Tag: Salvation Army

Lost art of typing

The BBC has a piece on Japan Love Affair with the Fax Machine. Older population has gotten used to that technology (which allows for hand-writing). For years, I have used email except for  Thank-you notes in writing. I can reasonably predict that even typing (as we know it) will be a lost art (speech recognition will be in) I-pad, I-phone replacing IBM Selectric.

The late Andy Rooney was seen inseparable with his typewriter. So was American literary giant, Norman Mailer.

Something about the man and his tools. We think as we type. The neurons are hard at work, one character at a time. The sound of those banging keys is rhythm to our ears, which then reflects each thought. A feedback loop. We know you are out there in the ether. And that you are lonely. We, writers, are too. Awake at night, half-sleep during the day. We are commanded by sudden thoughts. We are mere instruments and Irises.

Via fax, chat, text, tweet and type, we send out an SOS. That we were once here, alive and breathing, waiting for validation. Each, with love, hope and fears.

Love unceasingly. Hope never fails and fear as basis for survival.

We invent, reinvent and reshape this known universe in our likeness (while we are byproducts of earlier version).

Confined, reduced and restricted, we try to liberate ourselves by any means we can. We imitate others, read their works, copy their findings and their maps.

From Magellan to Mandela, we know they are out there, not taking injustice sitting down.

Yes, some did not play by the rules. But most do.

In the end, humanity benefits and makes progress as a whole.

Rilke advises the young poet that he should dig deep inside, where it’s dark and vulnerable.

We each carry that river of doubt. About our tomorrow, about the unknown and unfamiliar.

We want change and continuity at the same time. We are paradoxical.

A little progress, yes. But not too much. Because new pieces of hardware displace old ones, we end up making frequent trips to the Salvation Army or Goodwill, where their electronic section kept piling up with industrial waste. Among those, the fax machine.  Somewhere along the way, I hope to run into an IBM Selectric. CSI of the future will learn that our civilization once have a love affair with bulky stuff, fax machines made in Japan, and used in Japan.

Time to change

Change bears a different connotation to different people.

In the 60’s, change threatened the status quo (Hell No, we won’t go).

It’s inevitable that we need to adapt (from jukebox to boombox, from paper-back book to e-book).  A few years from now, we would rather be dead than getting caught carrying  a hard-back book (today’s equivalence of carrying a brick phone w/pull-out antenna).

In fact, leadership is all about change management: take R or L at the fork in the road (yahoo)

take both (Cisco), or take the one less traveled (Robert Frost).

Change has been equated with letting go. But it’s not. It’s being adaptive and relevant.

Downgrading, downshifting, downsizing and retrenching.

The exact reversal of the 80’s “trading up”.

In the Hummer and the Mini, the author tries to point out the paradox in taste and style. At the present time, we might have to do away with Hummers altogether

(have you noticed gas prices lately).

And there is forced change e.g. aging, empty nesting or season change whose cold front disrupts our holiday travel. Here in Florida, they use helicopters to bring down warmer temperature to protect crops (same technology was used during the Vietnam War to spray Agent Orange to destroy crops).

The positive side of aging is maturity. Having been there and done that, one detects a familiar pattern (deja vu) and can easily connect the dots (for instance, Haiti and Vietnam both had some French influence. This makes easy for the Vietel engineers to connect with locals while trying to rebuild Haitian telecom infrastructure.)

Unfortunately, the path of least resistance is often the path most taken. It saves time when everything is in place, the same place (efficiency model). Have you noticed that as creatures of habits, we always congregate around the fire-place (or TV, its modern-day replacement) and water cooler at work (or the conference-room speaker phone). But that’s our pre-Google false sense of comfort.

Now that the transformation to digital is almost complete, we must embrace minimalist life style (watch out Good Will and Salvation Army, you will have to expand your warehouses).  Digital natives will not give a second thought (since they are not attached to things non-digital) before junking that jukebox or that Polaroid.

We are change managers. And managers must decide what’s important and what’s urgent, what stays and what goes. Most importantly, from future vantage point looking back, will today’s decision hold? Are we being self-disruptive enough or face forced change?

The more we want to stay the same, the more we will have to change. Or just sit there and get run over by the train.

And that time is now.

The giving

This program has been made possible by Viewers like you, and the following foundations…..

We all heard that line on PBS or NPR.

Now we will see it on Fortune magazine that Giving is back in an organized way (like Barn Raising in an Amish community,

or Cognitive Surplus giving at Wikipedia).

This time. wealthy people from India and China will learn how to be rich (by giving away their new-found wealth).

In other words, to acquire money is just a first step to be admitted to the table.

Then, there is a curriculum: Giving 101 (preparing your will)  Giving 102 ( Giving away to help out the bottom Billion) before graduation at Davos.

Bono has advocated Poor Nation’s debt (for)giving. Jeffrey Sachs argues in similar vein.

And in India, bankers to the poor have tried mobile bank branches, mobile phone booths, and micro-lending.

I am sure these necessary steps will lead to a thoroughly vaccinated population and hopefully a more productive and peaceful world.

This is not the kind of  civic charity we have been accustomed to (Red Cross, Salvation Army, YMCA etc…).

This is new and very 21st-century. It’s the Third Wave’s giving (as opposed to Industrialist philanthropy such as Henry Ford and Rockefeller whose fortune was amassed due to the rise of the Machine). Now we have The Gates and Mr Buffett take the lead in a Round table (Hi, my name is so and so. And I am an anonymous donor AD and not OD).

http://www.economist.com/node/16381387?story_id=16381387

This time, we have a confluence of  information technology , health and bio technology and environmental technology (clean tech) to point us in the right direction (Kevin Costner‘s congressional testimony yesterday for one). Foundation and funding will back those who can best leverage donated dollars, and the best part is it’s pre-meditated and pro-active, not reactive or under relief pressures.

If anybody can do it, this trio can. After all, at the speed of thought, they can transfer shares by a click of a mouse. I hope they and their nouveaux-riches won’t suffer from after-thought which is mirror image of buyer’s remorse.

(As of this edit, only percentage of the pledges actually went through). But during this past Recession, non-profit dollars have been on the rise (Warren Buffet’s son had a nice piece on the NYT about this subject). It’s more blessed to give than to receive.