Changing lives may not always a good thing because your vision may not be a what someone else wants for themselves, and sometimes changes are for the worse. Most parents believe that if they did their jobs well enough all of their children would be creative, intelligent, kind, generous, happy, brave, spontaneous, and good—each, of course, in his or her own special way. In social situations the individuals apportions one’s own involvement among main and side involvements, dominating and subordinate ones, and in each situation a particular apportionment will be defined as proper. In addition, some general deviations from involvement propriety are described as: overdemanding subordinate involvement; lack of occasioned main involvement; insufficient main involvement; and overinvolvement. However, the specific objects or directions of involvement are also to be considered—ones that seem to be a central concern of involvement regulations and infractions. The individual’s own body, or an object directly associated with one’s body, provides a very common object for one’s own involvement. And while such activity may have a technical instrumental rationale, as when an individual attempts to remove a splinter with a needle, usually a self-decorative or self-indulgent element is seen to be at work. In any case, as instances of auto-involvements, of self-directed, self-absorbing physical acts, we have: eating, dressing, picking one’s teeth, cleaning one’s fingernails, dozing, and sleeping. These activities will be referred to as “auto-involvements”; the easier term “self-involvements” would seem also to include absorption in less distinctively somatic matters, such as discussion and fantasies concerning the self. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24

There are marked regional differences regarding permissible auto-involvements while present before others. On business streets in American cities it is permissible for adults to chew gum and even pop small candies into their mouths. However, the eating practices found on beach boardwalks would be considered a little out of place—to self-involving not to be a slight affront to others in the situation. By and large, these “own body” concerns are perceived as subordinate side involvements. An interesting group of examples will now be presented: While doing homework: You can keep your face creamed, your hair in pin curls; you can practice good standing and walking posture; when you are sitting at the kitchen counter peeling potatoes you can do your ankle exercises and foot strengtheners, and also practice good sitting posture…While telephoning (at home, of course): You can do neck exercises; brush your hair; do ankle exercises, eye exercises, foot strengtheners, and chin-and-neck exercises; practice good standing or sitting posture; even massage your gums (while listening to the other person)…While reading or watching TV: You can brush your hair; massage your gums; do your ankle and hand exercises and foot strengtheners; do some chest and back exercises; massage your scalp; use the abrasive treatment for removing hair. When others are present, however, these auto-involvements are often seen as improperly distracting from dominating involvements: in any case, situational restrictions are commonly placed upon them. Etiquette books, of course, give warnings against these involvements while in the presence of others: Men should never look in the mirror nor comb their hair in public. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24

At most, a man may straighten his necktie and smooth his hair with his hand. It is probably unnecessary to add that it is most unattractive to scratch one’s head, to rub one’s face or touch one’s teeth, or to clean one’s fingernails in public. All these things should be done privately. Even mannerisms such s passing one’s finger over the cheek or behind the ear can be most unattractive, particularly if it is done in an abstracted, searching way. One type of auto-involvement occurs when the individual checks up on or corrects the state of one’s personal appearance. One sign that some situations are becoming more laxly defined in our society is that apparently it has become less and less improper for a woman to attend a special room to do so, as in putting lipstick or adjusting her hat while at a restaurant table. In any case, this reparative work is felt to be so strategically necessary that provision is often made for appropriate involvement shelters in which these activities can safely occur. In many business offices, for example, one can find half-shielded washstands where a secretary can look into a mirror to apply make-up, comb her hair, examine the effect her face is creating, and the like, being able here to indulge in a degree of auto-involvement not elsewhere permitted. Mirrors are important objects to study when considering the problem of managing auto-involvements. In American society, apparently, the temptation to make use of nearby mirrors is very difficult to resist; here a level of self-control that ordinarily prevents unacceptable auto-involvement sometimes fails. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24

Often adults can be caught out in fugitive involvements of this kind, reminding us that as children they went through a period of explicit training to stop them from looking at themselves in mirrors (or in reflecting windows) while in the presence of others. Attention to personal appearance often entails some pleasurable self-stimulation, providing additional reason for appropriating the terms “preening gesture” and “grooming behaviour” from animal sociology for use in describing human social behaviour. An extreme instance of this kind of self-absorbing involvement can be seen in the license accorded on beaches to apply suntan oil to one’s skin, slowly and assiduously. However, of course, even in quite formally defined occasions the individual may exercise some liberty to caress fleetingly an exposed part of one’s own body. Perhaps the most extreme form of auto-involvement in our middle-class society is pleasuring one’s self. We appreciate that  self-pleasure may be defined as tolerable on some mental works, but we tend to overlook the implications of this for normal less affluent people, one-gender settings. Thus, at Central Hospital there were chronic male wards on which two kinds of self-pleasure occurred: that done by persons felt to be psychotically lax or undisciplined; and “normal” masturbation, that done, typically in a half-concealed fashion, by those patients recognized by their fellows and the attendants as being on the ward not so much because of mental disorder as because they had gotten into some kind of “trouble.” Here is an instance where the act is somewhat the same but where the psychodynamic implications are quite different. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24

The “normal” form of self-pleasure, and the lax social definitions associated with it, are reported, of course, in other all-male, predominantly less-affluent settings, such as prisons. Female settings, too, provide instances of this kind of auto-involvement, and similarly within what would appear to be in the framework of normal psychology: During a visit which I once paid to a manufactory of military clothing, I witnessed the follow scene. In the midst of the uniform sound produced by some thirty sewing-machines, I suddenly heard one of the machines working with much more velocity than the others. I looked at the person who was working it, a brunette of 18 or 20. While she was automatically occupied with the trousers she was making on the machine, her face became animated, her mouth opened slightly, her nostrils dilated, her feet moved the pedals with constantly increasing rapidity. Soon I saw a convulsive look in her eyes, her eyelids were lowered, her face turned pale and was thrown backward; followed by a long sigh, was lost in the noise of the workroom. The young lady remained motionless a few seconds, drew out her handkerchief to wipe away the pearls of sweat from her forehead, and, after casting a timid and ashamed glance at her companions, resumed her work. The forewoman, who acted as my guide, having observed the direction of my gaze, took me up to the young lady, who blushed, lowered her face, and murmured some incoherent words before the forewoman had opened her mouth, to advise her to sit fully on the chair, and not on its edge. As I was leaving, I heard another machine at another part of the room in accelerated moment. The forewoman smiled at me, and remarked that this was so frequent that it attracted no notice. It was specially observed, she told me, in the case of young work-girls, apprentices, and those who sat on the edge of their seats, thus much facilitating friction of the private area. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24

There is one further class of auto-involvements that should be examined, what might be called “creature releases.” These consist of fleeting acts that slip through the individual’s self-control and momentarily assert one’s “animal nature.” They appear to provide a brief release from the tension experienced by the individual in keeping oneself steadily and entirely draped in social clothing—momentary capitulations to the itches that plague a performer who does not want to sneeze in one’s role. Loss of control of these creature releases is an important means by which individuals demonstrate that they are sustaining little situational presence. A continuum or hierarchy of these creature releases seems to be recognized, varying according to the degree to which they discredit one’s readiness for what the situation is likely to bring. At one extreme are the minor releases such as scratching, momentary coughing, rubbing one’s eyes, sighing, yawning, and so forth; at the other extreme are such acts of flatulence, incontinence, and the like; in the middle ranges of the continuum are dozing off, belching, spitting, nose picking, or loosening one’s belt. Extending from one end of the continuum to the other are various depths of sudden so-called emotional expressions, such as an outright laugh, a shout or cry, an unsuppressed curse; these acts suggest a momentary loss of control over affect theretofore held in acceptable check. It may be added that since these creature releases tend by nature to be brief, they are well suited to furtive or shielded expression, as when a man hides a yawn behind his hand, or scratches his private parts from within his pants pocket, or circumspectly wipes his itchy nose on a shielding handkerchief. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24

In most cases in ordinary language, the word consciousness is used as an equivalent to the word intelligence (in the sense of mind activity), or as an alternative for it. In reality, consciousness is a particular kind of “awareness” in man, awareness of himself, awareness of who he is, what he feels or thinks, or where he is at the moment. According to the system we are studying, man has the possibility of four states of consciousness. They are: sleep, waking state, self-consciousness and objective consciousness. However, although, he has the possibility of these four states of consciousness man actually lives only in two states: one part of his life passes in sleep, and the other part in what is called “waking state,” though in reality it differs very little from sleep. As regards our ordinary memory, or moments of memory, we actually remember only moments of consciousness although we do not see that this is so. What memory means in a technical sense, shall be explained later. Now, turn your attention to your own observations of your memory. You will notice that you remember things differently: some things you remember quite vividly, some very vaguely, and some you do not remember at all. You only know that they happened. This mean, for instance, that if you know that some time ago you went to a definite place to speak to someone, you may remember two or three things connected with your conversation with this person; but you may not remember at all how you went there or how you returned. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24

Now if you are asked if you remember how you went there and how you returned, you will say that you remember distinctly, when, in reality, you only know it and know where you went; but you do not remember it, with the exception possibly of two or three flashes. You will be astonished when you realize how little you actually remember. And it happens in this way, because you remember only the moments when you were conscious. You will understand better what I mean if you try to turn your mind back as far as you can to early childhood, or in any case to something that happened long ago. You will then realize how little you actually remember and how much there is concerning which you simply know or heard that it happened. So in reference to the third states of consciousness we can say that man has occasional moments of self-consciousness, but he has no command over them. They come and go by themselves, being controlled by external circumstances and occasional associations or emotions. The question arises: Is it possible to acquire command over these fleeting moments of consciousness, to evoke them more often and to keep them longer, or even make them permanent? I was waiting in line to register a letter in the post office at Thirty-third Street and Eighth Avenue in New York. I noticed that the clerk appeared to be bored with the job—weighing envelopes, handing out stamps, making change, issuing receipts—the same monotonous grind year after year. So I said to myself: “I am going to try to make that clerk like me. Obviously, to make him like me, I must say something nice, not about myself, but about him. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24

I asked myself, “What is there about him that I can honestly admire?” That is sometimes a hard question to answer, especially with strangers; but, in this case, it happened to be easy. I instantly saw something I admired no end. So while he was weighing my envelop, I remarked with enthusiasm: “I certainly wish I had your head of hair.” He looked up, half-startled, his face beaming with smiles. “Well, it is not as good as it used to be,” he said modestly. I assured him that although it might have lost some of its pristine glory, nevertheless it was still magnificent. He was immensely pleased. We carried on a pleasant little conversation and the last thing he said to me was: “Many people have admired my hair.” I will bet that person went out to lunch that day walking on air. I will bet he went home that night and told his wife about it. I will be he looked in the mirror and said: “It is a beautiful head of hair.” I told this story once in public and a man asked me afterwards: “What did you want to get out of him?” What was I trying to get out of him!! What was I trying to get out of him!!! If we are so contemptibly selfish that we cannot radiate a little happiness and pass on a bit of honest appreciation without trying to get something out of the other person in return—if our souls are no bigger than sour crab apples, we shall meet with the failure we so richly deserve. Oh yes, I did want something out of that chap. I wanted something priceless. And I got it. I got the feeling that I had done something for him without his being able to do anything whatever in return for me. That is a feeling that flows and sings in your memory long after incident is past. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24

There is one all-important law of human conduct. If we obey that law, we shall almost never get in trouble. In fact, that law, if obeyed, will bring us countless friends and constant happiness. However, the very instant we break the law, we shall get into endless trouble. The law is this: Always make the other person feel important. The desire to be important is the deepest urge in human nature. The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. It I this urge that differentiates us from normal animals. It is this urge that has been responsible for civilization itself. Philosophers have been speculating on the rules of human relationships for thousands of years, and out of all that speculation, there has evolved only one important precept. It is not new. It is as old as history. This is probably the most important rule in the World” “Do unto other as you would have others do unto you.” You want approval of those with whom you come in contact. You want recognition of your true worthy. You want a feeling that you are important in your little World. You do not want to listen to inexpensive, insincere flattery, but you do crave sincere appreciation. You want your friends and associates to be hearty in their approbation and lavish in their praise. All of us want that. So let us obey the Golden Rule, and give unto others what we would have others give unto us: How? When? Where? The answer is: All the time, everywhere. You do not have to wait until you are ambassador to France or chairman of the Clambake Committee of your lodge before you use this philosophy of appreciation. You can work magic with it almost every day. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24

If, for example, the waitress brings us mashed potatoes when we have ordered French fired, let us say: “I am sorry to trouble you, but I prefer French fried.” She will probably reply, “No trouble at all” and will be glad to change the potatoes, because we have shown respect for her. “Would you be so kind as to____?” “Won’t you please?” “Would you mind?” “Thank you”—little courtesies like these oil the cogs of the monotonous grind of everyday life—and, incidentally, they are the hallmark of good breeding. The unvarnished truth is that almost all the people you met feel themselves superior to you in some way, and a sure way to their hearts is to let them realize in some subtle way that you recognize their importance, and recognize it sincerely. And face it, in many cases, we want someone who feels superior to us handling things like vehicle maintenance. Many of us are busy and we do not want to have to play guess work, and we love it when someone is confident in their job, and sure they will be able to do this job without us having to worry about anything other than how much we owe them. Every time I meet a person who is superior to me, I learn something. And the pathetic part of it is that frequently those who have the least justification for a feeling of achievement bolster up their egos by a show of tumult and conceit which is truly nauseating. Many people just crave a little human warmth, a little genuine appreciation, and when they get it, their gratitude cannot adequately express itself with anything less than the gift of their appreciation, which sometimes can be a material asset. Even people who are worth hundreds of millions of dollars and have tremendous accomplishments crave recognitions. Therefore, remember to talk to people about themselves and bring up qualities you admire in them and be sincere. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24

It is clear that when making a promise, you should not promise more than you have to. If the promise is successful in influencing the other party’s behaviour, you expect to carry out your word. This should be done as inexpensively as possible, and that means promising the minimum amount necessary. It is less apparent that moderation applies equally well to threats. You should not threaten someone any more than necessary. The reason is more subtle. Why does the United States of America not threaten a military attack against the Japanese if they do not agree to important more American rice, beef, and oranges? (In fact, just such a threat was used 1853. The black warships of Admiral Matthew C. Perry persuaded the shogunate to open the Japanese markets to American commerce. Today, the Japanese describe excessive U.S.A. pressure to open up Japanese markets as “the second coming of the black ships.” The idea may have some appeal to some American farmers and politicians. However, there are several good reasons against it. First of all, no one would believe the threat, and thus it would not work. Even if the threat did work, the Japanese might wisely want to reconsider whether the Americans are really their allies. If the Japanese did not import more organs and the United States of America actually carried out its threat, the rest of the World and especially the Japanese would sanction the U.S.A. for selecting an inappropriate method of punishment. However, if the United States of America did not carry out its threat, that hurts it reputation in the future. Either way the United States of America loses. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24

The threat dilutes the clarity of the original problem by introducing the otherwise extraneous issues of military force. The essence of all these points is that the threat is excessively large—too big to be credible, too big to carry out, and too serious to stake a reputation over. The first concern of a player making a threat would be just the opposite—a threat must be large enough to achieve the desired deterrence or compellence. The next thing that matters is credibility—the other side’s belief that if it defies the threat, it will suffer the stated consequences. Under ideal circumstances, nothing else should matter. If the threatened player knows and fears the consequences of defiance, one will comply. The threatened action will never have to be carried out. Then why does it matter how terrible it would have been if it were carried out? The point is that circumstances are never ideal in this sense. If we examine the reasons for our not threatening to use military power in this case, we see more clearly how reality differs from the ideal. First, the very act of making a threat may be costly. Nations, businesses, and even people are engaged in many games, and what they did in one game have an impact on all the other games. In our dealings with Japan in the future, and with other countries now and in the future, our use of an excessive threat will be remembered. They will be reluctant to deal with us at all, and we will forgo the benefits of many other trades and alliances. Second, an excessive threat may be counterproductive even in the game in which it is used. The Japanese will throw up their hands in horror, appeal to World opinion and the decency of the American people, and more generally delay the negotiation to the point where our timetable for compelling them to open their markets is slowed rather than speeded. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24

Third, the theory that a successful threat need never be carried out is fine so long as we are absolutely sure no unforeseen errors will occur. Suppose we have misjudged the Japanese farmers’ power, and they are willing to let their nations go to war rather than see their protected market disappear. Or supposed that the Japanese agree to our terms, but some U.S. military commander down the line who remembers his experience as a P.O.W. and is itching for revenge takes opportunity to launch an attack all the same. The possibility of such errors should give us pause before we commit ourselves to a very large threat. Finally, in view of this, a threat starts to lose credibility just for being too large. If the Japanese do not believe we are truly committed to carrying out the threat, it will not deter them either. One should stive for the smallest and the most appropriate threat that will do the job—make the punishment fit the crime. When the United States of America wants to stimulate the Japanese to important more oranges, it uses a more reciprocal threat, one that more closely fits the crime. The United States of America might retaliate in kind by limiting the quotas on imports of Japanese cars or electronic goods. Sometimes fitting threats are readily available. At other times, there are only excessive threats, which must somehow be scaled down before they can be used. In social systems, most transmission of traditional knowledge uses the approach of learning how things are done—or ought to be done—without understanding fully the reasons why. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24

Work practices, trading partners, religious ceremonies, musical forms, and social obligations, are all passed along in this way—to take but a few examples. For the most part, knowledge transmitted in this way serves people well, even if it may carry along sone counterproductive beliefs. The mechanism of copying the interaction patterns of other agents passes along vital social knowledge and allows an agent to adapt, without requiring an explicit understanding of very complex social systems. As with biological evolution, problems can arise when interaction patterns are transferred to new contexts, since the selectivity of a more precise theory is not available to sort out which features should be modified and which retained. Seasonal festivals that were highly functional can end up being celebrated at inappropriate dates because a religious calendar is not synchronized to the local climate, as happens with the planting holidays of the Northern Hemisphere religions that are now practiced south of the equator. Structures of family obligation that evolved in a long era of agricultural work and low spatial mobility can work badly when transferred to the highly urban life of recent decades. Copying another agent has a further important effect, in addition to picking up the other’s pattern of interactions. At the population level, copying others’ interaction patterns also introduces strong correlation among the contact patterns of the agents. If most agents are building their interaction patterns by such mechanisms, the resulting social system will have the cliquish property that most of those interacting with a given agent will also interact with each other. When social structures arise among agents situated in physical space with high costs of travel, this is the expected result. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24

Many advantages result from the formation of a social network with these correlated properties. Agents in such a population will have a large overlap with the contact patterns, and therefore with the strategies and knowledge, of most of the agents with which they interact. This overlap implies shared assumptions and common understandings, and these in turn simplify transactions of all kinds. Explanations can be brief and suffer few misunderstandings. Consequences of actions can be more correctly anticipated. The ease of communication in overlapping networks can help build social capital. Agents’ reputations for trustworthiness will be based on many previous interactions with many other (nearby) agents. If an agent behaves badly, it incurs heavy costs in loss of reputation since its contact can be easily informed. This is another way in which clustered networks build social capital. There are also disadvantages to the social structure that accumulate through pervasive agent-following. It can result in the loss of informational diversity. In populations where any agents’ friends, relatives, and co-workers also know each other, there can be loss of variety in the information easily available to a member of the group. Mechanisms of establishing interactions such as we have discussed here, that work by taking other agents’ patterns as templates, will tend to build social networks that are strongly clustered. That can have the side effect of reducing an agent’s ability to explore a wide space of options. The result, if only these mechanisms are active, may be insufficient exploration and danger of premature convergence. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24

Developments in nanotechnology will result in improved medical sensors. As protein chemist Bill DeGrado notes, “Probably the first use you may see would be in diagnostics: being able to take a tiny amount of blood from somebody, just as pinprick, and diagnose for a hundred different things. Biological systems are already able to do that, and I think we should be able to design molecules or assemblies of molecules that mimic the biological system.” In the longer term, though, the story of nanotechnology in medicine will be the story of extending surgical control to the molecular level. The easiest applications will be assistants to the immune system, which selectively attacks invaders outside tissues. More difficult applications will require that medical nanomachines mimic white blood cells by entering tissues to interact with their cells. Further applications will involve the complexities of molecular-level surgery on individual cells. As we look at how to solve various problems, you will notice that some that look difficult today will become easy, while others that might seem easier turn out to be more difficult. The seeming difficulty of treating disorders is always changing: One polio was frequent and incurable, today it is easily prevented. Syphilis once caused steady physical decline leading to insanity and death; now it is cured with a shot. Athlete’s foot has never been seen as a great scourge, yet it remains hard to cure. Likewise with the common cold. This pattern will continue: Deadly diseases may be easily dealt with, while minor ills remain incurable, or vice versa. As we will see, a mature nanotechnology-based medicine will be able to deal with almost any physical problem, but the order of difficulty may be surprising. Nature cares nothing for our sense of appropriateness. Horribleness and difficulty just are not the same thing. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24

Not all cultures place a premium on life itself, let alone on longevity. Millions dance with death every day in their religion or local belief system. Reincarnations waits. Virgins await. Heaven awaits. Nevertheless, for those who highly value life in this World, the last century, as we have seen, has been extraordinary. Despite the fact that population has more than doubled, life expectancy at birth in the World—including the “poor World”—shot up 42 percent between 1950-55 and 2017-2023. Nearly 600 people live in extreme poverty. Even in poor countries, the average baby can now expect to live sixty-four years. This is still a far shorter life span than a rich-World baby can expect. However, the direction and speed of change are hardly a cause for pessimism. The remaining difference is a good reason for commitment to eliminate the difference. One reason today’s baby—rich or poor—has a better chance to survive and live longer is safer drinking water. In just the twelve years between 2010 and 2022, more than a billion people have gained access to clean water. That, frightfully, leaves out 17 percent of the human race. However, it also makes one consider about wasting a glass of water. Remember the challenges some people did to gain awareness for a disability by pouring cold buckets of water over themselves? Although it was for a good cause, it is sad when people are dying because they do not have clean water to drink. Nonetheless, within-country inequality increased in as many countries as it declined, but after decades of convergence, global inequality increased. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24

The poorest have also suffered disproportionate losses in health and education with devastating consequences. 2020 saw the biggest setback to global poverty in decades, and the recovery has been highly uneven. During the pandemic, large and unequal job and income losses were reported, contributing to concerns about rising inequality within in developed nations, like America, as well as underdeveloped nations. However, poor-World gains also reflect, at least in part, the tremendous expansion of humanity’s knowledge base during the last half-century, as the revolutionary wealth system spread from the United States of America outward—diffusing new ideas about agriculture, nutrition, prenatal care and disease detection and prevention, as well as technology. In the rich World, knowledge-intensive economies have brought with them a strange phenomenon: Millions of middle-class mind workers who jog for miles every day or work out in gyms or at home, sweating and griding and panting as they go, singing praises to physical exertion but forgetting one important fact—they live  under economic conditions that grant them a choice of exertions, unlike most of the World’s muscle workers, whether peasants or factory laborers, who have little choice and must sweat for survival. Anyone who has slaved for years in the fields at the mercy of weather and a landowner, or who has been an appendage to an assembly line, knows how inhuman these forms of work can be. The shift toward knowledge work and advanced services, even at its worst, is an early liberating step toward a better future. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24

Returning from broad economic theory to the practicalities of everyday life makes it clear that Wendy’s managers, in speeding up their business, are reacting to customers who demand instant responses. They want fast service, and they want products that save time in their lives. For in the emerging culture, time itself becomes a valuable product. Beyond this, in today’s increasingly competitive World economy, the ability to bring products to market fast is essential. The blistering speed with which laptops of DVD players or other consumer electronic items sweep the market astonishes markets and customers alike. In small numbers, facsimile machines existed for decades. As long ago as 1961, Xerox research laboratories demonstrated what was called an LDX machine—for long-distance xerography—which did much of what today’s faxes do. Several things blocked its commercialization. Thus, postal systems still functioned with reasonable efficiency, while telephone systems were still comparatively backward and long-distance services expensive. Suddenly, in the late 1980s, several things came together. Fax machines could be produced at low cost. Telecommunications technologies vastly improved. AT&T was broken up, helping to cut the relative cost of long-distance service in the United States of America. Meanwhile, postal services decayed (slowing transaction times at a moment when the economy was accelerating). In addition, the acceleration effect raised the economic value of each second potentially saved by a fax machine. Together these converging factors opened a market than then expanded with explosive speed. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24

In the spring of 1988, as though overnight, Americans received a hailstorm of phone calls from friends and business associates pleading with them to install a fax. Within a few months, millions of fax machines were buzzing and bleeding all over America. Under today’s competitive conditions, the rate of product innovation is so swift that almost before one product is launched the next generation of better ones appears. Having recently bought a Surface Laptop Studio for Business—Intel Core i7, 32 GB RAM, 2TB SSD, NVIDIA RTX, I worry my machine will be obsolete soon. In terminology reminiscent of space flight or nuclear war, marketers now speak of the “lunch window”—the all-too-brief interval after which a new product is likely to fail because of competition from more advanced models. These accelerative pressures lead to new production methods. Thus one way to move faster is to do simultaneously what you used to do sequentially. Hence the recent appearance of the term simultaneous engineering (SE). In the past a new product was designed first, manufacturing methods worked out later. You are defining and designing the manufacturing process concurrently with designing the end of the product. SE requires unprecedented precision and coordination. The concept of simultaneous engineering has been around for nearly twenty-five years. Only recently, however, has progress in computing and data base capability begun to make it feasible. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24

Another accelerative step is to eliminate or redesign parts—to make products with fewer components and to modularize them. This requires more exquisite tolerances and higher levels of information and knowledge. IBM redesigned one component of its 4720 printer and not only cut costs from $5.59 per unit to $1.81 but also reduced manufacture time from three minutes to seconds. At Wendy’s, seconds count. Still another accelerative step is the introduction of “just-in-time” delivery of components, pioneered by the Japanese. Instead of suppliers’ making long runs of part and delivering them in big batches at infrequent intervals, the system requires the frequent delivery of small numbers of each part, precisely when they are required for assembly. The effect of this innovation is to speed production and slash the capital tied up in inventory. Britain’s Rolls-Royce, for example, reports that its just-in-time system has cut lead times and inventory by 75 percent. Speed of response to customer demand has become a critical factor for differentiating one company’s production or service from that of another. Travel agents, banks, financial services, fast-food franchisees, all view with one another to provide instant information and gratification. In the past, employees sought to accelerate production through the speedup of the workers. One of the great humanizing contributions of the old trade union movement was its battle to limit the speedup. In thousands of backward factories and offices, this battle has not yet been won. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24

Under the new system of wealth creation, however, hands-on labour costs plummet as a percentage of overall cost, and speed is gained not by sweating the work force but through intelligent reorganization and sophisticated electronic information exchange. Knowledge substitutes for sweat as the entire system picks up speed. In June 1986, Motorola, Inc., formed a twenty-four-member team-code-named Team Bandit—and gave it a seemingly impossible assignment. Its goal was to design a new radio-pager and a World-class computer-integrated manufacturing facility for producing it. The new plant would have to meet super-high quality requirements, defined as a 99.9997 percent probability that each unit of output would be perfect. The time limit: eighteen months. Today at Boynton Beach, Florida, the plant turns out customized radio pagers in production runs as small as one of a kind. Twenty-seven robots do the physical work. Of forty employees, only one actually touches the product. The Team Bandit operation succeeded—with seventeen days to spare. Even the automotive industry, a slow-paced dinosaur by comparison with the camera industry or electronics, is struggling to shorten time frames. The success of Japan’s car industry is partly a reflection of the fact that Japanese manufacturers can design and introduce an entirely new model in half the time it takes European and American car makers. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24

However, at BMW, simultaneous engineering, advanced information systems, self-organizing teams, and the sharing of information with suppliers at an early stage result in an ever more efficient development cycle…frequent new product introductions, and a constant flow of major and minor innovations on existing models. Similarly, they cite the case of a bank that cut the time needed to make a decision on a loan from several days to thirty minutes, by presenting the necessary information to a group of loan specialists simultaneously, rather than routing it in sequence from one specialist to the next. So powerful is the accelerative effect that companies must now have several overriding goals: speed, dependability, style, safety and excellent fuel economy. What is emerging is a radical new economic system running at far faster speeds than any in history. Digitization, increasing automation, and new business models have revolutionized the automotive industry. These forces are giving rise to four disruptive technology-driven trends in the automotive sector: diverse mobility, autonomous driving, electrification, and connectivity. However, there is still no integrated perspective on how the industry will look in 10 to 15 years as a result of these changes. Many people are still seeing electric cars as not a substitute for cars powered by fossil fuels, but as an inferior technology because they have to charge for several hours, instead of just filling them with fuel, which can take less than a minute. Overall global car sales will continue to grow, but the annual growth rate is expected to drop from the 3.6 percent over the last five years to around 2 percent by 2023. This drop will be largely driven by marcoeconomic factors and the rise of new mobility services such as car sharing and e-hailing. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24

Cresleigh Homes

Behind the lovely exterior, #PlumasRanch at Meadows Residence 1 holds a ton of surprises! We’re talking 2,054 of excellently designed single story living with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a two car garage plus workshop. 😍

We can’t wait for you to see the rest! Head to our website to get more details, and come by for a look! https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/residence-1/

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