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METAFORIX MAIL Volume 1, Issue 38 April 24, 2001 Sites and insights for the Information Age
CONTENTS AT A GLANCE: ON
MY MIND: Storytelling ON MY MIND [From the Editor] Telling Tales Twice this month, I have attended conferences about storytelling in organizations.The newfound legitimacy of storytelling is due to the rise of knowledge management (familiarly known as KM). The American Productivity and Quality Institute defines KM as "the systematic process of identifying, capturing, and transferring information and knowledge people can use to create, compete, and improve." In the past, organizations focused primarily on explicit knowledge -- the kind of data that is easy to quantify or to communicate accurately in words or pictures. Tacit knowledge -- people's unspoken or intuitive understanding of how things work in the organization -- often received short shrift. As people began to change jobs more often, taking their tacit knowledge along with them, the business value of tacit knowledge became increasingly clear. The growth of information technologies has made it feasible to record and disseminate tacit knowledge on a large scale, if only people feel safe about sharing what they know and feel valued for doing so. Initially, much of the KM literature focused on the technological apparatus required to capture and share knowledge within large or geographically dispersed organizations. Over time, business executives and researchers began to pay more attention to the softer side of KM. They started to ask what kinds of cultural, interpersonal, and ecological environments support or impede knowledge sharing. Organizations like IBM and the World Bank launched major KM initiatives. People, mostly men, began to write management-oriented books, give speeches, and earn big bucks teaching executives to appreciate the value of stories in business. At the conferences I attended, five of the six speakers I heard were men. Virtually all of the examples cited in support of the value of stories were drawn from male-dominated professions and organizations. Gender was not mentioned in the presentations. When I asked whether gender played any role in people's receptivity to sharing and recording stories, the answer was, "Not really." When I asked whether similar research was underway in settings where women had greater influence or were present in larger numbers, the answer was, "No." When I asked about the influence of feminist scholars on the current KM trend, I drew quizzical or faintly hostile glances. When I examined the bibliographies of several of these people's new books, women's scholarship on narrative, storytelling, and qualitative research was de-emphasized or entirely absent. Make no mistake: I am impressed with the new attention to organizational stories and delighted to see it gaining prominence. I am fascinated by the new strategies for collecting and cataloging stories and determined to add them to my bag of tricks as an organizational consultant. It's just that research focused on architects and computer programmers and urban planners has so much more cachet -- and attracts so much more cash -- than research focused on nurses and quilters and women college students and families sitting around the kitchen table. Could it have anything to do with the gender of the researchers? The gender of the people who were studied? The gender of the folks who hold the purse strings? No doubt, the answer would be, "Not really." But I just have to wonder. That's why I'm telling you this story.
Cordially, Lois C.
Ambash, Editor
MEDIA Shouting and Murmuring, The New Yorker Goes Online After 76 years in print, the "venerable" New Yorker magazine has taken its first tentative steps online. As many media outlets -- both traditional and virtual -- downsize or disappear, parent company Conde Nast launched NewYorker.com in February.The site offers the complete table of contents and selected articles from the current issue, along with reviews, events listings, and selections from the magazine's archives. There's also some digital-only content and lots of things to buy from the New Yorker Cartoon Bank and from partner Barnes and Noble. For the sake of comparison, The Atlantic Monthly, founded in 1857 (thus even more venerable if age is the criterion), went digital in 1995. The entire print version is available online at the time of publication, except for articles for which The Atlantic could not obtain electronic rights, along with full archives back to 1995, selected pieces from earlier years, and extensive digital-only content known collectively as "Atlantic Unbound." At the other end of the spectrum is Harper's, founded in 1850, which takes a much more parsimonious approach. Its site offers the table of contents of the current issue and very little more. These comparisons are not meant to suggest that The New Yorker actually has peers. As noted by Steve Johnson in The Chicago Tribune, The New Yorker is "the nation's pre-eminent general interest magazine" and, despite its relative youth, "has always seemed a little 19th Century." The site has been panned for its "staid" design, fusty art-deco typeface, and limited content. Personally, I like the typeface. And, though I wish more articles were accessible online, I'm glad the magazine finally took the plunge. Like Johnson, I admire The New Yorker's faith in the endurance of the printed word. I'm not planning to cancel my subscription any time soon.
Access previous issues of Metaforix Mail by date by visiting our archives. Or use the search box on any page of the Metaforix site (www.metaforix.com) to search by keywords. INFORMATICON "A
Comeback for Writing, but Not Necessarily for Eloquence" "A typical e-mail message does away with commas and capital letters, and is riddled with misspellings, some of which are deliberate, most probably not. There is a lot of white space because the return key functions as punctuation. Acronyms and little pictures, called glyphs or emoticons, communicate thoughts and impressions. The freedom implicit in jettisoning grammatical rules could be what has enabled the e-mail- chat revolution to occur, unlocking the inner writer in everyone. Not having to abide by grammatical rules, as chat room visitors might say, makes them :). "But is writing e-mail and chatting really writing?"
CYBERSPEAK Transmission Rates to Beat the Band Bandwidth, in its literal sense, refers to the amount of data that a communications channel can transmit during a given period of time. Because a cable modem can transmit more data per second than a dial-up modem, it is said to have higher bandwidth. Similarly, "broadband Internet access" encompasses channels that are faster than dial-up: cable, DSL (short for "digital subscriber line" telephone access), T-1 high-speed networks.Bandwidth has also become a metaphor. A highly intelligent person is considered "high bandwidth." A company that can't handle its workload is said to have "bandwidth problem." Someone who demands the lion's share of attention -- in real space or in an online forum -- is called a "bandwidth hog." A person who has trouble expressing feelings or making deep commitments lacks sufficient "emotional bandwidth." Next time you hear the term bandied about, you'll know what it means.
'Tis a Puzzlement I've just discovered a terrific new way to pass the time while you're on hold waiting for tech support. Just go to The JigZone, choose a picture you like, and solve a jigsaw puzzle.The site has over 800 images, each of which is sliced to order from a menu of 32 configurations. Depending on your time and inclination, you'll be served anywhere from 6 to 247 puzzle pieces, in a variety of "classic" or more challenging shapes. If you choose to register with the site, additional features become available. You can upload personal photos and turn them into puzzles, which you can then post on your web site or e-mail to a friend. You can also subscribe to an e-mail list that provides a link to the "puzzle of the day." There are some frustrating aspects to the site. For example, the puzzle pieces are all correctly aligned, which removes a key element of physical puzzles. And there is no way to save an incomplete puzzle if you're interrupted. That last can be a real problem if the tech support rep reaches your place in the call queue before you've solved the puzzle. So don't say I didn't warn you. The JigZone has addictive potential. If you are determined to disregard the warning, go to: http://www.jigzone.com
Guest Columnists and Interviewees Wanted! Metaforix
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Volume 1, Issue 37 April 17, 2001 |
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