Human Pyramid Formation Quotes

We repeat, these hybrid constructions are not the least interesting for the artist, the antiquary and the historian. They make us aware to what extent architecture is a primitive thing, demonstrating as they do, like the cyclopean remains, the pyramids of Egypt, or the gigantic Hindu pagodas, that architecture's greatest products are less individual than social creations; the offspring of nations in labour rather than the outpouring of men of genius; the deposit let behind by a nation; the accumulation of the centuries; the residue from the successive evaporations of human society; in short, a kind of formation. Each wave of time lays down its alluvium, each race deposits its own stratum on the monument, each individual contributes his stone. Thus do the beavers, and the bees; and thus does man.

But when the agricultural villages of the Neolithic expanded into larger towns that grew to more than two thousand inhabitants, the capacity of the human brain to know and recognize all of the members of a single community was stretched beyond its natural limits. Nevertheless, the tribal cultures that had evolved during the Upper Paleolithic with the emergence of symbolic communication enabled people who might have been strangers to feel a collective sense of belonging and solidarity. It was the formation of tribes and ethnicities that enabled the strangers of the large Neolithic towns to trust each other and interact comfortably with each other, even if they were not all personally acquainted. The transformation of human society into urban civilizations, however, involved a great fusion of people and societies into groups so large that there was no possibility of having personal relationships with more than a tiny fraction of them. Yet the human capacity for tribal solidarity meant that there was literally no upper limit on the size that a human group could attain. And if we mark the year 3000 BC as the approximate time when all the elements of urban civilization came together to trigger this new transformation, it has taken only five thousand years for all of humanity to be swallowed up by the immense nation-states that have now taken possession of every square inch of the inhabited world. The new urban civilizations produced the study of mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, history, biology, and medicine. They greatly advanced and refined the technologies of metallurgy, masonry, architecture, carpentry, shipbuilding, and weaponry. They invented the art of writing and the practical science of engineering. They developed the modern forms of drama, poetry, music, painting, and sculpture. They built canals, roads, bridges, aqueducts, pyramids, tombs, temples, shrines, castles, and fortresses by the thousands all over the world. They built ocean-going ships that sailed the high seas and eventually circumnavigated the globe. From their cultures emerged the great universal religions of Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam, and Hinduism. And they invented every form of state government and political system we know, from hereditary monarchies to representative democracies. The new urban civilizations turned out to be dynamic engines of innovation, and in the course of just a few thousand years, they freed humanity from the limitations it had inherited from the hunting and gathering cultures of the past.

DECISIONS Useful: Graphical Presentation Monitor Key Indicators Effective Measurements Wisdom Knowledge The Goal: Strategic Thinking Predictive Value Experience and Judgment Automated Exception Notification Information Structured: Voluminous Grouped and Summarized Relationships Not Always Evident Raw Data: Massive Fragmented Meaningless Data EVENTS Figure 1-01. The Pyramid of KnowledgeToyota, this begins with genchi genbutsu, or gemba, which means literally “go see it for yourself. ” Taiichi Ohno, a founding father of Lean, once said, “Data is of course important in manufacturing, but I place the greatest emphasis on facts. ” 2 A direct and intuitive understanding of a situation is far more useful than mountains of data. The raw data stored in a database adds value for decision-making only if the right information is presented in the right format, to the right people, at the right time. A tall stack of printout may contain the right data, but it’s certainly not in an accessible format. Massive weekly batch printouts do not enable timely and proactive decisions. Raw data must be summarized, structured, and presented as digestible information. Once information is combined with direct experience, then the incredible human mind can extract and develop useful knowledge. Over time, as knowledge is accumulated and combined with direct experience and judgment, wisdom develops. This evolution is described by the classic pyramid of knowledge shown in Figure 1-01. BACK TO CHICAGO So what happened in Chicago? We can speculate upon several possible perspectives for why the team and its change leader were far from a true Lean system, yet they refused any help from IT providers: 1. They feared wasteful IT systems and procedures would be foisted on them.