Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Acorns to Oaks

More often than we realize, singular people, or small passionate groups do things that change the world in positive ways for the rest of us. Many times we don't realize the magnitude of the change till the wave rises up like a tsunami, ignored till it hits the beach.

In technology, we are accustomed to seeing these waves and now expect them every decade or so:

Joe Ossanna, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Doug McIlroy brought us Unix

Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds stood on their shoulders and brought us Linux

Dave Winer, Ramanathan Guha and Dan Libby birthed RSS

Bill Gates and Paul Allen created MSFT

Don Chamberlin and Raymond Boyce created SQL, which brought us Larry Ellison and Oracle

Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf paved the way for Jim Clark/Marc Andreessen and the commercial Internet.

In politics, we have President-elect Obama, and in Jerusalem, my former Partner Nir Barkat looks to be the Mayor-elect. Both bringing fresh ideas to troubled areas with breathtaking potential.

It starts with an acorn....

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