Monday
Nov222004
This Used To Be ...
Monday, November 22, 2004 at 12:56PM
... (below) the "About Wirearchy" section of this blog when it was hosted on another blog provider.
I just gently chided a reader (Jeremy of the Sift Experiment blog) for "sifting" a bit too much on his (great) blog, and noted that I worried - often - about trying too hard to promote "wirearchy" too often on my blog.
That being said .. I was deeply impressed today upon watching and listening to David Weinberger's explanation to an audience at the Library of Congress about how very different is this entirely new set of conditions ... us all linked to each other.
He went through the origins of thinking about knowledge - Plato, Aristotle, Descartes - and then launched into the structure of the architectural assumption of the Dewey Decimal System, as the informing principle for the organization, categorization and classification of knowledge. He then led his audience through a very clear and deft explanation of how information, links and peoples' voices all messed up together on the web were in fact re-arranging the fundamental assumptions about "knowledge" - for good.
So ... I thought I'd offer up my "On Wirearchy", as my $.02 on how all this may come to be very different than what we have known and accepted up till now.
I'd also like to ask any readers who care to offer thier views ... what can I do to make this clearer, more practical and useful, and where does there need to be a deepening of any given point ?
On Wirearchy
Reams have been written about the erosion of the effectiveness of command-and control. It’s evolving to champion-and-channel.
Wirearchy is an (emerging) organizing principle. I believe it is showing up in clear ways all around us, and can be seen in daily events and in the ways people are working, behaving, and buying.
Examples are reported on every day....blogging is creating it, post by post......the impacts of living in the digital infrastructure of an electronic age are taking shape.
The working definition of Wirearchy is:
“a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority, based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology”
It’s the dynamic of e-everything. Interconnected access to information, knowledge and instantaneous communications is the modern equivalent to the dynamics created by the invention of the printing press - information gets distributed (much) more widely.
It's also the first time a medium for sharing and creating knowledge is truly bi-directional.
The continuous real-time flows of information are mind-driven electronic grains of sand, eroding the pillars of rigid static hierarchies. This new set of conditions is having real impact on our organizations’ structures, their dynamics and on the ways we do things and behave.
Some of this is exhilarating, and great – some of it isn’t. Some of it is about greater confusion, stress and frantic action – some of it is about clarity, calm and right action.
Polarities are appearing everywhere. Different dimensions and dynamics of influence, power and control are emerging at various nodes of the interconnected workplace and world.
The last thirty years have been about the building of the technical infrastructure that provides an interconnected world. The integrated platform for a transformation to economies and a world driven by the communication and exchange of information is now solidly in place.
The next fifty years will be about learning how we will behave in an interconnected world and workplace.
The dynamics of wirearchy are similar to, and different than, traditional hierarchy - yet need effective hierarchical structure and action to work smoothly.
I just gently chided a reader (Jeremy of the Sift Experiment blog) for "sifting" a bit too much on his (great) blog, and noted that I worried - often - about trying too hard to promote "wirearchy" too often on my blog.
That being said .. I was deeply impressed today upon watching and listening to David Weinberger's explanation to an audience at the Library of Congress about how very different is this entirely new set of conditions ... us all linked to each other.
He went through the origins of thinking about knowledge - Plato, Aristotle, Descartes - and then launched into the structure of the architectural assumption of the Dewey Decimal System, as the informing principle for the organization, categorization and classification of knowledge. He then led his audience through a very clear and deft explanation of how information, links and peoples' voices all messed up together on the web were in fact re-arranging the fundamental assumptions about "knowledge" - for good.
So ... I thought I'd offer up my "On Wirearchy", as my $.02 on how all this may come to be very different than what we have known and accepted up till now.
I'd also like to ask any readers who care to offer thier views ... what can I do to make this clearer, more practical and useful, and where does there need to be a deepening of any given point ?
On Wirearchy
Reams have been written about the erosion of the effectiveness of command-and control. It’s evolving to champion-and-channel.
Wirearchy is an (emerging) organizing principle. I believe it is showing up in clear ways all around us, and can be seen in daily events and in the ways people are working, behaving, and buying.
Examples are reported on every day....blogging is creating it, post by post......the impacts of living in the digital infrastructure of an electronic age are taking shape.
The working definition of Wirearchy is:
“a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority, based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology”
It’s the dynamic of e-everything. Interconnected access to information, knowledge and instantaneous communications is the modern equivalent to the dynamics created by the invention of the printing press - information gets distributed (much) more widely.
It's also the first time a medium for sharing and creating knowledge is truly bi-directional.
The continuous real-time flows of information are mind-driven electronic grains of sand, eroding the pillars of rigid static hierarchies. This new set of conditions is having real impact on our organizations’ structures, their dynamics and on the ways we do things and behave.
Some of this is exhilarating, and great – some of it isn’t. Some of it is about greater confusion, stress and frantic action – some of it is about clarity, calm and right action.
Polarities are appearing everywhere. Different dimensions and dynamics of influence, power and control are emerging at various nodes of the interconnected workplace and world.
The last thirty years have been about the building of the technical infrastructure that provides an interconnected world. The integrated platform for a transformation to economies and a world driven by the communication and exchange of information is now solidly in place.
The next fifty years will be about learning how we will behave in an interconnected world and workplace.
The dynamics of wirearchy are similar to, and different than, traditional hierarchy - yet need effective hierarchical structure and action to work smoothly.
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