Recently in Essays Category

I recently heard a saying: "most problems come from indecision."

While the source was a TV show, the statement struck me as both profound and meaningful on both personal and professional levels.

Think about a difficult decision you faced. So much angst goes into making a decision, considering the alternatives, making sure everyone is involved, debating the costs. What if this? What if that? All the hand wringing and second-guessing occurs before the decision is made.

Once the decision is made, the path is clear and the rest is execution, the details.

There are more nuances to this topic of course. Some people just decide and let others pick up the pieces while others really think about things before a decision and agonize. Some situations are half-decisions, like the things you do because you are forced to not because you actually wanted to.

But overall its a phrase worth thinking about when faced with your own decisions: "most problems come from indecision."

I love the Ancient Greeks. Centuries before Christianity was invented, the Greeks sure knew a lot about human nature. Something that doesn’t seem to have changed much in the past 2,000 years.

"Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief" (20th Century Fox)

I recently watched the mediocre movie “Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief”. A modernization of Greek mythology for the Twilight-teenies crowd.

The movie depicts the land of the Lotus Eaters as being a casino in Las Vegas. Clever idea that got me thinking.

While the land of the Lotus Eaters probably started as physical place for alcohol, drugs and general hedonism, it is not just a physical place.

You get to a comfortable place in life. Your basic needs are being met. You get older. You get lazy. You get slow. You forget things you knew, you lose your ambition and drive, you lose track of time and any sense of urgency and eventually you forget the person you wanted to be. Time passes…

The land of the Lotus Eaters may be a physical place for the young but it is also a very real state of mind for those of us who are getting older.

In the coverage of the recent Japanese disaster, I heard a quote that got me thinking.

"Why has this happened to us?"

What a powerful sentence. Just think about that for a few seconds and the humanity of it. Why has happened to us?

A cultural touchstone

I have written before about the Japanese psyche on display in their media. Take science fiction stories.

American sci-fi are basically Westerns: A badass dude rolls into town, kills everyone who disagrees with him, roll the credits. We idolize victory through violence.

Japanese sci-fi is either about an apocalyptic event or about rebuilding after an apocalyptic event. I bet NeoTokyo is the #1 location in all Japanese comics.

Can you blame them?

History

By all account Japan is a beautiful island nation. Ocean coasts, green valleys, tall forests, rocky mountains.

Unfortunately for Japan, the island is also on the Pacific Ocean's "ring of fire". An active region where tectonic plates meet and the resulting collisions of the Earth's crust creates volcanos and earth quakes and those quakes in turn create tsunamis.

For centuries, the Japanese have had to live with earthquakes and tsunamis. One moment you are fine, the next moment the Earth opens up, and the house falls down. One moment you are fine, the next moment your family is killed. One moment things are normal, the next moment the town burns down in a fire after the quake or a tsunami pours in a ruins the harvest.

A thing like that would weigh on anyone's mind and over time influence the culture itself. Since the invention of TV and shows like "Cops", American's love to dwell on imaginary disaster but the Japanese have had to live with the realities.

Then comes World War Two. Japan is one of the pre-eminant military powers in the world. Close the the height of their power when the US uses atomic weapons on two of their cities. One second you are walking down the street, the next second you are a shadow burned into a wall. In the blink of an eye, the city you grew up in is vaporized and the unlucky survivors have to deal with the aftermath and the radioactive fallout for a generation.

If you are Japanese, not only are you at the mercy of natural events like earthquakes an tsunamis but also atomic weapons. Things like that can fuck with your brain.

2011

Then comes March 2011.

Japan suffers a massive earthquake. A devastating tsunami that displaces 50,000 people. A nuclear power meltdown. And it snows.

"Why has this happened to us?"

I hear you. If I lost everything, my house, my family, my town... I might well give up.

It is a testament to the Japanese culture that they dont give up.

But Japan is not a Christian nation. They dont believe God is punishing them. They dont believe they are cursed or that disasters are caused by gays in the military or letting women vote or allowing abortions. The Japanese are orderly, and organized, and show the kind of practical, common-sense and self-sacrifice that American's havent shown in two generations. I wish them luck.

It is natural to ask why terrible things happen to us but the only real answer is that such things happen in life. Sometimes the only thing you can do is move forward as best you can.

We are all watching and wishing you the best of luck, Japan.

Disney is re-issuing Bambi on blue-ray.

I remember two things about seeing that movie. One, I saw it in the theater. Two, I cried. (You know Bambi's mommy gets killed, right?)

With a 4 year old, I find myself watching a lot of fairy tale movies and reading a lot of fairy tale books. After a while I began to notice something about them.

Almost all of the classic stories are about orphans. After all, you cant have wicked step mothers without orphans. This observation got me thinking about our society and how much things have changed for the better over the past century.

stories of the past

Looking at old movies and books, one can see that life must have been very, very hard. Human children are completely defenseless for years and most old fairy tales are about the struggle of those children to survive.

Snow White? Wicked step-mother queen who tries to kill the innocent princess. Even the huntsman is supposed to cut out her heart. (When was the last time you cut the heart out of anything?)

Cinderella? The classic wicked step mother story with evil sister's to boot. She spends her day doing grueling housework not watching TV.

As recently as the 1980's movie Fox and Hound, the story revolves around an orphan, albeit a fox. The movie opens with momma fox being killed and the rest of the movie discusses the topic of hunting animals.

At one point I realized that my daughter had no idea what a step mother was. She had no idea what an orphan was. She didnt know where chicken nuggets came from or why anyone would shoot an animal.

I understand that President Reagan in the 1980's started to close government mental hospitals and orphanages. Frankly you just dont hear about orphans in the USA anymore.

Look at the famous Charles Dicken's books you read in high school. Packs of parentless orphans living in the street, being taken advantage of, fending for themselves.

Compare these tales to the $1,200 Buggaboo strollers or celebrity adoptions of today. It is clear that this generation is living so much better than previous ones.

stories of today

Orphans basically come from a few places: war, poverty, disease and childbirth. I suspect the mass groups of orphans in this country peaked at world war two. While we have had wars since then, they have not been that massive or disruptive in this country. Likewise medicine has increased drastically and mothers dying in childbirth is a rare event. For the last twenty years, life has been downright wonderful here.

These days we worry about our cell phone bills, what shows to watch on TV and how many gifts to give the kids at xmas not whether they get one at all.

Which is not to diminish the lives of hardship that many live and the number of orphans that remain, but it just struck me how unnatural it is today to talk about a wicked step mother or scrubbing the steps with a brush.

Movies like Slumbdog Millionaire show that lives of poverty and desperation continue to exist around the world. War and poverty still create packs of parentless children who are preyed upon and must fend for themselves... just not here.

Look at the fairy tales of the last twenty years. None of them are about orphans.

The Little Mermaid? Nope. Aladdin? Nope. Anything by Pixar? Cars, Toy Story, the Incredibles - nope. Lilo & Stitch comes close but its about sisters and it bombed. Even Japanese movies by Studio Gibli (Ponyo, Spirited Away) avoid the topic.

Our media today struggles with a different topic: depicting ghastly violence in movies and video games but that violence is imaginary. It often has no point and differs greatly from the real violence of food, war, and survival. The basic skills of hunting and preparing an animal to eat is far removed from our lives today.

now what?

It is clear that our stories have changed to reflect changes in our society but how do you deal with the classic stories?

How do you explain to a child about death? "Where did her parents go, daddy?" How do you explain where orphans come from? "What happened to the fox?"

I suspect most parents just avoid the topic. Even though we eat hamburgers every day, meat now comes from the grocery store not from animals. Death and loss that have been such a part of the human experience throughout history dont seem to have a place in the American childhood of today.

Not sure how I feel about it myself. On one hand, life is still a struggle and I want my child prepared to survive. On the other hand, who wants to take away a child's innocence a day earlier that you have to?

Another sign of our wealth and prosperity is that we even have to think about it and make a choice. The choice is not thrust on us by events.

This topic is just another of the difficult issues we face today as parents and the answer you make has a lot to do with what you think the job of a parent is.

Oh Borders...

When I was a child, my parents would take me to the best book store in town. I liked to look through the amazing magazine selection.

The store was in a boring location in the middle of campus. When I went back for college, I gained a new appreciation for the store. The employees there actually read books. LOTS of books. If you had a question or wanted a recommendation, the clerks there could talk your ear off. It was a bookstore for book lovers.

Years later, Borders went national. Then they got bought by Kmart or something. Things changed. Borders changed.

Now it sounds like they are going out of business. Years ago, I heard that only few percent of companies survive more than a generation and only a handful last a century. Borders is fast becoming another statistic.

I dont know why B&N would thrive while Borders failed. It sounds like Borders got McKinsey'd. They were a victim of textbook MBA strategy decisions made by a changing set of CEO's. Decisions that lacked vision, decisions that probably focused on the "numbers" and eventually killed the goose.

Whatever the reason, it is sad.

In the summer of 2009, I got excited about an idea. I pestered everyone around me to talk about it. I wrote a product proposal document and tried to pitch the idea at my employer. It seemed like such a simple yet beneficial idea that no one was doing, it drove me a little nuts. It has been over a year but this month that idea will come to the MacOS and we will see what Apple can do with it.

in the beginning

I am a long time Windows PC video gamer. For years I would hit the local big box store on a Friday and take home the latest PC game for the weekend. Over time the store selection got worse and worse until it finally became a wasteland. While that was happening, I gradually started purchasing all my games from Amazon and then digitally.

By 2009, I was buying all my games digitally from Steam. If Steam did not sell it, I bought from Amazon - and always regretted it. It was at this point that I realized how insanely great Steam was and how beneficial it would be if the software industry as a whole adopted the same model.

software lifecycle

Desktop software has a lifecycle. You have to find what you want, pay for it, receive it, install it, register it, use it, update or maintain it, remove it and possibly re-install it.

With retail software or Amazon, the lifecycle translates into this experience:

• You drive and shop to purchase it or you order it online and wait 2 or 3 days for the mail.
• You open the box, basically through everything away except the CD. Then you put the CD in your computer to copy the data onto your hard drive.
• Then you have to enter a cryptic and annoyingly long key (the DRM) which allows you to run the program.
• Typically you also have to register the software online with your name to activate it.
• Over time you have to find, download and apply updates and patches to keep the software current.
• If you ever have to re-install the program, you have to find the original CD and the key and repeat the process - or call tech support.

This multi-step process is what we have been doing for years. Sometimes it goes smoothly; sometimes it is a nightmare.

It was not until I really started to compare that physical CD experience with the Steam experience that I realized how amazingly great Steam is.

the app store

Like the "one ring", Steam is a program that manages programs. iTunes provides the same experience for media and for iPhone apps. Steam is an app manager program. An AMP is a client program that runs on a users PC. The AMP client talks to an AMP server and manages the entire software experience for users. This model provides some huge benefits.

The app manager program [AMP] provides a simple place for users to shop, find and purchase new software. It also downloads and installs that software immediately over the Internet. The AMP has your library of software which makes it easier to find your stuff and run it. The AMP also handles updates and patches seemlessly in the background.

The AMP also handles DRM and does so without those annoying CD keys. The new software is encrypted so that only the person with the rights to run it can. (This is a big win against software piracy.) Your rights are managed by your account in the central system. Another boon for piracy because the system knows who you are and what you own.

The beauty of this kind of account based system is how much easier it is for users. Since your rights are stored in the cloud by your personal account, you can move your account anywhere and your software follows.

Did your hard drive crash? Did you get a virus? Did you buy a new PC? No problem! Just install the AMP and re-download all of your software. Compare that with trying to find those old CDs, the keys and then updating and patching everything...

seeing is believing

Like I said, I wrote a wrote paper extolling the virtues of this idea but seeing is believing. Millions of people have used iTunes but Steam is an even better experience. The difference is that Steam is only for video games. Steam was built by a small company called Valve to deliver Windows PC games. They have since expanded to the MacOS and there are rumors they will add the Playstation 3. Steam has been wildly successful but they have limited their reach to a niche market.

The AMP idea deserves to manage ALL software. It works great for the cell phone. It works great for video games. It would also work great for all desktop software.

Apple

Apple is a logical candidate to build such a system for the MacOS. This month they will start doing so and I am curious to see how it goes. The Apple software market is dominated by small developers so the AMP is a big win for them. It makes it easier for users to find their software and it makes it easier for the developers to find and support users. Apple makes a nice penny to provide the entire system. Win-win-win.

Microsoft

Microsoft is an even more logical candidate and so far they have nothing in this area to show. Given the difficulties of using a Windows PC, an application manager would be a huge win for customers. With so many competitive AMP products out there leading the way, I hope Microsoft eventually does something themselves.

But Microsoft has an even better application: the enterprise.

Getting software at a large company is a bigger pain than it is as a consumer. The AMP model extends beautifully to the enterprise. In this case, the system would have two servers. The desktop user would run the client; the client would talk to an enterprise-specific store server and that store server would talk with software providers like Microsoft and others. Microsoft would sell the platform as well as software in the platform.

For users, it would mean less time with tech support. They get a new PC, launch the AMP, and starting installing the software that they want. Users solving their own needs quickly. Win.

For IT, it would be easier to support. They provision their central AMP server with the software they want to provide as well as the patches they want to control. They can even manage what specific user accounts can access/purchase. Win.

For the enterprise and software suppliers, the AMP model provides very detailed data on what software specific users are using and how much they use it. Since the DRM model is tied to user accounts which are managed by the AMP server, the system provides terrific data to use for managing costs and paying enterprise license agreements. Win!

The AMP model for the enterprise is another win-win-win scenario that would introduce an entirely new business to Microsoft. And one that no one else is doing. The product leaders are all focused on consumers not businesses.

Valve

The third candidate is Valve. Steam is for games today but they could easily expand their model to include other software. They could even create a new store if they wanted to keep their branding clean. And they could do this on multiple platforms, something neither Apple or Microsoft would want to do.

The app store design is a brilliant idea with serious benefits to users, software developers and platform holders. It may take five years but eventually we will all be using one and I think we will all agree on its greatness.