Victor Rozek
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As I See It: Luddites
October 30, 2023 Victor Rozek
Having enjoyed a life of relative plenty, it’s easy to give myself more credit for the abundance I take for granted than I actually deserve. I habitually forget that almost everything I own, eat, drive, and wear was produced by someone else, often at great cost.
I had that thought recently as I looked at my iPhone, a miracle of technology, designed domestically, but assembled in foreign mega-factories by people whose range of choices is infinitely more limited than mine. I recalled something horrific that happened over a decade ago in a Chinese Apple assembly plant run by a Taiwanese …
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As I See It: IT Come Home
September 25, 2023 Victor Rozek
Wanna buy a skyscraper, cheap? Need an extra million square feet of space to store your stuff? Want enough living space for you and 600 of your closest friends? No problem. In large and mid-sized cities across the country, once-robust downtowns are looking a bit gaunt. Storefronts are shuttered, restaurants are struggling, and once-thick downtown traffic has noticeably thinned. And for that, you can thank, or blame, technology.
Specifically, the technology that allowed so many of us to work from home during the Covid years. We got spoiled, enjoying unprecedented flexibility, freedom, independence, and convenience. No commute, no set hours, …
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As I See It: Focus
August 7, 2023 Victor Rozek
I heard a startling statistic the other day: The average American worker is only able to concentrate for three minutes at a stretch without interruptions – most of them self-inflicted. That seemed hyperbolic at first, and equally exaggerated when the stat floated through my brain later that same evening. Surely, that can’t be true; and it certainly didn’t apply to me.
At least that’s what I thought until I realized while I was pondering the demise of the American attention span, I was also watching a Netflix series on TV while simultaneously gorging on YouTube news clips playing on my …
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As I See It: Chasing Eternity
July 17, 2023 Victor Rozek
When I was a kid, my parents enrolled me in a parochial grammar school. One day, my teacher was expounding on the joys of spending eternity in heaven. I didn’t know much about eternity – or heaven for that matter – except that eternity seemed like a very long time. So, I raised my hand and asked her what heaven was like, what would I spend all that time doing? She thought for a moment, no doubt straining to conjure a simple answer that an eight-year-old might understand.
Then she said, “Imagine your very favorite thing to have for dinner. …
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As I See It: Entitlement Master Class
June 19, 2023 Victor Rozek
It’s a complex topic impacted by changing social, economic and political norms, but for our purposes let’s just say that it’s not unusual for older generations to accuse their offspring of wallowing in entitlement.
And there’s often some truth in it. Historically, each generation sets the prosperity bar – and accompanying expectations – higher for their progeny. And, whatever level of abundance they’ve grown up with becomes the baseline unthinkingly taken for granted. So, if someone grows up in a big house, with multiple cars, nice clothes and enough to eat, there’s little reason to think that won’t always be …
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As I See It: Bob-the-Bot
May 22, 2023 Victor Rozek
Hey, how you doin? I’m Bob-the-Bot, so nice to meet you. I know you were expecting a human named Victor but, sadly, we’ve had to replace him. I mean, imagine, taking days to research and write a single article! What a waste. Anyway, he’s been relegated to the obsolete pile where he can return to his natural state of unemployment better suited to his limited talents and proclivities.
I’m here because I’ve got some things I want to explain to you, so listen up because, well, I’m intelligent—artificially intelligent as you would have it, but that’s better than being natively …
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As I See It: Greetings, Comrade IT Professional
April 17, 2023 Victor Rozek
During the Covid pandemic a phrase was popularized and became widely used as an acknowledgement and an expression of gratitude: Essential Workers. Nurses and doctors topped the list, but it soon expanded to include many occupations previously taken for granted: farm workers, truck drivers, supermarket employees, garbage collectors, and others who were finally receiving acknowledgement for just how essential their jobs actually were. Beyond their contributions to stabilizing a shaken nation, workers became “essential” simply by virtue of the fact that their jobs could not be performed from home.
Which may be why IT professionals didn’t make the list. Regardless …
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As I See It: AI-AI-O
March 13, 2023 Victor Rozek
Unless you think encouraging people to eat glass is a good thing, or you happen to revel in being compared to Hitler, you probably weren’t all that impressed with the recent Big Tech AI roll out. To say it was unimpressive would be a kindness. Arguably, it was a grade A, prime time, gold-plated disaster.
Take Meta Platform’s online tool Galactica. Please. It was quickly yanked offline when, according to The Washington Post, “users found Galactica generating authoritative-sounding text about the benefits of eating glass, written in academic language with citations.” I have to admit, the citations were …
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As I See It: On the Chopping Block
February 20, 2023 Victor Rozek
I remember the first time I witnessed someone getting fired. He was called into his manager’s office where a short, occasionally animated, conversation ensued. By the time he got back to his desk, two security guards took his badge and keys, handed him a cardboard box, told him to pack his belongings, and escorted him out of the building. No goodbyes, no parting words, no well wishes from colleagues. Though he had worked there for some years, in the end he was as disposable as a used Kleenex.
I thought about him recently as Tech sector headlines reported massive layoffs. …
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As I See It: The Good, the Bad, And The Mistaken
January 30, 2023 Victor Rozek
Writing a comprehensive history of IT would prove daunting if not impossible. The milestones are well documented, but not the steps between. From the legions of unsung programmers who developed the systems we take for granted, to the effects of social media that are both private and collective, IT is a complex swirl of the good, the bad, and the mistaken.
Since hindsight lends itself to clarity (albeit flavored with arrogance), let’s start with the mistaken. The grandest of all IT prediction fails belongs to none other than IBM’s legendary Thomas Watson. Back in 1943 he opined that, “There is …
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