A 'Window' of opportunity

Microsoft is releasing its newest member of the Microsoft windows family. The evolution of the Windows platform encapsulates the idea of evolution within the technology world which encapsulates the idea of evolution of ideas. I think technology improvement and innovation is how our species is evolving. Forget 'survival of the fittest'. The idea 'died out'. It wasn't fit enough. Humans now are no longer subjects of their environment regarding evolution. It works too slow. The only biological evolution going to occur to the species will be through the hand of man via bio-technology such as gene manipulation.

Back to Windows...

So Vista is a continuing improving product. But it can be better. Microsoft is struggling with keeping others from being 'peeping toms' and peering into Microsoft's Windows. Microsoft is attempting to keep the windows closed, locked and the shutters drawn. That's a Mistake!

Microsoft needs to think of windows as an open market place. Let the user choose between Yahoo, Google and Microsoft search technology. Let the user choose between open office and office. Microsoft needs to remove the resistance that all others are pushing against. An enemy cannot defeat a resistance that does not exist.

Microsoft needs to see Windows as a fulcrum point, where commerce pivots on their turf. They profit no matter who the user chooses to use to research what to buy Aunt Zelda for her 58th birthday. Microsoft can continue to battle for domination of the digital living room. That battle can still be won. But to continue to maintain a strangle hold on the desktop is a losing proposition. Indeed, it doesn't even make sense anymore.

The company Bill Gates founded also has an opportunity to make a contribution to the betterment of the world.

One example, a recent Nobel peace prize has been awarded to Muhammad Yunus for his work with micro loans in his country of Bangladesh. Microsoft could develop the opportunity to work with Grameen Bank (who is implementing Yunus' micro credit loan system) in expanding the operation and movement of capital from the wealthy nations to the poorer. For instance, is it outside of the realm of possibility that Microsoft could bundle within its “Window's Marketplace” OS an interface that allows users to 'invest' American dollars to a micro credit fund that will allocate its resources to the poor? Investors have the opportunity to read about various projects and funded opportunities. Essentially making a Joe System a potential Micro Venture Capitalist (MVC).

These things are possible. We just need the desire...the will...to implement change within the system.

Back to an earlier concept of system shift.

Just as nature detests a vacuum. Humans detest a system vacuum.

We may and will have transitions from one phase to another regarding systems. But a system void will not occur. A system shift can be subtle, just as it has been to the current role of American power and ideological projection throughout the world or it can be unnerving. Such as the system transition into the new world of modern financial markets which was 'necessitated' following the depression. Or it can be jolting...

A Richter type scale can be developed, to measure such changes. This scale, much like log scale of the Richter based upon the amplitude of seismic waves, the 'system shift scale' can be based upon the number of displaced lives relative to the earth's population for a scale of relative change.

I like to compare these system shifts and evolution of ideas of our systems to punctuated equilibrium. Such that long periods of time will pass where very little happens, and in relatively short periods of time, a great many changes occurs.

I believe it is very unlikely that any given individual will experience a dramatic system shift just based upon the relative time societal systems are stable relative to the small number of years an individual is given the chance to experience major system instability or transition (the individual's life span).