Sunday, October 22, 2017

The Running Man and 2017

I was just reminded this morning that The Running Man was set in 2017, the current year I'm writing this.

What brought this revelation on? I was plugging $3.25 into a hotel vending machine to get a soda. In the 1987 movie the characters were plugging $6 in change into one. It felt kind of weird to think they predicted this.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I recall when first watching the movie that prices were on the rise and it was kind of laughable to see how that trend might have continued. Now I'm living it.

But this got me to thinking about other similarities between the movie and present day life.

In the movie television is ruled by game shows. And not just fun game shows that give you the opportunity to win a car or money, but shows that really put your life in peril for a big payout.

In real life, television may not be quite as sinister as the movie, but it's ripe with "Reality TV" such as Survivor and competitive games like American Ninja Warrior.

The movie had the show's exec calling the "President's Agent" to get past the red tape of aquiring the mass murder Ben Richards, something that 30 years ago seemed ludacris. In 2017 this doesn't seem like a stretch. Having celebrity business man Donald Trump as president I'd expect him to have an agent.


I could go on with things like manufactured news, television controlling opinion, travel restrictions, Real ID, etc. but it all leads me to the same conclusion; were they predicting the future, or laying out their plans for the future 30 years ago?

Sunday, January 1, 2017

How Evernote Can (And Probably Will) Fix Its Problems in 2017


TL;DR Version: Sell it to Google.

Evernote had some PR problems in 2016. A price restructuring that got a lot of bad press since it was the second pricing increase in recent memory and a privacy policy change that rightfully garnered the ire of almost all of the Internet.

So how can they fix it? I personally think they've been headed towards a sale to Google for a while now. I believe it started shortly after the first pricing increase under Phil Libin. It probably became obvious to Evernote that the new pricing wasn't going to save the company.

Evernote replaced their CEO with a former Googler, and since then have moved their data store to Google, raised their prices, reduced the functionality of their free offering, and announced a new privacy policy that would allow Evernote employees to see private data—a policy they've since reversed.

At almost every one of these points, they've suffered negative PR and lost customers. If I was conspiracy-minded I'd almost say this has been orchestrated to reduce Evernote's value and make for an easier Google acquisition; hey, they're almost a Google entity already.

Pair all those of this with Google's inadequate Evernote "killer," Google Keep, and Evernote has got to look ripe for picking by Google.

Just finish the job, do the inevitable, save us the time and sell it to them so I can set about figuring if I stay or jump ship.

Update: Fixed spelling error. 1/2/17