Davos Newbies

Jim Moore on fifteen reasons why DIY Web Superservices will transform the landscape: “What is powerful today is that we now have a world of tools that enable networks of user/publishers to process immense amounts and diversity of content. Now the tools themselves are evolving into superservices that can syndicate each other’s content, at the command of users. Thus not only can users become user/publishers – the blog and aggregator world – but users can now become scripters of clusters and networks of automated and semi-automated user/publishing services.”

One of the most thought-provoking blog posts I’ve read in a long time.

Morgan Stanley’s Stephen Roach hasn’t been purveying sweetness and light for a long time now. But this week’s commentary is particularly grim:

I don’t know where oil prices are going. But I do feel strongly that an important macro threshold has now been breached — one that adds unmistakable tension to the world economy’s greatest imbalances. At the current level of oil prices, I suspect one of two things will happen — either the over-extended American consumer will finally cave or the long-awaited US current account adjustment will finally unfold. Courtesy of a full-blown energy shock, the venting of global imbalances can no longer be deferred indefinitely. If consumers remain unflinching in the face of sky-high oil prices, a plunging saving rate will push an already outsize current account deficit to the flash point.

As always, duration matters. If oil prices fall back quickly and sharply, all will be forgotten and the consequences will be minimal. Unfortunately, that’s a bet the financial market consensus has been making for far too long. All this points to what could be the biggest macro call that any of us will have to make for a long time — the capitulation of the unflinching American consumer. Needless to say, this would have profound implications for the rest of the global economy — largely a US-centric world that is utterly lacking in support from autonomous domestic consumption.

Over the years, I’ve learned to be wary of betting against the American consumer. But the history of energy shocks argues to the contrary. Moreover, today’s saving-short, asset-dependent, overly-indebted consumer is far more vulnerable than in the past. After years of such warnings, investors, of course, have all but given up on that possibility. That’s precisely the time to worry the most.

I’ve arrived late at Noriko Takiguchi’s guide to sushi, but it’s gripping reading for sushi lovers. My favorite detail was in lesson five: “When you touch the soy sauce with sushi, it has to be quick, almost like a fish jumping up from between the waves.”

At another level, it’s a good introduction to some aspects of Japanese culture and thought. I’ve always believed that there were two broad kinds of journalistic approach to a subject: in the macro approach, you offer an overview or generalization and provide necessary examples; in the micro approach, you start with a case study or corner of a subject, and through detailed examination reach larger conclusions.

I’m more a fan of the micro and Noriko is providing a way into Japan by writing about sushi.

The lectures Jay Rosen and I gave in Melbourne in May have been published in book form as Barons to Bloggers by Melbourne University Press. In addition to our contributions, the book includes four Australian responses to our ideas.

When I’ve had a chance to read the responses, I’ll offer some thoughts.

One detail of interest to my bookish mind: Barons to Bloggers is published by The Miegunyah Press, an MUP imprint. Miegunyah is an Aboriginal word meaning “my house”.

Even if you’re not a follower of British politics, you should read Gordon Brown’s eulogy for Robin Cook, delivered at the funeral service in Edinburgh today.

It’s a moving, articulate tribute to a great parliamentarian.

In some of the dark, early days of Labour’s years in the wilderness, I lived near Robin Cook in Kennington, an area of south London popular with MPs because of its proximity to Westminster.

Even though he was just a backbencher, I thought it was great to see him commuting on the number 12 bus, because his oratorical fame was already spreading.

I’m just catching up with an avalanche of reading, postponed because of concentration on my start-up and summer indolence.

Best of the bunch so far is Orville Schell’s explanation on Jay Rosen’s PressThink of why a group of journalism schools have banded together to rethink what they do.

Speaking as someone who has studied China and other Marxist-Leninist states for the last 45 years, there are haunting similarities between the public relations apparatus of the current administration and the propaganda apparatus of Leninist political parties. They include ultra-loyalty and obedience to the supreme leader; extreme party discipline; an absolute imperative to stay on-message (fidelity to “the correct line�); maximizing the use of state organs for propaganda purposes; and a poorly evolved appreciation of the essential role that the Founding Fathers of this country imagined for the press as an independent watchdog over all kinds of power (whether state, ecclesiastical, corporate, etc.)

I am not saying that there is a comparison between our government and that of a Leninist state like China, but I am saying that the role and acceptance by our state of the media as a legitimate and necessary institution is weaker now than ever before. I am also suggesting that because of their commercial/corporate backgrounds, when it comes to the question of “communications,� many in the higher reaches of government have a keener appreciation of public relations than of independent, hard-hitting and often abrasive investigative journalism. Their tendency is to want to use communications as “the mouthpiece� of the state and party, rather than to see the most important role for communications as one of opposition and challenge to established power centers.

This almost religious veneration of Woodward, Bernstein, Bradley, Graham means that people did, and still do, feel a deep need to believe that someone can, and will, stand up to these prevailing centers of power and propaganda. The Watergate hearings were cathartic, because sclerotic Washington did finally rise for one grand moment to dig in the Washington manure pile and get past the spin and PR to search out truth and fact from falsehood. And, yes, by now we have forgotten many of those other figures like Sen. Sam Ervin or Sam Dash who played such important parts in the saga. What we remember instead is their personifications.

Today’s Financial Times reports on its US front page that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp may spend $2 billion in a “drive to become dominant internet force”.

Leave aside that $2 billion doesn’t buy you very much in the way of Internet force (the same paper reports that Yahoo! will spend $1 billion for 40% of Chinese e-commerce group Alibaba). And you can view with appropriate scepticism Murdoch telling the FT that he is in “very advanced negotiations to buy a controlling interest in a wonderful search engine”.

The problem is that companies like News Corp have consistently shown themselves to be incapable of becoming part of the Internet. Murdoch did make a perceptive speech earlier this year, true, but that doesn’t change his character or the character of his company. News Corp is built on the principles of gatekeeper, we-are-the-authority media, a long distance from the two-way essence of the Internet. Their recent $580 million offer for Intermix Media, which owns MySpace.com shows to me how limited their ambitions will have to be. However much News Corp spends, I’m sure they won’t become a key company for the Internet.

There’s another puzzle about the FT article to me. Who on earth decided that this kind of speculative, puffy news story deserved to be one of only three on the front page? I hope the key editors are all safely in Tuscan villas this week, rather than making such baffling editorial decisions.

A climate change tipping point?

A vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today.

Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres – the size of France and Germany combined – has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.

The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world’s largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.

It is a scenario climate scientists have feared since first identifying “tipping points” – delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth’s temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers a far greater increase in global temperatures.

The discovery was made by Sergei Kirpotin at Tomsk State University in western Siberia and Judith Marquand at Oxford University and is reported in New Scientist today.

Miracle of miracles. We got up to the house in the Sierras today, which has three televisions by my rapid count. Not one has been turned on yet (that’s a whole afternoon and evening for the kids). I’m sure this will change, but I think this hiatus is significant.

One of the things that we decided to do on our move to Berkeley was to do without a television for a while. To some extent, this was a non-decision decision. If we wanted cable, I needed to call Comcast and subscribe. It didn’t seem a priority when I moved in, and I discovered that (possibly because of my technical shortcomings) the televisions in our rental house received terrestrial signals abominably. So, before I flew back to London to return with my family, I stored the house’s existing televisions in a few of the closets.

On day one, my two boys asked about the television, but we said there wasn’t one. When an open closet a few days later revealed a very large television, we said it didn’t work (which is partly true).

The result? I have to say that both my wife and I think our children are happier and better behaved. This might be the cumulative effect of many wonderful aspects of California, but I think the no-TV policy has something to do with it. Of course, there are times when we wish we could just plonk the kids in front of the TV and not be bothered. We’ve played more games as a family and done more stuff, which does demand effort and attention from us, the parents. That is, needless to say, a good thing, but there are times any parent wants to switch off. The much-hoped-for nirvana of children finding things for themselves to do does seem that much nearer.

What about the effect on us, the adults? I have to say I haven’t once wished I could turn on the TV. That may change come the US Open tennis, but I think I’ll do just fine.

(Incidentally, our TV-less idyll will be broken starting tomorrow. We’re going up to Tahoe, and the house we’re staying in there has a fully cabled-up television. I hope it doesn’t create any renewed withdrawal pains when we return to Berkeley next week.)