The not-so-slow death of ITSM (or, Be a mammal)

Raar!

It's easy to say it with hindsight, but I was only a real ITIL/ITSM fanboi for a short while. This was in the years between 1999 and 2007. Eight years was long enough to feel the pain of the major flaws. By the middle of the first decade of this century, I'd gone slightly cold on it, hence the focus on work psychology, data, and the softer side of IT service. I'll admit that I was hoping that ITSM could be fixed, but I wouldn't have bet my house on it.

As I say, hindsight is a wonderful thing, but thankfully traces of my scepticism remain thanks to the wonders of the interweb. See that in 2010 I was ruminating about the death of ITIL, and in my 2013 presentation at the Service Desk and IT Show in London I was looking forward to the post-ITSM service desk.

Naturally, I wasn't taken very seriously by the powers that be, although it became obvious that others were detecting the same signals as I was. Now that cloud, BYOD and other shifts appear to be in the process of removing our clammy hands from the technological levers of power, it must be said that across the landscape of corporate IT, ITSM practitioners are beginning to look over their shoulders a little. We probably look a little bit like the dinosaurs did when that extinction event meteorite was on its way earthbound.

"What the fuck's that?"

I Dream Of Kant

In the last 6 months, when I've found myself with a little free time away from the various technology jobs, the household duties, and writing and promoting my book, I've been studying the ideas of the 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant. I had been picking up little snippets of his conclusions over the last 4 or 5 years and I'm really pleased that I'm getting properly stuck into his theorising now. I think the man was genius of the highest order.

A few weeks back I had a really weird dream. It was some kind of futuristic scenario, where I was being made to commit hi-tech hari-kari for some unspecified misdemeanour. Everyone in the dream was rather cheerful and chipper about the whole affair including myself which in itself was highly odd. However the best part of the dream was that as I was waking up, I had a bit of a Kantian epiphany about the process of dreaming.