Category — Thought

Social networking creates the illusion that the fragmentation and despair that are so characteristic of modern human existence are somehow eliminated with the click of a button.

Jeremiah D. Braunlin in a Letter to the Editor, N.Y. Times.

Apparently Danish couples are waiting in line to get maried on Friday August 8 - 08.08.08. Get it?

I’m wondering whether we will start seeing these marriages end in divorce. If the reason for getting married is obsession about a fancy date, what’s going to happen on 09.08.08 and beyond?

I read a piece the other day about textile factories shutting down in China’s southern provinces, because they we’re becoming less competitive on costs than before.

Seems like the lesson from Denmark via Poland and Bangladesh is repeating itself: When cost hit some predefined point its time to move shop away to a place, where new low earners can be exploited, so we in the Western world can be allowed to buy a couple of jeans at inflated prices.

I wonder if at one point, production will revert back to the Western world? It we, at some point in time, will be the cheapest option and the world will thus have come full circle?

I like the way that Microsoft is thinking these days. It seems like Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie, has his mind set on fewer servers running a lot of different application servers using virtualization.

It’s a shift from every app family having it’s own ’server daddy’ just a few years back. But if you could sell the extended version then, why not try selling the slimmed down version now? It kind of goes in circles with the economy, it seems.

Giga OM had a thoughtful post the other day about VC’s moving their investments into The Cloud, ie services brought to you and me via the internet. It was interesting for the reason that it asked the basic question: When was the last time you installed something on your computer from a CD?

It got me thinking. For me it was exactly a year ago. I installed Office 2004 for Mac on my new MacBook. Since then I have been getting by using software downloads via the internet and online services. And the idea of ever installing something from  disc (except perhaps for an OS reinstall) seems very remote to me.

How about you?

The HBR Editor’s Blog has an interesting discussion about whether you can actually brand business as evil? The key quote from the article is this:

The problem with accusing a business of evil is that the behavior of an enterprise is collective, consisting of so many individuals, engaged daily in myriad acts of omission and commission, that it is virtually impossible to fix moral accountability in a meaningful way.

Try replacing ‘business’ with ‘The Third Reich’ and ‘enterprise’ with ‘the state’, and to me you have a very similar story, where we weren’t in any doubt. And thus a solid argument for why excessive capitalism can indeed be evil on ordinary people.