The Cheap Revolution (and how to survive it)

"The Cheap Revolution, as I have written, boils down to three factors:
1. The incredible power of low-priced technology... Google's server farm, Skype's free phone services, etc.
2. Emergent global talent pools, from Eastern Europe to India, from China to Southeast Asia.
3. The Internet, which connects technology to talent at transparent prices.
The Cheap Revolution is good for China and India as well as newer, clever companies in the West, such as Google, Skype and Craigslist. But is it good for older Western companies with higher cost structures and lots of legacy? That's an open question. As I see it, the only path available for older, high-cost companies is to innovate... innovate as if their lives depended on it... which would be the truth."
-Rich Karlgaard

"We are evolving from a nation of self-reliant individuals who once worked within a system of personal freedom and economic liberty, to a nation of whining malcontents; an ever-growing herd of reliant sheep making our daily pilgrimage to the trough of government to be fed. Things that our grandparents would have considered to be issues of personal responsibility are now generally looked upon as the responsibility of government. Freedom has taken a back seat to security, self-reliance a back seat to government dependency."
-Neal Boortz

A Book is a Wonderful Technology

"The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever
invented is the book." --Northrop Frye

"One of the recurring themes in the discussion of the new media if bytes will replace books. To many, it certainly looks that way on any given day at any given rest stop on the Information Highway. The book remains the dominant permanent record of all things worth keeping. Storage mediums come and go in the cyberverse ( One word: "floppy."), but I don't think that the age when all information and opinions and records and history is held in some immense GoogleServer pile is one which we should welcome. Distributed information is more powerful and more secure when it is distributed not only throughout the Net, but in more than one medium.
What is good about the book? What makes it persistently valuable in storing, not the trivia of the day, but that which is valuable to humanity over the long term?

1. No "advanced" technology required. Ability to manufacture present in all areas of the globe.
2. Crude but functioning units can be made by kindergartners with pencil, paper and glue.
3. Operating system and interface rock solid.
4. All types of information can be stored.
5. Has been demonstrated to be able to retain information in retrievable form across several thousand years.
6. Of the two, the User will often crash first.
7. All parts can be recycled.
8. All or part can be backed-up at any Kinkos.
9. Can be powered for hours with one candle.
10. All users receive up to 12 years of interface training free.

Add to that the tactile and aesthetic pleasures of fine books where art combines with craft and you have something that will be with humankind well into the future long after this day's high-tech toys are consigned to a museum and listed in their paperback catalog."
-Gerard Van der Leun

"The core of the American people has manifested itself most purely in blogs because elites for so long controlled all avenues of communication. Those days are over."
-Tammy Bruce

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
-James Madison

"The taxing power of government must be used to provide revenues for legitimate government purposes. It must not be used to regulate the economy or bring about social change."
-Ronald Reagan

"All predominant power seems for a time invincible but, in fact, it is transient."
-Tony Blair

“Like all people at all times, (we are) confronted each day by the present, which always arrives in a promiscuous rush, with the significant, the trivial, the profound, and the fatuous all tangled together.”
–William Manchester

"By any measurable--I said measurable--standard, the human condition is improving in the vast majority of the world. You name it--health, lifespan, clean water, clean air, abundant food, leisure time, health, safety, security, mobility, education, it's all getting better. Yet as this happens, people are convinced that things are getting worse anyway."
-Dean Esmay

"Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting."
-Leibniz

"Productivity is the best single measure of what leads to differences in economic performance. Even though GDP per capita is the all-encompassing measure, GDP per capita is determined primarily, almost entirely, by productivity. People basically work in order to have a place to sleep and something to eat and so on and so forth. The huge differences around the world are the efficiencies with which they work -- their productivity."
-William Lewis