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Friday, July 11, 2003
High on New York
By design, I knew this week was going to be a storied conclusion to my successful consulting assignment at AIG Corporate eBusiness. I had planned a busy week of meetings for Victor and I to launch him into all the parallel tracks of information architecture activity I started. By the end of today, we had met with most of senior management in Corporate R&D (parent to eBusiness), touched all the functional groups across the web property operations, visited some of the business units with active eBusiness projects, and received status briefings on the RUP and CMM initiatives. Victor's notebook is already half full and I think I've set him up for some interesting nights of REM sleep.
Yesterday's schedule changed from purposeful to monumental when I got permission to visit the 66th floor observation gallery at the top of the AIG Headquarters building at 70 Pine. Post 9/11, the building became the highest vantage point in Lower Manhattan, but the gallery is only used by senior executives to entertain clients. My interest in 70 Pine was fueled by reading Skyscraper Rivals, a history of the pre-World War II buildings in the financial district with an emphasis on The AIG Building. This photo of the gothic peak of the tower framed by an American flag was made earlier this year while looking up from Chase Manhattan Plaza.
We cleared security checks in the lobby and were ready to meet "Vinnie" for an elevator ride up to the 60th floor executive dining room. From there we transferred to a small elevator that took us to 66th floor. The elevator car comes up out of a trap door in the floor (!!!), which you can see closed on the left side of the photo above. Before being electrified by the views of the skyline, we were captivated by the art deco interior of the deck. An ornate globe rests on the marble floor of the octagonal room and covers up the old Citgo logo. In the direction of each of the main compass points, there are one of eight balconies edged with ornate aluminum metalwork. Vinnie graciously opened up most of the balconies for us despite his concern about high winds. Much More…..
We sit at a fork in the road. Which way will we choose?
Originally posted by Taledus
reply to post by Amaterasu
Resource-based society...I posted somewhere that it was a good idea, but lets think about it. No need for money since no one has to work since robots do everything for everybody...where will the robots come from? You can't just build 1 robot to oversee everything, you would need programmers to tell the robot what to make...if no need for programmers, then you no longer have robots but AI.
Originally posted by TheRedneck
You overestimate technology in your dream of a robotic society.
There is no substitute for human labor as of yet, and that is the driving force behind this disaster.
'We' are needed, not for our worth, but for our ability to perform. 'We' are slaves, just as surely as if 'we' were sitting chained to a wall in a dirt-floor basement, suffering whip marks across 'our' backs, awaiting the next sunrise when the cotton fields will beckon again. 'We' just don't realize it.
This economy will collapse completely now. The greed and excesses of those who have been 'our' leaders and masters is coming to light. The result is that soon, 'our' lifestyles will be too expensive for our owners to finance, and 'we' will wake up to the awful truth. Nothing 'we' will do can stop this now.
According to the Bible, when God created man, He gave man dominion over the earth. He specified each and every thing man was to have dominion over. He did not simply say "the planet is yours", but gave a detailed list of what man had dominion over. Only one thing I can think of is missing from that list: each other. And that is the one thing mankind has searched unceasingly for dominion over since that day.
'We' are slaves. 'We' have no ability to choose our path anymore.
'I' have chosen mine already.
American International Group Inc. has used $90.3 billion of a U.S. government credit line since it was bailed out last month, an amount that exceeds the size of the original loan meant to save the insurer.
AIG may need more than the $122.8 billion now available to the New York-based insurer, Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy said yesterday.