From the Archives...
The Management Center as Information Factory
[Matt Taylor Journal page 642, June
30, 1984, 7:32PM]
Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C.
Editor's Note: This Journal excerpt was the first
in a series of entries focused on the Management Center concept. Matt
composed these between June 30 and July 16, 1984. The text of the subsequent
journal entries have now been transcribed and published
on Matt's website.
(20000705.113230.wtj)
In introducing the Center to clients during DesignShop® events, I
often refer to Management Centers as "Information Factories."
This is not intended to be taken metaphorically; I mean to be understood
literally. And following the principles of the 7th
Domain: Venture Management, every scrap of information is to be used
and reused--combined, added to--stored, retrieved, analyzed, synthesized,
AND made available to each user "at the right time and place, in
the right amount of detail." The use of the information becomes itself
an item of information. The information connected with human action becomes
knowledge; the sum becomes a Knowledge industry, (i.e., the industry of
knowledge).
The procedures and facilitation methods utilized in Management Centers
are the factory's process engineering (using this term as it is meant
in industrial engineering). Throughout this factory process ideas and
data are refined until a product is developed. This is not a dry mechanical
process as the factory "image" usually conjures up; that image
and reality of the factory is ready for the scrap heap of history. To
understand the idea of Management Centers as information factories, is
also to build in one's mind a new image of the industrial factory and
that 19th century factory now called the office. These old ideas must
be recreated, generalized (seeing present practices as special cases)
and placed into a new humanistic context. A new Art and Science is being
developed: that of information processing. At the core of this is a unique
concept of information management
and of the human creative process.
At the center of this is a unique organization presently called the "Knowledge
Center" (Domain #1). The Knowledge Center had its first expression
in the Renascence Library (Kansas City, 1974-1980); and was further developed
in my concept of Earth Library (Boulder, 1979-81). The Earth Library concept
deals with issues related to a network of Knowledge Centers located in
Management Centers throughout the globe and the use of CyberConn
system to link, synthesize, communicate a new cultural paradigm. Central
to all this work over the last decade is the idea of a new level of human
tooling to meet transformational demands.
copyright © 1984, MG Taylor Corporation.
All rights reserved
copyrights,
terms and conditions
19970317224209.web.bsc
|