Our Plan, Part XIX
If you haven’t had the opportunity to use a cloud computing offering I would suggest that you sign up for one and try them out. Both Amazon and Google have very good starter programs where the initial upfront costs are discounted. In the case of Google Cloud Platform they provide you with $300 U.S. in initial free use. Which is a lot of power. The capabilities of these systems is realized the first time you use them. What might have taken fifteen hours for your computer to process can be done in a matter of a few minutes for very few dollars. That is the power of cloud computing. Massive power available when it's required and at extremely low costs.
These services will provide real value to the industry when we need to process the month end for the producers. For example it may have taken 72 hours in order to conduct all of the processing on hardware that we would have had to purchased. And with cloud computing capabilities we may be able to turn that around in as little as 30 minutes, or even 30 seconds for essentially the same cost as the 30 minutes.
People, Ideas & Objects have always focused on people doing the things that people are good at and leaving the storage and processing to the computers. The things that people do well are the leadership, issue resolution, decision making, creativity, collaboration, research, idea generation, design, planning, thinking, negotiating, compromising, innovating and financing to name a few. By allowing people to do the work that we’re best oriented to then we will be more productive and I would think happier than we are with the work that we are doing now. In a related note Michael Milken, the former junk bond king and now head of the Milken Institute had an article in the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal last week. Entitled “How Technology Liberates Human Capital” he raises an interesting point.
Through People, Ideas & Objects and our user community the oil and gas industry is being disintermediated. The positions and the types of work that will be done in the future, particularly in the accounting and administrative areas, will change significantly. Leading inevitably to some job displacement and outright losses. In the WSJ article Mr. Milken points to a McKinsey Global Institute report “that almost half of paid work can be automated with current technologies.” The knee jerk reaction to this news is one of concern and protection of one's turf. Mr. Milken suggests otherwise and has historical references to back up his opinion. That same McKinsey article notes that only 5% of any specific job could be completely automated.
But the very technologies eliminating jobs can be part of the solution for disrupted workers. To see what pessimists are missing, go back 40 years when powerful financial technology first started being used on Wall Street. The combination of mainframe computers with new types of securities and trading processes increased access to capital, especially for small and medium companies. Pioneers in the cellular telephone industry, for example, previously had a hard time convincing lenders that they could revolutionize how people communicate. There were only a handful of capital providers -- primarily banks and insurers -- that most companies could turn to.
This changed beginning in the 1970’s when capital markets began a long process of displacing the established financial institutions as the leading sources of funding for corporate growth. Innovative fixed income and equity linked instruments helped create more than 60 million net new jobs in the U.S. over the last third of the 20th century. This proved an important formula: Prosperity comes when financial technologies multiply the sum of human capital, social capital and real assets.
This liberation of human capital is what is the promise that our future holds. Instead of being preoccupied with the tedious and mostly irrelevant we as people can focus on the value added components of our society and do the work that we are best oriented to do. Leaving the tedious and irrelevant to the computers. That is the promise and the opportunity that stands in front of us. The performance that we can generate as a result of the user community and the service providers reconfigured in the way defined in the Preliminary Specification can open these benefits to the industry.
The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas producer with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for North America’s energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in these user defined software developments. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don’t forget to join our network on Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here.