Victor Rozek
-
As I See It: Uproar Down Under
July 12, 2010 Victor Rozek
… Read moreThose in favor of restricting speech often argue that the Framers of the Constitution could not have anticipated a technology such as the Internet that can be used to disseminate bomb-making instructions, invite sedition, propagate racism, and spread pornography like pollen. And, of course, they’re right. The Framers probably didn’t envision space travel either; or Lady Gaga, or a black President, for that matter. But here we are.
Free speech is perhaps humankind’s most cherished and envied freedom. Yet it is always under assault. The self-righteous would restrict it for moral reasons; the closed-minded for political advantage; and the unscrupulous
-
As I See It: Against All Currents
June 21, 2010 Victor Rozek
… Read moreYou gotta love a guy who stands against the traffic on a one-way street and yells with full-throated conviction: “You’re going the wrong way.” But that’s Malcolm Gladwell. In his best-selling books The Tipping Point, Blink, and now Outliers, he bitch-slaps prevailing wisdom, digging beneath the obvious to unearth surprising truths lurking below our awareness.
Gladwell is a fuzzy-haired myth exploder, as annoying as he is enlightening because in his systematic, well-researched way, he delights in messing with our (small “r”) religion–our unquestioned beliefs about how life works. In his latest book, Gladwell challenges how we think
-
As I See It: On Leadership
June 7, 2010 Victor Rozek
… Read moreThe wind yawns, and a long, mournful sigh sails through ancient trees. Slanting rays of sunlight ignite the pink tops of rhododendrons, and illuminate patches of emerald moss underfoot. The sound of water tumbling over stone hums in the distance. Here the lucky and patient may spot elk and deer, owls and hawks, black bear and steelhead.
But for all its natural splendor, this is a place of paradox: beautiful but scarred, healthy yet still healing. Fifteen years ago (a short time in the life of a forest), it was pocked with clearcuts and veined with logging roads; subject to
-
As I See It: Thriving Away Again in Margaritaville
May 17, 2010 Victor Rozek
… Read moreMy wife doesn’t do well without coffee. So as we’re standing in the airport security line at 6 a.m., caffeine deprived and bleary-eyed, she is not a carefree camper. When she spots a woman with a fresh cup, she pounces on her like a hockey goalie on a slow puck, and demands to know, “Where did you get that?” The woman says there is a vendor right next to the security gate. I must have been slow to react. With the impatience of Nixon shoving Zigler, she dispatches me to fetch coffee.
“Mocha grande with four extra shots,” she instructs.
-
As I See It: Life Logging
May 3, 2010 Victor Rozek
… Read moreFor all its remarkable properties, the brain is fallible and forgetful. Its formidable powers decline with age. Memories fade, knowledge retention is fleeting, and recall is unreliable. Interpretation of distant events is likely to be incomplete or inaccurate. Painful memories dwarf happy ones. Events are reduced to impressions. Time is compressed. Many people cannot even remember vast portions of their past, as if decades were torn from the fabric of their lives. Memory drifts, and over time the splendid minutia of our lives is forever lost.
While that may be the cheerless reality for most of us, technology is now
-
As I See It: Depriving the Senses
April 26, 2010 Victor Rozek
… Read moreOne of the more intriguing but seldom quoted lines of English letters comes to us courtesy of James Joyce. It’s from a short story called A Painful Case, part of a collection of 15 stories about Irish life titled Dubliners. In one brief sentence Joyce not only introduces his main character, but manages to capsulize the totality of his cheerless existence: “Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.”
With poetic brevity Joyce speaks of dissociation, lack of awareness, and a life largely void of sensory input. And although Joyce never sat in front of a computer
-
As I See It: Mining in the Anthropocene Epoch
April 12, 2010 Victor Rozek
… Read moreMovie images can be powerful and enduring. Years after they no longer reside in our conscious mind, they are still stored in memory, which is why Barack Obama owes Sidney Poitier a debt of gratitude. Back in 1967 when civil rights advocates were greeted with dogs, fire hoses, beatings, and worse, Poitier made a movie called In the Heat of the Night. It showed us that a black man could be better looking, smarter, more articulate, and a better dresser than a white man. Candidate Obama didn’t have to wholly reinvent the image because for a generation of voters
-
As I See It: A Different Currency
March 22, 2010 Victor Rozek
… Read moreIt all seems like a fairy tale now, as if I am recalling events that took place long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away. But believe it or not, there was a time when businesses actually competed for skilled IT professionals. In the early 1980s, when Silicon Valley was booming, job-hopping was a way of life. The need for IT skills was urgent, and those who had them were regularly besieged by recruiters. Enticed by higher salaries, signing bonuses, and ridiculous perks, defections were as common as keyboards.
It was the time when workplaces morphed into “campuses” complete
-
As I See It: The Accidental Philanthropist
March 8, 2010 Victor Rozek
… Read moreWords can be unreliable. Their meaning changes with context and time. Take cool, for example. Until the late 1950s it referred to ambient temperature when the Beat generation co-opted it as an expression of approval. These days when you see words like “traitorous” and “Pakistan” they conjure up betrayal and terror. But when applied to the life of a person responsible for one of the most important innovations in the history of the computer industry, those meanings are dead wrong. And you have to go back more than 50 years to understand them.
The man in question was born
-
As I See It: Opinions Are Like ISPs–Everybody Has One
February 22, 2010 Victor Rozek
… Read moreWhat do the Christian Coalition, MoveOn.org, AARP, and the Gun Owners of America have in common? On most issues, not so much. Amazingly, however, at least one concern has them standing shoulder to shoulder, rather than nose to nose. What issue, you ask, could possibly unite progressives and regressives, the old and the young, the cross and the gun? (The president, who has been searching unsuccessfully for such an issue, should take notice.) It’s none other than Net neutrality.
I never held out much hope for Net neutrality. Where there is a great deal of money to be