Pondering the Future

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." Alvin Toffler

For Mother’s Day as well as flowers for my mother I also sent flowers for her to take out for Bonnie’s gravesite. I asked my parents if they would take a picture for me and the kids.

This seemingly innocent request started an odyssey beyond any expectations.

Me: “Mom, would you take a picture of the flowers?”

Mom: “Well, I guess, I don’t know.”

Me: “Is that a problem?”

Mom: “I’m not sure we have a camera.”

Me: “Really? I’ll get you one”

Mom: “No, don’t do that, we’ll never use it”

Me: “OK, what about your cell phone?”

Mom: “What about it?

Me: “I’m sure it has a camera in it, you can use it.”

Mom: “Oh, I wouldn’t know how do that.”

Me: “OK, no problem”

*sigh*

I didn’t think that much about it until I got this email from Mom:

We took pictures of the flowers. Hope they turn out O.K. It was funny (in a way) when your Dad took them to be printed all the places said "we don't do that kind of film anymore” but they do send it away will take about a week. They only do digital. Anyway we should have pictures in about a week. Shows you are up (s---) creek without a paddle if you are not up to date in this fast world today.

Now, my parents are neither dumb nor illiterate, they’re just 85. When you think about how much things have changed in their lives it’s pretty overwhelming. Hell, when you think how much things have changed since they were MY AGE it’s pretty overwhelming.

This in turn got me thinking about what I will be like if I’m lucky/unlucky enough to someday be 85. If I think about change in the past 27 years (the delta between me and my parents) and project that forward it’s pretty impossible to predict.

I consider myself pretty progressive – for an old geezer head – and like to think that I’ll be able to keep up. But then again I’m not so sure. Will I be able to keep up? If my kids request me to do something seemingly simple will the then current technology be like voodoo? I can see it now, "Dad, all I'm asking you to do teleport the casserole dish I left at your place, use your global teleport app that came with your iPlant implanted telecomm device. Just hold the dish in your left hand, hold your nose with your right, say my name and fart".

Actually maybe the better question isn't will I be able to keep up, but will I even want to?

Jumping 2009

“The best way to compile inaccurate information that no one wants is to make it up.” Scott Adams

I met a guy the other day who was telling me about his business – tool and die for what it’s worth – and during the “how’s it going” phase he said, “pretty well actually. In fact the year is starting off really strong.” He went on to explain that his company is doing all their trend analysis based off of 2008 instead of 2009. Essentially they’re skipping ‘09.

My initial thought was “that’s goofy; you can’t just skip over an entire year”. But the more I thought about it the more it started to make sense. So I started asking almost everyone I talked to about it and found a lot of people doing pretty much the same thing by doing comparisons of important trend numbers using ’06, ’07, ’08 and ’10.

The thinking is 2009 was so bad in so many ways that if you can’t do better this year then you’re probably wasting your time. Thus, trying to put significance on comparisons is fruitless.

I can see the company party now, ‘raise your glasses everyone, lets celebrate growing Q1 by 10% over Q1 last year when we absolutely sucked”. Or better a recent Dilbert episode had the pointy-haired boss giving this update:

“The Company is happy to announce that compared to previous years, we improved our rate of revenue decline. We’ve been doing great since we redefined success as a slowing of failure”.

That sounds worthy of a celebration. After all, there’s some merit to celebrating victories as I wrote in a past blog. Celebrate.

So in a lot of places 2009 is being considered such an anomaly that a lot of people are just eliminating it from their data and memory banks.

Now, if we could only erase it from our money banks.