Come my friends, let us reason together … (feel free to disagree, none of this is dogma)
There are a couple of “truisms” that APPEAR to conflict –
Truism 1:
The more things change the more they stay the same.
… and then …
Truism 2:
The only constant is change.
Truism 1 seems to imply that “change” isn’t possible while Truism 2 seems to imply that “change” is the only possibility.
There are multiple way to reconcile these two statements – for TODAY I’m NOT referring to “differences in perspective.”
Life is like a dogsled team. If you aren’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.
(Lewis Grizzard gets credit for ME hearing this, but he almost certainly didn’t say it first)
Consider that we are currently travelling through space and the earth is rotating at roughly 1,000 miles per hour – but sitting in front of my computer writing this, I don’t perceive that movement. Both the dogsled and my relative lack of perceived motion are examples of “perspective” …
Change
HOWEVER, “different perspectives” or points of view isn’t what I want to talk about today.
For today (just for fun) imagine that my two “change” truisms are referring to different types of change.
Truism 1 is “big picture change” – e.g. “human nature”/immutable laws of the universe.
Which means “yes, Virginia there are absolutes.” Unless you can change the physical laws of the universe – it is not possible to go faster than the speed of light. Humanity has accumulated a large “knowledge base” but “humans” are NOT fundamentally different than they were 2,000 years ago. Better nutrition, better machines, more knowledge – but humanity isn’t much different.
Truism 2 can be called “fashion“/style/”what the kids are doing these days” – “technology improvements” fall squarely into this category. There is a classic PlayStation 3 commercial that illustrates the point.
Once upon a time:
- mechanical pinball machines were “state of the art.”
- The Atari 2600 was probably never “high tech” – but it was “affordable and ubiquitous” tech.
- no one owned a “smartphone” before 1994 (the IBM Simon)
- the “smartphone app era” didn’t start until Apple released the iPhone in 2007 (but credit for the first “App store” goes to someone else – maybe NTT DoCoMo?)
SO fashion trends come and go – but the fundamental human needs being services by those fashion trends remain unchanged.
What business are we in?
Hopefully, it is obvious to everyone that it is important for leaders/management to understand the “purpose” of their organization.
If someone is going to “lead” then they have to have a direction/destination. e.g. A tourist might hire a tour guide to “lead” them through interesting sites in a city. Wandering around aimlessly might be interesting for awhile – but could also be dangerous – i.e. the average tourist wants some guidance/direction/leadership.
For that “guide”/leader to do their job they need knowledge of the city AND direction. If they have one OR the other (knowledge OR direction), then they will fail at their job.
The same idea applies to any “organization.” If there is no “why”/direction/purpose for the organization then it is dying/failing – regardless of P&L.
Consider the U.S. railroad system. At one point railroads were a huge part of the U.S. economy – the rail system opened up the western part of the continent and ended the “frontier.”
However, a savvy railroad executive would have understood that people didn’t love railroads – what people valued was “transportation.”
Just for fun – get out any map and look at the location of major cities. It doesn’t have to be a U.S. map.
The point I’m working toward is that throughout human history, large settlements/cities have centered around water. Either ports to the ocean or next to riverways. Why? Well, obviously humans need water to live but also “transportation.”
The problem with waterways is that going with the current is much easier than going against the current.
SO this problem was solved first by “steam powered boats” and then railroads. The early railroads followed established waterways connecting established cities. Then as railroad technology matured towns were established as “railway stations” to provide services for the railroad.
Even as the railroads became a major portion of the economy – it was NEVER about the “railroads” it was about “transportation”
fwiw: then the automobile industry happened – once again, people don’t car so much about “cars” what they want/need is “transportation”
If you are thinking “what about ‘freight’ traffic” – well, this is another example of the tools matching the job. Long haul transportation of “heavy” items is still efficiently handled by railroads and barges – it is “passenger traffic” that moved on …
We could do the same sort of exercise with newspapers – i.e. I love reading the morning paper, but the need being satisfied is “information” NOT a desire to just “read a physical newspaper”
What does this have to do with I.T.?
Well, it is has always been more accurate to say that “information technology” is about “processing information” NOT about the “devices.”
full disclosure: I’ve spent a lifetime in and around the “information technology” industry. FOR ME that started as working on “personal computers” then “computer networking”/LAN administration – and eventually I picked up an MBA with an “Information Management emphasis”.
Which means I’ve witnessed the “devices” getting smaller, faster, more affordable, as well as the “networked personal computer” becoming de rigueur. However, it has never been about “the box” i.e. most organization aren’t “technology companies” but every organization utilizes “technology” as part of their day to day existence …
Big picture: The constant is that “good I.T. practices” are not about the technology.
Backups
When any I.T. professional says something like “good backups” solve/prevent a lot of problems it is essential to remember how a “good backup policy” functions.
Back in the day folks would talk about a “grandfather/father/son” strategy – if you want to refer to it as “grandmother/mother/daughter” the idea is the same. At least three distinct backups – maybe a “once a month” complete backup that might be stored in a secure facility off-site, a “once a week” complete backup, and then daily backups that might be “differential.”
It is important to remember that running these backups is only part of the process. The backups also need to be checked on a regular basis.
Checking the validity/integrity of backups is essential. The time to check your backups is NOT after you experience a failure/ransomware attack.
Of course how much time and effort an organization should put into their backup policy is directly related to the value of their data. e.g. How much data are you willing to lose?
Just re-image it
Back in the days of the IBM PC/XT, if/when a hard drive failed it might take a day to get the system back up. After installing the new hard drive, formatting the drive and re-installing all of the software was a time intensive manual task.
Full “disk cloning” became an option around 1995. “Ghosting” a drive (i.e. “cloning”) belongs in the acronym Hall of Fame — I’m told it was supposed to stand for “general hardware-oriented system transfer.” The point being that now if a hard drive failed, you didn’t have to manually re-install everything.
Jump forward 10 years and Local Area Networks are everywhere – Computer manufacturers had been including ‘system restore disks’ for a long time AND software to clone and manage drives is readily available. The “system cloning” features get combined with “configuration management” and “remote support” and this is the beginning of the “modern I.T.” era.
Now it is possible to “re-image” a system as a response to software configuration issues (or malware). Disk imaging is not a replacement for a good backup policy – but it reduced “downtime” for hardware failures.
The more things change …
Go back to the 1980’s/90’s and you would find a lot of “dumb terminals” connecting to a “mainframe” type system (well, by the 1980s it was probably a “minicomputer” not a full blown “mainframe”).
A “dumb terminal” has minimal processing power – enough to accept keyboard input and provide monitor output, and connect to the local network.
Of course those “dumb terminals” could also be “secured” so there were good reasons for keeping them around for certain installations. e.g. I remember installing a $1,000 expansion card into new late 1980’s era personal computers to make it function like a “dumb terminal” – but that might have just been the Army …
Now in 2022 we have “chrome books” that are basically the modern version of “dumb terminals.” Again, the underlying need being serviced is “communication” and “information” …
All of which boils down to “basics” of information processing haven’t really changed. The ‘personal computer’ is a general purpose machine that can be configured for various industry specific purposes. Yes, the “era of the PC” has been over for 10+ years but the need for ‘personal computers’ and ‘local area networks’ will continue.