As we think about what it means to be a Digital organization, we need to consider how we define technology, text and literacy. What do each of these things mean? How do they compare to past interpretations? How will they change as organizations (and society) continue to evolve and change (which is ongoing and accelerating!)? And, with the importance of culture in organizations – how do technology, text and literacy relate to and shape the culture of an organization?

• Problematizing: Text, literacy, technology and culture are unsettled, open to question and debate. This post explores the concept of “problematizing” and touches upon some of the key areas of debate. “An interesting thing that comes up when developing software is that the biggest challenges are typically not technology related. The biggest challenges are to get large groups of people to work together and successfully collaborate. These groups include the developers, business analysts, business representatives, clients/customers, quality analysts, UX designers, operations and support personnel. In such a conglomeration of people the skill of an individual is no match for the coordinated contributions of the group. Much like your favorite sport team – it doesn’t matter how good the pitcher, quarterback or goalie is, if the rest of the team is not contributing.”
• “Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology”: This book from Neil Postman provides some intriguing ideas and areas to explore as we consider the impact of technology (and culture!). In “Judging a Book by its Cover” – I highlight some of the ideas that caught my eye including  a “calculus of technological change”, the fear and misperceptions that new technology and automation leads to homogeneity, the bargains made in adopting technology and perhaps most appealing is the recognition that technological change aligns with ecological change. Organizations are complex and there’s often reference to systems thinking. I see a strong connection between the ecological view and the systems thinking view.
• Text and Paper as technology: Building on the ideas about bargains (and trade-offs), it is intriguing to examine the tradeoffs made as we adopted new technology in the form of text and paper. The idea that something was lost as we transitioning from an oral tradition to one based on texts and books warrants examination. I wrap up “What have we lost?” with the following thought: “So, while I’m not campaigning that we return to a time without literacy (I love books!), we should reflect and revisit the strengths of oral based cultures to improve our current, literacy based culture and its implications on education. Perhaps the “…dismissal of the importance of the spoken word involves throwing out the baby with the bathwater” (Chandler, “Technological…”, 1995)? Story-telling, presenting and public speaking in general, should leverage lessons learned from oral traditions to draw in the listener, captivate and educate. These are critical skills and I wonder if we underinvest and overlook the importance of such skills?”
• The Pencil: Innovation, Creativity and Genius: There’s much that we can learn about the future by looking at the past. To that end, I took a look at the pencil as technology (we didn’t always have  pencils!). I put together a short video about the pencil – and if you prefer reading, here’s a copy of the script. A short quote: “The pencil doesn’t have a user manual. The pencil can be picked up by a child and put to use immediately. The pencil doesn’t crash, need power, a reboot or an upgrade. The pencil is lightweight, is easy to transport and is easily replaced if lost. Yet, the pencil is often overlooked and is indeed, ‘virtually invisible’. Perhaps this is counter-intuitive, but this invisibility should be celebrated as further proof of the success of the pencil technology.” If only all of our technologies could be similarly described!
  • Another interesting technology to consider is the telegraph. If you haven’t already done so, I highly recommend reading: “The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-line Pioneers” by Tom Standage.
• Knowledge and Wisdom: In a post about Knowledge and Wisdom – I offer thoughts on the topic of open vs. limited access to content. Learning is best served by openness, decentralization and democratization. A top-down, formal construct cannot keep pace with change nor cover the topics needed for a large organization. I still like this idea from this post: “One other thought about limiting access is that it is artificial. Life is messy. Life is confusing, heterogeneous, and constantly changing. Is it inconsistent then to expect that knowledge would be managed, resistant to change and homogeneous?”
• Mechanization vs. creativity: I often see references to “software factories” and it makes me shudder. Is software development something that can be reduced to mechanization with a focus rapidly producing widget upon widget? The need to iterate, explore, rework and erase might be part of the reason I have an affection for the story of the pencil. This post on mechanization and creation digs into these topics.
• Predicting the future: In a short post, I offer thoughts on an article: “Picture a World without Pens, Pencils and Paper: The Unanticipated Future of Reading and Writing.” I found the paper to be misdirected and disconnected from the reality of technology. In addition to being too narrowly focused on certain modalities (all video, all the time!), there’s a misunderstanding of software development. “Software development uses many analog tools – paper, pencils, pen, paper notebooks, whiteboards, yarn(!), sticky notes, painter’s tape and Sharpies. Somewhere along the line, Office Depot, 3M and Staples became the official sponsors of developers worldwide. Go figure.”
• Literacy. Mediation. Remediation. This is my first iBook production “Literacy. Mediation. Remediation” and it looks at three key ideas: literacy, mediation and remediation. As we think about organizations, scaling learning, culture and Digital learning – there are some interesting ideas from this book that we should keep in mind:
  • Remediation is the cultural competition between new technologies. I see this connecting back to the ecological view on change. And this cultural change is on going and can be bi-directional.
  • “Mediation, abstractions, interfaces and interpretations can simplify learning and communication by hiding unnecessary details. But simplicity has a cost – we can be led astray, we can lack true literacy, or we can lose efficiencies.”
  • “The degree of abstraction and mediation can vary. We need to understand the needs of the audience to pick the correct level of mediation. Remediation continues as we learn more about our needs and deficiencies.”
  • “Mediation not only abstracts and hides details between us and reality, it also hides and makes it difficult to understand whether the user is truly literate. Christian Lange warns us that: “Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master” (Lange, 1921). And, if we fail to become literate, our technology will be our master.”