Communication is important

We all have our stories about the morning of 9.11.01. We can relate the smallest details of that day, from where we were and how we heard to how we feel and what we are doing to cope.

In the context of the chaos and its aftermath, my personal tale seems almost inconsequential. I share it because this is what I do for a living. To echo the sentiments of the athletes from my hometown area of metro New York, if what I do for a living creates a little bit of joy, some food for thought or a chance for illumination, I am glad to have helped in some small way.

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Telephony's coverage of 9.11.01 September 24 Shock to the system September 17 9-11

I write this a little more than two weeks since the morning that changed our world forever. I have started a list of things that I’d like to be “Through With,” sooner rather than later. The list is not comprehensive; it is a work in progress and merely a reflection of my own hopes, fears, insecurities and dreams. 

Feeling Lucky. This may seem an odd place to start, but I was one block from the White House, one of the alleged targets, when the chaos began. I was getting ready for a press conference, on PC and network security, where I was one of the featured speakers. 

I have thought about this a lot. In 1993 I was in the ballroom of the then Vista (now destroyed Marriott) Hotel in the bottom of the World Trade Center the day before it was bombed. And I have built up many frequent flyer miles on United Flight #93 from Newark to San Francisco--enough for my past two family vacations. I don’t have an explanation for the “Why Me/Why Them” conundrum. Some things are just inexplicable, but I have decided to be more aware of my surroundings since having a good exit strategy is no longer the sole purview of VC-backed start-ups.

How technologists respond to creating secure E-vironments will in large measure dictate the rate at which we recover economically.

Crying. I used to think that it was not so bad to have a good cry. What I did not realize is that it doesn’t make things an order of magnitude better to have a great one, or continuously be on the verge of having a good one. On the Jewish New Year day of Rosh Hashanah, I said to myself, “Yes, wishing people a happy and a healthy new year never seemed so heartfelt and so empty at the same time, but you can’t cry forever.” It is time to deal. 

Wallowing in self-pity. This is closely intertwined and somewhat indistinguishable from the first two items on the list. Feeling bad is not something we should keep score on. Talking to friends that day and week I found myself droning on about many things, including my close call with death; the frequent trips on Flight #93; and the number of people we knew who did not make it (too many). It was almost as if my usual business instincts to become expert on the things I experience had been pushed into hyper drive.

My trauma--and hopefully yours--is nothing compared to those who made it out of the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, and experienced the horror in real-time. My sorrow is nothing compared to that of people who lost spouses, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters or best friends.

Feeling Inadequate Compared to Others. There are three examples that immediately come to mine:

• Example #1.

  My daughter went to the funeral of her best friend’s uncle. He was 42 years old and left a wife and three young kids. There were 2500 at the funeral because he was involved in everything and apparently was good at everything. I wish I had met him. 

• Example #2.

  Those people who fought with the terrorists and aborted their evil intent for the fourth plane. Would I have been so brave? 

• Example #3.

  The people in the first WTC Tower that got hit who were near the top, and who got half way down when the all clear was sounded but instead of turning back continued out of the building. Ask yourself whether you live to work or work to live.

Being Blindly Angry. It takes too much energy to be angry at the terrorists, God, the economy, life, or anyone who seems insensitive. We all need to move on to anger with a purpose. Doing good probably is the best revenge, as is helping those who are in a better position extract justice.

Feeling Helpless. In times like these, neither words nor money seem to be the answer to making others feel better.  Grieving is a personal process, made more difficult in this case by an inability to grasp the concept that a society that cherishes the sanctity or life is now engaged in a war with a cultural aberration that cherishes the sanctity of dying. 

As we move toward reestablishing and redefining "normalcy" in our daily lives, there is some comfort in the fact that the business we are in is at the core of developing risk mitigation solutions.

The last thought is one that is worth dwelling on. While I am not naïve enough to believe that every dark cloud has a silver lining, I think we have all learned some valuable lessons from the last few weeks:

1. The Internet is invaluable.

   It is invaluable not for the reasons the dot.bombs thought, but for the reasons that were sitting there waiting to be highlighted all along. Communications, the need for people to stay in touch with each other, and the need for the computers that are the engines of commerce to interact with each other, are the big application. The rest is window dressing. It isn’t always about doing new things in a new way, it is about doing the right things in the right way.

2. Wireless is crucial.

   It is crucial for all of the obvious reasons and will become more crucial in the years ahead. We are still at the bottom of the learning curve, trying to figure out the delicate balancing act that will allow us to leverage location-awareness without disturbing too much of the privacy we all cherish. 

3. It is all about TRUST, that is, security and privacy.

   It is more than a bit ironic that the depression that has engulfed our industry in the past year, is a direct beneficiary of the emotional depression we collectively are experiencing as a society. We are more likely now to trust our businesses to the increased substitution of remote interaction than face-to-face visits. We are more likely to deal with vendors that offer totally “secure” E-vironments.

How technologists respond to creating secure E-vironments will in large measure dictate the rate at which we recover economically. One thing is certain: No matter where one stands on how to handle the myriad of technical and social challenges to the encryption and communication of encrypted information, authentication is one of the great growth opportunities ahead. Identities that are absolutely verifiable and that cannot be compromised are at the core of giving us physical and emotional peace of mind. Without this peace of mind, E-commerce will be stifled.

Communications, the ability to interact, is not only at the core of what makes us human, but is what makes us humane. It also keeps us healthy. Communications, the networking infrastructure that enables us to communicate has always been viewed as being important, but never more so than now.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the people and companies that have built the marvelous infrastructure that has served us so well in our time of need. It is their/our ability to improve upon past performance that can bring us out of the depths of our personal depressions. It is time to put our collective thinking caps back on and get back to the very important business of building the next generation, TRUSTED network of the future.
Peter Bernstein is President, Infonautics Consulting, Inc. He can be reached at pabernstein@worldnet.att.net.