{"id":54,"date":"2004-03-07T22:39:03","date_gmt":"2004-03-08T05:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/?p=54"},"modified":"2004-03-07T22:39:03","modified_gmt":"2004-03-08T05:39:03","slug":"im-happy-to-be-wearing-shorts-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/2004\/03\/07\/im-happy-to-be-wearing-shorts-again\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m happy to be wearing shorts again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Weekend’s been pretty chill thus far. Today I strolled around Berkeley with Giselle and Rachel after hearing Firoozeh Dumas do a reading\/signing about Funny in Farsi<\/i><\/a> which was cool. I was happy that it was 70 degrees today for the first time in awhile, and I could meander about like a true Californian in my shorts, t-shirt, sandals, and shades. <\/p>\n

I bought ST:TNG Season 2 from Rasputin’s on Friday night, which was great. I’m going to watch an episode or two in a little while. Now I have 1, 2, and 4. So be on the lookout for 3, 5, 6, and 7 for me, ok? (And be on the lookout for Seasons 1-5, and 7-9 of X-Files for Rachel.) <\/p>\n

It amazes me how these two articles, coming from different perspectives (one political economic, and one tech — but in an intertwined way), basically say the same thing: “Your job’s going to India? It’s better that way. Deal with it.”<\/p>\n

Thomas Friedman, NYT, March 7 2004<\/a>:<\/p>\n

America is the greatest engine of innovation that has ever existed, and it can’t be duplicated anytime soon, because it is the product of a multitude of factors: extreme freedom of thought, an emphasis on independent thinking, a steady immigration of new minds, a risk-taking culture with no stigma attached to trying and failing, a noncorrupt bureaucracy, and financial markets and a venture capital system that are unrivaled at taking new ideas and turning them into global products.<\/i><\/p>\n

Daniel H. Pink, Wired, February 2004<\/a><\/p>\n

And therein lies the opportunity for Americans. It’s inevitable that certain things – fabrication, maintenance, testing, upgrades, and other routine knowledge work – will be done overseas. But that leaves plenty for us to do. After all, before these Indian programmers have something to fabricate, maintain, test, or upgrade, that something first must be imagined and invented. And these creations must be explained to customers and marketed to suppliers and entered into the swirl of commerce in a fashion that people notice, all of which require aptitudes that are more difficult to outsource – imagination, empathy, and the ability to forge relationships. After a week in India, it seems clear that the white-collar jobs with any lasting potential in the US won’t be classically high tech. Instead, they’ll be high concept and high touch.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Weekend’s been pretty chill thus far. Today I strolled around Berkeley with Giselle and Rachel after hearing Firoozeh Dumas do a reading\/signing about Funny in Farsi which was cool. I was happy that it was 70 degrees today for the first time in awhile, and I could meander about like a true Californian in my shorts, t-shirt, sandals, and shades. I bought ST:TNG Season 2 from Rasputin’s on Friday night, which was great. I’m going to watch an episode or…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-tech","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4uks-S","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}