donald trump’s asynchronous world!
In the software industry, in which I worked for 30 years, synchronous applications were ones that updated databases in “real time” ( i.e. usually when a user hit the return key after changing data in some fields), while asynchronous applications were ones that updated data in “extended time” ( i.e. usually overnight after a program read data in a “temporary” file where changes were stored until the permeant files were updated.
The principle reasons for an application developer choosing one technique rather than the other generally had to do with the volume of data to be updated and the remoteness of locations from which updates were submitted. The more data being submitted by all users of an application and the more remote the locations from which users submitted updates, the more asynchronous updates became.
However, now that I look at formal definitions of the words synchronous and asynchronous it appears our use of the terms in the software industry may have been an industry convention rather than a faithful use of the definitions of the words. Following are the dictionary definitions of synchronous and asynchronous.
- Synchronous simply means that all events are occurring in a certain time order that can be predicted. A certain event would always follow another and they can’t be interchanged. Alternatively, synchronous messaging involves a client that waits for the server to respond to a message. Messages are able to flow in both directions, to and from. Essentially it means that synchronous messaging is a two way communication. i.e. Sender sends a message to a receiver and the receiver gives a reply to the sender. The Sender will not send another message until it gets a reply from receiver.
- Asynchronous is the opposite of synchronous. In asynchronous processes, there is no time order. Certain events can, and often do, interchange. Alternatively, asynchronous messaging involves a client that does not wait for a message from the server. An event is used to trigger a message from a server. So even if the client is down, the messaging will complete successfully. Asynchronous Messaging also means that, it is a one way communication and the flow of communication is one way only.
These formal definitions of synchronous and asynchronous are helpful during this ugly period of donald trump to which all of us have been subjected. Trump has turned our world from an orderly, synchronous one into a chaotic, asynchronous one and we’re all suffering the consequences of the lack of “time order”.
Before trump, uh, this is hard to write, became President, we were accustomed to leaders communicating with us in an orderly way through speeches and at times written announcements or proclamations. Those forms of communications gave all of us and particularly political analysts time to examine the President’s words and make judgements with regard to how they might impact us. Each of us could come to our own conclusions with regard to a President’s communications.
This is President Kennedy announcing the Embargo on Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis,
This is President Roosevelt announcing war on Japan,
While President McKinley ushered in the era of the American empire through military strength and economic coercion, his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, established a new foreign policy approach, based on a favorite African proverb, “speak softly, and carry a big stick, and you will go far.”
At the crux of President Roosevelt’s foreign policy was a thinly veiled threat. Roosevelt believed that in light of the country’s recent military successes, it was unnecessary to use force to achieve foreign policy goals, so long as the military could threaten force. This rationale also rested on the young president’s philosophy, which he termed the “strenuous life,” that prized challenges overseas as opportunities to instill American men with the resolve and vigor they allegedly had once acquired in the Trans-Mississippi West.
The Emancipation Proclamation was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. It changed the federal legal status of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the designated areas of the South from slave to free.
President Lincoln issued the proclamation as a war measure during the American Civil War and clearly directed it to all of the areas in rebellion and all segments of the executive branch (including the Army and Navy) of the United States.
Instead of these orderly, synchronous, communications from U.S. Presidents of both political parties, intended to calm and lead the American public in times of crisis, we now get the disjointed, asynchronous communications of a man so confused just looking at himself in the mirror that Americans find ourselves in a state of constant chaos and pandemonium.
This is how donald trump praises a brutal dictator like Vladimir Putin of Russia, who expropriates the lands neighboring Russia:
Or how trump’s communications are so asynchronous the Whitehouse must claim “they’re just jokes”
donald trump’s asynchronous world is no joke!
