Toluu

Andrew McAfee

Andyasks , and Hopes for AnswersNovember 25

I’ve been told by a few people that if I want to really understand the power of the microblogging utility Twitter (which I wrote about here and here ) I need to use it more broadly. Up to now I’ve ‘tweeted’ almost exclusively about IT and Enterprise 2.0. I also use the utility to respond to other people’s tweets, and during baseball season (a happy time that seems as far away as Saturn right now) I use it to shoot my mouth off about my beloved Red Sox, but that’s about it.

I don’t use Twitter to tell the world about my day, my feelings, my quotidian vexations and triumphs, traffic conditions, the song that I’m listening to at the moment, etc. And I don’t really want to start. I’ve been told by credible sources, however, that the more you give with Twitter the more you get, and it’s a possibility I want to explore. It’s clear that it wouldn’t take much effort to tweet more; it just hasn’t been clear yet to me what more I should be tweeting about.

And then I remembered that one of my favo

What This Country Needs is a Chief Technology OfficerNovember 14

I’ve read in a few places recently that president-elect Obama plans to appoint a Chief Technology Officer for America, perhaps as a cabinet-level position. This is one of those brilliant ideas that seems glaringly obvious in retrospect --  of course the most technically advanced, innovative, and computer intensive economy on the planet should have a high-ranking official in the federal government dedicated to technology issues! Why haven’t we had one since the dawn of the mainframe, PC, or Internet Eras? Still, much better late than never.

The precise job description is not yet clear, but how could it be? Technology’s role in American society is boundaryless and constantly increasing, so delineating the CTO’s role is going to be hard. Is it confined to information and communications technology, or should also include other blossoming flields like energy and life sciences? And is the mission to make policy, to allocate resources via something like a venture capital fund, to take control of large portions of the federal government’s IT spending and p

Why Some Business Innovations Can't Get Off The GroundNovember 4

On September 30 of this year American Airlines announced its new PriorityAAccess privileges, intended to ease the processes of checking in, getting through security, and boarding the plane for its most loyal and lucrative customers. PriorityAAccess is most visible at the gate. As I flew around the country over the past month on American (where I’m locked in because of my AAdvantage miles) I started to notice that the area in front of the door to the jetway—the place where we all line up to hand our boarding passes over to the gate agent—has been reconfigured. It now consists of two lanes, one marked "Priority Boarding" and the other marked "General Boarding" (or something similar).

According to American, "Customers with PriorityAccess privileges will be invited to board first or board at any time through their exclusive PriorityAAccess lane, which allows them to bypass lines after general boarding has begun." The new configuration seems to be pretty uniform; I’ve seen it at every airport I’ve flown out of over the past month, which is more than a couple.

The new configuration also seems to be uniformly ignored. My fellow travelers and I have continued to line up and board just as we always do, except now we use two narrow lanes instead of one broad one. I haven’t yet seen us fliers make any effort to sort ourselves into the â

Terror and TwitterOctober 28

A few different friends recently pointed me to stories about terrorists’ use of Twitter, which were sparked by the appearance, on the website of the Federation of American Scientists, of a report titled "Sample Overview: al Qaida-Like Mobile Discussions & Potential Creative Uses." It was prepared by the Army’s 304th Military Intelligence Battalion. My friends pointed me to the stories because I’m interested in Twitter’s uses for different purposes, and have blogged about it a few times.

The 304th MI’s report "coverhs a few examples of terrorist use and potential use of mobile to web and web to mobile technologies and tactics" including "a red teaming perspective on the potential terrorist use of Twitter." (

Should Knowledge Workers have E2.0 Ratings, Part 2October 23

I received a wealth of insightful comments in response to my earlier post on Enterprise 2.0 ratings for knowledge workers. I thought I'd use some of them to continue discussing the topic, starting with the very basic question of whether measuring E2.0 participation is a good idea at all. A few commenters felt that it was not, and that the very act of measurement would pollute or drain enthusiasm from exactly the activities E2.0 enthusiasts are trying to encourage.

From Kevin Gamble:  I have no doubt that some organizations will attempt to quantify participation... As soon as you try to quantify it, however, you will kill the goose… This would be something akin to paying people to contribute to a KM system. You’ll get nothing but garbage.

From Bryan Labutta: As far as a rating system is concerned, I would be hesitant to implement one around Enterprise 2.0 because I would not want to stifle an individual’s willingness to contribute. As I mentioned above, I feel like the biggest benefits to Enterprise 2.0 should come when employees realize the benefits on their own and contribute at will. If a regular contributor sees that their personal feedback rating is very low will that reduce the amo