Tell him there is measure in every thing
and so dance out the answer.

Shakespeare – Much Ado About Nothing

Hidden deep inside the HP Labs website on innovations for the environment which I profiled yesterday, is an important research theme for assessing the total environmental impact of technology on our planet.

Work being headed up by Chandrakant Patel on lifetime energy use introduces a new measure of environmental impact.

It can be argued that the environmental debate which is currently being conducted in terms of carbon emissions and carbon trading contain anomalies that limit full awareness of the impact of technology on the world in which we live.

It’s like figuring out the cost of running your car by only counting what you spend on petrol. As any motorist knows, there’s also the cost of repairs, insurance, depreciation and so on. From the day you drive your new car off the lot until the moment it is crushed and recycled there’s a total cost of ownership associated with running a vehicle. A savvy owner would want an accounting of this and not be satisfied with measuring one factor while ignoring others.

Just so, the concept of exergy allows engineers and policy makers a measure for performing accurate environmental accounting. Exergy-cost analyses evaluates the impact of human activity on the current natural environment and measures the overall environmental sustainability of different products: whether it’s a plastic drinks bottle or a supercomputer.

To attain true sustainability, it’s not enough to simply consider costs of powering, cooling and operating IT. It’s essential to take a ‘cradle to cradle’ approach, taking into account IT’s entire lifecycle – from the raw materials extracted to build the machine to its manufacturing and to its recycling and potential reuse.

HP Labs is working with the University of California at Berkeley to build a tool called the Lifetime Exergy Advisor, which would assess the total environmental impact (from extraction to shipping to operation and recycling) of using different types of materials (or different combinations of materials), different processes, operational or reclamation techniques.

Patel’s novel framework is based on the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and aims to drive the deconstruction of existing value chains with high resource costs and replace them with net-positive end-to-end IT solutions.

This research moves the focus on Green IT solutions beyond the level of anecdotes and into the realm of rigorous analysis.

“In the future, we will end up judging IT decisions based on the pool of available energy resources that we are depleting from the ground,” Patel says.

Technically speaking, this is the second law of thermodynamics, which says that although using a resource (e.g., burning coal) does not result in destruction of energy, it does destroy its available energy – that is, its ability to do useful work.

Such available energy is often called exergy and the unit in which it is measured is a joule.

“In a flat world,â€? suggests Patel, “the only currency is going to be joules – not yuans, not rupees, not dollars. What we want to do in our future research is to look at the entire IT ecosystem from end to end and quantify the available energy destroyed.”

This is a potentially game-changing way of looking at the environmental impact of IT.

It’s appropriate that in the same week Al Gore gave his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, HP Labs – the research arm of Hewlett-Packard – has published an elegant summary of a range of innovations which help deliver on the promise of a greener information technology landscape.

Al Gore challenged the world’s scientists to focus their research on confronting a planetary emergency:

The innovators who will devise a new way to harness the sun’s energy for pennies or invent an engine that’s carbon negative may live in Lagos or Mumbai or Montevideo. We must ensure that entrepreneurs and inventors everywhere on the globe have the chance to change the world.

So it’s significant that research institutions like HP Labs, with a network of seven R&D centers spread around the world, focus attention on environmental sustainability.

Innovative solutions from HP Labs which provide a way to minimize the environmental impact of data center computing include Dynamic Smart Cooling and Data Center Thermal Assessment Services – as well as looking beyond the data center to energy-adaptive displays, better ways to keep chips cool and video conferencing that has the feel of a face-to-face meeting. From the glass house to the executive jet there are now a range of environmentally sensible solutions that you can implement today, if you choose to do so.

These solutions from HP Labs allow customers the choice of an environmentally conscious alternative to the more profligate computing technology they may currently use.

So if you work in corporate computing, ask your CIO two things.

Firstly, ask them to evaluate the environmental impact of the entire IT life-cycle in your organization. Are there ways to implement technology that is good for business and good for the planet?

Secondly, ask them to consider their response to the question Al Gore posed yesterday in Oslo:

The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: “What were you thinking; why didn’t you act?�

Or they will ask instead: “How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?�

It’s your choice.

Tim Ferriss has posted a fascinating tale of a contest he ran at Princeton as part of a class on entrepreneurship. He challenged students in the class to contact high-profile celebrities and CEOs and get their answers to questions they have always wanted to ask.

For extra incentive, Ferriss promised the student who could contact the most hard-to-reach name and ask the most intriguing question a round-trip plane ticket anywhere in the world.

“I believe that success can be measured in the number of uncomfortable conversations you’re willing to have. I felt that if I could help students overcome the fear rejection with cold-calling and cold e-mail, it would serve them forever,â€? Ferriss said. “It’s easy to sell yourself short, but when you see classmates getting responses from people like [former president] George Bush, the CEOs of Disney, Comcast, Google, and HP, and dozens of other impossible-to-reach people, it forces you to reconsider your self-set limitations.”

His technique is to hack the target’s email (easy enough in most cases) and then use a sophisticated personalized approach to get past their handlers.

Ferriss claims that “impressive networks are built one superstar at a time. It’s another case of working smarter and not harder.”

This technique is covered at length in his book The 4-Hour Workweek.

Go for it!

A recent San Francisco Immigrant Entrepreneur’s Meet-up hosted by the entrepreneur queen herself – Edith Yeung – featured a talk by pioneering podcast Sci-Fi author Scott Sigler. He’s the first author, ever, to podcast a novel in it’s entirety.

Scott’s first novel Earthcore was podcast back in March of 2006 and is available today, by subscribing to the free download from the iTunes Store. Simply fire up iTunes on your computer, choose ‘iTunes Store’ and enter ‘Scott Sigler’ in the search area. You’ll see that Scott also has other books, Ancestor and Nocturnal, available online as well. There’s hours of listening pleasure available at no charge (a warning for our under-18 readers: Scott’s novels are marked EXPLICIT by iTunes and have more than their fair share of blood and guts.)

As compelling a read (or a listen) as these books are, Scott is an accomplished marketeer in the Web 2.0 world as he is a Sci-Fi author. You’ll see if you check out the links to his works that I’ve used already in my blog that his work is available through multiple channels:

• via iTunes or any of the other podcasting sources as audio
• on Google books as a downloadable .pdf file
• on Amazon
• and last, but not least, on his own portal: www.scottsigler.com

I missed the opportunity to interview Scott at the event in San Francisco. But not to worry. I followed his suggestion as a ace podcaster and thought outside the envelope. I installed the PrettyMay plug-in to SKYPE and arranged to interview him remotely. The sound quality on my first recorded SKYPE call is a bit spotty in places (having a webcam operate at the same time as you are recording is NOT recommended!)

In my interview I asked him how he could make any money giving the best stuff away for free. He’s very blunt “What people forget is the marketing and sales angle…”. To hear Scott discuss how podcasting and Web 2.0 technologies such as Instant Messaging, Wiki’s and free content downloads provide for user involvement and the growth of his fan-base click on the podcast icon below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:53 — 1.3MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

That was then…this is now

The founders of Fairchild Semiconductor (est.1957) in the company’s production area. Back row, left to right: Victor Grinich, Gordon Moore, Julius Blank, and Eugene Kleiner. Middle: Jean Hoerni. Front: Jay Last and C. Sheldon Roberts. Facing the group: Bob Noyce.

This photo shows the “Traitorous Eightâ€? who left Shockley Semiconductor to found Fairchild Semiconductor — using $3,500 of their own money they developed a method of mass-producing silicon which changed the world.

However, the founders did not stick around. Although most breadwinners in the 50’s looked for employment for life (my Dad worked for Rolls-Royce his whole career) these guys practiced the serial monogamy that was typical of executive life in the Valley from the get-go. Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, as well as several others, got the “eleven year itch” and left to form Intel in 1968.

There are a number of interesting things about the photo. Firstly, they are all white males, wearing ties and pressed shirts. Their hair is short. They are spookily conformist in their cult-like attention to Mr. Noyce. OK, so it was the 1950’s. McCarthyism ruled. But consider by way of contrast this photo from the 1940’s of Dave Packard with a couple of HP staff, notice that he’s seated alongside, not in front of them. And, hey! One guy has a check shirt on.

Both of these photo’s show that, as the world has changed, so has leadership style in Silicon Valley.

It’s not just a matter of personal grooming. The tech industry innovates relentlessly. Product life-cycles are shorter than ever. As with machines, so with people. Broader social changes have obviously taken place alongside the technology.

Look at the Fairchild photo again. There were no women in the executive team at Fairchild in 1950’s California. Today, 40% of HP’s top executive committee are women. Two of HP’s top managers are foreign-born. In fact, nearly 40% of all the current residents of Silicon Valley were born outside the USA. Things were different back then. Many of today’s successful high-tech companies were started by immigrant entrepreneurs. A number of these successes are profiled in a wonderful new book They Made It! by Angelika Blendstrup.

Back in the 50’s it appears from the photo that the women who were employed at Fairchild Semiconductor were dutifully engaged in mind-numbing assembly work. Today, there are almost no assembly plants left in the Valley. Manufacturing is sourced off-shore in Asia, where legions of women from the rural hinterlands labor at the same jobs their enfranchised sisters used work at in California sixty years previously.

At least they don’t have managers perched at their elbows while they continue with relentless heads-down production. The Fairchild photo begs the question “What defines ‘work'”? It looks as if the women are ‘working’ more than the men, but their rewards would argue otherwise.

A time of transition

Bob Noyce was instrumental in putting the “Silicon” in Silicon Valley. He inspired legions of colleagues at Fairchild and later Intel (although there are reports he and Andy Grove did not get on well.) Here’s a moment in history where he mentored the young Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer:

Management and leadership style in the Valley has moved on. Some argue the HP Way is a thing of the past. Companies today are more a loose network of employees, contractors and self-branded individuals. Tempus fugit.

The conformity of the 1950s made for a particular leadership style (and makes the courage of Hewlett & Packard in bucking the trend more astonishing.) It was probably easier back then to issue edicts that were obeyed. Today’s leaders swim in different waters.

How do leaders today inspire and motivate? Let me know if you have pertinent examples.

There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you.

Winston Churchill

I’ve always been amused by the language of wine. Many reviewers pile adjectives on top of one another with repetitive monotony. This might be due to the professional necessity of writing while tipsy (despite claims to spit and not swallow.)

Jon Bonné and Lynne Char Bennett’s list of 100 Best Wines in the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle, modifies ‘cherry’ in no less than 17 different ways when describing red wine:

…red cherry, crushed raspberry and spice…
…vibrant cherry, plum and berry fruit that’s laced with subtle sweet oak shadings…
…toasted cherry and a leafy hint…
…musky red fruit – strawberry, dusty cherry…
…baked cherry and raspberry…
…radiant red cherry, highlighted with cranberry, candied orange rind, oregano and fir cone…
…bright with thick cherry and citrus zest…
…ripe black cherry and subtle plum, with a mineral overlay and a juicy, salty profile…
…cherry, blackberry and cedar…
…rich pile of black cherry, nuanced raspberry and blackberry, coffee, toast and a full box of exotic spices…
…dried cherry and oolong…
…dried cherry, pebbles and black tea aromas…
…coffee, vanilla, mint and plush back [sic] cherry…
…rubyish cherry and cranberry fruit…
…roasted red cherry, warm oak to round the edges…
…tree bark and cherry lozenge…
…raspberry and cherry scents, with slight mushroom and mineral…

Ray Davies was right on the money back in 1970:

I met her in a club down in old Soho
Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like cherry-cola
Cee-oh-el-aye cola
She walked up to me and she asked me to dance
I asked her her name and in a dark brown voice she said Lola
El-oh-el-aye Lola la-la-la-la Lola

Lola – The Kinks

Rebecca Knight, writing on modern philanthropy in the Weekend Financial Times, highlights Gilbert Maurer, the former Hearst Corporation COO who noticed something odd about bright college graduates he encountered:

They could write okay, but they couldn’t articulate,� he recalls. “If ever they had to give a presentation, it was ‘like’ this, and ‘you know’ that. I called it verbal landfill.

His response was to fund the Maurer Professorship, an endowed chair of speech and rhetoric, at his alma mater, St Lawrence University, a small, private liberal arts college in upstate New York.

“Even if a St Lawrence graduate – whether an economics major, a biologist or a philosopher – is able to express himself just 10 per cent better [than his peers] it will be a worthwhile endeavour,� he says.

The St. Lawrence School for Communication Arts offers classes in Advanced Public Speaking; Argumentation and Debate; Interpersonal Communication; Gender and Communication; Communication Theory; Native American Oral Traditions; American Public Address; Rhetoric of Social Movements; Ritual Studies and Presidential Campaign Rhetoric. (There’s no apparent connection between the last two courses – although Presidential campaigns are as filled with ritual as any shamanic rite.)

Specific course descriptions show the depth of the studies:

211. Advanced Public Speaking.
Intensive study of the principles and practices of researching, organizing, writing, delivering and criticizing persuasive speeches. Students employ contemporary theories of persuasion to analyze a variety of rhetorical situations. Students construct persuasive speeches for different speaking situations in order to develop critical and practical skills.

326. American Public Address
A study of American history through examination of the speeches of spokespersons for social, political, legal and religious institutions and movements. From Thomas Jefferson to George Bush, from Susan B. Anthony to Phyllis Schlafly, from George Wallace to Martin Luther King Jr.: a study of the impact of rhetorical strategies upon ideas and events and of ideas and events upon rhetorical strategies.

The school website also references a fascinating resource: the Silva Rhetoricae guide to the terms of classical and renaissance rhetoric.

Congratulations to the Maurer family for this much needed correction to the, you know, persuasiveness of American youth, like.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee stopped by HP’s Research Labs on Tuesday. He’s the guy who invented the World Wide Web. Unlike the plutocrats at Google, Yahoo, eBay and the many others who’ve grown fat and happy off the web, Tim remains an academic, seemingly of modest means, as excited by the technology as ever.

It was back in 1989 that he began work at CERN in Switzerland on the basic HTML and http protocols which form the foundation of the Web. There was a time in 1991-92 when he had a list of every web server in the world on a piece of paper in his office drawer. There are now millions upon millions being served. There are few people in the world alive today whose innovation have had such an effect on so many.

Yet to hear Tim (although Knighted by Her Majesty he prefers informality) describe it, when he was first outlining his concept of linked pages on a world-wide network to rooms filled with of smart people in the late 1980’s only two or three in each group of 100 “got” it. So goes the uphill struggle to communicate change. The best & brightest often cannot see the benefits of truly radical innovation. Many inventors have the devil’s own job communicating the advantages of their new idea to others.

I recently wrote about Robert Chesebrough, the inventor of Vaseline, who suffered self-inflicted burns to demonstrate the effectiveness of his product. There’s the tenacious Ed Lowe, inventor of Kitty-Litter who “started visiting cat shows, where he cleaned hundreds of cat boxes each day in exchange for a booth to display his new product.”

The story of the 30-year struggle of the English inventor and lone genius John Harrison to prove his clocks provide a solution to the problem of a ship’s longitude position at sea are wonderfully told in Dava Sobel’s book.

So it was refreshing to hear Berners-Lee talk. His speech lacks the polish of the corporate suits. Indeed, as one audience member commented, it lacks linear thoughts and meanders from link to link as does the web. “Yeah,” Berners-Lee responded, “linear sucks.” The observation that his presentation style matches the web is not a trivial one. He stated that “I’ve been told the Web has 10 to the 10 to the 11 (number of) Web sites. The brain we study is as complex a system.”

Is the logic of a formal presentation or speech with a beginning, middle and end and one rhetorical section leading in a linear fashion to the next soooo last century (not to mention the dozen or so preceding centuries)? Will future generations raised on the interconnections of the web prefer to absorb presentations of linked hypertext? Who knows.

What we can see, in the non-linear tradition in literature is a prescient demonstration that the “linear sucks”. As far back as the 18th Century with Tristram Shandy, published by author Laurence Stern in nine volumes that had neither a beginning or end, a celebration of digression and multiple plot-lines. The tradition segues into Nabokov’s Pale Fire; Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds and so on.

Many of these novels mix poetry and prose. And on the web, sprung from Berners-Lee’s Swiss-time imaginings, we find poems which celebrate randomness and chance in the late-time twitters of people saying what they are doing now:

eve11: Confectioners sugar matte icing powdered over gothic cake...what the Salt Flats look like at the bewitching hour of slate blue dusk. November 21, 2007

TwitterPoetry: Winds buffet the twitterpoem, casting thoughts and emotions about with wild abandon. March 31, 2007

LloydDavis: Waiting for lunch date on bench in sloane square. Feeling rather george smiley... November 27, 2007


In the end the poets say it best:

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu.
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?

T.S. Eliot The Waste Land

Just signed up for Twitter, seeing what happens. Short messages like this. A lot.