fiat lux

This is going to be a short entry: So lately I’ve found a pattern from a number of places I’d previously worked at. I call it the tendency to “use more tools to solve problems created by tools”. It went like this: Needed a group ware, but no body really used them, so needed to arrange training sessions. But hard to solve schedule collision, so needed another group calendar (in some cases, plug-in for the previously mentioned group ware). Installation and usage were hard, so wiki to memorize them. Too many systems, so added up another homepage / blog / resource management system whatever to manage them all.

See the problem here? One of my ex-bosses, a professor that I really admire, she said: “We only use one ‘groupware’ tool: a giant blackboard, with lots of large white poster paper.” And guess which is the more efficient?

Another female friend of mine commented this kind of “tool worship” a problem of men. I don’t know about other cultures, but in Taiwan it’s quite true. Reductionism is not en vogue here.

lukhnos :: Sep.05.2007 :: tekhnologia :: 2 Comments »