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The Ironic Roots Of Ethics

Dean Marc Co

Ethics have often been a topic that makes me meander along various branches of thought and discussions never to get back to where I started.

What is central to my worries around ethics, in general, are ironies by which they have been defined, adhered to, evolved, and twisted. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Go put your creed into your deed." But does an 'evil' entity that does good for all to see, is still evil or good or both?

Much law has been used to fence and ensure protection and compliance by unethical practices within regulated sectors and large corporations wherein wrongdoing and fraudulent schemes have an escalating detriment not just to the company itself but to society. Take the Enron scandal, for example (Northcutt, 2004). It triggered a series of serious economic, political, legal, and social challenges that led to new laws, new compliance regulations, risk management frameworks, and other mechanisms to protect from another fiasco like this (U.S. DOJ, 2016).

What if the very thing that one can and should trust breaks it?

A few years after the Enron debacle, a revelation of massive government surveillance by NSA in collusion with a major telecommunication giant in the US showed just how much of our sense of privacy is false. It was discovered that a sophisticated traffic splitter was installed at an internet backbone at San Francisco (Electronic Frontier Foundation, 2017). More whistleblower events at such a large scale happened afterwards.

Without bordering on conspiracy theorising, the questions remain: How much more exists that we do not know? Who will guard the guard themselves, when the highest levels of authority is at fault? Can we do anything to limit its effect? Even if we had the liberty to disconnect, will it only handicap most people where digital inclusion is the default? How do we protect people and society already handicapped by natural disabilities and social injustice?

Ethics, is a boring topic for some people I know, but I think that while it is tedious and often untenable, it is an important discourse that needs regular attention, and not just by lawyers and attorneys among us. The history of IT ethics can trace back its root well before Sarbanes-Oxley, Digital Millenium Copyright Act, Security And Freedom Through Encryption, Personal Data Protection Acts in countries, and other modern legal frameworks across the globe. Ethics, I believe, beyond just being moral guidelines for goodwill and just practices in Information Systems, Companies, Governments, and Society in general, are signposts and beacons. It allows us to see when entities which we both ought to trust and who can do most harm to people & citizen are put in check. The impact of a national government leader engaging in corrupt practices and stealing from the public is not and cannot be put at the same level as a person who steals bread because of poverty and hunger. And while the former often gets away with it, the latter may be penalised to imprisonment or worse.

Let me circle back on trust. It is as intangible as the things ethics try to protect but it cannot be undervalued. It is often the very fabric that allows society to to pull together and focus on building great than just settling for mediocrity in the interest of guarding against the downside; where the mistakes of the few burdens the many.

References:

Electronic Frontier Foundation. (2017). NSA Spying on Americans. Retrieved on 3 March, 2017 from https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying

Northcutt, S. (2014). IT Ethics Handbook: Right and Wrong for IT professionals. Rockland, MA: Syngress.

Sarbanes, P. & Oxley, M. (2002). The Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Retrieved on 3 March, 2017 from https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ204/html/PLAW-107publ204.htm

U.S. DOJ - Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. (2016). A Guide for Victims of Copyright Infringement, Trademark Counterfeiting, and Trade Secret Theft. District of Columbia: U.S. Department of Justice.

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Online Collaborative Education Is Just Shaping Up

Dean Marc Co

The consensus on what clearly Collaborative Learning is still pending. In Marjan Laal's & Mozhgan Laal's paper on Collaborative Learning (2012), the define it as CL is "an educational approach to teaching and learning that involves groups of learners working together to solve a problem, complete a task, or create a product. In the CL environment, the learners are challenged both socially and emotionally as they listen to different perspectives, and are required to articulate and defend their ideas. In so doing, the learners begin to create their own unique conceptual frameworks and not rely solely on an expert's or a text's framework."

Possibilities of online learning are just beginning to emerge. While there are temptations and biases to steer discussions and boundaries of thoughts around top-down strategies alongside known ways of doing things writ digital, it is difficult to predict the future of known products in the next few years (Musk, World Government Summit, 2017). It is even much more difficult to do with deeply entrenched and establish sectors and institutions whose roots are far wide, beginning with highly successful empire administration and economic industrialisation (Sugata Mitra). Education's past and present becomes a part of a complex state of tradition that has roots in colonial era administration, management, and sustainability that requires rudimentary communication throughput and latency only (Cohen, 1998, p.1).

Successful and broken systems and sub-systems across the education sector will, in turn, convey its structures and ways of doing into the information systems it will implement as contexts and various perspectives within institutions are fused into realities of information systems (Klein & Myers, 1999). Contextless research and technology is not feasible without having a social and behavioural dimension in its execution.  It may be more useful to ask the right questions now than default to usual ways of utilising information technology and systems by cross-sector osmosis.

Key to understanding possible strategies to online collaborative education stems from:

(a) understanding its traditions, norms, effectiveness, and needless practices (Cohen, 1998, p.1-p.9);

(b) practically discerning its current challenges as empirically observed and research (Roberts & McInnerney, 2007) like inherent studen antipathy towards group work, selection of groups, lack of essential group-work skills, free-riding, inequalities in abilities, withdrawal, and assessments of individuals within group contexts;

(c) connecting it a deeper underlying transdisciplinary dimension of education within complexity studies (Davis & Sumara, 2006, p.5) and how the essential complexity of rigid education systems can be transformed into an emergent education learning scheme; a few characteristics of such complex collaborative educational systems are that it is inherently self-organised, bottom-up emergent, short-ranged clustered communication densities, nested fractal structural nature, ambiguously bounded, and organisationally closed; this must be matched with a sensitivity to some inherent limitations of formal online digital collaborative learning as opposed to collaborative learning as it already happens across different types of learning and natures of intelligence types --- Naturalist [nature smart], Musical [sound smart], Logical-mathematical [number/reasoning smart], Existential [life smart], Interpersonal [people smart], Bodily-kinesthetic [body smart], Linguistic [word smart], Intra-personal [self smart], Spatial [picture smart] --- (Gardner, 2004);

(d) wisely utilising technologies presently available while inculcating a modular systems approach to allow for future changes without getting stuck in a state of paralysis-by-analysis (Beldarrain, 2006);

(e) opening research, development, and administration into a more open organisational ethos that will become more & more prevalent in the future without forgetting the lessons of the past that may still be relevant; these are both supported by socio-political trends where educational resources that were once closed become gradually more accessible and by technological empowerment that allow wider and deeper engagement across demographics.

The hope is the maximisation of learning and education for the future from which current generations and thinking are ill prepared for. It was said best by Ken Robinson in a talk (2006), "We have to be careful now that we use this gift wisely and that we avert some of the scenarios that we've talked about. And the only way we'll do it is by seeing our creative capacities for the richness they are and seeing our children for the hope that they are. And our task is to educate their whole being, so they can face this future. By the way — we may not see this future, but they will. And our job is to help them make something of it."

References:

Beldarrain, Y. (2006). Distance Education Trends: Integrating new technologies to foster student interaction and collaboration. Distance Education, 27(2), pp. 139–153. DOI 10.1080/01587910600789498

Centre for Educational Research and Innovation. (2007). Giving Knowledge for Free - The Emergence of Open Educational Resources. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Publications.

Cohen, A. (1998). The Shaping of American Higher Education. San Francisco, USA: Jossey-Bass.

Davis, B. & Sumara, D. (2006). Complexity and Education - Inquiries into Learning, Teaching, and Research. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Gardner, H. (2004). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. USA: Basic Books.

Klein, H. & Myers, M. (1999). A set of principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive field studies in information systems. MIS Quarterly, 23(1), 67-94.

Laal, M. & Laal, M. (2012). Collaborative learning: what is it? Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 31, 491 – 495.

Roberts, T. S., & McInnerney, J. M. (2007). Seven Problems of Online Group Learning. Educational Technology & Society, 10 (4), 257-268.

Robinson, K. (2006). Do schools kill creativity. Retrieved on 25 February, 2017 from https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity

World Government Summit, Dubai. (2017). A Conversation with Elon Musk. Retrieved on 25 February, 2017 from https://youtu.be/7Lre6GxiQUE

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One Minute Paper: Enterprise Scales From Big To Medium To Small

Dean Marc Co (17 February 2017)

The paper The process of enterprise resource planning implementation and business process re-engineering: tales from two Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises by Newman and Zhao (2008) resonated with the author from relevant experience and existing endeavors going through similar situations. The key lessons from the two (2) case studies in the paper reminds of the importance of project leadership and structural contexts that amplify the benefits or inhibit the talents and implementation. The author does wonder if the concept of an ERP needs revisions. Essential definitions drive the way conceptual expectations are scoped, which in turn, are used to define architectural and design constructs within organisations as they implement information systems. It is key to evolve and adapt even basic premises to align with contextual realities like mainstream technologies, talent availability, geography, culture, organisational structures, and legacy considerations that provide a stable or chaotic environment to maximise benefits from Information Systems.

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IS Innovation For Smart Cities Begins With Inclusiveness

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Webinar Review: When Smart Citizens Drive Smart Cities

Dean Marc Co (15 February 2017)

The webinar Smarter Citizens for Smarter Citizens (Saracco, 2015) takes a tour of various vantage points and historical perspectives to support key arguments: that all cities have always been smart for its time, that technology is a driving force for change ever especially relating to infrastructure development, that what makes cities are not just purely economics, and that ultimately cities are moving forward in a dynamic equilibrium situation.

The author appreciates the hidden realities and impact of infrastructure, directly influencing quality of city life. Greis, a key proponent of airport cities, reminds us that “We often forget that the ability to move parts and components around the world is both enabled—and limited—by a network of transportation and logistical infrastructures” (2011). Great cities have always been marked by great infrastructures, for its time. Look for yesterday's busiest train terminals and you will find today's greatest urban centers. Look for today's busiest airports and you will find the great urban centers of tomorrow (Kasarda & Lindsay, 2011).

The overlay of allometry and biological metabolic scaling factors as it relates to cities opens up several angles of thought in both understanding the realities of modern cities and solutions to challenges that may be inspired by natural laws. Drawing a line between disciplines that is too rigid denies us the wisdom we can earn from vicariously seeing another perspective.

Taking a sociological and interpretive field perspective, seemingly contrasting ideas are actually opportunities for new ideas and synthesis of conflicting arguments into a richer understanding of contexts, contents, processes, and the actors in them (Pettigrew, 1987; Klein, & Myers, 2011) along a journey where principles play in concert to fuse a better horizon of understanding.

Colin Marshall concludes that the most high-tech cities come from anywhere: “... to a city about to emerge triumphantly from the developing world, to a historic capital that has turned to the future, to a slick development that has settled into its urban identity … or to some place as yet barely imagined.” For all our cities challenges, “In the end we won't stop flying for the simple reason that quitting now would run counter to our human impulse to roam” (Kasarda & Lindsay, 2011, p.22).

References:

Greis, N. (2011). The Aerotropolis - The Key to Global Competition in the 21st Century. Phoenix: National Science Foundation.

Kasarda, J. & Lindsay, G. (2011). Aerotropolis: The way we'll live next. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Klein, H. & Myers, M. (2011). A set of principles for conducting critical research in information systems. MIS Quarterly 35(1), 17-36.

Pettigrew, A. (1987). Context and Action in the Transformation of the Firm. Journal of Management Studies 24(6), 649–670.

Saracco, R. (2015). IEEE Smart Citizens For Smarter Cities. Retrieved on 13 February, 2017 from https://ieeemeetings.webex.com/ec3100/eventcenter/recording/recordAction.do?theAction=poprecord&siteurl=ieeemeetings&entappname=url3100&internalRecordTicket=4832534b000000039bb44dad7a86f7be547ddfa287b835cbb36804711621f6181cfd384702a83389&renewticket=0&isurlact=true&format=short&rnd=4936728673&RCID=ec20470951163b7f9d6e4db357305229&rID=89050547&needFilter=false&recordID=89050547&apiname=lsr.php&AT=pb&actappname=ec3100&&SP=EC&entactname=%2FnbrRecordingURL.do&actname=%2Feventcenter%2Fframe%2Fg.do

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The Real Smarts In Cities Fusing Hindsight, Insight, Foresight, And Dynamism

Dean Marc Co (12 February 2017)

Lears (2016, p.1) beautifully wrote that "All history is the history of longing." These longings are as diverse as humanity itself, in its individual and holistic nature (Alexander, 1965). We may never know how exactly the city, in its most rudimentary form, was born. We are struggling to even fully understand the whole complexity of present urbanisation dynamics across the globe. The future is as abysmally unknowable as ever.

Among the pillars of smart city implementation is instrumentation: the embedding and enabling of sensing capabilities in all things (Miller, 2015, p.2). This forms a continuum of "Seeing", "Mapping", "Understanding", "Believing", and "Acting" (Maney, Hamm, & O'Brien, 2011).

Reflecting on this desire to wire up cities, especially driven and purely influenced by large corporations, Townsend (2013, p.284) wrote, "Smart cities designed by corporations will deliver, indeed. But what? A landscape of automated cookie-cutter urbanism that doubles down on industrial capitalism and inevitably crushes our souls?" Should we fail to put people first, we may repeat the mistaken schemes and designs of the past.

The way we have envisioned smart cities "have been about controlling us. What we need is a new social code to bring meaning to and exert control over the technological code of urban operating systems" Townsend said (2013, p.284) and the author agrees. The danger in taking a singular technological and mechanistic view of cities is very worrying in that we may mistake control and predictability with resilience, inclusiveness, and liveability.

The author begins and continues to learn more on the essential importance of human adaptation as the real smarts in smart cities. "People are an essential component of smart cities: they are not only the target of smart city initiatives, but they should be smart too" (Dameri, 2013). From first principles to complex interconnected concepts, one thing stands out: a city is smart because its people are.

References:

Alexander, C. (1965). A City is Not a Tree - Part I. Architectural Forum, 122(1), 58-62

Alexander, C. (1965). A City is Not a Tree - Part II. Architectural Forum, 122(2), 58-62

Dameri, R. (2013). Searching for Smart City definition: a comprehensive proposal. International Journal of Computers & Technology, 11(1), 2544-2551.

Lears, J. (2010). Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920. New York: Harper Collins.

Maney, K., Hamm, S., & O'Brien, J. (2011). Making The World Work Better: The Ideas That Shaped a Century and a Company. Crawfordsville: IBM Press.

Miller, M. (2015). The Internet of Things. How Smart TVs, Smart Cars, Smart Homes, and Smart Cities Are Changing The World. USA: Que Publishing.

Townsend, A. (2013). Smart cities : big data, civic hackers, and the quest for a new utopia. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

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There And Back Again: Smart Cities, Not So Smart Yet Nor Not So New

Dean Marc Co (11 February 2017)

Immerse yourself in current news relating to urbanisation and you will nearly immediately find yourself with statements that the 21st Century is the Century of the City (Rockefeller Foundation, 2006), that more and more of the world's population are living in cities (United Nations - Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2015), that we are creating new cities both like never before and in a pace that is unprecedented (Nam, & Pardo, 2011), that challenges are overwhelming (Zenghelis & Stern, 2015), and that the innovative solutions are the cities themselves (Bloomberg & Sefcovic, 2016).

In a recent post (Co, 2017), the author endeavored to start the discourse by circling back to the basics of what a city is, regardless if it is 'smart' by different measures defined so far.

The author opines that cities are as old as and are intimately tied to the very roots and history of humanity's explosive, deliberate, and determined self-evolution.

In many ways, there is tight-coupling in the intricate interaction and co-stimulation between how people define cities and how urbanisation drives people. Which came first, the city or the people? Does it even matter?

When confused and definitive research or knowledge base are not present, one can deconstruct the conundrum further until first principles are achieved by asking: "Can there be a city without people?" and "Can there be people without cities?" Such questioning can lead to realisations about the nature of things.

Cities, towns, and settlements evolve directly from when humanity first tamed its land to provide for its sustenance. Indeed, concepts and words evolve and definitions are subjective to a certain extent (Violatti, 2014). Appreciating urbanisation and cities from its fundamental definitions and history allows us to focus on why we do what we need to do, no matter how abstracted or detracted away from the impact of our thinking and actions are.

References:

Bloomberg, M. & Sefcovic, M. (2016). Our new alliance unites 600m city dwellers in fight against climate change. Retrieved on 11 February, 2017 from https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/jun/22/michael-bloomberg-global-covenant-links-600m-people-and-7000-cities-fight-against-climate-change

Co, D. (2017). Smart Cities: It Is So Elementary, And Yet It Is Not, My Dear Watson. Retrieved on 11 February, 2017 from https://isportfolio.tumblr.com/post/157136454616/smart-cities-it-is-so-elementary-and-yet-it-is

Dameri, R. (2013). Searching for Smart City definition: a comprehensive proposal. International Journal of Computers & Technology, 11(1), 2544-2551.

Nam, T. & Pardo, T. (2011). Smart City as Urban Innovation: Focusing on Management, Policy, and Context. International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance 2011.

United Nations - Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2015). World Urbanization Prospects, The 2014 Revision. New York: DESA.

Violatti, C. (2014). Ancient History Encyclopedia - Civilization. Retrieved on 11 February, 2014 from http://www.ancient.eu/civilization/

Zenghelis, D. & Stern, N. (2015). Climate change and cities: a prime source of problems, yet key to a solution. Retrieved on 11 February, 2017 from https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/nov/17/cities-climate-change-problems-solution

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Smart Cities: It Is So Elementary, And Yet It Is Not, My Dear Watson

Dean Marc Co (11 February 2017)

Plato (Plato & Rouse, 2015) once said "This city is what it is because our citizens are what they are" but it can be argued that this is a duality and a contextual synergy that feeds off each other such that the author conversely argues that the citizens are what they are because the city is what it is. In Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1902), sublime insights can be gleaned in which he proposes that "no man can surpass his own time, for the spirit of his time is also his own spirit."

The author proposes, of course, a synthesis that will define the thought process throughout the rest of the theme concerning Smart Cities: what a smart city is, may be best understood when taking a wide point of view; often contrasting but rarely without common ground. It is immensely pragmatic to ground research and thought processes on principles that support synthesis of contexts, contents, and processes (Pettigrew, 1987) from different social actors and perspectives then merging them into a new understanding based on principles (Klein & Meyers, 1999) which facilitate research understanding.

Various aspects of what constitute a smart city solution are numerous. These are derived from or are inspired by early digitisation efforts by city governments (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, U.K., 2013), by proposal and development by organisations (International Electrotechnical Commission, 2014), and by researchers seeking to understand current progress to guide future directions (Caragliu, Del Bo, & Nijkamp, 2009). While most of research and commercial developments will pursue a multi-dimensional take on creating architectures and solutions for building and becoming smart cities, most, at least from the awareness and ease of accessing information regarding the theme, are technologically, functionally, or commercially oriented.

The author aims to pursue a more human-centric and society-centric perspective in understanding the history, contemporary nature, and possible futures of smart cities and urbanisation in general. It will take the perspectives of the triumvirate of Citizens, Governments, and Technology as it defines and are defined by Society. With this, it is hoped that a more practical, in-tune, and actionable cognizance of city realities will ultimately drive better citizenry, governance, and technological developments.

References:

Caragliu, A., Del Bo, C., & Nijkamp, P. (2009). Smart cities in Europe. 3rd Central European Conference in Regional Science, 46-59.

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, U.K. (2013). Smart Cities: Background paper. London: BIS.

Hegel, G. (1902). Lectures on the Philosophy of History. London: George Bell and Sons.

International Electrotechnical Commission. (2014). Orchestrating infrastructure for sustainable Smart Cities. Geneva: IEC.

Klein, H. & Myers, M. (1999). A set of principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive field studies in information systems. MIS Quarterly, 23(1), 67-94.

Pettigrew, A. (1987). Context and Action in the Transformation of the Firm. Journal of Management Studies, 24(6), 649–670.

Plato & Rouse, W. (2015). Great dialogues of Plato : complete texts of The republic, The apology, Crito, Phaedo, Ion, Meno, Symposium. New York: Signet Classics.

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Whitepaper Review: Getting Back To The Human Basics Of Why Develop Information Technology And Systems

Dean Marc Co (10 February 2017)

The whitepaper, "Launching a Generation of Global Problem Solvers" by one of the well known information technology companies in the world is suspiciously positioned as a discourse on the philosophical, anthropological, economic, social, and technological progress that needs to be supported to prepare humanity for the challenges of the 21st century. Suspicion is not necessarily an outright rejection of portrayed facts and sentiments, but can be a useful principle that helps facilitate thinking critically about the literature (Klein & Myers, 1999) as long as it is preceded by an open mind and a curious outlook.

It begins with people who are equipped in technology arenas like AI & Advanced Machine Learning, Intelligent Apps, Intelligent Things, Virtual & Augmented Reality, Digital Twin, Blockchain & Distributed Ledger, Conversational System, among others (Gartner, 2016). The discourse continues with the importance of not only having people and leaders to “Innovate as a Technologist”, but to also “Think as an Entrepreneur” and to “Act as a Social Change Agent” (Yoo, 2016).

Modern digital and information technology which are contemporarily and pervasively published like Internet-of-Things (IoT), Internet-of-Everything (IoE), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Deep Web, and cybersecurity resilience, among many things, are both hype (Miller, 2015, p.2) and a sneaking outreach to market, buyers, and users. Greenstein (2015, p.249) remarked that “Most strategic inflexion points, instead of coming in with a bank, approach on little cat feet. They are often not clear until you can look at events in retrospect.” Perhaps, with a multitude of multinational corporations vying to partake both in the hype and the promise of cutting-edge technologies (Miller, 2015, p.39) for society, these little cat feet now come in the form of large feline paws from the savannah, with the ability to drive change and influence lives that was previously only the purview of the kingdoms and governments.

Perhaps to have the ultimate answer is not the goal. Klein & Myers (1999) correspondingly advises, even after prescribing well-argued and thought-out principles on interpretive field research, that ultimately, it is about stimulating further discussions: “Without continuing debate on matters methodological, research methods and standards will stagnate.”

References:

Gartner Press Release. (2016). Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2017. Retrieved 9 February, 2017 from http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3482617

Greenstein, S. (2015). How the Internet Became Commercial: Innovations, Privatization, And The Birth Of A New Network. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Klein, H. & Myers, M. (1999). A set of principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive field studies in information systems. MIS Quarterly, 23(1), 67-94.

Miller, M. (2015). The Internet of Things. How Smart TVs, Smart Cars, Smart Homes, and Smart Cities Are Changing The World. USA: Que Publishing.

Yoo, T. (2016). Launching a Generation of Global Problem Solvers. San Jose: Cisco.

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Theoretical Paper Review: On Interpretive Field Studies And Research Principles

Dean Marc Co (7 February 2017)

Information Technology and Information Systems are seemingly highly technical areas which logically and intuitively lend itself to investigation, scrutiny, and research from a highly objective point of view.

As both student and practitioner, the author’s perspective has evolved over the years from a purist and singular belief that technology and the information systems it enables is a silver bullet in achieving mission and objectives, even in highly subjective and complex social interplays and conflicting stakeholder interests. But management failure that prevents successful outcomes are all too common in IT programmes and projects (Sutterfield, Friday-Stroud, & Shivers-Blackwell, 2006).

Instinctively, knowledge and wisdom have been ‘earned’, so to speak, through experience and realisation that technical and objective attributes are intimately tied with organisational, political, and social characteristics of any given endeavor. It has become useful also to perceive the state of things from different lenses and angles.

Marcel Proust wrote two beautiful passages in his novel series In Remembrance of Things Past which helped prepare the author’s sensibilities in learning more. The first is ‘We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves’ and the second is ‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes’.

The hope was always around having a theoretical framework or a set of guiding principles in accelerating this knowledge and wisdom realisation. This piqued the author’s interest in Klein & Myers work on promoting principles for Interpretive Field Research, as opposed to purely positivist and objective lenses we see with regarding Information Technology and Systems work in organisations. Fundamental grounding on the Hermeneutic Circle, understanding events within contexts, interpretation of data through conceptual abstraction, and from sensitivity to various interpretations of different actors (Klein & Myers, 1999) are a few principles which can guide preparation, formulation, execution, and reflection of field research.

References:

Gerring, J. (2007). Case Study Research: Principles and Practices. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Klein, H. & Myers, M. (1999). A set of principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive field studies in information systems. MIS Quarterly, 23(1), 67-94.

Stead, D. (2005). A review of the one-minute paper. Active Learning In Higher Education, 6(2), 118–131. doi: 10.1177/1469787405054237

Sutterfield, S., Friday-Stroud, S., & Shivers-Blackwell, S. (2006). A case study of project and stakeholder management failures: lessons learned. Project Management Journal, 37(5), 26-35.

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The Most Important Enterprise Of The Future (And Now)

Dean Marc Co (5 February 2017)

Much has been said about the twenty first century as being the century of the city (Rockefeller Foundation, 2006): about historical underpinnings (Rockefeller Foundation, 2006; Swinney, & Thomas, 2015), observed emerging realities & challenges (Florida, 2016; Cortright, 2017), forecasted multifaceted consequences (Rossant, 2013; IEEE Xplore, 2017), and possible solutions which come in singular forms & through integrated system of systems from citizens, companies, NGOs, politicians, and between nations.

While the volume, velocity, and variety of change is indeed staggering, the strategies, leadership, and competencies employed will determine the chances of success, failure, or enduring stagnation of cities and its citizens. John Wilmoth, Director of UN DESA’s Population Division, said “Managing urban areas has become one of the most important development challenges of the 21st century. The sentiment that “Our success or failure in building sustainable cities will be a major factor in the success of the post-2015 UN development agenda” was highlighted in a report called World Urbanization Prospects which aims to provide “new and updated information on global urbanization trends and city growth” (United Nations, 2014).

This is a beginning of a series of articles and posts which journeys through this portrayed reality of urbanisation now & in the future, how city history may hold deeper patterns we are ignoring, and how information systems are weaved through the fabric of urbanisation. This interface and interlace of information systems and technology, both as an artefact of our innovations and as an inherent aspect in the development, administration, and evolution of cities and citizenry is a foundational platform for further research and, more importantly, the execution and creation of simple solutions to very complex challenges we face. Roger Sessions (2008, p.xviii) wisely opines, “The antidote to complexity is simplicity. Replace complexity with simplicity and the battle is three-quarters over. Of course, replacing complexity with simplicity is not necessarily simple.”

The author argues the primacy of cities as the most important enterprise -- both from an organisational and information systems perspective -- simply because of its potential impact to do immense benefit or render profound detriment to society and humanity in its entirety.

References:

Cortright, J., (2017 February). Openness to immigration drives economic success. Retrieved 5 February, 2017, from http://cityobservatory.org/openness-to-immigration-drives-economic-success/

Florida, R., (2016 September). The New Realities of Talent Attraction. Retrieved 5 February, 2017 from http://www.citylab.com/work/2016/09/the-new-realities-of-talent-attraction/499670/

IEEE Xplore, (2017).Readings on Smart Cities. Retrieved 5 February, 2017, from http://smartcities.ieee.org/articles-publications/ieee-xplore-readings-on-smart-cities.html

Rockefeller Foundation, (2006 December). Century of the City. Retrieved 4 February, 2017, from https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/report/century-of-the-city/

Rossant, J., (2013 June). The century of the city will change the way we do politics. Retrieved 5 February, 2017 from https://www.ft.com/content/ee818994-dcb5-11e2-b52b-00144feab7de

Sessions, R. (2008). Simple Architectures For Complex Enterprises. Redmond: Microsoft Press.

Swinney, P. & Thomas, E. (2015 March). A century of cities: urban economic change since 1911. Retrieved 5 February, 2017 from http://www.centreforcities.org/publication/century-of-cities-economic-change-since-1911/

United Nations, (2014 July). World’s population increasingly urban with more than half living in urban areas. Retrieved 5 February, 2017 from http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/world-urbanization-prospects-2014.html

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First Drop Falls

It is as it were

From heaven’s love

Or ire as never before

That a drop of rain began

Among His billion tears

Yet unknown where it was to land

And ah! I was there

Against countless droplets

Among souls without a care

From as far as sight may

The drop and I, alive as one

It wouldn’t have been any other way

Nothing else but the mix of essence

Of life with another

Towards another, life bends

The purpose of nature’s laws

Is realizing, we all are nature

With all its beauty and flaws