A Word and an Aphorism: Ubiquity

While reading a white paper regarding the Microsoft operating system Windows, I ran accross a word I needed to look up. As it turns out, the word describes Windows well, and is a good word to use casually in conversation to make people scratch their heads:

Ubiquitous [adj.] existing everywhere; inescapable.
(The New American Webster Handy College Dictionary, 3rd ed.)

That got me wondering what I may find in my Geary's Guide to the World's Greatest Aphorists. Ubiquity, as luck would have it, was indexed to Seneca's thought:

"To be everywhere is to be nowhere." -Seneca (4 B.C. -65 A.D.) [via James Geary]

I am reading up on PC and server virtualization. I started by doing research for a case study due tomorrow night in an MBA class. However, PC virtualization is something I have been thinking about for several weeks as a means to branch out as an entreprenuer. Alternatively, it is a means by which my company could provide much more value to our clients. Unfortunately, it may be easier for me to start my own business and build it to profitability than it would be to convince my company to implement a good idea.

To put it in a nutshell, Virtualization in this case means that you do not have to buy a PC for every single person that needs one. You could buy a smaller, low-cost appliance, which would use the internet to act like a PC. Not only would you not lose anything in the process, you could gain so much in value, security, administration, application, and performance.

The white paper used the word ubiquitous to describe the current state of affairs in computing. If you wish to change anything about how people and businesses use computers, you have to deal with the fact that we expect Windows to be everywhere. If you want to make it cheaper through virtualization, you will have to virtualize the Windows environment because consumers will not adopt anything else.

I am glad I thought of looking up ubiquity in the Geary Aphorism Guide. Seneca's wisdom actually applies here in a big way: To be everywhere is to be nowhere. I think that could be a vision of the future: your computer today is a specific, tangible device that you can point to, open up, move with you , whether it is a desktop, a laptop, or a PDA. You may have two or three computers, each with their own data, purpose, look, software, etcetera. So, when you say your work PC is on your desk in your office, you are saying your PC is somewhere.

Through virtualization, there may be a day when you have an appliance at home, a laptop, a PDA-Cellphone, and an appliance at work. All three may access the exact same virtual PC that looks the same, has the same software and data, and can do the same things. In fact, it is the same, no matter what appliance you use to access it. The PC that you access exists on a server "somewhere", but you can access it from anywhere. In fact, you can access it from everywhere, thanks to wireless technologies. Therefore, as long as you have an appliance and internet access, you have your PC.

With PC virtualization, your PC is everywhere. However, you can never get your hands on where your PC's data physically resides. The server that holds your data would be a trusted source, of course, and great steps would be taken to ensure privacy and security. However, the server that you access to use the appliance may be anywhere in the world, or two places at once. Therefore, the server is somewhere, but you don't know where. Your PC is available everywhere, but if I asked you where it was, you could say it was nowhere.

Learn 1 Thing Every Day

I am sure I have heard this many times from many sources: "Try to learn one thing every day." However, I really remember it sinking in for the first time as I read the cheesiest self-help, motivational book ever written: Leadership Secrets of the Rogue Warrior by Richard Marcinko. I usually try to live by that advice.

Some days, I go to a college or corporate classroom with the intention of learning something--that makes it easy. Other days, I really have to seek out knowledge. I wish more people around me were trying to learn.

I have been in classrooms where the instructor quit learning a long time ago. It is hard to learn from someone who hasn't actively built their knowledge: what they teach you is dusty and moldy, and I have caught more than one dinosaur with inaccurate, out-dated knowledge.

I have worked for managers who quit learning a long time ago. The business environment has globalized, the workforce has diversified, the customers are now into low-cost and high-tech rather than high-quality and personal service. Even so, the dinosaur manager keeps trying to pound square pegs into round holes, and has no idea why they are about to be volunteered for an early retirement.

I know people who have the resources and opportunities to use technology to make a better, more productive life for themselves. Instead of rising to the new age, they cower as techno-phobes, afraid to learn something new. I sympathize with the romantic notion of a simplified, technology-less life. However, you must accept that, while that lifestyle was fairly free of consequences 20 years ago, today a person without a certain level of tech-savvy will be forced to make some extreme sacrifices in their life. It may be wrong, ugly, and scary, but it is too late to fight it. Get with the times or get left behind.

I have skipped opportunities to learn something new, and accepted those opportunities when, luckily, they were offered a second time. I have always found that the learning isn't as hard as I thought it would be. I have also found myself in times when I regretted that I had not accepted a learning opportunity and needed that knowledge later.

Learning should be viewed as a rare privilege. Not everyone has the opportunities, resources, and capacities for learning that we of the cyber-space do. We have a limited amount of opportunities to learn, and most opportunities only knock once. We have a limited amount of time to learn, and the clock is ticking.

I learned something simple and useful today: I learned how to embed a YouTube video into a Powerpoint presentation. I have considered doing it before, but made do without the knowledge. For a presentation on the culture and business environment in China, I really wanted to include a couple of videos. I watched a brief video, and did it. Piece of cake. It isn't knowledge that will solve the energy crisis or make me a million bucks; however, it may prove to be a contributing factor. You never know.

If you are curious, too, how to embed a YouTube video into a Powerpoint presentation, watch this:

One of the videos I embedded in Powerpoint today is worth embedding here. It is a short video of Greg Bissky explaining how the Chinese and western minds differ on their perception of a contract. He explains that the best paradigm is to view it as a marriage. A marriage entails ongoing negotiation and compromise to be successful, and that is how the Chinese view a business contract. They tend to be fatalistic, and believe that you cannot predict what the future holds. Therefore, you must be offering a present value, and leave the future negotiable when doing business in China. I wonder how many billions have been lost by businesses who failed to learn that little nugget of wisdom.

Which brings me back to my original point: you rarely know how valuable something is when you have the opportunity to learn it. It may look like a dirty rock today, but if you clean it up, you may find it is a nugget of gold.