A Moment of Zen

I sent this out to my team several weeks ago, but for some reason I keep thinking about this.

Detroit Newspapers to end Daily Home Delivery

I mentioned in my LOB presentation that my first job was a newspaper boy. It was for the Detroit Free Press. I now work in technology. I've seen alot of things change due to technology, but this is the first time I've truly seen where something I created (Internet technology) actually destroy something I had previously worked on, on a major scale. It was sort of a circle of life moment for me.

Back in 1998, I started working on a technology called Voice over IP, which was going to revolutionize how people communicated using the Internet. My previous CEO, John Chambers, told an audience of Telephone Company CEOs that "voice will be free in 10 years", which was considered blasphemous at the time. I even wrote a book about the technology. And even though landline voice calls are now essentially free, it didn't eliminate people using a telephone to communicate with one another.

The power of the Internet does some amazing things, many of which we take for granted today. I've been very fortunately to have been on the leading edge of many of these changes, but sometimes the changes hit closer to home.