BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

Search me

: Via Sean Bonner, I see that someone is selling T-shirts that say: "I do not consent to being searched."

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Digg courage

: Glenn Reynolds says:

AN ANTI-TERROR RALLY BY MUSLIMS in Antelope Valley, California.

You know, if these people had blown something up, they'd be getting more press. Which suggests that if the press wants to help eliminate terrorism, it should adjust its priorities.

Let's shame them into it with our Digg for terrorist inciters, excusers, and opponents.

It's about relationships

: The web isn't about -- or just about -- content or communication, of course. It's really about making connections -- about, well, links. But to be valued, those links must be organized around trust. In short: It's about relationships.

The greater the value of the relationship, the greater the value of those who enable those relationships. Those who figure that out succeed (and those who try to impose the old models and relationships fail): Google connects us to information at a low level with sufficient accuracy (we trust it enough) and succeeds thanks to high efficiency and high volume. eBay connects people in transactions at a higher value by creating a system of trust. Whoever uses online functionality to connect, say, employers to the right executives or homebuyers to the right homes -- replacing today's middlemen -- can bring even more value.

The first services that come along tend to free up information that used to be controlled by middlemen: It's what Craig's List did to classified apartment ads, what SelectQuote did to insurance rates (as Freakonomics points out).

But in certain high-value transactions, no one has quite cracked that next level: using trust to make the right connection efficiently.

Look at jobs. As I've said often, the new, inexpensive, efficient marketplaces where buyer and seller meet (Craig's List and Monster) replacing the old, expensive, inefficient ones (newspaper classifieds) are only a first step, a waystation on the way to a distributed future. Job listings and resumes are now popping up everywhere and anywhere online. So the next services to come along aggregate that (distribution and aggregation is the constant ebb and flow of this new world). Many services are now scraping jobs from any and all sources: Indeed, Simply Hired, Yahoo now, Flipdog was until it was scooped up by Monster, Workzoo still is after being bought by Jobster, and DirectEmployers' JobCentral has been doing it for sometime (as Stone points out, via Fred).

Makes you think that you need the aggregator of aggregators, eh? But, no, what you need to sift through this, to find value and efficiency, is trust: Relationships. Of course, Linked In wants to do that but I still don't get the service -- that is, I subscribe, but I don't grok it, because it isn't efficient for me; it gives me relationships I don't necessarily care about or that can even be a bother. Look, too, at Ev Williams' frustration trying to find a service to manage his recruiting. No one has cracked this nut.

This riff is inspired -- as much pondering often is -- by Umair Hague, who said that scraping jobs is just a first step:

I think the real problem in the jobs vertical is a coordination problem - not a search problem. That is, how do you connect job-seekers and decision-makers economically?

Why do I think this? Think about what headhunters do - it's equal parts coordination and search. Sure, they have to find the right candidates; but they also have to build relationships with the right decision-makers. So far, the basic model on the Net for jobs has only ever really addressed the first half of this equation. I've argued this many times before; archive it if you're really interested.

Matching jobs and job-seekers is fairly liquid on the net - the relative gap, and where Yahoo could build a strong sustainable advantage fast, is the coordination half of the value prop (which has been ignored for a veeeery long time, most likely because it's easier to build a few forms, a spider, and a database, than it is to build a whole new innovative coordination model).

LinkedIn, I think, gets this coordination problem, and has a particular take on it, which I think is kind of brittle and rigid (ie, transaction costs for referrals are pretty high, and expected gains aren't that high on average). If you ask me, the dominant design will be (a lot) more plastic, and it does not have to be centered around 'link to me' style social networking (but I can't say more unfortunately).

The problem is finding the right -- the sufficient and efficient -- level of trust needed to make the right connection, the appropriate relationship. A service that doesn't provide enough trust won't work (in the old world, it was the problem of putting your phone number in the paper to sell a car to people you don't trust; in the new world, anything you do not trust is spam). But on the other hand, an effort to establish excess trust -- to make me friends when all I want to do is complete a transaction (see Tribe or Linked In) -- is too much; it's inefficient.

I'm not sure how to do this in jobs. If I were, I'd create the business and make a damned fortune. I'd start by building on top of the aggregators and help people find the right jobs and get mutual recommendations specific to the task at hand. That's how headhunters work: When they call me to get names for a search, I take the time to reply because maybe someday they'll come searching for me. That's also how it works with friends and colleagues: I will recommend or help the ones I respect and trust and it's not wholly selfless; someday, maybe they will help me. But the networking is specific to the task at hand; I don't want to become buddies with all these folks and have to declare myself friends with some ongoing, public obligation (that's where Linked In stumbles). I want a system that lets me call on them when I need them and rewards me when they need me. I still don't know how to do that. Umair's right: That is the real challenge.

So let's switch to another leg of the classified stool: Real estate. In no sane universe, of course, does a real-estate agent earn 6 percent commission for the services provided. Now Craig's List and search engines can take away half their job by sharing information and breaking apart the monopolistic trust (in the bad sense of the word) that multiple listings services are: We can find out what's for sale and how big it is and the price.

But what they don't do is solve the trust problem: Real estate agents arrange for all those damned strangers to tour my house. At one level, it might be wise for a newspaper or Craig to simply offer a scheduling service (though if they take money from realtors, they are disinclined to do that): They could handle the hassle of matching schedules and then increase the level of trust by verifying the identities of the prospective homebuyers, by requiring and vetting credit-card information, for example. It would take a trusted agent to do that for both sides of the connection. On an even higher level, someone could start a new business that does nothing but arrange and schedule visits and physically accompany buyers on the visits: Say, a bonded moonlighting cop trusted to have my key does this to make sure my house and I are safe but without making any effort to actually sell my house (which he can't do without a license); I could pay the same person to wait at home for me to let the damned cable guy in. As a homebuyer, I would prefer that to a Realtor: I am armed with all the information I need about the homes -- now distributed and aggregated openly -- and I don't have to suffer through a sales guy's unctuous blather.

Now take this same calculation to other areas.

Take it to cars: Auto web sites give me the information I need about a car; CarsDirect and an Edmunds give me the information I need about pricing. Since all the cars are the same, I really don't need a trusted agent to sell me one (and I don't trust him anyway). If federal law would allow it, I'd just buy the car directly from Toyota and buy repair insurance (aka a warranty) and get it repaired wherever I want to by whomever I trust. That's the way that industry should work; regulation protecting old sales channels prevents it.

Take it to marketing: If you use this medium wisely, you don't treat it as a medium. You treat everyone you find here as a consumer, as a customer, as a person. You find the people who help you improve your products (alpha consumers); you find the people who help you market your products (influencers); you find the people who help each other with your products (life is customer service); you make good products and get out of the way. If you're lucky, you don't advertise. You create a sufficient and trusted relationship with consumers to answer questions and solve problems and keep them coming back. Are you listening, Dell?

And take it to news: The first step is to break up the old, centralized, controlled marketplaces of information and distribute news everywhere (put it online). The next is to aggregate it or help find it (see GoogleNews). The next is to solve the problem of overload and confusion via trust (see blogs). Note that the journalists no longer hold a monopoly on trust (if they ever did); in a distributed/aggregated world, we chose whom to trust.

That is what the internet is about: not just distribution, not just information, not just transactions. It is a web of humans. It is about relationships.

Information + Aggregation / Trust = Relationships

: I STAND CORRECTED: j.d. in the comments shows why I avoided higher math like the plague. What I meant to say is:

(information + aggregation) / trust = relationships

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When testosterone and capitalism meet...

... beautiful things happen: The complete Bud Lite Real Men of Genius commercials. [via Doc]

July 22, 2005

Baiting Bernie

: James Wolcott, antimatter to Bernie Goldberg's matter, taunts him in promoing an appearance on Al Franken's show:

As many of you are no doubt aware, Al outranks me. He's #37 on Bernard Goldberg's list of the 100 people screwing up America--a book that should be more properly titled, Hey, You Liberals, Get Off My Lawn!--while I place at #64. Yet I'm not envious. If anything, I'm embarrassed that my ranking is as high as it is. I've only been screwing up America for a few paltry years while Oliver Stone and others who placed below me in this feebleminded gimmick of a fake book have spent decades of blood, sweat, and tears trying to undermine everything Goldberg holds dear in the studios of Fox News, where he seems to have set up a cot in the green room so that he can be always on call.

And, I know, by merely quoting that, I'll be asked by commenters: "Haven't you learned?" Oh, yes, I have.

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Digg terrorism

: Tom Friedman says the State Department should produce an annual War of Ideas Report that would put the harsh glare of attention on those who use their words to incite terrorism, those who make excuses for terrorism, and those who bravely oppose it.

A fine idea. But I don't think the State Department is who should do this.

Bloggers should. News organizations should follow. And I'd be delighted to see religious leaders join in.

This seems like a fine project for Global Voices or such a group.

Why not create the Digg of terrorism: We all get to nominate examples in each of Friedman's categories and we all get to vote them up to the home page.

We all link to the worst of the worst to turn the spotlight on it.

Those who can volunteer to translate the offending material.

We convince news organizations to get RSS feeds of terrorism Diggs and report on those who are inciting and supporting the terrorists.

We pepper those associated with these inciters and excusers -- their governments, their religious leaders, their media outlets -- with protests: The whole world is watching.

The point is not to stop the speech. The point is to expose the speakers. And why rely on a government body, especially the U.S. State Department, to do this. Rely instead on the civilized citizens of the world.

Why, it even comes with cute slogans suitable for T-shirts: Digg out terrorism! Digg terrorism a grave! Digg dirt!

: Friedman preaches a wonderful sermon in that column:

Sunlight is more important than you think. Those who spread hate do not like to be exposed, noted Yigal Carmon, the founder of Memri, which monitors the Arab-Muslim media. The hate spreaders assume that they are talking only to their own, in their own language, and can get away with murder. When their words are spotlighted, they often feel pressure to retract, defend or explain them.

"Whenever they are exposed, they react the next day," Mr. Carmon said. "No one wants to be exposed in the West as a preacher of hate."

We also need to spotlight the "excuse makers," the former State Department spokesman James Rubin said. After every major terrorist incident, the excuse makers come out to tell us why imperialism, Zionism, colonialism or Iraq explains why the terrorists acted. These excuse makers are just one notch less despicable than the terrorists and also deserve to be exposed....

Finally, we also need to shine a bright light on the "truth tellers." Every week some courageous Arab or Muslim intellectual, cleric or columnist publishes an essay in his or her media calling on fellow Muslims to deal with the cancer in their midst. The truth tellers' words also need to be disseminated globally.

Digg it.

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The unstory

: What's most impressive about the nomination of John Roberts is how the White House made it into the unstory.

I don't see the blogs going crazy. There isn't much to say. Atrios very briefly had a moment's hope that Roberts had a connection to Iran-Contra. Oops. Wrong John Roberts. Nevermind.

We're not hearing scandals or scandalous opinions from the guy. We're not hearing any particular protest that he's the whitest white guy they could find.

The TV pundits and blathershows and the columnists aren't using their scarce ink and airtime to probe every Roberts angle because there aren't any.

As I mentioned below, Kos et al were already moving on -- like the good political strategists they are -- to figure out how to find victory in defeat. And they're back to hammering the Rove story.

In an absolutely bizarre post today, PowerLine defends Roberts against gay gags (because he was once caught in plaid pants).

It is the unstory.

Nonetheless, Howard Kurtz' Reliable Sources is talking about Roberts coverage and reaction on CNN this Sunday and I'll be on. Gee, I hope they don't think it's going to be so quiet that they have to invite Bernie.....

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The scarcity killer

: One of the slides in my PowerPoint BlogBoy dance calls the internet a scarcity killler and contemplates what that means for media: when advertisers can always find somewhere else to advertise and when access to scarce airtime and presstime is no longer valued.

It doesn't kill commerce but it changes the rules and the value. So, for example, the scarce commodity might not be paper but may be trust. And so those who establish trust gain value in the future.

At Always On, George Gilder went on a nice, hyperbolic riff on scarcity:

"TV is dying fast and it will be followed by Hollywood. These industries fed on scarcity. There are only a few channels available. TV was technology of tyrants. It fed this advertising model that has collapsed," Gilder told an audience at the conference. "The thirty-second spot is just going to die. Nobody is going to watch any ads they don't want to see.

"Book culture and blog culture can redeem a civilization," he said.

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Search me

: I say it's a good thing that New York police will start random bag searches on the subways.

Oh, I know it will be inconvenient when I'm late for a meeting and it's 120-degrees down there and I fear there will be a line. Nonetheless, if and when the cops search me, I'll thank them.

This morning on Today, they rolled out the "privacy" boogeyman. "Privacy advocates" were expressing concern. Who the hell are these "privacy advocates?" Name two. But listening to reporters, they seem to be everywhere. You just don't know it. Because they're very private.

And what precisely is the privacy problem? If the cops catch you carrying something illegal, well, you shouldn't be carrying anything illegal. If they catch you carrying the latest Playboy -- or, more embarrassing, Radar -- then don't worry; they've seen worse.

Are random screenings going to catch the next terrorist ready to kill people? We'll never know. But it is worth the effort.

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July 21, 2005

It ain't Taco Bell

: I'm a simple man with simple tastes. I'd be happy going to Taco Bell for lunch every day (grilled stuffed burrito, chicken, please) but today I made a rare, very rare appearance at media canteen Michael's. Apart from my map Elizabeth Spiers (whom I passed by going in, late for lunch, but saw going out) I did not notice a single one of the luminaries listed here. Not even David Hasselhoff!

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Me-Owe!

: The NY Post has just about the meanest front page and story I've seen (since the days of Bill Clinton, at least) on Jude Law's nanny. The lede:

Hey, Jude, you burned Sienna for . . . this?

Even all tarted up for a photo shoot for London's Mirror newspaper, nanny Daisy Wright looks more like a late-night belt-notch than a top-shelf taste worth scrapping an engagement to a gorgeous A-list actress.

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Cell-phone terrorists

: Listening to SkyNews via Fox via Sirius this morning I twice heard correspondents say that had just been ordered by the police to get off their cell phones because they feared the radio signals could detonate a bomb.

Today the Wall Street Journal reports (free link) about cell phones being used to wage terrorism in Iraq.

Saddam Hussein outlawed cellphones, determined to maintain an iron grip on his subjects. But as Iraq catches up with the world's information revolution, cellphones have become as commonplace here as they are almost everywhere else in the world. Now, they are increasingly being used as battle tools -- to set off bombs from afar, to target fire and to provide insurgents with instant communications.

Meanwhile, the cells in some New York tunnels were turned off after 7/7 out of fear they could be used by terrorists but they were just turned back on because, rightly, authorities say that they are needed for communication in an emergency.

Meanwhile, a study says that hands-free phones don't reduce the dangers of driving and calling.

Cell phones are getting cultural cooties.

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London nerves

: Every network is now talking about evactuated tube stations in London and reports of smoke and a "nail bomb" and a bus attack. They are being careful, as they should be, not to go overboard. In the days after 9/11, there were many scares and reports that, thank God, did not pan out. We can only hope that's what is happening in London. Here's the Guardian, the BBC, CNN. I get errors from Reuters and the Times of London.

Hating your customers

: The AP reports that the number of legal music downloads has tripled in the first half of 2005. I'd say that's good news. I'd say that's because, thanks to Apple, the industry finally found a way to help people do what they want to do: listen to music wherever they want. I'd say it indicates that if you give people the chance to do the right thing, they will. I'd say it's a good sign for humankind.

But the music industry doesn't say that. The music industry treats its customers like thieves and idiots:

The International Federation of Phonographic Industries... credited the increase to a 13 percent rise in the number of broadband lines installed around the world, along with an industry campaign to both prosecute and educate against illegal downloading.

The reviews are in

: In the comments below, there are plenty of people giving Donny Deutsch's show and me bad reviews and that's fine: A critic is fair game for criticism. And we can all disagree.

That's what makes America great (and not screwed up).

I'll answer a few of the points:

On reading books for TV: I didn't read the book. I said so here before the show. I did go looking for it but on short notice didn't have time to read it if I had. I read articles and posts about it and the summary sent over by the show's producers. And I will also say that I wasn't sure I wanted to add one more notch in the book's bestseller count (see below).

As some commenters point out, don't think that every time you see Matt Lauer interviewing an author, he has read the book. Authors who get publicity on TV know that their books are rarely read by their interviewers but they take the publicity. If they wanted more than three minutes of stone-skipping, then they should go to C-SPAN, where people read the books but nobody watches the shows.

And I don't think there is some moral imperative to read the book. There's nothing sacred about a book. When I'm called on to do the point-counterpoint TV dance with, say, someone from the PTC, I don't read their every screed and I don't expect them to read my every screed and we can still discuss and disagree about issues.

As Linda Stasi said, we were there to discuss the list, which had gotten plenty of publicity: I was prepared to discuss the notion of it, she was there to discuss the names on the list. Which leads to the next point:

Was it an ambush? I don't know that it was. I was told that Donny liked what Goldberg did, even though he, of course, disagreed with some of the names on the list. Donny started off with a polite discussion of substance about the list but Bernie got hostile quickly. That set the tone: If you disagree with him, you're ambushing him. He attacks other people -- and spends a whole book attacking people -- but yet he can't take the pushback himself. It was a bizarre start to the show.

When they came back for the next segment, Donny called on Linda Stasi. Keep in mind, she is a columnist for the New York Friggin' Post, one of the top conservative papers in the nation. It's not as if they brought in Jim Wolcott or Eric Alterman and threw it to them. They called on a Postie.

Linda and I were in the same studio, on the same couch (though we weren't supposed to acknowledge that; we were on separate cameras). I talked to her before the show and saw her notes preparing for the talk. She was going to engage Goldberg on his terms, on his list, and throw out her own nominees. That's how she started: She wanted Rush Limbaugh on the list, which was also her way of pointing out that Bernie had nothing but liberals on his list. That's a perfectly legitimate way to discuss the book. But this quickly devolved into shouting, with Bernie yelling at Linda to "shut up."

I'd say it was Linda Stasi who was ambushed by Bernie Goldberg: He was hostile and rude and though he kept saying he would answer her question he never in fact tried to (an old TV trick from an old TV hand). He yelled and insulted. He made it personal, as he did with me later. She was disgusted with it and was ready to take off her microphone and walk out and she had every right to.

I shrugged: It's just a silly discussion about a silly book on a silly TV show.

But then, I hadn't yet had Bernie talking about my humping.

And so now to the substance: As I said in my post before the show and as I said on the show, I don't buy his premise:

America is not screwed up.

Oh, we have plenty to disagree about and we damed well should be debating about how to solve our problems and face our mutual enemies and issues. But I do not think it is productive to make that personal and act as if some people are out to screw up America. We have met the enemy, Bernie, and it isn't us.

Oh, there are plenty of people on Goldberg's list he and I would agree to disagree with. But I think that most of them are sincere and are not bad people out to "screw up America". Michael Moore behaves badly but he's sincere. Noam Chomsky has inane opinions but he's every bit as sincere as Bernie Goldberg.. oh, is he.

They disagree. We can debate their disagreements. That is the very essence, again, of what makes America great. That is why America is not screwed up.

But turning that debate into an ambush on the 100 people on this list and making it personal and mean is not a productive discussion. And we see too much of that in debates today. We saw it on cable until Jon Stewart killed Crossfire and that tide shifted (until last night, I guess). We see blogs often accused of that (though I do believe that's the exception and that most discussion in this medium -- unlike TV -- has the opportunity to be substantive and to link to all sides).

To me, the mere exercise of trying to name 100 people on the other side as the bad guys who are screwing up our country is like freeze-drying the worst and most shallow of cable TV shout shows and online flames. It is the worst of making politics personal instead of productive.

If anything is screwing up America, that attitude is.

MORE: People in the comments are asking me to say I am wrong. No, we just disagree and I stand by my opinions and my view from being in the thick of it. They ask me to say I made a mistake. No, I didn't set up the event. I will say that I regret being part of it. I don't think anyone who was involved does not regret being part of it. It was not pleasant. It certainly was not informative. It was not good TV (though in its time, people tried to define such moments as good TV; those days are over).

: LATER: Crooks & Liars has the video up.

: AND NOW I'M WONDERING.... Who is nastier to me when I piss them off, conservatives or liberals? Hmmmmmm........

: THIS IS GETTING COMICAL: Bill O'Reilly teases Bernie coming on to whine and waaaaaaaaaaaa about this "harrowing experience" on CNBC; the screen calls it a "TV Nightmare!," complete with exclamation mark. This from O'Reilly, the shut-up king and Goldberg of CBS News, the ambush kings.

OK. I'm fed up now. I return to my original position: Bernie's bonkers... or a damned good book salesman.

: Atrios has the appropriate one-word review:"Hilarious.

: And here's Bernie waaaa-waaaa-waaaaaing his way to Rush Limbaugh:

The big point is that this is what the cultural elite liberals do these days. They can stab you in the back. No problem, because they know what's best. That's the problem. This time, they did it to me. Big deal. Big deal. Insignificant show. Big deal. They did the exact same thing, Rush, to Judge Bork. They did the exact same thing to Judge Pickering, the judge from Mississippi who they made out to be soft on cross burners -- and they're going to do it again, Rush, with Judge Roberts, and that's why Ralph Neas, the head of People for American Way is #10 on the list in this book.

He called the people on the show not just liberal but leftist. Can somebody tell Oliver Willis and Kos and Eric Alterman for me? Maybe I'll get my official party membership card back.

: Now O'Reilly is calling it "TV terrorism."

Twits.

: Now I'm getting fag-bashing email from the Bernieacs. Nice bunch, them. It gets better. It's homophobic and racist. Sweethearts.

: On O'Reilly, Goldberg says "the culture in this country has gotten way too angry and way too nasty." What the hell are you, Bernie?

Bill is sympathetic on "the shut-up thing." Uh-huh.

Poor widdle Bernie. Waaaa-waaa-waaaah.

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July 20, 2005

Unplugged

: Two notable TV deaths today:

: Gerry Thomas, inventor of the TV dinner, dead.

: James Doohan, Scotty from Star Trek, beams up.

Bizarro Bernie

: Yesterday, I taped Donny Deutsch's show with Bernie Goldberg about his book, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (earlier post here). It's going to be on CNBC tonight at 10:30p and you have to watch, for you will see a bizarre performance that continued after the cameras went off.

Bernie went bonkers.

Or Bernie is bonkers.

We report. You decide.

The show started with Bernie snarling at Donny for no good reason. Then, in the second segment, Donny came to NY Post TV critic Linda Stasi, who was prepared to discuss Bernie's silly list (giving it more dignity than I would have have). With good humor and energy, she asked why Rush Limbaugh wasn't on it.

Well, that set Bernie off. And downhill we went. Bernie shouted to Linda to shut up. He got downright mean. Linda and I were in the same studio (though we were on different cameras) and we looked at each other to confirm that we weren't nuts; this was. Bernie growled about how he can't stand being on "panel show." It got so bad that Donny had to scold Bernie for his behavior.

Later, Bernie insisted that he wasn't a "church lady" (after Donny and I defended one of the names on his list, Howard Stern) but then he went on about people talking about "humping" on TV. When I said he did indeed sound like a church lady, he came back and said less-than-polite things about whom I hump. I said that's a fine way for him to talk.

You get the flavor.

And then the madness continued.

Bernie called a producer at CNBC and reduced her to tears.

He called media outlets -- starting with the, cough, sympathetic Washington Times -- arguing that he was ambushed.

He called Fox -- where, according to one of the other guests, he has already appeared eight times to promote his book -- to whine and get on Bill O'Reilly's show.

One theory is that this is all a publicity ploy. Another is that he's acting wacky. I think it's a combination of the two: This is the behavior of a paranoid who needs enemies to keep his paranoid rantings -- and publicity -- alive. Bernie wanted to be ambushed. He made it into an ambush. And the strategy is working. The book's selling (at time of taping it was No. 3 on Amazon behind only Harry Potter; now it's No. 6). Except we on the show didn't buy the book. And that really pissed him off.

Here's what appeared in The Washington Times:

"I've been doing this a long, long time, and I have never, ever, ever, never -- I could say never and ever 10 more times -- experienced what I just went through," Mr. Goldberg told Inside the Beltway late yesterday after he taped the show, which is to air tonight, from Miami.
"Deutsch disagreed with everything, and that is just fine," said Mr. Goldberg, the best-selling author of "Bias" who has written the new book "100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken is No. 37)."
"But then, unbeknownst to me, they brought on a panel of five, plus Donny, all of whom took the other side. And it's not like they just respectfully disagreed; there was name-calling, ganging up; it was unbelievable. And not one of them even read the book. They admitted it.
"It was more than an ambush," he said. "It was the most cynical, dishonest thing I have ever been lassoed into. They misled me."
Immediately after the taping, Mr. Goldberg said, he told the show's producer, Marilyn Cutler, that Mr. Deutsch had been "dishonest."

And the spin continues. Someone masquerading as an "informed source" contacts the CaptainsQuarters with more whining:

However, instead of debating cultural issues as the producers had explained the segment to Goldberg, it turned out that the show had stacked the panel with people who disliked Goldberg's book -- and ganged up on him to belittle it.

The show issued a statement in response:

Mr. Goldberg was invited on our program to discuss his new book. We asked him if he would be willing to stay and join a panel of print and online journalists to discuss the people and issues he raised in the book and he agreed. At certain points during the segment, Mr. Goldberg, the panelists and Donny did not always agree. We felt that it was a healthy and robust conversation.

We treat all of guests, including Mr. Goldberg, with nothing but the utmost respect and courtesy. We encourage people to tune into CNBC tonight at 10:30PM and watch for themselves.

: Now here are a few quotes from the show. I don't have a full transcript yet. This quote from me comes after he attacked Stasi and Barbara Walters before that, after the heat was already on high.

You know, Bernie, you put yourself up on a high pedestal here as if you're above journalism. But you know what? You're just using the oldest trick I know--and I did it myself--in: 'Let's come up with a meaningless list and then a meaningless debate about.' [That's] almost certainly what's happening right now.

Let's start with the premise. America's not screwed up. Let's start there. America is a good place. It's a wonderful place....

And to say, `Well, I've got the list, and I have in my hand a list with names.' It's a ridiculous unjournalism, unnews exercise, and you make fun of Barbara Walters and others for blurring the line between news. This isn't news. This isn't journalism. It's a way to get promotion you're getting right now and then complaining about. It's really pretty hard to take, Bernie.

: And now a sample of the exchange between Bernie and Linda:

Ms. STASI: Well, I just think it's incredible that he writes a section on vicious celebrities and he's being so vicious. And we're just sitting here discussing it. You don't have to tell me to shut up, you know. It's just�I mean, don't you find that vulgar if you're yelling at somebody to shut up on television? Because I find that really vulgar.

DEUTSCH: I couldn't agree more.

Unidentified Guest: Yeah. Yeah, I don't understand how you could like...

DEUTSCH: Wait, let him respond to that.

Mr. GOLDBERG: No, I only did it because you don't shut up.

Unidentified Guest: I don't understand...

Mr. STASI: You know what? You see what I mean. It's so ignorant.

Unidentified Guest: ...how do you tell a woman to shut up?

Ms. STASI: It's ignorant.

Unidentified Guest: A woman, tell her to shut up? I mean, come on.

Ms. STASI: It's just ignorant. It's just ignorant.

DEUTSCH: What signal is that? You're talking about cultural wars? To any young girl watching out there, you tell a woman to shut up?

Ms. STASI: It doesn't matter if I'm a woman or not, what he says...

Mr. GOLDBERG: Donny!

DEUTSCH: It does matter.

Ms. STASI: ...is just silly.

Mr. GOLDBERG: Donny, Donny, that's interesting.

Ms. STASI: It's vulgar and silly.

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Supreme distraction

: Howard Kurtz on the uber media strategy in the White House:

I happen to think the president is giving the other side an extra month to build a case against his nominee (if that's what Democrats and liberals are inclined to do). But from the administration's point of view, media chatter about Roberts is probably superior to media chatter about whether Rove should be fired.

: MEANWHILE... Over at Kos they're trying to find the silver lining and that's how to lose well....

Acbonin says that the filibuster and dragging out other nominations worked; that this is a victory.

Steve M adds in a comment to that post that the Democrats need to lose this battle well:

But there are good losses too, and this is the concept that many refuse to accept. You can lose in a way that makes people sympathize with the principle you fought for. You can lose in a way that sets the stage to make a compelling case later. If you send a clear message to the American people that "we oppose Roberts because X will happen if he is confirmed," and then X does happen, now you have your campaign issue for 2008, 2012, and beyond. "Elect Democrats so we can roll back X and make sure it never happens again."

And Kos chimes in:

I see in Roberts someone who can help Democrats draw clear battle lines for the American public. It'll allow us to define who we are and who they are, and drive home the point that elections do matter, that there really is a difference between the Democratic and Republican parties.

Selling your soul

: I pass by the AM New York freebie paper stand today and see the screaming headline: MOVIE THEATER STUNS AUDIENCES. It doesn't take a minute -- or a genius -- to see that it's an ad for Motorola, Loews, Cingular. The ad takes over the front page. Oh, there's still a real front page inside; this is a wrapper around the real paper. Still, this is the front page you see screaming at you from the valuable space of the newsracks; this is the image AM New York presents to its public.

Now this is hardly the first paper to put an ad on its front page; that may be holy space, but everybody has his price. Nor is this the first paper to put on a wrapper, though those are usually handed out at events and I've never seen one in a newsstand, because newsstands are all about selling papers -- and news sells papers (doesn't it?).

But, of course, this paper isn't sold. It's given away. And that changes the rules. Letting an ad take over the front page doesn't depress newsstand sales; there are no newsstand sales.

And putting an ad with a giveaway on the cover may even help drive free papers out of the rack. All the better if they'd been giving away free sex.

Why the hell do I care? Because the free-news economy changes the rules and I am always fascinated to see how this happens.

I saw this happen at People in the '80s, when stars and their flacks realized that their images were being used on covers to sell magazines and they wanted something for it -- if not money then at least control ("picture approval" was their first bid).

Economics change media.

Here, AM New York's value is distribution -- greater distribution than the paid papers precisely because it's free. So that makes its front page more valuable to advertisers than it is to AM New York.

I'm not pulling a holier-than-thou newspaper attitude about this; not making an ethical judgment about this. I'm just noting how the economics affect the product.

The medium isn't the message. The bottom line is the message.

So what does that mean for online? Where's our real value? Is it distribution? (No.) Is it audience? (Maybe.) Or is it relationships. (Yes.) And how does that make the product?

Kiddie court

: The most striking thing about John Roberts -- so far -- is how damned young he looks. To make their legal legacies last longer, presidents will be drafting justices the way they draft basketball players, out of high school. Better yet: Junior high, when they're still virgins and haven't inhaled and haven't written anything embarrassing except for that poetry they had to do in English class.

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Shark ahead

: There's already a business conference on podcasting.

July 19, 2005

The real John Roberts

: Rex Hammock has all the dirt.

Hi-fi

: Philip Torrone from Make is taking a Boeing junket to nowhere to show off wi-fi. He links to Flickr photos filed from the air.

Dave Winer reports that Chris Pirillo is a fellow traveler>/a>.

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Throw the Google at him

: Andru Edwards tells the story of how GoogleMaps saved him from a guilty verdict on a traffic ticket. [via Make]

Sweaty, smelly, miserable mess

: That's me: Disgusting. It's a sauna without the showers in New York. I was out for 15 minutes and just closed the door to the office so no one can see what a mess I am. You're welcome for my sharing.

Blogging smoke

: Jim Treacher, one of my favorite interacters hereabouts, is manning a blog for the movie Blowing Smoke, said blog created by another fave, Jackie Danicki.

The 100 lists I hate

: I'm supposed to do Donny Deutsch's show (with Linda Stasi) later today regarding Bernie Goldberg's 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America. And, yes, I should be ashamed of myself for giving this unimportant exercise in unjournalism more publicity. The nice folks at CNBC spared me reading the thing and sent me a nice summary by email. All Goldberg is doing is taking the most basic trick of soft news editors, unnews editors -- that is, city magazines, feature sections, talk shows: He's making a meaningless list and having a meaningless debate about it. But his list isn't just meaningless. It's just mean. Oh, I also hold some of his choices in less than high esteem. But what Goldberg is doing here is lumping together people who are truly hateful (terrorists) with people who don't agree with him. He's holding his own cable TV shoutfest without having the other side on to shout back. It's silly. But what's even sillier is that he uses this to pontificate about how he thinks America should be run. SpeakSpeak is giving him hell for it. But I like Jon Stewart's response to his pompous prudery best:

Goldberg: Once upon a time, not too many years ago, a drunk in a bar wouldn�t use the f-word. Now-he may be your pal-but Chevy Chase goes to the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC at a gala where people are wearing tuxedos-and-gowns and calls the president of the United States a dumb blank.

Stewart: Once upon a time, Thomas Jefferson f**ked slaves.

Perspective, people.

LATER: Well, I hope the appearance goes better than this:

John Davison, editor at 1UP.com, deserves kudos for having the guts to walk off of the set of The Big Idea (CNBC) when it became evident that he'd been tricked into appearing on a show designed to do nothing but bash video games. It takes balls to walk off a show like that when things go sour because of manipulation instead of honest debate. It also takes more than a little self-respect. The nice thing about being a member of the media, though, is that you can still get your opinions out when you're comments are edited from existence by a two-faced TV broadcast.

Here's Davison's saga.

AFTERWARDS: Bernie sure comes off as the angry, nasty, self-important, humorless prig. He went after Linda Stasi, who was very nice, and played the paranoid victim with Donny Deutsch. It's on tonight at 10p, if the Supremes don't preempt it.

OH, AND: My first point: America isn't screwed up.

: HUH: Well, now I have no idea what's happening. Deutsch has an entire show on polygamy.

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July 18, 2005

Changes at the top

: Who says you can't blog about your own office? Steve Baker tells us about changes at Business Week and what they mean:

The most important change (from a blog perspective) is that one managing editor position has been turned into three--count 'em--executive editor posts. Yet only one of these editors will focus on the paper-and-ink magazine. The other two will direct BW Online and new ventures. That means that two-thirds of the top editing team will be focused away from our paper magazine. Gives you an idea of where the growth is.

He doth protest a heckuva lot

: Go listen to the latest On The Media to hear a mind-boggling interview with Cleveland Plain Dealer Editor Doug Clilfton about his decision not to publish two stories based on leaked government docs in the aftermath of the Judith Miller jailing (sorry but the link to the segment doesn't work and transcripts aren't up yet but it's in the beginning of the MP3 atop this page). I wish I could quote and characterize it to give you a sense of what happens there but you have to listen because it's just bizarre. Clifton snaps at interview Bob Garfield and at The New York Times for reasons that aren't entirely clear.

Democracy Guy writes about the interview here.

Carnival of the walkers

: As you may know, I'm working with good folks at About.com on such things as blogs and one of the enthusiastic, blog-smart guides there, Wendy Bumgardner, has just started a Carnival of the walkers.

The challenge, of course, is that there aren't a lot of blogs devoted just to walking. But we all do it. And I know there are good stories about good vacation walks with good photos and Flickr sagas memorializing these walks.

So do me a favor: Post about your favorite walks and walk photos and walk stuff (cameras, whatever) and send the links to Wendy: walking.guide@about.com.

I'm inspired by going on gorgeous strolls at Skytop last week and now that I'm back in miserably muggy Gotham, I want to smell the fresh air of freedom again. Beside, walking is the perfect topic for bloggers, isn't it: Left-right-left-right....

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News at the front

: Good on Reuters for supporting the creation of an Iraqi wire service.

The charitable foundation of the Reuters news agency plans to announce this week that it is turning a grass-roots Iraqi news Web site into that nation's first independent commercial news service.

For the last several months, the Web site, Aswat al-Iraq (Voices of Iraq), has relied on a team of 30 stringers and the help of three of Iraq's independent newspapers, as well as feeds from the Reuters Arabic-language service, to publish hundreds of stories a month on politics, culture and even the taboo topic of AIDS in Iraq.

Now the site, www.aswataliraq.info, will become a full-fledged newswire, managed and staffed by Iraqi journalists in Baghdad and operated independently of Reuters. It will use $800,000 from the United Nations to create a newsroom and post reporters in each Iraqi province. When the service goes live in a few months, it will feed breaking news to both Iraqi and foreign news outlets.

Yes, I can anticipate the cracks in the comments: Reuters and the U.N., what a team... we'll never see the word "terrorist" there. But I say give it a chance to prove its journalistic value.

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Gawker 1, Page 6 0

: Yesterday, Page 6 popped a vein over Gawker's snarking. Today, Jessica Coen gives Page 6 some advice:

Thesaurus.com is my top bookmark, and I suggest you make it the same on your browser. Then you needn't use words like "snarky" over and over again. Say I'm contemptous, irritable, cranky, cocky, insolent, sneering. Call me a dimwitted bitch, for all I care. Just don't use "snark" twice in the same item.

[via Blogebrity]

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To witness

: The Guardian's John Naughton -- a blog supporter -- has second thoughts about the citizen reporting that occurred in the London bombings. I disagree. He says in the Observer:

Hmmm ... Can I be alone in having mixed feelings about all this? I think it was Heidegger who said that 'technology is the art of arranging the world so that we don't have to experience it'.

I find it astonishing - not to say macabre - that virtually the first thing a lay person would do after escaping injury in an explosion in which dozens of other human beings are killed or maimed is to film or photograph the scene and then relay it to a broadcasting organisation.

Whoa. Isn't that the reflex that every reporter has? What's so wrong with anyone else having the same need to remember and share and report and witness?

And what makes fellow citizens lay people next to reporter-priests?

On September 11th in New York, I didn't know what I was: witness, reporter, survivor. I stayed at the World Trade Center to report after the first jet hit. My wife remains, well, disapproving of that decision, but that's because, as it turned out, the danger was far from over. I, too, disapproved of my decision when I was enveloped by the cloud of destruction.

But danger apart, I knew I had to report. A few days later, I started this blog to continue remembering and witnessing. I also bought a camera phone to replace the plain phone lost in that cloud, because I often thought how different our view of that day would have been if it had been seen at eye level and not from rooftops miles away.

As a journalist, you would think that Naughton would welcome more truly eyewitness reporting, more facts, more stories, more humanity. And who better to provide this than witnesses themselves, now equipped not only with cameras but also with the knowledge that they could report what they saw themselves. Isn't that better than second-hand reporting?

Naughton complains that some of the material they recorded was too graphic to be shown. Well, isn't that true of any photographer's rolls? That is why editors edit.

I've heard others fret that just-people, lay people, would be too obtrusive -- but that assumes that professional journalists are not. Oh, but we are.

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When freedom becomes a unique selling proposition

: So I was listening to Sirius yesterday and heard one of its (many) promotions for its comedy channels and their pitch was that it's "radio that's cool, without the FCC rules."

No escape

: Go read Tom Evslin's hilarious memory of a really bad day on the job.

LINK | Comments (0)

July 17, 2005

Feedthink

: There are two kinds of stuff on the internet:

* Resources and articles and other static gems.

* Feeds and lists and conversations and other dynamic goodies.

Even that is a quite imperfect bucketing of the wonders of online but stay with me for a second, for it's at least a useful means of distinguishing some fundamental aspects of Web 1.0 from 2.0 and what's coming next and what's needed.

Web 1.0 is built primarily on the former, the resources and articles and pages and mostly static things: It's about stuff that sits and is found at an address. It's about search. It's about URLs and permalinks. It's about Google and Yahoo before that. All that is valuable, always will be.

But Web 2.0 adds on the wonders of the latter: feeds (RSS, Atom, FeedBurner, et al); lists (OPML, etc.); conversations (blog posts, Technorati links, PubSub feeds, comments); swarming points (tags on Flickr, Del.icio.us, Technorati, Dinnerbuzz); heat sensors (Blogpulse et al); aggregations (e.g., Command-Post.org); communities (Craig's List, et al); alerts (Craig's List feeds); decentralized distribution (bittorrent, etc.); and on and on.

See Fred Wilson thinking about feeds and asking what businesses will be needed and will emerge, especially as Microsoft embraces RSS in Longhorn. See also Kevin Hale's wonderful post, which I linked to a few weeks ago, on how RSS is the new search.

But it's more than that a new Microsoft or a new Google. It's bigger than that. This is a new architecture. It's a dynamic architecture.

And it's not as if this is entirely new. About five years ago, when I arranged an investment in Moreover (which is when I met Nick Denton, which is when I met blogs, which is when my career and life changed, leading to the wonderful world of un-self-employment), what excited me was that this company -- which scrapes headlines to create categorized feeds -- was a means of getting to the dynamic web. There are many other examples, such as Technorati and Pubsub. Now, they're coming together to form the next generation.

One of the things I couldn't get done at the last job was to rearchitect the news sites around feeds and RSS. When you think about it, that's exactly the structure a dynamic news site should take and once it does, it becomes easy to replace static, produced pages with collections of feeds: I could put together my town page with feeds of newspaper headlines, blog headlines, forum-thread headlines, new classifieds (these homes added to the market since you were here), weather information, and so on: all categorized, all conscious of what I last saw here. It's really not a gigantic change, it's just that it's hard to take something already built with bricks and rebuild it with hoses.

I'm also grappling with this in my present consulting gig at The New York Times Company's About.com, which has an incredible collection of valuable reference material in about 500 topics and will also build lots of dynamic (current and conversational) material around those topics. Presenting each and organizing each brings different issues and opportunities.

In both these cases, the borders between the two buckets become very fuzzy: Dynamic content can turn into static reference content (e.g., a blog post you point back to again and again). And static content can become dynamic (e.g., Wikipedia).

And there are plenty of other issues that are only beginning to surface: There are not the means to measure audience for such things as RSS (readers don't cookie). You can throw out the definition of a page view when we shift to a world of the post view (post as in an element of content). You can throw out the definition of content when much of this is about conversation and interaction and just plain action. You can forget control of time and display when people can timeshift/placeshift/mediashift their stuff onto their iPods and phones and such. You have to worry about how people will find stuff in a post-search world where Google is no longer the answer to everything.

Now back to Fred and his quest for new opportunities....

I'm still trying to hook up with Dave Winer across vacations and travel to figure out what he's up to with OPML editors. I'm eager to play with his newest tools.

One great thing about OPML is that it exposes the depth of possibilities of working with lists. Any feed or any list of feeds carries with it the option of action: Click on a headline to see the article. Click on the classified alert to get a job or a house. Click on the eBay alert to make a purchase. Listen to a podcast. Respond to email or posts. Mush it all together and rearrange it into your own to-do list. Make that your calendar.

Feeds are dynamic in what they present, how they present it, and what you can do with it.

Five years ago, I worked with a smart bunch of people in Munich who were creating a company called Twest that aimed to create much of this functionality: They were making the module that let a family create and edit a shopping list via browsers and phones anywhere anytime. Or party lists. Or quizes. Sadly, they were ahead of their time. But I still want that functionality today.

In this post, a few weeks ago, I suggested that blogging and feeds should become a metaphor for how newsrooms operate -- and thus, a new content management tool for them.

See Dinnerbuzz, below (or at least the Dinnnerbuzz of my hungry imagination).

Like Fred, I'm eager to hear what opportunities there are in this next world. As you can tell from this rather rambling post, I'm not even ready to categorize the opportunities in buckets. But let's try a few:

* New means of creating: that new newsroom system, that OPML editor....

* New means of finding what you want. What's the next Google?

* New means of aggregating. Dinnerbuzz (to overuse that example!).

* New means of acting: That family shopping list (with buy-it-now buttons).

* New means of organizing: The ultimate calendar/to-do list/alert machine.

* New means of communicating: Use SIP to give me that urgent alert in the best medium for me at the best time.

* New means of recommending: Beyond Technorati's one-size-fits all authority.

* New means of policing: What to do about the next generation of spam scum.

* New means of marketing: If I'm going to be motivated to deliver via RSS I may need to make money doing it.

* New means of consuming: What happens when you take the best of every RSS reader out there today and coordinate with all my Windows and Apple applications and all my devices? What's the next browser?

What else? What are examples?

: See also Heather Green's chat with Yahoo's RSS pointman Scott Gatz.

Made for the distributed world

: I just came across Dinnerbuzz (catching up on my RSS after vacation; saw it via You're It). Though the execution is iffy at best, the concept is close to what I'm talking about in creating new information services for the distributed world. Here's the deal:

When you post a review of a restaurant on your own blog, you tag it and Dinnerbuzz picks up the link and aggregates it with other links to posts about that restaurant, other posts with those tags, and other posts in those cities. So when it comes time to eat, you can come in and find what locals are saying about a restaurant or you can search for "outdoor" "Mexican" joints in "New York." Further, you'll be able to get RSS feeds so you can get an alert whenever someone writes about a great new vindaloo in your neighborhood.

In old-centralized-marketplace-think, you'd try to get all those people to write restaurant reviews on your big-media site. And the question is: Why the hell should they? What do they get out of it? And in the old world, you tried to get people to read the reviews on your site when they knew there were reviews on tons of other sites out there as well and it's a pain to find them all.

In new-decentralized-distributed-think, you recognize that people will write about what they want to write about where they want to write about it and if you're smart, you'll find ways to take advantage of all that great information and aggregate it and and aggregate audience around it, sending traffic out to all those writers on the edge because readers know they can come to you find find it all.

To make this work, you need to get people to tag their posts and you need a critical mass of them so that people can start to agree (e.g., "byob" instead of "dry") on the right tags as happens on Flickr and Del.icio.us. But people will do that if they see that people are finding what they right because they tag and also if they start using the service themselves to find restaurants and so, in this gift economy, they realize that you need to give to get.

The example I've often used about how tags will work best in a distributed world is jobs: You tag your resume anywhere on the internet and a specialized successor to Google (who may, indeed, use Google's API to get raw data) finds jobs and matches them with job seekers without forcing anyone to pick one centralized marketplace or another. I've also said this will work in hyperlocal: I don't want to write an entire blog about my town, but I would tag the occasional post to be aggregated into a community of them -- because I'd want to read that collection myself.

This is a model for the future of media. There is tons of great stuff to be had out there; it's impossible to find and keep up with it all; search won't do the trick; tags and feeds will help. The key is not to collect the content and traffic -- the old, centralized media way -- but instead to collect enough information about that good stuff to help people find it when they want and to help support the people who create it all.

: OOPS: Well, it appears I was projecting what I wanted Dinnerbuzz to be. I misread one description of it. As I see the service now, I have to go there to add tags to it with a link to my post.

It would be better if I could just put the tags on my post (Technorati tags) or on Del.icio.us (with a for:dinnerbuzz tag) or simply add the posts and ping them and that would travel to Dinnerbuzz automatically. Those would be the better, more distributed ways to accomplish this.

I also find it terribly frustrating that I can't find the way to get from a Dinnerbuzz listing to the actual posts!

Or I'm wrong again....

Well, at least in my imagination, I see potential here....

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More snark

: Dave Winer on professional reporters: "They take longer to get it wronger."

LINK | Comments (12)

Live by the snark, die by the snark

: Somebody stuck a sharp stick up somebody's rear.

Unknown outside the dork-infested waters of the Blogosphere, her name is Jessica Coen, and she's the co-editor of Gawker.com, where she regurgitates newspaper and magazine stories and slathers them in supposedly witty sarcasm. Every time we bump into Coen, 25, who likes to accessorize with a stuffed dog poking out of her handbag, she smiles and showers us with sycophantic praise. But her every mention of PAGE SIX on her Web site is snide and snarky. Word to Coen: Next time you see us at a party, keep walking. Or slithering. You can't be a boot-licker and a back-stabber at the same time.

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But enough about you

: In dissecting Current.TV's relationship with its content contributors, Umair Haque at BuggleGeneration gets right to the heart of what's wrong with most big-media attempts to interact with the citizens via citizens' media. The big guys think it's still about them. They don't understand -- and perhaps never will -- that it's not about speaking but listening, about blowing up their networks to take part in vastly bigger networks than they ever could have imagined.

This raises a very special problem for Current TV. Namely, that more Web 2.0 focused competitors can always and everywhere offer a superior value prop, because they can leverage complementarity. Put another way, Current TV, by tying itself heavily to cable and satellite distribution, may be foregoing the real opportunity. If you follow this analysis, Current will never be able to raise relative switching costs.

Is this a symptom of a deeper...uhhh...thing? Check this out:

"...Assignment: London

Okay: We want to put together a reflective piece on the London bombings and their implications. Get out a camera -- a webcam will do -- and start talking."

Look, peer production is not about ordering prosumers around to meekly do your bidding. It's about building a platform/community that does theirs.

Not to sound harsh, but perhaps Current has the whole dynamics of this stuff backwards.

In a sense, this is the same kind of mistake that 1.0 dot commers made - assuming that the www was just another distribution/mktg channel. Dot com 2.0 peer production plays like Current seem to be assuming more and more that the www is just another production channel (supply chain, if ya like). It's emphatically not.

The deep economics of peer production are very different - they're about supply-side network fx, strong complementarity, and increasing returns. All of which are very different from traditional media competitive dynamics, and create very different industry structures.

Right. It's impossible for the big guys to think outside their networks. They can only think centralized; that was their core value, after all. They must learn how to think distributed: If they want to play in this new world at all, if they can, they must find out how they can help enable people to do what they want to do where they are already doing it.

This means sharing content. It means sharing promotion. It means sharing knowledge and training. And, most of all, it means sharing money. It means supporting citizens' media in every way.

Think eBay: It lets people start new businesses. What is the media equivalent of that? How do you create the world's biggest network by not tying it to a network, by even giving up your old network?

I haven't seen many examples of this. I've seen big-media companies try to suck up content and cool from the new guys; that will expire like milk at a 7/11. I've seen new, little-media companies use the old, big-media models but make it work just because it's so much cheaper. I haven't seen many, if any, truly enable (and then exploit) the distributed universe. I'm working on my little corners of it, trying to push notions of the open-source infrastructure that become necessary if you're going to enable a distributed model. But it's not easy. Media always -- always -- existed thanks to its closed networks, thanks to controlling the means of distribution. When the advantage of distribution disappears -- and, in fact, becomes just a cost that weighs you down vs. your new, Web. 2.0 competitors -- these guys don't know what to do. They want to impose the old models on the new instead of accepting that the old is gone and understanding the opportunities of the new.

Current.TV isn't it, or doesn't look like it's going to be. Blog posts quoted in print or on TV isn't it. Enabling the distributed world ... now that's it.

July 16, 2005

What a Goofy idea

: Here's the dumbest idea for a podcast I've heard yet: Listen to Disney extolling the wonders of Disneyworld. What's next: The Ron Popiel knife podcast? The hold-music podcast? The subway announcements podcast? The annoying car alarm podcast? The Dell excuses in a foreign accent podcast? The Rush Limbaugh podcast?

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Tolerating intolerance

: Leon de Winter, a Dutch novelist and wise, wry social critic (or so I think, having read a few of his novels translated into German), writes in today's New York Times about the death of the historic Dutch culture of tolerance, in the wake of the murders of Theo van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn.

The terrible irony is that tolerance, fully exercised, ends up enveloping intolerance.

For centuries the Netherlands has been considered the most tolerant and liberal nation in the world. This attitude is a byproduct of a disciplined civic society, confident enough to provide space for those with different ideas. It produced the country in which Descartes found refuge, a center of freedom of thought and of a free press in Europe.

That Netherlands no longer exists.

The murder last year of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh, whose killer was convicted this week, and the assassination of the politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002 marked the end of the Holland of Erasmus and Spinoza.

No, the Dutch suddenly did not become intolerant and insular. But these killings showed the cumulative effect of two forces that have shaken the foundations of Dutch civic society over the last 40 years: the cultural and sexual revolution of the 1960's and 70's and the influx of Muslim workers during those years of prosperity....

When they came to the country, often under long-term government work visas, they were faced with a highly educated but apparently decadent society in the grip of a cultural revolution. Many were astonished: was this country some sort of freak show?

No, it certainly wasn't. Under the effusive "anything goes" exterior, the majority of Dutch people held on to their disciplined Calvinist values. To the immigrants, however, this core was all but invisible....

And thus the delicate mechanism of Holland's traditional tolerant society gradually lost its balance. The news media, politicians and artists gnawed away at the traditional values of Calvinistic civic society, while in the bleak Muslim suburbs resentment grew among the Moroccans' Dutch-born children, who found the promise of an affluent life unfulfillable.

Meanwhile, the news media and politicians maintained an unofficial ban on any discussion of the problems of immigration: after all, in progressive Holland only socioeconomic problems were admissible. It was simply not acceptable to discuss problems relating to religion and culture.

: LATER IN BRITAIN: See, too, Michael Portillo in The Sunday Times of London arguing that mindless multiculturalism is over:

Tolerance was clearly never meant to mean that Britain should allow those with roots outside the country to flout human rights and the laws of the land on the pretext that things were done differently where they came from. The Ayn Rand Institute is right to say that it is dangerous nonsense to pretend that all cultures are morally equivalent. Such sloppy thinking corrodes our ability to distinguish good from evil.

It is tempting in a tolerant society to want to see other people�s point of view. If Islam has thrown up its extremists, we can recall the excesses committed over centuries in the name of Christianity. We can understand that a devout Muslim might find western society licentious and irreligious. But the time for sophistry has passed. Our citizens and our society are under threat from those who believe that difference is a justification for terror and murder. Our country has the right to assert its values and require from everyone living here compliance with our laws and respect for our standards.

Britain�s woolly thinking about multiculturalism has helped to make us vulnerable.

: MORE FROM BLAIR: Tony Blair addresses his party on tolerance and staying the course:

The Prime Minister hit back at suggestions that the London atrocities were linked to injustices in the Middle East, saying it was the 'almost-devilish logic' of extremists to play on western guilt.

Their propaganda was clever and sophisticated, he told an audience of Labour party delegates in London: 'It plays on our tolerance and good nature; it exploits the tendency to guilt of the developed world - as if it is our behaviour that should change, that if we only tried to work out and act on their grievances, we could lift this evil; that if we changed our behaviour, they would change theirs.

'Their cause is not founded on injustice. It is founded on a belief, one whose fanaticism is such that it can't be moderated. It can't be remedied. It has to be stood up to.'

: So where does all this end up in my mind? Tolerance is good and necessary and civilized. Multiculturism is good; I'm so multi-culti I don't know how mult-culti I am. But tolerance for criminals is always dangerous and wrong-headed. See the post below on the angry young men. We would not tolerate and understand and whisper about KKK killers or Nazis or serial killers. Why should we tiptoe tolerantly around the murderers of 7/7 or 9/11 or any day in Iraq today just because they are multi to our culti? We should not.

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Just in time for Harry Potter

: Know how the papers they read in Harry Potter movies have moving images. Well, now Fujitsu introduces electronic paper that can show moving images even while bent. [via B&C]