• The Four Hundred
  • Subscribe
  • Media Kit
  • Contributors
  • About Us
  • Contact
Menu
  • The Four Hundred
  • Subscribe
  • Media Kit
  • Contributors
  • About Us
  • Contact
  • As I See It: In the Land Of Lost Listeners

    April 24, 2017 Victor Rozek

    “I should sell my tongue and buy a thousand ears.” – Rumi

    Rumi would not do well on social media. Not much listening going on there. We are a culture of speakers. From the advent of email through the current suite of thumb-enabled apps, all are designed to amplify the mouth. From sea to shining sea, we have become one long declarative sentence fragment.

    Let’s face it: Most of us speak because we want to be heard. Only a priest in a confessional begins a conversation in anticipation of listening to someone blather on about their dysfunctions. But that’s the beauty of social media: it allows us to blather on about our dysfunctions without any prompting. And, without the need for forgiveness.

    Impulsive thoughts and volatile feelings can be shared without the obligation of listening to anybody else’s thoughts and feelings. Free speech is all well and good, but there’s a petulant power in ignoring other people’s free speech. Dismiss it as fake news. I am peevish, hear me roar.

    Like little Caesars (the guys, not the pizzas), we issue definitive statements with imperial finality. Mere mortals may reply at their own risk. Distance, and especially anonymity, has an emboldening effect that activates the less judicious aspects of communication. Declarations are posted, without discussion, and what dialogue does exist often devolves into insult and accusation. Sort of like a family gathering at Thanksgiving.

    We are becoming a nation of people who don’t listen, because we don’t have to. And because expecting to find meaning on the Internet is like looking for virtue in Vegas. Besides, algorithms make sure we can live in a bubble of our choosing. Unwelcome ideas are kept at arm’s length, and if one should sneak through the protective force field of preference, they can be hurled back into the ether with nothing more than an emphatic poke of the Delete key.

    It’s impossible to gauge the full impact of countless one-sided communications, except perhaps as a colossal exercise in self-gratification. The illusion is that posting implies people are actually listening. When posts become as ubiquitous as snowflakes, however, each may in fact be slightly different, but after a while they all pretty much begin to look the same.

    One of the limitations of social media is that words only comprise a paltry 7 percent of a communication – which explains the popularity of videos. Body language at 55 percent, and voice tonality at 38 percent provide the rest. We get a lot more information through our senses than we realize. And we miss a lot more when our senses aren’t engaged. I know this because it’s not unusual for people to take my sophisticated attempts at sarcasm seriously. (See, that was an example and you almost missed it.) But in my own defense when they asked an ailing British thespian if dying was hard, he said: “Dying is easy, comedy is difficult.”

    Another peculiarity of social media is that every utterance, no matter how vapid, becomes as legitimate as any other by virtue of being posted. Which is like saying all meals are equal by virtue of being cooked.

    Indiscriminate proximity doesn’t help. News, entertainment, scandal, hysteria, puppies and pussy cats coexist in awkward association, sort of like Congress where much is said, but little of value. Here’s what I learned just this morning: Martha Stewart reveals how often I should wash my sheets; Serena Williams is pregnant; Venezuela seized a GM plant; the president misplaced an aircraft carrier; there’s a purpose for that little tiny pocket in my jeans; Bill O’Reilly is an unemployed serial scumbag; and I was asked to “pray for the easy transition of a dying guinea pig.” Now, I like rodents as much as the next fellow – I happen to have a fondness for beavers – but really, I have to draw the line at prayer circles for guinea pigs.

    Conversely, people who actually have something important to say based on, you know, irrelevant stuff like scholarship and expertise, are dismissed as elitists; marginalized by intelligence, disqualified by proficiency.

    We may not have reached peak ignorance yet, but are hurtling toward it with alarming speed. Providentially, we were given some prophetic advice from a personage who had nothing less than a broadband connection to the BIG GUY himself. Pope John Paul II once opined: “Stupidity is also a gift from God, but one mustn’t misuse it.” Ordinarily such wisdom would be embraced by the huddled masses yearning to be bright, but the Pope is nothing if not elitist – I mean the Sistine Chapel wasn’t painted by Earl Scheib – so he can safely be ignored.

    The other mass hallucination, shared by desperate people everywhere, is that if a post is “liked” or “retweeted,” that means that the person who posted it is also liked.

    Maybe. But being “liked” on social media is akin to being liked by an Alzheimer’s sufferer: you get to be liked often, but it doesn’t last for long.

    At our current pace one would hope we would soon run out of tedious things to post. Not so. We live in the Golden Age of over-sharing. Did you know “There is a body part we are all cleaning incorrectly?” Don’t ask. Or that “Leggings could reduce cellulite within 15 days?” If you believe that, then you probably believe that wardrobe malfunctions are accidental.

    A society’s descent into minutia does not bode well for its future prospects. Just ask the Romans who are still trying to cash in on the remnants of the Empire. As David Brooks famously said about our very own social media addict-in-chief: “Those who ignore history are condemned to retweet it.”

    Share this:

    • Reddit
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Email

    Tags: Tags: AISI, As I See It, IBM i

    Sponsored by
    UCG Technologies – Vault400

    Do the Math When Looking at IBM i Hosting for Cost Savings

    COVID-19 has accelerated certain business trends that were already gaining strength prior to the start of the pandemic. E-commerce, telehealth, and video conferencing are some of the most obvious examples. One example that may not be as obvious to the general public but has a profound impact on business is the shift in strategy of IBM i infrastructure from traditional, on-premises environments to some form of remote configuration. These remote configurations and all of their variations are broadly referred to in the community as IBM i hosting.

    “Hosting” in this context can mean different things to different people, and in general, hosting refers to one of two scenarios. In the first scenario, hosting can refer to a client owned machine that is housed in a co-location facility (commonly called a co-lo for short) where the data center provides traditional system administrator services, relieving the client of administrative and operational responsibilities. In the second scenario, hosting can refer to an MSP owned machine in which partition resources are provided to the client in an on-demand capacity. This scenario allows the client to completely outsource all aspects of Power Systems hardware and the IBM i operating system and database.

    The scenario that is best for each business depends on a number of factors and is largely up for debate. In most cases, pursuing hosting purely as a cost saving strategy is a dead end. Furthermore, when you consider all of the costs associated with maintaining and IBM i environment, it is typically not a cost-effective option for the small to midsize market. The most cost-effective approach for these organizations is often a combination of a client owned and maintained system (either on-prem or in a co-lo) with cloud backup and disaster-recovery-as-a-service. Only in some cases of larger enterprise companies can a hosting strategy start to become a potentially cost-effective option.

    However, cost savings is just one part of the story. As IBM i expertise becomes scarce and IT resources run tight, the only option for some firms may be to pursue hosting in some capacity. Whatever the driving force for pursing hosting may be, the key point is that it is not just simply an option for running your workload in a different location. There are many details to consider and it is to the best interest of the client to work with an experienced MSP in weighing the benefits and drawbacks of each option. As COVID-19 rolls on, time will tell if IBM i hosting strategies will follow the other strong business trends of the pandemic.

    When we say do the math in the title above, it literally means that you need to do the math for your particular scenario. It is not about us doing the math for you, making a case for either staying on premises or for moving to the cloud. There is not one answer, but just different levels of cost to be reckoned which yield different answers. Most IBM i shops have fairly static workloads, at least measured against the larger mix of stuff on the public clouds of the world. How do you measure the value of controlling your own IT fate? That will only be fully recognized at the moment when it is sorely missed the most.

    CONTINUE READING ARTICLE

    Please visit ucgtechnologies.com/IBM-POWER9-systems for more information.

    800.211.8798 | info@ucgtechnologies.com

    Article featured in IT Jungle on April 5, 2021

    Share this:

    • Reddit
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Email

    The Power Systems Decline Did Not Have To Be This Bad Guru: Three Ways To Manage Unmatched Data

    One thought on “As I See It: In the Land Of Lost Listeners”

    • AntiSocialApp says:
      April 25, 2017 at 7:23 pm

      Great article. Bugbean has developed an Android only app called AntiSocial which help’s users control and track their phone usage. A great app to slowly reduce the time spent on social media by using the 3 blocking modes available. Highly recommend downloading AntiSocial and taking the 2 week challenge.

      Reply

    Leave a Reply Cancel reply

TFH Volume: 27 Issue: 27

This Issue Sponsored By

  • ProData Computer Services
  • COMMON
  • Linoma Software
  • WorksRight Software

Table of Contents

  • Getting Offensive With The Legacy Label
  • State Of IBM i Security: Seven Areas That Demand Attention
  • Guru: Three Ways To Manage Unmatched Data
  • As I See It: In the Land Of Lost Listeners
  • The Power Systems Decline Did Not Have To Be This Bad

Content archive

  • The Four Hundred
  • Four Hundred Stuff
  • Four Hundred Guru

Recent Posts

  • Big Blue Unveils Spring 2021 IBM i Technology Refreshes
  • Thoroughly Modern: Innovative And Realistic Approaches To IBM i Modernization
  • Guru: Web Services, DATA-INTO and DATA-GEN, Part 2
  • Back To The Future With A New IBM i Logo
  • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 23, Number 14
  • When Cloud Meets DevOps on IBM i
  • JD Edwards Roadmap Reveals Decisions To Be Made
  • IBM Completes Migration of Knowledge Center to IBM Documentation
  • Four Hundred Monitor, April 7
  • Crazy Idea Number 615: Variable Priced Power Systems Partitions

Subscribe

To get news from IT Jungle sent to your inbox every week, subscribe to our newsletter.

Pages

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Contributors
  • Four Hundred Monitor
  • IBM i PTF Guide
  • Media Kit
  • Subscribe

Search

Copyright © 2021 IT Jungle

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.