Web cipher! Thanks for taking that moment of silence with me earlier. I promise not to try to tug your heartstrings too hard again, but one of the reasons that this site exists is because my Dad believed in me enough to tell me to do my own thing when the magazine jobs that I was taking weren’t panning out. He saw the hours that I put into my 9 to 5 gig and then the time I would spend writing by hand, typewriter and computer. I was serious about getting my voice out to the world even if it meant that I would sometimes act the fool. My Dad knew how much of a joker I was and he was always trying to drill his serious sensibility into my brain. Writing and doing art projects are hell’a fun, but don’t keep the light bills paid for too many folks. I told my Dad not to worry because the new millenium was going to bring about the new economy. One of his biggest arguments discussions with me was about the ‘New Economy’.
You might have heard this term mentioned before. It was in heavy circulation during the ‘dot com’ boon during the mid 1990’s. Technology companies and their subsequent stock and mutual fund offerings were fueling this ‘New Economy’. My dad wasn’t a true believer even though there were people in his office making a windfall of money in their 401k’s by going after these cinderella corporations. My dad called them cinderella corporations because he said that when midnight struck they would turn into pumpkins. Sure enough he got another one right. My dad had this one saying that he used whenever I gave him props for being right.
He would say, “If I tell you a fly can pull a boxcar, do you know what you should do?”
Then I would say, “What Dad?” (he would NOT give his punchline until I answered him)
“Hitch ’em up!”, was his his retort.
Housing stock and new construction is where my Dad rested his retirement funds while I played around with defense contractors, telecoms and biotech companies. How in the post 9-11 world could these companies NOT be raking in the dough?!? Anything that sounded tech driven my Dad frowned upon as part of the bogus ‘New Economy’ except when in 2004 Google announced it would be going public with their company. What was this going on with my Dad? Had he come around to the quick-strike Wall Street windfall that tech companies usually delivered? I used Gmail, but I rarely ever used the Google search engine system. This is where the old man put me on…
America’s economic strength is built on a simple principal – supply and demand. The ability to link consumers with their desires is what Google specializes in. Google doesn’t provide the products because that would limit them too much. There’s no way to own a factory that makes everything, but Google knows who makes what you want. Hell, Google knows tons of folks that make what you want and if you are a savvy and disciplined consumer then you will be able to find the product and service providers that you need while saving money and time. How did my Dad know all of this when he turned on a computer almost never? He Googled it.
Since then I have used Google exclusively to search for the images and news feeds that you see linked to this site. I have even asked the tech staff to insert a button that allows you to download the FireFox browser program that I use when creating the site’s content. Google is not part of a ‘New Economy’ it is the portal to the ‘True Economy’. Thanks again Dad.
