Quixoticity? A new way of thinking?

[DISCLAIMER: If you are too busy to dedicate 20 minutes of your time to serious critical thinking about the future of society, then please do not start reading this article]

I have spent a lot of my life thinking. Thinking about the meaning of life; thinking about difficult mathematical problems; thinking about economic & financial models; thinking about critical communications solutions that save time, money, homes & lives.

Thinking has become unfashionable in an age where time is money & where we are expected to be as productive & active as possible while racing against the clock to deliver projects on time & on budget. Nobody has enough time anymore to think about what they are doing. Whether we are using the best method; whether we are building the foundations of a better future; or just going through the motions of a job with no purpose, with no lasting value, with no final goal.

Quixoticity is now 4 years old - and in fact, if we include Clemons Consulting, which I set up back in 1998 to advise suppliers & users about the benefits of private digital mobile radio technologies such as TETRA - I have been thinking (critically) about the deployment of critical communications solutions around the world for close to 20 years now. I am perhaps my harshest critic, so I constantly wonder if I am doing the best that I possibly can. Is this the best solution? Could we do it better? Will something better come along next year? Can commercial operators deliver better solutions using current business models? Is broadband really essential to public safety communications? Will mission-critical voice ever be delivered satisfactorily over LTE?

Every day - as soon as we wake up & before we go to sleep - if we aspire to be industry leaders one day, we must ask ourselves important questions & always remain critical of the work we are doing, even - or perhaps precisely - after the completion of a successful project or the launch of an exciting new product or service. We must never be satisfied by what we have done in the past; never complacent about our continued position of relevance within a particular ecosystem. Just like the strategies evolved by predators and their prey across the African savanna over millions of years, we must remain vigilant to changes in our business environment; be able to identify a new smell, a new characteristic in a particular species or its surroundings that might change the landscape forever.

Quixoticity must therefore, above all else, represent & amplify a new way of thinking, necessary for the new time we are about to live: the digital age being ushered in by the so-called "5G era" of which I will speak and write a lot over the coming months and years.

This new way of thinking must be foundational to the new age & must gradually replace old ways of thinking that will no longer be able to explain a radically new way of living. We must find new ways of interpreting the copious quantities of data that will be generated, looking beyond the quarterly results, the percentages & raw numbers of profits & losses; the averages & statistics. We will need to take a very long-term view of society & economies while giving equal importance to the here-and-now, being able to plan & anticipate radical transformations by taking a large number of small steps to get to where we want to go. In other words, we will need to think strategically, as well as tactically & operationally.

As digital communications becomes the core of this new enhanced, extended life-form, in order to preserve our position at the centre of this transformation, we must be able to overcome the old, traditional ways of thinking. The new forms of "increasingly intelligent & perceptive" artificial intelligence that emerge will need to be interpreted & controlled by "increasingly intelligent & perceptive" human beings. The current void of leadership, wisdom & culture during the early stages of the 21st century clearly show that our education, health & political systems will need to evolve if they are to withstand the winds of change blowing through modern societies.

We must find ways of accommodating the old forms within the new - i.e. safety nets are required for those people who are unable to adapt quickly enough to the changes that are about to take place - but we must not - & probably cannot - slow down or oppose the unlimited aspirations & ambitions of the digital-native generations to come. These are challenges indeed for a species that has tended historically to resolve such tensions by going to war!

Whatever George W. Bush might want us to believe, we no longer live in a binary world of either-or; for or against; black or white; we now live in a world of limitless options where private solutions can "cohabit" with public solutions & where economic & social value no longer need to be opposed to each other, if we allow social entrepreneurs to flourish in a world of new paradigms & new forms of value. Companies & entire industries are being blown apart/merged at breakneck speed as the boundaries of competition & cooperation are redefined. Intellectual property will also evolve in the new age of abundance of applications, where products & services work best when they are combined in exciting new ways. We are leaving the physical, industrial, black & white, solid, restricted, scarce world behind and moving into a new more fluid, adaptable, modifiable, virtual world, which opens up limitless opportunities if we are able to open up our own minds & the minds of future generations. We are once more like the Greeks in Athens, grappling with new levels of abstraction, creating new ideas, concepts & words, re-defining what it means to be human in a world of competing intelligences.

Long before the early commercial mobile networks of the 1970/80s - & then GSM & the early digital mobile networks of the 1990s -, there were bespoke, relatively expensive, professional mobile radio systems designed specifically for individual users using individual frequencies to deliver specific value. Law enforcement agencies, private utilities, transport companies & heavy industry were the main users & developers of such systems which fulfilled very specific user requirements based on control, safety & security & operational efficiency.

While 2G & 3G systems such as GSM & UMTS were developed for the global mass-market requiring a smaller number of harmonised frequency bands to cater for millions & eventually billions of subscribers eager to talk to each other, text each other & eventually access the Internet & pay instantly for goods & services, play games, watch movies & check their Facebook & LinkedIn status; a small number of global standards were also developed for professional users, such as TETRA, P25 and DMR. A number of natural disasters & terrorist attacks across the world drove a decade of sales & innovation in digital PMR/LMR solutions that came to an abrupt end with the financial crisis of 2008.

Of course, at its most fundamental level, time is not really linear at all - it is cyclical. The economists, scientists, analysts & forecasters try to convince us that time moves in a steady straight line from some distant past towards some distant future. At a very basic level, this may be true, but the deeper time is full of peaks & troughs; the new becoming old, becoming new again. As one king dies, another one is born. As one system agonises and dies, another one emerges from the shadows ready to take its place. Forecasts based on raw numerical values of numbers of users, technology trends & industry profits are of limited value to true visionaries & strategists when the rules of the game are being re-written by a new generation with new ideas.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the global critical communications community decided to approach the existing standards bodies such as 3GPP to ask for help developing the next generation of solutions. The commercial suppliers & operators accepted, helped develop & have incorporated a large number of critical communications user requirements into Releases 12 + 13, and it is now to be expected that this trend will continue as we move towards the definition of 5G, where a plethora of critical applications will become embedded into everyday life.

It is clear that the wider community of global players in the emerging 5G/mobile space have understood that if they can satisfy the demands of public safety, transport & critical sectors of the economy, they will be able to deliver value-added services to the whole extended community of man, machine & algorithms.

With critical communications once again at the core of the new global society, the possibilities for growth & development are limitless. If we succeed in developing the full range of 5G technologies over the coming decade or so, the following 2-3 decades could be the most productive & innovative ever, leading to new ways of thinking, working & living - new forms of social & economic system - new definitions of what it means to be human.

Of course, if we fail, the consequences could be tragic & perhaps apocalyptic. Due to the fragility & complexity of Life on Earth, we are always on a high-wire between one system and the next, trying to dodge the next global disease, conflict or step-change in our environment.

So, I may not have exactly answered what Quixoticity is, but hopefully I have provided you with plenty of "food for thought". As with most phenomena belonging to the digital age - AI, VR/AR, SDN/NFV, blockchains & 5G itself are just a few that come to mind - Quixoticity is a complex, adaptive, emergent phenomenon surviving by looking at the world in a different way to other companies or organisations & developing new tools to help us understand where we are going, rather than where we have already been. I like to think of Quixoticity as akin to one of those "good bacteria" that line the stomach wall & keep the overall organism healthy. We need many more "Quixoticities" working together with Governments, global players, SMEs and end-users to make sure that 5G becomes a force for good in the world.

So as this 5G juggernaut approaches (fully autonomous, of course, making it both safer & more dangerous simultaneously), we can either take the controls or step out of the way & watch it hit the proverbial brick-wall. We must keep thinking & keep challenging our traditional ways of framing & solving problems. Of course, if too much critical thinking starts to hurt your brain or you prefer to save your mind for other gentler pursuits, then please don't forget that there is now a company called Quixoticity ready & willing to take over the burden of thinking about what comes next in this magical, mysterious, impenetrable circle of life. 

So, perhaps we can finally define Quixoticity as critical thinking for the future of critical communications. Or maybe tomorrow, I'll come up with something better! Enjoy the ride!