South by Southwest Interactive gets underway today in Austin, Texas, and a broad swath of the technology community will be headed there to check out the bands, barbecue, and, oh yeah, the startups. Ever since Twitter had its breakout moment at the 2007 festival, SXSW has been considered a king-maker of sorts. Yet no startup has [...]
Judging bytrending topics on Twitter, I was not alone in reserving an iPad today as pre-orders began for the April 3 launch. The experience was un-Apple-like in the bugs I encountered. Ordering did not work at all on the Apple site in Google’s Chrome browser, but was possible with the odd error page in Internet Explorer. In Chrome, it [...]
As the FTC lays the groundwork for a possible challenge to Google’s purchase of AdMob, it is instructive to look at something else Google has already done to gain a strong foothold in the mobile ad business. Any advertiser that bids through the AdWords system gives Google complete authority over which devices its messages are seen [...]
In another validation of the suddenly hot collective buying trend, LivingSocial has landed $25m in Series B funding from a group of investors including US Venture Partners and Steve Case’s Revolution, LLC. But even with new money backing several similar companies, it is still unclear if the latest thing in e-commerce will last for long. LivingSocial [...]
Sony has every right to feel sore that Nintendo and Microsoft have stolen the limelight from it in adding motion-sensing to games. Sony had the EyeToy camera for sensing motion and putting players inside games on the PlayStation 2, long before Microsoft’s forthcoming Project Natal . Its six-axis controller has always had more motion capabilities than the [...]
Now what to make of various global leaders’ attempts to persuade, criticize or strong arm others into defined targets, implementation timetables, funding allocations and international monitoring……………WELL……………………
You know how in those disaster or alien invasion movies like ‘Independence Day’ and ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ where all the nations unite to fight off and defeat a common enemy and at the end of the movie there are saccharin sweet scenes that show LOVE IS UNIVERSAL and that, ultimately, we all belong to the same family (and regardless of cultural differences we all care about our families):
Hmmn………………..
Let’s just say that we should hope the Martians don’t invade us any time soon because, if they did, we wouldn’t stand a chance. It’s pretty clear from Copenhagen 2009 that national vested interests would mean NO country would be prepared to make concessions for the greater good and our species’ survival.
The Martians would find us as divided over climate change (including whether it even exists) as they would over whether there are aliens and how many troops each country would be prepared to put into battle against them.
Yes, it’s a ridiculous scenario but it also highlights some of the absurdities of high-level politics. LOL.
Now, please will readers also excuse this observation of an even bigger paradox:
·FOR DECADES DEVELOPED COUNTRIES COMMITTED US$ TRILLIONS IN AID TO ENCOURAGE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES TO EVOLVE THEMSELVES INTO INDUSTRIALIZED NATIONS, away from their agricultural heritage.
·This was regarded as a means by which to improve their GDP and export capabilities beyond growing vegetables and fishing and — in the parallel process — to enable them to enjoy equivalent political democracy, educational provision, as universal a healthcare system as affordable and secure housing and policing which the developed countries enjoy.
·YET NOW THE DEVELOPED COUNTRIES ARE OFFERING AID IN EXCHANGE FOR THOSE VERY SAME DEVELOPING COUNTRIES NOT TO INDUSTRIALIZE THEMSELVES BECAUSE IT’S APPARENTLY CAUSING POLLUTION AND INCREASING CO2 EMISSIONS.
Plus monies to help them in case the sea levels rise as a result of climate change and entire villages get destroyed.
This paradox aside, the US delegation seems to have made misjudgments in the way they negotiated with the Chinese delegation. It’s worth bearing in mind that, unlike President Obama, the Chinese government does not have powerful green lobby groups pressurizing them into action or to grandstand to win opinion polls and elections. The fact that they had been progressively opening up to conducive negotiations at Copenhagen 2009 seems to have bypassed President Obama’s advisors.
Prior to Copenhagen, the Chinese government had been commended for its collaborative efforts and leadership in its climate change approach:
Ergo, it’s unfortunate that President Obama made the speech he did and offended the Chinese government. If a Chinese person, out of goodwill and greater good interests, proactively offers to take action and then the other party turns around on a world stage and, effectively, says they don’t believe the Chinese will do what they say, then that is an insult.
If China offers to take action — no matter how small the step and without someone watching over them and micro-managing them, then they WILL take action. Moreover, NO ONE likes to be micro-managed or coerced into action. They like to be trusted with getting on with their responsibilities and being collaborative.
Copenhagen 2009 is an example of different cultures not quite getting each other’s meaning and intent — whether that is developed and developing or climate change campaigners and skeptics.
Today seems to have been something of a China day. My good friend GC called to say he’s back in Europe after a trip to China so I cannot wait for our catch-up later this week. Then I watched an interview on the FT’s ‘View From the Top’ with Michael Pettis, a Professor of Finance at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management:
Afterwards I went to check whether there was further analysis (particularly charts) on his views of China’s economy and I read that he seemed to be having issues with his blog technology, so — being a helpful person — I decided to send him an email to troubleshoot it.
Later still, I read an article in which negotiators involved in the climate change agreements say they’re expecting the Chinese Premier, Hu Jintao, to make some landmark policies on how China will control its CO2 emissions and actually be ahead of American counterparts (who are currently preoccupied with or diverted towards domestic healthcare issues):
LOTS of current affairs to discuss with GC then! Not to mention the slight pick-up in transaction activity (Kraft-Cadburys, Dell-Perot and the odd media buy). Activity like this always switches my brain on even more, particularly since Perot Systems was once in the tech portfolio I was co-responsible for!
Back in the place Brits call “Blighty” and I can’t tell readers how different the topics agenda is in Spain. We had some really interesting discussions about life after Franco, the Suarez presidency, why a generation of 40-something men in Spain are commitment dilettantes and how Zapatero is considered by the Spanish electorate to be Europe’s worst leader………..next to Gordon Brown. Apparently, the Spanish media have a seriously low opinion of the British Prime Minister.
We talked a lot about the political, media and television sectors in Spain and Latin America, and again the frames of reference are so different! My friend referred to someone the Spaniards know as the “Prince of Darkness” in British politics and it’s a completely different person to the ones Brits themselves have labelled with this moniker! Then there was also the different references between the Spanish, Imperial Chinese and British Rpyal Families, someone called the Duchess of Alba and various Spanish and Chinese restauranteurs, architects and actresses who may/may not be equivalents of Jamie Oliver / Sir Richard Rogers / Johnny Depp.
Anyway, onto our inspirational people for this week……….
(1.) Lord Adair Turner
Lord Adair Turner is the current Chairman of the FSA (the UK’s equivalent of the SEC / Consob / AMF / regulatory agency for the financial sector). His biography can be read here:
His recent article in Prospect magazine on the Tobin tax attracted a strong reaction from the City and its financial professionals, according to media commentators:
It’s not for the Tobin tax or the fact that he has the audacity to say that some banking activities are “socially useless” that he’s listed here in Inspirational People. It’s because he’s also interested in and committed to climate change issues:
This 17 year-old Brit became the youngest person to sail around the world single-handed. What he did shows us that achievement and inspiration are not just about passing national exams and getting good grades. It’s also about facing the challenges of nature head on — solo even — and showing perseverance, endurance and temerity. It’s an amazing triumph for this young man and now he’s planning to set up a Sail Mike Foundation to encourage youngsters to sail!
Here’s hoping he achieves his dream of taking part in London 2012 sailing competitions!
(3.) Hayley Lister
Another amazing sailing star from the wee islands of Britain! This 37 year-old today became the first female quadriplegic to sail around “Blighty” solo.
This blog tells how a person quest led me to thinking about President-elect Obama’s prospective international agenda and how it can fit into Debategraph, a wiki debate visualization tool provided under Creative Commons.
(1.)GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS, 16 September 2008:
(2.) INTERNATIONAL ISSUES, Iraq War opposition (2002 to election campaign):
(3.) CLIMATE CHANGE, 18 November 2008:
The domestic issues I’ll omit here but they are readily available at the Barack Obama site.
A JOURNEY BEGINS
Earlier this month I went in online search of a dear man called Giorgio Bertini, with whom I’d been swapping notes about the current financial crisis as well as much mirth. Giorgio, for the uninitiated, is the Chile-based Administrador for “Conversaciones Locales” - Comunidad Agentes Locales de Desarrollo, and has previously worked for the UN. He’s very interested in fostering net communities to educate and to collaborate as well as to solve serious major world issues, and has a terrific joie de vivre (in addition to personal kindness).
Finding Giorgio led me to the Global Sense-Making (GSM) Ning and opened my online life up even more.
From this week until President-elect Obama’s inauguration on 20th January 2009, David Price, the creator of the GSM Ning and the co-founder of debategraph, is collaborating with the Independent newspaper online to produce some visual tools to stimulate participation in and interaction with.
The project’s objective is to model what should be on Obama’s agenda and can provisionally be viewed here:
This is a fantastic way to present visual data for the Independent readers online!
To my mind there are 5 main agenda items which President-elect Obama needs to focus on and I wonder whether the map can designate prioritization (e.g., each subsidiary electron is numbered)? The items are:
(1.) Cabinet Appointments:
— Secretary of State (Bill Richardson cf. Hillary Clinton — which represents real change? International diplomatic experience vs international recognition. Dove versus hawk. Who has endorsed each potential candidate and what are the implications? Henry Kissinger has publicly come out in favor of Clinton)
— Treasury Secretary (potential candidates being speculated upon range from Larry Summers, formerly Principal of Harvard and Treasury Secretary during the Clinton Administration, to Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve)
— Secretary of Defense (speculation is between present incumbent Bob Gates or Gen. Wesley Clarke)
— support for non-financial sector businesses affected
— support for homeowners
— international frameworks for financial stability
(3.) International policy, principally focused on:
— Iraq + Afghanistan issues
— Middle East Peace Roadmap
— Russian hegemony
— China + trade relations
— EU ties compared with “special relationship” with the UK
(4.) Domestic policy:
— Healthcare
— Education
— Green economy that can be exported as a business model in replacement of Wall St model
(5.) US reputation abroad:
— Guantanamo Bay
— Flights of rendition
— ‘Walk the Talk” and lead the way in a GREEN future
In addition to referring to direct source material from Obama’s campaign and the Independent’s digital assets, it may be worthwhile to cross-refer to these sites:
RESPONDING TO GIORGIO BERTINI + MARK SZPAKOWSKI’s COMMENTS
Following on from what Giorgio and Mark wrote, I’d like to pick up on three points:
(1.) Green employment policy
(2.) Complexity of interconnectedness
(3.) Future modeling and tech tools
On the first point, previously I shared with Mark a report from the PERI Institute which covers in some detail how, potentially, 2 million new jobs in the green sector could be created within 2 years with a change in economic and labor policy:
My contention has always been that the green movement needs to move upstream from campaigning about recycling marketing materials and packaging to these areas:
* significant job creation in the sector, particularly in the MANUFACTURE of green technologies;
* consumer influence at the product design stage as a form of green quality control; and
* more appropriate inventory systems to meet GENUINE demand with supply and thereby reduce the surplus (that wastes electricity to produce, resources to refrigerate and / or house, etc.)
On the second point, I agree with Giorgio and Mark that the global system is much more complexly connected than current technology tools will actually allow us to model. The closest I’ve seen of any technology which offers us more insight into what can potentially be done is Quantum4D:
Nonetheless, even with Quantum4D there are limitations and I’ll cover this in my final point.
As an associated sub-strand to (2.), Mark’s insight on the STYLE of leadership (responsive, listening, and empathetic) is an important and — to my mind — a critical one. No one of a rational and democratic intelligence likes or wants a dictator, bully, megalomaniac or tyrant as a Head of State. We reject these types in our daily lives and they command almost negligible trust or respect as leaders of men.
In corporate life, this is also true. The narcissists and the egomaniacs (aka the hubris oriented) have proven to be the cause of long-term value destruction rather than value nurturing. By comparison, leaders who can combine strong technical skills (i.e., work their ways around a balance sheet and understand the appropriate drivers and levers to exercise in order to foster sustainable growth and profit generation) with nuanced EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE are often successful in both innovating and implementing 360-2020 win-win sustainable solutions.
I make the distinction between value nurturing as opposed to value creation because it would be relatively easy for President-elect Obama to seemingly create value but if it’s not nurtured, it won’t develop or become self-sustaining and strategic — merely tactical point-scoring.
On the final point, what technology should we be looking to build? Well, personally, I believe Alan Kay has absolutely led the way in this with the Squeak and Tweak languages (current iterations of smalltalk-80). In his writings, Alan often refers to how this OOP is an attempt to more closely proxy in computer language how the biochemical world works.
Why and how is it relevant to politics and policy-making?
Well, both are complex organic systems which are not bound by linear cause and effect impetus alone. In an ideal scenario, the technology tools would allow us to map a policy in the same way that we can map the pharmacology of a drug at a particular point and its subsequent effects throughout the body.
In the same way, we would then be able to track all the moving parts of a policy and how it permeates domestically and internationally — as well as how it interacts with other countries’ policies and changes form and shape as a result.
When we can model policy like biochemical reactions is when we’ll be able to capture the full complexity of international connectedness.
2ND ITERATION OF THE DEBATEGRAPH
The Climate Change and Response to Financial Crisis spheres are shaping up really well.
If I may, a few minor edits and adds?
* Typo — there are two L’s in HiLLary Clinton.
* The 4th person in the cornerstone being considered for Sec. of State is Chuck Hagel.
* Another person being considered for Treasury Secretary is Robert Rubin.
* Under Response tFC:
(i.) Identify and ring-fence off problem financial institutions.
(ii.) Compile and communicate information on companies not affected by the toxic assets — this is a more immediate measure that can help restore confidence. At the moment, people are selling “blind” otherwise solid stock due to lack of information from authorities.
(iii.) Implement timely bans on short-selling.
(iv.) It’s capital injection in exchange for stock rather than stock injection plan. Stock injection has a result of diluting earnings per share (EPS) which would cause further loss of confidence in the company.
(v.) Wrt Resolution Trust Corp, I think “apply the more effective measures learnt from the RTC” is better than wholesale re-creation of it. As far as I can recall from articles it wasn’t profitable and if US govt. is going to use US$700 billion of taxpayers’ money it needs to have a respectable ROI.
(vi.) Increase transparency of hedge funds and bring them under closer SEC/FSA etc regulation
(vii.) Re-work Basel II and international GAAP (accounting frameworks)
* Under Policy Measures on Climate Change:
(i.) Severe fines and other punishments for companies which violate green principles — ordinarily, I wouldn’t advocate the stick, but in the case of Climate Change and the urgency of the challenge it may be necessary.
(ii.) Develop an independent kitemark standard to award green companies — just like the Blue flag in the UK indicates which beach is clean, so there should be a universal Green Kite.
TECHNOLOGY + the INTERNET
This should also be added as a key sphere of President-elect Obama’s agenda. He is the first President to be elected by the deployment of Internet campaigning (his eponymous website, YouTube, Facebook and MySpace).
Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, has been discussing the role the Internet played in this election:
There’s also material in the blogosphere and business technology sites on what an Obama presidency may mean for the sector.
I’m looking forward to the next iteration of the graph!
ADDING MORE DIMENSIONS TO THE DEBATE
hi David,
This debategraph’s becoming quite brilliant! Thanks for incorporating my suggestions.
A few more quick ones.
(1.) Triggers to the global financial crisis include:
* American banks sought better revenue streams with high-yielding, risky and complex securities (since yields on long-term US bonds had been depressed by heavy international demand).
* relaxed US monetary policies until 2004 (Fed rate, July 2003 — July 2004: 1%). As a comparison between Jan — July 2007 it was at 5.25%.
* crisis of confidence dislocated the money markets where ordinary investors are involved; they withdrew their savings (as in the case of Northern Rock and in the States forced the US govt to intervene with financial support to mutual funds).
Prior to this triggered contagion the confidence issue was purely institutional, so banks were reluctant to lend to each other. When it affected the money markets was when the crisis became acute.
(2.) In the Political Implications of the global financial crisis, one of the key debates is about the demise of exported American capitalism of the Wall Street variety:
(3.) In International Economy as well as facilitating the devaluation of the Yen, the Americans need to consider their policies re. the Chinese renminbi. There was a great article in capital.fr (in French about this; I’ll try to re-find it).
(5.) Under International Policy, with the appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State there’s some more material on what some of the topics may be:
Debategraph is a wiki visualization debate tool provided under Creative Commons. It was co-founded by David Price,a Cambridge University graduate has worked in diverse roles with a wide range of organisations including: the BBC, the European Commission, the UK Prime Minister’
s Office, H. M. Treasury, and Virgin TV; and Peter Baldwin, a former Australian cabinet minister who has leveraged his programming experiences to develop the debategraph software.
Some of the debate topics covered so far include:
·Can computers think?
·Whose identity is it anyway?
·Flash versus Ajax
·Sport and Genetic Enhancement
·To be or not to be? (a light-hearted take on Shakespeare)
What they’re attempting to do is interesting and I wish them success with it.
