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Entries Tagged as 'Change'

The Smartphone: Today’s Transistor Radio

November 20th, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Today’s smartphone bears a striking resemblance to yesterday’s transistor radio. Okay, yell at me. I will wait. Now that you’ve screamed your lungs out, let’s compare today’s smartphone to yesterdays transistor radio. In case you are young(er) and don’t know what a transistor radio is, see this page. Attributes that the smartphone […]

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Tags: Change · Systems · Technology

Will the Federal Government Listen to the Google Guy?

September 25th, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Much has been made of the Google guy in Washington running the US Digital Service. The USDS is not needed and won’t succeed. There is a lot of splash in the regular media these days about the US Digital Service. Our government has recruited stars from Silicon Valley, brought them to the […]

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Tags: Change · Government

The Computer as I/O Device

September 18th, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Most of today’s “computers” are nothing but I/O devices to the cloud. Persons like me who use a computer that is in front of us are rare and disappearing. Here is a little, historical lesson on computing. A computer has three basic parts: processor memory input/output (I/O) That’s it folks. Nothing else. […]

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Tags: Change · Computing · Technology

How Big is Your Hard Disk?

September 11th, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips It seems the last time the title question was asked was when two dinosaurs were chatting while sinking into a tar pit. I didn’t know the answer to the title question for any of the computers that I use everyday. At one time, not too long ago, that was the preeminent question […]

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Tags: Change · Technology

The Washington D.C. NFL Team

September 1st, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips The locals are resisting the cries for a nickname change. Is anyone surprised with the resistance? Consider the situation: You are born in a place. You grow up there. You cheer for the home team. Nothing surprising in how the first two items lead to the third. One day, some outsiders shout: […]

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Tags: Adapting · Change · Communication

All Other Things Being Equal

August 28th, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Although it is rare that all other things are equal, they can be. This is especially true if there is only one person involved and that one person tries hard. It is difficult to keep all other things equal. The goal is to change just one thing, and observe what happens in […]

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Tags: Change

Change the Training

August 21st, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We have a #1 response of any bureaucracy in the 21st century. Any time a bureaucracy has a flub up (technical term), the response is the same: We will address this item as we change the training. This is the #1 response to any situation in the 21st century. Gosh. At least […]

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Tags: Change · Education · Employment · Thinking

Did You Notice the World Change?

July 17th, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Twitter and the World Cup show that the world changed. Most people, didn’t even notice. The world changed. When I show people, they shrug. “Of course. What’s the big deal?” is the usual response. This web page has a story about how 300 million people tweeted about the FIFA World Cup. So […]

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Tags: Change · Technology

Change and “Fixing” Things

July 7th, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips A change in the behavior of a system means that someone has changed something. We as people, often love to ignore this. Here is a situation I experienced a few years ago in a digital signal processing laboratory. One day, a piece of software didn’t work. A user ran the software, and […]

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Tags: Change · General Systems Thinking

Change and Cause and Effect (or the other way around)

July 3rd, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Any change to a situation will change the situation. It is often difficult to discern which came first. When a new person walks into an existing group of people, that group changes. There is no way around this—at least I know of no way around it. To have a new person without […]

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Tags: Change · General Systems Thinking