Chatting with David Claire, the director of CIS for the LDS Church,
after class, I asked him why he said, “after
working for the Church for a year or so, I’ll kick you out.” He responded, “I
want you to develop and learn everything you can. I want you to go out and work for the Googles
and develop as an individual. Then come back and share your knowledge with the Church.”
As I thought about his words, I was reminded that job security and salary should
not be our only consideration for choosing a career. I have a wife, a daughter
and a responsibility to provide our family, but this demand should be balanced
with a faithful desire to seek career opportunities that edify me
intellectually and even spiritually. Circumstances may at times force us to take
jobs just so that we have food on the table the next day, but if you’ve got a choice, don’t you want to say that you’ve done
something that made you a better person, even if that choice didn’t
always pay the most?
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Finding Trust by Becoming Trustworthy
A venture capitalist once told me, “It’s better to invest in
a company with a ‘C’ level idea and an ‘A’ team than a company with an ‘A’ idea
and a ‘C’ team.” After watching Nerds
2.0 and seeing how Robert Metcalfe was backstabbed by Microsoft in the 3Com
deal, I began to think, “It’s better to team up with a ‘C’ team that you can
trust than an ‘A’ that you can’t.” How can we find individuals that we can
trust in our professional lives? As I
ponder this question, a bit of sage dating advice from my single years comes to
mind: “finding a marriage partner isn’t about merely finding the right person,
it’s about becoming the right person.” A similar approach can be applied to
developing trust. It’s not about merely
finding the people you can trust; it’s about becoming a trustworthy individual
yourself.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Stop and Think!
Clifford Stoll’s autobiographical
account describes tracking down a hacker in one of the first cyber-attacks in
history. From reading Stoll’s book one asks how nobody foresaw danger in the
gaping security holes in the government systems that existed in the early years
of computers. The hacker was able to gain access to various top secret US
military and government systems by simply guessing common passwords and
sometimes even logging in as “guest” with no password requirement. It seems to me that mankind rarely takes
preventative measure unless we, or someone we know personally, experiences the
danger first hand. Perhaps that is why those that are most zealous about not
using a phone while driving are those with friends or family who have been
harmed in a cellphone related auto accident, and maybe that’s why lots of us
don’t start preparing for disaster until hurricane Katrina hits.
How
can we overcome this danger-prevention-lethargy that is in our human
nature? My answer to this question is to merely think!
Far too often we simply accept things at face value without stopping to ponder
their deeper implications. George Bernard Shaw--a world famous writer and a founder of the London School of Economics—noted, "Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week." Let us all take time to stop, think and ponder our life’s
surroundings.
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Compliance Vs Self Expression
Vladimir Putin recently announced that if Facebook and
Twitter want to remain online in Russia, then they must comply with local
censorship and storage laws. While many criticize
Putin for this action, it is my opinion that these two social media websites
shouldn’t be given special exemption from local laws. Before I am accused of
supporting tyranny, let me first explain.
Just as Clay Shirky conveyed in the video we watched in
class about self-expression and the internet revolution, I fully believe in the
goodness and power of freedom of expression.
I find that Russia would enjoy greater liberty, self-respect and
stability if it discontinued the restrictive censorship that currently exists. However, if all other media organizations within
Russia have to comply with laws of the land, than why should Facebook and
Twitter be exceptions simply because they are based in the cloud?
https://gigaom.com/2014/09/26/russia-orders-google-facebook-and-twitter-to-comply-with-local-storage-and-censorship-laws/
https://gigaom.com/2014/09/26/russia-orders-google-facebook-and-twitter-to-comply-with-local-storage-and-censorship-laws/
Monday, September 29, 2014
Who Owns the Idea
When Bill Gates launched Windows 95, the interactive GUI
(graphical user interface) was praised as one of its top innovations. However, Triumph
of the Nerds (Part three) shows not only how Bill Gates got the GUI idea
from Steve Jobs but also how Steve Jobs was introduced to the GUI by a team of
Xerox researchers in Menlo Park, CA. So, who really deserves the credit for the
development of the GUI? I think that neither Bill Gates, nor Steve Jobs or even the Xerox researchers can fully claim credit for inventing the GUI. The
truth is that someone somewhere introduced that group of Xerox researchers to
computing ideas that helped them think of the GUI, and if we follow this chain
of ideas back in history far enough we’ll find that neither Archimedes nor
Plato deserve full credit for their inventions and philosophies. It seems to me
that a true inventor is not someone who makes creative ideas materialize out of
thin air, but rather someone who can “connect the dots,” combining existing
ideas in a useful way that has not yet been considered.
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Invading Our Lives, Minds, and Bodies
According to the recent Harris Poll, only one in
thirteen Americans is happy. As the US happiness index has been declining for
the last decade [1] social media use rises every year.[2] While I agree
with Professor Dougal that these new technologies have practical uses, I
think that the obsessive use of social media may be a partial cause of the
happiness decline in the US. Think of the bombardment of tweets, pop-ups,
distractions and seemingly endless opportunities to compare yourself to the
glamorized photos of “friends” every time you log onto facebook or Twitter.
Comparing yourself to others and being distracted take away from happiness. A
Neuroscientist from Stanford University, Sylvia Morelli, expressed that, “Being
distracted reduces our empathy for others and blunts responses in the brain…
being distracted may also reduce our happiness.” I personally have a facebook,
twitter and LinkedIn account, but I invite all readers of my blog to be
judicial using these resources so that they do not become a happiness-reducing
distraction and resource for envious comparison.
[3] Rameson, Lian T., Sylvia A. Morelli,
and Matthew D. Lieberman. "The neural correlates of empathy: experience,
automaticity, and prosocial behavior." Journal of cognitive
neuroscience 24, no. 1 (2012): 235-245.
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
The New World of Artificial Intelligence
As driverless cars become more independent, they will
eventually face unpredictable situations where ethical decisions of
life-or-death need to be made. Imagine a child chasing a basketball onto a road
with an incoming driverless vehicle. An automated sharp swerve to avoid the
child will endanger the passengers, but hitting the child is also wrong. Who will be responsible for a mistake made?
The programmer? The engineering team? The manufacturer? We can’t imprison or
fine a car no matter how smart it is! I believe that artificial intelligence is
highly beneficial, but it requires us to change our world. Having self-driving
cars on the road must be accompanied by new branches in law, policymaking, and
ethics. Just like Postman said in 1998, “Technological change is not additive,
it is ecological.”[1] We don’t just have the world and artificial intelligence.
We have a new world.
1. Postman, Neil. "Five things we
need to know about technological change." Retrieved December 1
(1998): 2003.
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