This is NOT the Knowledge Age

In 1966, Peter Drucker described the knowledge worker in contrast to the manual worker. The knowledge worker is one who works primarily with information or one who develops and uses knowledge in the workplace. This type of worker is a product of the Knowledge Age described by Savage in 1995 as "the third wave of human socio-economic development". The first two being, the Agricultural Age and the Industrial Age. This third wave points to a time when the majority of workers will deal in information. They will work with their minds more than their hands. In the Agricultural Age land meant power and in the Industrial Age, factories meant power. In the Knowledge Age, knowledge is power.

The fact is, the United States has been in the Knowledge Age since the 1950s. At this time the number of white collar workers began to exceed the number of blue collars workers. The Information Age (as it was known then) began. This is the decade that brought us the mainframe and many other business technologies that are still in some form used today.

If knowledge equals power in the Knowledge Age, how do the powerful give away knowledge to get more powerful? Many of the blogs that I read and the twits I follow freely give away the knowledge they have. When they do, they are considered experts and grow more powerful as their standing in the community is raised and their demand increased. We have grown beyond the Knowledge Age. Thanks to web 2.0, all knowledge is shared. Wether it is a blog, a tweet, or just a posting I can google, it's shared. Having the knowledge is no longer powerful. How to aggregate the data and use it to create new ideas is powerful. We are now entering the Creation Age. In the Creation Age, creativity is power.

If you are a knowledge worker, there are two things to do to reach the next level of career evolution.

1. Recognize that you may not be a knowledge worker: Just because you work with data does not automatically make you a knowledge worker. You may be acting as a manual laborer pushing paper instead of operating a wrench. Anybody can be taught to use a wrench, if what you do doesn't have a value add then you are the 21st century equvilant of a manual laborer. You too will be replaced by automation, just as factory workers were replaced at the end of the Industrial Age. Avoid this fate by differentiating your work from what other people can offer.
2. Give away the knowledge: Since knowledge is not power, give it away. The more you share the information, the more indispensable you become. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it's worked for many already. Giving away the knowledge lets people know you are the expert. Now instead of maintaining knowledge and educating each individual about pieces of your expertise, you can concentrate on growing your abilities and creating something new.
   

2008 was all about the mash-up. Writing the music is good. Combining it is genius.

The same wave will transcend art and be adopted by business and education in 2010.

Welcome to the Creation Age.

In the beginning there was SaaS..

Thanks to everyone who has provided feedback on my blog postings. One comment that has surfaced a few times has been the level at which the postings are written. There is an assumed level of knowledge they are targeted at. However, I would like everyone to get something out of these postings so I would like to provide a beginner's guide to Utility computing and define some of the common TLAs and FLAs used. (See below definitions if you missed those)

• Utility Computing - The concept is similar to electric utilities we are all familiar with. In this model, you get electrical service to your house under an SLA and you pay for what you use of it. It's exactly the same with utility computing. An SLA is provided and companies use as little or as much computing resources as they wish and get charged only for what they use. Why do this? Providers can build large scale, fully fault tolerate environments that non-providers cannot afford to build and charge them for using pieces of it. It's a "the parts are worth more than the whole" business model. For users, they get all the advantages of this large scale, fully fault tolerant environment without having to shell out millions in capital expenditure and without the administrative overhead. It's a win-win for all.
  
• SaaS-(pronounced sass) Software As A Service is a model of software deployment whereby a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand. So unlike a traditional on premise solution, customers don't ever own the software, they are only licensed to use it. They only get charged for how much they use as well, whether that be by the hour or per user per month.
  
• PaaS- (pronounced pass) Platform As A Service is the delivery of a computing platform and solution stack as a service. Companies such as Amazon, Force.com, and Microsoft are offering complete development environments and a complete infrastructure stack via the Internet.
  
• Cloud Computing-A style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over a network. In the cloud, the concept behind where an application is located disappears. The physical location and even the physical hardware ceases to stay static or be relevant. Applications in a cloud computing environment run on a bank of systems in multiple locations. This guarantees their performance, scalability, and resiliency.
  
• Public and Private clouds-Cloud computing can take place in a private cloud within an organization's network or publicly where the resources exist on the Internet.
  
• Azure>-Microsoft's PaaS offering.
  
• AWS-Amazon Web Services. Online retailer Amazon provides infrastructure web services platform in the cloud. They sell pieces of their vast computing resources. You can purchase individual pieces (described below) or a complete infrastructure.
  
• S3- Simple Storage Service. An Amazon service providing online storage.
  
• EC2-Elastic Compute Cloud. Another Amazon service providing resizable compute capacity.
  
• TLA- Three letter Acronym.
  
• FLA-Four Letter Acronym.
  

I hope this helps clear up some of the techno-babble surrounding utility computing. The concepts are very different from the current model of infrastructure and software distribution and licensing, but are easy to understand. In fact there is little that's new about it at all. Most of you have had an online e-mail account for years now. You don't own the mail software. You are licensed to use it. It's a utility application. You pay for what you use and it's available for you when you need it. It's licensed as SaaS. You are reading this on a blog. The blog software doesn't run on your computer. The creation didn't really happen on my computer either. The creation and publishing are SaaS applications. Thanks to these earlier successes and a more robust Internet, more complex software such as office production packages and financial packages are now being offered as SaaS.


"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible."

-Frank Zappa

The Blues Brothers, master code developers

It's Monday morning and I'm reading tweets, my e-mail (home and work), and the various blogs that I track. Unable to think of a good posting myself right now as I am only half way through my first cup of coffee, I offer you this:

The Blues Brothers, master code developers

I must add one more allegory. Jake's wife (played wonderfully by Carrie Fisher in the film) is the stakeholder that comes from out of no where. The project is moving along despite a few pitfalls along the way. Suddenly the requirements change from another person at the customer's organization who at the last moment has decided that they need their fingers in this project. This is the moment when you think everything is about to fail. Project lead Jake pulls out all the BS he can muster and lets the project continue as planned.

Does this ring true?

Next: Can we create an allegory between project management and Star Wars?