I wish I could regularly attend the Carbondale to Cyberdale meetings, if only to help justify the name of this blog. In particular, I would have benefited from yesterday's discussion. (In the absence of any published proceedings, I am just assuming that it wasn't postponed or cancelled and that the topic remaind VoIP [Voice over Internet Protocol].) VoIP, in spite of some continued concerns, has been revolutionizing the telcom industry. The most notable of these concerns has been access for VoIP customers to adequate 911 service. Providers are evidently working quickly to resolve this issue because new FCC regulations have essentially forced them to do so. Point is, VoIP may not be fully a replacement for traditional phone service yet, but it may be very soon (but only for those lucky enough to have [both geographic and budgetary] access to a high speed internet connection).
Perhaps meeting participants also discussed the recent purchase by Ebay of Skype, which the Washington Post calls in a recent article, "the world leader in telephony on the Internet". I mentioned having tried skype in a comment to Dave's post about the meeting ( and no, grammar nerds, I wasn't literally trying out skype in the comment itself. However, if this aside is confusing to you, consider yourself lucky: you are most likely NOT a grammar nerd; your life is likely a full and rewarding one; and I must therefore apologize for this needless aside.), so I can acknowledge that the software at least works. In addition, because it wasn't a U.S. company, the FCC's new rules don't apply. Does it make a difference in terms of those rules that skype is now owned by Ebay? I have no idea, but would be curious to find out. Bottom line is, an essentially free product like Skype undermines the business models of the VoIP companies that were in turn undermining the business models of the traditional telcoms. (Crazy, isn't it?) Heck, you can now even make free skype calls from your cell phone (allegedly).
The larger point about VoIP and about Ebay's purchase of Skype seems to be that here is the bleeding edge of the current trend towards the flattening of the business world because it is getting cheaper and cheaper to connect even geographically far-flung workers. This means an exponential increase in global competition for even the most highly technical and creativity-intensive types of work.
And the iterations are almost infinite. You've already outsourced your business to an Indian tech company? Well, why not outsource your life? That's the service being offered by YourManInIndia. It's called GetFriday, and it allows you to have someone else handle those pesky "non-essential time-consuming tasks" that clutter up your mundane existence. For a recent article in Esquire Magazine, writer A.J. Jacobs did precisely that and seems to have started a trend.
But what if I outsourced my life and discovered that those non-essential time-consuming tasks were the only thing holding my fragile self together? What if I discover once I remove the quotidian that all I have left is something that even Nietzsche's abyss can't look at for very long without become depressed, if I discover that - in terms of me - there's never been a there there? What if I finally got a lever that was long enough and found a place to stand, but didn't have anything that needed moving?
Perhaps there really are some problems that still can't be solved with technology. Therapy, maybe, but not technology.
No comments:
Post a Comment