In doing so, he committed himself to conquer Rome or to perish trying. In 1959, when I was a very young kid living in Southern California, my parents took me to the then recently opened Disneyland. My two most vivid memories are of walking with my father to shake hands with Walt Disney himself, and of gazing at the fabulous improbabilities of Tomorrowland, the 1950s equivalent of Comdex. Tomorrowland as it was in 1959 stands as just another reminder of the axiom that we tend to overestimate technological improvements in the short term, underestimate those improvements in the long term, and occasionally pursue the wrong improvements altogether. And yet, it has been universally rejected as unnecessary, ineffective and distracting by those who have used it, and intrusive and unwelcome by those who occasionally like to hang around the house in their underwear.
Hope springs eternal in some quarters though.
Microscopic screens featuring the fluid motion of Japanamation. This, as we all know, can be a tricky and, at times, very frustrating exercise. It demands that we continually reexamine our priorities to make sure we are delivering what the company actually needs to make a real difference instead of what the company, or factions within it, want. Then the next week you do something painfully, embarrassingly simple, almost as an afterthought, like adding a field to some report, and the users are so amazed and delighted they practically carry you around the office on their shoulders. The fundamental unfairness of it all screams for a villain.