Knowledge Age is Making Current Job Losses Permanent

I was reading an article from the Economist entitled: Difference Engine: Luddite legacy. The basic premise is that the rapid technology advances occurring after the industrial age began is having an increasing impact on the job market.  They aren't talking about robots taking automotive workers jobs, as discussed in a BI review, but technologies leveraged by the knowledge worker of today's economy that makes manual operations performed by the industrial worker obsolete.  The below sums up this concept:

This is the disturbing thought that, sluggish business cycles aside, America's current employment woes stem from a precipitous and permanent change caused by not too little technological progress, but too much. The evidence is irrefutable that computerised automation, networks and artificial intelligence (AI)—including machine-learning, language-translation, and speech- and pattern-recognition software—are beginning to render many jobs simply obsolete. 

This is unlike the job destruction and creation that has taken place continuously since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, as machines gradually replaced the muscle-power of human labourers and horses. Today, automation is having an impact not just on routine work, but on cognitive and even creative tasks as well. A tipping point seems to have been reached, at which AI-based automation threatens to supplant the brain-power of large swathes of middle-income employees. 

That makes a huge, disruptive difference. Not only is AI software much cheaper than mechanical automation to install and operate, there is a far greater incentive to adopt it—given the significantly higher cost of knowledge workers compared with their blue-collar brothers and sisters in the workshop, on the production line, at the check-out and in the field.

The key point which I agree with is that these job losses are permanent.  We have learned to live without these functions now and don't see a need to go back and incur greater labor costs when our systems are performing adequately.  The greatest opportunity for knowledge workers and their businesses exist with organizations that rely on the old "brick and mortar" industrial age approach in conducting their business. As they face ever increasing pressures to compete and become ever more effective in their efforts they will need to embrace knowledge age solutions.  The question is whether they wait to long to recognize that the industrial age is behind them.

Are Macs going mainstream Forrester?

I want to start out saying that I have fostered an equal platform / opportunity workplace for sometime now.   When you walk around today in our offices you see people with Macs and PCs; both laptops and workstations.  You will also see iPhones, Blackberry's, and Android mobile phones as well as iPads and Android tablets.  All of these connected via wired or wifi throughout all of the offices. This is accessible to employees using company issued devices or employees owned devices.


This is totally against my higher headquarters IT policy but I've felt this was one of the keys to our innovative culture. 


It was surprising to see that Forrester, via GIGAOM, just released a report stating the following:

"Forrester made some waves in the IT world Thursday morning when it released a report strongly urging large enterprise companies to let their employees use Macs at work, or as they phrased it “it’s time to repeal prohibition.”

I believe that mainstream corporate IT departments just had a stroke!  Their entire existence is standardization on basic platforms, e.g. Dell latitudes, running Windows 7, BTW just migrated from XP, and ensuring that nobody downloads any unapproved application.  Not to mention that a standard computer is the only one authorized to connect to the network.  It's great we have the freedom to lean into the 21st century in our office.


So with the release of this report by Forrester I wonder when I will see something in the works in the mainstream C suite embracing their recommendation.  I'll report back when I see that happening.  Don't hold your breath.

NetApp and Hadoop

I just came from a meeting over at NetApp.  I've been a fan of their products in the past and have deployed out numerous systems using them all over the world.  The key advantage in the past has always been their replication technology that ships with each system.

I ran across an article from GigaOM yesterday entitled "NetApp does network-attached Hadoop" http://goo.gl/HhjYe.  Notably in the article is a simple rational why NetApp is partnering with Coudera on this:

"The ultimate goal of the new NetApp product, Albanese said, is threefold: 1) to separate the compute and storage layers of Hadoop so each can scale independently; 2) to fit with next-generation data center models around efficiency and space savings; and 3) to improve reliability by being able to hot-swap failed drives and otherwise leverage NetApp’s storage expertise."

I would also add a forth reason, NetApp is tied to the Federal Government sales chain and the Feds are in Lobe with Hadoop at the moment.  This product will give the Feds a simplified way to purchase a Hadoop stack that is easy to understand.


We are pretty excited about this product so we will be taking a look at this when we get one and report back what we find.