Business Opportunity

Is there any finer example of entrepreneurial-ship than the recent developments in China regarding Google? It seems that the censorship restrictions placed on the internet by the Chinese government, known in China as the “Great Firewall” (www.nytimes.com/2010/01/16/technology/internet/16vpn.html) has opened up a fantastic business opportunity for those who wish to help the Chinese circumvent the wall. This has created a booming market for software companies, which are capitalizing on the growing desire of China’s Internet users to “fanqiang,” or scale the wall, to visit Web sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

I find this kind of news extremely uplifting amid the tumult of bad news. While governments go to war, dispute boundaries, and fight over shares of natural resources, people are communicating without borders. The jury is still out on whether that’s a good thing. In fact, many juries are out, including in Iran, where the government there is also unable to stem the free flow of information. The early twenty-first century will certainly come to be known as “The Internet Age”.


By Myron Gushlak

A Decade Ago

The top stories ten years ago, in 1999, were the Elian Gonzalez repatriation story and the Y2K scare. www.cbsnews.com/stories/1999/12/27/world/main143365.shtml That same year, AT&T made a commitment to broadband, though few knew what that meant, and it was the year of the Euro, with eleven European countries switching currencies. It was, of course, pre 9/11, pre Iraq war, pre Afghanistan, pre financial meltdown and pre “Great Recession.” It’s hard to believe that many people will ever look back on this current decade as nostalgically as we now look back at the 1990’s.

In 2000, after George W was elected president of the US, The Onion had a headline story that in the wake of what has followed seems more prescient than satirical. For those who are not religiously addicted to The Onion, it is a weekly satirical “newspaper” available both on-line and on many street corners in Manhattan that pokes fun at modern society and political events. www.theonion.com/content/index The headline back in those innocent days read: “George Bush: Our Long Nightmare decade of Peace and Prosperity is Finally Over.” Some things just aren’t as funny as time marches on.


By Myron Gushlak