Victor Rozek
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As I See It: I See England, I See France, I See Techie Underpants
September 8, 2014 Victor Rozek
… Read moreImagine an ad featuring a nerdy-looking guy lying on his unmade bed, typing on his laptop, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts with stars and galaxies spinning on his butt. The announcer tells you that this line of underwear was inspired by Einstein and features a flexible waistband because “The universe is always expanding.” Wouldn’t you just want to run out and buy a pair?
Me neither.
What if the company then claimed it was fighting discrimination against nerds, and that the guy in the ad was actually the CEO of a Silicon Valley startup? Don’t know about
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As I See It: IT At Play
August 25, 2014 Victor Rozek
… Read moreDaniel Borson has a dream. It’s an unusual dream to be sure, shared only by a select few. In fact, just 31 others have achieved it, some by what can only be described as dubious means. But when you stalk great honor, you must be willing to rise above convention. Which in this case is not a problem. Daniel Borson wants to be a SLUG Queen, a dream that bears less resemblance to Dr. King than to Dr. Seuss.
Borson works in IT as a developer/analyst for the local water and electric utility. He has the distinction of having gone
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As I See It: The Final Escape
August 11, 2014 Victor Rozek
… Read moreLauren, Danielle, Lily, Rosco, and Zosia have at least two things in common: they are siblings, and they no longer have a father. Their Dad had been rather successful by all accounts, able to secure the bounty of Silicon Valley for himself and his family. But it wasn’t enough. Or perhaps it was too much. His death aboard his yacht at the hands of a distasteful-looking, tattooed prostitute will forever filter whatever his children thought they knew about their Father.
Forrest Hayes’ demise had all the requisites of a media carnival: wealth, scandal, and drugs. Add to that a whiff
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As I See It: To Think Or Not To Think
July 28, 2014 Victor Rozek
… Read moreBloomington, Indiana, is not the stuff of science fiction. Yet for the past 30 years, teams of scientists toiling in a non-descript house near Indiana University have been quietly conducting a decidedly Asimovian experiment. They have been teaching computers to think. Given the highly publicized achievements of IBM‘s playful R&D department–the spanking of chess champion Garry Kasparov by Deep Blue, and the Jeopardy dominance of everybody’s favorite know-it-all, Watson–it is tempting to believe that the challenges of creating thinking machines have largely been solved.
But those breakthroughs relied more on brute force than nuanced understanding. Dave Ferrucci, Watson’s daddy,
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As I See It: Midlife With Crisis
July 7, 2014 Victor Rozek
… Read moreIf you want to screw up your life, there’s nothing like a Midlife Crisis to provide handy justification. The affair with the younger woman, followed by spending quality time with the wife’s attorney; the outlandish purchase, after which your kid discovers she won’t be going to Stanford after all; and the cosmetic surgery that makes your face unresponsive to human emotion. These are some of the ingenious ways we’ve developed to cope with the unavoidable process of aging.
Having said that, sometimes a properly managed Midlife Crisis can save your life. But more on that later.
The Midlife Crisis is
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As I See It: The Game Changer
June 16, 2014 Victor Rozek
… Read moreWhat’s tougher than a diamond, but able to filter water; stronger than steel, but thinner than a butterfly’s wings? Give up? OK, it does sound improbable, unless aliens are involved. So let’s try this: What’s more flexible than a Yoga instructor, and predicted to thoroughly shake up the computer industry? No, it’s not Miley Cyrus. But it is made from the same element on which life depends. Even repulsive life.
It is, in fact, pure carbon, and not much of it at that. It’s as thin as thin can get and still be considered a material. In effect, it qualifies
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As I See It: The Dream Changer
June 2, 2014 Victor Rozek
… Read moreJack Kennedy joked that he had the best of both worlds: a Harvard education and a Yale degree. I have neither. Nor, I’ll wager, do you. Which means that if you’re a recent graduate you’re already lagging behind the competition. That wasn’t always the case, but sometimes good timing is more valuable than a good education.
Take me for instance. Like others of my generation, I rode the crest of the American experience. My life was formed (and transformed) by the availability of affordable housing, low-cost education, jobs with perks, and medical care that didn’t require choosing between illness and
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As I See It: The Wheeler Dealer
May 19, 2014 Victor Rozek
… Read moreUnless you have been in a protracted digital coma, you have probably noticed that the Internet is starting to look like a dead man walking. And if you have a high tolerance for duplicity, you may find it amusing to watch the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) go through public paroxysm deciding on the least offensive way to dress the body for viewing.
Officially, the FCC exists to “regulate interstate and international communications.” But like most regulatory agencies, unofficially it is an industry front group. Nonetheless, it is classified as an “independent U.S. government agency,” which sounds suspiciously oxymoronic. And that
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As I See It: What’s In Your Wallet?
May 5, 2014 Victor Rozek
… Read moreThe Weimar Republic had a big problem and its name was inflation. But it also had a solution, and its name was print-more-money. Which it did with reckless abandon. So much so that its currency, which was valued at 4.2 Marks per U.S. dollar at the outbreak of World War I, hyper-inflated to over 1 million Marks per dollar by 1923.
Which is why a man who wanted to buy a loaf of bread could be seen pushing a wheelbarrow full of money to a bakery early one morning. When he got there the bakery was not yet open, so
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As I See It: Old Hephaestus Had A Bot, A.I.A.I.O.
April 28, 2014 Victor Rozek
… Read moreIn 1956, Nathan Rochester approached the Rockefeller Foundation to apply for a princely grant of $7,000. He said he wanted to throw a little shindig at Dartmouth University, where the minds of mathematicians and computer scientists could run free exploring what must have seemed like a fanciful and distant notion at the time–the creation of intelligent machines.
He probably would have been dismissed outright, but Rochester was no garden-variety, star-struck futurist. He also happened to be the chief engineer of the IBM 701–the first general purpose, mass-produced computer–and therefore had the requisite gravitas to pacify the normally conservative moneymen.
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