May 24, 2010 by avram miller
The Road Ahead
There is an interesting review of Bill Gate’s pedictions from his book “The Road Ahead”.
Bill Gates was never very good at seeing the technology future. Frankly, I was not impressed with his understanding of technology. And what I found scary was that he believed that he was a technology visionary. While I meet him in 1980, it was not until 1993 until 1999 that I interacted with him often. He definitely did not have a good sense of the consumer market and was especially poor at understanding networking.
What Microsoft was good at was copying other companies ideas (some would say selling and in some cases that would be true). This pretty much came to a halt with the government investigation of Microsoft for anti trust,
Bill’s greatest error was thinking that people (the government) that were not as smart as he was could control what he did with his company.
In 2000 Bill stepped down as CEO giving that position to Steve Balmer who definitely is not a visionary. Bill must have realized that it was not going to be as much fun anymore. He was so right about that. And to Bill’s great credit, he and his wife Melinda started the Gates foundation. He continued to play a strategy and technology role until her finally left all together in July of 2008.
He did leave behind a cash generating machine which continues to make enormous amounts of money by selling products it either copied or bought and buy successfully locking in customers.
Now, I am not sure there were other CEOs of Bill’s vintage that were better at making prediction about the future. I certainly do not think at Steve Jobs was better. What Steve did better was invent the future which is more important that predicting it.
I wish I had written down my prediction fifteen years ago. I am find them in various speeches, article and interviews and it looks like I was pretty good but probably everyone one that thinks of themselves as some kind of “futurist” has selective memory What I was not good at doing was influencing my former company, Intel, to take advantage of the changes that I correctly saw.
Predicting the future is meaningless if it does not effect change which means influencing the future.
I use to say when I was an executive at Intel, “the future is to important to be left to chance” but I was mostly talking to myself.
Maybe I will write down my predictions for the next 15 years. I will be eighty when I can see how well I did.
Tags: Intel, Microsoft
Posted in Avram's Past, about business | Leave a Comment »
May 23, 2010 by avram miller
Today, while my wife was having a tennis lesson, I waited for her in the car. During this time, I took another class on iTunes U on evolution via my iPad. When she came back, my wife noted how amazing it was that I could take a course along with actual Yale students. I agreed it was amazing and my first reaction was that I was amazed that I could still keep up with these students. Then I began to think of my own youth and how I educated myself and how different it would be if I was seven years old now (the same age as my oldest grandson) had an iPad and access to the Internet.
- Stanford Home for Convalescent Children
So a bit of background: I was very asthmatic as a child. My early life was a struggle to breath. From the time I was a baby, I was constantly being rushed to the hospital. I was constantly absent from school and I doubt that I was there half of the time. At the age of seven, I was sent for a year to the Standford Home for Convalescent Children. The location is actually now the Ronald McDonald House. The Home became the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. I spent my time there primarily alone with only my imagination for company. When I got out I was pretty much a social misfit and continued with being absent from school. The other kids did not like me very much primarily for my political and religious views which were every changing and always extreme. I was accused of being a communists (I was probably nine years old). It was the time of the McCarthy hearings. I was also an atheists. So I spent all my time in the library reading books. The only other technology that I had to help educate me was the radio. I also build my own crystal set . I use to listen to science programs. I also had a chemestry set which was taken away by my parents when I created a small bomb that blew up part of the basement. An I also had a microscope.
I had to think about how different my life would be if I was that same kid now. How the whole world would have been opended to me via a computer or a device like the iPad. I would have been able to learn so much more. Or would have I have had a social life on the internet? Or maybe I would have turned to playing games and not learned a thing. Those of you that have young children now will certainly have thoughts about this which I hope you share them. But keep in mind I was not your normal healty and socially adjusted kid. I was a sickly nerd in the making.
Tags: education, iPad, Itunes U
Posted in About life in the last third, Avram's Past | Leave a Comment »
May 17, 2010 by avram miller
This post is about giving. I just found this site. It shows you where you stand with respect to the world population. Frankly, I was shocked. I kind of knew where I stood with respect to the US population but never new where I stood with respect to the world population. It certainly gave me pause.
I believe in the Jewish concept of Tzedakah (charity). It is an important part of who I am and of my Jewish Heritage but of course giving is not limited to Jews. The link above hopefully will encourage all of you that read this post to give more than you are comfortable with. We all have so much more than most of the people on the earth. Here are a couple of thought I have about giving.
- Give more than you feel comfortable giving.
- Increase you giving in bad economic times knowing that others are cutting back
- Be proactive. Don’t just give money in response to being asked but set your own priorities.
- Distinguishes between helping people and supporting activities. For instance while I may support some museums and take a tax deduction, I don’t really think of this as charity. I know several very wealthy silicon valley people that think charity is supporting their kids private school. I don’t. here are the levels I see:
- Helping people out of poverty
- Dealing with major world issues like climate change
- Support for medical research
- Support of arts and education (USA)
- Attending fund raising events so I can hang out with people
- Religious organizations
- Political donations while important are not charity
- Teach your children to give. Start early and give them money to give. Let them decided on where this money should go.
- Leave a significant part of your estate to charity (like 50%). If your estate is subject to estate tax, this will be even more significant on a net basis.
- Be smart about tax deductions so you can give more. Give appreciate stock. Set up a family foundation or donor advised funds. One of the benefits of these are you can control the timing of when you take the tax deduction versus the time you give the donations. I have a small family foundation. I normally use appreciated stock to fund this foundation. That way the true cost to me of a donation might be about a 1/3 of that the recipient t gets. You can even lend money to a family foundation and then give appreciated stock later which can be used to repay the loan.
- Give of yourself as well as you money. I believe you can be most effective by giving money to organizations which which you have some personal involvement. And give of your time even when you can not give money. Many non profit organizations can really use advice especially management advice I have found.
- Encourage your friends and family to give.
Certain kinds of Tzedakah are considered more meritorious than others and are described in the Talmud:
- Giving begrudgingly
- Giving less that you should, but giving it cheerfully.
- Giving after being asked
- Giving before being asked
- Giving when you do not know the recipient’s identity, but the recipient knows your identity
- Giving when you know the recipient’s identity, but the recipient doesn’t know your identity
- Giving when neither party knows the other’s identity
- Enabling the recipient to become self-reliant
Tags: Tzedakah, charity
Posted in Making a difference | 1 Comment »
May 14, 2010 by avram miller
Well not really. Like many of you (now admit it), you check our own name on Google (or now Bing). I actually do one worse. I do a search on Google News to articles where my name is mentioned. Now this normally does not change much since I am not doing anything news worthy (capturing the recent swarm of bees does not count). Furthermore, the reporters that use to ask me for quotes either moved on or died. And the ones that did not likely realize that “Former Intel Vice President” does not carry the some power as it once did.
I have watched Google improve its news search capability. But when Google did a redo of its search presentation paper I thought I would give the “News” tab another try. So I put “Avram Miller” in quotes. Nothing came up. I was freaked. Previously, I would get a graph of the number of articles from 1980 (there are articles that go back even farther then that). So I clicked on the button that said “Advanced Search“. I then go a typical Google Advanced Search table. I noticed a small button that said Archive Search. and that took me here where I could see all my old favorites like the Fast Company Article published in 1999 soon after I left Intel on Digital Competition or the USA TODAY profile (1 1/2 pages) published in 1996 that called me “Intel’s one man think thank” (I almost got fired for that one).
Now that I have done that I will venture over to the Google Book search here and see how many books quote me.
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?pz=1&um=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=%22avram+miller%22&cf=all
Tags: Google Search
Posted in About life in the last third, You know you are old when | Leave a Comment »
May 7, 2010 by avram miller
My wife has been feeling like she is a bit of a Facebook widow. She asked me to think about the things that she can do that Facebook cannot. So here is a list (but not a complete list) in random order:
Scratch my back
Cook amazing meals
Look beautiful any time of the day or night
Smile at me when I am being stupid
Listen to me play piano and not notice the missed beats
Walk with me in the garden
Snuggle up to me at night
Wake me from a bad dream
Say I love you and mean it
Tags: Facebook
Posted in Social Networks | 4 Comments »
May 6, 2010 by avram miller
I was able to share my earlier post which also went on to Facebook and Twitter about a very unfortunate experience with Adobe with a senior executive at that company. I knew that if it was my company, I would want to know. This resulted in a call by an executive who was very concerned about what we had experience and wanted to understand in detail so that he could take measures to improve things. I was very happy to hear that the update that my wife received which stopped her CS3 from working on Snow Leopard was not intentional. It was just a security fix that somehow had this result.
While I do think Adobe has a number of issues in their customer interface, there willingness to hear about the issue and take corrective actions speaks well for that company.
Tags: Adobe, CS3
Posted in Technology | Leave a Comment »
May 2, 2010 by avram miller
I don’t know if I am still a capitalist at heart. I watched part of the Goldman Sachs hearing and my stomach turned. Not at what Goldman did but the self serving hypocritical people in our government that are suppose to serve us but mostly severing themselves. My guess is that Goldman operated legally within the regulations and laws of our country at least with respect to the transactions being discussed. In our system, Corporations have a primary responsibility to their shareholders (and boards have a legal responsibility). That does not mean that there is not room for ethical considerations. And most great companies that are built to last believe that being a responsible citizen is part of that. Wall street does tend to get isolated and decoupled. The biggest issue on Wall Street is the people are compensated on the short term and take too many risks. They are also paid way to much. It is not their pay that really matters with respect to the economy but what they are driven to do to get that pay. But this is where they are one with their brothers in Congress. Both have control over vast amounts of money. And both will make decisions that are short term and create great harm to others. Wall Street has a much higher price however. I mean a typical senator will sell out is country for a one million dollar campaign contribution. Wall street wants a lot more. So now we have the government investigating Wall Street which conveniently takes away the light from the governments own role in all this. I would love to see a panel with our government leaders answering questions from smart people from Wall Street.
Here is a link on the point of view of Warren Buffet with respect to Goldman.
Tags: Goldman Sachs
Posted in Political Views, about business | Leave a Comment »
May 1, 2010 by avram miller
Recently, I was musing here on my blog about all the things that can go wrong in the future. Well today I was listening to one of m favorite radio programs (yes I still listen to radio but they are actually podcasts now), Fresh Air on PBS. It was an interview with Richard Clarke, the former chair of the national counter terrorism committee under Bush. He also advised Obama during the election. He is a man that I greatly admire. His now working on cyberwar and has written a book I am just about to read. But listening to a 45 minute interview was enough to make me realize that there is something else to worry about besides, Climate Change, Peak Oil, Terrism, Nuculear prolifiation etc.
It seems that North Korea and Israel have actually used Cyberwar techniques. North Korea has people planted in other countries and has already exercised a Denial of Service attack between South Korea and the USA. Israel evidently broke into the air defense of Syria when they went in and took out their reactor development (they were able to take over the radar and prevent the Syrians from seeing the Israeli airplanes). My guess is that the USA has penetrated the Chinese and vis versa. And either Israel and/or the USA can take down the information systems of Iran. But maybe terrorists can take down the our financial systems or blow up our oil refineries or worse. And I am pretty sure that some of the most powerful people in the world are 17 year old Russian cyberthugs drinking vodka and playing with our computers and available for hire.
Posted in Government, World Situation | Leave a Comment »
April 28, 2010 by avram miller
The future of the Novel. I had an interesting discussion about the future of the Novel. This was the result of a discussion regarding my recent blog post on what books were on my Kindle. My friend asked me if I thought books would continue given the short attention spans of young people these days and their need to multi task. At first, I said yes. Because most forms of media have lasted even though new forms have come along. But then I realized that was saying that books would continue albeit in electric form but like TV’s effect on radio, the type of content would change. For those of my generation and maybe even the generation of my children (now entering mid life), we enjoy giving up control of our minds and emotions to a write or a director of a movie. But this pretty much only possible in a linear medium. Novels take a lot of work to read because they ask for us to pay attention and to use our imagination to bring to life in our minds what the words on the page our saying. Maybe a generation that has grown up with the Internet will not learn the disciple to read through a 300 page novel. I pass no value judgment in this.
Posted in Thoughts about the Media Industry | 2 Comments »
