Total Recall - C. Gordon Bell [37]
Another example of progress in this area is a collaboration between MIT and Hewlett-Packard known as DSpace. Launched in 2002, DSpace is an open-source software package designed to accommodate an institution’s entire body of records, resources, and output, including books, aging microfilm, administrative records, audio recordings of classroom lectures, video recordings of speeches and events, scientific research data, published papers, student theses, 3-D models and scans of objects, and any other kind of digital information. The software includes a search engine and the ability for users to tag information in order to create useful trails and associations not present in the original data sets. DSpace has been adopted by hundreds of universities and research centers worldwide.
I expect Sprint will make Jon Gilmore’s memories about a cell tower available to any engineer who works on the tower, not just his successor. Likewise, repair divisions, like that of Xerox, use a common knowledge base to share diagnosis and repair information; all technicians inherit the memory of the one who first solves a particular problem, and get notes and tips for each model and type of breakdown. So when a technician first encounters error message #104 on model C900, the stories of a couple of previous repairs are instantly available, along with a tip to check for foreign material in the paper feeder before assuming the module needs replacement.
Customer service would sure be a lot better with a divisional memory. I can’t wait for my mobile phone provider to get onboard with this, because I’m sick of endlessly recounting the same story during a series of calls to different representatives, not to mention battling their skepticism toward my claims of what previous representatives have advised me. The next step is to make the memories accessible across the whole company. I want the wireless Internet troubleshooter I speak with to have access to, say, the billing memory to connect the dots when billing is really the issue. I’ve spent enough hours of my life on hold being passed around between specialists from that company, because the right hand doesn’t know what the left has been doing.
The march toward institutional e-memory has begun because the adoption of digital storage and communications makes recording and retrieval just too cheap and advantageous to pass up—especially in a competitive corporate environment. Keeping e-mails, instant-message chat sessions, and transaction records is obvious. With all bits of communication becoming virtually interchangeable you can generate voice from an instant message, or use voice-to-text to search for e-mail. Whenever I call my bank or insurance company, the first words from the corporate mouth are either “This call is being recorded for training purposes” or “This call is being recorded for your protection.” In a call involving stock purchase or sale, it is not uncommon for two agents to be involved and to verify the correctness of a verbal transaction. In companies such as Hartford Insurance, all sales calls are recorded along with all the interactions to the various databases that make up a call, making it possible to virtually recreate the full interaction and its associated data. In the next few years, we will see calls like these being converted to text so that when the customer calls again, the company representative will have the transcripts up on-screen during the call.
In addition to all communications, inventory is going to be tracked in greater and greater detail. Just as you have come to expect Federal Express to know the history of the packages you ship, construction companies will know the history of every sheet of drywall they use, and sporting-good manufacturers will know about every baseball glove they make from the time it is “born” to the point of sale.
The same trend will apply to individual tools and pieces of equipment. Each item will carry its own unique network identity so its usage can be logged and tracked, including who used it, where, and