My relationship to my career and my work is very strained right now.

I am exceedingly frustrated with the path I am on and my potential future within the technology industry. I really WANT to work in a system which is closer to my feeling of technology as a service delivery, enhancement, or provision mechanism, not the end product. The commodification of technology products is really eating away at my relationship to my work. I really want to use technology to make people's lives better.

It reminds me of the quote attributed to Steve Jobs talking to John Sculley in order to recruit him to Apple: "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water to children, or do you want a chance to change the world?" Now I feel like saying to the tech industry: "Do you want to spend the rest of your life making commodified tech toys, or do you want a chance to really do something important?"

IPhone vs. Android

I see this as a battle for developers as much as it is about the phones. Yes, there is a SIGNIFICANT difference between the phones ... hardware ... philosophy ... etc. but the war for developers is shaping up as just as significant. With Apple "locking down" their phones and only allowing distribution of applications that they approve, as a developer, I can't see the value proposition of even developing something for the IPhone. You spend time and, potentially, money coding up an application and then Apple says, "Umm, no thanks. We don't think it's good enough." or even "No, sorry, it's not different enough from other applications." This would drive me bat-shit. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU WON'T LET MY APPLICATION ON YOUR PHONE? LET PEOPLE DECIDE IF MY APPLICATION IS GOOD ENOUGH.

However, in converse, I also wonder whether people will truly want the options to have as flexible a phone as they could potentially have with an Android phone. I think that may come down to how well T-Mobile, Google, et al, can convince people that they aren't ~just~ buying a phone but a small mini-computer that you can talk through.

I was thinking about elections in the United States today. I know that the Presidential election is actually defined ... I think it's by law but it might be even defined in the Constitution that it be the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. It's not a bad time of the year but it can be cold, rainy, stormy, even snowy in various parts of the country. There probably isn't a better time of the year to have it.

However, the PRIMARIES are another story. I don't mind that the primaries begin in January or how people complain so much about how long the primary season is but I do have a couple of suggestions and a proposal for, in my opinion, making the scheduling a little better. In the text below, I am going to use "primary" to mean "primary, caucus or any other method(s) of choosing a candidate for a particular party".

1. The 1st primary cannot occur before January 15th. This allows two weeks between the holidays and when people vote. This also lessens the load of commercials during the holiday break when nobody is thinking about politics except the candidates.
2. I think the country should be subdivided into zones. These zones can be defined in various arbitrary ways.
3. The primary season should be defined as January 15th thru May 15th. Four months should be enough to schedule everything. If things are decided by May 15th, that gives plenty of time to raise money and prepare for the conventions (which should be scheduled earlier in August to allow for them to occur and people have a more peaceful, less intense Labor Day holiday).
4. To deal with the Iowa/NH/SouthCarolina/Nevada problem ... based on these zones that get defined ... one state ... ideally one of the states mentioned earlier in this line item ... will "go first" from each zone. These "one states" would be set by the parties, should be varied somewhat, and can be scheduled in January to reflect whatever values the parties want. For example, if the Dems want to have "representative" states which have rich POC elements, they might schedule SoCarolina, Nevada, Michigan, etc. If the Repubs want large states first, let 'em go for it.
5. These zones should rotate in order. First one year goes to last and the others move up one slot.
6. One zone every one-two weeks which will allow plenty of time for geographical focus.

For example,
Zone 1: Northeast: ME, NH (unless NH "goes first"), VT, MA, RI
Zone 2: Mid-Atlantic1: CT, NY, NJ, PA, DE
Zone 3: Mid-Atlantic2: MD, DC, VA, WV
Zone 4: South1: NC, SC, GA, FL
Zone 5: South2: MS, AL, LA, TN
Zone 6: OH, MI, IN, KY
Zone 7: IL, WI, MN, Iowa
Zone 8: MO, AR, KS, NE, ND, SD
Zone 9: TX, OK
Zone 10: AZ, UT, CO, NM, WY, MT
Zone 11: WA, OR, ID, AK
Zone 12: CA, NV, HI
Zone 13: Others (PR, Guam, Abroad, etc.)

just an idea ...

Maybe it's because I see things differently ... but every headline that mentions the phrase of how the economy is weakening ... well, I see it differently.

If people actually rebalance the economy based on buying less and saving more, we will have a MUCH stronger economy which would weather slight storms in job creation or other economic downturns because people would HAVE savings, banks would have stronger balance sheets with more money to lend, and not only the economy but the environment would thrive because people wouldn't buy as much or dispose of as much stuff.

Thought for today ...

Even though this doesn't sound optimistic ....

Even if the unemployment rate gets to 10% or 15% or 20%, that still means that 80-90% of us will be working. I intend to be part of the 80-90%.

Just a note to dwell on for later. From my Microeconomics book ...

"When do choices made in the pursuit of self-interest also promote the social interest?"

... and, I thought, how can we incentivize people to make these choices which are both in their own self-interest and in the social interest?

So ... tell me why again is it that we set economic and political policy based on the Dow, a weighted index of 50 stocks which is not in any way weighted in proportion to the stocks' contributions to the economy.