It happened like this: One time when Land and his three-year-old daughter were in New Mexico, she asked why she couldn't immediately see a photograph that he had snapped. He took a short walk through the desert, pondering that question. By the time he had returned (and it was no more than an hour, he recalled), he had visualized the elements of the instant camera. "You always start with a fantasy," he said. "Part of the fantasy technique is to visualize something as perfect. Then with experiments you work back from the fantasy to reality, hacking away at the components.

Really gifted people, as the article suggests, discover products or ideas and not really invent them. It is as if they already have it in front of them when they try to articulate through words and expressions.

Sculley, former co-CEO of Apple, once said that he observed Steve Jobs having this ability when he talked about the Macintosh when it was yet to be produced.

I think most of us, if not all, have this ability especially when visualizing our own future or career path. We know where we want to be and what we want to do - it's just a matter of making that happen. When I have career discussions with my employees or when I ask a job applicant on long term plans, I let them focus on these key points:

• Don't think of a specific company or a specific job/position. Think of a type of work you want to do, in what industry and for how long. Think of a fantasy 8-to-5 routine. 
• Are you leaning towards a leadership or management path, on knowledge-transfer, technical or on design? 
• Do you have what it takes to make the fantasy a reality? If yes, you are an anomaly but good on you! 
• If you don't have what it takes [yet] to make the fantasy a reality, it's perfectly OK. Answering these questions and having these discussions is the first step. 
• Because the next steps are listing down the things you will need to achieve, acquire, learn, buy, steal, etc., in order to make the fantasy a reality. 

Now, get to work.

But one heart-wrenching byproduct of disasters like this one has been missing in Japan, and that’s looting and lawlessness.

Looting is something we see after almost every tragedy; for example: last year's earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, the floods in England in 2007, and of course Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. It happens when some people who've seen life as they know it get tossed out the window feel that all morality has been tossed out too. It's survival of the fittest and whatever you can get your hands on is yours, no matter who it belongs to.

But that's not happening in Japan.

Interesting. Mind-boggling.

Jon Bon Jovi cast his vote in The Sunday Times Magazine; the American rock musician thinks Jobs is "killing" the music industry with iTunes.

The massive success of iTunes, says Bon Jovi, has caused the "magical" experience of buying records in a store to disappear. "Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it," the rocker told The Sunday Times Magazine. Bon Jovi says that "in a generation from now people are going to say: 'What happened?' Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business."

I disagree and let me counter point-by-point.

1. On the perspective of music availability, it is NOT killing the music industry. There are more music available to anyone than ever before because of Steve Jobs' iTunes and other digital music distribution websites or software. If Bon Jovi was referring to the major labels' current business model then, yes, Steve Jobs and company is killing them. Do we want this or not? See next bullets.

2a. Music distribution through the major labels (aka old school music industry) means you have to be a U2, Kings of Leon, Katy Perry or a Coldplay in order for your music to be heard. You will need the major label's huge and expensive promotional machinery to get it out there. As far as revenues, the big man (read: the labels) gets most of it while the artists take a small portion. For the above-mentioned artists, this is OK for them since the margins are huge. For lesser-known acts, you only get cheap change.

2b. The advent of iTunes, Amazon, etc. made music distribution easier for artists without the major labels' support. Metric made it big with their "Fantasies" album through iTunes. Owl City's early hits were mainly driven by his Myspace following. There are countless others.

2c. So, we do not really want the major labels to die. We just want them to adapt the digital world where major overhead costs (which by the way is the major source of the labels' income) are no longer necessary. We definitely want this direct artist-to-listener model to flourish (take note: major labels don't have to go, they just need to re-think their business models).

3. The buying experience that Jon is talking about is also something that I miss. However, this was bound to happen and was only a question of when, not if. That's technology. It is the same as the photography business where before, we hire photographers to document our events. Now, we can do it ourselves with affordable digicams and some software. Jon's argument is a luddite's.

4. While I still have your attention, let me argue that Bon Jovi IS THE ONE killing the music industry with their [very, very] old cheesy songs. They need to call it a day and stop injecting us with their "bad medicine."