Starting in Towers of Power, our initial assignments were to setup an Ubuntu environment in VirtualBox (done!), find our IMSI and IMEI numbers for our phones, and read the first two chapters of “Built to Last” by Jim Collins.
My experience with finding my IMSI and IMEI numbers was interesting. First, Googling what they are. The IMSI is your phone’s International Mobile Subscriber Identity, and the IMEI is the International Mobile Equipment Identity. My understanding is that the IMSI is based around the SIM while the IMEI is based around the device itself.
The IMEI can be found in an Android system by going into the Settings>About Phone>Status>SIM Status. There is also the option to dial the number *#06# in the dialer and then the number pops up.
But I couldn’t find the IMSI. Googling around seemed to indicate that some Android phones have it in the settings, while others don’t. Some people claimed that the number printed on your SIM card was your IMSI and others disagreed. Then in Googling, I saw that there were plenty of Android apps that could tell you your IMSI… but I got paranoid. You aren’t supposed to give that information away, and I was having trouble trusting any of the apps not to harvest my data.
I wound up calling T-Mobile customer support, who informed me that my IMSI is the same as my IMEI. I’m partly skeptical of this answer as being something a customer service rep might say just to get someone off the line, so I’m going to follow up on this with Dhruv and Edwin.
“Built to Last” was interesting, and having us stop at the end of chapter two felt a little bit like a cliffhanger, so I will be coming back to it when I have the time. I’m not necessarily the most business oriented person. And when I am it is more about having an idea for something I would want to make and then perhaps building a business model around it. This isn’t the ethos of “Built to Last”, nor of many of the tech/app economy types we usually get exposed to. But I did come to appreciate what Collins was positing.
I kept thinking of the word “sustainability” and how it has so much more meaning than in an ecological sense. How do you have organizational sustainability? In some of his examples of “clock makers, not time tellers” he talks about the United States and the intentions of the founding fathers to build a system that outlasted any one lifetime. I like this idea in an of itself, but also the realization that this organizational sustainability doesn’t need to be solely business oriented.
If you wish to obtain a more abstract goal, value, or set of beliefs; that often isn’t just about reaching it once and then proclaiming victory. It is a thing that needs to be reproduced and maintained continually. Clock making, not time telling. Teaching to fish instead of giving fish. Seems like a worthwhile art to study. And not only is it practical in that sense, but I appreciated the idea of having these core values be grounding in a way. Nice to think of being able to meditate on a strong and simple belief when navigating hectic terrain.