On 22/11/2010 07:25, Grahame Grieve wrote: > > btw, I do usually travel on planes designed by an opt-in merit > based democracy. I certainly wouldn't chose to fly on one > designed in a totalitarian/autocratic system - it's too hard for > a single person to get everything right. It's not at all clear that > the plane parable is even accurate, let alone relevant.
I hope not ;-) It might be said that planes are designed and engineered by meritocracies (rule by the competent), but not democracies (rule by everyone). When I said 'engineering' was like totalitarianism, I did not mean it in the literal sense of a single ruler, but in the sense that the social structure relates to defined job descriptions, choice of competent people to fill them, and the use of reliable methodologies. Voting in the democratic sense features very little. I am sitting in a symposium right now listening to Michael Jackson, Barry Boehm, David Parnas, Bertrand Meyer, Erich Gamma, and other notables from the software engineering universe. It is quite clear that the (non-democractic) methods of proper software and systems engineering have barely featured in the creation of many e-health standards we live with today. - thomas * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.openehr.org/mailman/private/openehr-technical_lists.openehr.org/attachments/20101122/e7d1011d/attachment.html>
