It's February, and here in New York that means it's cloudy. Some people get Seasonal Affective Disorder, which can be a real impediment to getting things done. One can start to think that some of the more menial tasks are useless and put forth less effort. But those people don't realize the true significance of what they do.

Think about this: why is homo sapiens sapiens the most dominant species on the planet? We are slow, weak, and fragile, yet now control the fate of all life on Earth. One would be tempted to answer that our undisputed place atop the animal kingdom is a result of myriad factors, from our dexterous manual ability to use tools to our penchant for wakeboarding (which is AWESOME). The common consensus among anthropologists today however, is that, while such diverse aspects of our morphology, physiology, and behavior are important, they pale in comparison to the use of one critical adaptive mechanism, one that, above all others, has lead us to our rightful position of utter dominion over lesser, non-wakeboarding, creatures: culture. Simply put, it is our unparalleled ability to effect coordinated action as a group that has lead to our success.

* Lemma 1: the fate of humanity lies with the proper functioning of society.

Society is a giant tool used by our species to adapt and thrive, an incomprehensibly complex machine, a network of billions of decision-makers struggling to align themselves. The industrial-strength lubricant used to ensure its proper functioning is communication.

* Lemma 2: the proper functioning of society is predicated upon effective communication.

The primary means by which humans communicate is obviously language (there are others, such as facial expressions, or flamboyant wakeboarding technique, but none approach language in terms of impact and importance). Once upon a time, this only meant the existence of an oral tradition through which members of a small group could transmit the ideas necessary for the community. One tribesman might say to the other, "Hey, let's go hunting. By dividing our efforts, the two of us can become better hunters as a group than we would have been as individuals. Afterwards, we can go wakeboarding." But soon this was supplemented by written communication, which had innumerable advantages over its solely oral counterpart.

* Lemma 3: the efficacy and nature of communication depends on the medium.

One such gain introduced with written communication was that, for the first time, messages could be carried over long distances and remain independent of the inaccuracies that accompanied human memorization (the old method). So now, a foreign diplomat could relay back, "My lord, I beseech thee to avoid further provocation of the Gauls. They are quite irate over the wakeboarding incident," without worrying about the linguistic subtleties being lost. Additionally, the knowledge contained within such communiqués could be permanently stored, copied, and/or disseminated. This proved to be a massive shift in the way societies interacted with ideas. Witness, for instance, the success of the Guttenberg Bible and its bearing on Martin Luther's reformation of the Catholic church. New technologies, adopted because they lowered costs, increased reliability, and decreased transmission time, made their impact felt in ways unimagined hitherto.

* Lemma 4: progressive paradigmatic shifts in communications technology (i.e. the medium) lead to greater societal benefit.

Every major communications revolution has, over the long-term, resulted in a profound change for the better. The telegraph eliminated the need for sometimes risky trans-oceanic envoys to carry missives between continents, but it also lead to such innovations as the stock ticker, which stoked the fires of the free markets (providing valuable information transparency) and helped to usher in the industrial age.

* Lemma 5: those who foster such shifts have a direct and non-trivial impact on the speed and extent of their adoption.

Beneficial technologies like, say, wakeboarding, will, ceteris paribus, likely achieve prominence on their own merits in time, but the process can be noticeably accelerated by its developers and benefactors. Business savvy, political sway, assiduous dedication, foresight, and any number of other qualities can shorten the window needed to turn a nascent and untested means of communication into a popular and vital one.

* Conclusion: the individuals responsible for shepherding new communications technologies have a direct effect on the health and operating efficiency of societies, the successes of which translate directly to the success of humankind in its entirety.

We are living on the cusp of a new stage of societal development, one that will be a direct result of wireless technologies currently emerging. Qualcomm, BREW, and you at QIS play no small part in this. Through your efforts, all of humanity benefits. I believe a new era of good fortune and wakeboarding is upon us.

So you see, when the sky is cloudy and you get to a-thinkin' that those little things you do aren't so important, please realize that the entire fate of our species rests on those very tasks you might at first think inconsequential. Not to be grandiose or anything.

Hey, speaking of which, I've enclosed an [phone model] with software build [unimportant]. Could you please re-flash it with the latest software build and return it to us as soon as is convenient?

Thanks,

Morland