One of the most famous images of the Great Depression of the 1930s is Dorothea Lange’s photo of a ragged old man selling apples on the street. As the Bay Area enters the second year of a recession that has left hundreds of thousands of Californians unemployed, that apple seller is now likely to be relatively young IT worker like Frank. Only, instead of apples, he hawks arcane high-tech skills in interactive TV or DVD authoring for a fast-food-outlet salary.
Read the rest over at SFGate. via Flutterby.
I haven’t been able to find a job, and that’s been about the worst for me; I’ve worked since I was 16 years old. But this is one I have to let go of. I have to concentrate on what I can control, which is finishing the book for O’Reilly, and digging up some other paid writing. And if I can’t find a computer job, or technical writing, or training, then I may have to look for work outside my field, but such is life. I was a waitress more than once, and have worked an assembly line years ago; if I have to wait tables again. or help cap bottles of Budweiser, I will. This is what people do when the economy takes a nose dive.
Read the rest over at Burningbird.
Bill Gates said on Sunday he did not expect a big pickup soon in technology spending, widely seen as a necessary ingredient for a sustained U.S. recovery.
“This economy is fairly flat — technology spending, there’s no big up-tick,” Gates told reporters at the sidelines of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos.
Read the rest at Forbes.com.
The U.S. economy requires technology spending for sustained recovery? How did it get that way?
According to The Atlantic, the past ten years we’ve experienced one-dimensional growth. The service sector over all others. Information technology over manufacturing.
The New Economy decade assisted my ascendance from circumstances I am hesitant to share. You can get hints of it in my menu to the right. A combination of foresight, timing, connecting with people who inspired me, and above all hard work, have contributed to bring me to my standing today. The circumstances of any moment in the future can wipe it all out in an instant. I can’t determine the cards I am delt, but I can control how I play them. A haunting question, that can’t be ever answered, is have I played them as well as I could have? Or should have? Here’s hoping we aren’t delt too many bad hands. Looks like many of the cards we’ve been playing with have been illusions.