IBM's New Chief Executive Officer

This week IBM announced a new CEO, Virginia Rometty. The New York Times has an article today discussing her career path. We have talked in class about the importance of social networks. It used to be common for women to be put in marginal positions within companies, such as personnel, purchasing, or public relations. IBM has had a long history of of including women within the company and developing programs to mentor them. IBM has seen this not as doing-good, but as enlightened self-interest. For a company to be its best, it needs to develop all the talent it has, whether it is women or men, black or white, American-born or foreign-born, gay or straight.

The 10th Birthday of the Ipod

The Ipod turned ten on Sunday. Here are some reflections on the Ipod's ten years with us.

The IThermostat

The New York Times as an article about how managers at Apple who worked on the IPod and the IPhone are now at a start-up company working on the iThermostat. Their premise is that they can use digital technology and concepts of machine learning to help people control the temperature of their homes more precisely, saving money and reducing pollution. The thermostat costs $249, which is twice the price of other thermostats, but they claim that it will pay for itself in one year. One of the founders said that at Apple, "we were building toys," but at the new company they were building "a product that could have a huge impact on a big problem.” The big question is whether Americans will pay as much for a thermostat as they will for their digital toys.

What is Important in Education: Character

The United States puts a lot of money and faith in education, but what is important in helping people live successful and happy lives? The New York Times had an article yesterday on a team of psychologists at Penn (my alma mater), which stress elements of character, but not just "moral" elements of character, but elements of character which lead a person to be a better performer. The group at Penn seven key character traits: zest, grit, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism, and curiosity. For my STS302H class, we might think of this as an update on Benjamin Franklin's virtues. One big theme in the history of technology is that people constantly fail or hit walls in what they do. The virtue of "grit" emphasizes the need to keep going in the face of difficulties. These traits are a reminder that a GPA is not the only reason we go to college or seek education.

Sell Big or Die Fast

In History 341 today we will be talking about Gothic Cathedrals, which sometimes took a hundred years (hundreds of years) to build. To think about how quickly things move in our times, an article in the New York Times recently discussed how companies were quickly pulling the plug on products if it became apparent that something wasn't doing well. HP's tablet computer only lasted on the market for 48 days. Today's business environment is so competitive, companies believe that if their product is not a hit right away, it never will be. Given that this is the environment, one can certainly understand why companies might not want to hire a lot of new workers. For a point of comparison, in the classic case of a business failure, the Ford Edsel, Ford stuck with it for two years before killing it.

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs's stepping down as CEO of Apple raises of a lot of interesting questions in technology and the history of technology. News accounts have reported a great deal of affection for Steve Jobs, probably more than any other business man of our time. Why do we feel so passionately about him? We probably couldn't even name the CEO of other companies like IBM or Microsoft or even Google. It is interesting that Jobs was not a typical engineer and had more of a liberal arts background than an engineering background. (How many engineers would think to attack a competitors product by saying "it had no poetry"? Here is a story about Jobs's passion for detail. Here is an anecdote from a reporter about Jobs. Here is a story from Fortune Magazine about Steve Jobs and how Apple works. Here is a description of some of his patents. Here is Jobs's introduction of the MAC in 1984--the crowd reaction gives you a sense of how radical it was for its time. Here is an early side by side look at Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Also here is a classic: Steve Jobs's 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University.

One interesting theory about the reason Jobs stepped down is that he did so to make sure that Tim Cook the new CEO didn't leave to go to another company. This theory says that as long as Tim Cook was just the acting CEO, other companies would try to lure him away from Apple and with Jobs stepping down, Tim Cook is less likely to be tempted away from Apple. One piece of evidence in support of this theory is that Apple granted Tim Cook options for 1 million shares of Apple stock (worth a third of a billion dollars) with one hitch: Cook has to stay around for ten years. So the story behind Steve Jobs's stepping down from Apple may not be that Steve Jobs is irreplaceable, but that Apple doesn't want to lose a very competent, but less charismatic leader.

Hurricanes, Walmart and Information--Run out and Get Strawberry Poptarts!

I said in class this week that I relate everything to the history of technology and themes in technology. What do I think of when I think of Hurricane Irene? Information!! A major theme in America today is applying information technology to every part of society, to every issue, from getting a parking space, to hurricanes. Besides the detailed forecasts and information we now can follow minute by minute about a hurricane's path, information is a part of this story in other ways. Walmart applies its information technology to understand what people buy when a hurricane hits (or before a hurricane hits and after it hits.) Walmart has a massive amount of data which tells it what people buy when. (In 2004, the New York Times reported that Walmart's computer center held twice as much data as the Internet at that time.) So they can see what people have bought during previous hurricanes and make sure that they have those items at stores in the path of a hurricane. It turns out that there is a huge spike in the sale of strawberry poptarts before a hurricane. (Also, not surprisingly, beer.) Here is another piece about this trend.

The Start-Up of You

Thomas Friedman always has a lot of provocative things to say about how technology is shaping our future. In July he had a piece talking about how young people should be preparing for the future. It's called "The Start-Up of You," and his basic claim is that those in college may need to invent their own jobs. He says that big companies aren't now (and probably won't ever) going to hire thousand of thousands of engineers. Instead they are looking for small numbers of very talented engineers who can add value to their company every day, every hour. The point about needing to invent your own job is an important one for college students. It's possible to see this as a good thing, rather than a bad thing. Instead of having to be shoehorned into a job that some big company has, that you don't care for, you can invent a job that is suited to your talents and passions. That means you should spend you college years purposefully, finding out what you are good at, what your passions are, and how you can use those skills and passions for society.

Paradigm Shifts

In class we will be talking about paradigm shifts. These can be rather trivial things (replacing a stop light with a traffic circle) or something far more dramatic. In the last year or so, Jeremy Grantham, an investor who manages something more than $100 billion, has been making the case that the world in on the cusp of a huge paradigm change, and to him its not a good one. In a very long newsletter article, he makes the case that we have lived in a world where natural resources (oil, steel, fertilizer, almost any stuff) has been cheap and gets cheaper. He argues that this era is coming to an end, and that resources are going to get more expensive. He sees this happening for a number of reasons. Most basically, he would say that no compound growth rate is sustainable forever and our society has been predicated on growth. One example of this, is his chart of increase in agricultural yields:


His point here is that it is getting harder and harder to increase our agricultural yields to keep up with population growth.

With more and more people in the world (i.e. the aspiring middle class in India and China), able to live a life that uses something on the order of magnitude of the resources we use, resources will be under increasing pressure. One of his most striking statistics is China's share of various resources:


A couple of things to note about his argument. It is undeniably true that we in the US live in a world based on the paradigm of cheap resources/material. Look in your garbage can if you don't believe it. Grantham is an investor, and he believes that global warming (which he does not doubt exists) can only be addressed if it can be made an economic issue. Here is a further piece about Grantham.