The Great Barrier Relief

Originally published in East & West Magazine

A few weeks ago I was playing Angry Birds on my iPad in the back of a car somewhere between Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh. I’ve spent a lot of time in cars and buses lately and idle time on the road often means throwing down with bucktoothed pigs in iron helmets.

For anyone who has never played or seen Angry Birds, it’s a very simple game. You are given a few cartoon birds which you shoot from a slingshot at little green cartoon pigs hiding in structures resembling flimsy wooden forts. There are several types of birds with different powers that make each of them uniquely effective against different types of structures. You earn points for each pig killed and structure destroyed, and the number of points determines your rating for the level, from one to three stars. After playing a while you eventually burn through all of the levels. With all of the levels beaten the only thing left to do is go back and re-beat them as efficiently as possible, earning enough points on each level to receive a three-star rating. It’s all very official.

So you learn exactly what bird to use, how and in what order. If your first bird doesn’t fly right, then you probably know you’re not going to make your three-star quota. Fortunately the game has a reset button that lets you start over, so you don’t have to waste time playing a doomed round, which means you spend more time working on getting it just right.

On this particular day, as I was resetting again after yet another bird plinked impotently into a stone slab, I had a flashback. It was the early Eighties and I was on a field trip with my sixth grade class to the Atari offices in San Jose, California. It was kid Nirvana. Room after room crammed full of every video game known to child at the time. The latest and greatest of everything of the day. This was literally the pinnacle of human video gaming achievement, and they were all free and all ours for three glorious hours. That was a great day.

This won’t mean much to someone who grew up on PS3 and Wii, but in the Eighties playing videos games had real-life consequences. Video games used to cost money. Depending on the game, a quarter bought about three lives, and even if you were pretty good at the game that got you only about five minutes of total playing time. That was it. You either put another quarter in the slot or you went home. Needless to say, a kid on a small allowance took those three lives very, very seriously. If your best friend so much as bumped your elbow he’d be wearing his Slurpee.

Tourist: “Can you please tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?”

New Yorker: “Practice.”

In kid terms, getting really good at a video game used to require significant financial resources, so only the kids with lots of quarters to burn were able to achieve Pac-Man greatness. Today, as in so much around us, technology has made video games smaller, more powerful, more realistic (or fantastically unrealistic) and, most importantly, cheap. Now we no longer go to arcades to play because we have the best technology available right at home. And since we own the equipment and the game, all future play is basically free. So if your guy gets blown up it’s no big deal; there are an infinite number of soldiers ready to take his place without pay on the front line. Technology has removed the financial risk of failure. Or, to phrase it better, it has removed the risk associated with trying new ways to achieve a desired goal.

It used to be expensive to get a message out to the public too. You used to have to pay a lot of money to a TV station or a publisher so that they would send your message out to the people who they broadcast to, so only those with lots of money could afford to do it. And those who could afford it had to plan meticulously to make sure they hit their mark exactly. Media was far too expensive to attempt innovation or experimentation. As a result the media landscape was populated by the few and the risk-averse.

Digital and social media have leveled the playing field to the point where everyone with a computer and an internet connection has access to the same tools, so there is no longer any barrier to entry for the little guy. A small business owner now has the same media creation and distribution tools available to him as even the biggest corporations. Not only does this put him on the same playing field with the big boys, but now media is so inexpensive to produce and distribute that he can afford to try new ideas and innovate. Now he can afford to make mistakes, because now mistakes are free. If a plan doesn’t work the way you had hoped, then take what you’ve learned from the previous attempt, make a new plan and try again.

Terry Hoitz: "Where'd you learn to drive like that?!"

Allen Gamble: "Grand Theft Auto!"

Just Bee Yourself

Originally published in East & West Magazine

We used to live in a world where access required money. If you wanted to get a message out to a lot of people you had to have a lot of money to pay the people who owned the means to create and distribute your message to the masses. Now anyone with access to a laptop and an internet connection can easily (if they are so inclined) create and distribute a message online. The barriers to entry for the creation and distribution of content are now gone. Now it’s all about who has the most compelling content.

If the metaphor for the old media model is a loudspeaker, where messages are created by a few and broadcast to the masses, then this new interconnected digital world is an infinite, electric meadow brimming with ideas and messages and information and entertainment, all sprouting up as flowers. In this metaphor we are the bees, buzzing around, hopping from flower to flower, bumping into and interacting with other bees, collecting, exchanging and disseminating information like bits of pollen; contributing in our own small way to the birth and development of new ideas … new flowers, which then in turn attract other bees. And the process continues.

We buzz around online, stopping here and there, sometimes leaving a little something and maybe taking something away. We consume, process, create, repurpose and distribute content. We reply to emails, read our friends’ Facebook statuses, visit websites, share links and watch videos, clicking from here to there to over there and so forth, sometimes ending up hours later in some totally (seemingly) unrelated place doing something totally (it might appear) different than what we had intended to do. The beautiful thing is that where we end up is the result of our acting honestly; doing exactly what we want to do at that moment, reacting exactly as we wish to. We don’t click on a certain link or visit some web page or register for some campaign because someone coerced us to. We do it because we genuinely want to find out more about it. This is nature at work.

When you fail to plan you plan to fail, as they say. But if you plan too much you fail to allow for all of those little opportunities and accidental wonders than emerge from the natural interaction of people in an open and free environment. It is the open, collaborative, accidental, random, organic nature of this connected world that enables the exponential growth of new ideas, technologies and ways of thinking which in turn will lead to the creation of things that we cannot yet imagine.

It’s time to stop looking for new ways to interrupt the flow of information and instead to become a part of the flow, to facilitate and enable the flow of information and explore new ways to make ourselves relevant and interesting to those we want to reach. Don’t look for new ways to shout your credentials at people … look for new ways to coax them to you. Grow your flowers. Grow flowers that people will buzz about. Invite people to sit on your flower for a bit and get cozy and let’s see what develops.

Photo Finished

Originally published in East & West Magazine


When I was about ten years old my second cousin was working on a photography job in his Los Angeles studio. He had set up the shot, a product of some sort, and the camera was on the tripod ready to go. At his invitation I pushed the shutter release and the flash fired and an image was created. I still remember my cousin then wondering aloud to the other adults in the room about the nature of creativity and who should actually be given credit for the photo that I had just made. He had procured the job, he had signed the contract, he owned the equipment, he had set up the shot, loaded the camera, adjusted the settings and calibrated the lighting. But in the end it was I who actually took the photo. (this being the days of 35mm slide film we wouldn’t know whether the photo was even worth taking credit for until sometime later.)


Of course many photographers have stylists, producers, assistants and other assorted staff, all contributing in their own way to the process of creating images. So then what is a photographer, really?  The individual who pushes the button? Is a photographer merely someone with the means and the technical know-how to create a photograph or is there something more to it? And in the digital age when almost everyone has access to the means to create, manipulate and distribute original content does it really even matter anymore?


Has photography, like some much in these digital days, become just another commodity?
I bought my first digital camera in 1998 for about $1,300. It took decent photos, but at 3.1 megapixels they were not useful for much more than sharing pixelated snapshots via email. Today you can buy a camera that fits comfortably in your pocket and takes amazing high-resolution images for under $200. Someday soon that same camera will be half the price and a better, even smaller camera with more features will have taken its place. This in addition to the multitude of cell phones and mobile devices out there, also with digital cameras embedded. With each day that passes cameras are becoming better, cheaper and more ubiquitous.


Consider the number of people in the last decade for whom photography has gone from an occasional hobby to a staple of everyday life. There are currently about six billion people on the planet and more and more of them are getting their hands on good quality digital cameras every day. So how much content is being generated by these billions of people with billions of cameras and where it is all going? We have to assume that at least some percentage of the content is commercially viable, even just as stock. A few years ago a friend of mine won an all-expenses-paid trip for two to New York City in a photography contest with a photo she had taken accidentally at a Cirque Du Soleil show using a cheap consumer point and shoot camera. Accidental excellence. Are we seeing the Infinite Monkey Theorem in practice before our eyes?


The barrier to entry represented by the high price of camera equipment, film and processing used to be one of the primary dividing lines between the professional and the recreational photographer. If you weren’t planning to make a living with it there was really no reason for anyone to make the investment in the expensive equipment needed to be a serious photographer. Once you had the equipment the rest becomes subjective, so who is to say that you’re not a photographer if that’s what you say you are? The term “f8 and be there” is a tongue-in-cheek way that photojournalists summarize their craft, meaning that most of being a successful shooter is being in the right place at the right time.


So if being there is half the battle, then why not use images from people who are already there? Especially in these days of declining newspaper and magazine distribution and ad revenues, how can a publication justify sending a western photojournalist to a war zone when there are untold number of people with high-resolution cameras already there and already shooting free of charge, without hazard pay, expensive life insurance plans, plane tickets or the burden of worrying about one of your staff being hurt or killed. CNN often uses footage from non-staff, labeling it as “amateur video” or an “iReport”. User-generated content is making its way more and more into television news broadcasts, just as it has in print media. This radical change in the paradigm of what it means to be a professional photographer in the digital age once again challenges our traditional notions of who creates content and who consumes it, just as it has shaken our view of what a book is. The irony is that as cameras keep getting cheaper and better at taking high res images our appetite for print-ready imagery is declining along with print media itself as more and more people view images on screens instead of on paper.

Barking up the wrong tree

Originally published in East & West Magazine

“All truths are not meant for all ears; not all lies can be recognized as such by pious spirits. The book is a fragile creature, it suffers from the use of time.”–Benedictine Monk, The Name Of The Rose (Umberto Eco)

Back in the day books were the domain of the privileged and the elite. Books were very expensive and therefore scarce. Each book made had to be individually hand-written, hand-drawn, hand-stitched and hand-bound. Scribes diligently scrawled literary works onto parchment by candlelight, the least educated of them charged with the binding and detailing. Then one day someone arrived with a new machine which replicated this work exactly and quickly. No longer was information clenched in the fists of the powerful and rich. Now everyone would have access to knowledge. The world changed that day. And no doubt some monk somewhere belligerently waved his inky quill in protest.


Ironically it was the medium that, until then, had done the most damage to the supremacy of the printed page that named Johann Gutenberg number one on A&E's Biography: 100 Most Influential People of the Millennium. But if Gutenberg were alive today he would most certainly (I like to think) scoff at the invention that made him immortal as he downloaded a new app.


Let’s be clear … to question or underestimate the importance of moveable type would be beyond absurd. The invention of the printing press and mass media changed the course of human history, tearing down barriers to information and knowledge that enabled the progress of mankind in ways we may never fully appreciate, and paved the way for media as we know it today. It is impossible to overstate the importance of the printing press in the history of human progress, and we are all far better off today because of it.


But the press, the printed page, is the means, not the end … it is merely a device designed to serve a greater master: ideas.


Perhaps it’s just a sign of the times, or a normal reaction to fast, consequential change, but some of you out there have taken up the mantle of the The Book to the detriment of The Content. You are, quite literally, missing the forest for the trees. You people, the members of what I like to call the Dead Tree Society, who bemoan and resist the inevitable, are missing the point completely. The book was never about “the book”. It is, and always has been, about the words. The book is but a vehicle (a very, very successful vehicle in its day) used to deliver a product. And like all technologies, this vehicle’s time in the limelight was finite, and is now drawing to a close. We should let it die with the dignity it has earned.

“No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.” –Steve Jobs, 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

Not too long ago I was in a client meeting observing a colleague pitching his marketing program, which revolved around a coffee table book of sorts. He pointed out that if the client purchased the 50-book package that they could expect “over seventy people” to see each book over the course of its lifetime, as he pushed a sample across the table, rubbing the corner of a page between his fingers and inviting the prospect to feel the quality of the paper. This was 2010, and he was not being sarcastic and showed no visible signs of embarrassment. Remarkable. Another person told me that their company was not interested in digital marketing because their boss insisted on seeing actual tear sheets from each campaign … for those of you fellow digitarians, a tear sheet is an actual piece of paper, ripped out of a publication. Yes, some people apparently still use those. Yet another friend on Facebook spoke lovingly of the weight and the smell of a printed book, protesting that the experience of a digital book just isn’t the same. That’s easy, I told her, just tear out a couple of pages, roll them up and stick them in your nose, then fire up an iPad and read any of the hundreds of thousands of available books or magazines, or watch a movie, or listen to music, or send an email, or call your mother, or do some work, or chat with friends, or surf the internet, or play a game, or whatever. There are more examples, but you get the picture.


When challenged to provide reasons why they prefer paper books, DTS members inevitably present some ham-handed reason why digital just doesn’t cut it, and the reason is always subjective or nostalgic in nature, and always based on a lack of knowledge or outright misinformation.


By all objective measures, when it comes to content, the digital channel is a vastly superior delivery system in every way. Not only is it easier to produce content for digital distribution, but it is also much cheaper. The same goes for the delivery of the content. In addition, the digital medium provides a platform for sharing, creating discussions around content and enabling information to go viral and to spread out across the world, finding its way organically into the hands of people who want it. While traditional media is a one-to-one monologue used to talk at people, the digital medium is a scalable, many-to-many multilogue in which anyone can easily participate. As such, the digital channel gives life to content that print cannot.
Even the most traditional of media are learning that they must adapt. Nigel Portwood, Chief Executive of Oxford University Press, told The Sunday Times of London in a recent interview that the market for print dictionaries “is just disappearing” and “falling away by tens of percent a year.” When asked about whether the upcoming (due in about a decade) third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary would still be available in print, Mr. Portwood replied, “I don’t think so.”


Consider the life-cycle of that magazine in your hand: someone went out into a forest and cut down a tree, which was floated down a river and loaded onto a truck and taken to a mill, where it was debarked, cut, chipped, cooked and digested, washed, bleached, beaten, refined, screened, wired, pressed, dried, pressed again, rolled, reeled and cut. The end result was loaded (again) onto a truck and taken to a printing plant where it was fed into a large, loud, belching machine and chemically-treated, inked four times, dried, compiled, assembled, cut, bound, packed and loaded (yet again) onto another truck to be taken to a warehouse, then loaded (again) onto another truck to a store where it sat on a shelf waiting for you to notice it, pick it up and read it. And after you’re done reading it, you will likely toss it aside. In the time it took to write this paragraph the previous one could have been distributed online with the push of a button, making its way around the world, being shared and discussed, potentially, by millions.


If content is king, then why make him ride that rusty, old unicycle? Give your content the royal treatment it deserves. Roll out the red carpet. Roll out the magic carpet. As Dr. Emmett Brown said, “Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.”

The Titans Of Tiny

Originally published in East & West Magazine


I used to have an illustrated postcard depicting an heroic, Rand-esque male character standing proudly against the wind, chest thrust outward, shirtsleeves rolled above the elbow, exposing muscular forearms, stacks of blueprints tucked messily under each arm, his fist clenching a quiver of pens. He glares purposefully into the distance against the backdrop of some mighty feat of engineering or public works project, gears and sunbeams radiating outward from just over the horizon. This kind of Howard Roark hero figure has been a staple theme in western culture ever since the Industrial Revolution ushered in the Age Of Big, an age when innovation meant growth and monumental challenges were met by monumental men with monumental ideas doing monumental things. People thought big and did big things.


Today, the illustrator might draw a rather different-looking figure. Instead of pens, our hero holds a mobile device, which he uses to manage his empire, creating, making plans, scheduling appointments, and syncing important documents to his laptop back at the office. If we were to crack open this device and look inside we would find thousands and thousands of little components, each fulfilling its own unique and vital role in the operation of the device and each with it’s own unique story about the journey it took to become a part of this device. Also behind each of these tiny, seemingly insignificant pieces, is a story of a person or group of people who dedicated their careers to perfecting the science and design behind that one, tiny part. These are people who don’t drive a truck to a job site or oversee a foundation being poured or attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony, but who sit in rooms and make calculations and experiment with materials and processes in the hopes of achieving even smaller and more efficient technologies that will eventually become parts of devices that will help all of us live and work better. These are the new builders of the future, leading us forward to a smaller, more intricate and complex world where evolution no longer favors the biggest and the strongest, but the smallest and the fastest. These are the new masters of the universe. The Titans Of Tiny.


In the movie “1941” Slim Pickens’ character is captured by a Japanese submarine crew along with personal items taken from his pickup truck, including a large tabletop radio. As one of the Japanese crew members tries to force the oversize radio down through the submarine hatch he observes “we’ve got to figure out a way to make these things smaller.”


And indeed we have. In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore made his famed prediction, popularly known as Moore's Law, which states that the number of transistors on a chip will double about every two years. For more than forty years now Moore’s Law has held up and is expected to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. This, of course, means that a radio that once was too big to fit through a door now fits easily in your pocket, and it performs better as well.


Consider for a moment the endless hours of research and experimentation and design and production and distribution than go into creating something like an iPhone and getting it into your hands at a palatable price. It’s really quite an amazing thing. So much effort, so many moving parts, so much design, so much attention to every miniscule detail, from the way it functions and how fast to the shape and even the shade of color. Then it arrives and we unwrap it and begin the process of getting to know it, playing and experimenting and testing various functions … always with one eye out for the slightest imperfection to jump on and criticize. We take technology for granted, failing to fully appreciate the level of human achievement that these devices represent. These things, after all, are luxury items. We are so far past the basics of survival that we have the luxury of being uber-critical of our toys. Take that point as you like.


Perhaps no one has summed up our dysfunctional relationship with new technology better than Louis CK:

“They made us sit there, on the runway, for forty minutes, we had to sit there. Oh really? What happened next? Did you fly through the air, incredibly… like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight, you non-contributing zero? You’re flying! It’s amazing! Everybody on every plane should just constantly be going ‘Oh my god! Wow!’ You’re sitting in a chair … in the sky!” (Google “Everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy”)

I was recently in a discussion on Facebook with someone who was arguing against the iPad, claiming that a digital book doesn’t have that same weight and feel as an “actual” book, nor does it have that “book smell”. I actually hear that a lot, that the iPad doesn’t “feel” quite the same. To them I ask “so what?” What is the inherent benefit of the current book feel over this new book feel? Nothing. The fear of change and the new sends many people scurrying back to what is comfortable and known. It’s easier for some to find fault with new technologies and use that as an excuse to avoid having to learn a new way of doing things. 


But everything we use was at some point new to us. When you were born everything was a new technology, including your own body, and you didn't know anything about any of it. But you learned. And just like your own body, the technology on the shelves today represents the pinnacle of human evolution. Despite all of your flaws, you are the best that humans have ever been. The same goes for technology. What you are seeing on shelves right now is the best it has ever been. The electronic device you hold in your hand is the result of a process of evolution that has been taking place for a very long time, and the result is a product that is a tiny testament to the power of the human mind.


Our culture celebrates the big and the grand; great buildings, massive dams, sprawling cities and gargantuan vehicles. It’s easy to look at these and immediately grasp the grandness of them, precisely because they are so large and in your face. The scale of them forces us to take notice and feel a sense of awe. But some of the greatest monuments to human achievement can't even be seen with the naked eye. Some of man’s best work goes unseen and unsung, locked inside a colorful case in the bottom of your bag. These mini monuments to man’s quest to be better and to evolve are all around us, making our lives better and more interesting. These devices entertain us, help us work, manage our lives, communicate and assist us in so many ways. Technology frees us up to do more, see more and envision things that we otherwise would never have considered possible. We have tools available to us unlike any other time in human history. Because of these technologies we are able to give life to new ideas and create things we never dreamed possible.


We now have the tools at our fingertips to achieve great things because someone else had the courage to think small.

Get Your Head In The Cloud

Originally published in East & West Magazine
August 2010 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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."

In June of 1776 Thomas Jefferson, borrowing from the philosophy and writings of John Locke and George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, penned these words that would escalate what was until then considered to be little more than a heated disagreement between brothers into a full-blown war for independence that would change human history.

Locke's original text alluded to a right to property, but by property Locke is not referring, necessarily, to land or possessions, but to one's own body, one's self. Nevertheless, Mason and Jefferson made a point of making the clear distinction between a right to property and the more general pursuit of Happiness. Quite prescient and insightful thinking from an era when property, whether gold, land, a home or even people, meant everything to one's social standing and place in the world.

Ironically, with this document America's Founding Fathers set in motion a series of events that would eventually lead to the creation of the biggest consumer society the world has ever known. In our pursuit of Happiness, Americans have created and embraced a culture of consumerism and the accumulation of things. For more than two centuries we have made a religion of acquiring stuff, often to the detriment of the very freedom we so cherish.

Jeremy Rifkin, the head of the Foundation of Economic Trends and author of The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where All of Life Is a Paid-for Experience, takes a dim view of this culture of materialism, saying "ownership is based on the notion that it's worth the effort to keep physical items for a long period of time", adding "in market capitalism, 'having' and 'collecting' were important and cherished concepts. But they are increasingly unimportant in an economy in which change is the only constant." Rifkin goes on to warn that companies are no longer content to simply sell us things, but that these things now come with the additional obligations of contracts, service agreements, payment plans and leases. "They're striving towards a continuous and long-term relationship with us", Rifkin observes, "which means they can earn money from us over and over again. They want to acquire a permanent place in our lives." Yet Rifkin acknowledges that all of this is voluntary and that these types of services would not be possible if there was not a market for them. Indeed, there is a big market. When it comes to getting the newest and the best and the coolest new stuff, we are obsessed with keeping up with the Jones'.

But the Jones' aren't home anymore. Their grass is overgrown and the newspapers are piling up on the porch. They've opted out of the rat race and have joined the Amazing Race.

More and more the measure of success for many people is no longer about things, but about experiences. So it is fitting, if somewhat ironic, that more and more Americans these days are enjoying life and liberty by forgoing property in their pursuit of Happiness. They are declaring their independence from stuff.

Study after study confirms that experiences, shared or personal, result in longer-lasting happiness, satisfaction and a greater sense of fulfillment. Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University, conducted one such study which looked at 154 people and their reactions to purchasing a new thing versus purchasing some kind of experience or activity. "The most striking difference", he says, "was in how participants said others around them reacted to either the purchased object or experience. Experiences led to more happiness in others than purchases did. A sense of relatedness to others -- getting closer to friends and family -- may be one of the reasons why experiences generate more happiness."

In another article entitled Experientialism, Materialism, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Leaf Van Boven (University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of Psychology) points to similar research findings showing that people are happier when spending their discretionary income on experiences rather than on things. He writes that recent research extends these findings by demonstrating that allocating discretionary resources toward life experiences makes people happier than allocating discretionary resources toward material possessions. As good fortune would have it, we are seeing the trends in information technology also moving away from ownership into what is known as The Cloud.

Technically cloud computing refers to a shared network where infrastructure and software is shared amongst multiple users and purchased on an as-needed basis, like Pay Per View or electricity. Currently we all have a computer of some sort with a local hard drive where we install our software, store our files and manage our personal and work-related information. For the most part we work locally and share files via email or over a network. We've all experienced the pitfalls of this configuration: computers can be lost, damaged or destroyed, taking valuable information with them. Yes, we all know the importance of backing up our data, but few of us do it on a regular basis, if ever. The loss of a machine is still a major source of anxiety for most people, and rightfully so.

Cloud computing eliminates these risks by moving everything to a server-based storage platform, where it resides until you are ready to access it using any internet-enabled computer or mobile device. Even if your machine is lost or destroyed your information remains safely elsewhere, ready to be accessed from any machine whenever you need it.

This model, however, has implications far and above simple peace of mind. Shared resources means shared costs, making access to more types of information, products, services and software more readily available to anyone with internet access. Want to use Photoshop, but can't afford the cost and hassle of buying and installing it? Someday soon you'll be able to simply buy time to access the full software suite online through your internet connection. This is already happening at a consumer level where web-based applications such as Google Docs and Evernote (to name two of probably thousands) allow users to securely create and manage their documents and information from any device.

In addition, the cloud model allows for collaboration amongst peers regardless of physical location, allowing people from anywhere on the planet to work together. No longer will companies be forced by the constraints of geography to choose their staff from a limited local candidate pool, but will instead be able to assemble a dream team of talented people who are best-qualified to do the work. Someday in the near future whole companies may exist only in The Cloud, with staff being chosen not by proximity to an office, but purely based on their merits and ability to contribute to the team, no matter where they are, who they are or even what language they speak.

On a more personal level, mobile devices with access to The Cloud will provide an opportunity for people to break free of the restrictions of geography and their belongings and to have seamless access to their lives from anywhere in the world. Look around your home. How much stuff do you have sitting on shelves or in boxes? What's in your basement? And your attic? If you're like a lot of people you probably have a storage unit rented somewhere too where you keep a few boxes of stuff that was taking up too much space at home. Of that stuff, how much would you miss if it disappeared? And of what remains, what can be digitized and pushed into The Cloud? Those boxes of documents? Photos? Books? All of it can be easily digitized and stored in The Cloud and accessed remotely from almost anywhere in the world.

The recent release of the iPad has been heralded by most experts and consumers alike as a game-changing development, both in terms of technology and in the way it helps us interact with information. I have been using mine for about six weeks now and will go a step further and say that the iPad is nothing short of life changing. It is hard to imagine that this will not be the new standard for mobile computing. It is small, light and powerful, but big enough to make reading and browsing the web comfortable, and there are thousands of apps available for whatever your needs may be, many of them free of charge. What is most astounding, however, is that this is the first iteration of the device. Imagine that the first car to ever roll off the assembly line was a Ferrari. That is the iPad. If you don't have one yet, buy one today. By the way, I am typing this sentence on my iPad while sitting in traffic in Saigon on my way to a meeting. Enough said.

But like anything else, the iPad has its detractors who complain that it doesn't (yet) do everything their laptop does. So what? The first automobile didn't replace the horse overnight either, but we all know who eventually came out on top of that contest. And we've all heard from those who complain that technology is making us less social, as people spend more and more time on their mobile devices. What they don't get is that the person who is face down in their iPhone is probably not being anti-social at all they are probably being very social with many people at the same time. Instead of pouting about being ignored on the subway, maybe the whiners should Google how to become less boring and predictable.

New technologies will always encounter bumps on the road to acceptance, but in the end the result of all of this is more freedom and more options for everyone, which is arguably always a good thing. By un-tethering ourselves completely from the constraints of hardware we allow ourselves the luxury of choosing which things we want to make a part of our lives and which things to ignore. Life is no longer a set menu proposition. Now you can order a la carte, or just have a glass of water and read a book.

In his 1931 book The Epic of America, the American writer and historian James Adams coined the term "American Dream", which he described as "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. [] It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."

If Adams were alive today he would likely be very pleased to see how far the internet and technology in general have helped to advance the dreams of not only Americans, but people from all nationalities and backgrounds. This is the new dream;  a place where anyone can share information, exchange ideas and become more than what they were born into. And we're really just getting started. We can speculate all day long about where technology will go next and what new devices, apps and services may become available in the future, but what is certain is that, more and more, people are doing the things we need and want to do the way we want to do them, not the way we have to. Technology not only allows us to be more productive, but it has the potential to liberate us from the constraints of geography as well as from the self-imposed confinement that comes with being burdened by our stuff, allowing each of us to pursue our own happiness in whatever form it might take.

Context Lenses

Originally published in East & West Magazine
July, 2010


Your entire life is spent absorbing, processing, analyzing and storing data. But you probably don’t call it “data”. You probably call it “the news”, or “gossip”, or “information” or whatever. It’s warm and rainy today. The soup of the day is split pea. That man is wearing a blue tie. There are three eggs left in the refrigerator. That shoe smells bad. This is very hot. Big or small, important or seemingly insignificant, every sight, sound, taste, smell and feeling you experience every second of every day is recorded as data. A lifetime of information, stored right there behind your eyes. These tiny data events are taking place constantly and over time become a larger collection of data known as “experience”. This database in your brain is the cumulative result of everything you have ever experienced. This is your frame of reference, which provides the context through which you view the world. So how do you manage your data? How does your frame of reference inform and influence how you manage new information? How do you apply the data you have acquired to your daily life? And perhaps most importantly, how do you guard against those who would seek to manipulate you by interfering with the data that you take in or the way you use it? 

“… we just had the fifth anniversary of YouTube and the twelfth of Google, and between them, they're killing off a great institution: lying. You just can't lie anymore -- facts are too easy to check …” – Bill Maher (Real Time)

What is a lie, but intentionally incorrect data designed to provoke a behavior desired by the provider of that data? We see it everywhere, from advertisements making bogus claims to baby-kissing politicians and street corner con artists; people passing along false data in order to get other people to engage in behaviors they otherwise would not. Massive quantities of time and money are spent by people of all stripes and motivations to put data in front of you, true or otherwise, to alter your behavior to one that is more beneficial to them, often at your expense.


The good news is that you no longer have to blindly accept as truth what others tell you. You have all the resources you need, literally at your fingertips, to filter out the bad data and get to the truth. But do you use it?

“You can’t handle the truth!” – Col. Nathan R. Jessep (A Few Good Men)

A great many people believe that marijuana should be/remain illegal. Probably a majority, depending on where you are at the moment. If you are not one of them feel free to sit this section out. If you are one of those who believe that pot should be illegal, write down as many of the reasons as you can think of why. Look at that list. This is a list of opinions you have based on information you’ve collected over your lifetime; from your parents, friends, teachers, the media, whoever. This is a part of your belief system. But there is a problem: every single item on that list can be debunked in seconds by anyone with access to Google and a pinch of curiosity. This is the truth: there is absolutely, positively zero evidence in any credible study, medical journal or any source whatsoever that marijuana is harmful to people. Quite the opposite, in fact. In the United States alone tobacco and alcohol-related deaths average over 500,000 annually. Estimates as to how many fast-food-devouring Americans die each year due to obesity-related illnesses vary between 300,000-400,000. And the number of deaths related to marijuana anywhere in the world in the entirety of recorded human history? Zero. Not even one. So here we have three of the top killers of Americans, cigarettes, alcohol and junk food, taking the lives of almost one million every single year in that country alone … yet the possession and consumption of all of these things is perfectly legal, even encouraged. Marijuana is but a harmless, benign plant.


These are the facts. These are the data. Even a study commissioned by the United States government under former Republican President Richard Nixon (no fan of hippy culture by any stretch of the imagination) concluded that cannabis poses no credible risk of any kind and recommended that the ban on marijuana be lifted, even going as far as to declare the prohibition unconstitutional (which it is). The study was, of course, immediately buried by the government which instead intensified their efforts to propagate false data and issue more disinformation. Take some time to check it out for yourself. The facts are there and readily available. Visit www.google.com. This is just one seemingly innocuous example, but it begs the question: if they are willing to go to these lengths to mislead you about something so minor, then what other data are they misleading you about? War? Yes, Nixon lied about that too. Prolifically.


The next question that must be asked is what will you now do with this new set of data? Will you replace your old, incorrect data with the new, accurate data? If not, why not? Will this information cause you to eat better? Exercise more? Will you stop using alcohol and tobacco? Will you be more cautious about accepting what you are told by others? Will you use this data to better inform you decisions going forward, or will you dismiss it? How do you process information that contradicts everything you’ve been told to believe your whole life?

“It became very clear to me sitting out there today that every decision I've made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have, in every aspect of life, be it something to wear, something to eat - it's all been wrong.” – George Costanza (Seinfeld)

In every corner of the world we see people engaged in behaviors which are clearly not in their best interest. From the farms of Kansas to the streets of Detroit to the muddy tent cities of Port Au Prince to the slums of Mumbai we see people voting against their own economic best interests, procreating beyond their means, forgoing education and living amongst their own waste. Despite generations of acquired human knowledge and endless amounts of data demonstrating the self-destructive results of these types of behaviors, people seem determined to continue to engage in them to their own detriment, and often to their demise.

"The more I practice, the luckier I get." – Golfer, Arnold Palmer … or Gary Player (depending on which website you believe)

If content is king, then data is God. In digital media and marketing we capture and study behavioral data to better understand consumers in order to get a better idea of how to market goods and services to them. We observe how they interact with information we put in front of them in order to learn about their preferences and build context around our understanding of them as individuals. Relevance to the life of the consumer is the lifeblood of successful digital outreach. Without good data none of this is possible. Without good data we have no context for understanding the consumer and therefore no way of knowing what is relevant to their lives. 


Several years ago I was having lunch in a coffee shop in Bangkok. In front of me was a cup of coffee, cream, a spoon and a napkin. There was just one piece missing from the puzzle. I called the waitress over and asked for “namtan”. Thai is a tonal language, which means that how you say a word, your tone and inflection, determines its meaning. So a word that might look the same a westerner actually has five often very different meanings depending on how you pronounce it. I apparently pronounced “namtan” incorrectly, drawing a blank look of total incomprehension. The waitress was unable to see past her immediate, limited understanding and intuit that what I was asking for was sugar. Imagine walking into a pizza shop in New York and asking for a slice of “beezzuh” and getting blank stares.


A few years back I was at a picnic on the beach in Connecticut when a friend arrived and announced to everyone that Russia had just invaded Georgia, and expressed concern that they might soon be coming north to Connecticut. Put aside for a moment the outlandish and preposterous idea that Russia would invade the United States … the fact that this person thought that we could enjoy a picnic on the beach as the United States was being invaded by Russia demonstrates a catastrophic failure of contextual understanding of the world and how things work. This was the result of not having enough data to be able to process this news event properly.

Farmer Ted: You know, I'm getting input here that I'm reading as relatively hostile. Samantha: Go to hell. Farmer Ted: Very hostile!(Sixteen Candles)

The beautiful thing about data is that, good or bad, it is always educational. Even negative feedback gives us insight into the world around us. Traveling the world one comes across numerous, often hilarious and inexplicable examples of the results of ignored data by souvenir peddlers. On a recent trip to Sri Lanka I was fascinated to find vendors waiting for tourists at the entrances to various attractions and temples, places that usually involved climbing numerous steps in intense heat to reach, selling (or attempting to sell) large, heavy, unwieldy items like (no exaggeration) brass nautical compasses, lanterns, oil paintings, large wooden sculptures and huge chunks of quartz rocks. There was not a bottle of water, an ice cream or even a moist towlette anywhere in sight. The last time I visited Cambodia’s infamous Tuosleng Genocide Museum I was surprised to find that the front display case of the gift shop was stocked full of feminine sanitary napkins. On several occasions I have been approached on the beaches of Cambodia by vendors offering shoe shines. At many tourist attractions you will still see people attempting to sell postcards to travelers with digital cameras who have just emerged from the location featured on the postcards. Many shops still sell 35mm camera film. I don’t even know where to buy a 35mm camera anymore. These people must hear “no” so often that you’d think they’d give up and try another line of work, or at least take the time to actually consider what product or service might be relevant to their target customer within the context of the situation. No such luck.


At another coffee shop several weeks ago, this time in Vietnam, my waitress brought me something I did not order. When I informed her that this was not what I had ordered she told me matter-of-factly that I could not return it. She was wrong. I did return it. I found out later that the store’s policy is to dock employee pay for the value of the mistaken order. In Vietnam that means that just one or two misplaced orders could wipe out an entire day’s paycheck. I’ve made mistakes before that have cost me a lot more than a day’s wages. I learned from those mistakes and do my best to not repeat them. If I had accepted her mistake she would never have realized that she had made the mistake, nor would she have had to pay a price for it. She would have learned nothing from her error. Consequences are what help us to learn and avoid unsuccessful behaviors. We can only learn from our mistakes if we’re aware that we’ve made them, and we won’t fully understand their magnitude unless we pay a penalty for them. This is part of the process of learning and growing. We’ve all stuck a finger in an electric socket at some point in our lives. Few of us have done it twice.

“If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.” – Jules (Pulp Fiction)

The danger of data, of course, is that it forces you to look the truth in the face and see things, including yourself, for what they actually are rather than what you wished they were. Be prepared, you might not always like what you see. The good news is that even the bad news is good news, because it’s yet another opportunity to learn and become better. It further enriches your context. It broadens your understanding and puts a little better focus on the world around you. The only question remaining is will you actually take time read the data … and will you act on it? Or will you keep doing what you’ve always done, just because that’s the way you’ve always done it. As they say, the truth will set you free. But only if you let it.

Wifi? Because I said so.

Originally published in East & West Magazine
June, 2010


Nothing is free. I get that. "Free" gift with purchase, "free” welcome cocktail at check in, "free" health care, "free" love, “free” wifi. It’s not free; it's built into the price. If it were really free they’d be losing money. When it comes to being wired I don’t care. Charge me for it. Just don’t talk to me about it.


Just as those kitschy American roadside motels touting “Free Cable TV” belie decades of signage neglect, so the ubiquitous “Free Wifi” signs, too, are starting to look quaint ... relics of an old and dying paradigm.


The digital divide is not just an economic gap between the technological haves and the have nots, but a divergence of thinking. Or, more accurately, a failure of divergent thinking. Many people are not getting on board with new technology and, by extension, the new ways of looking at and interacting with the world that are the inevitable consequence of so much change so quickly. They have chosen to ignore or even reject technology outright, oblivious to the fact that their failure to embrace the digital age can (and likely will) create some degree of adversity in their lives … and, more importantly, in mine.


Recently while checking in to hotel in Bali I asked the receptionist for their wifi password, as I always do. He informed me that they had (what I imagine they considered to be) a very high-tech, customized wifi system, complete with a branded sign-in page and scratch-off access cards available for sale for $1 per hour in 30 minute increments. I know what it costs to set up a small wireless network. It isn’t free, but it’s pretty close. In any case, it’s certainly not enough to bother me about on my vacation. Nickel-and-diming me over internet access when you already got a 5000% markup on those Peanut M&Ms is just tacky.


That was annoying enough, but I bit my tongue, paid for the card, scratched it off, logged on for 10 minutes, logged off and went to dinner. When I tried to log in again later the system rejected my code. I went again to the front desk to inquire. After a solid seven minutes we discovered that the problem was that I had logged off. Once you log off, you see, your code expires, no matter how much time is left on that card. For a split second I think I might have actually believed that Ashton Kutcher was about to jump out of a plant, pointing and laughing at me.


Needless to say I voiced my displeasure with their system in some detail.


The result? During my entire stay the hotel gave me as many access cards as I asked for - wait for it – free of charge. In the end the obstacle course they constructed ended up costing them, not me. I tried to explain to the manager that if he simply added an extra dollar to every room for every night’s stay that he could offset his internet access costs and possibly even make a little extra, and not a single guest would ever notice the difference, nor would they even care if they did. In addition, he would save all of the costs of printing cards, the hassle of collecting the money and IT management fees. Not to mention the added benefit of your guests not rolling their eyes at you in disgust as you make them jump hurdles for something they consider as ordinary and routine as flushing the toilet.


To this Balinese hotelier and his staff wifi is a western luxury item and another potential revenue channel to be exploited, but to his guests it is merely one of many expected amenities, like shampoo, or a door. It’s a part of their daily, and sometimes hourly, lives. Last month US News & World Report released a list of things that Americans say they cannot live without. The top three? Portable computers, high-speed internet access and smart phones. Education was fourth. Notice they didn’t just say “computers” or “internet access” or “phones”. We’re way past that. We not only expect these things, but we expect them to be light, fast and powerful. These are not aspirations anymore … these are the basics, the bare acceptable minimum. In a related story the same publication released a list of the top 21 things that Americans say they are willing to give up. The disposables, according to Americans, ranged from cable tv to a home phone (do people still have those?) to privacy to newspapers and magazines, health care and even comfort itself! What is absent from the list? Anything to do with getting and/or being online. We take being wired for granted, but for a large part of the world’s population it’s an exotic and unattainable oddity … just another foreign land that they will never have the opportunity to explore.


This digital disconnect does of course have bigger implications than my ability to access Facebook poolside. Information technology has the capacity to literally improve and save lives. Imagine the laborer in a developing country who toils in intense heat twelve hours a day for a few dollars. Now imagine him with even the most basic computer skills and he has suddenly moved into a much more comfortable life, with a bigger paycheck where he is surrounded by colleagues from whom he can learn new skills and share information. Learning builds on learning, success breeds success. In many parts of the developing world even a little knowledge can open doors to opportunities which may seem small to us, but to that man those few extra dollars a month represent a significant improvement in his quality of life.


But you can’t play the game if you don’t speak the language. And you’ll never learn the language if you don’t embrace the culture and begin to think in new ways.


King Chulalongkorn (Rama V), arguably Thailand’s most revered monarch (publically Thais will tell you that the current king is their favorite because they have to, and because he is a pretty great guy), was an insatiable and deliberate student of foreign cultures and traveled extensively to Europe and the British colonies in Asia to observe the habits, customs and methods of the west. He saw that big changes were happening and knew that Thailand had better change too if they were going to have any meaningful role in this new world. His relentless pursuit of political, social and educational reforms is largely credited for the modernization of Thailand in the nineteenth century, and for the fact that Thailand was never colonized by a western power (although Thais do now use a fork and spoon in lieu of chopsticks, thanks to him). He understood the inherent power of knowledge and of adopting new ideas and different ways of doing things. He was what we call an “early adopter”. He embraced the new and different. He immersed himself in learning. He understood that keeping up with the times was not just a fun hobby, but an existential imperative.


Unfortunately Rama V’s zeal for the culture of technology is not as pervasive today as some of us would like. From the taxi driver who instinctively turns on the car light to read my (illuminated) Blackberry screen, to the waitress hovering a precariously-overloaded tray of drinks over a customer’s laptop, to my sister’s boss asking her to “please forward that to my home email address", to my mother turning off her cell phone when she’s not talking on it, some people still interact with the new in old ways. Just a few short years ago a good friend of mine was trying to figure out the best way to get me some photos she had taken with a digital camera for a piece she was writing. Her proposed solution was to go to the local drug store and have them printed and mailed to me in New York, where I could then scan them for the website. Fortunately she’s pretty.


But I reserve my most intense scorn for those who understand and use technology but still, for whatever reasons, revert to old habits. Just flipping through the channels last night I caught a scene in some B movie in which someone was taking pictures with a digital camera which, of course, uses no film. But they dubbed in the sound of a motor drive to (I can only assume) get the point across that this was a professional photographer with a modern camera. And a modern professional camera (we are accustomed to believe) makes that iconic, sexy whirring noise. (No it doesn’t).


One of my favorite targets for ridicule in this category is the Backpacker iPod DJ. You know the guy: a scrawny, pierced European with dreadlocks and a tattoo in Sanskrit wearing $3 fisherman’s pants and a Red Bull tank top, standing smugly on stage behind a shiny new Macbook with the prerequisite oversize headphones pushed purposefully up against one ear. In the absence of actual turntables he tweaks dials, moves levers, pokes at flashing buttons and adjusts knobs with one hand while fist-pumping the sky with the other. Dude, we all know that song … we bought it from the same bootleg shop up the road that you did and it sounds exactly the same. Your little dog-and-pony show is a fraud. You’re not a DJ … you’re a Trustafarian with a laptop and a Peter Pan complex. Now press play and get off the stage.


I understand that some people are averse to change, especially radical change. Some people like to jump and some like to tiptoe to the edge and think about things a while. It’s all good. Anyway, watching people fumble and trip over technology can be very entertaining when it’s not hurting anyone or messing up my vacation. But when it comes to my attitude on being wired I defer to the King …

You can burn my house, steal my car, drink my liquor from an old fruit jar. Do anything that you want to do, but uh-uh, honey, lay off of my … internet.

It’s true that incorporating new technologies into our daily lives can sometimes be a challenge and a struggle. Not so with wifi. Not anymore. We’ve mastered it. It’s everywhere. Wifi is technological sausage. It’s easy to make, inexpensive and very satisfying … and I want it. But I don’t need to watch it being made. Just bring it to me hot and put it on my bill. And please don’t yap at me about “taking a vacation from the internet” and “relaxing”. This is relaxing, dammit! I don't want to be less wired. I want to be more wired ... but wirelessly.