If we look at the impact on technology investment in the aftermath (we think) of the Wall Street Meltdown, it would seem to be good news for Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and Intel. Silicon Valley, although certainly impacted by big customers such as Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch melting away or sold under duress, seems in better shape than many other sectors. With its own personal bubble having collapsed and been absorbed earlier, the chances of the nuclear winter of 2000 repeating itself are only high relative to the possibility of a system-wide collapse.
More striking in the backwash of the presidential race is the lack of tech leadership emerging from the new dynamics of the post-Microsoft realignment. Carly Fiorina’s benching for what may well be a case of telling the truth at the wrong time served more to highlight the failures that led to her firing than to put any tech skin in the game on a national level. Obama’s economic war council on Friday was bereft of tech heavyweights, and McCain is too busy running from Phil Gramm publicly while staying up late with the guy on the phone doing a global search and replace to change “de” to “the” regulation we need.
Perhaps the reason tech leaders are on the sidelines is because the major platform owners are so caught up in succession politics that they can’t apply the new wave of technologies to the problem at hand. Gates, Jobs, Ellison, and Chambers are fighting the last war with Google rather than leveraging the new real time tools. Even as Twitter’s growth as the premier information delivery platform continues unabated, none of the big players has a visible or even secret strategy for pushing the new architecture out at scale.
It’s not a technology problem, either, but a political one. This week saw the rumblings of a Windows 7 unveiling at the PDC a month from now, but where is the leak of micromessaging features inside a new service pack for Office or even Windows itself for that matter? The New York Times and Mike Arrington joust over whether the Google/Yahoo ad deal is good or bad for competition, but where is the debate over what form of media is most efficient at harvesting the most engaged and intentional crowds that have moved into swarming environments?
It’s a lot like the global warming data being debated while the ice caps melt before our eyes. Or the readiness of Palin to take over the free world if McCain gets sick or more confused than the networks can rationalize as a way of hedging their bets. Is social media a technology that can transform information routing or is it just a hippie mirage? Put it another way: what else is important if this isn’t?
Despite the Left’s insistence that this election should be about issues, every time economic catastrophe looms as a real possibility, we seem to fall back on faith to pull us through. Better we believe in 6 thousand year old dinosaurs than organize our information systems to reflect the extraordinary economic power of harvesting our actual signals of what we want and what we’re willing to reveal to get it.
Luckily, there will be a real debate this Friday, where we will be able to use television to measure our fears and hopes against these two or four candidates. It’s fun to talk back to the TV set, perhaps most because we know they can’t really hear us. We’d rather trust in things just working out than admit to our complicity in letting things careen. Twitter may be a toy, but it challenges our notion that we are powerless. Facebook may be a weakly-typed harvester of our individual social networks, but the aggregate activity stream of our personal clouds turns out to be a superior indicator of who we are and what we will do.
These two realities are in collision: belief in the rational world and evidence to the contrary. We look for leaders to represent us, while social media lets us do it ourselves. We blame the media for not getting it right, forgetting we are the media. No wonder the titans of technology are sitting this one out – it’ll be too easy to blame whoever bets on the wrong side. Instead, we dither while Rome melts.
Every afternoon around 5 or so, the familiar sound of the ice cream truck echoes down the hill where we live. I always look up in excitement, shouting for my daughter to come running. I always pretend that my joy is for my child, but the truth is it’s for me, for a simpler time when things seemed safer and in order. That’s why we look for leaders, not so much to take care of things for us, but to give us a clue how to do it for ourselves.
“or is it just a hippie mirage”
I’ve had the feeling it is. Haven’t really found evidence it isn’t yet.
“we look for leaders, not so much to take care of things for us, but to give us a clue how to do it for ourselves”
Had hopes Obama would do that, still waiting, have been disappointed so far. We need “statesmen” rather than politicians. So far, all I see is politics. There are a couple months left so there’s still hope.
Fundamentally, it is up to us, the People, to change the business as usual and not only demand, but do things differently. We are expecting someone else to save us and some great leader or leaders to rise up. Lest we do this ourselves, there is no one there to do it for us. I believe we are all still looking for some “one” to lead us through the mess we are. That “one” is us. Now the question is…is the us still the minority in this country and world or simply, until now, a silent majority?
There you go again Steve; seeking conservatively-clothed political monsters upon whom you can cast blame for all the problems of the world.
Technology was neither the cause or the innocent victim of this year’s meltdown of the economy. Nor will it serve well, as our economic savior. It can however, be argued that some technologists, by treating money as if it were derived from a Monopoly game, certainly contributed to a problem that is best compared to the technology bubble of the 90′s.
What caused the meltdown, was the craziness of the housing market, combined with corruption and greed on the part of too many politicians (of all political persuasions,) and the people who buy those politicians, just as people buy the services of prostitutes and drug dealers. No difference! In fact, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been whores for over a decade and if their black-books (listing their customers,) are ever made public, many political superstars (at least one of whom is currently running for President,) will go down in flames, much as did Eliot Spitzer.
And while I’m on a roll, Steve…It would be good if you could get a grasp on reality as it relates to global-warming. Your favorite ice cap may well be melting before your very eyes…but please do some independent research before you accept the cause de jour. There is surely evidence that the melting ice cream cone in your hand has causes related to your fervent grip…but no real evidence exists, to support your assumed power to melt a glacier. I suggest you read up on historical cooling and warming periods.
Jack
“we look for leaders, not so much to take care of things for us, but to give us a clue how to do it for ourselves”
There’s been some research lately that I’ve seen floating around that suggests that this very statement defines “liberal” or “conservative”. Liberals want to make their own decisions, where conservatives want a big brother, authority figure to make those decisions. This really seems contrarry to the political retoric, the more conservative folks that I deal with are all about saying that they want “big government off their backs”. Of course this isn’t backed up by their support of things like govt making decisions about how we live our personal lives, just the issues where they tend to agree.
I really think that Conservative and GOP are now just brands that people can identify with. They’ve been sold a brand and fall in line to support the brand regardless of facts or sense.
Jack
I never said technology was the cause, just that it’s interesting that no one from the “community” has taken the political risk of getting out in front of what will actually make a difference, namely the betting of large amounts of bailout money on changing Detroit from a fossil-consuming international emergency to one where millions of jobs and strategic technological investment will keep us ahead in the global horserace.
As to your denial of the science of global warming, good luck with that one.
And as I said, Steve, neither is technology the victim OR the savior. The cure can only come through integrity, a human value that is in great scarcity and probably even in jeopardy of extinction.
I will be happy to discuss the science of global warming, if we can agree that the issue is not whether the earth is warming…but whether the cause is a result of human-related carbon emissions. And if we engage, let us agree to rely only on credible sources; those that are motivated to discover the truth, as opposed to those that hope to achieve an agenda. I suspect your education in this arena has come only from the latter.
Jack
Yep love the debate! Hippy mirage is always going to be sitting there somewhere in the middle of the rational sentiment.
Twitter rules! Love the sound of the ice cream truck and sometimes I believe we create to much BS simply to keep our minds from discovering stillness.
“Wait for me! Wait for me!” -George Leroy Tirebiter