Date Archives: November 2014

We live in a world where technology is prevalent in our everyday lives. If you take public transportation, like the DC Metro, you can purchase a card that stores credit. The advancement in mobile technology allow us to perform many functions with the tap on our smart phone or tablet computer. Purchasing items is relatively easier with the RedLaser app, which lets us scan barcodes of items to find other stores offering the same things for a lower price.

If you want to grow your business or organization, embracing technology is the way to go.

In the United States, on a political level, the TEA Party created a strong presence on the Internet due to the contributions of the late-Andrew Breitbart. Social media and online networking were center stage in the 2008 and 2012 US Presidential Elections.

Our personal entertainment has changed and enhanced because of technology.

We can cut the cord the pricey TV-subscription service thanks to the Internet. For example, Sony is offering Playstation Vue, which is a cloud-based TV alternative to cable and satellite. You can watch live streaming TV on your Playstation 3, Playstation 4, and Apple iPad.

If you have a compatible mobile device, you can watch content from Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus, Viki, Crunchyroll, DramaFever, FUNimation, CBS, CW, and Crackle.

IBM, understanding the importance of advanced technology, has promoted this concept called “cognitive computing.” This concept promotes the unity of artificial intelligence and actual human intelligence.

IBM Watson is the first computer created for cognitive computing. Forbes reported that a $100 million initiative is in place for Africa, where Watson will be implemented. The plan will last 10 years. Under Project Lucy, the name of this plan, brings together people from many fields with the plan on improving Africa’s conditions.

Cognitive computing is not limited to Africa though.

IBM is promoting the concept across the world. While Africa will be using Watson, Japan will be receiving a next-generation cognitive computing lab. IBM has taken notice of anime being one of the country’s most popular domestic and exported commodities.

It tapped into the popularity of Steins;Gate, which aired from April 2011 until September 2011 for 24 episodes and one OVA. Unless you watch anime, let alone Steins;Gate, you would not understand the significance of that cross-promotion.

For everybody else that don’t understand, one of the anime’s plot devices is an IBN 5100, which is a play on the IBM 5100. Chaos;Head, the loose prequel, makes a slight mention of the IBN 5100.

5pb, the studio behind Steins;Gate, and IBM Japan joined together tocreate the mini-series Steins;Gate – The Sagacious Wisdom of Cognitive Computing. The mini-series, split into four parts, has the members of Future Gadgets Laboratory discussing the importance of computers improving people’s lives.

Steins;Gate fans can appreciate the comedy of Rintaro Okabe, who still tries to act like a deranged mad scientist.

Part one, “Cooking,” introduces Oopa, the mascot of IBM Japan’s Cognitive Computing. They use Oopa to learn how to make fried chicken. Unfortunately, the lab does not have the ingredients to create fried chicken. Oopa saves the day by coming up with different dishes they can make with the ingredients they have.

They end up making chocolate burritos.

Part two, “Navigation,” uses an AI-version of Oopa. Okabe and Makise, having a romantic spat, walk their separate ways. They both use Oopa to find a way back to the lab, with Okabe instructing Oopa to navigate a way back without bumping into Makise.

Part three, “Fashion,” has Makise using Oopa to find a new wardrobe for Okabe and Daru.

Part four, “Meeting,” has the group using Oopa to find a new location for Future Gadgets Laboratory after the group is handed an eviction notice for being too noisy.

The series is one of the examples of international companies tapping into anime to promote their products to the Japanese market. IBM Japan also streamed a live video promoting cognitive computing.

Keep in mind that this video is in Japanese with no foreign-language text. In the case of this video, cognitive computing will be used in most aspects of work. That includes serving meals to customers and recommending certain dishes to them.

If you enjoy Steins;Gate, check out Steins;Gate – The Sagacious Wisdom of Cognitive Computing.

The story of Steins;Gate, adapted from the original visual novel, explores “theoretical science” using the theme of time travel. Steins;Gate takes place one year after Chaos;Head. As Chaos;Head takes place in Shibuya,Steins;Gate takes place in Akihabara. Okabe, with ‘Mobile Microwave’ invention, discovers one method of time travel by sending text messages to the past.

SERN, an organization that is already sending humans back in time, learns of the invention and sets to kill Okabe and everybody else associated with Future Gadgets. Steins;Gate is like The Butterfly Effectwith text messages.

Robotics;Notes, the sequel to Steins;Gate, takes place 10 years later. The setting is Tanegashima and the theme is “augmented science,” with the focus on robotics.

Technology has been accused of making many a job disappear, like the production line or the accounting office. And it is not done yet.

A company often resembles its communication and technology system. In the era of cloud computing that the tech industry is moving into, that seems to suggest that companies will have smaller departments, quickly analyzing data and endlessly experimenting.

That means change is on the way at the many companies that will adopt cloud computing over the next few years. Middle managers: This is not good news for you.

“Technology shapes styles of work,” said Ed Lazowska, who holds a chair in computer science and engineering at the University of Washington. “One critical advantage of the cloud is that sharing becomes dramatically easier.” He foresees more collaboration and outsourcing of work, and more specialization into whatever a worker, team or company does well.

A corporate organizational chart from 100 years ago looks like a factory, with little workers at the base like parts, assembled by managers into units that interact with or fit into larger parts. Layers of white-collar jobs died in the “corporate re-engineering” boom 20 years ago, after email and networking replaced middle managers carrying plans among departments.

Outsourcing and off-shoring happened once the dot-com bubble put lots of fiber optic cable under the ocean. Otherwise, you couldn’t have so many call centers in India, or manage a global supply chain.

In cloud computing, computer servers are pooled through management software. Power is dialed up or down depending on the workload, and the system is continually reconfigured, based on data about the next workload. To see how this changes a workplace, look at the structure of the biggest cloud companies around.

“You learn to harness feedback,” said David Campbell, the head of engineering at Microsoft Azure, the name of Microsoft’s cloud. Early on, this means lots of “A/B testing,” or putting up two versions of a website to quickly see which the customers prefer.

Azure makes engineering changes by moving parts of its customers’ traffic into the new stuff, seeing if that works as predicted and then building up. Checking expectations and hypotheses in real time, Mr. Campbell said, “takes hours, instead of months and years in the legacy world.”

Over the previous quarter, Azure delivered a new feature or service every three days, he said. “Over this quarter, it feels like it will be every two days,” Mr. Campbell said. That’s not unthinkable; two weeks ago, Amazon announced that so far in 2014, its cloud division had created 60 percent more new products than it did in all of 2013.

That challenges management. “Instead of having a debate informed by decades of experience around whether a customer would want A or B,” he said, “we define a testable hypothesis, which we quickly try to validate.” In the ego-rich halls of Microsoft, it is a lot like the adjustment to the Internet, “except the scale of everything is magnified 10 to 100 times,” said Mr. Campbell, a 20-year employee of the company.

Google also works in a data-fixated culture. Every meeting seems to be full of young engineers scrambling to amass the most compelling facts, trying to create something else they can watch customers use, then build on that. The big loser in this model may be the managers in charge of scheduling things, since it is all happening too fast.

At Amazon Web Services, which has built the world’s biggest cloud computing business, work is divided into teams of the smallest size necessary to figure out what the customer is doing with an important product. That team then quickly adapts the product to work better and looks for new insight.

“We run the entire organization as a federation of autonomous groups,” said James Hamilton, who is in charge of expanding A.W.S. “Top management can’t say ‘You must do this.’ It’s hard to give direction.” Senior executives at A.W.S. meet once a month to review what all the teams are working on, and coordinate among them.

Parts of this approach sound like the trendy “lean” tech start-up, ever changing to suit a new business model. It’s different at big companies, executives there say, when you are moving quickly but also have many customers and obligations.

“There has to be a core” that defines what the overall company stands for and does, said Renée James, the president of Intel. “You need to have more customer focus, and you need partners with a depth of local knowledge, but you have to have a strong center too.” In the last year, Intel, once the most go-it-alone of tech companies, has announced a slew of partnerships, aimed at moving faster.

It is not clear that any of the big companies has nailed this new style of work. Even so, they all say that their non-tech customers are badgering them to determine how they can break into smaller customer-focused teams, loosely collaborating and intent on moving information faster. The survivors will be good at collaboration, good at statistics and good at figuring out what the company needs to build next.

“Companies tell us, ‘We want to be Google,’” says Greg DeMichillie, the head of Google’s cloud business. “People will be more analytical, experimental, faster, more data driven at work.”