workflow Engine
Managing events/activities as they unfold right into your organization is one of the priority areas where knowledge works can be made to flow at the speed of light.
The advantage is two-folds, (1) events define the context in which knowledge is created, captured, and used, thus, by linking the vital information with the event that triggers its creation you are assured that it will never lose its context wherever such knowledge may have been stored, archived and retrieve for knowledge re-use, and (2) events have no meaning other than the meaning that we choose to give it, thus, imagine an organization that does not agree on the interpretation of every event that unfold right before its eyes – the result is chaos and confusion at the ground level. A well-designed event-driven distributed execution workflow will minimize if not eliminate the occurrence of such an unfortunate scenario because the engine clearly defines a set of records-linked activities for every workflow.
Every interesting situation or surprises that occur in an organization can be classified either as threat or an opportunity to the business. Such situation can be expressed as event that can trigger either an ad hoc or complex workflow. The distributed workflow can be designed so that the operation of all the component systems including processing entities can react swiftly, concurrently, and decisively to event occurrences.
Further, the document management capability of the workflow system ensures that every electronic document, physical records, databases, web-published documents, competitor information and government issuances, and digital images, including emails are created, captured, filtered, categorized, stored and destroyed or archived in a time-definite manner. Organization need not reinvent old wheels if such event recurs because its historical antecedents are available in real time mode.
Lessons are learned so an organization can avoid repeating the same mistake over and over again. Best practices are modeled (as opposed to being imitated), as they are re-echoed in every corner of the organizational memory.
The conceptual model and detailed design of the distributed execution workflow engine depends entirely on the nature of the company’s knowledge-intensive business processes and activities.
Designing Federated Execution Workflow Engine
Whilst event-driven distributed execution workflow engine works internally within the organization- managing the smooth execution of workflow that is triggered by internal/external events; federated workflow engine provides extension to the outside world - a framework for managing open innovation and integration with the customers especially in the “e” sphere. The key objective is to integrate and develop a solid handshake with customers without necessarily cannibalizing existing core application systems, i.e. to provide another layer of integration using collaborative workflow engine.
Achieving cost leadership is the main focus of event-driven distributed execution workflow engine guarding the business against threats of increasing cost while always looking at the opportunity to reduce cost.
The main focus of federated execution workflow engine, on the other hand, is to achieve product/services differentiation and/or push for innovative customer integration through e-business, tracking and capturing customer knowledge at every event execution.
The key in designing federated execution workflow engine is to be able to document and track down customer knowledge assets by product line or market segment and identify key influencers. The workflow engine defines the events on how you acquire, retain, grow, migrate, or even how you have lost existing customers – each event defines a certain role required to act decisively based on available real-time information.
You retain existing customers and acquire more by attracting them to co-design and co-create collaborative platform that opens the door for the company to obtain and capture customer knowledge and make them accessible across the enterprise (a federated workflow layer just above your existing core applications and your customer’s application systems).
Mass customization of products/services through configuration management, integration with customer’s existing products/services and collaboration with ancillary services are ground breaking technological innovation that presents unlimited opportunity to the business. A complete and integrated document management, records management, emails management and workflow management solutions necessary to elevate your business to the next level of competition.
Conclusion
Knowledge is situated in the activities of people. You cannot simply gather all the documents in your company and put them all in a repository without losing their contexts, in the same way that a particular activity cannot be interpreted in isolation without having to refer and relate it to other events or activities that came before it. It is only by linking information to the activity that triggers its creation and tracking it through the workflow engine that you preserve its context and enables knowledge to travel through the organizational memory at light speed.
Designing organizational memory using integrated workflow with document management system software requires the following criteria for success:
1. It must be driven by business process reengineering and/or continuous improvement, and innovative use of technology.
2. It must have both end-user and management buy-in. Project implementation using proven methodology such as the Six Sigma quality management program/problem solving methodology is the best approach to any knowledge management initiatives.
3. Must impact bottom-line value such as productivity improvement, cost savings, increase revenues, product enhancements, improved customer service, and quality of service.
Knowledge is actionable information. Information sources such as documents, physical records, databases, emails, web-published materials and informal group discussions must be captured and stored in the organizational memory along with the events the triggered its creation and re-use.
The second generation of KM initiatives now focuses on workflow engines as a way to reduce the stickiness of knowledge in business processes thereby enabling knowledge to flow across the organization just as RAM chips operates at light speed.
This trend in KM initiatives defines the next level of competition that rests in the ability of global companies to implement workflow execution models in all their branches worldwide simultaneously and synchronously.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
The Psychology of Human Wants for Paper
I discussed in my previous article Society's addiction to paper.
The 21st century is thought to be the beginning of a paperless society. However, the statistics are glaring, the amount of information printed on paper (documents and postal mails) is still increasing specially those individuals in offices.
The following parapraghs describe the deeply-rooted culture of dependence on paper and papar-based products.
Here it is:
“People still like something they can grasp in their hands to view, read, contemplate and reflect on. But the bigger question is: how will the young crowd growing up in their technological, computer-driven society live their lives – possibly without paper clutter? Another question is how far will this ongoing innovative technology develop, spilling over into control of people’s lives – and what will this do to our humankind nature? How will it affect us globally?” 1
“Technology certainly allows people to access far more information electronically than they could in paper form. But as Jackson notes, once they find what they want, “People like to print that and take it on the plane……. Its comforting to have a paper book,” Jackson says. “Its more fixed in the mind than if you read it off a screen.” 2
“The fact of the matter is that human beings have a long-standing meaningful relationship with paper. Paper is intimate. You can touch it, run your fingers down the type and feel the texture of the ink forming the letters. You can hold a page, rip it in half when you’re angry, crumple it up and throw it away when you’re frustrated at it (try doing with your computer screen!). Paper has one quality that today’s CRT screen lack – tactility. Can you see yourself taking a laptop to the beach or getting cozy with a Newton next to a blazing fire and a bear rug? Maybe you can. Whether or not you actually do it is another question.” 3
References:
1. Communitelligence.com, “Paperless Society: Myths and Reality”, May 2007
2. Bill Virgin,“It’s a brave e-world, but paper still king”, Seattle Post, December 2006
3. Mark J. Jones, “Myth of the Paperless Society”, February 1996.
The 21st century is thought to be the beginning of a paperless society. However, the statistics are glaring, the amount of information printed on paper (documents and postal mails) is still increasing specially those individuals in offices.
The following parapraghs describe the deeply-rooted culture of dependence on paper and papar-based products.
Here it is:
“People still like something they can grasp in their hands to view, read, contemplate and reflect on. But the bigger question is: how will the young crowd growing up in their technological, computer-driven society live their lives – possibly without paper clutter? Another question is how far will this ongoing innovative technology develop, spilling over into control of people’s lives – and what will this do to our humankind nature? How will it affect us globally?” 1
“Technology certainly allows people to access far more information electronically than they could in paper form. But as Jackson notes, once they find what they want, “People like to print that and take it on the plane……. Its comforting to have a paper book,” Jackson says. “Its more fixed in the mind than if you read it off a screen.” 2
“The fact of the matter is that human beings have a long-standing meaningful relationship with paper. Paper is intimate. You can touch it, run your fingers down the type and feel the texture of the ink forming the letters. You can hold a page, rip it in half when you’re angry, crumple it up and throw it away when you’re frustrated at it (try doing with your computer screen!). Paper has one quality that today’s CRT screen lack – tactility. Can you see yourself taking a laptop to the beach or getting cozy with a Newton next to a blazing fire and a bear rug? Maybe you can. Whether or not you actually do it is another question.” 3
References:
1. Communitelligence.com, “Paperless Society: Myths and Reality”, May 2007
2. Bill Virgin,“It’s a brave e-world, but paper still king”, Seattle Post, December 2006
3. Mark J. Jones, “Myth of the Paperless Society”, February 1996.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Society's Addiction to Paper
In 2003, Geoffrey Peters from School of Computing Science (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver Canada) worked on a research paper entited "A Society Addicted to Paper - The Effect of Computer Use on Paper Consumption". This is what he concluded and I quote:
"The concepts of the “paperless office” and the “paperless society” are fanciful envisionments of technology promoters – they are ideals which are interesting to consider, but are unlikely to ever be realized. Statistics show that both paper consumption and computer usage are increasing in Canada, and that there is no obvious trend to a reduction in paper consumption due to computer use.
But this discussion is somewhat limited in scope: documented examples from Japan show that some companies have decreased their paper consumption by 30-50 percent as a result of new information technology.9 And on the other end of the spectrum, electricity has not yet reached some two billion people, a third of the world's population."
Take note that in Japan he said, some companies have decresed their paper consumption by 30-50% as a result of information technology.
Then he presented the advantages of paper over that of the computer documents. Here i quote:
"Besides being relatively inexpensive, and easily accessible, paper still has several advantages over electronic based mediums.
The first is tangibility – for important documents such as contracts, paper can be signed and have legal binding. Paper documents can be annotated and edited by hand, and passed on to other readers who can add their comments. Although new features in word processing software allows for a similar kind of collaboration and review of changes, the paper based process is still more intuitive for many people.
While electronic documents can only be viewed on the limited screen space of most monitors, actual printed papers can be easily spread across a desk, allowing a person to quickly switch between documents and pull out important sections without navigating confusing task bars or menu bars.
The second advantage is versatility: paper has very high resolution, can display thousands of typefaces, does not “crash”, cannot be accidentally erased, and can contain built-in hyperlinks such as tables of contents, page references, and indexes.
Because of the usefulness and advantages of paper, and the ease of consumption provided by printers and photocopiers, it is likely that paper consumption will remain at high levels for many years to come. Of course, technological innovation does not stop either, when even now, inventors are working on “paper-like” substances whose content can be electronically altered in a matter of seconds. Perhaps the most interesting chapter in the story of paper has yet to be written."
I will continue my discussion on man's behavior towards the use of paper tomorrow. I feel sleepy.
"The concepts of the “paperless office” and the “paperless society” are fanciful envisionments of technology promoters – they are ideals which are interesting to consider, but are unlikely to ever be realized. Statistics show that both paper consumption and computer usage are increasing in Canada, and that there is no obvious trend to a reduction in paper consumption due to computer use.
But this discussion is somewhat limited in scope: documented examples from Japan show that some companies have decreased their paper consumption by 30-50 percent as a result of new information technology.9 And on the other end of the spectrum, electricity has not yet reached some two billion people, a third of the world's population."
Take note that in Japan he said, some companies have decresed their paper consumption by 30-50% as a result of information technology.
Then he presented the advantages of paper over that of the computer documents. Here i quote:
"Besides being relatively inexpensive, and easily accessible, paper still has several advantages over electronic based mediums.
The first is tangibility – for important documents such as contracts, paper can be signed and have legal binding. Paper documents can be annotated and edited by hand, and passed on to other readers who can add their comments. Although new features in word processing software allows for a similar kind of collaboration and review of changes, the paper based process is still more intuitive for many people.
While electronic documents can only be viewed on the limited screen space of most monitors, actual printed papers can be easily spread across a desk, allowing a person to quickly switch between documents and pull out important sections without navigating confusing task bars or menu bars.
The second advantage is versatility: paper has very high resolution, can display thousands of typefaces, does not “crash”, cannot be accidentally erased, and can contain built-in hyperlinks such as tables of contents, page references, and indexes.
Because of the usefulness and advantages of paper, and the ease of consumption provided by printers and photocopiers, it is likely that paper consumption will remain at high levels for many years to come. Of course, technological innovation does not stop either, when even now, inventors are working on “paper-like” substances whose content can be electronically altered in a matter of seconds. Perhaps the most interesting chapter in the story of paper has yet to be written."
I will continue my discussion on man's behavior towards the use of paper tomorrow. I feel sleepy.
Monday, May 7, 2007
Paperless Society: Myths and Reality
Why am I spending time on issues like 'Going Paperless'? What motivates me in doing this? Am I just bored or I got nothing to do?
Well, I got probably two important reasons for immersing myself and spending time doing research and making sense out of this topic on 'Paperless Society'.
The first reason is, I believe that by advocating paperless society we can help reduce deforestation, and in turn, minimize the impact on climate change and global warming, which in turn, will ensure that our children and the generations to come will not worry about rising sea level, extreme wheather conditions, and other unpredictable natural events and disasters.
The second reason is, I am an IT professional. Going paperless definitely improves business processes by eliminating the manual process of printing, transport and motion of printed documents for approval, routing and inspection which to me are all non-value adding activities. It also generates jobs for the IT industry.
I believe that if we are really serious about going paperless, we need to understand its metes and bounds. Go dig information from the digital corridor and find out where we are today and where we want to go in this initiative.
I scanned the digital corridor for information about the myths and realities about Paperless Society and these are what i found out, and i quote:
".... the university of California-Berkeley has found that the volume of information online has tripled during the past three years (though voice and e-mail dwarf the web interms of overall throughput). Among trends noted:
- Paperless Society? The amount of information printed on paper is still increasing, but the vast majority of original information on paper is produced by individuals in office documents and postal mail, not in formally published titles such as books, newspapers and journals.
-The world wide web contains about 170 terabytes of information on its surface; in volume this is seventeen times the size of the Library of Congress print collections.
- Instant messaging generates about five billion messages a day(759GB), or 274 Terabytes a year.
- Email generates about 400,000 terabytes of new information each year worldwide. " 1
Another comments on the myths about paperless society:
"The 21st century was supposed to be the beginning of the paperless society..... Brochures, catalogues, and other forms of print advertising have continued in high demand in all aspects of the business world.... The visual and interactive demands of the 21st century consumer ensure that our society wont be paperless for a long time yet". 2
And one more article on the myths about paperless society:
"... The differences between typewriter and computer word processing resulted in an increase in the paper-print load, not a decrease. I saw it up close and personal in typing and printing out military and civilian evaluation reports. With a typewriter-initiated report, the evaluator could and was allowed to correct, initial typos and make additional comments in pen and ink including the carbons. With computer formatting and printing, the striving for a perfect report produced more reprints, correcting typos and editing---sometimes rewriting reports 10-20 times---more paper wasted. The Goal: Perfection." 3
Another statistics on the growth of information:
"The United States produces about 40% of the world's new stored information, including 33% of the world's new printed information. Thirty percent of the world's new film titles, 40% of the world's information stored on optical media, and about 50% of the information stored on magnetic media.
How much new information per person? According to Population Reference Bureau, the world population is 6.3 billion, thus almost 800MB of recorded information is produced per person each year. It would take about 30 feet of books to store the equivalent of 800MB of information on paper.
We estimate that the amount of new information stored on paper, film, magnetic, and optical media has about doubled in the last three years. " 4
This is the fact about the sales revenue from paper:
"There is a paradox here. With $20.1 billion in sales last year, International Paper is the biggest player in an industry that visionaries long ago predicted would be a dinasour in a paperless society. Well, not only have paper sales grown steadily, but Internaltional Paper has become a power user of the technologies that were supposed to render it obsolete." 5
Another one from Office World News:
"With the electronic revolution in full swing, the main result thus far is an almost exponential increase in the amount of paper generated. In fact, the more high tech we become, the more paper we use. This is because computers help people work faster but people still want the security of a "hard" copy. Because the computer generates so much more work and analysis, it also generates more paper." 6
And from W3Org itself:
"BookMaker believes that the wealth of information on the web will cause more printing to be done, rather than less. Companies spending thousands of dollars publishing Web pages that look compelling and professional on screen. There is a need for consumers of these pages to be able to self-publish these pages in a useful and compelling format, that they can read off-line, or throw into a briefcase and take with them." 7
So the question of whether Paperless Society is a myth? The answer is still a big NO to me. The journey towards a paperless society is inevitable.
It only depends on which road humanity wants to take. Its either in the road where rain forests in the world are gone completely and eventually go paperless; or in the road where we choose to stop cutting tress and eliminate if not reduce our addiction to paper by going paperless. The future is there for us to shape.
References:
1. Communitelligence.com dated May 01, 2007
2. Rob Parker, "Paperless Society? I dont think so.", ArticleOnRamp.com, March 2007.
3. Bonnie Alba, "Not a Paperless Society - Yet", January 2007.
4. Bill Virgin,"It's a brave e-world, but paper still king", Seattle Post - Intelligencer
5. Claudia H. Deutsch,"The Paperless society, Eh?", nytimes.com, September 1998.
6. Office World News, "Whatever Happened to the paperless society?", Proquest Company, Apr 1998.
7. Hal Schectman,"Paperless Society a Myth", W3Org, 1996.
Well, I got probably two important reasons for immersing myself and spending time doing research and making sense out of this topic on 'Paperless Society'.
The first reason is, I believe that by advocating paperless society we can help reduce deforestation, and in turn, minimize the impact on climate change and global warming, which in turn, will ensure that our children and the generations to come will not worry about rising sea level, extreme wheather conditions, and other unpredictable natural events and disasters.
The second reason is, I am an IT professional. Going paperless definitely improves business processes by eliminating the manual process of printing, transport and motion of printed documents for approval, routing and inspection which to me are all non-value adding activities. It also generates jobs for the IT industry.
I believe that if we are really serious about going paperless, we need to understand its metes and bounds. Go dig information from the digital corridor and find out where we are today and where we want to go in this initiative.
I scanned the digital corridor for information about the myths and realities about Paperless Society and these are what i found out, and i quote:
".... the university of California-Berkeley has found that the volume of information online has tripled during the past three years (though voice and e-mail dwarf the web interms of overall throughput). Among trends noted:
- Paperless Society? The amount of information printed on paper is still increasing, but the vast majority of original information on paper is produced by individuals in office documents and postal mail, not in formally published titles such as books, newspapers and journals.
-The world wide web contains about 170 terabytes of information on its surface; in volume this is seventeen times the size of the Library of Congress print collections.
- Instant messaging generates about five billion messages a day(759GB), or 274 Terabytes a year.
- Email generates about 400,000 terabytes of new information each year worldwide. " 1
Another comments on the myths about paperless society:
"The 21st century was supposed to be the beginning of the paperless society..... Brochures, catalogues, and other forms of print advertising have continued in high demand in all aspects of the business world.... The visual and interactive demands of the 21st century consumer ensure that our society wont be paperless for a long time yet". 2
And one more article on the myths about paperless society:
"... The differences between typewriter and computer word processing resulted in an increase in the paper-print load, not a decrease. I saw it up close and personal in typing and printing out military and civilian evaluation reports. With a typewriter-initiated report, the evaluator could and was allowed to correct, initial typos and make additional comments in pen and ink including the carbons. With computer formatting and printing, the striving for a perfect report produced more reprints, correcting typos and editing---sometimes rewriting reports 10-20 times---more paper wasted. The Goal: Perfection." 3
Another statistics on the growth of information:
"The United States produces about 40% of the world's new stored information, including 33% of the world's new printed information. Thirty percent of the world's new film titles, 40% of the world's information stored on optical media, and about 50% of the information stored on magnetic media.
How much new information per person? According to Population Reference Bureau, the world population is 6.3 billion, thus almost 800MB of recorded information is produced per person each year. It would take about 30 feet of books to store the equivalent of 800MB of information on paper.
We estimate that the amount of new information stored on paper, film, magnetic, and optical media has about doubled in the last three years. " 4
This is the fact about the sales revenue from paper:
"There is a paradox here. With $20.1 billion in sales last year, International Paper is the biggest player in an industry that visionaries long ago predicted would be a dinasour in a paperless society. Well, not only have paper sales grown steadily, but Internaltional Paper has become a power user of the technologies that were supposed to render it obsolete." 5
Another one from Office World News:
"With the electronic revolution in full swing, the main result thus far is an almost exponential increase in the amount of paper generated. In fact, the more high tech we become, the more paper we use. This is because computers help people work faster but people still want the security of a "hard" copy. Because the computer generates so much more work and analysis, it also generates more paper." 6
And from W3Org itself:
"BookMaker believes that the wealth of information on the web will cause more printing to be done, rather than less. Companies spending thousands of dollars publishing Web pages that look compelling and professional on screen. There is a need for consumers of these pages to be able to self-publish these pages in a useful and compelling format, that they can read off-line, or throw into a briefcase and take with them." 7
So the question of whether Paperless Society is a myth? The answer is still a big NO to me. The journey towards a paperless society is inevitable.
It only depends on which road humanity wants to take. Its either in the road where rain forests in the world are gone completely and eventually go paperless; or in the road where we choose to stop cutting tress and eliminate if not reduce our addiction to paper by going paperless. The future is there for us to shape.
References:
1. Communitelligence.com dated May 01, 2007
2. Rob Parker, "Paperless Society? I dont think so.", ArticleOnRamp.com, March 2007.
3. Bonnie Alba, "Not a Paperless Society - Yet", January 2007.
4. Bill Virgin,"It's a brave e-world, but paper still king", Seattle Post - Intelligencer
5. Claudia H. Deutsch,"The Paperless society, Eh?", nytimes.com, September 1998.
6. Office World News, "Whatever Happened to the paperless society?", Proquest Company, Apr 1998.
7. Hal Schectman,"Paperless Society a Myth", W3Org, 1996.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Study of Related Literature
I just completed scanning the digital corridor. Using google, I managed to download about thirty-six (36) papers on "Paperless Society".
The next step is for me to digest all those articles, summarize them and present them as objectively as possible in my next blog.
I want to understand first and foremost the opinion of other people when in comes to the issue of going paperless. The pros and cons, what are the facts of the case, what they have accomplished so far and what remains to be done.
My next step is relate this to environmental issues, to global warming and greenhouse effects, and climate change.
Generate a compelling necessity to go paperless to help reduce global warming, leave the issue of industrial pollution to the politicians and industrial experts.
Then, finally, formulate a framework or structure for going paperless and get buy-in from various sectors of the society.
Meanwhile, wait for my study of related literatures.
The next step is for me to digest all those articles, summarize them and present them as objectively as possible in my next blog.
I want to understand first and foremost the opinion of other people when in comes to the issue of going paperless. The pros and cons, what are the facts of the case, what they have accomplished so far and what remains to be done.
My next step is relate this to environmental issues, to global warming and greenhouse effects, and climate change.
Generate a compelling necessity to go paperless to help reduce global warming, leave the issue of industrial pollution to the politicians and industrial experts.
Then, finally, formulate a framework or structure for going paperless and get buy-in from various sectors of the society.
Meanwhile, wait for my study of related literatures.
The Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol
Will the World be ever green again?
Will this river be the same again?
When did we say 'NO' to GLOBAL WARMING?
When did we say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH to DEFORESTATION?
A Beautiful Poem About Trees
Trees
by Joyce Kilmer
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
----------------------------------
Louis Untermeyer, ed. (1885-1977). Moderm American Poetry. 1919
by Joyce Kilmer
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
----------------------------------
Louis Untermeyer, ed. (1885-1977). Moderm American Poetry. 1919
Monday, April 30, 2007
Dead Paperless Society?
This is an excerpt from an article entitled "Paperless Society Falls By the Wayside" written by Sandra Gittlen for the Network World (08/28/02), and I quote:
A few years ago, I visited Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. There, a host of researchers were working tirelessly to create what they referred to as a "paperless society." They said everything from newspapers to training manuals would be replaced by digital alternatives.
Now, almost four years later, I have seen little indication that their vision has been met - at least not in the world of training and education. Instead, each week, I receive in the mail books that number more than 500 pages each on topics such as voice over IP, wireless networks and security. Rather than going digital, they seem to be getting larger, with print houses trying to pack everything into what the binding can support.
This article is written five years ago.
I am going to spend the rest of my blog on a dream. A dream that one day we can help, in our own small way, save the earth by reducing if not eliminating society's addiction to paper and its paper-based products.
Lets together call this dream - "The Paperless Society"
A few years ago, I visited Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. There, a host of researchers were working tirelessly to create what they referred to as a "paperless society." They said everything from newspapers to training manuals would be replaced by digital alternatives.
Now, almost four years later, I have seen little indication that their vision has been met - at least not in the world of training and education. Instead, each week, I receive in the mail books that number more than 500 pages each on topics such as voice over IP, wireless networks and security. Rather than going digital, they seem to be getting larger, with print houses trying to pack everything into what the binding can support.
This article is written five years ago.
I am going to spend the rest of my blog on a dream. A dream that one day we can help, in our own small way, save the earth by reducing if not eliminating society's addiction to paper and its paper-based products.
Lets together call this dream - "The Paperless Society"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)