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Monday, July 12, 2010

reelin' with the feelin'


How 'bout you?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

"The beatings will continue until morale improves."

Nyet said...

THE COMMITTEE OF TWELVE VICTORY PARTY

“Bing bang, I saw their whole gang
Prancin' on Jake’s living room rug. Yeah!

Flip flop, they wuzza doin’ the bop.
All the queens had the dancin' bug.

There wuz Lollipop-a (with-a Peggy Sue),
Good Golly! Miss Molly wuzza even there, too!”

Ah! You just had to BE there! Tough luck you didn't make the J-list.

sir lawrence said...

i loved this cartoon.
what business and UT org chart aficionados fail to recognize about "the 21st century" is that org charts are obsolete from the get-go. good or bad, we are living in a virtual world. 30 years ago, theoretical research in astrophysics became virtual with the advent of e-mail and electronic submissions to supercomputers. today, observational astronomy is virtual through remote observing facilities. the submission to and reading of research journals went virtual 15-20 years ago. even laboratory research in chemistry and microbiology will be virtual within 20 years, either by simulation or by remote mechanical processing.
learning will be virtual. there will still be good profs who engage their students, and bad profs who don't, and students who want engagement, and disinterested students who don't.
either way, i don't need an org chart to tell me to work with chris burnett in art on the physics of new media- the virtual world does the job.
solar energy will decentralize the energy economy and give "power to the people" (literally).
the virtual world decentralizes authority structures and makes org charts a humorous anachronism.
of course there will be problems of "truth" (if there is such a thing, xoroxyz10), veracity, and responsibility, but so what else is new?

Unknown said...

Re Sir Lawrence

Very well said.

These are just some of the reasons org charts and brick and mortar educational institutions are doomed for obsolescence quite soon in favor of virtual education. Business and management guru Peter Drucker recognized this fact a long time ago, as have many people in IT, science and technology and alternative education.

It’s one of those obvious no-brainers except for those blowing smoke and dragging their feet out of ignorance or because of their vested interest in the highly inefficient and often highly mediocre status quo of face-to-face education as it has been conducted out of necessity since the beginning of human civilization.

Decentralization and “power to the people” is not always necessarily a good thing, however.

Are you saying you would prefer the “anything goes” rumor and disinformation-filled Wild West of the Internet to some sort of centralized and certified academic information portal where people can have at least some reasonable degree of confidence that the information there is not total bullshit or propaganda?

Or the “decentralized” and often brutal and lawless world of the actual American Wild West or of nations during revolution like Russia or China or the present horrible state of Iraq or Afghanistan or many African nations etc. or the post-Apocalyptic worlds of Mad Max or Cormac McCarthy’s The Road – as opposed to the generally very safe and comfortable lives many of us are fortunate enough to have now in America and in other democratic nations?

I certainly hope not.

Re the “truth” – I’m not quite sure which edge of the Sword of Irony you are wielding here.

I doubt you are coming from a postmodernist relativist perspective – so you must be coming from a more scientific/analytic perspective – i.e. Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle or Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem or Russel’s Paradox or the logical positivist/empiricist Verification Principle or Popper’s idea of falsifiability – or something along those lines.

The subtleties of any absolute truth (if there really is anything like absolute truth) are undoubtedly still generally (but not entirely) open to debate – from the logic of inductive reasoning to the macroscopic level of astrophysics and black holes and the origins of the universe to the molecular level of DNA to the subatomic level of string theory and back to the human level of meaning, language, truth and logic.

But here’s one thing that is true. Mathematicians, physicists and engineers can do things like build really fast planes, trains and automobiles and scientists and physicians can cure diseases and people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs can make awesome personal computers etc. … but postmodernists can’t do any of these things – not practically or even theoretically, according to their own worldview.

And THAT’S the truth.

Incidentally – as a humorous aside – I can’t recall off hand who said it but it has been said by scientific critics of postmodernism that anyone in the humanities or social sciences who mentions Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle or Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem should be considered “guilty until proven innocent.”

Cheers.

Anonymous said...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38206989/ns/business-bloomberg_businessweek/

Anonymous said...

Loved the Business week article. Not all apply but #5, #7, #8 and #10 seemed to fit.

We have long tended to watch what we say on the phone and in our email.

HSC faculty member.

Anonymous said...

The University of Toledo certainly evokes "sad chuckles."