<offtopic> The Fallacy of Reification

["Bullard, Claude L \(Len\)" <len.bullard@intergraph.com>]

http://hbsworkingknowledge.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=5270&t=organizations

You'll hate this.  It is nonetheless true.   What it doesn't point out 
is the extreme danger of superstition in systems that amplify results. 
I pointed it out in the Enterprise Engineering papers at GE in the 
80s but it is a lesson that has to be relearned often.  At that time, 
we knew the web was coming and the dangers of stuffing faulty beliefs 
into real time systems that are fast to grant but slow to revoke 
were obvious.  Now that we are building very large networked security 
systems, the aphorism of "trust but verify" should be nailed to the 
heads of our managers, engineers and customers.

For all the hype of the We Web, Web 2.0, SecondLives, Who Is Who, 
the web is just an amplifier.  Don't put an amplifier where all 
you need is a filter.   Engineers understood that long ago, but 
in today's hot money-gottaBeAHero environment, fishbrained engineers 
continue to feed their children to the machine.

No, I'm not optimistic.  The insistence on engineering over philosophy 
means the technology is getting faster and cheaper, but the humans are 
learning little.   If the web really is a 'social system' (it isn't; 
it amplifies one), it is incredibly primitive.

Len Bullard
Senior Technical Consultant, Security, Government & Infrastructure (SG&I Division)
Intergraph Corporation (NASDAQ: INGR) 
P.O. Box 6695, Huntsville, AL 35824 USA 
P 1.256.730.8140 F (256) 730-8006 
len.bullard@intergraph.com, www.intergraph.com