I love books — the look and feel, even the smell. They’re almost perfect: relatively portable, random-access, and — treated properly — they’ll last a hell of a long time. If you get tired of them, you can give them away, sell them on eBay, take them to a used-book store, or burn them for kindling, al la Fahrenheit 451… They look grand on bookshelves. They’re almost perfect. The do have a few draw backs:

• Books (and paper) are heavy — especially those damn 4-inch thick computer books.
• Books are not very portable — small quantities are fine, but if you try to take ten or so on vacation with you, it’s a literal drag. Despite their catchy name, Few “Pocket Books” will actually fit in a pocket — or if they do, you look kind of stupid.
• Paper takes up a lot of space — especially those damn user guides, administrator guides, and installation manuals I print and bind in 3-ring notebooks.
• Printed materials tend to “expire” — Today’s newspaper is worth about a dollar, yesterday’s is suitable for wrapping fish. (Of course, tomorrow’s newspaper, if you had it today, would be worth a fortune.)
• Repurposing is difficult — Transmutation costs are outrageous, either lead to gold, or paper to digital. Screw OCR, it’s not good enough, ever.
• Paper is expensive — There a “tree-cost” and an environmental cost. The manufacture and bleaching of paper is horrendous. Stand downwind of a pulp mill and breath deep. You’ll know what I mean.
• The print publishing process is arcane — the economies discourage risk and tend to favor existing authors and large publishers, to the determent of the small publisher or aspiring writers.

In late 2007, Jeff Bezos introduced the Kindle. I’m not sure he’ll be remembered in the same breath as Herr Hoffmann Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (whew). At least his name is shorter. The Kindle is, nevertheless, revolutionary.

Life’s Little Ironies

I got mine in late January of 2008. I feel I’m standing at the edge of history. Despite the book’s drawbacks, it was with some concern for my eternal soul — and some trepidation about the future — that I ordered a Kindle. A classic conundrum, I was caught in a lovers triangle, torn between my love of books and my love of shiny new gadgets. I couldn’t resist. I did not get it simply because I had an extra 400 simoleons burning a hole in my pocket though. I had a real purpose in mind, really. But I do like gadgets.

Gavin’s Second Element of Effective Knowledge Management In Action (I finish two sets of bookcases the week the Kindle arrives)

Just so we’re straight: let me assure you, I am not anxious to herald the end of the 600-year reign of the book. More so, after watching what the iPod and digital music has done to the music industry; I fear for the future. Newspapers are already suffering — perhaps on their last legs — put out to pasture by something as innocent as Craig’s List. Information may want to be free, but writers (and journalists) also want to eat. I think they should. Nevertheless, I bought a Kindle – hoping to fill it with user manuals, installation guides, and 4-inch-thick computer books (and a little pulp SciFi for long airplane rides).

Ironically, my Kindle arrived just after I had spent untold hours building, drilling, cutting, measuring, cutting again, cursing, painting, staining, sanding, and trimming some 30-odd-feet of book shelves for some of my thousand-odd books. There was barely time to admire my work before it was time to ponder the future of books. Had it all been a waste of time? They’re awful purty, if I do say so myself.

The Difference Engine

The Kindle is different; it changes the rules of the game. First, it’s wired, in a wireless sort of way. It comes bundled with a lifetime, free wireless connection to the ‘net — an EVDO connection, no less, via Sprint.

That’s right, you heard me —free. Once you shell out the 400 clamasaurs, you can browse the web, surf to your heart’s content for not another plug nickel. You see, the connectivity is bundled as a cost of sales, book sales. Amazon is betting on making up that cost with the sale of content; figuratively giving away the razors and hoping to sell you a razorblade in the form of a $9.77 Kindle-ized copy of Sweeny Todd (the book, not the movie).

They’ve made the process so painless it’s scary. Gratification is instantaneous. Click a button on the beast, and the book arrives, wirelessly, painlessly, ruthlessly efficient. I worry it’s too painless. Now, when I finish the first book in a three-part trilogy, the next book in the series is just a click away. This could cause a clamasaur problem.

I admit, at first glance, the Kindle looks funny. I was disheartened by its design, seeing the initial press coverage. In the pictures it looked like it was designed for the DHARMA Initiative (right here in Ann Arbor), circa 1968. Up close, though it’s not that bad — kind of retro, kind of not.

It’s here that I think the wonky gadget geeks missed their marks, and missed them badly.

The pundits, previously spoiled by the elegant beauty of all-things iPod, almost universally panned the Kindle, complaining about pretty much everything. But they especially complained that it was impossible to hold and “funny looking” (a technical term meaning not an iPhone). Once I had mine in my hands, I knew where those grumpy geeks had gone wrong. They had been using the Kindle naked. I mean the Kindle was naked, not the gadget geeks. (Don’t go there.)

In the half-dozen reviews I saw or read, every Kindle was demoed without its leather case. It was a logical mistake on their part. They’re used to looking at iPhones, and iPods, and other iThings — we can blame bad iPoddy training. The iPod “case,” for example, is a worthless throwaway specifically designed to make you spend another couple of hundred dollars on iPod accessories.

Back to the point, the Kindle, sans the (included) cover, is awkward to hold. However, properly attired, dressed up in nice leather, it all flows, it all makes sense. This cover is integral. You need it.

A Properly Dressed Kindle

Easy to Hold | Easy to Read

Without its cover, there is no easy place to put your fingers, no logical place to grab it at all. In fact, everything you touch seems to toggle the pages, either forward or back.

Slip it in its cover, however, and suddenly all the weird angles make sense. The left edge sort of slips into two leather brackets, and the weird angles on the right side now provide purchase for your thumb on the cover— they’re cutbacks that let you easily hold the thing without mashing the (now handy) “Next Page” bar. There’s a little plastic tab that snaps into the rubberized underside of the beast that holds it all in place. (Pundits, apparently, don’t read manuals.)

With the cover on, I find myself holding it just like I would hold a hardback book; palms on the cover and thumbs on each edge. Nothing could be more natural. It “feels” like a book. Moreover, it reads like a book. I’ve even taken to taking it to bed, reading a few pages of a novel before The A Daily Show. Let me say that again: it reads like a book. The transition was painless. My luggage has just shed 10 lbs.

It has a couple of other features, some worth mentioning, some not. There’s a speaker, but it’s lousy. Given that, it will play music and audio books. Through headphones or ear-buds the sound’s great. I gave it the Amy Winehouse test, and it passed. But, I’m not giving up my iPod (which is filled with Audiobooks anyway). Besides, there’s no way I could easily wire it into my car without feeling real foolish. Of note, you can put it “to sleep” — locking the keyboard — and the music or audio books will continue to play. This is important; otherwise the cover clicks the mousy-roller thing, playing havoc.

The Weight of Water

The Unabridged Mark Twain 3 Lbs – 4 Oz	The Buying of Congress 1 Lb – 12 Oz	The Hero with a Thousand Faces 1 Lb – 4 Oz	Gavin’sKindle (w / 2GB & cover) 1 Lb

Weight-wise, the Kindle is elegant. It weighs in at exactly one pound, cover included. At first, I thought: “a pound, damn, that’s kind of heavy for a book, ain’t it?” Turns out, it’s not. (And, quite frankly, the Kindle is smaller than it looks in any picture.)

Just for the fun, I decided to run its “comps” — to compare it to a few other books I had laying around on the nightstand.

As you can see in the pictures above, a typical paper-back “trade” book, as represented by The Hero with a Thousand Faces, weighs over a pound and is also slightly larger. A hardback (an embargoed copy of Chuck Lewis’s The Buying of Congress) is almost twice that. A paper-back, unabridged Mark Twain Reader is over 3 lbs. But, then again, Mark Twain is worth his weight in gold. Paperback pulp fiction, the kind I find in airports and carry from country to country, town to town, weighs in at about a pound.

Size-wise digital books on the Kindle average between 500K and 800K. Calculating liberally, that means that my beast, outfitted as it is with a 2GB SD card I found in a drawer, can hold over 2,000 books. With that kind of space, I am going to be well read, but broke.

Here’s the deal: Kindle books typically cost less. By my reckoning, I’ll save the purchase price within two years, on computer books alone. I am, on the other hand, worried about my local Borders, the Kindle’s gain, is their loss. I take solace in the fact that clicking the Kindle is no substitute for my weekly trip to the Border’s redoubt.

Books on the Kindle are cheaper than paper… Here’s a random comparison of titles and prices.

Depending on the book, savings run from nothing, up to about 26 percent of the print edition. Savings over hardback costs are greater still, but that comparison seems unjust, since the difference seems irrelevant.

[Borders, by the way, no doubt fearing the loss of my business, has opened a new concept store in town. It incorporates "digital media and internet features" — a concept they are calling the "media room." I haven't been yet — been too busy building bookcases and playing with my Kindle.]

The Future of Ideas

Finally, with the Kindle, I had two ideas I wanted to pursue — two ideas I used to justify the purchase to myself:

1. I use it as a “geek reference library” — loading it up with PDF copies of manuals, installation guides, administrator references, and all the other desiderata of CIO life (as well as books).
2. There were possible “enterprise” uses — could I, for example, use it for board materials? Would it effectively bridge the gap between things “printed” and things “digital,” serving that in-between no-man’s-land land where we still want paper, but despise it.

The Portable Geek

The first idea turned out to be easy. There are three easy ways to turn other documents, like PDFs, into things that can be read on the Kindle. It’s not perfect, but it works. It works best with text-heavy documents. Graphics can be a problem. They don’t scale well.

At issue here is the ability to scale — fonts and graphics — from “I can read it” to “I can read it across the room.” The text has to be able to “flow” — to adjust to the screen as you up the font size.

Amazon’s native format — a DRM’ed version of the MobiPocket eBook format — does this. Word documents and text documents do this. This makes Kindle conversion easier. PDF’s don’t flow all that well, especially if they’re graphic-heavy. To set the record straight: the Kindle supports Amazon’s DRM format (.AZW), as well as unprotected MobiPocket formats (.PRC and .MOBI) and Text documents. Other formats (like Word and HTML) must be converted

With all of them, Word, PDF, HTML, or Text, the conversion is easy. There are three ways. Two are free, and one costs $0.10 per document. The ten cents is for the wireless delivery.

1. Convert via Email (without wireless delivery) — simply email the file to a special Amazon email address, they’ll convert it for you, and they’ll email it back to you. You then drag it on to your Kindle from your PC.
2. Convert via Email (with wireless delivery) — simply email the file to Amazon to a (slightly) different email address, they’ll convert for you it and email it directly to your Kindle for a cost of ten cents. It arrives on the Kindle via the wireless connection.
3. Convert manually — simply download a (free) copy of the MobiPocket Reader software, and click the button to convert the file to the MobiPocket format. It takes a few seconds and stores it on your hard-drive. Once done, you just drag it into the Documents folder on the Kindle.

That’s it. With a little “conversion” work, I had a complete technical reference library on my Kindle. Moreover, it was searchable. Everything on the Kindle is searchable. That’s what the keyboard is for. Just a few (tiny) keystrokes and you get a KWIC listing of any term you enter. Idea number “One” was a success. I had my geek library, portable, searchable; I’d never suffer insomnia again.

Enterprise and Culture

The other idea, enterprise applications, is slightly problematic. The Kindle, like many of today’s gadgets, does not lend itself well to enterprise. DRM gets in the way, much as it gets in the way of using a Kindle within a library. That’s a problem that needs solving. In my mind, the solution is easy, the answer, simple: like a physical book; a digital book should only be in one place at a time. How this is done, is easy too, but I’ll save that idea for some other time.

DRM aside, there are a few uses where the Kindle has an enterprising chance — a chance to function as a wedge between the analog and the digital world.

Organizationally, for example, we produce and ship an amazing amount of paper, all for an internal audience. Non-profits in general do the same thing. I’m talking about all those board documents; updated policy manuals, bylaws, program plans, pandemic plans, and disaster recovery plans. In organizations today, documents fly through the email-aether. But, in the end, a surprising number end up on paper, in binders, and three-ring notebooks.

The reason is simple. Humans — especially those of longer tooth — don’t especially like to read lengthy documents on LCD. Even short-toothed people don’t like reading long documents on an LCD screen. Enter the Kindle.

My thought is to replace all those “reference-type materials” — Board materials for example — with a Kindle and digital copy. Even at $400 a pop we’d save on in-house publishing costs (not to mention the FedEx bills). Moreover, for the most part, these sorts of documents are not “interactive” they’re reference.

Nevertheless, they’re necessary. And, they’re heavy, awkward, and difficult to transport. They suffer the same liabilities as the “book.” Kindle-izing them would save time, save paper, keep everything centralized and up-to-date, and allow a 10-cent, near instantaneous delivery.

In the end, I am reminded again of Gutenberg. It turns out he only printed about 180 Bibles. He made his money running a press on the side, printing thousands of indulgencies for the Church. It’s an old story, innovation flows to demand. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Perhaps I’m indulging myself, but I suspect Gutenberg would approve.

We travelled together, she and I, bisecting France; from Brussels to Aix-en-Provence and back again. In hindsight, I couldn’t of done it without her. How I ever planned to survive, travelling those weeks without her is beyond me. I’d have been lost without her, lost.

She was my constant companion, Jane. During the day, driving, she was there. In the evenings, she’d accompany me on walks — short or long. She was never at a loss for words; she always knew just what to say. I’d hang on every word. She was worldly in ways I can’t describe. We became close in those few days together; I could sometimes even anticipate what she’s going to say next. “Oh Jane,” I said. “Run away with me. Together we’ll see the ends of the earth.” Jane, always taciturn, would say: “Go to the end of the road and turn left.” Jane had a sultry way about her, teasing yet stern, with that lilting British accent. I’d smile, knowingly. “You have reached your destination,” she’d say firmly. Then, I’d reach up and – ever so gently – pluck her from her adhesive perch on the windscreen and tuck her into the glove box. Yet, in the end, I left her. I left her in Brussels, back at the Avis counter. I had to. It was either that or lose my deposit. Jane: the GPS lady.

GPS is a liberating technology. Jane — in the form of a TomTom GPS device — was amazing. To put it nicely: driving in a strange city can be, shall we say, flummoxing. To put it accurately, it can be frustrating, irritating, and downright dangerous — to you, the other traffic, innocent and not so innocent pedestrians, and/or your assorted travelling companions.

Driving in another country quadruples that frustration and danger. Not only are you perpetually lost, but the roads are wacky, some barely wide enough for a goat (and a skinny goat at that). The pace of traffic is fast and all the signs are in a different language. [To quote Steve Martin: Those French are amazing, they have a different word for everything!] Moreover, even if the road signs are roughly approximate to English, or you happen to speak the local lingo, everything is nevertheless somehow incomprehensible.

Now what were those “three laws of robotics” again?

I’ve wandered the world, driving here and there, always with some degree of angst, some lingering anxiety about the traffic, the other drivers, where I was going, or just where the hell I was. With Jane as my co-pilot that anxiety was gone. I could concentrate on driving, either at (very) high speeds on flawless French highways or feeling like James Bond as I curved around winding trails in search of coteaux and caveau, my (rented) Audi A4 Turbo Diesel purring, Amel Bent’s Nouveaux Français blasting on the Blaupunkt.

It’s odd. Technology was supposed to be enslaving, not liberating, the enemy of democracy, not its savior. We were headed for dystopia, an Orwellian future where technology was to be a black boot on the back of the neck. I watched the year 1984 creep closer and closer, big brother looming large. It came and went, with barely a whimper.

Now, don’t get me wrong: technology can (and has) been turned to evil ends. Much has already been said about the evil ends. The possibilities for more evil abound, even for a company who’s motto is “do no evil.” (It’s just a little to newspeak for my tastes.)

The Open Secrets Effect

But I want to talk about the other side. I want to talk about Jane, and things like Jane. I want to talk about something I call the “open secrets effect,” something that has the power to save one’s marriage from map-reading malevolence, and, perhaps, the power to save democracy from itself.

While it may seem a trivial one, GPS is a good example of the open secrets effect — that magical synergy you get when you mix disaggregate information with extraordinary computational power and deliver it in new ways. In the interest of honesty, I should say that I stole the name of the effect from Larry Makinson and OpenSecrets.org, a site published by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP). That site is the brainchild of Larry and of Ellen Miller. Ellen is the former executive director of CRP. She’s now at the Sunlight Foundation. In the interest of full disclosure, I should also note that my wife was CRP’s long-time communications director, until the fates led her down a much more fun career path. She’s the reason I get to do these fun trips.

The site, OpenSecrets.org is about campaign finance. It’s also a prime example of the power of opening the kimono, of exposing information that has been shrouded in darkness and complexity.

The Open Secret Effect is what happens when you shine a bright light on data, making it not just available — there are lots of maps of France “available” after all — but accessible, understandable, and personal. When you do that, something magic happens.

For example, originally, Open Secrets was a book. It was published by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP). It weighed in at probably 10 pounds and was a good four inches thick. But, when CRP took that information, mixed it with a dash of database and a smidgen of internet, suddenly they had an even more powerful agent of change.

That magic mix — data, database, and internet — made the information real and powerful. People could look up their “own” politician, and see just where the money came from. There’s a new twist today, by the way, an initiative called MapLight.org. It promises to take that information to the next level, marrying campaign contributions to voting records. So called “mashups” like MapLight — where two or more previously isolated sets of data are “mashed” together — potentiate the open secrets effect. “You have reached your destination,” says Jane.

That’s the power of the open secrets effect. The mere act of opening the kimono changes behavior and changes the balance of power. Now, more than ever, U.S. political campaigns (and politicians) are dominated by big-money interests. Those interests finance the campaigns and, through those dollars and donuts, pocket the politicians that shape the fabric of our lives. Hopefully, the jig is up. With the open secrets effect of MapLight and OpenSecrets, it should be much more difficult to be bought and sold, especially when everybody knows how cheap the price.

So too, the inherent “connectedness” of the Internet is also changing the relationship of money to power as well. Big money is still there (by the bucket-full in this particular election season) but it is being somewhat counterbalanced by so-called internet campaigns, campaigns that are using the ‘net’s ability to aggregate lots of small things, in this case small contributions.

For good or for bad, campaign contributions have been ruled as constituting “free speech.” As such, more people are speaking than ever before. [Sadly, over two-thirds of those dollars — regardless of source — just end up fueling the creation of traditional one-way TV spots, designed not to inform but to obscure, enrage, or distract. One-way media must perish from this earth.]

Nevertheless, today’s innovative (dare I say social) uses of technology have had a liberating effect. Instead of robbing us of rights, they have increased our participation, restoring power to the formerly powerless. It has strengthened our democracy, not undermined it. To paraphrase Al Gore in his (absolutely terrific) book, The Assault on Reason, “a connected citizenry” is our greatest hope. The new internet is all about connections and the open secret effect.

More and more secrets are being opened. It’s a revolution in knowledge, power, and influence. Suddenly the powerless are powerful, the disenfranchised are raised up. It is something that can change the course of history or something that can get you from village “A” to vineyard “B” (and back again). “Take the roundabout, second exit,” says Jane.

Opening this secret can of worms has the potential to turn power on its head — counterbalancing previously one-sided relationships or creating strength of numbers where there was none previously. It’s directly responsible for the new realization that “consumers” are not passive patsies but active participants. Nowhere is this truer than in the development of software, for example. Software publishing has become a dynamic, interactive process where the customers participate in the product’s development, even doing the product testing.

Previously top-down, one-sided relationships are being changed — for the better IMHO. For example, let’s look at some previously one-sided relationships: between the entrepreneur and the venture capitalist, between the Fourth Estate and the public, and between grantee and grantor. These are being turned on their heads — they’re feeling the open secrets effect. They are being forced to operate in an environment where the formerly obscure is now in public view, i.e., the open secrets effect is at work.

In one of my favorite examples of truly living the Open Secrets life, Southwest Airlines actually made a television show of their inner operations called “Airline,” with a tag line of “We all have our baggage!”

Meanwhile, a site called TheFunded has turned the tables on the world of the holy venture capitalist, dishing up a place that allows entrepreneurs to rate their would-be suitors. TheFunded has changed the equation by opening up the secrets that everybody “knew” but nobody shared. TheFunded has aggregated the voice of the powerless, and in so doing, become powerful. Now the VC’s are beginning to understand the real business they’re in and the nature of their relationship with their customers, the entrepreneur.

A more Web 2.0 example is being done by Google. Google is turning the one-way-medium called “the news” into a two-way conversation by introducing a way to give the subjects of news reports a way to comment on articles written about them. What was a one-way pipe is now a two-way conversation. It chips away at the Fourth Estate’s overwhelming power to set and control the agenda.

Finally, there is a little open secrets project I’m involved with. It’s called GrantsFire. [I don't have much to show you yet about GrantsFire – but you can look at the hGrant microformat standard, if you want. Microformats are a way of marking up web pages to make them machine readable. Find information here.]

Clearly, grants are no secret, just as maps of France are easy to come by. However, GrantsFire is about seeing and presenting that information in new ways. GrantsFire is an initiative to both establish a standard for publishing machine-readable grants information on the web, and about encouraging foundations to publish such information. Once up and running, with a critical mass of participants, that information can be aggregated by one (or more) sites. People will be able to run the data through a data vegamatic, slicing and dicing by topic, type of support, geographic focus, foundation, dates, and dollars. Who knows what mashups might result. Perhaps the next time I’m careening around France, Jane at my side, she’ll pipe up and say: “You have reached your destination. There’s a vineyard on your left, a gas station on your right, and this area has received over $4 million in private grants to encourage organic farming, improve educational test scores among children, grades K-12, and to finance microenterprise.”

Secrets are now open secrets. Clive Thompson, writing for WIRED in an article entitled “The See-Through CEO,” writes:

“The Internet has inverted the social physics of information. Companies used to assume that details about their internal workings were valuable precisely because they were secret. If you were cagey about your plans, you had the upper hand; if you kept your next big idea to yourself, people couldn’t steal it. Now, billion- dollar ideas come to CEOs who give them away; corporations that publicize their failings grow stronger. Power comes not from your Rolodex but from how many bloggers link to you – and everyone trembles before search engine rankings.”

It’s a new world. Expose yourself. Come drive with Jane and see the power of the open secrets effect.

{Photograph copyright: Pam Green, 2003}

Anyway, just as I was taking off my shoes in prep for the 8 hours ahead of me, the speech began. You know the one:

“…this aircraft is equipped with [Pick one] [four] [eight] [fifteen] [sixteen] [twenty-three] [forty-two] exit doors…, fasten your seatbelt by inserting the metal tab, pull up on the huskerdo thingy to release,… in the event of a water landing, be sure to inflate your shoes, etc., etc.”

Right, you’ve heard it, I’ve heard it. I’ve heard it enough that I could do the little accompanying hand motions if I pushed myself [two fingers waving towards each side of the plane to illustrate the location of the doors, etc].

This time, however, I realized something. As you’ve probably noticed, the speech has been automated. On more and more flights, it’s a video. That’s not new. What was new – or at least up until now I hadn’t noticed – is what the cabin stewards did while the speech was running. Robbed of their finger wagging, freed of their bondage to the oxygen mask demonstration, no longer forced to demonstrate how a life jacket could be inflated manually… they just stood there.

On this flight, they stood, each under the video monitor, at parade-rest, in the middle of the aisle just where they used to do the speech. It was as if they were still doing the presentation. Only they, like the rest of the humans in cabin, were busy staring off into space. And, as I watched, I thought to myself: What a perfect example of “holding the horses.”

It’s a phrase and a concept I delightfully steal from historian Elting E. Morison. The term is from a series of lectures first delivered at CalTech in the 50′s. No, I wasn’t there, but I was lucky enough to have had to read his book in graduate school. It’s from a collection of essays published as “Men, Machines, and Modern Times.” It’s not so much a book about history as it is a book about the interplay of history, technology, change, and adaption to change; more stunning today than ever, more relevant. It’s a must-read if you work with people and new technology, providing an understanding of how and why and where institutions and individuals fight back against change, against new technology.

The phrase “holding the horses” is from the introduction to an essay entitled “Gunfire at Sea: A Case Study of Innovation.” The lesson has stuck with me for years. Morison tells the story of a “time and motion” efficiency study – the write-up of an analysis of firing a field artillery piece done around WWII. Let me explain the horses.

The goal was to identify ways to improve the efficiency of firing a mobile artillery piece — either to speed up the number of rounds in a given time and/or decrease the required number of people it took to do it – almost a classic definition of “productivity.”

As part of the analysis, the researchers examined the carefully orchestrated movements of the gunnery crew – a total of five soldiers as I recall – as they loaded, aimed, primed, and fired the gun. The process had been carefully choreographed over time for maximum efficiency and speed.

Watching, and later filming, the dance of the gunners, the analyst was puzzled by what seemed to be a series of wasted and wholly unnecessary steps. Two of the gunners, in fact, seemed to do nothing half the time, while the other three worked their respective asses off. Just before the gun was fired, these two soldiers just stepped back, one to either side of the gun and simply stood there; watching the other three work. Once the gun was fired, they stepped back in to help. It was obviously part of the carefully choreographed routine, but it made no sense.

Puzzled, the analyst queried other gun crews looking for an answer. The whole loading and firing process was carefully scripted, extremely orchestrated, right down to individual movements and roles. There had to be a reason why two of the guys just stood there half the time. Nobody seemed to know why; they just all agreed that it had to be done that way. It was the way they were taught, and that was the way it was done, period.

Finally the researchers asked an old colonel of artillery, someone who had been around for a while, and someone that actually trained the younger gunners. The veteran knew immediately. “They’re holding the horses,” he said. “What horses,” asked the researchers. “Why the ones that used to haul the guns. Each gun was hauled by two horses. If you didn’t hold them steady when the gun fired, they would bolt.” Of course, the horses had been replaced by mechanized artillery years before.

Looking at the flight stewards, I thought to myself: I bet they’re holding the horses. Automation, in this case a standardized video message about seatbelts, exit doors, and all things oxygen mask, had changed their role, actually improved their jobs, but they were still left holding the horses by the old processes. The world had changed around them.

On the return flight, the same act played out. The video ran; the attendants stood. Curiosity piqued, I had to ask. I motioned one of the stewardesses over and asked her what was up. With serious face, she replied that the stewards stood there so that it was “clear to the passengers who to ask if they had any questions about seatbelts or water landings.” “And,” she added, looking very very serious, “to make sure you’re paying attention.” Since, of course, I hadn’t been, nor had anybody else, I momentarily felt a little guilty and felt myself blushing red. Then she winked, and we both broke into laughter.

Confronted by today’s rapid pace of technological change, organizations hold a lot of horses; the faster the change, the more horses. We all do it. We treat web sites like magazines, databases like report producers, voicemail like a “while you were out” pad, and email like it was direct mail. Some of us even think to treat email like a weapon, using it in an attempt to inundate or overwhelm, harkening back to the days of postcards or letter campaigns, while never thinking that deleting a million messages is as easy as deleting one. That’s just stupid.

Non profits are not immune — in fact they’re probably worse. Working with nonprofits as a consultant, I’ve often walked into what felt like an imaginary stable, horses being held steady to the left and right; a regular day at the races. To quote again Dr. Morison, “The tendency is apparently involuntary and immediate to protect oneself against the shock of change by continuing in the presence of altered situations the familiar habits, however incongruous, of the past.”

There is no clearer example than the persistence of paper, especially paper reports; usually generated by databases. We are swimming in paper reports – most unneeded – each one immediately out of date the moment it is printed. We print them despite the fact that the same information is available, dynamically, on-screen, with the push of a button.

Language too, can show you where the horses are stabled: it’s slow to keep up. When things are in flux, language usually reflects the associated angst. That’s why you still here the phrase “in the can” when a news crew finishes a video shoot – it refers to the act of putting the film into a sealed container or “can.” Film is gone, and so is the can, but the language has failed to adapt. The examples are everywhere: “b-roll,” “post-modern,” “post-industrial,” “login,” and “boot,’ or for that matter, “reboot.” Our brains hold horses and we don’t even notice. I shudder, for example, when I hear voicemail with a message like: “Can you call me back. I need to ask you a question.” We’re thinking pink “While you were out” pads. Sadly, I am not immune.

One example that sticks in my mind: the language surrounding the grantmaking process at one foundation. There, a grant was referred to as “going to blue” — a point in the process where approval was almost certain and eminent. Stymied, after a few days I broke down and asked: “Why blue?” “What’s blue?” After some digging [basically asking the foundation's the colonel of artillery], it turns out to be a reference to the carbon paper; the “blue” copy that was produced when the paperwork was being finalized. Hell, we still call it paperwork.

Today’s tools are different. They do different things. Confronted with change – driven for the most part by technology – we often can’t or won’t change, we’ve been left holding the horses, holding on to past ways, however, incongruous. The problem is in our heads and our hearts. But it’s not just us individuals.

Organizations too, fight back against change, eliminating all but the slimmest possibility of “change from within.” In the same study, Morison concludes that “[T]he deadlock between those who sought change and those who sought to retain things as they were was only broken by an appeal to a superior force, a force removed from, and unidentified with, the mores, conventions, and devices of the society.“ The argument, the great generalization, here is that no institution can reform itself. Truly, it’s a rare institution that can. That reform requires rare bravery, rare vision and even rarer leadership. And, it is why, the view from without is so valuable sometimes. I could see the bridles in the hands of the cabin attendants. They could not.

Stupid, just stupid; the idea fails the simplicity test, in my opinion. Fact is, it’s just easier – assuming you wanted to – to type in the URL. Anyway, their stupidity (and subsequent bankruptcy) is your gain. Because of it, you can enter the amazing world of barcodes for real cheap.

I think DigitalConvergence shipped millions of these useless hunks of plastic. I received six or seven of them myself, for free, in the mail. They look like kind of like a cat-shaped mouse. We hung them over a cubical wall, and there they sat. Here’s a picture:

One day it – when I was thinking of selling off some of my science fiction collection on EBay and dreading the thought of entering all that data — it occurred to me that if I had a barcode scanner, my life would be easier. EBay lets you use ISBN numbers, and most of my books had barcodes with the ISBN number somewhere on the cover. All I needed was a scanner.

(I also collect wine, and the software I use to manage that collection uses barcodes too, if you have a scanner. Amazing, there is software that tells me when to drink. Ain’t life grand.)

Anyway, while we did have several barcode wands at work, they ran about $500 each. We use them for library books and a custom built folder tracking system. But, for that price, I’d be better off just burning my books for heat in the winter and just drinking the wine at random.

Enter the Cue Cat. It is, after all, a barcode scanner, and I had 6 of them.. But, while it was a scanner, it was also designed so you couldn’t use it for just scanning barcodes. It had been designed to output the data in an encrypted form, and to tag it with an identifying serial number. (Of course, DigitalConvergence wanted to track who was looking at what. After all there was money to be made, right?) Anyway, a quick jump to Google, and I found how to fix the cat – it’s easy depending on what Cat you have. Here’s a link to the process:

http://www.cexx.org/cuecat.htm

If you have one lying around, and it’s happens to be one of the models that this process describes, it’s very easy to do. I did it in less than 10 minutes, with a piece of twist-tie. I now had a barcode scanner. I use it for managing my library, selling items on Ebay, managing my wine collection and CD collection.

If you’re not that brave, don’t have a Cat or the right Cat, or can’t find a twist tie, screwdriver, or whatever, you can also buy them – already modified – for about $10 on EBay. And for $10 you get the USB model that actually goes to sleep when it’s not used. (With mine, the eyes have been glowing for months now. That tends to be a little disconcerting when I wander around my house at night.)

Aside from drinking wine and selling books, there are truly useful tasks you can do as well. Most every PC I’ve seen in recent years comes with a barcode serial number, for example. Hence, inventory becomes much easier. Trust me, it’s a lot easier to scan a barcode than try to both see and accurately record a serial number of the bottom of some PC.

Barcode readers, by the way, Cue Cat or commercial, work just like you’d typed it on the keyboard. If you’re in Word, it will simply read the barcode and output the corresponding numbers on your screen, at the cursor. If you’re in a database field, for example, swiping the reader across a barcode will insert it into the current field. They are very handy and a great time saver, once you put them to work.

Gavin Clabaugh – June 2006