Victor Rozek
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As I See It: After You’re Gone (.com)
September 28, 2009 Victor Rozek
… Read moreMy wife’s grandmother was born while the Ottoman Empire was still in business–which is to say a long time ago. When she died, she left behind memorabilia from a life that spanned nearly a century. There were photos–boxes of them–some in albums, some loose, some marked, some not, some capturing moments with people known to the family, some showing the smiling faces of strangers. There were letters, diaries, newspaper clippings, mementos, knick-knacks, and memorabilia documenting the lives of four children. It was a mountain of minutia; the physical remnants of a long, full life.
Family members were undoubtedly comforted by
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As I See It: The Future in Parallel
September 14, 2009 Victor Rozek
… Read moreOurs is a mixed marriage. I am PC and my wife is Mac. We are the Yang and Yin of personal computing. She has Mac OS X, I have Windows XP. She has iPhoto, I have HP Photo. She has iChat, iMovie, iDVD, iCal, iSync, and iTunes, I have no tunes and a bunch of other stuff I seldom use. She has Steve Jobs, I have Bill Gates; which is to say she has cool and I have nerd. She has a virus free computer, I have multiple layers of security software and in spite of daily updates and scans,
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As I See It: Daniel, Part II
August 17, 2009 Victor Rozek
… Read moreThere are now 6.3 million people receiving unemployment benefits, the vast majority engaged in a desperate race to find work before the benefits run out. For many, like Daniel, with a family and a mortgage, at best unemployment offers a tenuous lifeline, easily stretched to breakpoint by the expenses of day-to-day survival. But having lost his home and family, maintaining his unemployment eligibility became even more of an imperative for Daniel.
What work he could find paid far less than his IT job and offered no benefits, but would strip him of his unemployment check. So Daniel entered the
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As I See It: Daniel, Part One
August 10, 2009 Victor Rozek
… Read moreUnless you’re a statistician or a baseball fan, statistics are boring. The numbers generated by the seizing economy and the ill-chosen efforts to resuscitate it, are sterile, too big to grasp, and void of back story. For the purpose of understanding, statistics are to experience what birth certificates are to giving birth. In other words, stripped of all consequence, there can be no understanding. William Greider, in his groundbreaking book Secrets of the Temple, an in-depth exploration of the workings of the Federal Reserve, acknowledged that each time the Board of Governors voted to increase interest rates, they understood
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As I See It: Injured Wing
July 20, 2009 Victor Rozek
… Read moreAbout the only time I set foot in a shopping mall is during the holiday season–coincidentally the same time everyone else does. So it’s no surprise that as I circle the parking lot for the fifth time, looking for an empty space that isn’t there, my frustration mounts. I can almost feel the holiday spirit leaching out of every pore. But just when I’m ready to run over Santa and be done with it, the answer to my problem glares at me from the front of every row. There, in the primo spot, at the head of every line, as
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As I See It: The Green Gap
July 13, 2009 Victor Rozek
… Read moreWhen the Great Economic Recovery finally arrives, many expect it to be riding a Green mount. No other sector, not even healthcare, has such potential to resuscitate the wheezing marketplace. The employment prospects alone can make a Job Czar tremble with anticipation. Two-and-a-half million jobs have the potential to transform the brown economic landscape into verdant shades of cash. And since IT percolates into all corners of all sectors, some of that employment should inevitably flow our way.
These days, however, America’s problem-solving prowess is more challenged than a German lullaby. Looking for answers to problems too long ignored, the
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As I See It: Oh the Jobs They Are a-Changin’
June 29, 2009 Victor Rozek
… Read moreRemember those tests we took as kids that required us to pick the item that did not belong in a sequence: A) bicycle, B) wheel, C) chain, D) handlebars, E) botox. Well, here’s one, courtesy of Time magazine. Going forward, the workplace will be: A) more flexible, B) more freelance, C) far less secure, D) run by a generation with new values, E) increasingly controlled by women. In fairness, I should have added F) all of the above, because Time believes all five conclusions to be true. But given these choices, one item on the list doesn’t fit. At least
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As I See It: Smarten Up
June 8, 2009 Victor Rozek
… Read moreIBM is worried about the world. Like a parent with an underachieving child, IBM thinks it’s time to sit the world down and have a serious conversation. So listen up world, the computer maker wants you to get smarter, because apparently you’re none too bright at the moment. In contrast to the fried philosopher Timothy Leary, however, who memorably urged the world to “turn on, tune in, and drop out,” the great thinkers at IBM have come up with a slightly less catchy dictum. They’re calling on the world to get “instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent.” Keep still my beating heart.
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As I See It: Expectations of Immediacy
May 26, 2009 Victor Rozek
… Read moreIn 1860, a revolutionary multi-species information delivery system was unveiled in St. Joseph, Missouri. Its creators were honest enough to name their enterprise after the harder-working species in the joint venture and called it the Pony Express. The system included 190 stations spaced approximately 10 miles apart–about as far as a horse could run at full gallop–and spanned some 2,000 miles between Missouri and California.
Some 183 riders and 400 horses carried mail between St. Joseph and Sacramento, capturing the imagination of a nation eager for more immediate news from its western frontier. Immediacy, however, is contextual and at that
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As I See It: Ah, Vacation!
May 11, 2009 Victor Rozek
… Read moreThe tiny specs on the massive Navajo-sandstone face are two men. They are hanging from absurdly long ropes, inching downward toward a spot a few hundred feet above the ground. The sun is merciless and they work quickly. One man begins boring a small hole in the sheer rock wall, while the other waits to insert a stick of dynamite. When he lights the long fuse, both men scramble up the ropes as high as they can before the explosion tears a portion of the wall away.
The year is 1924. The men have no sophisticated climbing gear, no specialized