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Ambient Knowledge

I have been giving a lot of thought lately about the impact of technology being integrated into everything.

In a separate post, I will talk more about that, but until I get that written, one of my students in my Syracuse University class on CIO on “CIO’s and the Global Enterprise”, wrote an interesting discussion about Ambient Organizations.

As I understand the various phrases that use the word ambient in this context, what is being said is that we come across information all the time; conversations, books we read, news sources, and so on. Over time even when we do not realize it, we tend to process and integrate this information often in unexpected ways. This is becoming even more relevant as the number of information sources and the pervasiveness of them increases.

For a simple example, for those of us who participate in such things as twitter or facebook, it is not infrequent that we when we run into someone for the first time physically that we are connected to on one of these social networks, it is as if we already know them. Even when we didn’t notice it, we pick up on what a person is interested in and what their opinions on a variety of topics are.

Helen Patricia McKenna is one of my students in this semester’s CIO class, the class itself in fact is completely on-line; taught asynchronously – that is, no direct lectures. It is part of the on-line graduate curricula at Syracuse University’s iSchool,  http://ischool.syr.edu/. She often posts very interesting comments, this one I thought was of particular interest – I will warn those who go on, that in addition to being interesting it is a bit long.

BTW, in the interests of full-disclosure, I also teach at the University of Maryland University College. I find that the “do not want to appear like an idiot” syndrome forces me to keep relatively up-to-date in the topic areas I teach – which typically range from Cyber-Security Policy to CIO Management to IT Acquisition.Ambient Knowledge

Philosophy of Life

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This morning my wife mentioned that she was going out to Target.

“Did I want anything”, she asked. “What do they sell at Target?”, I wondered aloud.

“Well,” she said, “would you like detergent?”

“What?”, I responded in confusion, “Detergent?”

“Yes”, she said, “Would you like some laundry detergent for your clothes?”

“You know,” I said, “In almost 30 years of marriage, I can honestly say you have never asked me that question before. I have no idea as to if or what detergent I would need. I have never figured out which kind works with what kind of clothes or in what circumstances. I just take the container closest to the washing machine and hope that is the one that would work best.”Philosophy of Life

Ellen & Dan’s Excellent Adventure in Nova Scotia – Day 7

We started our penultimate day on our Nova Scotia adventure by going to the Cows manufacturing plant where they make cheese, most recently butter, and most important what is considered by a number of sources the best ice cream in the world, www.cows.ca.

Outside the Cows Plant

We took the tour along with a number of other visitors, including four guys who were members of the Harley Davidson club in Idaho Falls, Idaho. They brought along with them their fake snake Chester. It turns out they hold a 50-50 raffle each meeting. The winner not only gets 50% of the money paid into the pot but they also get Chester who (which?) they are obligated to take around with them until the next meeting where they hopefully will not be a repeat winner.Ellen & Dan’s Excellent Adventure in Nova Scotia – Day 7

Ellen & Dan’s Excellent Adventure in Nova Scotia – Day 6

Today was Anne of Green Gables all day, all the time.

For those of you who haven’t read the books (I haven’t) nor seen the TV shows/movies (I only vaguely remember them) it might be a wonder that a fictional character has this kind of impact. I think that LM Montgomery, who wrote the books, was so strongly associated with Prince Edwards Island (all but one of the books was located at PEI) and local pride; there is lots of that we have learned helped.Ellen & Dan’s Excellent Adventure in Nova Scotia – Day 6

Ellen & Dan’s Excellent Adventure in Nova Scotia – Day 5

Today was our transition from the first part of our trip, in Cape Breton Island, to Prince Edwards Island.

Interestingly when we asked people in Cape Breton about PEI, they almost always said that it was pretty nice but they rarely visited there. One person described PEI as a potato field surrounded by water which we thought pretty funny. We found when we landed in PEI, the reverse was equally true. There they all said that Cape Breton was very pretty, but rarely went.

For one thing it is free to drive over the very short causeway to Cape Breton. It costs between $40 and $60 to take the ferry, or drive over the bridge, from PEI back to the mainland one-way. It is free to enter PEI. So once there, the trick is to figure out to sneak out and avoid the toll. Ellen & Dan’s Excellent Adventure in Nova Scotia – Day 5

Ellen & Dan’s Excellent Adventures in Nova Scotia – Day 4

Tuesday was a leisurely day starting in Ingonish on the East side of Cape Breton about half-way down the coast, completing the loop we started yesterday, swinging back in a circle through Baddeck and ending up in the early afternoon in Mabou, at the bottom of the west side of Cape Breton.

The Lantern Inn & Hollow where we stayed overnight was on the Atlantic Ocean. That morning, we walked on the beach. Ellen & Dan’s Excellent Adventures in Nova Scotia – Day 4

Ellen and Dan’s Excellent Adventures in Nova Scotia – Day 3

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Today had two main parts to it, the Alexander Grahme Bell museum and our trip around much of the Cabot Trail.

To finish off a comment on our stay in Baddeck, a lovely community on the shore of a truly beautiful lake, Bras D’Or, our B&B we stayed in called the Water’s Edge Inn, was a great place physically, really nice room, and very centrally located in the town. However, it was pretty ordinary when it came to breakfast. The only juice was Apple, the breakfast consisted of a pre-measured container of fruit-salad, you know with that heavy syrup stuff, a plastic bag with two slices of white bread which could be toasted, and an optional cup of waffle mix which could be poured into the waffle maker. Ouch.Ellen and Dan’s Excellent Adventures in Nova Scotia – Day 3

Ellen and Dan’s Excellent Adventure in Nova Scotia – Day 1

Ellen had long expressed an interest in visiting Prince Edwards Island, the site of the Anne of Green Gables stories, and nearly Nova Scotia. I had always heard it was a very beautiful place to visit, the high’s were going to be in the 70’s, not the 90’s, and going would be consistent with my saying yes to as much as possible so Ellen would let me continue to go to Disneyworld once every two years.Ellen and Dan’s Excellent Adventure in Nova Scotia – Day 1