Einstein’s contribution to science is elegantly précised by the equation E = mc². This is unfortunately the best I can offer …
But it is based on three decades of observation and experience, inside and outside of management. This is how it works …
As a manager, what do you find hardest, makes you most uncomfortable, to be avoided at all costs, and wherever possible? Is it …
- Spending time with your team: working out what they need, pitching-in, pulling together, but having to justify decisions made by higher management? Or …
- Spending time with other managers, making decisions that affect your team, but ‘away’ from your team, often doing your best to keep things from your team?
In other words, whose side are you on? (1) Your team’s, or (2) Management’s. If you’re more comfortable spending all your time with other managers, but would rather not have to face your team with the decisions made, you know which you are!
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Leave a comment | tags: Management | posted in Academia, Education, Industry
Vic’s sci-novel, ‘CONSCIOUS’, now has it’s own website.
https://consciousnovel.com/
New stories, competitions, etc. will appear hear, also linked to the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/ConsciousVicGrout/. (Nearly 9,000 ‘likes’ now!)

Leave a comment | tags: Conscious, Consciousness, Science fiction | posted in Computer Science, Computing, Education, Philosophy, Politics, Science
Now available as eBook and paperback
What makes something sentient? What does it take for an entity to be aware of its own existence and to want to interact with the world of its own accord? Is it a gift from God or hard science? Is it something fundamentally human or animal in nature or is it a simple technological principle based on brain size? There are many models, of course. But, if consciousness is simply a natural product of neural complexity then eventually, in theory, we might build something – a computer or a machine – that was actually big enough to wake up!
Oh, wait …!
The widespread ramblings, which have appeared on this blog over the years, now make a partial contribution to a novel. (See http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/vicgrout)

Vic Grout’s Conscious is set a year or three into the future. The ‘Internet of Everything’ is making the world a more connected place than ever before. People’s lives are becoming increasingly automated. But something odd is happening … ‘Things’ are beginning to misbehave and no-one can work out why. What starts as an amusing inconvenience quickly becomes very serious indeed!
A ragged bunch of academics, scientists and philosophers are on the case – and may know the answer. But now they have to convince people that their crazy explanation is true. And that’s only the start. Against a backdrop of a world suddenly beginning to fall apart, they’re in a race against time to get someone to do anything about it. And not everyone is on their side!
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Leave a comment | tags: Artificial intelligence, Big Connectivity, Big Data, Brain, Formal proof, Futurology, Internet of Everything, Internet of Things, IoT, Machine intelligence, Real Internet of Things, Science fiction, Singularity, Technological singularity | posted in Academia, Algorithms, Computer Science, Computing, Education, Engineering, General, Hardware, Industry, Mathematics, Philosophy, Politics, Programming, Science, Software