Tag: Research In Motion

Confidence

2.5 per cent. That’s US growth figure. Enough? Confident? Could be better?

I am glad we are growing even when it feels like we are running in place.

Perception vs Reality. Like how they feel now at Microsoft, at Yahoo. Even at RIM and Facebook.

Something is missing. Mojo? Passion and Pride. Exuberance and Exhilaration.

Grown men are sleeping on Mommy’s couch. Grown women too, to make it equal.

Crushed right out of the gate. Austerity.

Where is that needed confidence I used to see on Seniors’ faces on their first-job interviews.

It’s like dating back then on campus. Except it’s on weekdays, and you get to put on a suit. You could always tell they were experiencing “senior panic” : get a job, get settled down, bought into the American Dream with white-picket fence and automatic sprinklers.

Now, it’s the couch, not sure where it was made from.

Trickled-down economy. Wealth imbalance. Daddy brought wild animal kingdom home for Daughter’s surprised birthday. While others waiting in line at county food bank.

1939 all over. This time, with Bernanke, not studying the phenomenon as an academic subject. He is handling it, and inadvertently, helps shape the textbook of the future.

How are we looked at from year 2020’s vantage point? That we mishandled this “opportunity”?

In crisis, there is always opportunity. Electric Vehicle? Wind and Solar? Software for the mass and medical world?

C’mon. Exercise a little imagination. Muster up some courage. Be confident again.

Build that high-speed railways. Don’t let me want to learn Korean (broadband-envy). Don’t let Friedman keep writing about Beijing and Shanghai modern airports. Build them and be proud again. Make me USA-proud and the world USA-envy.

two-step back

A laid-off Coca Cola delivery man gave a bank teller a note, demanding one dollar so he could go to jail and get healthcare.

A Florida retiree robbed a bank to pay his mortgage.

New York sex workers told investigative reporters they went on-call to pay back college tuition.

Something is not right with our time: those who are entitled don’t get entitlement, and those who aren’t do. Government grew in size, while big businesses shrunk or off-shorred. One could wait for ever in voice-mail jail hearing occasional “someone will be right with you” (yesterday’s prospect is today’s customer, hence, a lower priority).

What happened to Moore’s law (speed of processing double every 18 months)?

We can’t see the forest for the tree because we did not step back far enough.

Years of instant noodle, fast food drive-in, personalized search and pizza on delivery have lulled our sense and slow down our reaction.

Wind came from the Southwest, but we keep looking into our GPS (which might fail us).

First, the elephant (IBM) can’t walk. Then, it’s voted most innovative company, on the same Dean list with Apple, which had been rejected by investors just a decade ago.

Nokia and Motorola fell behind while RIM couldn’t keept its field advantage.  Google, who got tired of Search and Social, also got into phone, glasses and unmanned vehicles

We now need the Audacity of Austerity, not of Hope.

And please, don’t blame technology for London burning .

(It’s like blaming the Rodney King riot in LA on black and white video footage ).

This blog is my first from a children’s library. I am surrounded by school children playing games. Will they grow up learning how to connect the dots in this vast data-driven world?

Will they be able to step back to see the bubbles coming their ways?

Or many will fall through the cracks, with  few options such as bank robbery and escort service.

These are rhetorical questions which seek solutions to inflationary measures not inspirational messages. We all can see for ourselves, which is the tree, and which is a forest. We have stepped back at least two-steps in the last four years. Now it’s decision makers’ turn to see the forest for themselves.

Buddha was purported to do just that, with his first walk among the commoners. It’s called reality check. It’s called enlightenment.