Since TiVo and Replay TV have been giving the TV programming business heart burn, they have been trying to find a way round the "problem". The most egregious idiocy was perpetrated by AOL's jack Valenti who proposed that not watching the TV adverts was tantamount to theft. That was in response to the ability of technologies such as TiVo to time shift programme content in ways far beyond mere recording and replay. Being able to watch a programme while it is being broadcast and at the same time to skip the ads is thinking WAY outside the average TV exec's box.

But now AOL-Time Warner are going to try and undermine the technology by doing it themselves with something called Mystro TV. And if you believe that, I have a couple of nice bridges to sell you. Mystro TV needs to win the cooperation of networks, studios and the creators of shows. So far, most industry executives even some at AOL Time Warner's networks and studios say they are dubious about the feasibility of the idea.

The essence of AOL Time Warner's Mystro TV is a technology that uses a cable system itself to provide viewers capabilities similar to computerized personal video recorders like TiVo: watching programs on their own schedules, with fast-forward and rewind. But it also lets networks set the parameters, dictating which shows users can reschedule, and it also creates ways for networks to insert commercials.</blockquote> Once again, they can't bear to let go the control.

The essence of the Internet is to transfer control, if you can't live with that, then you will go away.

The net is not a media entity, it is not susceptible to media management techniques, paradigms or business models. The sooner they get it, the sooner they will stop trying to speak English in a room full of Chinese. It really doesn't matter how loud you shout, you still wont make any sense.

There are any number of business management theories, but the ones that amuse me most are the ones which only work if the management knows exactly how the work is done and exactly what work is being done. Usually presented as in real time Right.

So get rid of them immediately because, as John Seely brown and Paul Duguid point out in The Social Life of Information, organisations only function at all because the people in them act with general good will to consistently and predictably, break the rules. The surest way to cripple a company is to "work to rule". I wonder why we even bother trying to figure it out, unless of course you are selling ERP or CRM software.

That is what makes emergent theory so fascinating. It is both Chaotic, and ordered; as ideas and practices develop they are communicated, modified and adapted to changing external circumstances. Very often the management of the business becomes one of those external circumstances, usually after reading the latest guru on how it is done. Which is why this looks interesting.

The Management Secrets of the Brain By M. Mitchell Waldrop.
... a big company like General Electric (GE), which boasts more than 300,000 employees in 14 business units spread across 100 countries. That's nothing compared with the human brain, which has a staff of about 100 billion nerve cells shuffling countless messages to one another...

Your brain is the ultimate example of a complex, decentralized organization. And because we (usually) behave coherently, smoothly integrating new circumstances as they arise, the brain is also the epitome of an adaptive organization, a learning organization, a shared-vision organization -- in short, the ideal modern company.