A brief update
I suppose I should address why I am posting to my blog at the swift pace of twice a decade. Well I’ve been busy until now spending all my mindshare thinking about other things. I’m learning to enjoy the present a bit more now instead of always focusing on the future (and past). The end result is I have more free time and things like posting to my blog come to mind. Unfortunately, it seems that I’m out of style; I should probably be posting this on my facebook profile or posting a compressed 5 word version via twitter. I guess I’m getting older and starting to be set in my ways :]
I’m very much a different person than I was as a 25 year-old in 2006. I continued on for quite some time traveling seeing all sorts of sites and meeting many different memorable characters. I cultivated my love for being an engineer at heart and learned many soft skills such as how to make someone frustrated smile and how to calm my nerves in a situation filled with scarcity. Some of my favorite memories during this period of time have been visiting Edinburgh where I experienced my Scottish heritage by for example discovering my favorite scotch. I helping seed DataPower into the UK and Europe for the first time which was easy considering that the product was ahead of its time. Another memorable moment was stepping onto the Asian continent for the first time.
After almost six years of consulting and sales engineering – after years of taking a flight out of Austin Sunday evening and returning Friday night – after writing the most elegant dojo code for investment banks – after developing taste buds that were completely devoid of any sensation when eating restaurant food; I decided that I was burned out. I have an office job now for a different division at IBM. At first it was overwhelming to actually see my friends regularly and be able to see a girlfriend everyday. I think now I have the hang of it though :]
I’m very grateful for what I have experienced. I do think that things happen for a reason – especially if you have some self awareness and are at peace.
So enough about my personal life. I’ve been granted the dubious distinguished title at IBM of Master Inventor. So listen carefully, what I say about technology and innovation must be very smart!
Obviously we are experiencing a so called revolution. My knowledge of history is embarrassing considering that I have trouble remembering details, but I do know that there have been several similar revolutions in the past:
- The development of spoken language
- The agricultural age
- The discovery of fighting each other with large armies
- The industrial revolution
According to evolutionary biology our bodies and brains for the most part are wired for the period of time before the agricultural age, in other words, hunter gatherer societies. I also believe that there is kind of an exponential curve where each of these paradigm shifts are compounding causing us to exponentially move away from our original roots. I also think a lot of people are having a hard time. We live in a word of unimaginable riches. What would be a feast of a lifetime during our hunter gatherer days can be purchased at a grocery store down the street and prepared in fifteen minutes. I had one of those pre-cooked roasted chickens from HEB a couple days ago and as I ate it, I thought about how I did not deserve it. Waking up in Texas a million years ago I would not be able to catch anything or even cook anything nearly as nourishing. Today I purchased it with 1% of my daily salary and I ate it instantly. My body must think I’m some kind of emperor. But then it asks why as an emperor does not everyone bow at my feet? Are we living as serfs or emperors?
With every revolution there is a plateau – a period of settling. I am here to tell you that this will eventually happen for the information age. I think the agricultural age is the most similar age to the information age. Once we figured out how to feed everyone without spending our whole day trying to find seeds and fruits or the occasional fish / warm blooded animals – we exploded (from a growth perspective). With agriculture came large cities, all sorts of creative new uses for abundant free time, and larger egos.
So now we have figured out how to send messages to each other instantly. We are somewhere in-between being able to communicate with grunts and being telepathic. We’ve also figured out how to build machines to automate anything that is predictable or scriptable. So now we not only have more free time, but have access to instant information and no tasks are left to do that do not require creative thought – we are all being forced into the role of “knowledge workers.”
Moore’s law is talked about a lot with processors. Computers are getting more efficient exponentially. Well I’m quite certain that everything is becoming more efficient or improving exponentially – food, war, spirituality, entertainment, nearly anything.
So my theory is we are going to stabilize. I suppose there could be another revolution or “disruptive innovation” that every startup and university is trying to furiously find first. What could it be though? My guess is that the next true revolution is going to be a long-long time from now.
So what am I saying? There will be one day when most internet websites have been the same for a decade. There will be a day when the supermarket aisles don’t get reconfigured every week. There will be a day when everyone feels safe.
Let’s work on getting there faster, but safely. My plan is to do so as an IBMer.
