Steve Prentice's Blog, page 17

Cedexis – The speed of business is in milliseconds

 

 

Perfect!

I write professionally for CloudTweaks, an authority on cloud computing. This link takes you to a story I recently filed that talks about the work being done by Cedexis, in testing, analyzing and categorizing global cloud performance. It is reminiscent of the “blipverts” concept of the 1980′s TV series Max Headroom, and goes to show just how much the issue of business success now comes down to milliseconds.

Take the hype out of Hyperloop

The Hyperloop

It amazes me to read the reactions to the recent proposal by Elon Musk to create a hyperloop – essentially a vacuum tube running from San Francisco to LA, and maybe later one running across the country. Choruses of “it can’t be done” resonate across the media with deafening unanimity.

I ask the question “why can’t it be done?”

I don’t mean why in terms of “how many curves does the track need,” or “what are the issues regarding heat buildup?” for those are the technicalities of innovation that human beings are very good at resolving.

My concern is, why can’t it be done by a nation that was founded on “can-do?” Why do people and the media leap on a good idea and pillory it in the town square?

I think always about Google Earth and Google Street View:  The enormous effort of not only indexing the streets and neighborhoods of much of the world, but also actually photographing them in person, and then stitching all the photographs together, and then making them searchable and findable, and then making the results visible on any type of computer for free, and then making it available all over again in 3D. Imagine if any one of our many layers of government had tried to undertake such a project. It would have been buried under mountains of feasibility studies, consultants, diverted funds, earmarked bills, protests, obstruction, cost overruns, strikes, incompatibilities, defects, incompetence and graft. Yet a single company undertook to do this. And they went out and did it. And they succeeded. On their own dime.

The future has always belonged to pioneers and visionaries. Sir Richard Branson named his company Virgin because he went into businesses where he had no experience. He just went and did it. Sometimes he failed. Other times he succeeded enormously. More humbly, but equally significant, the inventor of the 3M Post-It note worked, on company time, to noodle with an idea that was an original project failure: a glue that wouldn’t stick.

Invention comes from experimentation. Innovation comes from drive and vision. Naysayers stand on the sidelines and laugh, yet they’re always ready to come to the party once success has been attained. How many of the people that we observe daily, texting messages to their coworkers or family members, would have greeted with a shudder of revulsion the prospect of carrying a mobile device containing a camera, that can be tracked by big business and government through a series of relay towers? Yet there they are.

The vision of Elon Musk is akin to the works of John F. Kennedy, when he challenged America to put a human on the moon by the end of the decade. It is akin to the ideas of Steve Jobs, or of Nobutoshi Kihara, the Japanese inventor who had the audacity to put a music player (the Sony Walkman) into a person’s pocket. With PayPal, Elon Musk changed the way people do business and transfer money. Mark Zuckerberg changed the way people relate to each other. Did these people ask for permission to do this? No. Did they ask whether it could or should be done? No, they just went ahead and did it.

The great value of Musk’s Hyperloop vision is it gets people talking. In this age of open source idea-sharing, someone else will come along and raise his idea to a new level. The ultimate hyperloop transport may look and operate nothing like Musk’s current vision, the same way a passenger jet has little resemblance to the Wright Brother’s flying machine.

What is sad is that the number of vocal nasayers seems to be greater than the number of enthusiasts. Too many people are more interested in protecting the status quo, where their vested interests currently lie, than to explore new options, which may have great and lucrative ramifications in the near future.

A company can only ever be moving forward or moving backward. You advance or you die. This notion applies to countries and civilizations also. When resistance to innovation overpowers personal motivation, the nation dies. And other hungrier nations leap in to fill the void.

I for one would like to see the media, and its corporate masters refrain from their soft mockery of visionary inventors, scientists and geeks, and instead question where the world (or at least their corner of it) will be in 50 years if these people are not given the credibility that they deserve. Because the status quo is not in a rock-solid state. It it like glass – a liquid that drips slowly down by the inexorable pull of gravity and of reality.

Time Management: Decisions

I write for Time Management for iPad Magazine, an authority on Time Management. This link takes you to Issue 11, which contains an article I wrote on decision-makng techniques. Here is an excerpt:

“Five seconds before Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and his colleagues successfully crash-landed their Soyuz capsule onto the steppes of Kazakhstan, Mission Control sent the following command: “close your mouths.” This was a timely and proactive message, given that immediately afterwards, the capsule made contact with earth with the force of a serious car crash. Had the control centre not issued that command loudly and verbally, one or more tongues might have been involuntarily bitten off from the impact. There were too many things for the astronauts to focus on at that point, which is why there was both a checklist, and a person assigned to read the command exactly on time. This was not a moment for decision-making; it was a moment for rote action.

For all humans, time and decisions make uneasy bedfellows, since decisions usually require more time than they are given, and pressure makes the entire process physiologically difficult. Humans are also reactive by nature; we are designed to move instinctively, and the capacity for reasoned thought is still very new to us, collectively, as a species…”

To read more, please click here.

Time Management for iPad Article: Decisions

I write for Time Management for iPad Magazine, an authority on Time Management. This link takes you to an article I wrote for Issue 11, on decision-makng techniques.

Volometrix – What would you say you actually DO here?

What would you say you actually DO here?

I write professionally for CloudTweaks, an authority on cloud computing. This link takes you to a story I filed that covers a great application created by Volometrix that allows IT managers and C-suite types a better understanding of where tasks and resources are being deployed, and the true costs involved in working with clients, vendors and other resources.  It comes with dashboard graphics and allows for a true thousand-foot view of business activities. Very dynamic and useful stuff!

The Lurking Dangers of “Bring your Own Cloud” (BYOC)

I write professionally for CloudTweaks, an authority on cloud computing. This link takes you to a story I filed following my interview with Nimmy Reichenberg of AlgoSec. It looks at the dangers of “Bring Your Own Cloud” (BYOC). In short, BYOC refers to the practice of people using free cloud services such as DropBox or iCloud to store company documents and files. As secure as these services may be, Reichenberg cautions that they are not always the best choice for sensitive corporate information.

CloudTweaks Post: Egnyte, Google Docs and a cool hybrid concept

I write professionally for CloudTweaks, an authority on cloud computing. This link takes you to a story I wrote regarding the new collaboration between Egnyte and Google Docs, which allows for seamless cloud/non-cloud access PLUS real time, multi-person document collaboration. Cool!

 

Time Management for iPad Article: Tools

I write for Time Management for iPad Magazine, an authority on Time Management. This link takes you to an article I wrote for Issue 10, on time management tools.

Time Management for iPad Article: Overload

I write for Time Management for iPad Magazine, an authority on Time Management. This link takes you to an article I wrote on overload.

Why I love Vine

Vine! Huh! What’s it good for? Absolutely nuthin! Say it again…

I love Vine, the six-second revolving video app. I love it because it is useless.

Well, actually it is not the app that I love so much, as I do its potential, and most specifically the potential of the human beings who will come into contact with it and make it something great.

Vine, as it stands right now, seems pretty limited. Six-seconds of low grade video without any options for editing or sound. As such the overwhelming chorus from those who have given it the once-over is, “what’s the point in that? What’s it good for?”

History is full of stories of innovations that enjoyed little warmth when they first entered the world. The ubiquitous Post-It note from 3M was a product failure; a glue that wouldn’t stick properly. No-one wanted a fax machine or later, an email address, since, at the time of the release of both of these technologies, there was no-one else to talk to. Television was dismissed as a vast wasteland; the Beatles were turned down by Decca records, since in their minds in 1960, guitar music was on the way out. Even Bill Gates had a hard time envisioning why anyone would want more than 640K of RAM. I think my espresso machine has more than that.

For every person who dismisses an innovation, there is another, who asks, “what if?” and a lot of these people end up on TED Talks, sharing their passion and their creativity, energetically aware that a Wiki approach to life – openness and synergy, yields more than does keeping ones cards close to the chest.

Synergy is a hugely powerful driving force.

Take, for example, the 3D printer. In the early months of its public existence it was able to print out doorstops and small toys, to which the chorus of naysayers cried, “Marvellous! a 21st century ashtray made out of 21st century clay.”

But then, something interesting happened. Someone asked, “what if we were to use this device to create medical implants?” And then out came bionic jawbones, and breathing stents for premature babies. Then someone else asked, “what if we could create food in transportable formats to feed the 2/3 of the world who can’t find enough to eat?” And out came pizzas, made from natural protein sources like insects and algae (OK, not so palatable for first-world tastes, but transportable and non perishable nonetheless).

There is an engineer/artist by the name of Theo Jansen who has created a new form of “life” out of straw and water bottles – creatures who walk along the beach, store wind energy for later use, and learn how to stay alive all on their own. His video is both fascinating and chilling. These creatures have an organic reality and a poetic beauty all at once.

And again, the question arises, “what are they good for?” And again, someone, somewhere will see these beasts, and will be able to see a way by which they can be used – for farming or water retrieval in desolately poor areas, perhaps, or for minesweeping, or any one of a thousand yet-to-be conceived uses.

It is is a common turn of phrase for an adult to ask a teenager or child, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” which I think is a very unfair burden to place on a young mind. The closest I have ever come is to ask a young person “what do you want to be first?” since I believe that every person has the potential and the right to reinvent themselves as often as it suits.

Yes, the world will always need plumbers and doctors, (not so much lawyers or hedge fund managers), but many of the jobs of a decade from now have yet to be invented, and they will likely be invented by these kids themselves.

So that is why I like Vine. It is, at this moment, apparently useless. As useless as an unused camera, pen or line of code. All it is waiting for is the spark of someone else’s genius to touch it, and make it become something amazing. Just like Twitter before it, or the Arpanet before that. And if Vine does indeed fizzle, the way the Newton and the the Laserdisc fizzled, the energy of its short-lived existenced will fuel the next new thing. Someone, somewhere will have the vision and curiosity to ask, “what if we were to do this?” And the wonder of humankind’s collective brilliance will shine anew.