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Exploring the science and magic of Identity and Access Management
Thursday, March 28, 2024

So Much Information; So Little Time.

General
Author: Mark Dixon
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
8:48 am

In a bit of frustration recently, I thought about how much information I plow through each day and posted this tweet:

Littletime

Timeeternity

After thinking about that conundrum some more, I drew a graph like the one on the right on my whiteboard.  

As the available information in the world continues to expand geometrically, we are constrained by an absolutely finite resource – time.  To my knowledge, nobody’s days have grown longer recently.  Yet the amount of information we have at our disposal continues to tend towards infinity.

Big data analytics certainly attempts to deal with this challenge.  Ever more sophisticated tools sift through larger and larger piles of data, attempting to discover “Subtle Patterns and Relationships” that may have importance in our lives.

It as if we are attempting to grasp and understand the infinite from a finite frame of reference.

It reminded me of a profound statement from a very wise man: David O. McKay

Spirituality, our true aim, is the consciousness of victory over self and of communion with the Infinite. 

I doubt that the Infinite of which he spoke will be found in the near infinite pile of data in Facebook or Twitter, but it is food for thought.

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Happy Pi Day!

General
Author: Mark Dixon
Thursday, March 14, 2013
9:57 am

In honor of 3/14, Pi Day, please take a minute and enjoy the Pi song with me …

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AC/DC: The Tesla–Edison Feud

General
Author: Mark Dixon
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
3:58 am

Two of the great minds in the history of electricity were featured in a recent article in Mental Floss.  These two men, giants in their field, were closely related in their work, but diametrically opposed in so many ways.  This short, but fascinating article gives a good overview of the feud between them.

Edison tesla 12

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Tree Down!

General
Author: Mark Dixon
Saturday, March 9, 2013
9:16 am

Yesterday’s storm toppled a big eucalyptus tree across the backyard fence.

Treedown

Can you guess what we get to do today?

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Abundance vs. Scarcity – Which do You Choose?

General
Author: Mark Dixon
Thursday, March 7, 2013
7:41 am

Sunrise

On the whiteboard in my office is a statement, “Abundance is born of shared ideas,” which I wrote down when first introduced to the book, “The Emergence of the Relationship Economy.”  We don’t have to look very far to find many examples of how innovation sprang from ideas shared among creative, energetic people, leading to a rich abundance and growth of health, happiness or monetary wealth.  This type of expansive thinking and action results when people look outside their situation in life, whatever it may be, and concentrate on what can be, rather than what is.  This is an Abundance Mentality.

In contrast, a Scarcity Mentality prompts people to look inwardly, concentrating on the supposed constraints of a situation or condition in life.  Perhaps this is no better illustrated that in a video being shared widely on Facebook. “9 Out Of 10 Americans Are Completely Wrong About This Mind-Blowing Fact.”

This video cleverly compares the wealth of the 1% richest people in the US with the rest of us 99 percenters. The graphics are well done, the narration and music are professional.  However, there are at least five glaring errors in the supporting logic:

  1. By focusing on relative percentages rather than absolute values of personal wealth, the video infers that somehow the wealth of the 1% automatically diminishes the wealth of everyone else.  After all, the stack of money for a guy on the left side of the chart sure looks smaller than the stack on the right side.
     
  2. The video assumes scarcity, rather than abundance – that the sum of all society wealth or individual wealth is constrained to a fixed amount, that individuals are somehow limited in opportunity for growth because the 1% are insanely wealthy.
     
  3. The video assumes that “fairness” is defined by a more even distribution of wealth.
     
  4. The video infers that if some magic would occur to take the wealth of the 1% and spread it in some more equitable fashion across the rest of us, that we would all be more happy and the world would be a better place.
     
  5. The video assumes that monetary wealth is the ultimate measure of success or happiness.  After all, how can I be happy when someone else has more money than I do?
     
With these comments, I don’t intend to excuse that rampant greed that fuels so much of society today, but I propose that getting all caught up in the “Scarcity Mentality” embodied in this video diminishes our ability to focus on innovative thought and action, which could alternatively lead to abundant growth, both individually and as a society.
 
An example from my past is particularly important to me.  I grew up on a small farm in southern Idaho.  My college educated father loved farming, but couldn’t make enough money on the farm to support his growing family, so he began teaching school, an occupation he despised.  We still worked on the farm, plowing ground, harvesting crops, feeding pigs and milking cows – tasks that demanded relentless attention but yielded little monetary gain.  We never went on an overnight vacation; the cows demanded to be milked every morning and every night.
 
But my dad had a vision of what his children could become.  Knowing that he couldn’t afford to send us to college, he allowed us to work outside the farm to earn money to finance our education.  I bucked a lot of hay, milked a lot of cows and made a lot of cheese for other employers.  Dad could have focused on the scarcity  and constraints of our farm and demanded that I exert all my work on the farm within those constraints, but he favored the abundant focus, which enabled me to get an education and pursue a successful career.  Dad never achieved even a modicum of monetary success that would show up in the video, but measures his abundance in the success, happiness and abundant lives of his seven children and their families.
 
I recently watched a video where Ben Carson told of how his mother, one of 24 children, abandoned by a bigamist husband, living in dire poverty, refused to focus on her own bad situation, but make her sons study at the public library so they could rise above the dire conditions in which they were born. Inspired by what he read, Ben rose to become Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital.  In addition to financial success, he has blessed many lives through his skill and dedicated service.
 
In my current employment, I could get all caught up in the fact that Larry Ellison has many more billions of dollars in his bank accounts than I have in mine, or that he has yet to invite me for dinner on his private Hawaiian island, or that I will never catch up to him monetarily.  That would be Scarcity Mentality on my part.  But when I focus on what I can do innovate, to serve our customers or to move our industry forward, opportunities blossom. That is the Abundance Mentality.

 

 

What a Storm!

General
Author: Mark Dixon
Friday, February 8, 2013
3:13 pm

Hello my friends and colleagues on the East coast of the US!  NASA is watching over you!

Hope you remain safe from the ravages of this big storm.

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The Final Landing

General
Author: Mark Dixon
Friday, September 21, 2012
8:40 pm

Today, the space shuttle Endeavour, atop the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, landed at Los Angeles International Airport, marking the final scheduled ferry flight of the Space Shuttle Program. Endeavor will be placed on public display at the California Science Center. (NASA Photo)

My sister posted on Facebook: “I was standing in Disneyland today when I saw the space shuttle Endeavor fly over. Living the dream!!”

I must admit that I have a bit of a lump in my throat tonight as I contemplate it all.

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Data in Context

General
Author: Mark Dixon
Saturday, September 15, 2012
7:35 pm

The following graphic is a great example of how false conclusions can be easily drawn from perfectly good data.  This is a graph provided by our electrical utility for our family home covering the month of August this year.  It looks like we had a super-efficient month of August for electrical usage, correct?

Well, if you had known the context, the report wouldn’t have looked so good.  During the month of August this year, our home was being restored from a house fire.  No air conditioners were running in the house during the entire month.  No wonder we had a low power bill!  If only we would compare so favorably now the new air conditioning units have been turned back on!

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Old MacDonald has a farm and a smartphone

General
Author: Mark Dixon
Friday, September 14, 2012
6:47 am

Great article and infographic on the SmartPlanet blog about use of smartphones and other technology in agriculture.

Telecommunications has come a long way from when I grew up in rural Idaho.  Our telephone line had a seven-minute limit on call length because of relative lack of capacity.  And even that was a step up from the party line we had when I was a little boy.

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May We Never Forget

General
Author: Mark Dixon
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
5:33 am

May we never forget the devastation on that fateful day of September 11, 2001.  But let us always remember the selfless service given courageously by so many that day.

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