It’s not always going to be the same
12 July 2010
I recently found myself in a scenario that would perhaps form the rudimentary foundations of a modern reality show. I was in rural France and completely disconnected from the rest of the world.
No signal on my mobile, no Internet connection, no television, no newspapers, and it was wonderful. Everything else continued and I was blissfully unaware of what was going on in the world. For all I knew, everything could have gone into meltdown whilst I was happily feeding the local deer.
And yet, upon my return, it was as if I’d never been gone. The world had not gone into meltdown (as you’d probably noticed), the climb out of recession continues, and all that had happened was that my inbox was slightly fuller than when I left.
Essentially, two weeks is not a long time. When you’re disconnected from rolling news feeds it can feel like a long time, but in essence, everything keeps on going. Perhaps it’s my fault for almost counting on something to have occurred. In a society that requires goods and data instantly, change is expected. But then, big changes will not happen in a short time. We need to think ahead and consider the long-term before progress can be made.
A story we’ve featured this week, Chip sales in May rose by 4.5%, reports that the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) states that worldwide sales of semiconductors in May 2010 were $24.7 billion; a sequential increase of 4.5% from April and a year-on-year increase of 47.6% from May 2009. Semiconductor sales are often reported and observed in order to gain an understanding of the state of the industry. Interestingly, the SIA noted that the industry year-on-year and sequential growth rates are likely to continue to slow during the second half of 2010. “Recent chip sales have shown robust demand, but the year-on-year growth rates also underscore the very depressed market conditions of the first half of 2009. Year-on-year growth comparisons will reflect the industry recovery that gained momentum in the second half of last year. Growing concerns about issues such as government debt, declining consumer confidence, and pressures on government spending do not appear to have affected worldwide semiconductor sales to date, but given the semiconductor industry’s growing sensitivity to macroeconomic conditions, these issues bear watching in the second half of 2010,” concluded SIA President George Scalise.
The SIA are clearly looking at the long-term, conscious that change in the short-term is not necessarily indicative of the future.
Equally, SEMTA and the UKEA are looking towards the future, and investing in it. ‘Promoting new standards in skills, education and innovation’ explains how Semta, the sector skills council for science, engineering and manufacturing technologies, and the United Kingdom Electronics Alliance (UKEA) have announced a partnership agreement that aims to involve more employers in tackling the skills priorities of the electronics sector. Within the partnership, members will collaborate to identify solutions to address the industry’s needs.
“The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does,” stated C. S. Lewis, but we all have the power to shape it, change it, and make it better. It won’t happen in a day, a week, or two weeks, but it can happen.
It was Charles F. Kettering, an American inventor and the holder of 140 patents that said: “My interest is in the future because I'm going to spend the rest of my life there,” and to me, that seems like good advice.
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