Web-Tones

Healthcare & Education

There is a lot talk about "shovel ready" projects related to infrastructure where the stimulus money needs to be spent, and where it can quickly be spent, in order to get the economy moving ASAP. I am all for rebuilding our infrastructure and it is probably long over due. God knows we need to get this economy moving and large numbers of our citizens need the work.

I would argue that healthcare and education are infrastructure projects as well, although admittedly perhaps not something we can quickly throw money at. That said, both need to be high on our list of things to do. A sick nation is not going compete well in the 21st century. Non only that, our current healthcare system is not helping us get well for reasons I highlighted here. We need a healthcare system that competes to create value for the patient, period. Ditto for our education system and our students, especially K-12.

If we love this country and if we love our children we need to fix this mess. This is not a question of right versus left. This is a question of our own survival and of creating lives worth living, in our country and on the planet.

Looking for inspiration?

Check out the 212 Movie! This is one of the best pieces I have seen on these Internet(s) ever. I have been surfing for quite some time, before Netscape; before Mosaic. This short piece is phenomenally well done and quite moving.

It will make your day.

Neighbors

I have a great neighbor. His name is Frank Barrett (family name is really Barrettino but the judge shortened it when his father emigrated from Italy. Maybe figured the family would fare better with a Waspy name?). He is 84 years old (more or less). Frank is a retired baker. Owned his owned bakeries since he was 22. Grew up in Pittsburgh. Served his country in WWII; definitely part of the greatest generation. Hard working. Honest. Street wise. Comes over so I can review various types of paper work he doesn't understand, but mostly comes over to shoot the breeze. If I don't see him in a couple of weeks I make it a point to give him a special invite. He waters my lawn twice a week (early bird gets up at 4:30 to walk) and keeps me informed of the neighborhood gossip.

Frank Barrett (Largo, FL) is one of many reasons that I love this country. His story is an American story. Smart, but undereducated, he managed to live the American dream. But this is not the end of the story. Frank continues to live the dream. Besides walking 40 minutes a day, he does daily aerobic exercise for another twenty. He loves to watch baseball and play the lotto. Goes out every day for 2-3 hours to have lunch, buy his lotto tickets and drink a few beers. Hasn't missed a day out in the four years that I have known him. Now Frank, as you might imagine, doesn't have a blog; I am sure he has never touched a computer in his entire life, but he is now on the Internet(s).

I was listening to Don Henley's CD "Inside Job" and specifically to "My Thanksgiving" when I thought of Frank. A couple of verses follow:

Now the trouble with you and me, my friend
Is the trouble with this nation
Too many blessings, too little appreciation
And I know that kind of notion well, it just ain't cool
So send me back to Sunday school
Because I'm tired of waiting for reason to arrive Its too long we've been living
These unexamined lives

Ive got great expectations
Ive got family and friends
Ive got satisfying work
Ive got a back that bends
For every breath, for every day of living This is my thanksgiving

Yeah it has been too long that we have been living these "unexamined lives." I don't have many friends like Frank Barrett, but I have a few. Some are not close enough to invite over for coffee, but because of the Internet they are not as far away as they use to be. I can email them. I can see them on live video. I  can talk to them for next to nothing using VOIP. I can go online and hangout where they hangout. I can do all of these things, but I don't do them enough. But that will change. Why? Because the wife and I have been blessed with grandchildren and these kids were born digital. They don't live close but we can still be part of their lives. So I think that my grandchildren are inspiring me to become more connected just like Frank Barrett inspires me to be more connected.

For every breath, for every day of living This is my thanksgiving

Like Walt, I too hear America singing, our best days lie ahead. The dream remains alive in the 21 Century. The Internet will play a role. Sure it is great for commerce, but I am confident it will drive the American Renaissance. I wrote about that in What Comes After What Comes Next? many moon ago.

You heard it hear first.

It is early in web years!

I have been doing more than my usual share of hardcore surfing in preparation for the launch of a new “digital venture.” Much of this has been related to SEO and online marketing in general. This post has been “brewing” for more than a week now and I finally found some bandwidth to get it out.

Some posts are obviously “routine” and others require much more thought/editing, and hence the delay. I have great admiration for those bloggers that apparently can consistently write long “stream of consciousness” posts while at the same time making them eminently readable and coherent (either they have more talent or they don’t sleep much—likely both). I admit that for me these kinds of posts are a bit more painful to write.

I had the opportunity to listen to Chris Matthews speak a few months back and wanted to borrow his five key points with respect to “why it is early in web years?” I am neither a big fan (though I admit to watching “Hardball” in a past life when I watched more TV than I do now) nor a Matthews’ basher, but he was quite interesting and entertaining. His talk had nothing to do with the web. I am just using his five key points (I’ll call them rules) as a metaphor (while giving Chris his “props” at the same time).

Note to self.

Rule #1: Get in the game

It has often been said, but bears repeating, to “get” the web you have to “live” the web. You don’t live the web simply because you use Google and read the web. You have to join the conversation. You have to make some mistakes. If you want to leverage enabling technologies, whether it is blogging, social media, twitter or the next new thing, you need to start experimenting with them. If you want to learn about SEO you have to do some SEO. The same holds true for PPC. No, you don’t need to press all the buttons, but you are not going to “get it” if everything is delegated either. Why? Because you won’t understand what it is you asking someone else to do, since you don’t have the first clue. In short, if you want to play the game you have to get in the game and get off the sidelines.

Rule #2 Listen

Listening is painful because there is a lot of “snake oil” being sold and sometimes from corners that you least suspect. You can waste a lot of money and time (wasting the latter may have even more negative implications) if you don’t learn to listen. But, with the noise to information ratio so high, the first problem is figuring out whom you should listen to. There are more “experts” than “Carter has pills” (who the hell is Carter?) and you must sift through and triangulate the BS before you arrive at any sense of clarity. This is not a trivial exercise and it can’t be accomplished from the sidelines (see rule #1).

But lets just limit the conversation to online marketing. Sure SEO is important, but that is only a piece of the puzzle. If you are going to completely turn your online marketing over to Google and the SEO rabble (unless of course you find the needle in the haystack) then by all means plow ahead. But your business judgment should guide you online as it does off line. Online marketing is mostly about having a strategy and building key relationships (same as off line). If you think that all you need are links then it is clear that you haven’t been online long enough to realize that that particular game has been over for quite some time. What you really need is an interesting story to tell. You tell a story with content. Content is hard. That is the dirty little secret.

Rule #3 Ask

Sure you may eventually have to drop some coin on the problem. But you just might be amazed at what people are willing to tell you for free (often precisely because they believe you will drop some coin). Get engaged. Listen. Ask for some advice. Here’s some free advice, yeah you didn’t ask but I am giving it to you anyway. There are no solutions to the online marketing problem. There are processes that you need to develop and maintain over time. If you want a quick fix go to Starbucks and buy some espresso. Hey, I would like to press the PFM key and get results just like everybody else, but we all know (or should) that is not the way it works. Yeah asking might be humbling but there is simply too much complexity in the world. Get over it.

Rule #4 Get along with your competitors (practice civility)

The distance between two points on the network is zero. The circles are small. Be careful. How many reputations have imploded due to an organization’s own actions? Sure, there are powerful ways to leverage the network, but the network can also punish with devastating ferocity if you don’t understand its ethos. There are acceptable and unacceptable modes of behavior. You can run but you can’t hide. The network will find you. You can disagree. It is important to disagree. You can have controversial opinions. It is important to have controversial opinions. All of that is fair game if you practice civility. There are no reasons to create acrimony where civil conversation works just as well.

Rule #5 Wherever you go that is where you are (huh?)

Ok, I have no idea what Chris meant by this one but it is a “five rule post” so I have to give it a shot. This is how I think this one works for the web. The web is a journey. It takes us to places both near and far (i.e. to our understanding of the evolving “digital universe”). We must travel often and travel well. There are lots of opportunities for exploration. This journey that we are on is in its infancy. You are not too late. The journey has barely gotten started. It will continue to surprise us. That is, if we let it. It is still early in web years. If this were a book we don’t as yet have a table of contents. Yeah the ship has set sail but we have no earthly idea where it is headed.

Find a good story and tell it. Get in the game (find a boat). Listen. Ask. Practice civility. Wherever you go that is where you are.

Project Virgle

Link: Official Google Blog: Announcing Project Virgle. You may have to volunteer  but I in fact was recruited for project Virgle (mission to Mars). In my case, I think it is a conspiracy to try and remove me from this planet before my time.

As Jimi once said: "See ya in the next world, don't be late."

Plantation or the Law of Private Agreements?

Link: Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Meanwhile, back at the plantation. Nick writes a populist post for the Internet masses (musicians in this case) which is not exactly what you might expect from him. It is quite well done and manages to "pull at the heart strings" for the little guy (in all sincerity it does). And while many us have similar sentiments for the "sharecroppers" of the world (either having been among them or watched our parents labor in those fields)--the argument Nick makes is fatally flawed.

The musicians who "licensed their works" did so obviously because they thought that they would benefit from doing so. The fact that the other party to the "contract" benefited more, leaves them no real room to complain. This does not have the markings of a "contract of adhesion" where the "little guys" had no other alternative but to sign on the dotted line. They freely entered into a private agreement. Private agreements (i.e. contracts) control most of what occurs in the business world on a daily basis. They allocate risk, not after the fact, but at the time the contract is made. Sans some kind of illegality or fraud, they are a critical part of the legitimate engine that drives commerce as we know it.

Aren't book publishers a kind of plantation owner? Large corporations? Newspapers? The point is that we can't start denying a party the benefit of the bargain without it having much broader implications with respect to the society in which we live. A society (despite its shortcomings) that has produced arguably the best standard of living, for the most people, that the world has ever known. It can and should be improved. There are iniquities in the distribution of wealth that "scream for a solution" in a civilized society, BUT contract doctrine is not the place to muck with "social engineering" experiments.

Open Source Education?

Link: Michael Geist - Why Is There No Canadian MIT?. There is something fascinating (and important) with respect to what MIT (and the consortium) is doing vis-a-vis higher education. It is called "accessibility" to the masses. The dissemination of knowledge, and the rate by which it is being disseminated, could be what makes (or breaks) some nation states in the 21 century. Don't believe me, just see who is following MIT's lead--China of course, and India and the rest of the developing world are soon to follow. Why? Because the rules of the game have changed (again) and these countries are seizing the opportunity. Thank God that MIT is right here in the good 'ole USA, because where there is no vision, the people (eventually) perish...

Victor Hugo (I think) once said: "if you build more schools then you can build less prisons." We should be investing heavily in education, but instead our politics is still dominated by the type of thinking that leads more toward prisons and less toward education. To borrow from JFK: "progress is a nice words but progress has its enemies."

E-Greetings R' US

Link: E-Greetings Gain Ground at Businesses This Season - New York Times. Many commentators like to indicate how e-greeting are "green friendly"--which of course they are, but it is as if they need some justification for this behavior. It is simply a reflection of our "digital lives"--a  profound transformation of how we live, work and play.

This is the beginning, the tip of the metaphorical "digital iceburg," we should stop pretending that we know where all of this is headed, we don't. But one thing is clear, paper Christmas cards are already a thing of the past. It just make more sense to send the bits...they are just as effective for reaching out and touching friends and family, at Christmas or any other time.

Information Just Wants to be Free!

Link: blog.pmarca.com: Open Social: screencast and screenshots. Looks like Google just turned Facebook into Microsoft (i.e. proprietary social network). Ouch! Here Marc is having some fun with the new "Open Social API."

The medium indeed appears to be much, much bigger than the message. The fun is just starting....

Is the medium more than the message?

Link: Poll: US Attitudes About Internet Are Insane. I am not sure what to think of these results other than this "thing" we call the medium is perhaps more powerful than what we have previously attributed to it.

The absolute obsession with search, social networks, and all things digital on college campuses (and elsewhere) is startling--even for those of us who have been long time netizens and observers of this space.

There is something transformative happening that is perhaps more fundamental and profound than even what a credible futurist (e.g. Alvin Toffler) might acknowledge. Perhaps a "singularity" of sorts is starting to manifest?