Monday, 10.07pm
Sheffield, U.K.
We don’t have a monopoly. We have market share. There’s a difference. – Steve Ballmer
I’ve been thinking a little about resilience and what it means for us as individuals.
How do you think people get fired these days?
There are a lot of stories around but I think the general approach is that you have a short meeting with your boss and a HR rep and are told that you’ve been let go.
And that’s it. Your email is turned off. You lose access to company resources. You’re out there on your own.
So what happens next?
For the majority of people this is going to be discombobulating, a shock to the system.
If you’ve been cocooned in an organisation for a long time it’s hard to see how things can function without all that support around you.
Who’s going to give you a computer? Who’s going fix the printer? How do you set up a website? How does email work?
These are not hard things, if you know what you’re doing.
They might seem the hardest things ever if you’re facing them for the first time.
So, a first step to becoming more resilient is having alternatives in place before you need them.
If you were fired today what would you do?
Make a list of actions.
Then do as many of them now as you can.
You may never need to carry out your plan but if something does happen, you’ll thank your younger self for being prepared.
When it comes to computers why do so many people build their lives around online applications?
You don’t control them. They could get turned off at any time. They could double their prices.
There really is no reason to use them unless you have no alternative.
Install GNU/Linux on a spare computer and start using it and you’ll have all the software you need to get everything done.
But… that takes time and is hard. It’s much easier to log in on a browser and get on with it.
The problem is this – it’s a constant tradeoff between freedom and convenience.
It’s convenient to have a stable job, and it’s convenient to have someone else sort out the software for you, so you can focus on doing what you like.
But, when doing what you want to do depends on resources controlled by others, then you don’t really have a choice – there’s no freedom there.
Freedom is a function of the resources you control.
In one special and unique case, that of Free Software, you own resources that others own as well and no one has any less than anyone else.
There’s a final set of choices that are harder to work through.
Many technology services are built to capture market share – ideally everyone uses the one thing and it becomes an effective monopoly through capturing most of the market.
Think Google. And what OpenAI wants to be.
For some people going all in on Google made them rich.
Until changes in the algorithm broke their business models.
You might think all these thoughts are only relevant in this modern world of ours.
But it’s not.
I’m reading a biography of Shakespeare that reminds us that he once wrote “Like a fair house built upon another man’s ground; so that I have lost my edifice by mistaking the place where I erected it.”
In other words, if you build on someone else’s land what you build belongs to the person who owns the land.
Read the terms of service for any product if you don’t think that’s the case.
And then, when you’re making choices, remember how the three little pigs made theirs.
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
Handcrafted insight 