Manufacturing overseas
The NYTimes has an interesting article titled “How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work” using Apple as a case study regarding China, the US, and manufacturing. It really illustrates the complexity of manufacturing regarding the US and other countries. The big takeaway, for me, is that it is not simply about wage costs when various companies move to China or overseas for manufacturing. They talk about supply chains, ramp up capability, time to market. But that is not what stuck out the most for me.
Companies like Apple “say the challenge in setting up U.S. plants is finding a technical work force,” said Martin Schmidt, associate provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In particular, companies say they need engineers with more than high school, but not necessarily a bachelor’s degree. Americans at that skill level are hard to find, executives contend. “They’re good jobs, but the country doesn’t have enough to feed the demand,” Mr. Schmidt said.
I’ve heard talk about technical schools here and there over the years and the need for them. And it makes realize even more how the US economy, how the employment structure has changed. We have the service industry, some infrastructure industries, and then we have the “professional” class of workers. If the US has mostly moved beyond a manufacturing based economy what have we become? I am not smart enough, nor know enough about economics to say but it does give one food for thought. Can we sustain what we have become and will the middle class survive it?
Using Evernote
Managing all the information in my life is a constant battle. From remembering little tidbits at work, to recalling the model of a water filter. I’ve found as I get older I have more and more things to keep track of. So, I’ve always been on the lookout for programs which can help me do so. Evernote is a program/service that I’ve used for a number of years. But it is only recently that I’ve begun to use it to it’s full potential. It’s an example of how technology can help humans manage things.
Evernote has two major things going for it that allow it to live within almost any workflow. The first being device independence. You can use it on your desktop, android/ios device, or the web. That combined with the interaction with other applications via its API really makes it shine.
The trick for me to use it more and more has been the tagging. Notebooks are important, but since it is basically a data repository, search is much more important. So proper tagging is required in order to use it. Without tagged entries it becomes nearly impossible to track what you put in it. This also means that I’ve ended up putting all sorts of random, and not so random, data into it. I have technical data, project stuff, travel information, recipes, model numbers for some house stuff. I’ve found that by making it a default to send it stuff I know I may want to keep that it becomes more valuable. It also has saved me quite a few times by having data I could not find elsewhere. It also has me wondering though, how others use Evernote or similar programs.
RIP Steve Jobs
WE are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
Reading
