From The movie Wall Street Bud Fox: “How much is enough? “ Gordon Gekko: It’s not a question of enough, pal. It’s a zero sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred from one perception to another.” This quote applies to this article in two ways. First it begs the question how much technology is really necessary to run a business or your life for that matter? Second is the zero sum game where someone (insert your company name here) wins and someone (insert your competitor’s name here) loses. At least everyone hopes it works out that way. I have been pretty old school in my thinking. I only learned how to IM last week. Didn’t see the purpose. Why not use technology I already know, like email or cell phone. Then I don’t have to learn anything new. Frankly I am not the smartest or coolest crayon in the box and like most humans I don’t like change very much. Then I got a lesson from one of my sales people Lance. Lance had posted some of our product for sale in on a forum website. A company previously unknown to him saw the posting on said forum and contacted him, with an Instant Message. Before Lance could type back to the potential customer, his cell phone rang-yep it’s the customer from the Instant Message. This customer is about to leave his office in England, Lance is just getting started with his day in Washington. This customer is in need of product and it must ship NOW. This customer has already been to our website and checked out product. Next our new customer emails a PO to Lance. For payment the customer is understandably reluctant to email credit card information-so he faxes it. Lance proceeds with the order using our company network of computers and software. Our shipping department uses the internet to process the shipping of the product. The customer is sent a receipt with tracking information via email. Everything bolded represents technology. Note to self nowhere do I mention carrier pigeons. So essentially the transactions described above just eliminated “the pond” that exists between the USA and England. So it would seem that as technology grows, the distance around the planet proportionally shrinks. I confidently speculate that this transaction would not have taken place 100 years ago or maybe even 25 years ago. So back to the question of how much is enough? Well I guess it depends on who you want to be in the zero sum game.