My experience of blogging is that it’s like waiting for a the bus — no material for days on end and then a whole bunch comes along at once.

Following my post yesterday on the Portland State University lost speech tapes, I found an article about the Blank on Blank project that curates lost tapes of interviews with famous people, mostly in the entertainment field.

I’ve enjoyed listening to Larry King’s hilarious story about his late night escapades as a young radio DJ, Janis Joplin on rejection, John Lennon on love, and Pete Seeger on writing ‘We Shall Overcome’.

These tapes are a great source of entertaining stories.

Here’s more than you ever needed to know about what differentiates England, Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland from Great Britain and why vestiges of the British Empire are alive and well in isolated parts of the world like the Falklands.

Explained brilliantly by C.G.P. Grey.

Watch the video and be informed!

The Weekend FT continues to delight with unexpected and refreshing views.

I’ve noticed before that, unlike any American newspaper I know of, it has no problem using explicatives when the context calls for them.

The latest example is Sarah Churchwell’s article on censorship at the cinema.

She notes that The Wolf of Wall Street

“…is the sweariest mainstream film in cinema history, with some viewers counting as many as 569 audible instances of the word “fuck” over its three-hour duration.”

What’s remarakble about the article is that the FT prints the word as above, not as “f**k” or “the F-word” or even “the f-bomb” as most American newspapers would.

Indeed, the article quotes the word eight times (including “motherfucker” and “fucker”) and a search on the ft.com site reveals a rich store of articles on a variety of topics that include ‘fuck’ in the text.

Personally, I find it refreshing (even fucking amazing!) that a word the majority of FT readers use on a daily basis (pace The Wolf of Wall Street, those who work on trading desks in finance perhaps more than most) is not censored from the pink ‘uns pages.

What this says about the laws governing the press in the UK vs. the USA, the Puritanical roots of American culture, and the decline of Western civilization, I leave for my blog readers to comment on.

Ever since I studied the sociology of sociology I’ve been fascinated by recursive activity. I’ve heard professional speakers speaking about speaking and read writers writing about writing.

The current edition of the New Yorker features a translation of Wislawa Szymborska’s compelling poem Reciprocity (subscription required). It is a wonderful play on the idea of recursive activity. Of worlds within worlds. Mirror shades.

I found this Italian translation which I have rendered into English for the benefit of anyone who does not have a New Yorker subscription.

There are catalogs of catalogs.
There are poems about poems.
There are plays about actors played by actors.
Letters in response to letters.
Words used to clarify words.
Brains occupied with studying brains.
There are griefs as infectious as laughter.
Paper emerging from waste papers.
Seen glances.
Conditions conditioned by the conditional.
Large rivers with abundant contributions from small ones.
Forests overgrown by forests.
Machines designed to make machines.
Dreams wake us suddenly from dreams.
Health needed for regaining health.
Stairs leading as much up as down.
Glasses for finding glasses.
Inspiration born of expiration.
And even if only from time to time
hatred of hatred.
All in all,
ignorance of ignorance.
and hands employed to wash hands.

The last two lines alone summoned, for me, images of manicurists who don’t know what they don’t know, but (working backwards through the stanza) with every breath they take, have an opportunity to speak tolerantly with occasional customers.

And, of course, the whole silicon chip industry and Moore’s Law has been driven by machines designed to make machines that have enabled tremendous advances in cognitive science by corporations where careers are downsized as often as they advance; where patents filled with footnotes are written on recycled paper; where the sum of knowledge is made up of a multitude of small contributions; where the Light of Consciousness itself can awaken us from this dream of our limited and limiting conditional existence. Klik-Klak, pattern patterning.

At least that’s what the poem seems to be saying, at first glance.

Breaking the mold of uptight, upright executive presentations, here’s a peek at former Dutch finance minister and chairman of ABN Amro, Gerrit Zalm, delivering a stunning impersonation of his alter-ego, brothel owner Priscilla.

The presentation was designed to motivate the Dutch bank’s 23,000 employees with a risque monolog that would not make it past first base with the HR gatekeepers at any American company. She started by telling employees that she was “blessed with a good front office” – pointing to her bosom – “and a top notch back office.”

Take a look:

The photo that accompanied the FT report on this stellar performance was firmly above the fold, as one would expect from a newspaper that reports breaking news “without fear or favour”.

In response to an interview with Silicon Valley VC Peter Thiel in the Weekend FT on Dec 20, 2013 my letter defending hippie values was published a week later:

Of the many sweeping statements made by libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel during his “Lunch with the FT” interview (“People are not trying hard enough”, Life & Arts, December 21), none seems as wide of the mark as his claim that “when the hippies won … the idea of progress came to an end”. As someone who lives and invests in Silicon Valley, Mr Thiel should be familiar with the well-documented connection between 1960s radicals and innovations around open systems computing and the origins of the personal computer.

Open systems grew out of the variation of the Unix operating system developed at the University of California at Berkeley – hotbed of the 1960s counter-culture in the US. Open systems innovation led to a revolution every bit as real as the one hoped for by those manning the barricades on Telegraph Avenue.

Homebrew Computer Club founder Fred Moore was an anti-war activist. Club members Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs engaged in “hippie pastimes” such as phone phreaking, experimenting with LSD, and seeking spiritual enlightenment in India. They then went on to found Apple Computers, hardly a sign that progress had come to an end.

Now, a long article in the Jan 13 edition of the New Yorker by Evgeny Morozov, details various elements of the rebellion against establishment ownership of the means of production–from the Arts & Crafts movement of the early 20th Century through the Whole Earth Catalog of the 1960s to the hackers of the 70’s and the Maker Movement today.

Whole Earth Catalog founder and computer revolutionary Stewart Brand contrasts the nature of the rebellion on different sides of the San Francisco Bay:

Around Berkeley, it was Free Speech Movement, “power to the people.” Around Stanford, it was “Whole Earth Catalog,” Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, people like that, and they were just power to people. They just wanted to power anybody who was interested, not “the people.” Well, it turns out there is no, probably, “the people.” So the political blind alley that Berkeley went down was interesting, we were all taking the same drugs, the same length of hair, but the stuff came out of the Stanford area, I think because it took a Buckminster Fuller access-to-tools angle on things.

Morozov writes that, in addition to Fred Moore, another leader of the Homebrew Computer Club was Lee Felsenstein. A veteran of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, he wanted to build a communication infrastructure that would allow citizens to swap information in a decentralized manner, bypassing the mistrusted traditional media. He founded the Club to help counter the power of IBM, then the dominant manufacturer of large and expensive computers, and make computers smaller, cheaper, and more useful in political struggles.

Morozov’s notes the irony that today “we carry personal computers in our pockets—nothing could be more decentralized than this!—but have surrendered control of our data, which is stored on centralized servers, far away from our pockets.”

While he criticizes the lack of a willingness of these movements to address institutional and political change, the overwhelming impact of the innovations that the counter-culture unleashed is undeniable.

Journalist Michael Skapinker notes in the FT that US Visa questions include

• Are you coming to the United States to engage in prostitution or unlawful commercialized vice or have you been engaged in prostitution or procuring prostitutes within the past 10 years?
• Do you have a communicable disease of public health significance such as tuberculosis (TB)?
• Do you belong to a clan or tribe?
• Have you, while serving as a government official, been responsible for or directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom?
• Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization?

In researching the reasons for these questions — which seem unlikely in the extreme to ever have anyone answer “Yes” — Skapinker uncovers a rich tapestry of reasons they are posed to overseas visitors.

Take the one about TB. Officials at Ellis Island used to keep members of the huddled masses out of these shores if they were infected.

Many of the others — such as asking terrorists to declare themselves — are there so that when they, natch, answer “No” and are later apprehended they can be deported since they obtained the visa by fraud or misrepresentation.

The question that most perplexes Skapinker is the one asking foreign government officials if they have ever been responsible for “particularly severe” violations of religious freedom. He wonders if mild violations of religious freedom are acceptable. Apparently the only person to have been barred admission on these grounds is Narendra Modi, tipped by some to become the next Indian Prime Minister, for alleged complicity in the deadly 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat.

Beyond the mysteries of the visitor visa questions are the ones posed to those of us who wish to became US Citizens. I well remember hearing the claim of one friend from Ireland who, when asked “What flies over the White House?” knowingly replied “Crows”. Many citizenship questions would, however, stump the average American. Example:

• The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Name one of the writers.
• Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the states. What is one power of the states?
• The House of Representatives has how many voting members?

Answers here.

My own proficiency with the English language was tested when I was taking my citizenship test by having to carefully write the phrase “I usually drive my car to work.”

I’m glad to say that I passed the test, even though I now take the ferry to work, which is where I usually read the Financial Times.

The Circle is a dystopian view of Silicon Valley set in a future time that could be, oh, sometime the day after tomorrow. Dave Eggers has crafted a story set in the corporate campus environment of a fictional social media company that will seem all too familiar to anyone who has spent time in the headquarters of a Facebook, Apple or Google.

While the plot, as many reviewers have noted, can be a little creaky, the main thesis of the book is that the world of social media that many of us have rushed headlong into has threatening potential. By trading privacy (you have none, get over it, a tech titan once remarked) for ease of communication with our circle of friends we have entered a Faustian bargain with the bright young sparks who have created the social media sites we love to love.

The book’s main character is a young woman at the start her career. She starts work at the company named “The Circle” that provides the kind of college-dorm on steroids environment the Google and Facebook’s of the world are famous for: free food, parties, famous musicians, fire-eaters & jugglers at company events. With a workplace like this, why leave? The on campus crash pads have refrigerators stocked with goodies, it’s summertime and the living is easy.

However, it isn’t long before the summer sun turns into a winter of discontent.

Our twenty-something heroine slowly realizes that the success on her work position is associated with activities that are anything but voluntary, like attending events and sharing everything with the Circle community, about each and every minute of her life, as a company motto states: “Sharing is Caring”.

To outline any more of the plot would be to spoil the shock of recognition that those of us who spend time in and around Silicon Valley must feel when reading about the All Hands Meetings, customer service centers, managerial shenanigans and office romances on the shores of the San Francisco Bay.

Future Perfect

The weirdest part of the reading The Circle, for me, what what I started noticing in the news after I put the book down. The headlines suddenly seemed to be taken from later chapters. Literally, in the last two weeks, I’ve seen news reports about a mysterious barge Google is building on the Bay; Palo Alto police might start wearing body-mounted cameras (hopefully, as in the novel, they’ll automatically switch off for three minutes while the user in the toilet); and, just in time for this blog posting, The Economist reports that “life-loggers” are embracing the potential of Google Glass to create a people’s panopticon.

The Circle is an entertaining read. Recommended.

One of the rules of improv theater that I learned when I took classes at the Pan Theater in Oakland is learning to say “Yes, and…” in response to any suggestion from another actor who is a partner in a scene.

For a story to be built, the players have to agree to the basic situation and set-up. By saying yes, we accept the reality created by our partners and begin the collaborative process from the start of a scene. The collaborative process puts us in situations that we would normally avoid.

It was refreshing to read a quote from Google executive Eric Schmidt supporting the value of this approach, not just on the stage, but in terms of life in general:

“Find a way to say yes to things. Say yes to invitations to a new country, say yes to meet new friends, say yes to learn something new. Yes is how you get your first job, and your next job, and your spouse, and even your kids. Even if it’s a bit edgy, a bit out of your comfort zone, saying yes means that you will do something new, meet someone new, and make a difference. Yes lets you stand out in a crowd, be the optimist, see the glass full, be the one everyone comes to. Yes is what keeps us all young.”

Thanks to my fellow Ace of Hobos Improv Troupe member David Linder for sharing this gem.

Stephen Apkon’s new book, The Age of the Image: Redefining Literacy in a World of Screens more than lives up to last week’s preview in the Financial Times. This is one of the most thought provoking books I’ve ever read on corporate and political communications.

Images are replacing written communication

Newspaper circulation is down while YouTube views number in the billions. These facts are not unrelated.

Apkon argues that we are on the threshold of a new era where the democratic reach of media can now stretch to a level never before possible in human history. This phenomena is enabled by the ubiquity of screens to consume video; the universal language of the image over the specificity of written communications; the power and reach of the networks of distribution through YouTube and the web; and, finally, our ownership of the means of production via smart phone cameras and inexpensive editing tools. Apkon notes:

What we are now seeing is the gradual ascendance of the moving image as the primary mode of communication around the world: one that transcends languages, cultures, and borders. And what makes this new ear different from the dawn of television is that the means of production–once in the hands of big-time broadcasting companies with their large budgets–is now available to anyone with a camera, a computer, and the will.

The power of images

Akpon details how the human brain is wired for images (the province of 85% of our grey matter) and why we trust the evidence of our eyes above all else. Images are understood in context, which can be manipulated with narrative to hook an audience emotionally. We expect nothing less from Hollywood, we should not deny ourselves this facility.

Every picture tells a story

Images have energized corporate storytelling. Apkon shares examples where the old rules no longer apply: from the low-budget Dorritos Super Bowl ad to Gillette’s instructional video on How to Shave Your Groin, corporate video appeals directly to our ‘reptilian mind’, prior to logic and rationality.

Lawyers and journalists are tapping into the power of the image to bolster reasoned arguments.

Implications for executive communications

For anyone involved with corporate, political or executive communications the implications of Apkon’s thesis, even if he only partly right, are profound. Those who wish to succeed in the corporate world need superior communication skills. Today, these include not only listening, speaking, reading and writing, but also superior visual communications skills.

The days of the copy editor, speech writer, or PR professional who focuses on the language of the press release alone are numbered. We need to relax our obsessive focus on a logical, written narrative. Instead of endless meetings about the nuances of a product announcement, we should look for ways to craft images that will emotionally connect with an audience. Apkon recommends we learn from the black arts of the political advert:

Political images are much less logical that they let on–in fact, they rely on the image makers’ ability to tap into primitive emotional centers that govern adaptive urges such as fear, comfort, and love.

Remember, America is a country where one of the more popular of recent Presidents was a trained actor; California a state where we elected an inarticulate Austrian body builder with an outsized fictional screen presence as Governator. The biggest stumble made by the Republican challenger in the last election was being caught on video talking about “the 47 percent”.

Corporate communications professionals need to grab their Flip cameras (or whatever is available to them), fire up Windows Movie Maker and go stick the lens in the face of customers, partners, employees, and, yes, even executives.

Apkon’s important book challenges us to recognize the importance of the image over the written word, to learn to become literate in this medium, and to be willing to step forward and say “Lights, Camera, Action!”.