• As I See It: Sainthood

  August 5, 2024 Victor Rozek

  I’ve been pondering sainthood lately. Not my own, just to be clear, but rather the concept and qualifications for such a venerable designation. The most notable modern-day example would doubtless be Mother Teresa who, after a lifetime of service and sacrifice, was canonized in 2016.

  The Catholic Church holds the franchise for saintly designations with over 10,000, many of whom were martyred for their faith. But it was the newest entrant who caught my attention. His name is Carlo Acutis, and he died in 2006 of acute leukemia at the tender age of 15. I have to admit he beat …

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• As I See It: Communication Fail

  July 22, 2024 Victor Rozek

  If there is one frequently overlooked source of workplace discontent it involves the quality of communication. Or the lack of it. On a corporate level, pronouncements seem predictably boilerplate lacking authenticity if not veracity, more suited to limiting liability than guiding behavior. Everyone, for example, touts their commitment to customer service. But customers must often navigate draconian phone trees and endure excessive wait times before being connected to a helpful human.

  The disconnect between what is said and what is experienced is based on two sets of competing values: Professed Values, and Operational Values. Professed Values are the ones companies …

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• As I See It: Upgrade Exhaustion

  May 13, 2024 Victor Rozek

  Several decades ago I recall seeing a 60 Minutes episode about an arms transfer (or perhaps it was a sale) of state-of-the-art American fighter jets to Israel. The interviewer traveled to the Middle East to see how Israeli pilots were adapting to the latest in American military technology. After being assured that the jet performed as advertised, the interviewer looked into the cockpit and marveled at all the screens, dials, switches, and gadgetry confronting the pilot. A deluge of supposedly useful information was available to the pilot in real time. But the sheer volume of it seemed daunting. Curious about …

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• As I See It: Doctor AI

  February 26, 2024 Victor Rozek

  AI has been getting a lot of press and chatter lately, its vast potential for good and ill spawning prodigious debate. It’s not surprising that a technology predicted to impact 40 million jobs engenders a wide range of possible outcomes. But whether the future tilts toward transformational or apocalyptic depends, in part, on which profession is doing the assessment.

  One of the more ardent transformationalists is Eric Topol. To say Topol is over-accomplished would be an understatement. He is a cardiologist, a scientist, and an author. In his spare time he became the founder and director of the Scripps Research …

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• As I See It: Elusive Connections

  November 27, 2023 Victor Rozek

  Between the ages of 2 and 6, I formed a deep attachment to a small stuffed bear. I played with it, talked to it, and slept with it. It was my constant companion and before I moved on in my development, I had loved much of its fur off.

  America, according to mental health experts, is experiencing a loneliness epidemic. On a planet straining with the weight of 8 billion people, it seems that an uncanny number lack meaningful connection. A problem not likely to be solved by embracing stuffed animals.

  In a study commissioned by healthcare/insurance giant Cigna, “more …

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• As I See It: AI-AI-O

  March 13, 2023 Victor Rozek

  Unless you think encouraging people to eat glass is a good thing, or you happen to revel in being compared to Hitler, you probably weren’t all that impressed with the recent Big Tech AI roll out. To say it was unimpressive would be a kindness. Arguably, it was a grade A, prime time, gold-plated disaster.

  Take Meta Platform’s online tool Galactica. Please. It was quickly yanked offline when, according to The Washington Post, “users found Galactica generating authoritative-sounding text about the benefits of eating glass, written in academic language with citations.” I have to admit, the citations were …

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• As I See It: Transitions

  April 18, 2022 Victor Rozek

  Over the past two years, as many of us sequestered, masked-up in public, dodged strangers, and kept friends at arm’s length, our socially distanced conversations shared a common, oft-expressed yearning: “I just want my life back.”

  Now that we’re in a lull between variant fronts, millions of us are anxious to reclaim our old, comfortable and predictable lives. They may not have been perfect, but they were at least manageable, set in a world we knew how to navigate.

  Beyond familiarity, our old lives were even more central to our identity. As sociologist Anthony Giddens notes: “A person’s identity is …

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• As I See It: Two Front War

  March 28, 2022 Victor Rozek

  History records that the Second World War began when Germany invaded Poland, breaching its western border on September 1, 1939. For the Poles, however, that accounted for only half of their unfolding misery. Largely forgotten, 16 days later, the Russians invaded Poland from the East.

  Being situated between Germany and Russia in the war-ravaged 20th century turned out to be geographically inauspicious. Long after the Germans were defeated, the Russians stayed. Opportunistic invasion turned into long-term occupation.

  A similar story is unfolding in Ukraine, where a two-front war is being waged: one analog, the other digital. Weeks before tanks and …

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• As I See It: The Ideal Workplace, Part 2

  January 24, 2022 Victor Rozek

  New year, new possibilities. And what better place to start than sharing the experiences and aspirations of IT professionals.

  Last month, as 2021 was coming to an end, I asked readers for feedback on how they would describe their ideal workplace; the issues that were important to them, the quality of their working environment, and how they wanted to be treated by their company and its management. I offered a list of issues for consideration, and below is a summary of their responses.

  The first question was a variation of the classic “paper or plastic” dilemma. Would you prefer to …

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• As I See It: The Ideal Workplace

  December 13, 2021 Victor Rozek

  Traditionally, at yearend, I would write a predictive article about IT trends and prospects for the coming year. But if you’re not among the lucky few who have been abducted by aliens and kept closeted these past two years, you doubtless already know that our foreseeable future will include more dreck and disruption, liberally peppered with stress and uncertainty.

  Of course, computers could care less, but the people who work with them do, so writing about anything uplifting was preferable to another dose of dour reality. I wracked my brain to find it, failed miserably, and was about to settle …

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