Good post. I line-up with that history professor on the Charles. Sorry, 'disruptive innovation' is annoying shtick. It's professorial hubris. We need to get away from the 'disruptive' baloney as fast as possible. For example, most computing today is based on the Von Neumann architecture of 1945. In the 1960s the prominent computing model of was called cloud computing oh, ahh, err, sorry, meant time-sharing. The electronic tablet was patented in 1888. Magnetic storage was first demonstrated at the Paris Exposition of 1900. So forth and so on... Yet, every time there is an incremental improvement in these decades-old concepts, some centuries old, it is called 'disruptive.' It's revolting embroidery. Meanwhile, contrary to the overbearing hype, the facts are that business startups are at a 30-year low. Workforce participation is lower than during the Carter Administration. Furthermore, the US Administration is patently incompetent. Congress, at 14% approval rating, is objectively dysfunctional. Tax 'inversion' is driving household name firms and their cash hoard out of the USA. Not to mention geometric expansion of global terrorism... Want shift? This hot mess is one huge, stinking pile of shift. My money is on Porter everyday. 'Clay' is riding his coattails with irritating and superficial management rhetoric. It's Number 85 is a long-line managerial bombast. See: http://colabria.com/management-science/ 'Disruptive Innovation' is management woo. The sooner it fades the better for everyone. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Woo

Wow! My personal pals Roy and Johnny. That's cool, great to see 'em... Did you have some "Old Sober" (yaka mein)? It's the fav. Hanging now, at the moment, with Cosmo & The Counts. Dig it. http://youtu.be/lmHg5k9_nAw Keep it real!

Story -- deterministic Narrative - nondeterministic

Hi - Sorry to disent, but UC is a counterproductive farce. Beware. UC is a classic 'anti-pattern.' "Their research finds that the more business involvement in IT projects, the higher the success." WTF? What year is it? This circa 1970s remark is bass-ackwards. Correct: "The more IT involvement in business projects, the higher the success, the better the business outcome." UC is lame. See: "Too often, agency network patterns and configurations pursue ‘unified’ architectures and deployments. This is a deadly mistake. The more these legacy-style architectural practices are institutionalized, the more rigid they become. In turn, the more they are taken for granted, the more resources are required to managing them! It is a vicious cycle and deadly embrace." http://networksingularity.com/2011/03/15/hope-for-the-best-plan-for-the-worst.aspx UC is a classic anti-patterns. Yep, said it twice. Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-patterns Cheers, John

Yes, anyone that spawns so much thinking, conversation and, yes, disagreement, has to in the pantheon. So here goes, the medium really IS the message. Content is completely irrelevant. For example, from professor McLuhan, the MEDIUM of movable type greatly accelerated, intensified and ultimately enabled cultural and cognitive changes, aka, the MESSAGE. Not to trivialize the prosaic, day to day uses of the MEDIUM, but it is how, in the fullness of time, the medium impacts humanity – that’s the real MESSAGE! Anyway, debating HMM in a blog comment is like deconstructing Joyce in Taki Taki (341 total words in the language). On favorite quote from Professor McLuhan that is germane… “Catholic culture produced Chaucer and Cervantes. Protestant culture produced Milton, Tennyson and Winnipeg, Manitoba.” -j

Hi - Thanks. 'Been a McLuhan evangelist for 30yrs. Despite all the hype, definitely think Marsh would have NOT been surprised by two recent things -- - The short life of social media apps - The farce of TV-Internet integration Yesterday Myspace laid-off 500 people, half its people. They follow the long-line of failed social media like AOL, Compuserve, Orkut, Friendster, etc. Trust me, Facebook will have their comeuppance and it will be ugly. If you want to know why, read McLuhan. The medium is the message. Concerning TV, as Marsh predicted, it delivers the persistent vegetative state that viewers crave. After pouring asphalt or bookkeeping all day, the last thing people want is media interactivity. The Number One criterion for TV content is ease of watchability. The medium is the message. Annoying media dilettantes see McLuhan’s notion of the “homogenizing and dehumanizing effect of mass media” as a pejorative. Absolutely wrong. Quite to the contrary, these media properties of the global village all led the Modern period in the Western world: individualism, democracy, capitalism, etc., etc. The medium is the message. An ardent Roman Catholic, McLuhan attended Mass every day. His faith was the embodiment of his theories and vice versa. As many perceptions an observations originated from Oxford and Toronto as they did from The Vatican and Dublin. The fluidity and travel between idea and metaphor and rigor and perception was ultimately validated by Catholic faith. The medium is the message. -j