Friday, October 29, 2010

Fast Company Magazine - Russian Resource Grab / New Faces of Social Media

Really good story in the November issue of Fast Company Magazine... which reminded of a past feature from FC.

In this issue was "The Siberian Energy Rush" about Russia pushing natural gas exploration further and further into the Arctic Circle. Written by Joshua Hammer it's a pretty amazing look at a country staking a claim to new territory.

Thinking past just Russia and past natural gas, the story reminded me a great deal of the "China Storms Africa" special report from the June 2008 Fast Company (and which I also linked to here).

Taking these two features together with other statistics and content I've seen about jobs, education and innovation moving from the U.S. to other countries... it's disconcerting.

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A counterpoint of sorts to this concern was another piece from this Nov 2010 issue of Fast Company. "The New Faces of Social Media" is all about the industry and careers carved out today that one wouldn't have dreamed of 10 years ago.

Considering these two different somewhat opposing ideas, the thing that occurs to me is it's definitely possible to create and innovate as an individual in America today... but, you can't rely upon anyone other than yourself to make that happen.