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Yesterday's Barriers Are Not Tomorrow's

August 28, 2007 A note by my colleague Walt Crawford in his publication Cites and Insights about a one-terabyte hard drive for USD$ 400 set me to thinking. It wasn't all that long ago that disk space was a serious issue. Back when MARC was created it was such a serious issue that it framed the very design of that standard, as it did many things at that point in the history of computing.

But now look at us. For less than the cost of an iPhone you can have fast hard-drive storage of 1,000 gigabytes -- more than most of us ever thought they could ever possibly consume. Of course with high-definition digital cameras and camcorders now easily available, a terabyte isn't looking quite as spacious. But the point is this -- disk storage, despite its role as a serious barrier in the past, is no longer the problem it once was. For all personal intents and purposes -- and even for many corporate and organizational intents and purposes -- disk space is not a barrier to anything you can imagine.

This is not the first time a barrier has disappeared, nor is it the last. What this tells me is that we should be aggressive in casting aside barriers and conservative in accepting them. Unfortunately, this is almost the exact opposite of our tendencies. We tend to be quick to accept barriers, and loathe to let them go. We can't seem to get it through our heads that the things that stood in our way in the past are no longer an issue.

It's almost as if we need to wake up each morning a fresh perspective, look around, and learn anew why we can't do what it is we really want to do. Because if we're not careful we will wake up, look around, and see only the reasons why we can't -- even when they no longer apply.

Posted by Roy Tennant on August 28, 2007 | Comments (2)