Lost In Conceptualisation

This is a spoon I use everyday.

However, to six year old Zara, she exclaimed,

"WHAT A KOOL SPOON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!".

"Why is it a kool spoon?" I asked.

"Because it is so colourful!" she replied.

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Yes, come to think of it, now that she has mentioned, it is a 'kool spoon'! I did not notice that it is such a colourful spoon, though I look at it everyday. Looking is different from observing. To me, I saw it just as a spoon with a function, that falls into a category conceptualised as 'a spoon'. When we conceptualise things, we stop looking at the true characteristics and finer properties of the 'thing', and the true 'thing' gets lost in conceptualisation.
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Conceptualisation, categorisation or labeling is useful in our everyday thoughts and communications, but we need to be careful not to be blinded by them. We learn about concepts and labels early in our life, right from the time when someone told us that 'it is a bird' that flew by, or 'that is an aeroplane', etc. It would have been better to have been taught that "the feathered creature that just flew over is something we call a 'bird'" or such like. There is a difference. In the latter, it would encourage me (as a child) to continue to be observant with all things around me as they are, not blinded by the labeling, but still made aware of their names or labels.

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Being observant is fascinating, as we notice the simple beauty in all things around us and understand them better. By observing, we discover new things everyday and remember what we see better. Have you wondered why some people have a better memory than others? That is because they live in the NOW. Being observant is living in the NOW. That's how children below six, develop photographic memory.

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Photographers, painters and writers produce works from their detailed observations in life. I have found photography to be very relaxing as it makes me observe the various and varied colours, geometry and expressions of all life forms. Likewise, writing and painting are relaxing because the painter or writer has to observe the intricate details of his object.

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As adults, we have missed a lot in life by ceasing to be observant. Sometimes, when we see a new shop opening along the high streets, we wonder what was there before. Even though the shop was much bigger than us and we pass by it everyday, we couldn't remember how it looked like or what was there. Sometimes, a whole building got demolished and we wonder what was there before!

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We perform better when we are observant and it helps us serve people and organisations better. By observing the needs of our customers, remembering their names and what they purchase before, costs us nothing, but gives much. Being observant and not being distracted by labeling and conceptualisation helps me a great deal in my role as an information security specialist - the sort that outwit hackers.

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My knowledge about information security emerged from the old days of computing, the time when we instruct computers with strings of 1s and 0s. It was extremely tedious going through switches and punch-cards, but it compelled us to go through every necessary logic. Then, we have to observe each blinking light, and laboriously enter every '1' and '0'. It was painful, but it made all of us remember.

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As the knowledge developed, the 1s and 0s got collectively generated by programs written in more English-like computer languages. This in turn, got generated by programs that writes programs. By the 1990's, some application programs became so popular that just knowing how to operate the application becomes a commercial skill.

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As programming evolves, the 'programmer' now becomes more and more distant from the core computer and lack the intimate experience to understand its fundamentals directly. Meanwhile, program development are continuously abstracted, conceptualised, de-skilled, and drifted further from its happier pioneering days.

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[Incidentally, drawing parallels with computing, this is the same for human beings. I find that the more I understand about my innerself, the happier I become.]

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An information security specialist has to be highly concerned over details, as understanding what goes on in a system is critical. 'System' here goes beyond technology, to embrace the whole operating environment, like people, procedures, business needs...etc. In such a breadth and diversity, it would be impossible to know everything by mere logic. However, by careful observation a lot can be discovered intuitively. This is what they call the "Aha!", or "when the coin finally drops", much like how detectives unveil mysteries.

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In one of my investigations, an executive I interviewed claimed that morale was high in the company and therefore information security was not a problem. I accepted that at face-value. However later as I strolled the corridors of the company, I noticed broken door knobs in the offices and a cracked mirror in the elevators, that looked like acts of vandalism.

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This led me to suspect that what the executive said wasn't true. I then decided to mingle around during lunchtime, and it was then I found out that the company was firing many people and morale was all-time low. If so, there will be more disgruntled employees and security would be a problem, since most security breaches in organisations comes from within. So, what started out as seemingly unrelated observations, aggregated into useful information that suggested for more internal controls.

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Just like computing, information security has been over-conceptualised, compartmentalised and have distanced the present day practitioner from fundamentals like identifying risks to strengthen the weakest link and aggregating clues in investigating incidents. In the old days, we started on the ground, work through the fundamental data, aggregate them into useful information and implement the controls.

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These days, this intuitive process is de-skilled into standard checkboxes built into 'standards'. Expectedly, these standards now become yet another buzzword demanded by the industry. So now, they start from "standards" to dictate what should be done, or not to be done, with the naive expectations that everyone will obey, and the fallacy that they are working with the fundamentals.

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While specialised fields grow in scope and conceptualisation, it will be useful to induct professionals from other fields that are not lost in inbred conceptualisations. These introduced professionals from other fields will observe and ask questions akin to those from an infant and discover the hidden colours of the field. Devoid of previous conceptualisation, labeling and blindspots, new designs, improvements and new knowhow can more easily be developed.

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At the beginning of this article, I mentioned that Zara saw the colourful kool spoon while I didn't. Now I do.

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How about you? Have you passed by your life missing the many colours?

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You may also like to read Universal Law Part 2 where subjects like 'the observer' and 'living in the now' are further discussed.

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