Radical computing, economics & politics – connections?
If global economics were a computing system where the heck is THAT SA? 
So what is radical about current trends in computing, economics and US politics? **
Google-define:radical - revolutionary: markedly new or introducing radical change…
Are any of our recent economic, political or computing changes anything more than a natural evolution?
Are we seeing YAPS (yet another paradigm shift?) Physical to virtual to ethereal?
Politics
The US political scene is morphing through one of those incredible times – I hope folks remember that the person in the White House (even the current one) inherits not only from the previous leader but from EVERY PRECEDING leader. And don’t forget that all citizens contribute by voting/not-voting, sharing your voice (or not) and being actively involved in your community. Hmm, any connections with computing systems?
The (American) dream is alive. We, like many countries, have some challenging times ahead, but we are Americans; we will rise to meet any challenge. 
It is truly sad that our political races spend so little time on presenting true solutions and too much time on bashing the opposition – the reason (I think) is quite simple; neither presidential camp had ANY idea about what to do or how to do it for probably most of the issues that we are facing (i.e. no real, long term plans.) A second reason is that presenting slick info-mercials/ads is much, much easier, and perhaps a third reason is that advertising seems to be a results driven, on-target approach to getting elected. (Sounds like a IT sales cycle.) I don’t recall seeing any radical ideas during the election process (although it certainly has been and is a significant, historic time.) We can only speculate on whether or not promised change will be radical.
Economics – Are we enjoying the fruits of short term/non-thinking?
- Billon dollar bail outs? (the guy on the street wants to know where he can get his check)
- Failure (apparent corporate greed) is the new success????
- What happened to long term value(s)? strategies? planning?
- Stimulate ‘the economy’? How about reducing/eliminating short-term economic speculation? (We are all loosing from this type of activity.)
- What would happen if ALL automated computer trading were eliminated? or
- What would happen if ALL stock trades required a minimum 7 trading-day holding period?
- What would happen if we were paying a reasonable price for fuel?
- What would happen if gas stations were limited in the prices that they could charge for fuel already in their ground tanks? (i.e. no more than $0.05 change per day – we experienced gouging with overnight/hourly increases of $1 or more during the 2008 Hurricane Season.)
- What were auto manufacturer’s thinking when they delayed development/deployment/design of the types of vehicles we needed ~30 years ago?
- Is the current econmic environment a radical one? (I don’t think so – it reflects long-term cycles and I’m sure, at some point the current siuation will be reviewed with some level of root cause analysis – we did not get here over night; companies that have a clear mission with long term plans will continue while greed-based companies will disapear…)
Computing
The computer technology arena thrives (and companies fail or are so successful that they are ‘absorbed’) on rapid, sometimes radical change. The emergence of the cloud (whether it is an internal, local one or an external, global one) looks to be the next thing. Can your company take advantage of these seemingly radical trends?
What would happen if your business did not:
- have a DR/BC plan?
- monitor it’s systems and infrastructure?
- benchmark continuously?
- hire the best people you can find/develop?
- develop/follow best practice standards/procedures?
- develop and constantly refine/tune short and long term plans?
- plan for the lean times? peak times?
- have an eye out for radical approaches? (which may become ‘the next thing’ that allows you to do more with less or to simply have a market edge…)
At this point (IMO) the cloud has significant appeal for on-demand, utility computing (i.e. resources to handle compute spikes, resources to provide ‘extra’ compute power for special efforts, other specialized processes.) I consider it to still be somewhat radical – I don’t see it as a solution for any type of sensitive data (would you want any government entity placing your sensitive data into the cloud?) In-house or data-center machine virtualization, on the other hand simply makes significant sense (maximize resource utilization, provide a flexible environment for on-demand compute resource needs, smaller hardware footprints, reduced power consumption, and the list goes on – when did maintaining or enhancing operational security while reducing costs and increasing capacity, performance, and options not make sense?)
The most radical computing idea at present – desktops in the cloud – are you willing to store your personal/sensitive data somewhere out there?
As you enter or leave the tunnel, are your lights on?
** A bit of rambling – Spinning wheels or getting wheels to spin…
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