Navigating in Marisel

Technology seems invincible because we mistook consumption for innovation. Inflationary markets are a real threat to the lovable tech app.
I was at Marisel for New Year, away from technology. It was a conscious effort to detach, to go to a mountain cabin with friends. At 1,300 meters Marisel is one of the highest settlements in the Apuseni mountain range in Transylvania. The scales really change when you go and live on a mountain rather than flying over one. I imagined a small wooden cabin with small beds and a fireplace and lot of quilts. But at 4,300 feet not only it was modern living with lot of snow with great landscape but also high speed internet.
I was happy doing the real networking and not social networking. How much technology do we need anyway? People lived without it all the time. Some still don’t know how the world changed in the last twenty years. My host a local farmer turned eco tourism entrepreneur was still in 1970’s. He knew how to farm, manage cattle, navigate the mountains and of course enjoy life. Was he the real loser of information age? Or was it me who ran a virtual global office? This farmer here knew more about conservation than me. I was the mall guy. He was about life and I was, about lifestyle. Mountain tech could help him survive another decade without even ever having to convert his cash to buy gold, to hedge. He had limited cash, he was still on barter. Did we complicate our life too much?
My friend Joseph a high tech programmer also got concerned. I told him nothing is permanent. “Could you live life doing something other than programming? Everything changes why technology itself can’t go through an innovation? When you are exponentially changing everything, why can’t the change get bigger than you? We started talking about databases that could understand and speak. How far were we from easy language becoming easy voice? “Don’t you remember Captain Scott coming back in time and speaking to the computer? “Hello Computer!”
Well you see the change is going to get bigger than technology. It already has. And before we reach to talking computers, we will have a few more Time Magazine covers and few more multibillion-dollar valuations. The only problem is our understanding of Technology. The mall guys really think they are very smart. But actually we are the ones at the receiving end diluting our wealth and wisdom as we spark up like fireflies with every little innovation we do. And then we wonder where the inflation is going to come from.
I wanted to catch up with my art teacher at school back in India. It took me a while and we connected. He remembered me. It was a joy. Well he is not a social networker. He, is old tech. But yes the new app made my struggle to connect with other old friends easier. It was a smarter way to cluster and spread information. However, it was still an easy app, another tech consumable. Is this innovation or consumption? Did we get it wrong all the while mixing Solow’s technological Innovation with a tech app?
History is full of examples of great apps that came before their time or had design flaws and never took off. Great apps became great businesses and great business floundered as times changed. The last great business remaining of the 150 years of Dow Industrials is General Electric, rest were overtaken by time. We are living a time of extremity in consumption and the way I see it this will also pass. Consumption has a limitation, as just like everything it peaks and troughs. It’s an illusion that we can make prosperity permanent by creating a virtuous ever extending consumption trend. Inflation devalues money, dampens consumptions and is a real challenge for technology consumption. Tech apps can flounder in such an environment and along with it the money backing it.
The crisis also happens because money herds like communities, too much allocation to one area and none to the other. Unbalanced allocations, imbalances and toppled carts, it’s a repetitive risk story. Charles Handy, “time does not change, the paraphernalia does.”
Did we have more time yesterday, or do we have more time today? Did we connect less or are we connecting more today? Did we express less yesterday and we are expressing more today? Nothing has changed, the mediums have changed. I have no intention of robbing Mark of his genius. Creation is the toughest, whether it’s putting mind on paper, or writing a software code, or painting a picture on a canvas. This is real tech, rest is noise.