• As I See It: Elusive Connections

  November 27, 2023 Victor Rozek

  Between the ages of 2 and 6, I formed a deep attachment to a small stuffed bear. I played with it, talked to it, and slept with it. It was my constant companion and before I moved on in my development, I had loved much of its fur off.

  America, according to mental health experts, is experiencing a loneliness epidemic. On a planet straining with the weight of 8 billion people, it seems that an uncanny number lack meaningful connection. A problem not likely to be solved by embracing stuffed animals.

  In a study commissioned by healthcare/insurance giant Cigna, “more …

  Read more

• 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 …

  Read more

• As I See It: Transitions

  April 18, 2022 Victor Rozek

  Over the past two years, as many of us sequestered, masked-up in public, dodged strangers, and kept friends at arm’s length, our socially distanced conversations shared a common, oft-expressed yearning: “I just want my life back.”

  Now that we’re in a lull between variant fronts, millions of us are anxious to reclaim our old, comfortable and predictable lives. They may not have been perfect, but they were at least manageable, set in a world we knew how to navigate.

  Beyond familiarity, our old lives were even more central to our identity. As sociologist Anthony Giddens notes: “A person’s identity is …

  Read more

• As I See It: Two Front War

  March 28, 2022 Victor Rozek

  History records that the Second World War began when Germany invaded Poland, breaching its western border on September 1, 1939. For the Poles, however, that accounted for only half of their unfolding misery. Largely forgotten, 16 days later, the Russians invaded Poland from the East.

  Being situated between Germany and Russia in the war-ravaged 20th century turned out to be geographically inauspicious. Long after the Germans were defeated, the Russians stayed. Opportunistic invasion turned into long-term occupation.

  A similar story is unfolding in Ukraine, where a two-front war is being waged: one analog, the other digital. Weeks before tanks and …

  Read more

• As I See It: The Ideal Workplace, Part 2

  January 24, 2022 Victor Rozek

  New year, new possibilities. And what better place to start than sharing the experiences and aspirations of IT professionals.

  Last month, as 2021 was coming to an end, I asked readers for feedback on how they would describe their ideal workplace; the issues that were important to them, the quality of their working environment, and how they wanted to be treated by their company and its management. I offered a list of issues for consideration, and below is a summary of their responses.

  The first question was a variation of the classic “paper or plastic” dilemma. Would you prefer to …

  Read more

• As I See It: The Ideal Workplace

  December 13, 2021 Victor Rozek

  Traditionally, at yearend, I would write a predictive article about IT trends and prospects for the coming year. But if you’re not among the lucky few who have been abducted by aliens and kept closeted these past two years, you doubtless already know that our foreseeable future will include more dreck and disruption, liberally peppered with stress and uncertainty.

  Of course, computers could care less, but the people who work with them do, so writing about anything uplifting was preferable to another dose of dour reality. I wracked my brain to find it, failed miserably, and was about to settle …

  Read more

• As I See It: The Management Challenge

  October 18, 2021 Victor Rozek

  Imagine coaching an athletic team under the following conditions: Some percentage of your players do not practice in your facility. You have minimal contact with them, and even less influence over how, when, and how long they practice. Building and maintaining team cohesion is almost impossible. There’s a chance some of your players may be unavailable at some point during the season, and your training facility could be closed for an unspecified period of time. Yet you are still expected to win.

  That’s roughly the situation in which managers find themselves. Some percentage of their employees probably still work from …

  Read more

• As I See It: Delusionware

  July 19, 2021 Victor Rozek

  Currency has always been the product of mass hallucination. From shells to spices, bottle caps to urine, what people decide is valuable, and what they are willing to trade life energy for, is as varied as imagination and circumstance. (In case you’re wondering, clean urine is used in prisons to pass drug tests and can be bartered for goods and services that are best left unnamed.)

  All that is required for a currency to have value is that enough people share the same delusion. And suddenly, little pieces of paper with numbers and the faces of departed presidents (and lesser …

  Read more

• As I See It: Orwellian

  May 24, 2021 Victor Rozek

  In last month’s article, I expressed ambivalence about our increasing reliance on technology and its growing dominance even as it slips ever further from our control. The challenge presented by a host of computer technologies is how to maximize their benefits while minimizing their potential for harm. And the more powerful the technology, the greater the temptation to weaponize it.

  I closed the article with the following statement:

  We are already using artificial intelligence on an enterprise scale. It won’t be long before it’s used on a planetary scale. Computer intelligence is evolving much quicker than human intelligence. According …

  Read more

• As I See It: Ambivalence

  April 19, 2021 Victor Rozek

  Former business professor Aaron Levenstein once said: “Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is interesting. But what they hide is vital.” Unlike the bikini wearer, however, statistics are bloodless, void of experience, and often boring. Except of course to statisticians.

  Broadly speaking there are two types of statistics: the ones that make your eyes roll to the back of your head, and the ones that make your eyes pop out of your head. This is the latter, courtesy of economist Robert Reich. Reich calculated that in 2020 Jeff Bezos’ net worth rose by $2,378 every second! You read …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles