Escapable Logic

George Bush is a brave man. He’s invited a country singer named Natalie to sing at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner tonight, Saturday, at 8 ET (CSPAN listing).

The good news for him is that this Natalie is a lowercase dixie chick from Nashville, not that Dixie Chick from Lubbock. Natalie is my future daughter-in-law, Natalie Stovall (MySpace, GarageBand), an up-and-coming country rocker and songwriter, whose CD is available at the iTunes Music Store. She’ll be singing America the Beautiful, a capella, just after the Star Spangled Banner. As far as I know, Natalie is apolitical, having been raised in Tennessee balanced by four years in Boston at the Berklee College of Music. But even if she had loaded up on Boston politics, the Prez need not worry. Natalie is a wise and empathetic soul who takes care of stray puppies and would never be uncivil to a guy who’s lonelier than he once was.

Here’s Natalie and Tamara celebrating Tam’s birthday at the Bitter End in 2005, and Nat and my daughter Kelly at the after-party here at the East 43rd St. HQ. Them’s some real swell women and it was a real swell clambake.

Flashback

Natalie’s father, Larry Stovall, was an Army Lieutenant on the ground in Vietnam while I was flying C-130s. We shake our heads a lot.

Tom Stites tried to comment on my post after our great lunch meeting Monday, but had to send an email instead. You’d think that blog software would be more tractable but not yet - it’s not like I’m a luddite, eh?

Here’s Tom’s message:

Hi Britt — I’m finally back from the dial-up purgatory of my New York B&B stay and have had a chance to go spelunking in the links in your nice post about our lunch and conversations. There’s always much to learn from the links smart people stick in their writing, which is why I’ve come to believe that the Web is a much better way to deliver quality journalism than print.

I set out to leave a comment on your post but I couldn’t find a door on your blog that would open to let me register to do so. Do you have this feature disabled or am I overlooking something?

(Memo to self: create a web framework that makes blogging and commenting easy.)

In any event, the main reason for the comment I was imagining is this excerpt from Tom Piazza’s excellent but unfortunately titled book, The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz:

In a jazz group, as in any community, certain roles need to be filled. Someone has to play the melody, someone has to keep time, someone has to suggest the harmonic context. Often these jobs overlap. In jazz, each instrumentalist has to understand his or her role in the group well enough so that he or she can improvise on it and not just follow directions. Playing in a jazz group involves both responsibility and freedom; freedom consists of understanding your responsibility well enough to act independently and still make the needed contribution to the group. As such, a jazz performance is a working model of democracy.

This certainly supports your sense of jazz as a fine metaphor for OSS2. And the metaphor extends to where old-school journalism and the BSphere diverge: Not everybody can play jazz. No small number of superb musicians are lost without the score in front of them. For related reasons no small number of music lovers have zero appreciation of jazz.

I share your faith that in an Open Source Society “the right person will show up with the right contribution at the right time” and that “the value of that ad hoc contribution will be obvious.” I just don’t see any evidence that this phenomenon will be distributed evenly across all the topics and political geographies that people need to be informed about to make solid life and citizenship decisions.

Common sense, at least what passes for common sense in what’s left of my mind, tells me that people are quite likely to show up with the right contribution at the right time in communities of geography and interest whose population is disproportionately endowed with easy and continuous broadband access, certain thinking, writing and technical skills, and the motivation to take part. Municipalities with populations like these — Westport, Conn., is an excellent example — have excellent Web gatherings where the right people show up with the right contribution at the right time. But this works less well up the road in Bridgeport, were such folks are scarce. And it works hardly at all in the Global South, where billions subsist on $1 a day — or in highly secretive institutions like the World Trade Organization, which play their music only from the score and only for an elite private audience. Perhaps someday there will be an eschatological moment and the needed OSS2 skills and resources will be evenly distributed across our communities, nation, and globe, and old-school journalism will become unnecessary. But until then, if old-school journalism were to vanish whole aspects of our political and economic life would go dark, and all hope of democracy would go dark with it.

Old-school journalism certainly has its failings. Editors and other mediators inevitably have biases, and some will always be intellectually or otherwise corrupt. To my mind the OSS2 approach is no less flawless, but its main flaw is wildly unequal distribution ensured by the inherent inequalities of our society and global society. That said, OSS2 is a huge and growing gift to democracy and thus to the world. The stronger it gets the more it corrects the weaknesses of old-school journalism. As Doc wrote in that post that’s so generous to the old school, “we need AND logic, not OR.” Hooray for all of us. We be synergistic. The universe is not inherently binary.

And I appreciate your citation of Bro. Surowiecki, whose very independent mind I admire and from whom I have learned a lot. His thinking on the failure of crowd intelligence start with crowds that are too homogenous. I suspect that this applies to people who groove on the seductive mantra that information wants to be free, and who think that OSS2 makes old-school journalism obsolete or soon will. I know of no one who shares this mindset who does not have the previously enumerated skills, motivation, and easy and continuous broadband access. As a corrective: Remember, 80 percent of Americans work for hourly wages. People who punch time clocks and work at retail, or run machines, or drive trucks, or build things on construction sites, many of whom work more than one job, have no chance of digesting RSS feeds from their favorite bloggers all day as they sit at their desks, and very few will be reading them on their Treos.

I don’t mean this as ungenerous, but I sense a shared belief among information-wants-to-be-free folks that in time all people will be like them, or at least want to be like them. It’s a universal human trait to think the world is composed of people like us and the folks we deal with routinely, but the truth is that people ain’t all gonna be blogger/jazzers unless that eschatological moment comes along. I know of no economist or demographer who expects the percentage of hourly-wage workers, or the nature of their work, to change much in the foreseeable future. Further, there’s for sure not going to be any sudden change among the global poverty population, or in the adherence to secrecy of the corporate elites whose power directs the global economy and the government in Washington. So OSS2’s reach is limited by the number of folks we can realistically expect to have the skills that its jazz requires.

Here endeth the comment for the day.

As much as a pain as the ORGware delay must be to you, as a reader of your blog, I find it a blessing that you have more time to post these days. I’ll savor it while I can.

It was a blast to see you. We have lots more conversation ahead of us, and I look forward to it.

Tom

P.S. Please let me know if there’s a way for me to shape what I’ve written here as a comment; if not, and you’re so moved, feel free to put it, or parts of it up yourself however you wish.

The View from the Frontier

So spaketh Thomas. The issue we’re grappling with is how fast and skillfully might the next several waves of Web-struck newbies embrace and extend the power of connectedness to unite the people who most need its leverage. As Archimedes might have said, “Give me a web that’s wide enough, and I’ll lift the world.”

Tom knows that we pioneers who went west first desperately need the next wave of settlers to show up and populate this wild country with real families and infrastructure and town marshalls and schoolmarms. Since they won’t put up with the wildness we’ve embraced, it’s our job to provide a safe haven among the cactus and sagebrush and Indians.

However, Tom and I diverge a little on whether the skills and values of the pioneers will be adopted by the subsequent settlers. When we talked today, I suggested that, his Bridgeport example notwithstanding, the next wave of settlers may respond to the web’s delights just as we have: that we’re not really so special, simply early. Although we were quick to adopt the Internet’s protocols and values, it doesn’t mean that those who show up next (and next and next) will be any less skilled in embracing these collaborative tools. Despite that possibility, it’s likely we should build easier tools for them.

Tom sent me a book a while back: The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America by Lawrence Goodwyn. Though most of us have heard of the Populist Movement that emerged in America after the Civil War (was it really so civil?), it’s Goodwyn’s remarkable insight to describe it in a book titled “The Populist Moment”, because it demonstrates that movements are dependent on unique moments in time. Tom is convinced that America is in such a moment today. As a journalist, he is committed to serving the people who may not have a voice yet but who will certainly find theirs, moments from now, as reckoned by Internet time. Roughly speaking, his audience is hourly workers.

But actually, he yearns to rescue all of us. It’s a good thing, ’cause we sure need it.

Overpowering arrogance and dismissiveness is the elephant in the room of the Don Imus blowup.

Certain socially-skilled people learn early in life to parlay arrogance and dismissiveness into social prominence, and Imus is the poster child for these poseurs. Naked emperors all, they ply a trade even older than the so-called oldest profession (that would be “Ho”). I submit that this pose is so effective that other bullies have parlayed it into temporary dominance of the globe: Cheney and Rumsfeld and Bush, in that order. Everywhere I look in corporate America, I see this pattern of attractive arrogance and desolation of collaboration.

I have a terrific book about consulting firms, “House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time“. In it, Martin Kihn describes a personality type that pervades the consulting industry: “Their single skill is to be dismissive of others.” Whether by nature or nurture, some people learn this trick early in life and compound its excessive ROI for a lifetime. Most of us seem genetically wired to respond deferentially to those who exhibit this singular trait: confidence that they are better than you. Doc Searls has made a five year career writing about them for Linux people, called “Suit Watch“. So titled because those people must be watched so carefully.

I know what it’s like to be an old fart and to be inappropriate due to evolving standards of humor–I do it all the time. But this was different. Don Imus got caught extending his tiresome lifelong schtick with yet another demeaning throwaway line. His schtick, of course, is “I’m way cooler than you and I have the dismissiveness and entourage of toadies to prove it”. He would like us to judge his words in the tight context of his comedic schtick in a single show, rather than realize his lifelong role as an abusive bully whose daily derisiveness is calibrated to fly just below the radar of outrage. Predictably, he’s been outted by emerging technology and the “aggregatable” mindset it enables.

But it’s not just the suits. Imus has raised dismissiveness to a high art but hasn’t worn a suit in years. In the last few days, we’ve seen some pushback against the remarkably self confident “cool kids” at 37 signals. Their schtick feels similar: “Buy our $19 PDF file because, really, we’re cooler than you are.”

Tivo and Blogs: The Trick of Perspective

Every Renaissance seems to be about Perspective as a useful tool. As we come to assume a Googleable life condition, we’re more accustomed to judging people on their entire body of outrage, rather than single, ephemeral expressions of their current, carefully calibrated misanthropy. My dear friend, Diane Francis, says that “Life is High School”, that those same tiresome forces of power, intimidation, striving and dismissiveness are driving most of the energy and judgments in society and politics. This frightening truth trumps all the theories of how society and organizations work, because it’s grounded in our genetic algorithm driving our deference to the “cool kids”, who operate as bullies.

When we get an overview of a person’s body of work, the rules change. Suddenly we can sense the iceberg of vindictiveness that lurks below the bright tip of hale-fellows-well-met. In that sense, the Tivo and the blogosphere are similar aids that provide the perspective that this new renaissance is teaching us.

The Myth of Intelligent Design

Liberals and Fundamentalists are similarly deluded about Intelligent Design. Many of us know that Fundamentalists have embraced an untenable theory of how complex systems are impossible without a constant gardener. But Liberals are equally naive. They assume that Americans agree that we should work together to make conditions more equable, and that there is consensus that a rational design is universally sought, so it should form our vocabulary. Sheesh, what naiveté! Everyone secures as much status as they can, which often means money. But the deeper striving is to be perceived as more consequential than others. If you can manage that trick, the money will follow. Without it, the money rarely finds you.

This arrogance is what the most clever kids do, early and continually. It’s such a great schtick that people who are otherwise respectable have been eager to call in to Imus and hang with a guy who wouldn’t give them the time of day in Junior High. I saw the similarly equipped Letterman demolish Bill Gates in the early nineties, dismissing him as a lab-coated prop as Dave got on with his cooler guests.

It’s even worse than that. Like primates who would rather look at pictures of high-status monkeys than eat, the cable news industry has formed around our need to feel acknowledged by the cool kids. If you really don’t feel this urge, count yourself lucky. But you know that most of your fellow citizens are transfixed by the easy demeanor of the news anchors who are willing to seem to include the great unwashed in their tiny circle for the duration of the show. They practice the world’s oldest profession, like equally cynical politicians in this silly season.

Algorithms to deflate the Poseurs

From a web design standpoint, there are a few things we can do to expose and amplify the otherwise below-the-radar corrosiveness of phonies who need to sound more important than they are:

1. Commenters must register to display their comments to others.
2. Comments appear as a primary post on the commenter’s blog.
3. Trackbacks are automatic and organized.
4. Comments are not immediately visible until they are rated positively.
5. There are no negative ratings (trolls only want attention)

For now, this ORGware-based solution is limited to single sites that offer those capabilities. But at least we can offer a laboratory to discover the benefits of owning your own sins and graces. Aggregation of our sins and graces is the essence of relationship, and an adequate remedy for the scourge of the Cool Kids’ dismissiveness of whoever chose not to master their schtick.

I had lunch yesterday with Tom Stites at the terrific Ipanema Restaurant near 46th & 5th. A half century ago, Tom and I were schoolmates at Pembroke Country Day School in Kansas City (Pem-Day). We were also acolytes at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church, where Tom was Chief Acolyte, or whatever that teenaged notable was called. Hotdamn, we were skilled at lighting and snuffing them candles!

Tom had issues with his Chief Acolyte role, and those issues and their fallout are a telling insight into the remarkable freedom of thought and philosophical equanimity of the late 1950’s. Even in Kansas City. Tom asked the prelate assigned to the acolyte corps (young Christian soldiers!) if his beliefs might cause a problem. Tom confessed that he wasn’t sure if he believed in God. The ordained leader of our little flock assured Tom that questioning his faith was almost a prerequisite to authenticity in the church. After all, any boob could spend a life in thoughtless obeisance to an invisible Deity who, wrapped in metaphorical blue robes with a reassuringly paternalistic patina of imputed authority, held absolute judgment over all creatures. That blind faith was trivial compared to the heavy lifting required by the robust faith of the Church’s true leaders. They were doomed to a lifetime of questing and yearning and fearing and wondering if they could trust this palpable, soaring and anguished faith that gripped their heart, but periodically devastated their soul.

In short, a 16-year-old Chief Acolyte with existential questions was honored for his authenticity as he served at Saint Andrews’ Episcopal Church on Wornall Road in Kansas City in 1957. I wonder if they are as wise today.

In the mid-60’s, Tom went off to Williams College in Massachussets and I to Wesleyan University In Connecticut: two of the so-called “Little Three” (with Amherst). Tom became a journalist and served as Dan Gillmor’s mentor at the Kansas City Times. He also became a jazz critic and, in fact, is in town from Boston this week for a reunion of the people who made Jazz Magazine an institution in the 1970’s. Jazz was a big deal for Tom and me, but I envy his ability to turn it into a paying gig.

It’s interesting that Tom ended up in Theology after all that. He serves as Publisher of the UU World Magazine of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Yep: Ralph Waldo Emerson’s mouthpiece. Currently, he’s on sabbatical taking courses at the Harvard Divinity School.

OSS 1, anda 2, anda 3 . . .

I often wonder if Jazz isn’t the best metaphor of Open Source Software (OSS1) and my favorite extension of it, Open Source Society (OSS2). All three of those artistic expressions assume that the right artist will contribute the right riff at the right moment and that their (our) contributions will be captured (by technology) so that successors will be able to embrace and extend our work.

That reflection requires me to dwell on how ordinary we all are. Although Tom and I benefited from the one of the finest secondary educations ever offered on the planet (albeit by a small, self-conscious and insecure little midwestern school–part of its special alchemy), neither of us has embraced the arrogance that marks so many people who have been educated almost as well. Tom and I (and Dan Gillmor nor, I think, John Readey, another KansasCitian and Pemsy-Daisy) have an innate respect for the ordinary condition. In that ordinary condition, we discern the salvation of humankind.

Although any of us, given the opening, might be tempted to throw our lot in with the cool kids–the Wall Street Machers and (shudder) Cheneys of the world–we understand at a gut level that our society will thrive or fail on the strengths of We The (average) People, AKA We the Media. This does not and can not create a Tyranny of the Mediocre, because the foundation of this new model rests on an emerging way of perceiving excellence: that “quality” is not the provenance of the few and judgmental but rather the collaborative insight of the many and thoughtful. As James Surowiecki has taught us, it’s not the average of opinions that matters, it’s the vector of many opinions.

So, how do you forge excellent insights from the rough and ready, plainspoken sensibilities of the people who are closest to the problem and farthest from the arrogance? I suggest that it’s their jazz. There’s something about the voicing of a jazz solo that conveys its authenticity, especially when it’s got the support of the rest of the ensemble: Preamble. Framing. Resolution. You know: all that jazz. Traditional media delivers snapshots of truths, but the web gives us immediate acces to what I wrote yesterday and the day before, etc: a three-dimensional picture of where I and my “facts” are coming from. Like this graphic from Apple:

As an editorial model, Tom Stites isn’t ready to buy it. He’s run enough big-city newspaper desks that he knows that editors must trust their writers in order to have a reliable flow of articles that their readers can rely on. On tight deadlines and uncertain facts, your only foundation for trust is that you work with these same people day in and out, and that your paychecks have the same signature. But most of us here in the BSphere have faith that the right person will show up with the right contribution. at the right time. Further, we think that the value of that ad hoc contribution will be obvious.

Can a publication be built on “Obviousness”?

That trait of “obviousness” is where old-school journalists and web citizens diverge. Is obviousness tangible and verifiable or is it just subjectivity? An old-school editor like Tom needs to work with a staff of trusted reporters because he assumes he cannot have direct insight into the material the reporter presents. The editor is dependent on trust: there’s no presumption that he can verify and ratify reporters’ work. But maybe that’s the world before Technorati and Google and WikiPedia. Blogger/bloggees feel that a few minutes of drilling down will clarify the general contour of a story which, when combined with the web reporter’s authentic voice and others’ reporting on the same or tangential issues, gives us a kind of facial recognition of authenticity. I’d love to see a study on the conformance of that expectation with real facts confirmed objectively.

Now that would be a clinical trial worth its weight in terabytes. Especially because Tom’s got a killer idea for publishing to the people who matter most.