Chiba-City

Our legacy "computer industry" was a lend/lease styled business model industry. Our legacy "computer companies" were financing companies. Not "computing" companies. That lends/lease financing business model justified the sales forces operating on commissions. All that is over now.

Everything has changed now. Computer automation (CPU, RAM, Storage, I/O) is now priced in the mere 100's of dollars. That signifies "stuff" you can buy at Best Buy or even 7/11. Stuff you can "buy" signifies "stuff" that cannot be sold on commission. There is no more role for financing (lend/lease). There are no roles for sales forces operating on commissions.

I love bits and bytes. So what? Follow the money.

Great article. Read all of it twice. Don't fixate on one or two sentences.

I once worked in Fed Govt IT system. Remember the 2015 OPM (Office of Personnel Management) data breach? If not, read up on that (use a search engine). Over 22 million government personnel records were released into the wild. The Wikipedia article "blames China," but some folks told me that multiple agency personnel and multiple agency contractors had simply put everyday Fed Govt OPM spreadsheets on everyday Web sites to make them easy to share.

"Experts" rarely grasp the everyday 1. incompetence, 2. indifference, 3. recklessness and 4. even corruption pervasive across and thriving in all our "elite institutions."

We need to take Robert Salow's Productivity Paradox (look it up) very seriously. All the incentives line up for "experts" to sell more things and sell newer things. But we are often (always?) selling bandaids for the previous bandaids, while users (customers) are swallowing birds to catch the spiders to catch the flies. Solved problems cease being problems. That's sadly bad for the IT business.

I enjoy making photographs on black and white films. Different films are something like different musical instruments. A C# played on a guitar and a C# played on an oboe sound different. The lens, the exposure, the developer and the processing ritual also all make a difference.

Years ago, I threw away my coffee maker, espresso maker, microwave, toaster oven and most other kitchen "appliances." I did keep a few electric grinders/mixers. But I also have some manual grinders.

I make coffee in a glass jar (gravity filter) or with a moka pot and concentrate on the ingredients now and brew coffee with cardamom and ceylon cinnamon.

The last thing I want in my kitchen are devices with blinking lights and clocks. My cast iron, carbon steel, stainless steel and glass gear have no moving parts. They are magically "compatible" with serial, parallel and USB cables. I'm the moving parts.