End of an Era or something like that.

On Monday 14 September 2026 at 6AM Eastern US time I was one of many who were told that our services were no longer required at Oracle. I suppose I could be angry and all that, but I’m not.  Mostly I’m relieved that the threat of being let go is over.  It happened and I can move on.  I was ready for it, well as ready as anyone can be I suppose.  The threat had been hanging over our heads for over a year.  And for those who remain, the threat continues to be there.  More massive cuts will happen.

 

 

The exit from Oracle has actually happened at a decent time for me.  Sure, I would have liked to stay employed for another year or so at least.   But I’m OK financial for retirement.  I will not be living the life of Riley, but I’ll be fine so to say.  I have no plans for extensive traveling, as I’m pretty burned out on travel from all my work trips over the years.  I’ve seen enough of the world and now I will do some local travel by car, if I travel at all.

 

 

And I’ve started to get pretty jaded about the future of IT.  I’m not a big fan of AI.  It is helpful, obviously.  There are plenty of good uses of it.  But I worry about our future.  Not from a future of Terminator or the Matrix type thing happening.  I see that kind of thing as unlikely.  A far more subtle and worse possible future seems to be coming. 

 

 

The dumbing down of the human race.  It’s fairly bad already.  As a simple example, more and more folks couldn’t use a paper map today if their life depended on it.  GPS devices (our phones) have made map reading a forgotten skill.  At a personal level, I’ve always been a terrible speller, and rely more and more on autocorrect to help me.  Heck this paragraph alone I had it help me on at least half a dozen words.  I haven’t used my good old dictionary in a long time. 

 

 

The movie Wall-e comes to mind.  The people on the spaceships with the last of humanity have become folks who can’t even walk anymore and just ride around on glorified scooters.  Is this the type of future we are racing for at such a breakneck speed?   So lazy we can’t even walk?

 

 

Maybe, I hope not, but we must be careful as we move forward.  The problem with this advancement is its speed.  Things like the industrial revolution, cars becoming common place, and other massive changes to our society typically took a long time.  Even a full generation or more.  This one has happened in a few years.  

 

 

I can still easily recall the time before home computers, the internet, Cell phones, and so on.   Heck, I went to a one room school until fifth grade.  Not a lot of folks can say that these days.  Things sure have moved fast in my life.  From a farm boy to a SQL optimization specialist, that is one crazy time line.  The picture below is of all the students in the school all 24 of us, I'm on the left end. 

Thanks for reading this and who knows what (if anything) I will publish in the future for this blog.