December 29, 2002

Good bye, 2002

It's Sunday morning, the sun is streaming through the window, and the end is nearing its finale. The New York Times Magazine is filled with obits of the famous folks who are no longer with us. I read their bios, smiling at the entertaining way they're written and finding myself in many of their stories.

Asking how a beauty with such promise as Little Edie Bouvier ended up in a filthy, dilapidated "Gray Gardens" house seething with cats, mice, and racoons, the writer says, "The answer, of course, is: Easy. Life is a daily battle against the accretion of tiny entropies."


"In midcentury America, sociologists for a while rivaled even psychiatrists in their seeming ability to explain everything about everything. the most influential scoioloigist of the era was David Riesman, whose 1950 book The Lonely Crowd ventured to break all of civilization down into three basic character types: 'tradition-directed,''inner-directed' or 'other-directed.'"

The passage of time had reconfigured my memories of the days when sociology was hot stuff and Riesman's book "crowned an age when eggheads had the answers," and I'm glad the Riesman obit puts things back in order for me. I was swept up in the belief in sociology in the mid-sixties. I majored in "soc" (rhymes with bosch) at Princeton, thinking it the key to mind-control and a career in persuasive advertising.

As the years rolled by, I discounted the relevance of sociology to the real world and thinking most of social science is 90% horseshit. This became a personal put-down. Why hadn't I majored in Electrical Engineering or something practical? Fact is, I made the right decision for the person I was, in the environment I found myself.

Ironically, the discipline of sociology has more answers to making eLearning and knowledge management work than does computer science. The real issues are social. Collaboration, participation, motivation, culture -- these are the tough nuts to crack. The computer stuff is a given.


Breaking out my personal journal from the Internet Time Blog feels like the right thing to do. Here I feel free to let the stream of consciousness flow wherever it may; the business blog feels more purposeful.

Posted by Jay Cross at December 29, 2002 12:37 PM
Comments

For the non-techies.. a word of explanation about entropy. Entropy = disorder.

Entropy explains why it is always easier to heat things than to cool them, why it is easier to destroy anything than create it, why things always go from bad to worse and never the other way round.

And the concept of entropy has given rise to the thermodynamic arrow of time and explains why time flows only one way.

For its apparent simplicity Entropy is a pretty deep concept. Take a look at http://www.2ndlaw.com/

This limerick is at zero K
If it weren't it'd diffuse away
The letters would mix
There would be no fix
For entropy would rule the day.

Posted by: Ramki at December 29, 2002 08:45 PM

cool stuff

Posted by: pic of paris hilton at June 29, 2004 12:19 AM