Thoughts from the middle of the night

Worship

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 12:13:28 +1100

2010 was, for a whole host of reasons, was a year that caused me to think deeply about what worship is, why we worship and how we should worship when we come together at church.

After posting this paper to facebook, (at a meaningless cloud URL), I thought I’d give it a more (semi)permanent home since a lot of folks had mentioned interest in sharing it. It will live here at least until I decide to rethink my website or blog.

Since it may disappear from here too, you are welcome to store or even host your own copy, as long as there is attribution to me.

Towards a Worship Ministry Framework v1.4 (all).pdf

Discussion welcome via facebook James Boswell.

“My vision is this big” - Turnbull takes on the NBN

Sat, 18 Sep 2010 12:57:37 +1000

For the sake of full disclosure, I worked in next generation network research for several years, and was very familiar with the issues at the time. Less so now, but I think largely, the issues are still the same if not more accentuated with the passage of time.

The piece by Malcolm Turnbull published in the Herald on Thursday shows that the opposition only want to tear down rather than be constructive. It demonstrates a pernicious lack of vision and understanding.

I think it is important at the outset to encourage everyone not to lose sight of the fact that the article is by a politician not a journalist. As such it is more biased than even your usual opinion piece. It is given the look of "informed opinion" after assessing the facts, where it is actually driven by a political agenda and ideology.

What do I agree with Turnbull on? Labor could have done a better job of discussing the benefits of the NBN. What have I filtered from his ideology? Just about everything else. It is clever but completely misleading, based on flawed analogies and isolated ideology.

Fundamentally, the "business case" approach is to move the focus from big vision, to narrowly defined financial benefit. The difficulty is that business cases only take a small view. I have been involved in the development of business cases for projects that are a no-brainer but under accounting rules of business case development barely make it over the line. Such projects, can make a fundamental shift to the way things operate, which have game changing impact on a business, but that cannot be considered in an up front business case. Sadly business cases are insisted upon in most cases, not because it isn't obvious the project should be done, but because executives want to cover their rear end and not get fired for making a decision they can't back up within a narrowly focused set of rules. They want iron clad immediate benefit, not visionary gain.

Read carefully Turnbull's comments to see the narrow focus of benefit. "The value of the network is a function of its future cashflows." What a lot of rubbish. We are talking about infrastructure. By that logic, we would only ever build toll roads, and they would all have to be cash flow positive. We would not consider the benefit of roads to open up remote areas for population growth, agriculture, tourism or evangelism. The value of the network is what it enables!

And this is where his arguments about public companies are either disingenuous, or blinded by capitalist ideology - and I think to some extent both. The government of a nation is not a business, and does not exist to make profit - even though the Liberal party's fanatical devotion to only ever having a surplus budget might make you think otherwise. The government should care about value to people beyond the value of the network asset in isolation, and what it could be sold for. Value to community, value to education, information exchange, equity of access to services, better distribution of health outcomes, more efficient trade between regional and urban centres, the ability to optimise transport for a non-carbon economy. All of these things are what a truly ubiquitous high speed network (not one for just the urban areas and regional centres) enables. Turnbull wants a business case because it excludes all this future transformative vision from the discussion and allows him to dismantle a bold vision based on a narrow definition of value.

It is a deliberately short sighted view. Take a look at his argument about speed. I quote:

“I readily concede that, all other things being equal, you get faster speeds on optical fibre networks than on wireless. But if people can get speeds that are fast enough for their purposes on wireless, the superior functionality and convenience will win the day for many customers. At present, many choose not to buy the fastest broadband available to them. In short, current experience does not support the underlying assumptions."

We are talking about investment in future capability, and Turnbull is arguing on habits of people today. This is the logic that says "I think there is a worldwide market for maybe, four computers", or "640k ought to be enough for anyone". Try running today's software, on a 1985 computer, or looking at modern websites over a 28kbps modem. Once the speed exists as a baseline, the sorts of things we can consume become totally different. Of course there are other differences between optical and wireless networks besides speed, but I will spare you the geek speak. The NBN is about cultivating the ground for the growth of a new set of possibilities. Turnbull is talking about habits today, and the sad news is that the rest of the world will have this level of speed and ubiquity. His alternative proposal will leave us in a poor position to access the new economy.

Another thing that the current Liberal policy and the former Howard government policy sell short is that the NBN gives us perhaps the last chance to have the proper separation of Telstra's wholesale and retail businesses, which should have been done years ago, under Keating and successive governments. Much of what Rudd achieved has been discounted or forgotten, but the fact that his government didn't blink in the face of bullies like Sol Trujillo was an outstanding demonstration of backbone, and it would be a shame to throw away that hard won ground. Telstra are the biggest drag on the competitiveness of the communications sector. The NBN is not just visionary in technology terms, or ambitious in geographical penetration. It will fundamentally change the competitiveness of the telecommunications sector of the economy which has been slowing innovation down in this country for years.

In my view, $43b is cheap from both technology and social standpoints, because the NBN is transformative and visionary from both of those standpoints. The shadow minister's policy is exactly that, a pale shadow. It lacks vision and understanding. It views government as business for profit, based on narrow financial scope for defining value. It views future possibility through the lens of what is possible today. Sadly the world is too often run by short sighted bean counters - we have a rare opportunity to do something bolder than that which is truly transformative, and I hope that these diversionary tactics don't ruin that opportunity.

William’s Weight Loss

Thu, 13 May 2010 17:57:41 +1000

There was once a man named William who knew he had a problem but wasn’t certain what it was, or what caused it. What he did know, was that he seemed to be losing weight.

At first Will considered this a good thing. After all, lots of people want to lose weight, and it came easily to him. After a while though, he began to be concerned that he didn’t seem to be in control of his weight loss, and there was no apparent reason for it. Some months the loss would be barely noticeable, but every now and then he would discover kilos missing.

Will tried to ignore the problem, but others became less comfortable around him. His attempts to rectify the situation were many and varied. He tried simply eating more, but the more he ate, the thinner he got. His grocer told him to eat only raw vegetables, his butcher cut his meat with more fat on it, his gym instructor tried to bulk him up with protein powder and muscle building work outs. Everything failed.

Finally, when Will could barely cast a shadow in the morning light, a doctor came to see him to tell Will that he had a problem, and it needed to be fixed.

At first Will got quite upset. “I know I have a problem! I don’t need you to tell me I have a problem, I need you give me some medicine to fix it.”

The doctor explained that the only way to solve Will’s problem was to run a series of tests, and to examine his diet, his exercise habits, his environment, and how well various parts of his body functioned. Will agreed, and the Doctor wrote him a number of referrals to specialists.

In between the visits to specialists, Will’s friends began to tell him that all those specialists he had agreed to see would cost him a fortune. Each of his friends thought that will could fix it much faster, if he just visited their naturopath, or homeopath, or acupuncturist.

When all the tests were finally finished, Will went back to see his doctor. The doctor started to explain to Will what was wrong with him. It was not just one cause, but a complex interaction of many factors resulted in him losing weight.

Will was incredibly frustrated. He told the doctor that he knew what was wrong months ago, and all these tests only confirmed that he had a problem. He had spent a fortune on specialists and was still losing weight, and he still hadn’t been given a prescription for a weight loss drug.

The doctor wanted to explain that a pill on its own would not solve William’s problem. Lifestyle and environment changes would be needed along with a specific diet and exercise program, which would need to be worked out in conjunction with the specialists.

Unfortunately, before the doctor could explain all this to William, he walked out. Having invested all the time, effort and money in the specialists, who now had enough knowledge of his problem to help him, Will refused to pay them any more money.

William went back to his job at the bean factory, and to the best of my knowledge he continues to lose weight.