Life is full of paradoxes. Opportunity is embedded in the Chinese character for “crisis” (water bottle is selling for three to four times its normal price in current Egypt – oil is inching $100 per barrel ).
Construction workers are mopping up of what is left of the Australian flood.
And Netflix just rides the wave without constructing any infrastructure (it started out using the USPS‘, and now uses video streaming ).
During the 1st Gulf War, CNN decided to go live.
In crisis, it found an opportunity (remember Peter Arnett?)
News bureau cut back its staff, then boom, things happen that call for perspective and perspiration (in this case, Middle East background and knowledge).
Sure, the digital natives got speed and multi-tasking talent.
All the powers to them. But Google’s algorithm could only list near-relevant answers to your queries, not deep factors for your analysis.
It’s like using the dictionary when you don’t know how to spell the word .
To push the envelope, Facebook‘s early founder funded a company whose software enables universal search i.e. web page plus video, fax etc… Imagine all the wasted time down the wrong path. This reminds me of the song “It Might Be You” (will I recognize the face).
For now, the “jasmine unrest” might lead to the “rise of the rest”, the M.E.version of an opportunity in crisis.
Change, compromise or conformity?
I know one thing. Once you have adopted the latest and greatest (technology for instance), it’s hard to turn back .
The same with aspiration and expectation.
We saw similar young faces during the French and American revolution. We remembered those Asian faces some decades back (in Korea for instance).
A crisis in Tunisia turned out to be an opportunity in Egypt.
It’s a small village after all, one tweet at a time, turning comfort mode to crisis mode. Whoever invented the Chinese language had identified this paradox by planting “opportunity” in the word “crisis”.
Thang Nguyen 555 