It is perhaps a curse of our society that we have such a rich fund of dystopian literature throwing up the dangers of the future. Who can read Huxley's Utopia, or Eggers' The Circle without a little shudder about what's to come? Sadly, it seems an essential requirement in our post-industrial society that in order to lay out one's brain cred, you need to decry all that is new.
This is hugely dangerous in a world that is changing rapidly, whether we like it or not. With that change goes value: do we really wish simply to become a theme park of olde curiosity to those coming from the real world with money, hoping to cream off the odd crumb as they gawp at us, rather than compete for the high grounds of the modern economy? Of course, there will be many for whom the answer is actually yes, so they shouldn't trouble themselves with this blog article. However, there will be others less consumed by brittle pride, and would like some pointers as to how to proceed.
The key is to remember that this is not a zero sum game. The introduction of technology does not replace humans, it modifies their activities. Indeed, it can modify them in the most wonderful ways: with the introduction of machines, people can look to a future when they do not have to try to become one. Thus the duller parts of being a lawyer, doctor, accountant, actuary can go whistle. The whole process of industrialising humanity that has been the norm for the last 150 years can, mercifully, go into reverse: getting up reliably on time, performing repetitive tasks, keeping one's emotions under check to deliver "output" in a language devoid of emotion. We can become human again, as the machines can be the machines. If you think this is poppycock, just think of a simple example from, say, the fund management industry: before technology humans were employed going to meetings to brief other humans about the data: what the performance numbers were, primarily, the what. Consider a world where the what has been delivered by machine to machine, leaving the humans to meet to discuss the why.
Clearly, this requires change. Gone are the coveted skills of acting like a machine, to be replaced by those of a human: amusing, inspiring, interesting, empathising, clarifying. However, an additional skill underpins them all, that of an appreciation of how the machines work, and an understanding of how best to set them to work. A decent analogy is sculpture with a chainsaw: the human provides the skillful angles, the machine the velocity. OK, you say, what has this got to do with upgrading our company infrastructure? Quite a lot, actually. Most businesses make two opposite errors: either they resist the machines for fear of "upsetting" the business, or they embrace the machines as if they possessed the ability to be human (and judge), relegating the humans to machine-like processing around the edges, like some awful Kafka novel. The former business falls further behind as the web whirs around it, and the latter business spends a gazillion pounds on vendor systems, dehumanises its workforce and turns off its clients. The answer lies in the middle. Give to the machine what a machine is good at, but reserve to humans their unique ability to direct, judge and tweak. In practice that means concentrating machines on managing the information, the what, and organise people around the how and the why.
"We already do that!" I hear you say. What you probably do is confuse the information with what's it's manifested in: departments, processes, documents and systems. You've got people managing stuff, so if you want to know something, you ask someone. All very philosophical, perhaps, so where should you start? With the simple recognition that the most important thing to concentrate on is your information, separate from where it currently comes from. Once that has been achieved, it becomes that much easier to overlay web services to manage that, allowing your humans to dip in and out where they need.