Light/Breezes

Light/Breezes
SUNRISE AT DEATH VALLEY-Photo by Tom Cochrun
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

HELLO, TECH SUPPORT

THE INDIAN PARADIGM
     You've probably seen those pictures making their way around the cyber world-street scenes of cities in India where power and phone lines criss-cross, snake and weave their way in a rats nest, while the captions read as to how this is where we call for "tech support."
      No one is laughing today, as 600 million are without power.  The frightening and economically damaging outage is also a "poster child" for a world where technology leap frogs into new patterns without forethought.  How does a rapidly expanding economy, like India but also think China, manage to continue its growth and yet do so in ways that do not over reach? At least over reach until there are significant break downs, both in services and expectations.
      Money is not so much the problem.  There is plenty of money in expanding quarters of the Indian economy.  The difficulty is in planning-orderly planning and phased growth-as well as government and/or service management.  
     Less serious, but from the same root, is the topic I posted yesterday-old fashioned Network mindsets in a Twitter and social media world.  There is even more fuel on that fire today as NBC is taking more shots for their numb skull promotion cycle, just in advance of their own intent to build drama into a Missy Franklin race. And there is the flap about pulling Twitter rights. Guess we can't have the most rapid media beat the old systems, and on and on and on.
     Planning ahead? Thinking it through?  Making arrangements?  Accommodating new technologies?
     Old systems in conflict with new patterns.  India-though a hot economy, unable to manage into the future.  
      I'm miffed and slightly amused when I see miles and miles of telephone and/or power lines strung along the same route captured in historic photographs.  We can send messages to Mars rovers, satellites and other even more distant space explorers, but we still hang those lines like we did a hundred years ago, or longer.  Yea, OK, I know electricity needs a path, but there are other ways to pipeline it, and there are alternative energy sources. 
      No one believes future technology advances, especially in communications and information sharing, will get less complex or infrastructure dependent, but where do we see evidence of nations, or even hemispheres planning for what is to come?  No one believes we will use less energy, unless of course, the system goes down, like it did in Tech Support Land.
      
     OK, it's time to chill.  Here's something for your blood pressure.
DAY FILE
JUST WATCHING THE WAVES
See you down the trail.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

A TOUGH QUESTION & EXQUISITE BEAUTY

HOW DO YOU CLEAN A BATTLEFIELD?
     It is more than a rhetorical question, but the answer is fleeting.  I ask because I watched a friend present a report on his mission to Kuwait to supervise the cleaning of a target range on an American base.  Specifically they were charged with removing uranium shells or bullets that had been fired into a mound of sand. 
      Laborers from Pakistan and India were hired to dig out the material, struggling in 3 digit temperatures, using Geiger counters.  The gathered debris was brought back to the U.S. where it was disposed of in Washington state in one of only few sites approved for such nuclear waste.
       As he noted, the battle fields themselves still have not been cleaned.  Uranium at the grade of weapons has a half life of relative eternity. Another legacy of modern warfare.

DAY BOOK
LOVE THOSE FLOWERING TREES



See you down the trail.