Category: Information

The Business of Information

…the technologies are only the tools and methods I must be familiar with in order to stay current with the business practice of information creation, management, and presentation.

During a discussion about technology evolution in American business, a subscriber on GaryNorth.com solicited my opinion regarding getting into online authoring using WordPress. Although I regard WordPress as a state-of-the-art content management system that most everyone should be familiar, I put the issue into a broader context:

“I have heard, Mr. Hobbes, that you do a lot of online work and that you do a lot with WordPress. This is probably where I should be going. Industrial controls are becoming more “intelligent” and offshoring is becoming a problem for us.” (Sic)

From https://www.garynorth.com/members/forum/openthread.cfm?forum=21&ThreadID=281000#281279  (Website subscription required.)
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What Hath The Cloud Wrought?

Today, the “cloud” label is being used as a code-word for the next evolutionary morphing of business process automation from the old “client-server” model (circa 1990), and the prior “mainframe” model (circa 1960’s). But it is much more than automation. It is the next evolutionary phase of that enabler of all business: “communication.”

A recent post on GaryNorth.com:

“Cloud computing seems to be the next big shift in personal computing. Investing in the companies who will prove to be the big winners may be very profitable. I don’t even know who all the players might be. Google, Microsoft, Apple, and perhaps IBM should be in the mix. I’m thinking Google wins biggest. What do you all think?”

For more than four decades, we have modeled computer systems communicating with other computer systems with a “cloud” in between. I have personally taught classes wherein a cloud was at the center of my course graphics, as far back as the early 70’s.

The “cloud” was merely the short-hand reference to the communications infrastructure. It serves that purpose today.

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