walking mostly through rural Alabama<\/a>. This weekend I am in Tuscaloosa. This is a university town, so it differs from most of the places I have been. I was driving around on Sunday morning (a no-walking day) and before my eyes was a shopping center just like I would see in Reston, Virginia (home base). There before my eyes was a Starbucks, Chipotle, Panera Bread, and even a Five Guys (a hamburger chain based in the Washington, D.C. area – how did a Five Guys get here???).<\/p>\nAh, familiar. Such a feeling of comfort came over me. Go to Starbucks for coffee, sit in Panera for coffee and WiFi and maybe a sandwich. Go to Five Guys for a hamburger with jalepenos and grilled onions and maybe some fries. I was looking forward to this.<\/p>\n
Familiarity is comfortable. That isn’t an original thought with me. I have experienced it many times before this experience today. Ahh, I have been here before, I like this.<\/p>\n
What could go wrong? Well, a lot of things. Consider the (dying) newspaper industry. Quite familiar for many decades and quite comfortable.<\/p>\n
I rarely see impending doom while comfortable. Consider the (dying) newspaper industry. They never saw the impending doom.<\/p>\n
I suppose we could run through a long list of examples where people were in the familiar, became quite comfortable, and didn’t see possible problems coming. Consider the (dying) newspaper industry. Ooops, I mentioned that one twice already. I guess I am familiar and comfortable with that example. I better think of another one. The railroads once ruled America – familiar, comfortable, doomed. Bell once ruled telecommunications – familiar, comfortable, doomed. IBM once ruled data processing – familiar, comfortable, doomed.<\/p>\n
What did I do this day? I had a cup of coffee at Starbucks. While drinking it I listened to a conversation of three college students. That made my day. Lunch? I drove past Panera Bread, Chipotle, and Five Guys. Instead I ate at a local barbeque place. It wasn’t familiar, so it wasn’t as comforting, but it was really good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Dwayne Phillips The familiar is comfortable. The comfort, however, sometimes hides risk and impending doom. Take care. I have been on the road for two weeks walking mostly through rural Alabama. This weekend I am in Tuscaloosa. This is a university town, so it differs from most of the places I have been. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,32,17,44],"tags":[143,139,166],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-change","category-communication","category-culture","category-risk","tag-change","tag-culture","tag-risk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":251,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions\/251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}