Michael’s unifying theories

Michael’s unifying theories: when you grew up seems to really affect your attitude towards information

When I was a teenager one of my favorite series of books was Inside Macintosh. Sure I liked lots of fiction stuff as well, but in terms of technical books that really changed how I thought about things in high school, this was it. The design of the early Macintoshes was elegant, whilst also having to deal with limitations of the time — the library routines for much of the operating system were baked into ROM for example, but there was a method to cowboy patch them as required. The books were comprehensive, readable to a mildly talented hobbyist, and best of all were sitting on the shelf of my local library.

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Michael’s unifying theories: the way an organization thinks of itself really matters

A few times now I have worked for organizations that are basically IT shops — that is, their core business now depends on being very good at doing Computer Things. However, many of these places were pretty terrible at computers. Let’s keep picking on Telstra, because its an easier example.

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Michael’s unifying theories: all signs exist for a reason

All signs exist for a reason.

Making a sign (or a policy) takes work. Therefore, this work is only done when some incident has caused someone somewhere to decide that the correct response is to expend effort ensuring this thing does not happen again. Now, one issue with this is that it is also a lot of effort largely in the form of risk acceptance to remove a policy or sign. So these things tend to accrue. It is rare for someone to ask if the number of mandatory training courses is still reasonable for example, because they don’t want to be the one to remove one and then eventually have to explain that in a lawsuit or coronial inquest.

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