Time & Perspective Quote by Jim Barksdale

There is a special kind of corporate poetry in Barksdale's line: it sounds visionary while refusing to be pinned down. "After all" signals that the debate is already settled, a verbal shrug that frames skepticism as quaint. "It's the future" does the heavy lifting, borrowing inevitability as a substitute for evidence. And "that we're looking toward" is the tell: the future is always safely over there, perpetually approaching, never quite arriving in a way you can audit.

Barksdale, best known for steering Netscape in the 1990s, is speaking from the heart of the first internet gold rush, when "business communication" was being reinvented in real time: email displacing memos, browsers turning information into a competitive weapon, and executives trying to make sense of a networked world without admitting they were improvising. The quote’s intent is to rally and reassure. It gives employees, investors, and partners permission to tolerate friction - clunky early tools, cultural resistance, unproven models - because progress has been declared a destination.

The subtext is managerial: align around the horizon. By invoking "business communication" rather than "technology", Barksdale positions the shift as practical, not geeky. It’s not about gadgets; it’s about how power moves inside organizations. The line works because it converts uncertainty into momentum, turning a messy transition into a moral narrative: adapt now, or be left speaking yesterday’s language.