On Brevity

Okay. I’ll try to keep this short (but I probably will fail)

Brevity is king. Between, sound bites on CNN, the death of newspapers and the rise of such sites as Twitter , YouTube and Facebook , the era of patience is over.

And if I haven’t grabbed you by now, you’ve probably already clicked somewhere else.

We used to have a lot of time. Before the age of mass media, whole communities would gather to hear speeches lasting many hours, and read books which were both long and complex. However, with the introduction of television, came competition for our attention.

If you don’t like what is on, you simply switch to another channel. Holding your attention was easy when there were only three networks but soon there were fifty, then five hundred and now, with the rise of the internet, the number of “channels” is essentially infinite.

This is not a revolution. Revolutions are fought by visionaries with particular ideologies. The internet age has had it’s visionaries, to be sure: Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google , Craig Newmark of CraigsList or Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia to name just a few. However, the genius of their vision was to stand aside and allow their customers to create what they wanted. The same is true of Facebook , flickr , Twitter and YouTube . In other words, they might’ve started the ball rolling but the resulting new economy of information, just happened through natural selection.

In other words, this is not a revolution. This is evolution.

In some ways I think this is a good thing. Competition breeds quality and infinite choices means no one, no matter how powerful or well established, can afford to take their audience or users for granted.

We’ve already seen how much faster Twitter is than traditional news sources and how much more variety there is onYouTube than on the networks. However, we are also losing something and I believe that loss might be very dangerous.

First of all, there are no moderate sound-bites.

If you want to get noticed you have to be extreme. Whether it’s the daily news round up on MSNBC or your latest post on Twitter , no one is interested in the middle ground. That means there is a natural tendency towards polarization in new media. No one will re-tweet that I have mild misgivings with a particular policy, or event. If I want an audience, I have to say that it is the “worst fucking thing I’ve ever heard of in my entire life.” or, better yet, “people who support (blank) are baby raping devil worshipers.” That’s the way to get noticed and that is frequently what is broadcast, followed and repeated.

The result is that the perception of polarization is much greater, and, in this interactive age, perception and reality are symbiotically connected.

Another consequence, and I believe a far more dangerous one, is that while certain ideas are easy to express in a few words, some ideas, frequently the best ones, take time.

Even our briefest speeches, such as The Gettysburg address (278 words) or Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a Dream” speech (1675 words), are too long and complex for todays appetites. Is it possible to compress Lincoln’s Second Inaugural or Eisenhower’s Farewell Address into a sound-byte or tweet? No.

And those speeches are still relatively short. How will Dostoyevsky’s ruminations on God and Morality play in the modern era? Where is the time for Plato’s dialogues or even Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance ? Could you tell the stories of Hamlet or Lawrence of Arabia in a few seconds? Yes. Would the stories be better? No.

The way we get information today is unbelievably broad and incredibly varied but it is often dangerously shallow. You simply can’t run a government, discuss the intricacies of human society or dig deep into personal emotion in a few seconds.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m fan of Web 2.0. I believe the socialization of media has democratized information and given new power and influence to the general public. It has fostered new ideas and new collaborations. However, this transformation does not come without a price and I am concerned that deep, difficult and complex ideas will be lost in the tidal wave of brevity.

After all, revolutions can be fought but evolution is inevitable.

Fuck The Auto Industry!

I have never been prouder of a vote than the one I cast last year for Barack Obama. However, as much as I admire him personally, and as much as I applaud much of what he’s done in the first few months of his administration, I am deeply concerned by his attempts to bolster America’s economy.

I was outraged by the Bush administration’s close ties to Wall Street and big industry. I felt that our democracy had become an oligarchy, where the richest few could control the future of our nation and the world. Under the Obama administration that relationship has been flipped upside down with the government now stepping in to save, and even take control of, those industries who are most responsible for our failing economy.

I make no comment on the far larger banking bailout. Believe me, I have my misgivings, but I am too overwhelmed by the complexity of the banking industry to make an informed comment (In the interest of full disclosure I should also note that I own some CitiGroup stock)

However, I believe that the Auto Industry Bailout is dangerous, wasteful, anti-democratic and I say,

“FUCK ‘EM!”

Remember that these are the same guys who’ve been fighting tooth nail against mileage and pollution standards for the last four decades. They claimed that higher standards would cost American jobs, then they turned around and shipped those jobs overseas. You have to wonder what would have happened, had the big three listened to men like Jimmy Carter and Ralph Nader who called for a reduction in our dependence on foreign oil during the first oil crisis back in the Seventies.

These are the guys who have used political pull and economic pressure to stifle competition and new ideas. Remember Tucker? There used to be dozens of American car companies. Now there are only three. A little competition might have given us better cars and more profitable companies. Instead, we have aging giants who use their lumbering power, not to make better cars but to stave off their own inevitable extinction.

Capitalism is the evolution of economics. That which works, survives and thrives. That which fails will whither and die. Evolution is not nice or compassionate. It is neither nostalgic nor sentimental. If you can’t survive you wont. That’s it. No second chances. It is that hard reality that has given us the best products at the cheapest prices and it is that system which is threatened when the ties between government and industry become to close.

For years, the right has used this philosophy to condemn the poor and destitute. For years, they have said that handouts only reward bad behavior. I’ve never agreed with that philosophy when applied to a starving child or cancer patient, desperate for healthcare, but when it comes to a big business that has drastically and repeatedly damaged us, I say,

“FUCK EM!”

Now, I know the argument. I know that the death of GM and Chrysler will put millions out of work. I know that people will lose their pensions and I know that cities like Detroit, which are already in deep trouble, will be mortally wounded.

I’m not insensitive to those issues. In fact, it is those issues that I really care about. However, is handing a few billion dollars to failing companies the way to save Detroit? What evidence do we have that these companies will be able to overcome decades of corporate culture and reform? How do we know that they wont be asking us for another hundred billion dollars next year?

Even with the money they’ve already received, these companies have closed dozens of factories and hundreds of dealerships. In other words, they are already putting people out of work despite the billions we’ve given them.

So I say,

“FUCK THE AUTO INDUSTRY”

The truth is, I agree with President Obama that our nation is in serious trouble and that drastic actions are required. I agree with him that we must keep America working. However, if my tax dollars are going to pay the salaries of millions, then we should hire them to build the future, not the past.

I mean, these are cars we’re talking about. They are a big part of the problem. The internal combustion engine might have fueled the twentieth century but it’s killing the twenty-first. They are bad for our health, our environment and our economy and they have drastically shifted the world’s power structure in ways which are extremely dangerous.

Instead of putting these people to work building cars, which only exacerbate our problems, let’s put them to work building a modern, oil independent nation. Let’s build a modern power grid. Let’s build wind, solar, and nuclear plants. Let’s repair our roads, update our failing infrastructure and build the foundation for a twenty-first century economy.

You say we need cars? Fine. But let’s invest, in new technologies from hungry young companies, like Tesla, or the incredibly ambitious, Better Place Electric car company.

If every problem is an opportunity in disguise, then we must see this downturn, not as a time to shore up lost causes, but rather as an opportunity to build a new, cleaner, safer and more efficient nation.

So, I say, it’s time to let the dinosaurs die, they are bound to anyway, and let’s put America to work on something that makes sense, The Future.