[...]... and more lucid path to lullaby, greeting other insomniacs or offering help to the janitorial crew This was his standard condition when Linwood visited in the evenings, whereas, on the weekends, Linwood came to New Dachau in the morning, when the old man was in his daytime state of feistiness a very different kind of visit Even after Linwood and his wife separated, he continued to visit his father -in- law,... truth and challenge facing us Here we find the cause and effect of misunderstandings between corporate tribes, in this case the financial headset of Foreword xv the CFO and the “technology isn’t free” mindset of the CIO The way we move forward is via stories That is what this book is all about Stuart encourages us not to adopt a master narrative from one or the other discipline but rather create an environment... trust Linwood’s special relationship with the large machines They knew he had a particular understanding of the machines’ binary language, and he was eventually promoted to lead the training team when IBM personal computers began to appear on employee desktops As those same personal computers began to appear in their homes, as the card-processing behemoths became smaller and faster, Sounds Incorporated... reach the first row without lifting himself from the mattress “We can’t play There’s a piece missing, look,” the old man said, his pencil-thin finger pointing to an obviously empty space on the board “Can’t play with a missing piece, can we?” Linwood reached into his pants pocket, as he always did on the evening visits, and produced the 1970 Kennedy half-dollar that served as their missing piece The. .. technology is altered The original impression, the purely physical realm of circuit boards, coaxial cables, wireless relay junctions, and dumb terminals becomes transparent 4 Lessons in Grid Computing It has been ten years since I first postulated a relationship between information systems and the “people systems” that build and maintain them, in an editorial and subsequent conference paper for the Association... promoted Linwood, first to manager of the entire computer room when the university-trained scientist became too paranoid and was fired, and later as director of the Computer Services division, when the company had grown large enough to employ a team of technicians to manage the systems that managed their data—data about customers, data about contracts, data about the sounds themselves After all, Linwood... It is responsible for integration, coordination, and rationalization As the instruction set becomes increasingly complex, the need for this layer of software increases Middleware performs a very specific translation so that the tables and fields in the database layer can Interfaces EXHIBIT 2.1 15 Communication Protocols: Example 1 Presentation Layer Middleware Foundation Databases understand the instruction... benefit as Linwood opened the door and headed into the mustard-andbeige hallway “Don’t make any efforts on my account!” Linwood stopped at the front desk to thank the attendant for his latenight attentions The young man was preoccupied with an uncooperative computer Linwood watched as the man turned it off and on, then off and on again, and continued to reboot the machine, even as he spoke to Linwood about... build them Each story in this collection is based on this central theorem and a set of corollaries, derived from the broader discipline of systems theory as it applies to information systems The Prime Theorem is this: We mirror ourselves in the systems that we build Therefore: Corollary 1 The systems will not “talk to each other” if the people are not “talking to each other.” Corollary 2 The relationships... pipes In this case, the water is information, and as our companies increasingly become dependent on a transfer of information among customers, partners, vendors, and consultants, the myriad layers of software, servers, routers, repositories, databases, access points, devices, and the ever-increasing volume of information itself, is now a barrier In many cases, you simply can’t get there from here The . 8:48 PM Page i Additional praise for Lessons in Grid Computing: The System Is a Mirror “I really like the storytelling format for communicating these ideas, and I have a strong feeling this book. dinner table, so many evenings, and announced that I was going back to my office to work on the book, again and again and again, instead of telling stories to him at bedtime, or falling asleep. products, visit our Web site at www.wiley.com. Library of Congress Cataloging -in- Publication Data Robbins, Stuart, 1953- Lessons in grid computing : the system is a mirror / Stuart Robbins. p. cm. Includes