Re: Can Organizations Learn? Pass exams? Take vacations?
After a lengthy and thoughtful discussions of steps an organization can
take to improve its performance, and to retain and store data,
information, and knowledge, Doug Jones concludes:
>So, do organizations truly learn? I don't have a clue.
As a pragmatist, I continue wonder why it matters so much to so many here.
An analogy.
My car is now able to store information and do many useful things for me.
It can tell me how far I've driven since I last put in gas, and how close
to running out of gas I am.
Now, suppose folks here, given as they are to wanting the answers to
metaphysical puzzles, ask this:
Is my car remembering? Does my car have a memory?
My car also makes it very clear to me that it "knows" I have not fastened
my seat belt.
I think I believe that my car is intelligent.
That it learns.
That it has a memory.
That it has a mind of its own: I'd like to tell you what that silly car it
does to annoy me.
Now I submit that my attributing characteristics and qualities of living
beings to a machine is useful.
For example: I can now ask the question: what improvements can I , or
designers, make to the memory of my car to improve its value to me.
And if it pleases me to insist that my car has intelligence, and I call it
Jennifer, and talk to it, who am I harming?
But you might get uneasy if I go beyond using the metaphor for improving
the functioning of a car and start insisting that my car REALLY has
intelligence...
Or if I insist that a basketball team or a chain gang or a sales force or
a dance company REALLY has intelligence and memory and can get hungry and
die of loneliness.
And I start calling the basketball team by its first name.
Jennifer.
Steve Eskow
--Dr. Steve Eskow President, The Electronic University Network 288 Stone Island Road Enterprise, Florida 32725 Phone: 407-321-8770 Fax: 407-321-4681 email: dreskow@aol.com
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