Author Archives: Steve Mays

Can Facebook really “connect?”

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Reading David Kirkpatrick’s The Facebook Effect has piqued my interest in the service (which I do not use) so I’m unconsciously on the lookout for anything FB related. Like this post (at Mashable) by Ori Brafman, the co-author of Click: The Magic of Instant Connections. An excerpt:

“Social psychologists have found that the distance separating people greatly influences the likelihood of a connection. Think back to your friends in school. How many of them had a last name that began with a letter close to yours on the alphabet? That’s because teachers routinely assign seats alphabetically based on last name. The closer you sat to someone, the more likely you were to hit it off. When a researcher asked police cadets to name their friends from the academy, ninety percent of them named someone who sat adjacent to them. Likewise, scientists proved more likely to collaborate with other scientists who sat in the same corridor.”

“Facebook used to be an intimate community that only included your college buddies. Now, the company is starting to be perceived as Big Brother-like. If we write on someone’s wall, who else will see it? If we comment on someone’s status, whose newsfeed will it show up in? Sometimes it’s as if Facebook is a hidden microphone that threatens to expose what we’d really like to say. Without that ability to be vulnerable, it is difficult to really connect with friends.”

This idea really comes through, again and again, in the first half of Kirkpatrick’s book. And this absence of real (okay, online “real”) connection might be what’s missing for me.

“You will not be retiring at 65”

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Michael Schrage, a research fellow at MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business, takes a –for some– scary look at the “extra” five years that most folks will work in their professional careers.

Everyone reading this should take 15 hard minutes to ruthlessly reassess the reality of the “new” final years of their future career. The finish line has become elusive; the goal posts have been pushed back. Based on your current skill set and competences, what do you think your workday will look like when you’re 70? Are you comfortable with the probability that you will be managing employees younger than your grandchildren? Temperamentally, do you think you’ll add more value as a mentor, a partner, or part-timer? More important, what will your (much) younger boss think? Do you honestly believe that, when you have to work five more years than anticipated, you can get away with not being more facile, adept, and productive with emerging technologies? The inevitable aging of the (for now) wealthier Western economies guarantees a surge of innovative device interfaces more compatible with slower fingers and tired eyes. You will, of course, be taking web-enabled professional/technical development courses at 58 or 62 or you will be fired for cause. Whatever your 70-year-old workday scenarios may be, what new or novel skills or experiences do they demand? Do they demand more travel or less? More time immersed in digital environments or less? More interactions with people within a decade of your age or fewer? Are there personal or professional development initiatives you should be undertaking now precisely because those five years present opportunities that the earlier deadlines don’t? The most important slice of those 15-minutes-for-five-more-years should focus on role models. Who are the 70+ year olds whose presence, energy, and effectiveness might profitably serve as the benchmarks for your own? Who are the two 75-year-olds who you would professionally emulate? Write them down. I know my two and why I picked them. But why have you chosen yours? What do your choices say about the kind of person you want to be at the end of your professional life?

I expect this to be less of a problem for me than some. I’m a little more technically savvy than the average 62 year old. I love my job and would love to be doing it when I’m 80. Or 90. But for people who still utter “I just don’t get this Internet thing,” those extra 60 months could be tough.

The $99 PC and cloud computing (1997)

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In 1997 Po Bronson wrote The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest. The novel was the story of some Silicon Valley types who set out to design a PC that would sell for $99. Here’s a bit of the plot from Wikipedia:

“The team finds many non-essential parts but cannot come close to the $99 mark. It is Salman’s idea to put all the software on the internet, eliminating the need for a hard drive, RAM, a CD-ROM drive, a floppy drive, and anything that holds information. The computer has been reduced to a microprocessor, a monitor, a mouse, a keyboard, and the internet, but it is still too expensive. Having seen the rest of his team watching a hologram of an attractive lady the day before, in a dream Andy is inspired to eliminate the monitor in favor of the cheaper holographic projector. The last few hundred dollars comes off when Darrell suggests using virtual reality gloves in place of a mouse and keyboard. Tiny then writes a “hypnotizer” code to link the gloves, the projector, and the internet, and they’re done.”

Does that “put all the software on the internet” part sound familiar. I mean, shoot, that was 13 years ago. Shows how long folks about been thinking about “cloud computing.”

I liked Mr. Bronson’s early work. The Nudist on the Late Shfit and What Should I Do With My Life (non-fiction) in particular.

“The Spill, the Scandal and the President”

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That’s the title of a damning story in Rolling Stone by Tim Dickinson. The sub-title sums it up: “The inside story of how Obama failed to crack down on the corruption of the Bush years – and let the world’s most dangerous oil company get away with murder”

There are so many depressing aspects to this story I don’t know where to begin.

“As BP was cutting corners aboard the rig, the Obama administration was plotting the greatest expansion of offshore drilling in half a century. In 2008, as prices at the pump neared $5 a gallon, President Bush had lifted an executive moratorium on offshore drilling outside the Gulf that had been implemented by his father following the Exxon Valdez. On the campaign trail, Obama had stressed that offshore drilling “will not make a real dent in current gas prices or meet the long-term challenge of energy independence.” But once in office, he bowed to the politics of “drill, baby, drill.” Hoping to use oil as a bargaining chip to win votes for climate legislation in Congress, Obama unveiled an aggressive push for new offshore drilling in the Arctic, the Southeastern seaboard and new waters in the Gulf, closer to Florida than ever before. In doing so, he ignored his administration’s top experts on ocean science, who warned that the offshore plan dramatically understated the risks of an oil spill and petitioned Salazar to exempt the Arctic from drilling until more scientific studies could be conducted.”

As a contributor to the Obama campaign in 2008, I’m on a shit-load of mailing lists and frequently get calls to contribute. I told the last guy, “No.” He asked why and I told him I was disappointed in so many of the president’s decisions (or lack of decisions). The young man asked for specifics, ready with a screen-full of talking points and responses, but I declined.

He said something like, “In a democracy, nobody is going to agree with everything the president has to do. If you approve of 75% of his actions, that would be pretty good.” Not for me. Not if that 25% is symptomatic of the same old political shit that Obama promised to move beyond. Uh uh.

Am I sorry I voted for Obama? Not given the McCain-Palin option. Is Obama a better president that W? Yeah, probably, but so what. That aint much of a bar.

[For some reason this story is no longer available on the Rolling Stone website]