Skip to main content

Ready, Set, Reboot?

This century only 20 years old has already pushed the boundaries of never before seen statistics and many firsts.

Some nutjobs with skewed ideology flew commercial planes into large buildings killing 3,500 in the richest economy on earth.

India did a global pilot with 1.3 Billion people when they decided to remove their most popular paper currency in an exercise called demonetization.

Net result - some black market types got hammered.  Poor people (which is half of India's population) got hammered.  Today net result is that the grey economy continues with new Rupee notes.  Duh!

World stock markets reached all time highs.  Man made indices to represent the fastest growth companies rang up huge profits as cost of capital plummeted.  World banks dropped interest rates to levels not seen ever.  Some went to Zero and some Negative.  It costs money to put it in a bank not the other way.

More people are alive than ever before approaching 8 billion.

The internet took on a life of its own with the fastest data transfer rates ever achieved.

More petabytes were added in this century alone than any point in history in a cumulative 2,000 years.  More people started tapping on pieces of glass aka smartphones than all the globe's woodpeckers ever tapped on wood.

Then came COVID pandemic.

Outside of the largest swings in capital markets the world over, the miniscule virus put the entire world out of order.

America which touted to be the richest country in the world and who built and sold the most expensive fighter jet ever at price tag of just over  $0.5 Billion dollars apiece ran out of 75 cent face masks for its doctors when the virus hit.

The planet largely was ordered to shut down and lock up - the largest ever experiment of its kind in peacetime.

Pollution levels have dropped and probably the wildlife around us is confused... but the sun is still shining and earth is still spinning.

So at some point the world now would want to get back to its business of life.  How?

America announced a largest ever $2 Trillion relief package for its people... how it will help - time will tell.

How many might die and how will those left behind adapt?  The sporting life does not look sporting just now - what with the first ever Olympic Games being postponed.

What else you ask might befall this species?

No idea.  But this would be the largest REBOOT of a stopped system EVER.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A few good books

 On an informal mission to read one book a week as long as the eyes allow for such ambition. Fiction or non is not important as long as it entertains and /or educates. To that end the past few weeks have brought a bounty in the form of some wonderful and then not so engaging literature. Among the notables are - Non fiction category: 1. Good arguments by Bo Seo (how to handle a dispute or debate the most efficient way possible) 2. Genesis by Eric Schmidt (and former US Secy of State Henry Kissinger, who recently passed) - how AI might affect our lives as we know it 3. One in a billion - Zarna Garg (an autobiographical look at an Indian born American woman with a bindi narrated in a standup format - yes it is at times cliched but still funny) Fiction: 1. Personal by Lee Child (a vigilante story with Jack Reacher the giant, nomad protagonist of Child's novels goes hunting for a sniper) 2. Ramayana unraveled by Ami Ganatra (she might disagree about it being a work of fiction but oh wel...

Back in DC

This time for a tech conference in the realm of what else? AI. But applied to an oft neglected space called Knowledge Management. The latter is a community of practice that focuses on analyzing, organizing and making available reams of data that have been gathered over time by various functions within an organization for anyone in the company to utilize. This function or process is ripe for applying AI agents (or agentic AI framework) and optimize for better outcomes. It was informative. More rewarding was getting acquainted with folks who practice this craft as well as learning of what they see in the corporate or public sectors. Since the venue was Washington DC it also afforded me the chance to take evening strolls albeit the weather was trying. With wind chill in the single digit it still is a glamorous place to perambulate through history absorbing what this country has been through since its founding days. I was able to visit the place Lincoln was killed along with his monument t...

Costa Rica

 Our first foray into Central America. That elongated isthmus that forms the geographic boundary between two vast continents of North and South America. Specifically landing for NYE 2026 in San Jose, Costa Rica. Capital city for this region that does not have its own army, instead relying on its big bro the Estados Unidos to the north is a metropolis of approx. 500K people. Largely wilderness and with both a Pacific and Carribean/Atlantic coast the country is rich in bio diversity. In Spanish it means the rich coast so named by Columbus landing in early 16th century and being mesmerized by the local tribes sporting gold jewelry.   Our stay included visiting the foothills of a large strato volcano called Arenal and enjoying the naturally heated thermal baths for a while.  Lunching amidst lush forest and watching indigenous species of avian noise makers fly overhead. Toucans, some sort of pea hens, multiple song bird species completed the spectacle. Iguanas and a lonel...