Ron Davison Quotes & Sayings

It seems likely that the Internet will do for the corporation what the Guttenberg press did for the church. That is, it will break up structures we had always assumed were permanent: it will render temporal what we assumed was timeless. — Ron Davison

The test case of the civilizations in America suggests that we are predictable creatures, driven everywhere by similar needs, lusts, hopes, and follies. — Ron Davison

It may be no coincidence that the world's richest man is a computer programmer. Programmers have "theories" about how software will behave when they change a line of code. Those theories rarely hold up to their first encounter with reality. Unsuccessful programmers could probably wax eloquent about how things should be different. Successful programmers just debug their code. Such a profession would quickly wean a person from idealistic notions about how to make a change. Successful programmers soon learn that it is more profitable to challenge their own thinking than to curse their computers when faced with unexpected results. — Ron Davison

Choice is one level of freedom, but design is a higher — Ron Davison

Entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs for one simple reason: to be free. If you give that up, then you stop being an entrepreneur, and to hell with that. - Wilson Harrell, founder of over 100 companies and former publisher of Inc. Magazine — Ron Davison

pay gap could be less about market realities than the fact that the corporation has yet to be democratized. — Ron Davison

one's life begins when he is born and one's life story begins when he realizes that he was born into the wrong family. I would expand that somewhat, to say that anyone paying attention must eventually have a moment in which he wonders if he has been born into the wrong society. I suspect that you would have to be on some fairly strong drugs to escape those moments when you feel like a Martian. — Ron Davison

At that moment, when you feel like you were born into the wrong society or culture, you have a few choices. You can ignore the gap between the world around you and what you feel within. There are lots of ways to do this, from TV to drugs to desperately trying to succeed within the world's big social inventions. Another way is to rail at the world for its failings, creating a narrative in which you are right and "they" are wrong. Or you can be humbled by trying to change the world around you just enough to realize your own potential. — Ron Davison

The Great Depression in the 1930s turned many young people away from corporations towards communism. By contrast, the Great Recession in the first decade of this century seems to have turned many away from corporations towards entrepreneurship. — Ron Davison

Perhaps teachers and parents should add this to their list of admonitions and lessons: "Warning: contents of this society have been known to create feelings of stress and alienation; provoke wars, homicides, and suicides; and pollute the habitat you need for survival. Most of what we tell you, you should question. You can improve it. This is, really, just the best we have been able to do up until now and it could be that improvement will actually overturn much of what we now accept and advocate. Learn about your culture and your place in it, but do not cling too tightly to it. What we're teaching you probably needs to change, and soon. — Ron Davison

Millennials were the first generation to grow up with game controllers. They are not spectators. They are participants. — Ron Davison

Corporations create wealth and define how it is shared. They define working conditions, salary, wages, and benefits. Holy days used to be defined by the church, but now it is the corporation that defines for the workforce which days are holidays. Politicians have to win the approval of corporations in the same way that kings, centuries earlier, had to win the blessing of the church. — Ron Davison

If a drug failed as often and had as many side effects as western marriage, the FDA probably would not approve it. — Ron Davison

rogrammers have "theories" about how software will behave when they change a line of code. Those theories rarely hold up to their first encounter with reality. Unsuccessful programmers could probably wax eloquent about how things should be different. Successful programmers just debug their code. Such a profession would quickly wean a person from idealistic notions about how to make a change. Successful programmers soon learn that it is more profitable to challenge their own thinking than to curse their computers when faced with unexpected results. There is no reason that communities could not formulate policy in a similar way. Two reasons that it is not is because of our still rudimentary understanding of system dynamics and our insistence on placing blame on individuals rather than trying to understand systems. — Ron Davison

It was not until the late 19th century that the term innovation had a positive connotation: — Ron Davison