Bruce Boyes's Blog: Business Archives

Posted by bboyes on June 12, 2007 at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Don’t Look Back by ZDNet's Andrew Keen -- How to innovate? That was both the spoken and unspoken question on everyone's minds at the Wall Street Journal's memorable D Conference this week in Carlsbad. How can we radically improve the experience and value of interacting with one's digital device? What is the next chapter in the evolution of information and entertainment technology?

The part of this that really sticks out for me is the issue of looking ahead instead of behind. Exactly what that means isn't fully explained in Keen's blog. The possibility which rings true for me is the concept of disruptive innovation vs evolutionary innovation. I just finished an Anne Perry historical novel and one example of disruptive technology is the advent of rifled-barrel, cartridge-loaded firearms which displaced smooth-bore muzzle-loaders around the time of the US Civil War, with devastating results.

Speaking of looking forward, Ann Perry seems to have succeeded in spades. She has gone from a murder conviction (this was news to me until researching this blog) at the age of 16 to a new name, career, and commercial success. That's a turnaround!

This year, my company - Systronix - is releasing several new products which attempt to look forward into areas such as robotics and wireless sensors. These are not a logical progression from existing products, so perhaps we can consider them disruptive...

Please share your thoughts on how you try to look forward.

And what does this mean for Java and related technology? Will Java be eventually displaced by something disruptive, or will we see the programming language evolution of the last 20-30 years continue for the next decade or two? Personally I believe that programming is far too slow and complex and we all would benefit greatly from a radically new answer to the question of "how to we make programmable devices do what we wish?" but I have no idea what such a quantum leap might be, or even if it is possible.

Opportunity: Electronic Health Records Systems

Posted by bboyes on November 23, 2005 at 09:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This American Family Physician newsletter reports astonishingly low (to me, anyway) adoption of electronic records systems. Electronic billing and scheduling - yes, but medical records - no. Only 17% of physicians offices use electronic records? And only 8% of physicians use a computerized order entry system, which has the benefits of checking for drug interactions, standard doses, and allergies.

Is there an opportunity here or not? Java in combination with open source software has been very successful in scheduling and patient management in Brazil, and in fact, there was a fantastic BOF on this topic at JavaOne in SanFrancisco this past summer. One of the presenters, and the lead developer, Fabiane Bizinella Nardon received a Duke award for this project. There's some interesting discussion about the technology in this ServerSide thread. Brazil is planning to add medical records to this system in the future.

So, if there is a need, quantifiable benefits, the technology is available, and has been successfully deployed, what's holding back adoption of such applications? There was quite a bit of discussion of this following the BOF. It's an interesting question...

Denver Airport scraps automated system

Posted by bboyes on August 29, 2005 at 09:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In the category of automated systems which never worked, and as a cautionary tale against grandiose robotic systems:

This month marks the end of a costly and ultimately fruitless experiment for United Airlines at Denver International Airport. The airport's automated baggage handling system was supposed to be a marvel of modern technology when the airport opened in 1994, but United was the only airline ever to use the system plagued with breakdowns and shredded luggage.

Ditching the system will save $1 million in maintenance costs every month, and test runs with baggage handlers on incoming flights have already proven that human hands are faster and more accurate than the automated behemoth ever was, a United official told the New York Times on Saturday. What to do with the extra space taken up by the 26 miles of track for the system? The airport says it has already put 33 automatic baggage scanning machines down there to comply with FAA mandates for X-ray screening of all checked luggage.

One expert who has studied the sad sack arc of baggage movement in Denver said the designers had invested too much belief in the wizardry they thought was at their command.

"It wasn't the technology per se, it was a misplaced faith in it," said Richard de Neufville, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and engineering systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor de Neufville said the builders had imagined that their creation would work well even at the busiest boundaries of its capacity. That left no room for the errors and inefficiencies that are inevitable in a complex enterprise.

"The main culprit was hubris," he said.

Sharp corners, for example, were too much for the system to deal with. The whirring baggage carts, programmed to pick up and drop off bags in a perfectly coordinated ballet, often just tipped over and dumped their loads.

Then there was the lizard tongue, formally known as a telescoping belt loader, which was designed to shoot out from the track system's maw directly to an airplane's luggage doors. It, too, was a flop.

BAE Automated Systems of Carrollton, Tex., which designed the system, has since been liquidated, and no one associated with the effort could be reached for comment.
- iPilot.com and NY Times article

News like the above serves to remind me that even the experts (we assume they didn't hire amateurs here) can really screw up. And that, ultimately, if the system isn't maintainable (how can it require $1M of maintenance per *month*?) it is worthless, no matter what "great technology" it incorporates.

... and don't you wonder why it took 10 years to figure out that this system was doomed? Perhaps if United is willing to spend $120M flogging a dead horse, so to speak, we can better understand why they are in their current financial straits.

... and finally, if we can't even design a working automated baggage handling system for a few hundred million dollars, how close can we realistically be to autonomous robots "taking over the world", as Hollywood loves to portray? I don't think I'll lose any sleep over that threat for a while. So perhaps every cloud does have a silver lining.

Powered by
Movable Type 3.01D

java.net RSS Feeds