I never knew why farms could be so junky, but I think it’s beginning to dawn on me now. Over the weekend, and after a truly chaotic week, I traveled through parts of Amish Country, Pennsylvania, to buy and transport a used piece of farm equipment that has to be 25 years old: new ones run between $4,000 and $5,000. The three-point hitch “ditcher” attachment I picked up probably works. If not, I have the parts list and there’s not a whole lot to it: a 540 revolutions per minute (rpm) straight-shaft Power Take Off (PTO) that transfers power through a gear and a roller chain to another gear, which drives a shaft with a propeller-like cutter that looks like it would be good to slice pizza into quarters, only it channels sideways through the ground, not down. This cutter is used to cut drains in a field to allow water to run off, and it throws dirt everywhere: truly a delight for any kid who ever played with mud pies.
While travelling, I stopped at an Amish market and got lunch, which cost me $3.45 for two hot dogs and a thing that looked like a cannon ball made of chocolate cake, cut in half and filled with cream. One customer called it something that sounded like “wumbgadoodle pie,” but not only did I get the name wrong, I instantly forgot it after he said it was a “local specialty.” Wrapped tightly in plastic and obviously homemade, it was mine and I was on my way. The way in Amish Country is dotted with windmills that pump water, and people cut grass with horses attached to a self-powered rotary cutter; they have learned to adapt. They travel about in carriages and on bicycles on the paved roads; truly an anachronism, in every sense of the word: the local economy looks to be strong. They pay for things with cash in Amish country.
If you look closely, everything old is new again, and so, at the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) annual convention several weeks ago, I approached Craig Newmark of craigslist.com, who was one of the speakers, and, after introducing myself, told him that his Web site gets me in lots of trouble. (This comment produced no reaction.) I mentioned the “farm and garden” section – the conversation went downhill from the there – which section on craigslist is partly responsible for a growing collection of old equipment with uses I barely understood several years ago.
Everything old is new again: they use horses to lay fiber in Vermont. Anything mechanical breaks (I can break anything) across the rocky ground that is Vermont (and I don’t even have rocks). This is innovation, high tech meet low tech. High grain prices, driven by the world’s rapidly growing population, particularly in developing countries, and federally mandated requirements to combine ethanol in gasoline (in the U.S., much of ethanol production made today comes from corn) have encouraged farmers to upgrade their equipment. Thus, the used farm equipment market is flowing with lots of implements that do things to dirt, presenting an opportunity for someone like me, who is learning to farm, but competition for used implements is fierce, and if you see something think you might need, you buy it and then figure out whether you actually need it or not.
I buy junk. Then, using the power of the Internet to locate far flung and no longer made spare parts, I rebuild it and then learn how to use it. All of it is heavy, most of it dangerous and, therefore, scary, but only if I let it bother me. Paint on the equipment I buy is scarce, surface rust abounds, and so I get to work. It’s fun and I learn something. I think I have reached the 1960’s vintage for most of my planters, disk and field cultivators, various cutters, a tree spade and now the ditcher.
Farmers upgrading today purchase tractors and implements tethered to GPS and the Internet, loaded with electronics that help them wring out efficiencies in their growing operations. Also today, Lightsquared, a company seeking to provide broadband using a combination of terrestrial and satellite delivery is locked in a battle with those who rely upon GPS, including the military, the airline industry and even John Deere. I sat at the Lightsquared booth at the NATOA conference a couple of weeks ago because there literally was no other place in the room to sit – it was that well attended – and so I kind of feel like I have a front row seat at this fight.
Telecom policy influencers like to talk about “the next Google” or the “two guys in a garage” who invent “the next big thing” to invoke the power of grass roots, which success happens, one hopes, before they blow up the garage. My garage tends to be a mess, with these multiple rebuild operations in process. Opposite the grass roots picture, though, is one of large corporations that spend tons of money on research and development (R&D) to invent the next big thing, and also innovative start-up outfits that are lean and mean and prove to be exciting places to work. There, you operate with no safety net, which is something I learned to do in the federal government, and come to think of it, I’m still doing now, using equipment with little or none of the safety devices commonly in use today.
What’s missing from this picture is the importance of government funding for R&D, though some state and even local governments “get it,” and which exists in pockets of the federal government and varies from area of study to the next. Other countries certainly understand this and want to be leaders in the 21st century. Korea may have missed the industrial revolution but is determined not to miss the information revolution. In a truly dynamic ecosystem, all of the above are needed to complete the cycle of innovation. Today, much of the venture capital money in the US is directed toward social networking, but a lot of money is still sitting on the sidelines, waiting for the big opportunity to change the game.
The meteoric rise of companies like Facebook and Twitter, and the market dominance of companies like Apple and Amazon are owed as much to what they make as to who they have working for them, and the visions laid out by their founders, like the late Steve Jobs. Last Friday’s sale of the iPhone 4s was as much about getting the latest and greatest smart phone as it was about paying homage to Mr. Jobs and his amazing impact on our world.
Remember what phones were like before the iPhone? Think about the dramatic difference between then and now, and today’s widespread use of streaming video and data available on the go. Think again, of how we connect with one another, seamlessly, immediately, incessantly, and then take that away. Lose your phone, lose your connectivity, or wait for that signal, those little bars that tell you whether you can connect with the global economy on your terms and on your time, or whether you will have to wait longer for that connection.
There will be more of this “Anywhere, Anytime, Access by Anyone, through Any device… Authorized” connectivity in the future, but it needs one more “A” to complete the picture: “Affordability.” And that’s what we are all about.
Postscript: there is one “A” missing from the above, and that is “Amish,” at least not now. But who are we to tell them what to do?