“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

In this final episode of season one of rethink: IT, I discuss why Arthur C. Clarke’s famous phrase should be a touchstone for technology performance in the enterprise.

John Eisenman analyzes blockchain architectures and applications at Orange Silicon Valley. In Part 2 of this two-part podcast, he covers Consensus Algorithms, Sybil’s multiple personalities, and why Bitcoin burns almost as much energy as the entire country of Austria. Most importantly, John proposes that CIOs should view blockchains not just as technology but rather as a decentralization model to transform business processes.

Can blockchains stop contaminated arugula from reaching your kitchen table? In theory. Are blockchains truly ready for the enterprise today. Not quite. Will blockchains drive foundational change in the enterprise over the next decade? Absolutely.

John Eisenman analyzes blockchain architectures and applications at Orange Silicon Valley (https://www.orangesv.com/).

In Part 1 of this two-part podcast, he addresses blockchain myths, especially around security. He addresses confusions between cryptography and encryption, the role of data ownership, and the origins of the “Don’t Trust, Verify” cypherpunk ethos that became the basis of blockchains.

Tom and his Sentient team built the largest distributed AI system in the world, with one million PCs across thousands of Internet cafes in China. In this episode, he describes that journey and how those learnings can help CIOs looking to maximize their compute power and minimize their cost as they move workloads to the cloud.

Robin is responsible for building businesses around new technologies, including artificial intelligence. In this episode, he shares learnings from an innovative program in Finland for educating the population about AI and from the brand-new national AI center in Sweden for driving better AI outcomes. We discuss why AI must become affordable, practical, and ethical, and we end with tips on how to get your internal IT and business teams up to speed on AI to trigger their own innovation.

Guest: Dr. Jesse Sowell, Faculty Fellow at the Texas A&M Cybersecurity Center and the Mays Innovation Research Center

Dr. Sowell proposes a fundamental shift in enterprise security mindset, taking the rule-breaker out of the shadows to promote innovation and accountability, and leveraging shadow IT as primary research into workflow innovation. Dr. Sowell holds a PhD in technology, management, and policy from MIT and is Assistant Professor of International Affairs, Bush School of Government and Public Service, at Texas A&M University.

Dr. Sowell discusses the cybersecurity implications of accelerating technology change and how CIOs must rethink the feedback loop between front-line workers and security professionals. Dr. Sowell holds a PhD in technology, management, and policy from MIT and is Assistant Professor of International Affairs, Bush School of Government and Public Service, at Texas A&M University.

Mr. Robot’s plots are fiction but based on reality. Designing security exploits is like filming the show, with most of the work “off-camera” and behind-the-scenes. In this episode, James describes why the transactional nature of IT makes organizations vulnerable and why CIOs and CISOs need to fundamentally rethink how they structure and prioritize the work of their teams. We also discuss how to make attackers noisy, the role of laziness in hacking, and why James didn’t get a consulting gig for the recent Queen biopic starring Rami Malek.

You probably ask your phone for weather, traffic, or music all the time. It’s cool, but the potential of natural language in the enterprise goes well beyond hands-free information discovery. Twenty years ago, Babak Hodjat invented the technology behind Siri, and now he describes the context embedded in language and why the future of robotics depends on you being able to talk with a machine.

The new digital divide is not about access to IT. It’s about how the technology is used.

We are cramming more and more data into our clouds, and we’re using more and more AI to analyze it.

We’ve created a fantastic engine.

But without a steering wheel, we’ll go nowhere. We need an actionable experience on the front end to drive the data toward the desired direction.

Sean Ginevan shows us how.

He’s the Head of Global Strategy & Market Enablement at Android Enterprise. His work with Android and their enterprise partners gives him real insight into how businesses are using data, and how they’re sometimes missing it.

Sean joined us on our rethink: IT podcast to show us how to connect data with experience and enable true digital transformation.