~synthesis~

humane

What does it take to shape the essence of who we are? For an individual, it is likely to be one or a series of personal experiences. For a community it might be a shared experience, more often than not a calamity of some kind. But for the whole human race? Now that's something else.

Think of what has impacted us on that scale - religious figures like Buddha or Christ or Mohamed; evil figures like Pol Pot or Hitler or bin Laden. And then I think of Gandhi and King Jr. and Mandela.

They have affected me profoundly - not just in terms of who I am, but more than that, the type of person I aspire to be; and if I have one, what I would hope is the nature of my soul. I hope they have in some small way touched the better angels of all our natures.

If you think of the essence of India - Gandhi comes to mind. If you think of the essence of America, King Jr. comes to mind. If you think of the essence of Africa, Mandela comes to mind.

We are so very lucky to have had one of these men inhabit our lifetime, to have personally experienced and been touched by his essence.

As I was driving home today, not long after I heard the news of Madiba's death, I was thinking about my own experiences with racism and intolerance (in my home country of Tanzania, and my adopted countries of Canada and the US); how I acted, and how I wish I'd acted.

I wrote this blog about Madiba a few years ago, it includes the poem (Invictus by William Ernest Henley) that accompanied Mandela during his 27 years in jail. There is immense strength and power in Henley's words, and there is even more in Mandela's actions.

If his death (and life) are to have meaning in our world, then his actions (like those of Gandhi and King Jr.) can not, must not stand alone. We have to walk in their footsteps, to demand of ourselves and of our elected leaders the tolerance and care that goes along with the word "humanity."

Humane is a powerful word. It demands immense things of us; it asks us to transcend our Darwinian urge to survive even at the cost of our fellow man, and recognize that our individual freedom and opportunities for greatness only comes when all in our community are also free and great.

Amandla Awethu.

the pope loop

My list of questions if the Papacy was a job won via interview, and if I were on that interview loop.

1. Name the one thing you believe every Catholic must be/have - the one thing without which you would not consider that person a Catholic.
2. Name the one thing that if a person was or believed it, you would consider them a non-Catholic.
3. Beyond the "typical" officiating work of a Cardinal, what ONE thing would you (as Pope) define as your priority for the next three years?
4. As Pope, will you focus more on regions where Catholicism is on the rise or in decline?
5. If you had to strengthen the Church's relationship (alliance) with another mainstream religion, which one would you select? What would your goal be in doing this?
6. Are there any aspects of the Church's teachings (traditions/rules vs. religious tenets) that you believe should be reevaluated based on changing times (between now and when these traditions/rules were established)?

My ideal candidate's answers (bearing in mind I have no affiliation with the Catholic Church, nor am I religious):

1. A practitioner of the golden rule - do unto others as you would have them do unto you, combined with love thy neighbor, which I believe are two sides of the same coin.
2. That harming another or allowing them to come to harm is acceptable.
3. To turn our religion from a series of "No's" to a conversation about "Yes" - assuming the worst and a model that scares people into behaving seems antithetical.
4. I will focus on people in need no matter their faith or location.
5. I would pick Islam. The loudest fringe always subsumes people of moderate voices; this is and has been true in our faith, and it is so in others. It saddens me when the fringe uses faith to advance a self-serving agenda, and it scares me when they advance a violent agenda. I would seek to build a bridge between moderate Catholics and Muslims in the hope that our combined strength and tolerance will help the fringe find its way to the middle.
6. I believe Catholicism is centered on the notions of faith, love, tolerance, and service. Anything beyond this is a matter of time and place. I would look at homosexuality, contraception, celibacy, and the role of women in the Church as subject to reinterpretation.
   • I would rather people are guided by their faith in God and love for each other when it comes to which gender they should love and marry; our teachings should focus on faith and love, and we must trust in God that people will choose wisely, and then accept the guidance God gives them.
   • I would urge adults to view parenting as their most important role; one that must be entered into intentionally, and when ready. There is nothing worse in the world than a child suffering needlessly because their parents are not able to care for them; I would support the use of contraception to prevent this form of child abuse.
   • Rather than being celibate, I would like to see the leaders of our Church be exemplars of healthy, successful marriages and parenting.
   • I would hope that one day soon the person answering these questions is a woman - there is no reason why it should not be so.

the NRA is right - it’s not about the guns...

...it’s about the gun owners. According to Wayne LaPierre (head of NRA), “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” It’s hard to argue with that, just as it is hard to implement an “only good guys may have guns” policy.

Proponents of gun control will say that access to certain (or all) weapons + ineffective buyer "qualification" are the issues. This might be true, but so what - it will not prevent gun violence in a country where there are ~9 times more gun dealers than McDonalds restaurants; where there are already ~300 million guns in circulation, and where 5-10 million guns are purchased every year.

The American Bill of Rights protects an individual’s right to bear arms; changing that is nigh impossible, so the real question is not how to prevent gun ownership; it is akin to what LaPierre said, how do we prevent bad guys from wanting to use guns.

I think the anti-gun lobbies/organizations are wasting their time and money. They ironically draw strength and impetus from killing sprees (especially where young people are involved), and sure they create a feverish signing of anti-gun petitions and calls to Congresspeople, but in the end, the outcome is status quo. And then comes another spree, the process begins anew, with the same outcome - status quo.

Back to LaPierre, who are these “bad” guys? The killers are almost always male, they often are killed or kill themselves in the process (society gets no justice), and they are deranged.

So most gun violence is committed by men; these men buy/get guns as an extension of their penis/machismo. They use guns to assert their maleness, and as a conduit for their anger and bravado. Their role models are gun-toting archetypes, like John Wayne/Rambo/etc., revolutionaries, survivalists, gangstas, soldiers, other spree-killers, etc.

They crave the luster of strength, confidence, coolness, assertiveness, heroism, etc. that comes from wielding a gun. Guns are perceived to be a supremely manly accessory.

Rather than relentlessly pursing the pointless cause of legislative relief, let us instead change the perception of guns. Let us reposition gun ownership and gun usage as something other than an expression of machismo.

It would take time; it would take persistence; it would certainly take creativity; but compare that to the multi-decade failure of every anti-gun organization to meet its goal. It is time to try a new approach.

Positioning is a powerful, powerful tool. It allows a thing to be conceptualized or re-conceptualized in a way that will endure. I wrote this a couple of years ago - if you have a moment, read it, and more importantly, watch the two videos. They are outstanding, and they are exactly what is needed to redefine the lure of “bearing arms.”

How would “men” feel if guns were associated with tampons, or as an indicator of erectile dysfunction? Will this happen overnight? No. But look at how we view cigarette smoking today vs. during the era of Mad Men.

If America’s love of guns is to be diminished, it will NOT be with laws; it will be because we redefined the notion of gun ownership to be insipid.

bloodied introspection

Why work hard to be "united" when "divided" is so much easier?

I wrote several months ago that the personal nature of the rift between the Middle/Southern (MS) states vs. the Northeast/Northwest (NEW) states has put America on a path to divorce - the differences are simply irreconcilable. That was in the midst of the Republican Primary. Have things changed since? Did the election resolve or reconcile anything?

No. America has never faced its mortality, and thus never grasped or faced the question of what it really stands for, what is at the core of being American. Without this, there is nothing with which to trump the red/blue emotional antipathy I referenced in that blog, and without which, I don't think America can be one nation.

I joined Microsoft in 1994, during its "cool" zenith (Windows 95): success was everywhere, the stock was rising, the world was happy. Then came the DOJ. Being a convicted monopolist put the company back on its heels. We became timid, cautious, and for a long while, without mojo. They are a different company today, Windows and Office are still the flagships, but now Servers, Xboxes, etc. are legitimate multi-$billion businesses unto themselves. Tablets and Phones are new, but the company is patient and tenacious and will keep trying.

Their size and diversity has put them in a position of potential success in a number of high-margin businesses. Each of their battles (DOJ, browser wars, open source, search, Apple, etc.) caused them to question who they are, what they are, and either re-up or abandon the idea that Microsoft could exist and thrive as a "new" entrant in non-PC markets. They have faced breakups, severe loss of cool, being viewed as insignificant, and yet, the profits keep coming in.

Look also at Germany through the 20^th century -- decimated in WWI, they rose from the ashes, became an industrial powerhouse in the hands of one man. Vanquished again in WWII, they were split in half and became servants of their Eastern and Western masters. Two generations on, Germany reasserted her independence and united as one nation with a clear identity that is informed by its past, understands its potential, and has the maturity to be a world leader. It is now a global powerhouse whose citizens enjoy a comprehensive social and economic foundation.

While the WWII/Holocaust generation is waning, that Germany's behavior still colors their thought process. Rather than diminish, it has strengthened their resolve to strive for success, but with a conscience. Over the years, they looked inward, explored what it really meant to be German, evaluated their past, understood the essence of who they were, and then emerged as the culture they are.

The desire to remain whole; diversify with a long-term view; and embrace conflict and introspection does pay off. If I were picking a long-term tech investment, or betting on a country's preeminence over time, I'd buy Microsoft or pick Germany -- they've been bloodied, faced their own good and bad, and shown that they can get back on the horse, and progress.

America is divisive and divided today because she has never been bloodied; the act of being American has never been questioned. 9-11 was a blip - there is no lasting effect. Support for the military and first responders at sporting events while touching, has not prevented budget cuts and reductions in force. America and Americans have never been sufficiently challenged or provoked to true introspection. The country remains successful, but also petulant, naive, and immature on the world stage.

Today Democrats hate Republicans for their passion for god and guns, and disdain for science. Republicans hate Democrats for their passion for socialistic services, secularism, and belief in science. If America is to be a beacon for pluralism and freedom, then it must experience the worst that can be thrown its way, and yet stay true to these ideals.

This isn't about any one issue, it is about never having questioned your fundamental identity, never having faced legitimate threats to your existence, and never having risen from such challenges as one.

America was most "American" when it faced the very real threat of identity and existence from the Soviet Union and Communism. It gave the country a higher purpose than childish partisan bickering - and while that threat was credible and imminent, the country was more together than apart. Once the Iron Curtain fell, the bickering returned, and as the threat to America diminished, so did our desire to put America above partisanship. It seems the experience of falling and then rising from the ashes is required to created sustained oneness.

Visit Fukushima, Japan, and then New Orleans, Louisiana and ask yourself which cataclysm happened seven years ago, and which one happened two years ago? Ask yourself which country is more persistent, more resilient, and more unified?

Despite their absurd and moronic efforts, our politicians can not make China another USSR - our economic interdependence and China's passion for capitalism are just two reasons.

Is it possible to become one without having to rise from the ashes? Can American ingenuity and "exceptionalism" extend this far? If the post election machinations of the White House and Congress are any indication, then no.

If America is to live, it must first die a little bit.

fatal dependencies = political failure

Marketing exists to grease the skids between the product and the buyer. There are many ways to do this, but in the end it boils down to creating actionable preference.

Because marketing is so visible and so expensive, it is easy to assume a good marketing campaign trumps the product, business process, or customer. We often see senior business executives more enamored with marketing at the expense of the other two. This generally leads to bad outcomes - in business or in politics.

Now politics is perception so marketing (and polling) do play a role. But relying on them exclusively can bite you, as Hilary Clinton learned during the 2007 primaries, despite being a pretty good product.

What can also bite you is believing that midterm (local) wins can translate to national elections. In 2010, the Republicans won simply by opposing President Obama. Their message, “We’ll stop ObamaCare, kill terrorists, hate anything a Democrat does, and lower taxes.”

The product/candidate didn’t matter as long as it could parrot the party line. Win first and worry about governing later, if ever.

Just months later, the Republican Primary candidates went back to the well: vilify the incumbent and make impossible, sound-byte promises that resonate with the base. All talk (spin) no substance (product).

It is hardly surprising that the shallowest candidate won.

But the Presidency is a different ballgame. The electoral college and broad-based support matter more than any one Congressional district. The dynamic is more complex, the scrutiny is greater, and your opponent is no longer a less competent and (even) more buffoon-like version of you.

Now the product matters as much if not more than the marketing. It must meet the needs of a much broader set of customers, it must be real, and it must convince skeptics. A shallow (and hollow) message won’t cut it.

Governor Romney lost because he assumed marketing would take him all the way. He let winning the primary go to his head, did not realize how different the new game was, and how much harder it is to convince undecided voters. He also assumed he and his plans were now fully-vetted and approved by all voters - no analysis or clarity required. “I’m bona fide!” And finally, he believed that the people attending his rallies represented all voters, that what swayed them would sway every voter he needed for the win, and that their fervency reflected their intent to turn out and vote.

The reason your base is called your base is because they love you and your platform, and hate your opponent. The relationship is irrational. Independents are less driven by emotion - they’re trying to make a reasoned choice based on factors matter to them.

The Romney camp didn’t grasp this - they reckoned that mere promises were enough to carry the day. They avoided specifics because they didn’t want to open cans of worms. Non-fanatics saw through it; they wanted:

• Specific, independently verified plans showing how 12 million jobs would be created.
• Proof that you can lower taxes, grow defense, not raise more money, lower the deficit, and allow everyone to take home more money.
• To know why he hated Latinos (and women?) so much.
• To learn Romney’s strategy to work with the Tea Party (something the Republican Speaker failed at), and a Democrat Senate.

These questions (and others) required more than vapid sound bytes, more than “trust me because I saved the Olympics.” The marketing wasn’t holding water.

But this wasn’t their only problem - remember the three elements in the equation - product, marketing, customer. They forgot that the only thing that counts in the end is a person showing up and voting (customer). They assumed that their voters would turn out, but did nothing to assure it. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The President, invested early and extensively at the local level. He was able to overcome a number of setbacks (negative ad campaign, poor debate performance, weak economy, etc.) with his “ground game.” He avoided outlandish promises (12 million new jobs, lowering the deficit without raising taxes, etc.), and his local machine created relationships and helped people come out and vote.

In the wake of the election, the "evolved" Republican strategy for 2016 appears to be:

1. Romney was too liberal - the next candidate needs to have unimpeachable conservative credentials (small government, lower taxes, bigger defense, loves God).
2. Win the Latino and female vote - support amnesty and trumpet Marco Rubio and Susana Martinez, to demonstrate Latino/female kinship.
3. Continue to deny inconvenient facts - the 2010 Republican House was the least functional ever; climate change does exist; lower taxes don’t magically create jobs; there is no fraud - voter id laws are designed to prevent Dems from voting; gay people families are just as normal as straight families. “Hey - let’s not change things too much, after all - there’s nothing wrong with the real us, the problem was Romney.”

#1 & #3 make sense. Republicans have a better chance of wining when they stay true to their roots. There is goodness in authenticity, misguided though it may be.

#2 - well... Latinos and women (and any other “target audience”) are not idiots - they can see through the lip service. If the Republicans truly wish to win over these constituencies, they will have to get over the idea that a marketing/spin campaign is all that’s needed.

Exit polls from the election showed that Americans are:

• 25% Liberal ~ 40% Moderate ~ 35% Conservative
• 39% Democrat ~ 33% Republican ~ 28% Independent

Neither party wins without the moderate/independent vote. This vote is by definition not emotionally attached to a party, and thus makes decisions by observing behavior, reviewing facts, and evaluating policies and plans.

Marketing alone can not convince them. The winning candidate will understand that you also have to show the substance of your product, and you have to directly and genuinely engage your customer.

I am a moderate/independent who will never affiliate with a party. I wanted to vote for Romney - on paper, he seemed the better candidate. BUT in reality, he lacked substance, disdained the voters, and exhibited a shocking lack of integrity. I changed my mind because all I saw was an empty suit whose only interest was self-interest.

To win, Republicans have to get past their Eric Cantorness and focus on the electorate - spin won't win.

debating integrity

In a few short hours, one wasteful, unscrupulous, liar will be chosen to serve as the most powerful man on earth.

This man will have won this right by wasting more than a billion dollars advertising to witless voters; by further polarizing the people against his opponent/party; and by lying.

The level of causticity that permeates politics in America has dangerous side effects:

1. Bifurcation of the populace. Most Americans are so indoctrinated (brain washed?) by this that they not only have an abject hatred for whichever party they oppose, but they also hate their fellow Americans that support that party!
2. America the global laughing stock. As a recent American, and perhaps still an outsider, I can say with certainty that the best impression American politics leaves in foreigners’ minds is bemusement; the typical impression is disdain.
3. Governing is impossible. The Tea Party REQUIRES their candidates to pledge to never compromise with either the Democrats or “unenlightened” Republicans!?!?

We can’t let this continue.

I propose that six days before the next presidential election, the candidates are required to participate in the following debate:

Details:

1. Each party will select three ads authored by their opponent’s campaign, and one ad authored by an outside agency (PAC or Super PAC) and submit them to the moderator six (6) hours prior to the debate.
2. Logistics:
   1. Duration: 90 minutes
   2. Setting: opponents sit across from each other at a table arranged so that one camera can show both faces.
   3. Audience: 300 people - evenly split Republican, Democrat, Independent; each will have a device with which to choose between “Righteous” and “Sleaze Bag.”
   4. Structure: 
      1. eight 10-minute segments for the eight ads.
      2. closing segment with one minute each to "explain."
      3. remaining minutes used at the discretion of the moderator.
3. Approach - a coin toss will choose the first speaker.
   1. Candidate A is given a transcript of one of his ads and required to read it aloud while facing his opponent (one minute).
   2. Candidate A will then have one minute to explain the ad.
   3. Candidate B will have two minutes to rebut.
   4. The Candidates will argue for six minutes (fact-checked by the moderator).
   5. The audience will assess (see 2.3 above) Candidate A, with the results appearing in real time for all to see (including the Candidates).
   6. Repeat for each ad. The Moderator will decide the order of the ads.
   7. Close - each candidate will have one minute to explain themselves.
4. Optionally:
   1. Viewers at home can also add their votes via text, mobile app, or the internet.
   2. Candidates’ seats are metal with electrodes through which voltage corresponding to the level of “Sleaze Bag” as judged by the audience is applied after each segment.

Some might think 4.2 is going too far...

Because the opposing Candidate is selecting the ads, they will be very prepared for the rebuttal. While the choice of ads will be a surprise, the Candidate should know their own ads, after all they approved them. The moderator will have fact-checked the ads and confront any lies.

Impact:

1. The voters will be able to judge the Candidates’ integrity.
2. The Candidates will publicly confront and defend their own lies as, as well as one "independent” lie.

There is no way (given today’s laws) to prevent political “free” speech. But by confronting their own ads in this way, we at least turn them from three-year-olds to twelve-year-olds.

life choice

Politics in America is polarized and infantile; governing in America is even worse. Governing should be about the whole country; it should prioritize the well-being of all citizens now and in the future. It does neither. Short of a revolution, there doesn’t seem to be a way to change this dynamic. Or is there?

What if we put the most fracturing issue of our time on the table? If both sides can find common ground on this, their most polarizing issue, might that open the door to further compromise?

If the first presidential debate did anything, it showed that one event (in a campaign that began more than 18 months ago) + the right conversation + the right audience + the right visibility can markedly alter the election dynamic.

Maybe a similar approach can be used to alter the governing dynamic.

Abortion - more than taxes or socialism, abortion is the litmus test in American politics. It is the pivotal question when choosing Supreme Court Justices; it plays a role in our choice of political candidates; and it is an enormous sink of effort, money, passion, and divisiveness in America. This despite clear laws for almost forty (40) years.

It is a complex argument fraught with nuance, but I think the politics are simpler; and if presented in the right way, perhaps open to compromise.

Background:

1. Over 80% of Americans belong to a religion that proscribes sex outside wedlock.
2. 70% of boys and girls in America have had intercourse by their 19th birthday.
3. By age 44, 95% of Americans have had premarital sex.
4. 80% of young evangelical Christians have had premarital sex; 1/3 of their unplanned pregnancies ended in abortion.
5. Abortions have shrunk from 1.61 million in 1990 to 1.21 million in 2007.
6. 49% of pregnancies in 2006 were unintended; 43% of these ended in abortion.

With this undisputed data as context, what if we were able to bring the five most ardent and visible advocates/politicians on either side to a televised panel, where a moderator asked each of the ten people these questions:

1. Do you agree that in a perfect world, no fetus is destroyed; that every child is wanted and lives a healthy and fulfilling life?
2. Do you agree that every abortion is a tragedy; and that we should do everything possible to prevent it?
3. Do you agree that the best way to prevent an abortion is to prevent unwanted pregnancy?
4. Do you agree that the data above shows that we are failing to prevent abortion more than one million times a year?
5. Is creating a national goal to dramatically reduce unwanted pregnancies and the resulting abortions something you would support wholeheartedly?
6. Do you agree that reducing unwanted pregnancies and thus the more than one million abortions would by far be your highest priority?

Would all ten would unanimously reply “yes” to every question?? Would you?

I think so; and I would too.

How could they not? How could you not??

What then have we accomplished? We’ve bypassed the questions of a woman’s right to choose, and when life begins; and gotten agreement that preventing unwanted pregnancy is paramount. We have recognized that while there may be areas where we disagree, it is possible to find common ground, and more critically to act based on that common ground to serve the greater good.

During 9-11, Congress united with the White House to pass laws aimed at protecting America. We acted as one in response to the killing of nearly 3,000 Americans. The issue before us was without party affiliation; and we were able to rise together and as one to make progress.

Can we now act as one to dramatically reduce the more than one million abortions that happen in our country every year? Surely that is an even greater calamity?

Might this act of cooperation lead to new avenues of accord between the Left and the Right?

Is that not after all the essence of governing?

is foxnews secretly pro-obama?

What if candidate Romney pulls out a miracle and not only wins the Presidency, but also drags a Republican majority into both the Senate and the House?

Whom, in the months to follow is going to be most disappointed and dejected? I say it is FoxNews, and especially Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter (the prince and princess of vitriol).

Why would these two who revel in reviling anything and everything Liberal, who can spin the smallest Democratic act into a demonic plot to strike down all God-fearing Republican Christians be sad?

Because they’d have no-one to hate. The “lame-stream” Liberal media (MSNBC) would own the self-righteous, angst-filled hate advantage, and take over the mantle of official spokesnetwork for the easily-manipulated unwashed masses. Hannity, Coulter, Limbaugh and the rest, all ardent supporters of Mitt, the Tea Party, and all things Sarah Palin would languish on their airwaves with nothing to complain about and no-one to insult.

Imagine that.

My assessment of the coverage mix at Fox/MSNBC:

• 5% our candidate/party looking good.
• 15% their candidate/party looking bad.
• 70% analysis affirming how their bad behavior makes “us” look good.
• 10% update (+ lots of video) of brain dead, ultra-tanned mom arrested for bringing daughter to tanning salon.

To fill the airwaves (and garner watchers and advertising $$) the best possible outcome for Fox/MSNBC is a president of one party, and a split in the House/Senate. This way everyone gets to have someone hate-worthy in power, and of course spend interminable hours with sycophantic "analysts" critiquing minutia in order to perpetuate the hatred.

Many think today’s professional athletes sacrificed the intellectual for the physical; that they are largely one-dimensional beasts whose sole focus is winning at all costs and cashing in on that big paycheck. With American Football, it is this plus the desire to physically dominate and punish your opponent in every way.

I was watching a replay of the Giants-Eagles NFL football game last night; these teams are in the same division, play each other twice a year, and typically for one to succeed, the other must fail. A factor that no-doubt contributes to their intense and long-standing rivalry. Suffice it to say, these players get paid to convincingly decimate each other.

One might even compare them to the Democrats-Republicans in politics, though we’d have to recognize that except for Joe the Plumber (assistant plumber turned actual Republican candidate in the 9th Congressional district of Ohio), most politicians have a meaningful university degree (often post-graduate), earned on the basis of intellectual ability vs. physical prowess.

How interesting then that once the final whistle had blown and the high-stakes, intense game had ended, we saw Jason Pierre-Paul (job: pummel Vick) hug Michael Vick, who hugged him back. This is not unusual - if you watch sports at all, you know this type of inter-team camaraderie is common amongst even long-standing rivals.

What does it say about our politicians when these physically gifted, but purportedly dumb jocks are able to transcend the field of battle and recognize that there is a time and place for everything? They compete with passion during the game, but once it ends, treat each other with care and civility, after all, much more unites than divides.

And yet, our better-educated, more sophisticated, and worldlier politicians are unable to overcome their in-election combativeness to do as the electorate commanded - govern.

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

These are the closing words of Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address. But he had no experience of Fox/MSNBC - a force united to break our bonds of affection; a force stronger even than the Parties' candidates; and a force whose survival depends on discord.

There is but one way to overcome this force. Hmmm... where is that remote?

fear foiled

Why is Mitt Romney not winning? He should be - his background is perfect - proven business man (Bain), proven state leader (Gov. MA), proven repairer of things gone bad (Olympics). On top of this, he’s a good person - faithful to his family, committed to his community, strong moral foundation, etc.

And yet the incumbent who has presided over the largest national debt in history, middling economic performance, difficult times internationally, massive unemployment, and has Hussein for a middle name is preferred.

How?

Is it because Mitt is so far up the ivory tower that he simply doesn’t connect to “regular” people? Is it because his plans are ambiguous? Is it because he equivocates too much? I don’t think it’s any of this. Compare Romney to W. Bush, and you don’t see major differences (President Bush never equivocated; but he was perceived as a bumbling idiot, no-one will accuse Romney of being an idiot so that evens out).

President Bush won because he sparked fear in his constituency. He (and Karl Rove) polarized their base against Gore (and Liberals) to the point where its fervency was so strong, it bled to the center to make the election very close. The Florida debacle did tip the balance, but fear made it close enough for Florida to matter.

In 2008, candidate Obama won because he caused people who had never done so to vote; his rhetoric combined with the absurdity of Palin assured a win. That fervor abated by 2010, allowing the Tea Party to take control of the Republican machine and dominate the House.

Over the last year, Tea Party fervor has abated some (abysmal Primary candidates), and while they still have a hold on Party policy, they are not controlling the campaign dialogue.

Here’s the problem - Team Romney (despite the best efforts of the FoxNews whackos) has not been able to spark enough fear in the base. Potential wedgies:

• Economy - everyone is resigned to a crappy economy; the EU crisis and China’s strength have taken their toll. No-one believes either side can really do much.
• Unemployment - no one believes either candidate’s claims that they can fix this, also a wash.
• Foreign Policy - as much as the media cares about this, most Americans just don’t.
• Redistribution - what crap! A society can't exist without redistribution; Romney has already said wealthier Americans should get a smaller Medicare benefit.
• Obamacare - well... sucks that Romney implemented 1.0.
• Terrorism - whatever - we’ve all got terror fatigue.
• Obama the Socialist - those who believe this are already voting Republican - the rest don’t see it as real or a big enough threat.
• Obama the Muslim - he’s been President for four years, and no-one’s singing the call to prayers from the White House balcony.

See what I mean? The fanatical Left and fanatical Right will vote for whomever their Party nominates - that’s a given. But this leaves Romney way short.

The “issues” aren’t scary enough, and no amount of Hannity/O’Reilly spin can change that. The tried and true Karl Rove strategy is failing despite the money they’ve raised and the vitriol they are spouting.

Romney could ask Grover Norquist to have every Republican candidate sign a pledge promising to cooperate with a Romney White House; it’s hard to imagine that happening, but it might be the one legitimate opportunity to one-up Obama... But then again, people hate Congress.

So, short of Romney so flustering Obama during the debates that he admits to being a closet Muslim who intends to give Palestine nukes, the Democrats have fallen into the good fortune of a country so resigned to its fate that it can’t be scared into voting for Change.

social business

Facebook announced its first post-IPO earnings this week, heralding a critical step in the maturity of social networking - is this a new way to make money, or just the same-old?

The "same-old" is Google, whose innovation was to turn what was the customer (we who search) into the product, and selling us to their customer - the advertisers. It was brilliant, and transformed the very nature of internet monetization.

Social is a bit different - most who use it are less susceptible to, and rarely click on ads. After all, the idea is to connect with friends, share - not to click on random ads. With that, this aspect of Facebook's Q2 (second quarter) numbers should give pause:

• Earnings: $1.18 billion
• Earnings from advertising: $992 million (84%)
• Average monthly users: 937 million
• Total quarterly users: 2.865 billion
• Average revenue/user/quarter: $0.41 ($1.23/year)

Piling on, their most ad-lucrative market, and also the most stagnant in terms of user growth is America; the fastest growing is mobile (543 of 937 million users, or 58%), however converting mobile users into big time revenue remains undiscovered country.

At ~1 billion users, Facebook owns ~14% of the planet's population; but even the user base doubles this coming year (nigh impossible), the current revenue/user puts them at just $8.5 billion/year. Hardly "big-time," especially given their initial $100 billion valuation. (For context, Apple expects to earn $13 billion from iTunes alone in 2013.)

Key to social networking is the ability to publish what you're doing or thinking right now. This requires a mobile, connected device. The problem of course is that mobile, connected devices have to be small enough to go anywhere, and if the screen is cluttered with ads, there's no room to express yourself or see what your friends are up to, which defeats the purpose, and turns users off.

While Facebook started out on PCs, it's pretty clear that their future is mobile. But they've also admitted they don't know how to turn those users into $$.

The approach they're most bullish on is Sponsored Stories - where if a company buys the service, their ads show up in the right pane (on a PC), along with names of your friends who Liked it, and with that endorsement, the hope is that you'll Like it too. Facebook said they're now earning $1 million/day from these ads, with about half of that from mobile.

Even if this does create meaningful mobile revenue, it's not how Facebook becomes "big," or how social networking gets through puberty in a compelling way. Ads are just plain intrusive on a small screen; moreover, mobile click throughs need to go to mobile-enabled sites, which are more difficult to turn into actual sales for the advertisers.

Despite Google's brilliance, click through rates have declined from 5% initially to about 0.3% today. Google is still a success, but now with logarithmic (or less) vs. exponential growth.

If social media rely on ads as their primary revenue source, they will only make money by interrupting human interaction, not enabling it or enhancing it. It will however have the advantage of being not at all transformative, but at least it will be irritating.

I hope they are thinking bigger. I hope that Sponsored Stories sparks in the very smart minds at Facebook, Twitter, etc., ambition to innovate yet one more business model; one not based on the user's propensity to click random links, but instead attuned to the interaction between people, aware of what they care about, and savvy about how they will express it. Imagine how effective a company would be when armed with this kind of insight! Let's call this IP - Interaction Perception.

In fact, the smart approach would be to eliminate advertising altogether (reduce distraction and improve satisfaction) and focus instead on collecting data and creating algorithms that can (without infringing on privacy) assess and predict interaction, preference, and passion based on how we Facebook or tweet or tumblr.

Advertising is about creating urgent awareness (you learn something and are then compelled to act). The more savvy or sophisticated the consumer, the less effective ads become. Most ads suck at doing both - they at best accomplish awareness.

The type of contextual engagement that would be possible with interaction perception makes advertising obsolete. With IP, you could pinpoint exactly where your target audience tends to be when they're most likely to want your product, and literally place yourself at that location. You would know the 5 or 10 trend-creators for your product that you need to reach, and through whom you can create immediate and pervasive market penetration without ever "advertising."

foursquare for example creates incentives for people to announce their location, and then works with businesses to create special offers for frequent visitors. They can now identify "magnets" that bring people together, track traffic flow from place to place, determine brand preference, and much more. Today, foursquare is still using their knowledge to help merchants better target advertising/offers on their site, but this is just the beginning. While much of the insight today is location-centered, I'm sure this will not be the case tomorrow; they'll be able to get predictive enough to know when you need your next coffee, and potentially be able to vector a mobile coffee service to where you are. The possibilities are endless.

Unlike search, social networking is implicitly permissive. We never gave Google the right to track our behavior; we became angry when they started doing that and figured out how to disable their oversight. But we choose to publish what we're doing, with whom, and how we feel about it on Facebook/twitter/etc. Sure, some prefer to keep it private, but most don't - they want to share.

Social networking is about the only way to capture interaction perception - the problem is the "innovators" in social networking are too busy trying to sell ads, despite the inherent diminishing returns.

Rather than interrupt our experience with ads, why not infer and fulfill our needs with insight?

divided

Something rather predictable happened in America yesterday. North Carolina became the 28^th State which overwhelmingly voted to amend their constitution to protect the "sanctity" of marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

As a recent citizen of this much-vaunted nation, this and related events make me question two things I was required to learn to gain citizenship:

(1) Did the Boston Tea Party really occur? Was this country really formed in response to "a long train of abuses and usurpations" against the ideal that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."? Or is that all a sham?

(2) Are the fifty (50) United States of America really so, or is this just a geographically convenient artifact?

Today, 56% of American States are anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion, and anti-any-other-religion-but-ours. They ironically campaign for this using the very Declaration quoted in #1 above. They are strong in their conviction, persuasive with their campaigning, and (very) successful in their actions.

If an alien were tapping into American news over the last months, they would be convinced that this continent is on the brink of civil war pitting the Middle/South (MS) against the North East/West (NEW). They would be further convinced that the passion, state of weaponization, and ferocity of MS would prevail against the tepid passion and insipid NEW.

I think they'd be mostly right. MS wins referenda because they stir passion in an organized way, they instill fear by correlating any issue to the personal insecurities of their constituents. NEW on the other hand appeals to people's sense of what's right; they may agree, but are not provoked enough to rock the vote. Once again proving that when it comes to politics, the threat (actual, perceived, or fabricated) of imminent, personal danger far outweighs any intellectual discourse.

Notwithstanding their brains, NEW's density and lack of savvy are impressive -- if I were running the NEW campaign advocating that any two consenting adults should be allowed to marry, I would also argue that any two consenting married adults should be allowed to divorce. I would be sure to give the latter as much "air" as the former, secure in the knowledge that that would cause/require MS to oppose it. While incredibly obvious, I'm certain NEW will never do it.

Gay rights is but one rift in metaphoric Grand Canyon that separates Americans; it began with the Civil Rights movement and the US military presence in Vietnam (or perhaps with the abolition of slavery?), and fed by vitriol, violence, and politics, blossomed into our current state of "irreconcilable differences." The pundits claim that the upcoming presidential election is about the economy/debt, jobs, national security (energy self-sufficiency), and health care. They're wrong. These are surface issues, filled with gray; and both sides (politicians and voters) are mostly in agreement. The real issues, the most evocative, are personal and decidedly black/white.

Democrats and Republicans alike claim "what unites us is far greater than what divides us" and in the next breath, go on to paint "them" as against the core, fundamental, and personal issues that "we" share.

You can't have it both ways. Aaron Sorkin said this best with President Andrew Shepherd's speech in The American President:

America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship.You've gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say, "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours." You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms.

Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free.

America (and democracy) can't exist when her citizenry is made to be personally severed from its neighbors. If we continue down this path of intolerance, metaphoric severance will become literal; either peacefully - "You (44%) go your way, and we (56%)'ll go ours.", or violently - "You're too evil to live, you need to be ended."

Maybe it's time to renew my Canadian passport...

spintegrity

As a kid, I routinely proclaimed my innocence when “stuff’ happened . It is possible that sometimes “I didn't do it” wasn’t exactly accurate; it's also possible that had I come clean right away (or even before the “stuff” was discovered), I would have spent much less time being well-grounded...

When I was in that “innocent” moment, I always felt it was possible that the broken fish tank (or whatever) might not actually be discovered, or that I could find a way to not make it my fault.

As in childhood, “stuff” also happens in business; but the consequences are worse than a wet carpet (the fish were saved, though I got zero credit for that). Sadly, the “adult” leaders are often as righteous as I was, and as convinced that they can somehow get away with it.

A teacher I admire recently posted a link on Facebook to a blog by Gary Rubinstein entitled: Why I did TFA, and why you shouldn’t. As a former TFAer, my friend was understandably upset about this. I too am an admirer of TFA (Teach for America), and this article was an eye-opener, it exposed perspectives I hadn’t considered.

Money quote: "Rather than be honest about both their successes and their failures, they deny any failures, and charge forward with an agenda that has not worked and will never work. Their ‘proof’ consists of a few high-performing charters. These charters are unwilling to release the data that proves that they succeed by booting the ‘worst’ kids — the ones that bring down their test scores."

A few months ago, the Susan G. Komen Foundation was accused of politicizing their grant-making (which they denied despite information to the contrary); they were further accused of singling out Planned Parenthood, which the head of Komen, Nancy Brinker also denied. When asked if their reputation was at stake, Brinker responded: “...all I can tell you is that the responses we’re getting are very, very favorable." They reversed their decision 24 hours later, apologized for causing any distress, while reiterating their righteousness.

Like TFA (23 years), Komen has been around a long time (30 years), both are very effective, and widely regarded as resounding successes. They had to overcome huge obstacles; persevere through difficult times; and finally gain traction and slowly win people over. Now, rather than begging to get an invite to the dance, they are the main attraction.

To get to success, it is often necessary to transcend negativity; it is always necessary to believe in yourself, your vision, and your strategy, even (or especially) when everyone else doubts you. This thick skin is critical to progress in the early days, and if you are fortunate enough to "win," it is sadly also very effective at helping you forget who and what you were when you started, and think only of how great you are now.

Humans are designed to forget, minimize, or even romanticize tough times -- I can't imagine a mother wishing to give birth to second child if this weren't true; it is certainly how adults forget the angst and difficulty and complexity of puberty and teenagehood, when they vowed never to be the jerks their parents were.

In life, as we learn and grow, we hopefully never lose sight of the principles and morals that we were taught as children -- these neural pathways were formed when young, and ideally persist and guide us throughout our lives. But in business (and politics), there is no such memory, especially when it comes to leadership. Principles or morals are routinely forsaken in the name of expediency. What's worse, it is the very leaders who were closest to those principles that are most likely to ignore them.

But how is the ideal that caused shivers down your spine, brought a tear to your eye, and drove you to do just one more thing before going to sleep so easily replaced??

I think it happens when you hire two- and three-lettered people - JDs, PRs, MBAs. The "2-3s" are designed to manage situations by respectively telling you scary stories about what will go wrong if you admit things; telling you lies about how great you are, and assuring you about how easy it is to fool the public; and by "helping" you measure success with generally-irrelevant metrics. The 2-3s also help you forget the big picture -- the very reasons your organization exists in the first place.

The result? You've been spun.

Spin is a powerful thing - it is intended to "shape" truth into convenience: "the fish needed a new home anyway, and let's face it the floor also needed a wash." The problem happens when you start believing your own spin. Back to TFA: Education is a difficult, difficult challenge -- we spend $100s of billions on it and are still failing. Rather than admit that some of their efforts have also failed, and help others learn from their mistakes, they're forsaking their original dream -- we can make education better -- for their new mandate -- TFA must succeed at all costs. This is true for Komen, for many large corporations, and certainly in politics.

As Gary put it, “TFA spawned leaders suffer a type of arrogance and overconfidence where they completely ignore any evidence that their beliefs are flawed.  The leaders TFA has spawned are, to say this in the kindest way possible, ‘lacking wisdom.’ ”

When you start believing that your 2-3s can help you hide or spin failures and acts of stupidity, you’re in trouble. When you start believing that these things didn’t really happen, you’re an idiot. And when you start thinking you can now do no wrong, you’re sunk, for you are now without integrity.

The standard to which we hold ourselves is our greatest asset. When we are honest about our successes and failures, we show our humanity. When we are open to external scrutiny, we are worthy of other people’s trust.

prelude to discombobulation

I was reading a speech John F. Kennedy delivered in 1961 to the Canadian Parliament, and struck by this quote:

Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies. Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder. What unites us is far greater than what divides us.

Over the last few months, I've been wondering whether the country President Kennedy represented still exists, whether his half of the "us" can in fact be represented as he did. Is there still a "we" in the "us" or is America no longer one country? Can the President legitimately "represent" US?

I thought the intra-American vitriol had peaked during the presidential election in 2008 - from calling candidates terrorists to questioning their birth and religious affiliation, because in the weeks that followed, it felt like we were moving back from the ridiculous to the sublime.

Wrong.

Today there is NOTHING the Republicans can do that will inspire Democrat support or approval, and vice versa. I bet if Speaker John Boehner(R) were to give money to a homeless person, Nancy (the idiot) Pelosi(D) would find a way to condemn it as a political act aimed at eliminating Federal social programs. Such is the lack of quality, maturity, and civility within the government.

The very concept of governing has lost meaning; American politicians' only goal is to win, and then raise enough money and create enough polarity to keep winning - there is no compulsion to actually do anything (serve) whilst in power, who cares about that!

Whatever "they" do, "we" have to hate and decry, even if we agree (or agreed) with it. If they do something that the electorate thinks is good, we have to spin it as misguided, anti-freedom, anti-common man, anti-jobs, or (last resort?) treasonous.

How did politics become so devoid of honor? I blame Karl Rove, who in crafting George W Bush's candidacy, saw that the only way to win was to target the religious right, prey on their fears, and make them hate, truly hate John Kerry. It was a brilliant strategy, and obviously successful. Now all politicians passionately embrace the low road.

Each side is so effective with their spin, they've erased the essential principle of democratic rule - that the wisdom of the broader electorate will attenuate the candidates' radicalism. When politics comes up at the coffee shop or at the dining table, it is easy to find "regular” people parroting either the MSNBC or Fox argument depending on their bias, and expressing the same vitriol against “them” that they hear on TV and from political talking heads.

The electorate has been manipulated, and can no longer do its job of keeping politicians honest and focused on governing.

The American government divides power among three branches so that no one agenda will or can dominate. But today the President (executive branch) largely controls his party in Congress (legislative), and with a majority in the House and Senate, is able to have his way on most things. The Supreme Court (judicial) is nine individuals with a lifetime tenure and the power to interpret laws as they choose. The current Court is comprised of five conservative and four liberal judges; many 5:4 rulings happen along "party" lines, and while the Court wishes to avoid this, it occurs more and more frequently, especially in cases where the Executives and Legislatives are also divided according to party propaganda.

If Mitt Romney wins his party's nomination (likely), and if he is able to activate the Tea Party with sufficient force to maintain the House majority and also win a Senate majority (possible), he will, with this "friendly" Supreme Court, essentially be a despot.

While he may have been (perhaps still is) more moderate than his rhetoric, he knows how to appease "them that brung him," in order to sustain majorities through the midterm elections, and then get reelected in 2016. Winning = radicalism + fear mongering.

Even within America, does the picture JFK painted still apply? Can Americans of both stripes be neighbors, friends, partners, and allies? Is there more that unites us than divides us? Or has Karl Rove put us asunder? It took a several years to foster the revulsion each feels for the other; I imagine it will take much longer to repair the rift and establish real trust. I do know that the longer we mistrust, the longer it will take to undo the damage.

Not ironically -- this rift was created by our leaders and blossomed with our assent. Not so long ago, a group of traitors wrote these words within a proclamation saying that enough is enough:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Here in the 21st century, the so-called Representatives inside the Beltway might well be worse than the despotic Brits of the 18th century.

So what will this primary and the upcoming election say about US?

Have we endured a long enough train of abuses and usurpations? Have they evinced a desire to once again establish new guards? Or will we just placidly whine about it and order another nonfat decaf half soy latte?

quintessence

Steve Jobs resignation as CEO of Apple has provoked questions - will Apple maintain their trajectory of success? What is their unique advantage?

Check out these three articles:

1. Ultrabook: Intel's $300 million plan to beat Apple at its own game
2. The New Apple Advantage
3. 10 Reasons Why iPhone 5 Doesn't Stand a Chance Against Motorola Droid Bionic

The first is Peter Bright’s quest ‘to find a 13" MacBook Air that isn't made by Apple.’ Sobering insight into a normal person's experience of buying a laptop from Dell, HP, or Lenovo.

Next John Gruber thinks Steve Jobs and Tim Cook are responsible for Apple’s success: “We’ll give Jobs the credit for the adjectives beautiful, elegant, innovative, and fun. We’ll give Cook the credit for the adjectives affordable, reliable, available, and profitable. Jobs designs them, Cook makes them and sells them.” Gruber feels that it is possible for Dell, HP, etc. to copy Steve, but they’ll never match the economies of scale that Cook achieved.

Finally, Elias Samuel delivers a detailed and apparently thorough assessment of the shortcomings of a phone that no-one has seen vs. a phone that few will use. It includes the Korean version of their teaser ad, here’s the English version. If you want to nerd out some more - here’s a comparison of three random Android phones - does a typical consumer really think this way?

From these articles, I concluded that Apple made it easier for us to buy; consolidated their product line and parts requirements to lower operating costs; and conceded the phone-nerd audience vs. normal consumers.

But this isn't really Apple's magic...

Have you seen Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement speech? He said one of the best things that happened to him was getting fired from Apple in 1985. It gave him the freedom to create NeXT (which Apple eventually bought), and Pixar, the most successful and creative animated film studio ever.

Steve Jobs is brilliant and a visionary, but there are many of those; what makes Jobs unique is his time at Pixar.

Two “behind the camera” roles in film-making are Producer and Director. Simplistically, the producer’s job is money, logistics, and marketing; the director’s is the story, the artists, and the ultimate experience.

I think John Lasseter (director, Chief Creative Officer, Pixar) is/was a HUGE influence on Jobs’ thinking about the essence of product development.

Great directors must:

• Interpret an intricate, complex and wide-ranging story and turn it into something that can be conveyed in ~90 minutes;
• Marshal talented, creative, and ego-filled actors to work together for one cause;
• Create a complete sensory (emotional, visual, auditory) experience;
• Make all the difficult editing choices that turn hours and hours of footage into a tight story that will not only entertain at the theater, but also in DVD.

The story is preeminent. Difficult tradeoffs will be made, forsaking interesting story lines, scenes, and special effects. The audience will be treated to a unique and powerful and memorable experience because these tough choices and decisions were made. The audience's job is also made easier because *they* don't have to do this hard work - they just have to enjoy its fruits.

Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 as CEO, but he was really the Director.

He took over a company that lacked focus and was bleeding money. Jobs eliminated most of the product portfolio (Newton, Cyberdog, OpenDoc, etc.), keeping only what he believed was part of the "story," and he aligned every employee to a singular vision.

He defined the experience customers would enjoy. I can imagine him saying, “Forget computing or productivity or any of that crap! Apple will entertain. We are not a company that builds multi-purpose devices that offer flexibility and choice at a low price. Apple's job, our job is to elevate spirits, to amaze, to create pleasure in use and pride in ownership."

This is Apple’s magic - this obsessive and uncompromising desire to create pride, to elevate.

Will it survive Steve Jobs’ departure as CEO? Is there another Director in the wings who will have as strong a spine and be as unwavering?

I hope so.

Stay hungry, stay foolish, Apple.

the hole in the middle

The professional baseball season is 162 games long, and the players have a saying: "Every team's going to win 54 games, every team's going to lose 54, it's what you do with the other 54 games that counts."

This is also true in politics. The fervent Right (1/3 of voters) will always vote Republican, and are lost to Democrats, who have the Lefty third in their camp. The theoretically “balanced” media is just as polarized, and only attracts audiences who are in violent agreement with them; few if any “minds” are changed.

Both sides realize they need the Center to win the Presidency, and despite redistricting efforts, many Congressional districts and states are also decided by Centrists.

Normally, politicians lean toward the Center once elected, but the 2010 elections have resulted in a level of dogmatic obstinacy that has rendered the White House impotent, Congress a disgrace, and America a laughingstock.

Was this a one-time occurrence? Will the political landscape come back to its senses with a natural regression to the mean? Or has the American voter become so polarized that the middle 1/3 is no longer meaningful?

As a Centrist, I hope not - I don’t want to see a cluster f&*k like the one that we’ve experienced so far in 2010/11.

I don’t speak fo all Centrists, but I believe most would agree that ensuring the sustained wellbeing of every citizen is the #1 priority of Government.

Today is Labor Day, but more than 25 million Americans are un- or underemployed (i.e. not earning enough to survive); the two greatest sources (public sector and small business) of jobs are retrenching; and larger corporations are doing pretty well.

The White House and Congress are oblivious; they think making government smaller, eliminating jobs, and pandering to the Tea Party (lower taxes, less debt) are the path to prosperity.

This at a time when more families are unable to feed themselves every day, individual debt is untenable (student loans are at an all time high), and those who might have a dollar or two of disposable income are saving it, preventing the very commerce needed to put people back to work.

To earn my vote, I’d like to see candidates focused on:

1. Investing to create jobs.Individuals and small businesses need improved access to debt, and assurance that their jobs are not about to go away. People create the demand that will drive the need for supply, production, and jobs. The obsession with shrinking government (the country’s largest employer), reducing debt, and cutting and cutting, has created a ripple effect in the commercial sector (shrinkage), and with individuals who are increasingly scared to spend.
   
   Government prioritized supporting corporations over the last couple of decades and it worked. Large businesses are more profitable than ever, and they are more cash-rich than ever. But they are not investing because they see no need to. There is no pressure on corporations to expand capacity because consumer demand is weak.
   
   Government must now prioritize the individual, to help them become consumers once again, and give corporations a reason to invest their savings back into the economy.
   
   Lowering individual taxes are not the answer - this has never worked. We must improve cash flow by refinancing existing consumer debt, changing the way student loans are awarded and priced (if we can deduct mortgage interest, why not student debt?), and providing individuals with some assurance that at least their children’s education and health will be taken care of (see below).
   
   These acts will immediately put money in consumers’ hands, and give them the motivation to buy stuff.
    
2. Creating a safety net that includes universal education and healthcare. Public education was a response to the demand for Industrial Revolution workers, and to protect young children from slave-like labor. It was decried at the time as a socialist act, but justified because an educated and employed workforce would accelerate Capitalistic economic growth, and prevent child abuse, which was thankfully agreed to be a good thing. Today we accept public education.
   
   Universal healthcare is no different. The ONLY constituent that suffers is the health insurer (and the politicians funded by them). By ensuring that everyone is covered, we grow the healthcare industry even more rapidly (it is one of the few that even today is adding jobs), and we recognize (as we did with child labor) that this is part of society’s obligation to help ensure the sustained well-being of every citizen.
   
   But we accomplish one more thing - we enable the bold, daring, capitalistic mindset of the “exceptional American” (sorry) by freeing them to invest and spend and grow the economy, safe from the worry that their families won’t be able to go to the doctor when needed.
   
   The value of this peace of mind can not be underestimated when it comes to a national, positive, growth-oriented outlook.
   
   
3. Banning government intervention in individuals’ lives (provided they aren’t harming others).
   
   I want my government to stop wasting time worrying about abortion (it is the law of the land), gay marriage, teaching creationism, and the myriad other “social” issues that are important to individuals, but which as a Centrist, I don’t want to make political.
   
   It is bizarre to me that Congress (a bastion of piety, morality and right-mindedness) should even be allowed to opine on these issues, must less legislate them. They simply have no standing.
   
   I think we can trust the American people to live within their moral fabric and rely on domestic law enforcement to protect them from those who would do them harm.

Once the economy stabilizes, we must absolutely focus on cleaning up Government - this will require a clarity of vision and cojones. Attributes both President Obama and the Republican candidates are sorely lacking.

It is ironic that the non-extremist nature of Centrism precludes the impetus to advocate for rational government.

demoPrats

Nope - it’s not a typo - a prat is an incompetent fool; and looking at the Party of Donkeys, I see a whole lot of those in their midst.

The DemoPrats have accomplished little to nothing since 2006, during which they’ve had control of the House (‘06-10), Senate (‘08-) and White House (‘08-); their leadership is inept and toothless, and they lack the ability to lead.

The Republicans are dogmatic bullies under the dual (and bizarre) thumbs of the Tea Party and Grover Norquist. But they are masterful at focusing their message in a way that is instantly resonant. Their platform in my words:

1. Taxes are evil - We must curb government excess and put Americans to work.
2. Life is sacrosanct - We must protect innocent unborn children from those who would kill them.
3. Peace through might - We must ensure America’s freedom and safety with a powerful military and border security that deters all our enemies.

To any Democrats that might read this post - can you in as succinct a way articulate your Party’s position?

...

Yeah - it’s a problem isn’t it? In the absence of a compelling message, you allow the Rs to define you as Anti-Jobs, Anti-Life, and Anti-Freedom.

...DemoPrats

From the President down to the petulant Reid/Pelosi dullards, no-one has been able to effectively challenge the Republicans. This is after all the party favored by most of the media, almost all of Hollywood, and some of the brightest minds in the country, and yet, they are bumfuzzled.

1. Taxes create jobs. Capitalism is greed - if your net revenue/employee is positive, you will hire more people because you will make more money. If your taxes go up, you’re still greedy and you’ll hire even more people to make back the tax money - remember employees are a tax deduction. There’s a ton of data to back this up.
2. Life doesn’t end at birth. Every life must be protected; a healthy birth is the beginning - we must ensure a healthy life for every child - that includes an excellent education and guaranteed healthcare. Healthy, well-educated children are net contributors to our economy - they do honest work, and pay their taxes. In fact, they give back more than we spend on them. The Bible says we must protect life, and we couldn’t agree more - the healthier our nation, the wealthier we are, the more jobs we create, and the less debt we incur.
3. America first. We have a lot of problems to fix here at home, and a lot of enemies wishing to attack us in our own backyard. Let us bring our troops back from abroad, and defend our own cities and towns. We don't need to be the world's cop anymore.

This is just an off-the-cuff (one hour of thinking) response written by an immigrant marketing guy.

The Dems could easily de-Prat themselves if they were to utilize the full capacity of the talent on their side; they just need to focus on connecting to their audience, and not on trying to be smart, something in which all DemoPrats revel.

Effective communication is not when the speaker does a good job, but when the audience hears what they need, in the way they need it.

To be clear, this is only a way to engage the voters politically, and win an election. It does not change the DemoPrats' ineptitude in government.

I think there is a possible fix. President Obama needs to replace Vice President Biden with someone who will run the entire Domestic portfolio. He must be able to wrangle Congress, and know how to streamline our government and catalyze job creation. He must be confrontational, decisive and impolite, but most of all, he needs to totally resonate with "regular people."

I think that person is Ross Perot.

remember who you are

Henry Ford once said, “Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.”

Ford's planned auto-innovations will enable cars to run apps, read your Twitter feed to you, let you update your Facebook status, and surf the web, all while driving! Ford executive Sue Cischke: “Telling younger people not to use a cellphone is almost like saying, ‘Don’t breathe.’”

We know that texting while driving is more dangerous than being drunk or stoned, and yet Ford, in their quest to be "with it" have chosen to pander to kitsch ["Cischke" <--> "kitsch"?] and actually enable distracted driving to win younger buyers - now there's a strategy - let’s proactively help young drivers "stop breathing...” - not sure this is the path to repeat business.

In talking to high-tech C-level executives, I know they are desperate for strategies to help "connect with the consumer." This despite the fact that most of their revenue comes from corporate clients, whose values and priorities are decidedly not-consumer. Corporations (and older people) are interested in function, economic value, predictability and vendor stability; young consumers are interested in form, social value, creativity, and “new.”

So why are large corporations like Ford and others desperate to be hip when their real (paying) customers value the opposite?

In the old days, for costly items like trucks or computers, it was easier to get corporations to buy - they had more money to spend, there were fewer of them (easier to sell/market to a smaller segment), and they could write off the costs of these purchases, making them even cheaper. Whereas the consumer had less money, was much harder to reach, and didn't have the tax advantage. The barriers to entry were lower at the office.

Today corporate customers are extending the lifecycle of hard goods like cars and PCs; they’re reluctant to deplete their cash reserves; and they’re negotiating when they do buy. None of these problems exist in the home, and more specifically, in the minds of new buyers. The barriers to entry are now lower at home and with younger people.

Their example is Apple, who has seen non-corporate, young-consumer sales also drive adult and business purchase behavior. But their “cool” comes from an uncompromising commitment to the product and its design. This priority is why people buy, and why they can command a premium price in tough times. It is also what justifies the "adult" decision.

Executives at Ford (and many high tech companies) are glomming onto social media in the belief that being Twitter/Facebook-enabled associates them with youth and “cool,” and winningyoung and hip customers, leads to “adult” sales as well. This is just badly-executed imitation.

It feels like Ford (and other) executives no longer believe they can “do a thing,” and desperate to remain relevant, are vainly grasping at social networking straws in the hopes that that becomes their new killer feature. 

They should know better. Marketing and random features don't compensate for bad decisions and weak products.

The first step is simple - be clear about your “why” - once you know why you exist - what your fundamental purpose is, then the what and the how become much clearer. There is no doubt about Apple's "why." I fear that companies like Ford have gotten so pendulous that their “why” is lost somewhere in the folds of their quadruple chin.

Instead of enabling distracted driving, get on a treadmill, and work off the fat (high priced consultants, MBAs, etc.) that has caused you to misplace who you really are.

in the best interests

Are you familiar with the Butterfly Effect? It states that a small change in one part of a system can dramatically affect outcomes in another part of the system, or more poetically, a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can set off a tornado in Texas.

A look into the roots of recent uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt reveals that some of their inspiration came from far-away sources like American Gene Sharp, and the Optor in Serbia. They were bolstered by a history of civilian uprisings against authority - from Kent State in May, 1970, where students reacted violently to President Nixon's announcement that the US had invaded Cambodia, to the African National Congress and people like Steve Biko rising up against Apartheid in South Africa, the list goes on.

Lives have been sacrificed and countries have been shaped through civil disobedience, but sadly, humanity is not yet civilized enough to claim that this phase of our "development" is over. Recent events in Bahrain eerily echo what happened at Kent State 40 years ago. We are at least consistent...

Our hackles are raised when our sense of what's right is shaken; we feel righteous indignation when what we know to be fair and just is violated; indignation turns to anger when the perpetrators are those entrusted with authority and expected to represent the will of the people (their victims).

What about those on the "other" side of these actions?? I think/hope most are acting in what they believe to be the best interests of the people, that they are doing what they know in their hearts and minds to be the correct response given the situation and available information.

Look at President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction, and how we see that the information he believed to be true and verified was a lie. Look at the actions of the British Empire, who for centuries believed that they were "civilizing" the Colonies. It's easy to fault their actions in hindsight, but in that moment, in their moment, I can't honestly say what I would have done, given what was known to be "true" at the time.

In their minds, they were doing what they felt to be "right." If any of you are or were children, were you ever "subjugated" by your parents for doing or wanting to do something you thought was OK? Did you swear that you'd never do that if you had kids, then when you became parents, you put the screws to your kids in much the same way??

Context matters. Our judgment about the best interests of those in our charge is at best complex, and infrequently based on pure, unbiased reason.

Parenting is different from politics - in politics transparency matters, due process matters, and the voice of the people matters. In the politics of a democracy, these are sacrosanct, aren't they?

Texas Governor Rick Perry believes that abstinence is the only way to teach sex education, and he has invested more than any other state on promoting virginity before marriage. Texas has one of the worst-performing public school systems in America, the 3rd highest teen pregnancy rate, and more sexually-active high school students (52.9% June/08) than the national average (47.8%), when recently questioned about his decision cut education budgets, close schools, lay off teachers, etc., but maintain abstinence funding, he responded: “I’m just going to tell you from my own personal life. Abstinence works.”

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has decided to arbitrarily rewrite the rules governing public service employment in his State. His legislature will vote to ratify this despite strong opposition from the people of Wisconsin. His rationale - we can't afford to do what we were doing, we must live within our means, and this is the only answer - I/we know what's right.

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak have always acted in what they believed to be the best interests of Tunisia and Egypt respectively. King Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa has always acted in what he believes to be the best interests of Bahrain. Each of these leaders' assumptions have been challenged over the last weeks.

We in the West have looked on these events with some feeling of superiority, sanguine in the belief that at least we live in nations with government[s] of the people, by the people, for the people.

I wonder - are there butterflies in Tunisia or Egypt or Bahrain?

clarity

"You've got mail" was in the vernacular 15 years ago, there was even a movie that used this now quaint Aol phrase. Such was Aol's strength and place in the market that they were able to strike the largest business deal to-date in buying Time Warner in 2000 for $182 billion. Aol's core business was (and still is) dial-up Internet access. They peaked in 2003 with 26.7 million subscribers; today that number is 3.85 million, with earnings of $1.02 billion (and $1.28 billion from advertising) in their last fiscal year. Both were 26% lower than the prior year, despite averaging 112 million visitors/month. Revenues have fallen by 25% for the last three quarters of this fiscal.

With desperation come bad decisions. Aol recently bought TechCrunch for $25m and then Huffington Post for $315 million in the belief that content is the light at the end of their tunnel.

On the same day I learned of the Huffington purchase, I read this fascinating survey whose title says it all: "Executives Say They're Pulled in Too Many Directions and That Their Company's Capabilities Don't Support Their Strategy." My gut response to these executives is: "then you're clearly not worthy, do us a favor and quit."

64% of these "executives" complained that they have too many conflicting priorities; 52% don't feel their strategy will lead to success; and a whopping 66% admit their organization does not have the capability to be successful.

To run an organization, you must have a clear vision; be relentless (dare I say - single-minded) in pursuing it; and you must have the capacity to ensure success. If you can't do these things, you are not a leader - you're at best a mid-level bureaucrat who needs a manual to figure out where the toilet is (and perhaps what to do while there).

In my last post I talked about how team trumps the individual, how success requires a cohesive team focused on the end goal and not individual glory. Executives bent on personal accomplishment to "rise" above their peers create random strategies and priorities aimed only at making them look good.

In the end, these organizations are doomed to fail, they favor spurious action over well-thought-out plans, they jump on random bandwagons, and they don't create a community with a common purpose, where people are valued and team success is rewarded.

What does this have to do with Aol? First:

1. Dial-up - what market segments use dial-up today? I’m guessing it's people who have decided they're too old to change, can't afford to change, or have no interest in change because it's not worth it to them.
2. Advertising - the fact that Aol's ad revenue is falling at exactly the same pace as their subscriber revenue means that most of their traffic comes from their subscribers, and they're doing nothing to hold on to, or expand either.
3. TechCrunch/Huffington Post - including DMG from the link in #1 above (a must read), you might not need all the fingers on one hand to count the number of TechCrunch (nerds) and Huffington (liberals) readers who prefer and use dial-up.
4. I'm willing to bet that Arianna Huffington only sold the Post because she's been promised the CEO-ship of Aol in the next 12-18 months.

Second – one of the most interesting demographics for advertisers is older people; now that baby boomers are retiring by the thousands every day, there’s a lot of $$ available to companies that have access to these very lucrative audiences. Aol's 112 million visitors/month are probably closer to this segment than any other, but have minimal overlap with either the nerds or the liberals.

If Aol has a core competency, it is in provisioning dial-up access and advertising to their subscriber base. Why not buy a cheap broadband ISP that they can use to convert (and maybe even grow) their subscriber base, and focus on delivering (vs. acquiring) content that is meaningful to the customers they already serve?

Tim Armstrong, their CEO was President of Google Americas (US & Canadian ad sales) prior to Aol; there is no doubt that he knows the Internet ad business and how to run a sales organization. He will leave Aol soon, having added M&A to his portfolio.

But sales (and M&A) by its very nature is not a team sport - for you to win, others must lose. Is Tim forging a path for Aol's success or his own?

curativity

Being charitable is an essential part of humanity. The definition of society is a community formed to (among other things) help those who can't help themselves. Humans are inherently giving beings.

According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, as of August 2010, there are 980,000 nonprofits (that filed IRS returns; there are 1.6 million registered .orgs) in the United States alone; they earned $1.74 TRILLION, and have $3.89 TRILLION in assets. That's an average of $1.78 million in annual revenue, and $3.98 million in assets per organization.

Obviously the "big" foundations skew these numbers with their $multi-billion endowments, but still - $5,637 per American resident was donated in this last (economically tough) year. Impressive.

About a year ago, I received an email from Paul about giving - what's the motivation, why do people do it, etc.? Most people give money to relieve guilt or to (as Paul put it) "make a spectacle of themselves." You only have to look at how philanthropic organizations solicit money - guilt is the essential ingredient in .org marketing. Almost every advertisement or solicitation you see will in some way make you think, "there but for the grace of God go I."

In good times, this works well - those who have respond, and help those that don't. Tough times are often (sadly) also marked with major disasters (earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, etc.), and in these times, people will rally in support of these causes, taking money away from their normal nonprofits, and their beneficiaries can be left with nothing.

Back to the numbers, I'm most shocked by the almost one million nonprofit organizations - surely there aren't this many societal issues that Americans alone wish to address? Surely there aren't a million Americans who are skilled at managing philanthropic organizations? And ...surely there aren't a million+ people/potential employees skilled at eliminating societal problems??

Most nonprofit founders have either personally experienced, or observed a "problem" first hand, and are now compelled to do something about it. This is a great thing - the motivation to help others not suffer as much as you did or saw is truly heartwarming.

But as an old friend once said, in business as in life, you must put the right tool in the hands of the right person. The wrong tool in the hands of the wrong person creates unwanted results: if you give a dentist a jackhammer, dentistry will not occur (!).

We give because we care; we give because we feel guilty; we give because we can. But how do we know the ones to whom we are giving "can"??? What's the assurance that these 980,000 nonprofits have the ability to not just make a symptomatic difference in the moment (palliative care), but actually do work that creates real and sustainable improvement, that eventually eliminates the need for that nonprofit altogether?

There is no assurance - this is the problem. Rarely do the people that form nonprofits have the skills and experience to solve the problem. They may not even have the skills or aptitude to effectively operate a nonprofit. More often than not, their core skills are empathy and fund raising. These are both important, but not enough to get the job done. This is where the whole point of giving is at risk.

You might be asking yourself "what's wrong with hiring the people that can do the job?" Nothing! Except - most people who have the expertise/talent/experience to contribute to the solution and can afford to work for a pittance are already trying to set up their own .orgs! Hence the almost one million separate organizations! Irony abounds.

To Paul's question, I think this is why people make their giving visible - they recognize that motivating others to give is the only real difference they can make.

To the question of how you fix it - how to make giving curative and not palliative? I suggest two acts - first - raise the bar so that actually setting up a nonprofit is incredibly difficult. Second - the big foundations should use their marketing muscle to showcase successful interventions (ones that create sustainable improvement); and then show givers how they can contribute their time and money to helping proven interventions scale through the existing channels vs. setting up their own .orgs. "This is working - here's proof - help make this work in more places!"

Happy New Year everyone - here's to a curative 2011!

the D.T.s

In this time of reflection, I've been asking myself - what monumental legislation did the US government pass over the last 30 years? What laws have had a profound and lasting effect on people, the economy, and the world's view America?

I thought of two - the War on Drugs and the War on Terror:

WoD: jailed the second-most people in history (after the internment of the Jews during the WWII); cost $billions in increased law enforcement, court delays, prisons; demonstrated to the world that America cares less about its people and more about self-righteous politics.

WoT: created the Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security (aka the War on Americans), killed more Americans than 911 (and counting) with wars in Iraq/Afghanistan; cost the American economy $trillions; proved to the world that everything looks like a nail in America, because the only tool they have is a hammer.

Have drugs or terrorists been defeated? Is America better than it was before either War?

2011 brings us an even more polarized nation/government; a revitalized Republican Congress; and impending redistricting based on the 2010 Census that will allow the newly-elected State and Federal politicians to draw the lines of their district to ensure a partisan electorate and future reelections. This is a perfect storm, giving Congress the impetus to "do something big" in 2011.

I think they will want to declare a War on something. Potential "enemies" - overall government spending (nuke all socialist programs); repealing the Health Care Bill; and Education.

The average age in Congress is 57, we have an increasingly aging electorate, and lest we forget, the Republicans are also known as the GOP - the Grand Old Party; Medicare, Social Security, etc. are relatively safe.

Health care - the incoming Congress is already contemplating repealing ObamaCare; but the Democrats will (per the deal on tax cuts) negotiate some tweaks, but keep the essence intact.

That leaves Education, where costs are rising, performance is declining, and (pro-Democrat) unions are strong. The latest PISA scores (OECD global student achievement testing) have the US toying with average, while others are excelling in literacy, numeracy and science. This, despite spending more per student than almost every country in the world. Powerful ammunition in the right hands...

Congressional Republicans are supporters of school vouchers (un-bundling the public school budgets, giving parents vouchers to pay their child's tuition at a school of their choice); a "free market education system"; and they are strong supporters of faith-based schools.

With an increasingly polarized electorate, and armed with equally polarized candidates, the extreme right (conservative, pro-religion, pro guns, pro-military, anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, anti-socialism, etc.) are stronger than ever. They advocate Family Values, and want to see America restored to its "rightful path."

According to Pew Research, American scientists are 55% Democrat, 32% Independent, and 6% Republican. If you can stomach her, listen to this speech - Palin is a political force with a large and energized following, and the wit and vocabulary to incite them to action. She appeals to that growing extreme right who wishes to take back America from the "intellectual snobs that have put us in this mess," and to return America to "just plain folk" vs. those elitist science-mongering snobs. Scientists aren't their people; science disputes Intelligent Design; it questions their right to burn coal and petroleum (GOP disbands committee on global warming); it advocates for stem cell research, abortions, and all manner of foul and evil acts; science disputes the very existence of God.

How might the next war be declared? Here's a possible excerpt from the speech:

America was a proud and honorable nation, standing on the shoulders of great men who gave their blood for her freedom, and so that our children could fulfil their dreams, knowing that they were protected from all forms of evil. My fellow Americans this is no longer the case. Today we are weak, our values are eroding, the very nature of the American family is in question!

We must rise once more! We must take back America, restore her to her rightful place as the land of the free and the home of the brave, as the one nation under God. Our journey begins with our children. Our schools must reflect our vision, our potential, and our values. The public school system - from the buildings to the curriculum to the teachers - is a failure. Decisive action is required.

Starting today, American parents will receive vouchers to choose a school for their children that aligns to their values and morals, and that teaches the tried and true curriculum that built this once-great nation. American baby boomers are the most educated and successful community in history; we need schools that teach what they were taught and in the way they were taught.

The voters are demanding a stronger, faith-based education system that adheres to these principles. We have heard you, and will match your voucher if you choose to place your child in a qualifying school, thus doubling the funding for the "right" schools. This free market approach, which again goes back to our roots, is how we will take back America, restore our children's education, and take back our schools.

Is it really that far-fetched to imagine the incoming Congress declaring a War on Science?

Most of us know the term D.T.s to describe addiction withdrawal symptoms. America is going through the Delirium Tremens right now with the Wars on Drugs and Terror and soon, science. But why? Every war was declared with the intent of restoring the good old days. If this declaration succeeds, it could very well drive America back into the 17th Century with trials in Salem for the Mark Zuckerbergs of tomorrow.

Congress needs to go into rehab, do the 12-Step Program and rid itself of this addiction once and for all. No addiction is healthy, and an addiction to war is the least healthy of all.

bumfuzzled

There's been a lot of furor lately about WikiLeaks and the US State Department documents they published (vs. stole). The United States Congress is seeking to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange; Senator Joe Lieberman in a recent Fox News interview stated that Assange (an Australian) should be tried for American treason! He is also contemplating charges against the New York Times for bad citizenship! Do Senators now get to fabricate their own laws? Next he'll outlaw literate people - oh wait - that was Pol Pot.

Every government/police system in the world wishes to prosecute Assange for his part in publishing these documents. I bet if they had their way, the US Congress, Interpol, etc. would also want to prosecute everyone who tweets or blogs, and possibly everyone who's under the age of 25 just on principle.

According to www.senate.gov, the average age of this, the 110th Congress is 57 years (55.9 House, 61.7 Senate). This is one of the OLDEST Congresses ever. The average Congressperson was born in 1953, when TVs had two channels, no remotes, and black & white pictures; they were teenagers before it was even possible to send telexes. They graduated from university five years before CNN was created, a decade before personal computers became commercially available, fifteen years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and almost a quarter of a century before mobile phones were broadly available. The world's population has almost tripled since they were born.

Sadly for them, we are in the midst of the Communication Revolution. Going from the Industrial Revolution (their world) to the Information Revolution to this, the Communication Revolution, we have shifted from standardization (Ford Model T) to discoverability (Internet/Google) to transparency & immediacy. While foreign to these relicsleaders (many of whom have never even read email), the need to be transparent and expect to have anything be immediately exposed for all to see is today's reality. Keeping secrets like you did during the age of Leave it to Beaver, in a time where the latency between information capture and global distribution is measured in seconds is absurd.

Congresspeople: the good old days are over. The RIAA faced this with online music, the MPA is facing it with online films, and you are now facing it with pervasive (and unfettered) access to information. The systems you employed to safeguard your secrets are antiquated and designed for the Cold Warriors, not today's average 12-year-old. But like your much-vaunted HUAC and Senator McCarthy's demagogic anti-communist investigations, you have charged decrepit freaks like Lieberman to persecute these modern "evil-doers" in the name of National Security. Bravo.

History will judge you as it did McCarthy and HUAC - as a Congress unable to fathom a changing world, using its power in desperate ways to impose order, and putting its energy into holding on to the past vs. leading your country towards a brighter future.

Punctuating the 2010 US Government's reaction to this leak is their edict to all government employees instructing them NOT to read any of the WikiLeaks documents. Quoting MSNBC, the Department of Homeland Security sent out a strongly worded memo to all employees and contractors telling them that not only may they not “download or attempt to download” any of the classified WikiLeaks memos onto their computers, they also may not “discuss the content” of such “potentially classified” documents “with persons who would not otherwise be authorized access,” according to a copy of a Dec. 3 memo from the department’s Office of Chief Information Officer. NASA and the Library of Congress have blocked the WikiLeaks site from their employees.

As a Homeland Security employee put it, "So, my grandmother would be allowed to access the cables, but not me."

Remember - these same government leaders have publicly decried the Chinese Government for impeding free information flow to her citizens.

The modern world has left the aging US Congress and various government Ministries bumfuzzled.

How does one de-fuzzle? I don't think it's possible - with apologies to canines everywhere, you can't teach old dogs like Lieberman/Pelosi/etc. new tricks - they're simply too withered, and sadly too entrenched.

Giving them some credit, they do understand that the WikiLeaks episode portends an even more dangerous future - one where no secrets are safe, no back-room dealings are kept in the back room, and what happens in Vegas becomes a TV movie that everyone can watch. Their strategy is to delay that future as long as possible, not realizing that their very acts (which only serve to extend the story) are actually helping seal their fate.

That this is news to Congress is not surprising given their agedness, but it is surprising that one of the youngest (and most tech-savvy) presidents in history is behaving so much like his septuagenarian colleagues.

Or is it that the very act of joining the government not only bumfuzzles but also calcifies?

tax refunds

When money is exchanged for a good or service, the buyer and seller enter a contract where the product offered will meet expectations and achieve advertised results; and if it doesn't, some form of restitution/refund is expected.

In a market economy, providers of goods or services that do not operate with integrity should as a matter of course lose customers and go under. This behavior is enforced in America by the Federal Trade Commission. With all of this, one would think that the American consumer is well taken care of... but no.

In 2008, Americans spent almost $600 billion (via income taxes alone) on public education (or well over $10,000 per student per year). That's a lot of money. Where is the consumer protection? If a student doesn't successfully complete high school, fails to get accepted to college, or fails to get a job, shouldn't the "buyers" be entitled to a refund? What if the school doesn't do enough to educate a child? What then? How does one get restitution?

If we look at Education America as a business (EA.com), who are its customers? What is the product (how do they create value)? What does the model look like?

1. EA.com creates value by taking raw materials (students age 5) and machines (curriculum, exams, standards) them within its factories (schools) and with its workers (teachers) into theoretically actualized, independent, and contributing members of society (students age 18-ish) 13 years later.
2. A company's customers are the ones that pay for the good or service, or in this case, the American taxpayer. The customers are the ones that have already passed through the system, not the ones currently in the system. Their stake is in the "future value" of EA's product and not in the process. This is a pretty significant nuance, and rather convenient for EA.com as its customers are unable to judge the quality of the product until well after the product has left the factory, and the payments have been collected.
3. The model is brilliant - get paid to crank out widgets according to an external specification (curriculum) and measured based on an antiquated (standardized tests) assessment, which has no connection to the graduate's ability or likelihood to succeed per the customers' requirements (blue text in #1 above).

By the time you realize the education you bought your child didn't meet expectations, it's already too late 'cause they've already graduated. And since there are no refunds, EA.com is counting on the fact that you will recognize there is no value to airing your very legitimate grievance, and just give up.

This can't be allowed to go on. Since a bad-education-refund is not possible, what can we do??? Where is our Fair Education Commission???

In the spirit of my last post, to create change, we must identify the most influential constituency, pick the most provocative issue, and pour some Tabasco into that wound.

The only way to truly and sustainably change Education America is to mobilize most if not all citizens to vigilantly ensure #1 above for every child. Adults aren't doing this today because it's in their past, and they don't correlate it to their future. We need to reposition Education and make it much, much more viscerally relevant to everyone.

Education America is funded by American taxpayers, all of whom are current or future retirees. Every one of whom expects to receive Social Security and Medicare until they die. Social Security and Medicare (SS&M) are the political third rail - the one place where all political parties fear to tread. This is because both are at risk of bankruptcy, and more taxpayers are closer to retirement than ever before (i.e. they are going bankrupt faster). 

SS&M were designed on the premise that there will always be more employees than retirees (bizarrely, no-one counted on people being healthier, living longer, having less kids) and that the current employees' taxes keep the system afloat (unemployment = bad). So if I'm retiring in the next 10-20 years, I want to make damned sure that today's students are VERY employable and will pay a ton of taxes, otherwise all I've done is fund my parents' retirement, and I'm left holding the bag.

Strategy: Make SS&M the wound, a poor education the Tabasco, and push the masses to personally focus on improving Education America to ensure their retirement benefits.

Let's take a look at the "biggest" education change agent in America - the Gates Foundation. They are investing a TON of money (my guess: $1-3billion/year), but that's less than 0.5% of the total education budget - a relative pittance. They can't make a big enough impact with that - they need a bigger lever.

Rather than creating programs, they should stand squarely on the third rail (since they're not political), and use their $Billions to create a fervor among Democrats and Republicans alike. If the citizens of America want to ensure SS&M access for their own retirement, they need to make sure that EVERY student graduates and is very GAINfully employed very soon after. The Foundation should produce a clear, simple list of three things that the voters must expect from Education America in the upcoming election (step 1). In the following election round, they should specify the next three things that voters must focus on (step 2), and so on.

We can't get a refund on the misspent $600 billion - let's at least make sure all future money is spent well.

lesser evils

How do democracies work exactly? Churchill said that "Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." He also said "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

Watching the recent election in America, I imagine voters from both parties will agree with the second quote. Except for countries with an utterly homogeneous population (Scandinavia comes to mind), are there any democracies where political success doesn't require an opponent against whom you must incite passion?

One of our basest instincts is fight or flight; we act when we perceive a threat. Politicians have figured this out (Karl Rove is probably the best) and know that the only way to "rock the vote" is to get people afraid enough of the "other guy" so that they donate $$ and vote for you.

Surowiecki, in Wisdom of Crowds argues that "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." Now try to imagine the wisdom of 46% of the American electorate that wanted Sarah Palin (now a reality TV horror show) to be Vice President in 2008. The ONLY way this happens in a "wise crowd" is if the alternative (Barak Hussein Obama) is portrayed as so vile and horrific that it raises your righteous indignation to the point where you're able to stomach the lesser evil.

Politicians want voters to do three things - donate money, vote, and convince others to vote. They accomplish this by appealing to the basest instincts and fears, and by counting on the fact that the electorate has a very short memory when it comes to promises vs. actions.

There is a fourth social/constitutional expectation, which is to care, be discerning, and make intelligent choices; but let's face it, that's asking a lot, and you know that politicians would prefer you let them do the thinking...

The election process is no longer an assessment of a candidate's past performance, intentions, and ability to create value for their electorate; it is instead an exercise in emotive herding. Look at either side's campaign in any election around the world and you will see that most if not all of their "voice" is aimed at your gut and your heart, and NOT at your head. Most if not all of their voice is also not about their candidate, it is about how bad their opponent and his party are. A good campaign manager (Rove et al) knows the issues that will incite their base, and more specifically how to spin them to achieve maximum enragement. The better the manager, the more sustained the effect of the spin.

The best way to move a community is to find or fabricate an enemy. People only coalesce when they have something to oppose. I do not believe it is possible to sustain a mainstream movement based solely on a peaceful or positive intention. If you have no opposition to rail against and vilify, you will not be able to keep your audience.

For example, Palin = plain spoken, apple pie, maverick, god fearing, gun-toting, hockey mom. Anyone who is NOT this (Obama) is evil - "she's one of us," and he's not. You can't trust him, is he even American, his name sounds Islamic, he's... Politics today is more about creating caricatures than it is about addressing issues. With the prevalence and reach of media, the voters' connection to the caricature (or the idea) is more profound and more long-lived than their connection to the person.

These days democratically-elected candidates can't be mainstream, they have to be fringe, and they have to establish and nurture a polarized constituency. Once in power, the majority pushes their agenda; and the opposition/minority needs to do everything possible to not just impede that agenda, but to inflame their constituency into a rage against the incumbent. That's the only way they can raise enough money and rock enough voters to win next time.

The effect? Unless one party has a massive majority across the entire government, nothing of substance will happen - the citizens' lives aren't materially improved. The legislation that does get passed is rife with compromise and a pale shadow of what was promised. The spinners happily point the finger at the "enemy," and the citizenry's belief that the real cause of all their ills is at the other end of the spectrum (government and voters alike) is deepened. And the government oscillates between extremes - nothing gets done.

Think of how most advocacy groups function; they don't talk about the rightness of their cause, they create momentum by promoting the wrongness of their opponent. Do you think the Pro-Choice community would survive over time without extolling the threat that the Pro-Life movement represents and vice versa?

Now think about YOUR feelings - is your reaction stronger to an anti- message or a pro- message? Are you more like to vote or contribute or participate because of a fear of what might be if those other idiots get their way, or because you feel passionate and positive about your candidate and their platform?

I think the Tea Party movement in the US began because they wanted to change this dynamic, to see a government and citizenry closer to what the Founding Fathers intended. But in the end, they sacrificed integrity to pander to the media, grow their membership, and raise money, and ended up becoming a fringe instead of a mainstream voice.

If the byproduct of a democracy is that half the citizens hate the other half and wish evil upon them, how is this civilized? How do we claim to be civilized?

The opening Churchill quote has given us permission to be complacent, to concede that there is no better government than a democracy. That's not acceptable. Our imperative should be to prove him wrong, and not acquiesce to democracy simply because it sucks less than the alternatives.

community v ambition

First, it's been quite a while since my last post. A lot's been going on over the last months, and as a result, I prioritized other things over ~synthesis~, but I intend to amend that from now on! I thank all of you who sent me emails and were concerned about my well-being - that was surprising and sincerely appreciated - a thousand times thank you.

Second, I've decided to leave Microsoft - my employer of many years - and embark on a new journey in the world of education and start-ups. The next weeks and months will be spent refining the vision, finalizing the business plan, and of course, securing the funding to make it happen. I may do some consulting work in the interim, but hope to devote most of my energy to creating this new future with the goal of making a difference.

Community v ambition: I was visiting with a friend recently and we got to talking about her recent adventure in India, and then about some of the differences in the way people approach life (broadly speaking) in "developing" vs. "developed" worlds. Out of this came this idea that there are two extremes in how we approach life - community and ambition.

For most of our existence on this planet, community has been fundamental to survival. As competition grew and threats increased, people coalesced into communities where roles were defined, and they took care of each other. For example, in a true community, there are people who will hunt, grow, prepare food, build shelters, heal, and defend the community; more often than not, the children will inherit their parents' roles as they grow older. Similarly, you won't see daycare or convalescence or retirement homes - the young, the recovering and the aged are cared for within the community. The very idea of saving for retirement doesn't occur or exist.

The community can and does sustain itself with relatively lower stress - certain issues that individuals face simply don't arise; and others (will there be enough food today, what if bad weather damages our homes) are dealt with more easily because the burden is shared by the entire community, and there is comfort in that. People never go it alone. The community creates a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, and a sense of beholdenness.

At the other end is ambition. It argues that the individual prevails over everything, that we each go it alone, and that success is self-created, and self-enjoyed. "Ambitious" parents expect their kids to leave the home after secondary school, go on to university (in another town) and then the working world, happily leaving them in the bliss of an "empty nest" - this concept simply doesn't exist in the community.

Ambition is also a zero-sum game - there are winners and losers in everything - and that's how "keep score" and gauge your progress. It's a bit weird that ambition requires us to prevail over fellow humans - a rather counter-to-Darwin strategy.

To and "outsider," community is an oddly stagnant thing - "don't they want/expect/desire more than the status quo?" I am an outsider (ambitious) - but I wonder where happiness lays, where less strain and stress, fulfillment lie, and whether individual outcomes are on an equal footing with community outcomes.

The recent election in the United States was largely a celebration of individual ambition over community impact. Most if not all of the issues in play asked why the one should pay for the many. Incumbents were vanquished because they supported legislation that required individuals to spend their money in support of others. While there is a party line, most members of the party only agree on one thing - that the other party must be stopped. Outside of that, their perspective is largely individual.

Most large corporations believe success comes by pitting individuals (their own employees) against each other (in a zero-sum performance management scheme) in an effort to achieve greater team performance. BUT because success comes comparatively, many of their own employees (presumably rigorously-selected and trained, etc.) must "fail" in order for some of their employees to succeed, and theoretically for the company to succeed. Hmmm... "For us to be a great company a proportion of our employees must be failures - we have therefore designed our system and set our expectations to achieve this."

Does that compute?

It is fair to argue that the community forsakes the individual - the "communistic" view requires each of us to sublimate our desire for the broader good; the innate artist must be a hunter; or the budding mathematician must be a seamstress because those are the things the community requires. They must forgo their uniqueness.

In my family - we often wonder at the fact that the only times we get together is for weddings and funerals, that as much as we say "we must do this more often," actions speak louder than words, and the next reunion is when someone else bites the dust.

Is there a happy medium where the individual is celebrated, and yet a vital and contributing, and nurtured member of the community? Or does the one implicitly pollute the other? Is individuality inherently a corruptive agent in the community? Is there a limit to the amount of corruption that a community can withstand before it evaporates? Does community suppress innovation? Does community perpetuate stagnation?

Over the last ~3 years, I've had the honor to be a part of an amazing community - those that are passionate and committed to improving education around the world. It is vibrant and passionate and energetic and able; but are we really a community or are we just ambitious individuals who share a common goal?

Is there a pendulum effect? Will Western society move back to a community base at some point? I was in Cape Town a couple of weeks ago, and saw community power first hand; but I fear that progress trumps stagnation, and while I appreciated what they have, inside me is the desire for it/them to be more...

reinforcement

How do we regard and celebrate good behavior? What are our expectations of people and how do we help reinforce what we want?

What would have happened during the 1992 Democratic Primary if Bill Clinton had said: "You know, while I'm devoted to my wife, I view sex as something altogether different. My wife and I have an arrangement, I do and will have other women in my life, but that in no way compromises my leadership."?

He would not have won the Democratic Primary, he would not have been President, but he would have been truthful (something we presumably value). Clinton is not the only politician to have ever strayed; one might argue that faithful politicians are the outliers. Do voters want to know about these affairs? Or would they prefer to assume goodness, hope the infidelity stays hidden, and then be self-righteous if it comes to light.

Of course infidelity is not particular to politics; it happens in sports, religion, business, and in everyday life. Despite this, "customers" - fans, congregants, employees, media, partners, friends, etc. - are always shocked at the behavior, wonder what mysterious and diabolical circumstances contrived to make it so, and wonder why these people are unable to "control" themselves?

What's more, by turning a blind eye to any one "bad" behavior, are we not tacitly sanctioning them all? Having "gotten away" with the fidelity lie, is it any wonder that President Clinton claimed not to have inhaled? Sure eyes rolled at that, but in the end, there was no accountability for either smoking pot (not that that really matters) or lying about it. There are many other peccadilloes that human nature says are within us, yet we persist in expecting people to transcend their genes.

Taking this to the next step, if we expect and forgive lies, surely we can't expect the lies to be limited to meaningless acts like smoking pot or having an Oval Office "O"? What else might a dishonest President lie about??? Are we ready to accept that?

In the business world, a smart company will under-promise and over-deliver. They do this knowing the value of setting clear expectations and the cost of failing to meet them. If the company develops a reputation for always achieving or exceeding expectations, they know that that currency is worth something - it could be a premium at the point of purchase or market value or even more critical, customer retention and loyalty. Equally, a smart company will not make a promise it can't keep. They will not set an expectation knowing that they can't meet it. This is good business. In both cases, the rewards are clear and the company benefits in the long run.

Facing your truth and setting the right expectations is what we should all aim to do; but our society doesn't want this; it prefers the illusion over reality. Look at Enron or Bernie Madoff or every too-good-to-be-true diet program, and the fact that people will flock to the next Enron or Madoff or diet pill to know that we prefer to gamble on goodness or outlandish promises despite the history or the massive odds against success, believing that this time we will buck the odds and find the one honest politician, or win the lottery. Either way, we mostly end up disappointed. And because we keep coming back for more, there is no shortage of predators creating "disappointment opportunities."

I think this phenomenon contributes to the downward morals/ethics/behavioral spiral. In the old days, we lived in (and were known within) communities. The community - your neighbors and friends and family helped ensure a broader ethos using both active and passive reinforcement; we don't have that today.

Instead the precepts of society and the canon of law expect us to fail; they spend all their energy anticipating and policing these (potential) failures, and publicly "recognizing" the miscreants with trials and the like. So what behavior is modeled for impressionable minds???

Are there societal examples where good behavior is rewarded (i.e. "Congratulations!! You get a free petrol/gas coupon because you adhered to the speed limits!")? I can think of two - first where good students or talented athletes (or both) are able to get scholarships to reduce higher education costs, and second, reduced prison sentences for good behavior.

So other than helping convicted felons reenter society early (a rather ironic incentive), when does society actively reward positive behavior? I did a quick search to see what I could find, take a look for yourself - it's not pretty.

Isn't it a shame that there's so little we do to reward ourselves when we've achieved more than expected? If human nature is so filled with "vices," why shouldn't Clinton have gotten some kind of reward for being honest and admitting that he's a horny old man, but still a good leader?

Instinctively, most parents (or pet owners) know that positive reinforcement leads to better (and more sustained) behavior in children or young animals than negative reinforcement. Why do we flip that as we become adults? Science tells us there is a big difference between telling someone "Don't forget to pay the rent" and "Remember to pay the rent." The parts in bold are the most likely outcome.

It is this simple - we must expect more of ourselves, and we must encourage others to do the same; we can do this by taking the energy we invest in finding and showcasing failure, and putting it into rewarding success.

expectations

Does a customer have a right to be served? Is there a law that requires every customer to be catered to? Does that law make sense?

It's true that there have been occasions in history where people were not served [see picture on the left] because of some kind of visible difference. It also happens today, case in point being this eight (yes, 8) year old girl, Evelyn Towry, who was arrested and handcuffed by the Boise police department at the request of her school principal because of her autistic behavior and I suppose they (full grown adults) felt physically threatened by her (yes, 8).

But I don't think the law makes sense. The existence of anti-discrimination laws doesn't always create the right outcome. In both cases not only were the perpetrators evil and wrong, but law enforcement was as well! Exactly what protection did the victims get? When we have too many rules, it becomes too difficult to enforce any of them, and the level of specificity creates too many loopholes, allowing fundamental wrong-doing to be forgiven.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not agreeing with the jerks that denied service to black people, or abused a poor eight-year-old child. Both parties should have been/be severely punished. In my opinion, people (white and black) should have boycotted the former's restaurant, and the latter all need to be terminated - the teachers, staff, principal and police officers should all be out on the street (and ideally not allowed to ever procreate again, but I suppose some might consider that harsh).

When does it make sense to exclude a customer? Seth Godin wrote about a failure heirarchy (I like this idea a lot) - it argues that you have to live up to your intentions and expectations, and that failure is critical to success. Part of this license to fail comes from choosing the right customers.

Roger Kay claims that Apple is firing its customers and that that's wrong. His view is that Apple should be much less exclusive in its dealings and be open to all types of customers. I don't agree.

When you build a product (say an item of clothing, you "optimize" it for a certain gender, a particular body-type, and sometimes even for certain skin colors - and that's acceptable. If you've ever eaten at the Carnivore in Nairobi, you know that they don't care about or cater to anyone other than meat-eaters. Aston Martin does not cater to poor people. etc. So why does Apple have to serve corporate clients?

Not only do I think they should avoid corporate customers, I also think catering to this clientele will cost Apple it's margins (profitability), as well as its reputation. As a commercial vendor, Apple will have to build products with specific features (security, manageability, interoperability); it will have to test products with greater rigor to ensure compatibility with applications built by 3rd parties; it will have to build a more extensive sales, service and support engine; and it will absorb a much greater change management burden to ensure that commercial clients are "whole" when then do upgrades, etc.

Even in the consumer space, Apple is going through some struggles with product quality. Now imagine if they'd sold the iPhone4 as a commercial product, and their antenna issues caused companies to lose business - there would be lawsuits galore ('cause let's face it, they're flush with cash, have a huge market cap, and are in some categories, dominating their markets) claiming lost income due to Apple's product flaws.

I think Apple was brilliant to deliberately step back from the commercial business (and think they should move away even more concertedly); it enabled them to dramatically streamline their business and operating model. As a consumer goods company, their only obligation is to the consumer. This allows them to:

1. Confine their sales channels (their stores, other resellers, the web).
2. Implement the most basic upgrade/switching support - easy to move from one Mac/iPod/iPhone to another, but not much else.
3. Focus their engineering efforts on specific and Apple-chosen consumer capabilities (aesthetics, music, photography, etc.) versus responding to features their corporate customers demand.

Corporations don't like as rapid a product update cycle as Apple is used to (it's too expensive and difficult for them to upgrade that often); they want a lot more "personal" care and feeding than Apple would want to fund; and they're a lot more particular about standards, compliance, interoperability, and a host of other things.

Further to #2 above, today the barriers to change are much lower in the home than the office (it's waaaay riskier and more expensive for corporations to upgrade or switch). Apple's success is predicated on a rapid innovation rate and the only market segment able to absorb that kind of re-purchase cycle is consumers. Why go after a market that can't keep up with your business?

By treating everyone in the same way - as mere consumers with disposable income and a sufficient degree of panache to be able to pull off owning an Apple device(!), Apple is able to go after the market that is most able to buy and buy often. Their customers' expectations are set and set clearly. If a corporation does wish to buy their products, they essentially have to do it as consumers.

By setting expectations correctly, Apple is not only able to remain focused while lowering their cost of doing business, they are also able to maintain their premium pricing, while creating an ever-more loyal fan/customer base who readily forgive Apple's mistakes and eagerly await their next Apple purchase. That's why a business should have the right to choose its customers - it allows it to set, live up to, and succeed based on clear expectations.

head games

Are you open to trying something new? Are you open to learning something new? Are you open to a new idea, or to overturning a closely-held belief? Before change is possible, a society must be able to say "yes" to these questions, otherwise enacting change is like pushing a rope uphill.

I attended the Games for Learning day of the Games for Change Festival at NYU last week. Brilliant people spoke on the role of games in learning, approaches to assessing efficacy, and how to build great learning games. It was hosted by Ken Perlin and Jan Plass, who are the co-directors of the Games for Learning Institute. There is a lot happening, I learned a ton, and was privileged to meet and hang out with some very cool people.

One facet that wasn't a focus at the Festival is how to ingrain games more deeply within mainstream education. This is a tough, tough challenge, one that will take some careful thought, mostly because the deck is so stacked against change in education.

I recently had lunch with a ~29 year old mother of a 5-year old boy (both were born and raised in the Seattle area). She believes strongly in the authoritarian approach to education, where the teacher is in front, the students listen quietly, write down what the teacher says, do their homework and pass their tests. This is what she wants for her son. I wonder how much of the population she represents?

I've also been talking to a friend about intellectual divides; she sent me two links that shouldn't have surprised me, but did. First, Charles Pearce's treatise on the a segment of America that disdains "smart" - one payoff quote comes from Pastor Ray Mummert of Dover, Pennsylvania, a leader in Intelligent Design community: "We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture." That says it all, doesn't it?

But there's more! The second link is to a survey in National Geographic measuring the relative belief in evolution in Western Countries. Just 14% of Americans believe that evolution is "definitely true"; over the last 20 years, uncertainty about evolution has grown from 7% to 20%; and now fully 1/3 of Americans (more than 110 million people) outright reject evolution. Less than 50% of Americans can provide even a basic explanation of DNA. This ranks America #31 out of 32.

These stories illustrate something of the current state of education in America, how science is regarded, and how deeply-held the idea of "old school" and "traditional" education might be in this country.

I have no data to back this up, but my guess is that the people more likely to believe in creationism are also likely to support "traditional" education approaches. I'm also guessing that a direct "innovation" message will NOT resonate with this audience or help affect change.

How then is something as "radical" as the use of games in learning going to achieve broad use across the American public school system?

Socio-politically, there are two ways to achieve (relatively) rapid, widespread change - brute force (e.g. 9-11/terrorism and security; or H1N1 and the obsession with hand-sanitizer), and guile (e.g. the $billions America spends fruitlessly on dieting).

How is this guile? Most diet-related advertising says something like: "try our new quick, easy and safe approach to losing tonnage without sacrificing the foods you love." The people who buy the product or service keep buying and buying and buying, always seeking that quick, easy fix. The $$ spent on trying to get thin keep increasing despite the fact that the number of obese people in the country is also increasing. People are relentlessly gullible.

Call it guile or preying on stupidity - either way, the lose-weight industry is literally and figuratively making a killing.

I believe that transforming education will require the same mercenary, exploitative approach that the weight-reduction industry has perfected. If we want to see pervasive change, we have to create a marketing groundswell that preys on the gullibility and quick, easy fix-obsessed nature of Americans. The message has to come from a united front - the Department of Education, (some) universities, and foundations, all of whom must be willing to put their money where their mouth is.

I would also focus my "magic pill" on lower grades - say Kindergarten through Grade 3, prioritizing core skills like literacy, numeracy and the sciences. Parents tend to get less involved in school as their kids get older; to make them an effective change agent, they must be at their most passionate, most susceptible to external influence, and most able to influence their school board/district.

Once you have achieved success in the lower grades, you train these same parents to expect and demand innovation as their children grow. If all goes well, you do the same thing with the next generation of K-3 parents, because by then, whatever we're changed will now be the new "old school."

To teach in a changing world, we must ourselves be ever-open to change; today it's games, tomorrow - who knows.

revelations

I found this fascinating animation of the history of religion across the globe (click "Play" below). Hinduism began 5,000 years ago, followed by Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity and then Islam, which came into being in 570AD.

Some observations:

1. Five major religions cover the globe, the youngest of which is fifteen centuries old.
2. Despite all "modern" claims of "Internet time," etc., no new religions have spawned or spread for quite a while.
3. The two most populous and fastest-growing nations on the planet essentially have their own religions, but neither of their religions is bent on "evangelical expansion."
4. The smallest (by population and geography) is Judaism, and the largest is Christianity.

Historically, the spread of religion occurred through conquest and evangelism/missionary work. During this time, some of the religions competed (and combated) with each other to win followers, but at some point it seems a detente of sorts was achieved, creating a relatively steady state. (This is not to say that peace broke out, but that the geographic distribution has remained largely the same.)

In 888 (a fortuitous year!), block printing was invented; movable (clay) type arrived in 1041; and then Gutenberg came along in the 1440s. By the end of that century (1499), an estimated 15 million (mostly religious) books had been printed. The most famous of these of course is the Gutenberg Bible, which among other religious texts (like the Koran), helped promote and proliferate Christianity and Islam through the centuries that followed.

Four hundred years later, communication changed - beginning with the telegraph, followed 30 years later by the telephone, and eventually with wireless telephony and the Internet. Despite this increase in publishing capacity and reach, the big five have remained relatively static. Until now. I believe the next decade will see the rise of an altogether new type of religion, one more connected to the e-world.

Atheism is not a religion (by definition); they would say that their "faith" is science and logic, and that they are not evangelical. Today most Atheists are individuals without affiliation; but with the likes of Richard Dawkins, I believe a movement is forming, and its leaders (will) wish to establish a widespread sociopolitical force with structure, membership, meeting venues, corporate sponsorship, etc.

They could choose a political approach. While compelling, I don't believe the ROI is interesting - too much work for relatively little gain. I think they will instead choose the non-political tack, and like the big 5, use the strength and size of their base as clout to affect social and political change. Does this make them a "religion"? I think so - here's a paragraph from Wikipedia's article on religion (I've highlighted in blue the text that I believe applies to Atheism the religion):

Religion is often described as a communal system for the coherence of belief focusing on a system of thought, unseen being, person, or object, that is considered to be supernatural, sacred, divine, or of the highest truth. Moral codes, practices, values, institutions, tradition, rituals, and scriptures are often traditionally associated with the core belief, and these may have some overlap with concepts in secular philosophy. Religion is also often described as a "way of life" or a life stance.

New religions have historically formed in "space," gaining traction among those who had not yet encountered religion. Today fundamentalists in Christianity (American religious right, Tea Party, etc.) and Islam (Al Qaeda, Taliban, etc.) are a polarizing force; there is enough concern about this in the minds of their moderates (and especially the younger generations), that Atheism could be a viable alternative. Differences on issues like personal freedom, selective accountability, abortion, gay rights, women's rights, the use of violence, etc. just might be enough to tip the balance in favor of "defection."

The ideal for Atheism is morality and integrity founded on science and logic. Atheists will shirk terms like "believer" - instead I imagine them using a tag line like: "We don't believe; we are." But they will also struggle with the same issues that beset other religions or large organizations - how to create an effective and deserving leadership hierarchy, how to impose or enforce rules, and how to deliver value. Traditional religions deliver value in the form of answers to these three questions:

1. Why am I here?
2. What happens when I die?
3. Whom do I blame (corollary - who will absolve me?)?

Atheism does not view these questions the same way, so a new approach to value-creation will be needed, one that centers on the attributes above - morality, integrity, science and logic, but also one that gives those that are seeking an alternative a place to belong, where they can feel at home. If the leaders of Atheism can find this, I believe the next decade will host a new religion, and one that achieved critical mass by filling a void that the other five didn't realize was there.

intellectual divides

Have you encountered the phrase "digital divide"? I imagine more than once. What does it mean to you? Is it expanding, contracting or the same as it was? What's on either side, and how do you know where you are? If you do only do email on a PC, are you on one side (which side?); if you only use SMS where are you? It's not clear cut anymore, and it also depends on your point of view.

eSchool News published A look at the technology culture divide recently, the author made a bizarre assumption - that the "have" side of the digital divide is static. According to this, the "digital divide" came into the mainstream in the mid-1990s via speeches by then President Bill Clinton and Vice President (and self-proclaimed inventor of the Internet) Al Gore.

Do you think someone who was on the "digital" side of the divide in 1996 is still on that side today? At that time, being "digital" would have meant owning a computer with access to the Internet (via a modem connected to a land line). Say that was me, and that I'm still using the same or similar equipment today; how do I compare (my PC + internet access, living in Seattle) to three 15 year old brothers I met recently in Angola who have smart phones with data plans but don't really use PCs? Is it clear who has the advantage?

Now take a look at this article also in eSchool News about the excessive proliferation of hardware in learning. This author suggests it's not about more hardware (I agree), but that we need the right software packages (he enumerates four requirements); once we have these, no more change is needed, and our now "futurized" school system can happily live in this new steady state.

Education is not about social networks, mastery of existing assessments, or basic reading; it is about preparing every child to discover and become their greatest selves, and to prepare every child to survive (and hopefully thrive) in whatever future lies ahead. All we know about the future is that it will come; to create a static system that is based on today's state of the art (just because we can't grasp a more advanced or changed future) is naive at best, and assured to NOT prepare children for their future.

These authors are like Al Gore when he proclaimed Internet paternity - they're trying to lay claim to ideas that they don't fully grasp, and making absolute that which is always changing. As Seth points out, it's very easy to be manipulated - all you need to do is string together the right kitsch phrases, and prey on people's fears or avarice. It's a sure-fire way to win followers and influence people, but it is devoid of integrity.

Rather than railing about the digital divide, we need to bemoan the intellectual divide that has made adults in our society gullible enough to believe this kind of propaganda.

For those who wish we could go back a generation to the time when our education system was wonderful, and when we graduated the best and the brightest on this planet, I would point out the following: more adults in America are illiterate vs. the top 20 economies on Earth. More than half of Americans adults are unable to identify the precise location of Washington DC or New York or Los Angeles on a blank map (forget naming the capital of Canada or pointing to its location). More Americans bought mortgages beyond their means, believe they can healthily lose weight via diet pills, and believe the Earth is flat than any other nation in the OECD top 20.

I'm exaggerating to make a point, but it's important to realize that many of the people making decisions about our children's education are both victims of their own (potentially weak) education, and susceptible to the random and ill-informed rhetoric of others. Rather than trusting education to people whose only qualification is electability (by these same ill-informed crowds), shouldn't we put it in the hands of the best and brightest and most successful among us?

It's time to get our collective heads in the game...