Context & Continuity

Bruce Sterling: Pay Attention.

Bruce Sterling is one of the people I follow.  What I mean by that is this:  Whatever he has to say, whatever he's up to, whatever he's into, I need to know about it because Bruce Sterling has a time-tested knack for understanding what will happen next and is able to articulate this point of view in a fascinating manner.  I've been priviledged to hear him speak, in person and, at first, I was put off by the way he was reading his presentation but then I realized that no one could be that smart, that concise and that droll off-the-cuff or even working from an outline. 

And so, in what has become an annual gift to the world, Mr. Sterling has published his annual report on the state of the world.  His platform for the address is well.com, a venerable space on the internet.  Here's a sample from this year's musings:

I'm a bohemian type, so I could scarcely be bothered to do anything
"financially sound" in my entire adult life. Last year was the first
year when I've felt genuinely sorry for responsible, well-to-do people.
 Suddenly they've got the precariousness of creatives, of the
underclass, without that gleeful experience of decades spent
living-it-up.

These are people who obeyed the social contract and are *still*
getting it in the neck. The injustice of that upsets me. The
bourgeoisie who kept their noses clean and obeyed the rules, I never
had anything against them. I mean, of course I made big artsy fun of
them, one has to do that, but I never meant them any active harm. I
didn't scheme to raise a black flag and cut their throats because they
were consumers. 

I even fret about the bankers. Seventeen percent of the US works in
financial services. That's a lot. I've got friends and relatives who
work in those industries. I frankly enjoy tossing myself into
turbulent parts of life, because I'm a dilettante who bores easily, but
jeez, bankers are supposed to be the ultimate humorless brown-shoe
crowd. They're not supposed to wake up on a sleeping roll and scrounge
breakfast.

If the straights were not "prone to hostility" before that experience,
they might well be so after it, because they've got a new host of
excellent reasons. The sheer galling come-down of watching the Bottom
Line, the Almighty Dollar, revealed as a papier-mache pinata. It's
like somebody burned their church.

 I keep remembering the half-stunned, half-irritated looks on the
faces of those car execs when they were chided for flying their company
jets to Washington to beg. I felt sorrow for them. Truly. These
guys are the captains of American industry at the top of the food
chain. Of course they fly corporate jets. Corporate jets were
*invented* for guys like the board of General Motors. And now they're
getting skewered for that by a bunch of punk-ass Congressmen they can
usually buy and sell? 

*That's* the issue at stake, a few jets? General Motors built the
aviation industry in World War II. General Motors aircraft pounded
Nazi Germany into a flaming ruin. Here they get this off-the-wall,
total-hokum act of peanut-gallery gotcha humiliation about the
corporate airplanes they've used for fifty years. That must have felt
surreal, even nauseating.

There are going to be so many nettling, humiliating experiences for
similar people, people congenitally unable to laugh at themselves and
roll with the punches. Nowhere is safe any more, not even the
mirrorglass skyscraper, not even the boardroom. 

I wish I could make them feel safe, but since I've lived in parts of
the planet with no-kidding, real-deal economic collapse... I dunno,
does reading Dmitri Orlov feel safe? I love that guy's writing, I
really get it about him, but the prophets of doom have so little
comfort to offer people. Last thing I heard about Orlov the guy had
chucked it and was living on a small boat.

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Judy Estrin on Innovation. You should read this.

By any measure, Judy Estrin is one of the Very Smart People from Silicon Valley.   In September, McGraw - Hill published her book, Closing the Innovation Gap.  In addition to descibing how Innovation takes place in a corporate setting (and how corporations can nurture it), she describes the growing innovation gap between the US and the rest of the world.     

Our short-sightedness has led to major challenges — dependence on oil, climate change, health care, and national security — that threaten our economy and quality of life. Each challenge also brings opportunities — if we give innovation the attention it deserves.

McKinsey recently had the good sense to interview Estrin and publish that video to its website.  You can find it here.

But what I really want to know is how you feel about Pittsburgh.

It's probably a sin to take delight in other people's misfortune so the German's came up with a word for it: Schadenfreude.  So please let me apologize in advance for have more the one or two laughs about this article in PR Weeki: 

 A Tweet by a Ketchum staffer that was visiting the agency's client, FedEx, in its hometown prompted an angry memo that reached executives on both sides and the blogosphere.

A Twitter post made by the screen name “keyinfluencer,” which lists James Andrews, VP, director of interactive at Ketchum, as its owner, made the “true confession” that “I'm in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say ‘I would die if I had to live here!'”

An employee of FedEx then wrote a letter to both FedEx and Ketchum leadership that said the comment was "inappropriate” and they were “confident” that “it is enough to expect a greater level of respect and awareness from someone in your position as a vice president at a major global player in your industry.” The memo was posted on the blog of Peter Shankman. 

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What tickles my funny bone is that the story arrives at a perfect intersection for me:

1. It's about an alma mater, Ketchum, an agency for which I have tremendous respect and an agency with its corporate headquarters in Pittsburgh.
2. The protagonist of the story is a "creative director" for an "interactive group," which is just another way of saying that he probably doesn't have P&L or account responsibility.
3. The downfall comes through a message on Twitter as a result of a bit too much hubris. 

I can just imagine the reaction of Dave Drobis and Ray Kotcher and the other gods of Ketchum, current and departed, when they got the call from the client.  Day to day life is hard enough without some yahoo with a fancy title and no good sense upending a key account.  Oh my goodness.  Mr. Andrews will probably be on a very short lesh for quite some time. 

Oh, and Mr. Andrews' apology?  He blames the medium of Twitter and its 140 character limit and not his own lack of skills as a "creative director" for an "interactive group" at a top-tier, world-wide public relations firm.  --Amazing. 

Honestly though, this should come as no surprise.  His blog features sections called "Geek Sexy TV" and "Under the Influence."  But really, for someone who lives in Atlanta to throw rocks at Memphis, well, that's some nerve indeed. 

Name the movie. Win a cookie.

It has been absolutely fascinating...

... to watch Citizen Journalism grow up, or, do something like grow up.  Today we received a screed from Brian Lam of     Gizmodo who takes a Lady MacBeth turn on the stage to let us know he feels dirty about how he's covered the health of Steve Jobs.  Oh my.  Poor boy.  When combined with Michael Arrington's mid-winter breakdown over being played by rookie public relations drones finally makes me respect what I learned at the world's oldest school of journalism.  There, in that rareified air, we learned to cover car wrecks, school lunch menus, industrial accidents, suicides, meetings at city hall, the harvest and the local little league.  Like it?  Great.  Hate it?  Then move on.

Please don't mistake what I've written with a lack of sympathy for Mr. Lam because I reached that same river, Quite Some Time Ago, and decided not to cross it.  In fact, I couldn't help but smile when Mr. Lam apologizes to his parents in his screed because, when I decided to take a different path, I said, "My mother didn't raise me to do this."  --Mr. Lam:  With all due respect, sir, either get used to it or get off the bus.  

Harlan Ellison: The Irritable Man

It's probably been too long since I've read science fiction.  I took an exit off that highway when I reached Kurt Vonnegut and never really returned to that road.  Bethatasitmay, I quite enjoyed Harlan Ellison who has consistently and persistently complains that he doesn't write science fiction but then again, it turns out he complains about a lot of things and that's the topic of a very nice profile about Harlan Ellison in the blog, Nextbook and you can read it here.  Here's an excerpt: 

He writes shtick. “I’m Looking for Kadak” (a story in Wandering Stars) follows Evsise, a blue, eleven-armed Jew, as he travels around the planet of Zsouchmuhn searching for Kadak, who hasn’t been seen since he got fed up and renounced his faith, seventeen years before, during Purim services. The nine remaining (blue, eleven-armed) Jews on Zsouchmuhn need Kadak to complete their minyan so that they can sit shivah for the planet, which is soon being hauled to another solar system.

And here's a bonus:  This is an interview conducted by Kurt Andersen of Harlan Ellison.  Kurt Andersen is another of my favorites and always puts a very nice finish on all his work. 

 

The Mechanics' Institute Library: Forgotten Classics.

The Mechanic's Institute Library is almost the last of the indulgences I allow myself.  It is a private library in San  Francisco, located at Fifty-Seven Post Street.  I justify my membership by using the library rather like an shared office in downtown San Francisco, a place to meet people and relax before or after meetings elsewhere in the city.

The library has many charms, chief among them is that it's the home of the oldest chess club in North America (take that, New York) and it has some very lively book groups especially including a long-standing Proust book group. 

The library has just announced the formation of another book group, this one titled Forgotten Classics and I'm positive you can divine the focus of the group from its appellation (eventhough I think there's an inherent contradiction).  This stalwart band of readers are tackling Vanity Fair on the evening of February 5th and I applaud them for their dedication to their mission.  Next up are Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed, Honore de Balzac's Pere Goriot and Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavrandatter:  The Bridal Wreath, The Mistress of Husaby and The Cross.  (We think there's a comparative lit major in the room.) 

Should you ever find yourself in San Francisco and you need to retreat to a swath of civilization to catch your breath, find your bearings and collect yourself, you certainly could do worse than The Mechanic's Institute Library, my desk in San Francisco.

Communication News, 1.9: University deploys Wi-Fi access

In 2005, the University of Utah, based in Salt Lake City, began implementation of one of the largest wireless networks at any U.S. higher-education institution. Answering the demands of students and campus organizations and institutions, the office of information technology (OIT) proposed and obtained funding approval to install a wireless network that would provide connectivity and support applications for approximately 45,000 users across 1,400 acres and more than 200 buildings.

According to Bryan Morris, OIT’s manager of network operations and services, "Our goal was to provide ubiquitous wireless access to every student, educator and administrator on campus. We also wanted to reduce administrative costs of disparate wireless systems across campus by establishing centralized management and integration with our existing wired network."

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clays, aka Clay Shirky, Wise Man

About a million years ago in New York City, I signed up with that city's first ISP, Panix.  I was the 61st customer and I've sustained that relationship and honor it because Panix has been one of the few fixed points in the every changing sky of the internet. 

Obviously, there were only a handful of us and we helped each other out as much as we could.  When I first signed - on, all I saw on my screen with this:  $.  --Welcome to the internet. You have a UNIX shell account, some good tools pre-installed and ... that's all.  One of the very knd people back then who helped me figure things out was <clays>.  He evolved into one of the wisemen on Panix and could be trusted. 

Now, a million years later, Mr. Shirky has monetized all that good work and emerged as a pundit, one of the few that respect and admire without hesitation.  Mr. Shirky has travelled throughtout all the waters of the net and knows them better than most.  Furthermore, he has syntheized what he's learned into that precious element:  knowledge.

Recently the Columbia Journalism Review was smart enough to interview him. 

News is very complicated because the news, in fact, is not a very coherent category. We use the word “news” to describe more than one sort of rough set of things. We use “gossip” to describe another rough set of things. But, in fact, they overlap. And the news used to be defined with reference to news organizations. So, for example, you know, FDR’s polio was kept out of the news. Now, clearly, the information that FDR had polio would have been news had it come up. But because there were few enough news outlets, they could essentially conspire to make it not-news by simply not reporting it. As we know from the Drudge Report during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, those days are gone. And so the news is suffering the same kind of breakdown that I was talking about with behavioral economics and evolutionary psychology, which is the edge case of a group of accredited professionals deciding what becomes news and what doesn’t become news has now been set aside in favor of a much more soft-focus, kind of permeable membrane-oriented way of handling or thinking about the news.

<snip>

If there’s any lesson in all of this, it’s that you can breed an entire generation of really smart people to not think about existential threats to the business if you want to. We happen to be in an environment where, I think, it’s really damaged the print journalism world’s ability to think through the problems, because half the house hasn’t been invited into the conversation until just recently.

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