Larry, Sergey and Rauf
Written by Lanre Adewole - Lagos
Uncommon
sense has gripped my backyard, but that would not stop me from
celebrating three uncommonly passionate men, who wanted to infinitely
affect their generations. Idealism drives them. Realities have delivered
different results.
In 1995, Larry Page, 22, got a guide in Sergey Brin, 21, both eyeing a Ph.D from Stanford. The paroxysm of (POP) power-of-possibility gripped them and by September 15, 1997, had registered a search domain; Google.com, by punning the word “googol” a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The puny business nomenclature was no joke; it was pragmatic expression of their mission to organise a seemingly and perceivably-impossible, infinite amount of information on the web!
The duo, who wanted to rule the world by warehousing every piece of information on earth, set up their first office on September 4, 1998 in the garage of Susan Wojcicki’s in California, who the duo later made the head of YouTube for being magnanimous enough to allow legend grow in her backyard.
Barack Obama’s testimony in his “Audacity of Hope” when he visited Mountain View, the corporate headquarters of Google as a senator confirmed the success of Larry and Sergey’s audacity in just eight years! “We spoke about Google’s mission-to organise all of the world’s information into a universally accessible, unfiltered, and usable form-and the Google site index, which already included more than six billion web pages. Recently the company had launched a new web-based email system with a built-in search function; they were working on technology that would allow you to initiate a voice search over the telephone and had already started the Book Project, the goal of which was to scan every book ever published into a web-accessible format, creating a virtual library that would store the entirety of human knowledge!”
That was in 2004 and this is 2014. To dare is to be indeed rare.
At a meeting with the media recently in Lagos, Nigeria’s governance-maverick, Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State struck me twice with unforgettable statements. After rambling through his Omoluabi pet project, I asked him why he is a loner in all the controversial policies and actions despite the much-mouthed regional integration policy of his defunct ACN party. While his opinions of his regional colleagues would remain in the off-record domain we agreed to put them, he promised to keep trudging on with his mission of returning the systemic Omoluwabi values and ethos in his areas of influence; Osun state and possibly his Alimosho political base in Lagos. Then the clincher “who says the policies would even succeed, but we can’t fold our arms and not doing anything for the younger generation and even generations unborn because of fear of failure”.
While pumping hands, he halted at my turn and turned to my former Managing Director at the defunct Anchor newspaper, Mr. Segun Babatope and said in his characteristic chitty manner “Ha, Lanre is always hitting me. I always read you. You said though we are from the same place (Ilesa), you won’t spare me. Egbon, Lanre started the struggle together with us o, he just derailed.”
I told the governor I was still in the struggle with him; discharging possibly the toughest assignment of telling him hurtful truth. About moving away, an uncharacteristically sober Aregbesola turned back to me, and picked his way through “Lanre, whatever, it is, I want you to know I mean well, honest, I mean well”.
Aregbesola may mean well on the school re-classification policy in the state which has become an absurdity of epic proportion but the denouement last week, spelt a realistic tragedy. The policy mix; with its higher religious opium content, has drowned his idealism regarding education in the state. In the spirit of my tough errand for him, I won’t mince words in declaring the policy in its current state as a poisoned chalice. It is not about Baptist Mission or MURIC, it is about the impressionable students, who have become pawns; easy to persuade but difficult to dissuade. Grandstanding and coercion by government would germinate faster the negative impressions in the minds of the youths who Aregbesola said are his focus and hope. The panel of inquiry, invitation of 92 Christian students and their parents, Baptist Mission non-appearance directive, all point at a possible Byzantine empire for him.
He should not be the daring General Flavius Belisarius under Justinian 1 in the early 6th century, who stubbornly stuck to a failed battle plan against the Persians, thereby forcing the Byzantines into tribute-paying, leading to the disaster of the Fourth Crusade. The empire’s dominance wasn’t inevitable. Today, it exists only in imaginative history.
Larry and Sergey were not instant success. In 1996, their collabo on a search engine; BackRub operated on Stanford servers for more than a year but eventually took up too much bandwidth. The seeming cul-de-sac gave birth to Google legend.
Aregbesola should not listen to sabotage-theory from the Speaker of the state Assembly. He should personally step into the mix and re-mix the re-classification formula devoid of religious spice. No teacher, student or parent should take any drunken punch from state officials intoxicated with the acidic educational formula.
The governor should see his pet project from the perspective of Thomas Edison. He should not give up but quickly recognise certain ways the idealism would not work. I once heard about an idea of a “School B” for the embattled schools in Iwo and Osogbo from a senior member of his cabinet, mainly for Hijab-wearing students, while the fundamentals are sorted out. Why not make that the Edison’s 10,001st time that illuminated humanity. Aregbesola does not deserve the sticks today for daring. With listening ears, he may end up being rare.
In 1995, Larry Page, 22, got a guide in Sergey Brin, 21, both eyeing a Ph.D from Stanford. The paroxysm of (POP) power-of-possibility gripped them and by September 15, 1997, had registered a search domain; Google.com, by punning the word “googol” a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The puny business nomenclature was no joke; it was pragmatic expression of their mission to organise a seemingly and perceivably-impossible, infinite amount of information on the web!
The duo, who wanted to rule the world by warehousing every piece of information on earth, set up their first office on September 4, 1998 in the garage of Susan Wojcicki’s in California, who the duo later made the head of YouTube for being magnanimous enough to allow legend grow in her backyard.
Barack Obama’s testimony in his “Audacity of Hope” when he visited Mountain View, the corporate headquarters of Google as a senator confirmed the success of Larry and Sergey’s audacity in just eight years! “We spoke about Google’s mission-to organise all of the world’s information into a universally accessible, unfiltered, and usable form-and the Google site index, which already included more than six billion web pages. Recently the company had launched a new web-based email system with a built-in search function; they were working on technology that would allow you to initiate a voice search over the telephone and had already started the Book Project, the goal of which was to scan every book ever published into a web-accessible format, creating a virtual library that would store the entirety of human knowledge!”
That was in 2004 and this is 2014. To dare is to be indeed rare.
At a meeting with the media recently in Lagos, Nigeria’s governance-maverick, Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State struck me twice with unforgettable statements. After rambling through his Omoluabi pet project, I asked him why he is a loner in all the controversial policies and actions despite the much-mouthed regional integration policy of his defunct ACN party. While his opinions of his regional colleagues would remain in the off-record domain we agreed to put them, he promised to keep trudging on with his mission of returning the systemic Omoluwabi values and ethos in his areas of influence; Osun state and possibly his Alimosho political base in Lagos. Then the clincher “who says the policies would even succeed, but we can’t fold our arms and not doing anything for the younger generation and even generations unborn because of fear of failure”.
While pumping hands, he halted at my turn and turned to my former Managing Director at the defunct Anchor newspaper, Mr. Segun Babatope and said in his characteristic chitty manner “Ha, Lanre is always hitting me. I always read you. You said though we are from the same place (Ilesa), you won’t spare me. Egbon, Lanre started the struggle together with us o, he just derailed.”
I told the governor I was still in the struggle with him; discharging possibly the toughest assignment of telling him hurtful truth. About moving away, an uncharacteristically sober Aregbesola turned back to me, and picked his way through “Lanre, whatever, it is, I want you to know I mean well, honest, I mean well”.
Aregbesola may mean well on the school re-classification policy in the state which has become an absurdity of epic proportion but the denouement last week, spelt a realistic tragedy. The policy mix; with its higher religious opium content, has drowned his idealism regarding education in the state. In the spirit of my tough errand for him, I won’t mince words in declaring the policy in its current state as a poisoned chalice. It is not about Baptist Mission or MURIC, it is about the impressionable students, who have become pawns; easy to persuade but difficult to dissuade. Grandstanding and coercion by government would germinate faster the negative impressions in the minds of the youths who Aregbesola said are his focus and hope. The panel of inquiry, invitation of 92 Christian students and their parents, Baptist Mission non-appearance directive, all point at a possible Byzantine empire for him.
He should not be the daring General Flavius Belisarius under Justinian 1 in the early 6th century, who stubbornly stuck to a failed battle plan against the Persians, thereby forcing the Byzantines into tribute-paying, leading to the disaster of the Fourth Crusade. The empire’s dominance wasn’t inevitable. Today, it exists only in imaginative history.
Larry and Sergey were not instant success. In 1996, their collabo on a search engine; BackRub operated on Stanford servers for more than a year but eventually took up too much bandwidth. The seeming cul-de-sac gave birth to Google legend.
Aregbesola should not listen to sabotage-theory from the Speaker of the state Assembly. He should personally step into the mix and re-mix the re-classification formula devoid of religious spice. No teacher, student or parent should take any drunken punch from state officials intoxicated with the acidic educational formula.
The governor should see his pet project from the perspective of Thomas Edison. He should not give up but quickly recognise certain ways the idealism would not work. I once heard about an idea of a “School B” for the embattled schools in Iwo and Osogbo from a senior member of his cabinet, mainly for Hijab-wearing students, while the fundamentals are sorted out. Why not make that the Edison’s 10,001st time that illuminated humanity. Aregbesola does not deserve the sticks today for daring. With listening ears, he may end up being rare.
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