I have an annoying habit of reading more than one book at the same time -- in a none-too-complete way. One of my current half-way-there digs is called "Number: The Language of Science" by Tobiaz Dantzig, and some early pages in the book triggered these thoughts.

According to "Number," after the world struggled to think nothing for thousands of years some unknown thinker in ancient India came up with the word sunya to represent emptiness or blankness and unexpectedly started a computational revolution that we can't seem to survive without today (think no computers).

Tenth century Arabians adopted this "empty" representation and called it sifr. The Italians, meanwhile, latinized the Arabian term to zephirum. Over the course of the next hundred years, the word has simmered to become zero.

Meanwhile, the Germans slightly modified sifr to cifra and the French did a cifre. Finally, the English speakers wanted their own and cipher (meaning: a secret or disguised way of writing) is what they got.

R=G, the concept of global entities coming together within the organization or outside it and/or within one's geography or outside it, is as ubiquitous as sliced bread and as amalgamated in our evolution as the air we breathe. To act as if a world existed or exists or will exist without R=G is like using your iPhone and acting as if it's a piece of wood with nothing inside. Break it open and you'll find a bhelpuri of firms involved.

Korea's Samsung makes its applications and video processor, America's Marvell does the 802.11, Germany's Infineon the baseband, America's Broadcom its beautiful touch screen controller, UK's Cambridge Silicon Radio its Bluetooth, National semiconductor the display interface serializer, and Taiwan's High Tech Computer creates a few other components among several other suppliers (read here and there for more). And Apple, of course, designed the device at home in Cupertino.

If an anti-outsourcing birdie is tweeting out there, he can always spend some time deciphering the phone in his pocket.