Dawn of a New Day is the subject of a memo written by Ray Ozzie.  According to Reuters, Ozzie is Microsoft Corp’s resident visionary and departing software chief.

In the Reuters story, they gave the following description of the memo:

Microsoft Corp’s resident visionary and departing software chief has urged the company to move on from its Windows and Office roots and imagine a “post-PC world” of simple, global Web devices.

I have to agree with one of the forces that Ozzie identifies as driving the change.

But as the PC client and PC-based server have grown from their simple roots over the past 25 years, the PC-centric / server-centric model has accreted simply immense complexity.

Complexity kills. Complexity sucks the life out of users, developers and IT.  Complexity makes products difficult to plan, build, test and use.  Complexity introduces security challenges.  Complexity causes administrator frustration.

I am going to miss the PC-centric days, but I must admit, right now the thought of buying a new PC fills me with trepidation as I think about all the installed software on my current PC that I will have to install on the new one.

As someone who enjoys writing his own software to solve problems, I hope the day never comes when I won’t be able to write software no matter what form the next computer revolution takes.  This memo just reminds me of the need to stay abreast of the coming changes even though I am retired from the software industry.  What I learned over the past 40 years will have to be constantly refreshed.

From what I have read, this effort to keep up-to-date will either keep me mentally alert or will drive my mental deterioration even faster.