Berkeley Blog

"Say Everything" Says It All

Am reading Scott Rosenberg's balanced but exuberant book about the history and impact of blogging, "Say Everything," to be published by Crown July 7. A former theater critic and cofounder of Salon, Rosenberg understands the important of story in telling this history. His book reads like a play, with Act One delineating the players like Evan Williams and Justin Hall who begin to flesh out the plot in the next two acts. 

Even if you think you know the plot, this book will change your mind about the importance of what has just happened and is happening now. It's full of profundities about the human potential for thought, desire for connection and cooperation, and the need for expressing and sharing one's experiences and ideas -- for recording what is essentially one's own story. "Say Everything" captures not only the essence of blogging but also its power to transform our awareness of ourselves and others. 

Just as important as the advances in digital technology are the motivations of the people who found uses for that technology. The printing press preceded Gutenberg, but it was the desire to make books available to the common man that made Gutenberg adapt the machine to his ends. It's this deep understanding of the people who changed the world, an encyclopedic knowledge of Western history and culture, and a brilliant, insightful way with words that makes "Say Everything" a classic and exhilarating read.

No Going Back...2 prnt news

So after being harangued by the NY Times on phone and by email, I decided to renew my weekday subscription to the paper. Frankly, I needed something to read in the bathroom, and the paper is perfect. (When I lived in France in the early '70s, we used the paper for more than one function in the bathroom, and that was the eminent Le Monde.)

Guess what? After over a month of consuming my news online, I could no longer be tempted by the print version. In fact, the paper seemed tawdry and flimsy compared with the clarity and sparkling colors of the medium online. 

After just a day, I called the NY Times and said, "I cancel. I'm too used to reading online." The operator sternly informed me that if I cancelled the print version, I wouldn't be permitted to read all sections of the paper online. Have they got a new business model, or reverted to the old one where one had to pay to read columnists? What's going to happen when a blogger or other media links to a "pay only column in the NY Times?

Whatever. I'm changing along with the world, just a little in lag step.

BTW, Dave Winer and Lance Knobel, along with Lance's partner Tracey Taylor who has that British flair for understatement, have started a local news site, www.inberkeley.com, for all things happening in Berkeley. Perhaps because the founders are still fresh to the uniqueness of Berkeley, their stories and photos evoke a serendipitous quality that makes it fun to read as well as useful. 

Digital Pack Rat

Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, which has been undergoing the Sisyphean task of trying to save every page (except porn) ever put up on the World Wide Web, says he missed his chance to save the best archive of music the world has ever heard. That was the chance -- and the archive had the server capacity -- to save every song available on Napster before the music industry took it under. Not that the music moguls might try to excise the songs they copyrighted from the Internet Archive as well -- a feat worthy of the Chinese government's attempts to censor the Internet.

I think i have recommended that the Obama Administration appoint Kahle to a prominent archival post, and if there isn't one, they should create one. It's as important to archive the archivist as to preserve the stuff he archives.

Without culture -- books, music, web sites, art, film/video, architecture -- what's left to pass onto the next generation?

Oilfield Restitution Fund

Went to hear a Commonwealth Club-sponsored "debate" between Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope and Chevron CEO David O'Reilly last night in S.F. They both agreed that it's necessary to switch more to sustainable sources of energy, such as natural gas, wind, solar, and even nuclear rather than rely on coal and oil. The critical difference was in the numbers: Pope maintained that by 2050 the U.S. needs to reduce consumption of coil and oil by 90 percent, whereas O'Reilly said that 20 percent was a more realistically achievable goal given the lifespan of cars on the market and the road today.

Taking the tech high road, Pope said that if the oil and automobile as well as other industries deployed technological energy-saving innovations, his 2050 goals could be reached. He pointed out the new technologies used in drilling for oil as a case in point. O'Reilly hued to the 20 percent for 2050 line as it were his PR-mandated life vest. 

A few anti-Chevron demonstrators livened up the discussion, but it was all pretty tame compared with protests I've witnessed in the '60s. This is the Commonwealth Club, for goodness sake, and we are civilized folk here. The moderator, a WSJ reporter, even described two of the duct-taped gagged protestors to the radio listeners streaming in so they could get a good "look."

At a private dinner afterwards for Sierra Club donors and board members, Pope -- who has announced his imminent departure as ED once a replacement for him is found (candidates should herewith apply!) -- reiterated his recommendation that a 10 percent tax be imposed on corporate profits of oil companies for an oilfield toxic wastes fund. But the likelihood of this happening at the federal level is dim, he admitted.

"There is no sense in Washington that energy become a national interest issue," Pope said. Dan Miller, former CEO and investor in Ask.com, warned that the cost of not making changes in our energy policies right away is too high to be ignored. In fact, much like Al Gore, Miller has taken his message on the road (see www.ClimatePlace.org). Maybe he should be applying for that ED position?

The New Journalist

My friend Carleen Hawn, business reporter, Knight Fellow, former associate editor at Forbes and creator of the Midas List, west coast bureau chief at Fast Company, reporter for GigaOm, and freelancer for Financial Week, Business 2.0, and Ode, has just made the switch to new journalism.

She is now publisher, editor in chief, and reporter for Healthspottr.com, a publication about innovations in healthcare. After years of being assigned stories, which were then edited in ways that often conflicted with the author's intent, Carleen now has control over what she writes, how it's presented, and when it gets published. Of course, she has the additional responsibilities of finding sponsors so she can pay herself, her web team, and an additional reporter, and she doesn't expect her income to equal its former levels anytime soon.

In exchange for generating her own income, Carleen gets to write about a field -- healthcare -- she sees undergoing major transformations. She gets to interview the innovators at the forefront of the ways we deal with health, and she gets to do what she does best: write about change.

This might be the calculus of the new age of media.

P.S. Will Healthspottr's sponsors influence content, since publisher and editor-in-chief are one? Or will Healthspottr's content influence the direction potential and existing sponsors take? I'm sure the latter is the founder's intent.

New Security Czar

Mr. President,

I highly recommend Larry Ellison as Security Czar, a post that I hear you're going to fill any day now. Larry's qualifications are impeccable: he makes systems to keep track of data and if anyone else has a competing system, he'll buy it and then destroy it. How more secure could we get with a person like Larry in charge?

The Valley would be sad to give him up, of course, especially folks who live near the San Jose Airport and get a thrill every time they are woken up by Larry's post-bedtime landings and take-offs. Or the California Highway Patrol, which can be fully engaged keeping pace with his Nissan sports cars on 280. 

Barack, you need someone to balance all those Googlers, and you know that Larry would keep those boys in line. As for the girls, we'd advise you to keep them in separate wing.

From your favorite Silicon Valley girl

Times-less

It's been more than two weeks since I dropped my 20+ year-long subscription to the New York Times, delivered on my doorstep in its blue wrapper coated with morning dew. 

Gradually, I've stopped reading the Times altogether and realized that much of the news is PR spin (the silly story about reviving Polaroid in the Netherlands, and Livermore Lab's non-story about the National Ignition Laser project, which still doesn't work after umpteen years of development at taxpayer expense), redundant (Claire Cain Miller writing about how online revenues for most tech companies except Google are not being driven by ads, as if we didn't already know), or underhanded (a snide review of Updike's last books that intimates the great writer covered small, tired subjects).

So what am I reading? More paper, alas! The Economist for a breath of fresh air from the people who started newspapers. Fast Company magazine, because I like their focus on the creative, their fine graphics and design, and their progressive attitude. And books, lots more books now that I've saved at least an hour a day by eliminating most of the Times.

Online there's plenty of news to read, and just when I quit the Times, the paper started a moment-by-moment news update service much like the River of News my friend Dave Winer suggested as a model of news delivery more than a year ago. With the Giro d'Italia this month, I get up early to watch the cyclists and helicopter views of Northern Italy via Universalsports.com. I can hook into Twitter to hear what my favorite cyclists are saying about the race firsthand -- it's like being a fly in the locker room.

It's a little unsettling, I admit, deciding where to find the news I want on my own. But it's also liberating to discard the shackles of someone's else's media mindset.

Play Time

Carl Page, founder of eGroups and brother of Google cofounder Larry Page, showed me the cool Sky app -- which lets you google stars in real time as you point the Android phone to the sky -- last night at dinner in Berkeley.

I had just read that a Google employee based in Pittsburg had created the app on his 20 percent "free" time given to Google engineers. So I suggested to Carl (who might communicate this to his brother) that Google engineers get 80 percent "free" time and spend only 20 percent of their time assigned to work projects. Who knows what riches might ensue?

Actually, the most creative people on earth do spend at least 80 percent of their time on "free" projects, such as painting, writing, music, filmmaking, and technology (witness Wolfram's new data-crunching search engine). I really do think that "work" or "jobs" as we know it -- which have existed mainly since the Industrial Revolution -- are a waste of creative time.

And it is creative time that makes existence meaningful, pleasurable, and longer lasting than our physical selves.

No More Newspapers

So after 25 years of subscribing to a paper edition of the New York Times and a habit of walking outside to pick up my copy first thing in the morning, I cancelled my susbscription a few days ago. The person on the phone asked me why I was cancelling and I said it was because I preferred to read it online.

"What if we cut the cost of your subscription in half for the next six months?" she asked.

I felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach. They are this desperate, I thought? But I said, No, I want a different experience when I "read" the news. And I want it online.

The first day of my cancellation reminded me of when I quit smoking 30 years ago. What will I do? What will identify me as Sylvia Paull? Not going downstairs to pick up my paper felt strange, but after I made breakfast, I finished reading an article in the New Yorker instead of reading front page news, which is what I usually do. It was calming, and it was easier to place my magazine in the rack on my dining table than fuss with the Times, whose pages were always difficult to handle.

Then I went to my computer and opened two screens: one for my email, the other for the news. I could answer email and while waiting for emails to open or be returned, I read the news. 

The entire experience -- and it's just been three days -- has been irreversible for me, and here's why:

1. I can select what I want to read and not be bothered by articles that are a waste of time but which have drawn me in because I'm too lazy to turn a page of paper.

2. I can read comments to columnists, which open up an entirely new world to me. The comments to an column by David Brooks on reforming the education system the other day were more interesting than Brooks's original comments. I could also quickly add comments if I wanted to do so.

3. I can watch video. This morning I watched our President tell jokes at the National Press Association dinner. He's a marvelous joke-teller, with pitch perfect timing and a poker face. This is something that is not conveyed merely by print.

4. I can follow links, dig into the paper's archives, do dictionary searches, and connect with the knowledge base that is on the Internet.

5. The print onscreen is much easier to read than the print on paper. Colors are more vibrant, and there's a plethora of photos to follow online so I can get a more complete visual story than what's been selected for print.

6. News is news. I get news when it happens, not a day later.

7. Oh. It's free. But frankly, I wouldn't mind paying.

Which all goes to show that people's habits can change when technology improves our experience. Where will the journalists go? Online, where the rest of us are going.

Gloria-isms

Gloria Steinem spoke at Engage Her's (www.engageher.org) first Multicultural Women's Leadership Conference yesterday, April 26, at UC Berkeley to a crowd of hundreds of women and a few men. She has a way with words, as you can see below.

"If it were true that women have slept their way to power, there would be many more women in power. [The truth is that more] sons-in-law have slept their way to power."

"Nothing works unless it's almost equal," in response to her rejection of the word "mentor."

"I'm a Midwesterner trained to be a female impersonator," in response to why she smiles even when she's talking about a serious subject.

"Marx wasn't right when he said the ends justify the means. The means are the ends."

"The masculine idea of the masculine role is killing them. We have four years of life to offer you [men, who lives four years less than women on average], so join the movement."

"Hate crimes are really supremacy crimes, committed by white, middle-class guys who feel entitled," as opposed to the images the media projects of these crimes.

She identified many people in her generation as "tech immigrants."

"We are communal creatures. When we are alone, we feel crazy and at fault."

She also said we should keep using the word "feminism" because there is no adequate substitute. I don't think there is a substitute for Gloria.