Shelly's Algorithm For Success
I'd raise my fist in the air and wave it in solidarity with Cringely while letting you know 'lo the many years I've been reading his stuff but I tend to lose my balance when I let go of my walker.
"What we have here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week..." The following quote from 'Cool Hand Luke' speaks to a trend in management that I encountered in uni as Operations Research. My readings suggested Operations Research took on a mantle of its own in the 60s. The application of scientific methods and, especially, algorithms to problems in organizations provides a methodology subject to quantifiable checks and has the added benefit of suggesting the methodology is without bias and free of people problems like nepotsim and prejudice against rebels without a cause like Cool Hand Luke. Like any other tool/artifact variations on Operations Research are open to abuse, creative use and mundane implementations. Implementation of OR raises very interesting moral and ethical questions. The success Big Blue realizes will just be one more step along the road to AI exhibited, not by machines, but by their makers.
Without turning overly garrulous it's interesting to see in the contingency that's history the rise of democracy from the interplay of the ancient exchange attempting to equate the duty of the individual to society and the right of the individual to individual freedom. In terms of this argument, in the west, we default to the contest in ancient Greece between Athens and Sparta. Creativity is tied to individual freedom. The freedom preached in nominal western democracies is crucial to the creativity driving the innovation behind successful OR management algorithms demanding the surrender of personal freedoms to the greater interest of the corporation. The awkward recursion between individual freedom, creativity and lean, algorithmic profit making invites visions of the Rise of the Machines directed by Corporate overlords having attained all the rights and privileges of citizenry.
Imagine, if you will... a Big Blue Borg Collective