A glance at the New York Times this morning (downloaded to my iPad in Rome) and it’s evident we’re already in a Matrix world. A threat by Julian Assange last November 29th to “take down” a major American bank and reveal an ‘ecosystem of corruption’ plucked from an unnamed executive’s hard drive, has set off a massive internal investigation by a team of 5 to 20 top Bank of America officials who fear that missing hard drive may be from one of their own.
With their stock price falling, the bank has also hired the consulting firm of Booz Allen Hamilton to join in the inquiry. Meanwhile, of course, the world’s media is still feeding off the hundreds of thousands of classified Pentagon and State Department documents, new revelations continue each day.
Meanwhile Mark Zuckerberg’s personal fortune may have doubled after a massive new investment of $500 million from Goldman Sachs and a Russian investor that values Facebook at…..$50 billion. Another social buying site, Groupon, just recently $6 billion takeover bid from Google.
And ebook sales are soaring—will surge by one billion dollars per year in 2011—headed for 3 billion by 2015. As for traditional publishers, like Borders, well, they’re shutting down brick and mortar stores in an attempt to survive.
We’re on an IT rollercoaster. And what lies beyond the next curve? Who knows? Who just five years ago could have predicted the mammoth presence of Facebook and Wikileaks and Kindle?
As this New Year begins, you can either rail against it all—or hold on—and enjoy the ride.
it is true that the rollercoaster is rolling and there is no going back, but it is scary when you know that if the electric current is cut for more than 12 hours you will be cut from life itself, you will not be able to connect with anybody, not read your newspaper or a book nor call your friends on the phone, to be dependant on just one thing is kind of scary!!!
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