Tubthumping

I have been on the road meeting people, talking tech, data centers, networking and getting knocked down.   When I find time to read the blogosphere and trade rags, which is usually on a train or plane, it is then I realize how disconnected people are from reality.  I find myself asking colleagues if I am crazy or are these people just following pre-programmed doctrine and doing the same thing over and over?

I have started down this thought path before here and here, but I think it is important to accept that we have been doing the same networking stuff for 16 years.  It was called switching.  1995 to 2011 are the switching years, 1980 to 1994 are the client/server years and both eras are all done.  Just stop now.  We are moving on.  2012 to 2027 will be a new era.  We need to stop referring to the future using concepts from the past.  I cite as examples this article in El Reg, which I think is in general a great site, but got lazy with the assumption in the first sentence and this grand standing, Pollyanna post from Empire.

I still think this all comes back to people doing the same stuff they have been doing for years because they do not know any better.  When I was selling for my first startup, CrossComm in 1989, people would tell me that no one gets fired for buying IBM.  Last week a senior IT executive told me that no one gets fired for buying Cisco.   I find that comment fitting and I suspect will be a milepost in this new networking era taking root.

“The concept of doctrine enables technology people to make assumptions.  Assumptions are great as long as they hold.  When I refer to doctrine I am referring to procedures that ecosystem participants follow because they have been trained to reason and act in a certain manner within the command and control structure of their business and technology.  We design networks, manage companies; evaluate technology and markets according to a common set of doctrines that have been infused into the technology ecosystem culture over many decades.  I was thinking along this thought line in mid-October when I posted “I also believe we are all susceptible to diminished breadth in our creativity as we get older.  Diminished breadth in our creativity the root cause as to why history repeats itself and another reason why when we change companies we tend to take content and processes from our prior company and port them to our new company.  This is especially true in the technology industry.  We recycle people; hence we recycle ideas, content and value propositions from what worked before.  Why be creative when it is easier to cut and paste?  As a casual observation it seems to me that most people working in tech have a theta calculation as to their creativity.  I believe a strategy to guard against creativity decay is to look back on the past and critique the work.”  In mid October I had not fully fused the thesis of creativity fail or creativity theta with doctrine.  The idea to link the two concepts occurred to me last night as I was reading Shattered Sword for the second time.”

/wrk