In the last few weeks I've finished two books, each dealing with Change in their own way. One was written by a Ph.D., the other by a self-educated longshoreman, and I've enjoyed them both.
In Managing Transitions, William Bridges (Ph.D.) writes about the emotional impact of change and suggests that before people accept change they need to go through the emotional phases of transition: grieving the ending of the previous "normal", a chaotic empty neutral zone, followed by a willingness to come to terms with the "new normal".Bridges goes on to point out that as the speed of change increases, people are increasingly dealing with multiple changes, each in their own phase - so that rather than dealing with one transitional phase in isolation, people are simultaneously in multiple endings, nuetral zones, and beginnings.
This was an interesting book, I've tended to see it as the "emo-change" book in the way it focuses on the emotional implications of change. It's certainly a balancing read for technoquants who see change management as a merely technical exercise.
While Bridges describes change as something difficult that people are adverse to, the second book discusses how and why people sometimes embrace major changes. In The True Believer, Eric Hoffer discusses the nature of mass movements in which people eagerly seek change.
Eric Hoffer is an interesting study himself. Born into a working class family, he went blind at age seven. When his sight returned at 15, his fear of returning blindness prompted him to read voraciously. He became a migrant worker, living "between the books and the brothels". When called an intellectual, he insisted that he was a longshoreman.
Hoffer's book The True Believer talks about a situation in which people embrace radical change: the mass movement. He analyses the motivations that cause people to seek massive change, and explains that it is people with poor self-esteem that initially support mass movements, and that for them their membership in a movement is more important than the goals of the movement.Hoffer's book is brilliant. Written in 1951, it explains both al Queda and the Obama presidential campaign. He analyzes the reasons that some seek big change (low self-esteem, frustration, no creative outlet) and the reasons that some people are impervious to movements (high self-esteem, individual identity, a fully formed personality).
He charts the leadership of movements from the men of words, to the fanatics, to the men of action, and finally to the administrators. In Hoffer's book, which is quite non-political, resistance to change is attibuted to people who are people who are fully formed individuals - and apathy to change is attributed to people struggling for survival.
My take-aways from Hoffer's book are (1) marveling at the philosopher and (2) re-appraisal of resistance to change. Perhaps it's a good thing that some people are resistant to change, and perhaps those in that category are among our best people.
Maybe change shouldn't be easy. Maybe initiators should have to justify it, earn it, and work it.
Pittsburgh's Premier Tweed Ride, Saturday April 3rd, 2010, 3pm.
Specifically, IBM leased their unit record (punched card) equipment and support services to the Third Reich, providing a significant help in dealing with the massive administrative task that was the 'Final Solution', with sizable profits for IBM. IBM denies that it had control over its subsidiaries after the Nazis took control of them. Researchers such as Edwin Black found that in addition to the Dehomag connection, a large amount of the technology arrived via "a subsidiary in Poland, Watson Business Machines in Warsaw, which reported directly to the IBM New York headquarters."
Google's incentive program is a homage to 
(TAOCP). Knuth used to pay a finder’s fee of $2.56 for any typographical errors or mistakes discovered in his books, because “256 pennies is one hexadecimal dollar”, and he paid $0.32 for “valuable suggestions”. Given his near-mythic status in geek circles, these checks were valued way above their monetary value; computer scientists with both a PhD and a Knuth check hanging on the wall would sooner take down the PhD. Knuth was 
Saturday the floodgates opened and 120,000 people pre-ordered their Apple iPads, which is possibly the 
Alpha Testing is testing done within the company, by people other than the engineers, programmers, and designers who built the product. It usually involves white box techniques, but can include black box and even grey box techniques.
Saturday Apple started taking advance orders for the iPad (wifi not 3G), and 120,000 were ordered, sight-unseen, in the first 24 hours. People are willing to pay a premium to be an early-adopter and what is essentially a beta-tester. This in spite of the fact that the people who bought the first iPhone would shortly see an improved, updated version being sold for less. 
Google has announced that their Google Maps application now attempts to provide bike routes. The routing algorithm prefers to use bike paths, lanes, and sharrows, and attempts to avoid hills and highways.
My review of Google Bike Maps: It's not as good as knowledge of the local area, but if you're unfamiliar and trying to plot a route it'll be a worthwhile tool. It would be wonderful if you could export the Google route into a Garmin GPS for on-bike navigation, but I realize that they're selling 'Droid phones so the GPS export probably isn't likely.
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