Before I continue, I suppose I ought to clarify the part about 'speaking your truth'.

I fully believe that there is an objective truth, mostly with regards to things that can be measured and counted and validated with science. The grass is green (hopefully, if well watered in the spring or summer), and this is something we can go out and see for ourselves.

There is also our own inner truth. It can come from our experiences, the ideas we encounter, the way we relate to those ideas, etc. People can argue about whether those original ideas are true or not, but my experience with them is uniquely my own, and relaying that is my truth. 

Which is also why the things that can't be validated by science are often so subjective. 

When I first started blogging, I generally tried to keep the posts coherent and somewhat well-researched. If I could find an article making the point I remembered I'd link to it. But, well...

This is my own weird little corner of the internet, and if the blogging statistics are right almost nobody is reading it. I've started going more with an attitude (meant in a light-hearted way) of f*** it.

F*** it, I remember reading something, somewhere, and this is what I recall and how it impacted me. I don't necessarily remember where I read it, nor am I 100% sure I remember it accurately. But f*** it, blogging isn't about being 100% accurate anyway. 

I've also decided to keep some of the asides and detours, though I generally circle back to my point. That's closer to how the human brain works anyway, so whatever. I'm not trying to get these things published in scientific journals, or even as op-eds. 

(Speaking of asides - there are some subtleties with 'speak your truth'. For example, if you admire Mohammed a great deal and try to imitate him, you should be very careful that you're not trying to speak Mohammed's truth. Only Mohammed can speak his truth. You can speak about how Mohammed impacted you, and why you admire him, and how you chose to live your life based on him. That's your truth, and yours alone. Don't try to mimic other people, don't try to be other people, or you are missing out on sharing that thing that is indescribably and solely yours.)

So, on to the main topic, the reason I made my earlier post about cloud computing.

I have heard it said that our ability to govern, and how, is related to the technology of the time. More specifically I've heard speculation that there was a size limit to how much the Roman Empire could control, given that communicate depended on how fast people could walk, or travel in horsedrawn vehicles, or sail a boat. That's part of why Roman governors had so much independence. It took too long to send a message to the Emperor, much less get a response. If you were dealing with anything that was time sensitive, you needed the authority to make the decision on the spot.

Our own earlier elections were affected by this. It took time to count the votes and send the results in. It also took time to communicate with whoever you wanted on your staff, and get their responses. The telegraph, telephone, and now the internet have changed that calculus tremendously.

As communication has gotten faster, different problems have developed. There's always been problems with delegating and creating a system that brings the important things to your attention (while delegating the things that can be delegated so that you're not swamped.) Iirc, Philip II struggled with that.

These problems are worse now. 

Previous eras also struggled with getting information in the first place. 

Now we are swimming in it.

A lot of this ties into organizational structures - which often act like my earlier example about the project management triangle. That is, there is no perfect system. There are trade offs, and benefits, and which ones are worth it depend on the circumstances and your own priorities.

The army, as one example, has the structure it does in part because we've learned people can only effectively manage so many things at once. Give a battalion commander a couple of combat companies, a headquarters company, and a staff and that's probably about what one person can manage. The company commander has a few platoons and an XO, and same. (Maybe a little less in number, since s/he's less experienced). But a structure like tends to have many layers between the bottom and the top, which means there are multiple places that can become chokepoints. It can take a while for information to travel up and down the chain, and anyone along the way can slow or speed the transmission rate. (We've all heard of someone going on vacation, and an important document sitting in their inbox until they get back. Sometimes it's even more deliberate than that, too.)

So you get people who try to 'flatten' the structure. Take out a few layers. That can run the risk of overwhelming the people everything is funneling to, but it can also take out some of the lag and bloat.

Technology and communication plays a role in this. The Secretary of Defense, for example, can now send out an e-mail and know that it will reach every. single. person. as soon as they read their e-mail. And the cost of doing so is ridiculously small.

Our companies can now have a zoom meeting where thousands of us listen to our CEO, and we can even ask questions. Verbally or via keyboard.

That means you can flatten a hierarchy to a far greater degree then you could before, but you still have the problem of potentially overwhelming the person at the center of it all. The CEO, other members of the C-Suite... various other people in positions of power and authority.

Now, I've complained before about how a lot of our processes are impersonal and make us feel like we're just a cog in the machine. That's in part because the solutions of one generation become the problems of the next. 

Or rather - policies, procedures, and structure are important. They have helped us create systems that can produce the exact same thing, to a consistent standard. The fact that computer memory cards are consistently the same size, so that we can upgrade with new cards (so long as they fit the socket) is amazing. That we have screws and nuts and bolts of standard sizes, good enough that we can go out and buy anything labeled that size and expect it to fit, is awesome. Impersonal though the army MTOE can be, making sure that your staff has someone specifically responsible for comms, or supplies, or operations... all of these help make sure we're consistent. Yes, every team changes whenever a person leaves or joins. Everyone is different. And the team will adjust a bit (taking up the slack for the weaker members, whether it's one staff officer taking on more duties or a high speed subordinate stepping up.)

The modern industrial age required quite a bit of that to work. Clearly defined standards, clearly defined roles, clearly defined chains of command - there are quite a few people who would be hopelessly lost without it.

I suppose this is as good a place as any to mention some socioeconomic differences. Or rather, even though we've developed machine-like structures, the people with the best connections often manage to get around them. This causes quite a bit of resentment, in that most of us are at the mercy of impersonal and overpowering bureaucracy that the well-connected are free to ignore. Take the current vaccine rollout (and numerous people upset that the very people who minimized coronavirus and downplayed it used their connections to get a vaccine before high risk people like the elderly and hardworking nurses and doctors are still waiting.) Similar issue with the 'Good Old Boy Network'. Either everyone should have the same access and privilege, or nobody should. Letting some people get cushy jobs without qualifications just because they're well-connected, while others work two or three jobs and can barely make ends meet... and are constantly told they don't have the qualifications for anything better... it's a breeding ground for anger and resentment. 

Now, I've talked a bit about the Industrial Age, and a little bit about what I've heard some people call the Information Age. The latter, if we use the term, is new enough that we're still sorting out all the ramifications. Massive amounts of data and fast communication is just one part of it...

The cloud computing structures I talked about are another. Not just in and of themselves, but as a symbol of some of the differences.

The legacy structure - the capacity planning, the systems businesses created to figure out how much they should buy and when they should replace their systems - are also examples of the policies and procedures I mentioned earlier. It was important work, it helped businesses ensure they had the resources they need, but it was also slow and not very customizable. You couldn't react very quickly to change in demand, and when you had just invested thousands or millions of dollars in new hardware you were probably not going to buy anything new until it reached the end of its lifecycle. Not unless the benefits of upgrading greatly exceeded the sunken costs you'd already put into your system. (Hence why businesses may still be operating on older versions of Windows Server, or RedHat, or whatever.)

We have unprecedented resources for combining industrial age consistency with a level of customization that hadn't existed before. Or rather, you could have a master craftsman customize anything if you had the money for it. It was much harder to do so for the less well off. (Also why clothing was ridiculously expensive back in the day, whereas now we can all get cheap and ill fitting clothes at a low enough cost that most of us have wardrobes full of things we never wear.)

The cloud computing structure highlights this. You can customize the resources you use to fit your particular need, even as you draw on the cloud provider to ensure consistent and reliable access. There's the potential for great resilience (though also potential for great vulnerabilities. Consider how the Nashville bombing took out the internet and cell phone service for a large region. Or the recent AWS outage, and I think Google recently had something similar. Not sure what the root cause was, whether it was an internal problem or something else. I'm digressing again, though.)

I'm not sure I can foresee all the changes heading our way... Heck, I'm still kind of interested in seeing whether 3D printing will make a difference. New technology seems to go in these cycles where people hype it up, then it fails to live up to the hype and they forget about it. Then people get a better sense of how to use it, and it comes back and actually transforms industries. (Something like that.) 3D printing has the potential to totally change logistics, shipping, customization, and storage. After all, if you can make the exact part, exactly as demanded, in a 3D printing facility that serves a particular region... then you don't need to store the manufactured parts in a warehouse. Just ship the raw components to the 3D printing site as needed. (I am not saying it's going to happen. I don't know near enough about 3D printing, or it's current status. But if we got to the point where the bulk of our manufactured goods could be created that way, it would change a lot of things.)

I do think, though, that we have the potential to combine the benefits of mass manufacturing, standards, and consistency with the customization and personalization that had been missed before.

And there's probably the potential for similar changes in organizational structures, if we can sort out the processes and procedures for doing so.