The psychedelic Sierra Nevada alpenglow soothes my road weary missionary ache.  I'm traveling a lot this year...more than last year.  It's funny that I'm traveling more when the chips are down.  I'm not sure what to make of that....it's satisfying, in a way.  Now, when Sun can afford it least and we need it most, I'm traveling.  Such circumstances bring clarity of purpose to a sometimes smoky landscape...

The Nemesis has many faces.  Especially in uncertain times, the Nemesis will lie, twist, fabricate and cajole in order to seed doubt and fear.  The Nemesis uses unsuspecting means to sow such deceit, and can be uncanny in operating capabilities.  The Nemesis cannot be trusted.  You know the Nemesis by its lies:  1.  You cannot stop me from innovating whatever I choose.  2.  Only I know what you want.

We are witnessing the transition from a point of near maximum entropy; eco-extinction events follow a power law distribution, at least according to Stuart Kauffman.  A similar observation could be made of recent economic incidents; the extinction of the dot-com species.  While not all don't-com have passed, as it were. many have.  Others will follow.  From their ashes, something new will rise.  Autonomous agents must, after all, make a living.  And will do so with increasing complexity over time.  The eco-landscape from whence the agent arises is similarly affected by the extinction events, thus giving rise to a complex positive feedback system.  Chameleons dancing on smoky mirrors.  This is to say that new, unexpected things will arise in a near future economic landscape.  This is also to say that just we must be prepared at all times to reinvent ourselves, so should we also be hopeful of the outcome, as the journey itself is altered with each set of steps. And that, in the end, is what our journey entails, isn't it?  Not the Omega Point so much as all the steps from here to there?  For example, I think it's interesting that Italian scientists will be the pioneers in human cloning techniques...

Bangalore has changed in the last two years.  My first data point was at a Sun Evangelism event we gave there in February 1999 which attracted mostly male engineers.  It was a single day event.   At the time, there were
few cell phones in sight.

Two years later wireless conversations are abundant.  I even saw several small children with what was presumably their own phone.  The number of phones ringing during presentations was at least equal to that of the average U.S. audience, which while frustrating for the presenter is a welcome development in the heart of India.  One of the measures of technology adoption is communication capabilities.  And Bangalore is chattering.  We saw at least a 50% increase in attendance at this year's two day event -- and to my reckoning, some 15-20% of the audience this year was female.  This too is progress.   The developers of Bangalore have a sense of dharma  about their work that moves me as no other locale.  I feel humbled and truly blessed when I remember now my visits and the friends I've made there in the past two years.  I return home enriched by the exchange of all the locales I've seen in the past few weeks; Manhattan, Singapore, Bangkok, Katmandu (just changing flights, but experientially awesome nonetheless), and Bangalore.  Not to mention the satisfaction of working with some of the best people in the world at what they do, my compatriots at Sun and our partners.  Sitting here today, with the Sierra snows glinting across the somber wetlands, I am once again hopeful -- and at the same time, cautious, because as the man said, the road ahead is made of thought.

FUD has blossomed.  Uncertain times are fertile ground for FUD farms --  Word is dot-com layoffs means the death of WORA and the inevitable coercive victory of the Micro$oft tyranny -- promise them anything, hand wave C# and .NET, and maybe no one will notice the slow march.   Oh yeah, and let's make Open Source illegal while we're at it.  In the name of the American way.  We can just wrap it in the flag and enough; folks will buy it; stuff it down their throats and pretend it's Justice; Freedom to innovate, all that....isn't that how business is done?  Hmmmm...

I'm home now, but part of me is still on Bangalore time, and will likely remain so for some time to come. As such, I'm posting this on March 10th. Although it's still March 9th in all the U.S as I complete this, it's the 10th in Bangalore....so in honor of that sacred place, I celebrate that POV, lived from that world frame. The spirit burns in Bangalore; cauldron of software development which could lead this world in days to come. That unspoken promise coupled with the acute conditions India now faces yields a gentle urgency that is palpable. And a simple existential burden: if software is humanity's hope, developers are its dealers. The community at large expects a lot from its clerical masters, especially when god's retribution appears less than docile otherwise. Developers in India feel the weight of the heavy air we share during sych. It's the air we all breathe.