Page 84 - Make Work Great

It Starts with You

FIGURE 3.1 Your place in the crystalline node/network model

YOU

Despite this visual representation, it can be difficult to think about

this crystalline network as the single source of your entire workplace
experience, including your productivity, your enjoyment, your prob-
lems, and your solutions.
Consider this. In the mid-1980s, John Gage of Sun Microsystems
made a compelling statement about the future of computing that is still
the visionary basis for the company today. He said, “The network is the
computer.” At the time, this was an alien concept to the majority of
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computer users, who could each see their computer and count on their

fingers the small number of outside services to which it could connect.
The computer was the computer, and the network wasn’t much. Today,
Gage’s visionary statement is making a lot more sense. With the advent of
on-demand Internet-based services of all kinds for individuals and busi-
nesses of all sizes, the computer on your desk is more than the machine
doing the work; it’s the access portal to the system that does it.
The change in the role of the worker is no different. In the early
information age workplace, we are no longer a collection of semi-
isolated individuals completing neat bundles of work in a vacuum and
passing along our output to the next step. We are not links in a single

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