As I See It Archives

As I See It: From Disk, To Cloud, To Coal Mine

March 24, 2025 Victor Rozek

Back in the 1970s, my first IT job was working swing shift in computer operations. In those days disk packs were removable, and my primary task after running nightly reports was doing backups – copying the day’s updates and transactions from the live pack to the backup pack.

Nightly backups were an article of faith. They were akin to unquestioned IT doctrine. The smooth functioning of companies depended on them because they mitigated the consequences of hardware failures. Head crashes were rare but not uncommon. And when they occurred, they made a grim screeching sound that signaled data being scraped …
Read more
As I See It: Gratitude

December 2, 2024 Victor Rozek

Tech has taken a number of hits this year, and many of them were aptly deserved. The issues are well known and thoroughly documented. What is often obscured, what is often lost amid the outrage, are some of tech’s extraordinary accomplishments. They are overlooked in part because they have become the baseline for our expectations.

In the smartphone, for example, the least among us has access to more computing capacity than powered the first Moon landing. We hold a miracle in our hand, and get annoyed if our text message isn’t promptly delivered.

Imagine, for a moment, living in the …
Read more
As I See It: Unintended Consequences

September 9, 2024 Victor Rozek

In the classic movie Inherit the Wind, Spencer Tracy plays a character fashioned after Clearance Darrow in a re-enactment of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. It acquired that reductive moniker because the defendant was a teacher accused of teaching evolution.

In his closing summation Tracy, as the defense attorney, argues that there has always been a price for achieving progress. New knowledge often challenges old beliefs; progress inevitably displaces what came before; and, more often still, it leaves in its wake a wash of unintended consequences. “Mister,” says Tracy, “you may conquer the air, but the birds will lose …
Read more
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 …
Read more
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 …
Read more
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 …
Read more
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 …
Read more
As I See It: The Other Eight Hours

January 29, 2024 Victor Rozek

In 1594, Philip II of Spain issued a royal edict establishing an 8-hour workday for construction workers in the Spanish colonies. As far as we know, there were no time restrictions on pillaging.

It took another 223 years for the notion of an 8-hour workday to find a supportive voice in England, albeit not a royal one. Robert Owen was something of an oxymoron in his day. He was both a textile manufacturer and a social reformer. As early as 1810 he proposed and instituted a 10-hour workday in a Scottish cotton mill. But by 1817 he had revised his …
Read more
As I See It: Riffing On Retirement

December 11, 2023 Victor Rozek

It didn’t take long after my father retired for him to start getting bored. There were suddenly lots of unstructured hours to fill and no prescribed way to fill them. So, he did what many retired men do: He stayed home and annoyed his wife. But after several months of straining my mother’s tolerance for togetherness, he settled on a novel solution.

The back of our property was bordered by a very tall hedge which shaded portions of the lawn. During the rainy season the shaded areas never fully dried and became saturated. So my father decided to replace patches …
Read more
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 …
Read more

Content archive

Recent Posts

Subscribe

Pages

Search