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Thursday, October 11, 2001
When in doubt, blame the Net 
| | Declan reports that The Register was de-panted on the matter of a "secret meeting" of various entertainment industry BigCos that was the subject of a story the site ran on August 8th. A correction yesterday blamed the Net by opening with this line: "The troube with the Internet is that it's too darn fast." Declan smacks that set-up line right out of the park: |
| | No, the trouble has nothing to do with the Internet. It has everything to do with shoddy journalism. Worse yet, the halfhearted retraction still argued, pitifully and implausibly, that the quotes supplied by Anonymous "may" still be accurate. An update to the original article, instead of saying forthrightly we-were-hoaxed, instead allowed only that "our source may not be all he or she claimed to be." Right. |
Enduralia
| | Rory (O'Connor, of Globalvision News Network) was right. We should have known more about their grievances and our vulnerabilities. And if we had, we might have even -- let's say it -- avoided the catastrophe (soon, no doubt, the blame chapter will start, and might fairly encompass the media as well as the intelligence community). |
| | And yet, as I listened to Rory -- I must confess -- much of what he was saying was still boring. |
| | Foreigners always always ask why the American media doesn't have a greater interest in other countries. It's hard to give a polite answer. The impolite answer is that America is the big story. |
| | His point: now that the news is bad, hard news is good, commercially as well as, perhaps, morally. |
| | Ratings are up for news that sucks, he adds. His conclusion: |
| | ...it is possible, I think, although not necessarily desirable, that the shock to our systems has been so great that a true cultural inversion has taken place, and what we want to do now is look into the abyss. |
| | I'm still shocked by what we don't know, and how quick we are to arrive at uninformed opinions. Is our new sworn enemy — terrorism — entirely to blame for September 11? Is there no other context at all? How can we possibly say if we don't know shit. Thsi is roughly the point Arnaud de Borchgrave makes in this piece running currently in Globalvision. De Borchgrave is a decorated news veteran, former CEO of United Press International, author of many books, and (last I checked) very much a right-leaning kinda guy. But most of all he is equally highly informed and nobody's fool. Here's what he says about our favorite TV network news operation: |
| | Prior to Sept. 11, ABC World News Tonight frequently reduced the rest of the world to a single foreign news item, more often than not of marginal importance. As the New York Times' Maureen Dowd put it, "It's somewhat embarrassing that we didn't look outward sooner, that foreign wars got less TV air time than the war against wrinkles." |
| | And this about the government: |
| | For 10 years following the end of the Cold War, three administrations (including two Clinton terms) saw only the global triumph of democratic capitalism. Unbeknownst to the media, globalization became shorthand for American economic and cultural imperialism for countless millions, not only in the developing world, but also in developed European countries, from Seattle two years ago to Genoa last July. Anti-capitalist demonstrations were duly noted, but the dots were never connected to the forces that now lionize bin Laden. |
| | De Borchgrave is now Editor At Large for Globalvision, which I will add to my news links on the right. |
Rockin' to the top
| | Google now finds 540,000 pages containing the word "weblog." That's more than swell and almost the equal of jerk. This very blog, incredibly, is 5th on the list. Number 3 is Onclave's Wannabe (url: wannabegirl.org). Number 2 is GuardianUK's Weblog, which is more a list than a blog, but still very useful. Number 1 is WebScripts' WebLog brand log analysis tool. Which has nothing to do with blogs, but probably used the word first. On that issue they are SOL. Must make searching for the product on the Web a rather steep needle/haystack ratio problem. |
Slashnews
| | ...for all the mainstream media phobias about the dangerous or irresponsible Net, it's seemed increasingly clear in the weeks since the attacks that the Net has become our most serious medium, the only one that offers information consumers breaking news and discussions, alternative points of view. |
| | I think something's missing in there, but you get his point, which fails to enlarge on the obvious. Same goes for most of the responses. This one properly belabors the problem: |
| | I think I'm experiencing Deja Vu, because I coulda [slashdot.org] sworn [slashdot.org] I've [slashdot.org] read [slashdot.org] this [slashdot.org] article [slashdot.org] before [slashdot.org] (Ok, bored with searching, but there is more). |
| | We get it, Jon. The net is evolving to the next stage of media. Can we talk about something else? |
| | But hey: What if the Net isn't a medium? What if, rather than being yet another conveyor belt from Supply to Demand, the Net is a place, a commons, a whole new world? |
| | This is where Phil Wolff and Larry Lessig are going when they look for government help on the matter. Doesn't something other than commercial interests and nature itself need to look after protecting this thing? Left to the BigCos of the old world, this new one looks like yet another medium. Patents pending. |
The last binary date until 2010
| | [Later: Oops. Make that 11/01/01, 11/11/01 and 11/10/01. Shows why I was pretty much a straight-D student at math. Thanks to Cam for the correction by email and Jon Prettyman in a more public location that makes the mistake harder to hide.] |
An X letter day
| | I'm getting serious about moving my Macs up, or over, to OS X. The professional reason is that I'm helping review the OS for Linux Journal. The main personal reason is that I'm ready to jettison its crashy predecessor, which I've been using as my main workbench, easel, drafting table and typewriter since 1984, when the ad agency I co-founded bought one of the first 128k Macs that rolled off the line. |
| | I'll probably share some of what I'm going through in the meantime. Stay tuned. |
Linkmarks
| | That headline just came to me out of the blue while I was pondering how fast many 9-11 links have rotted. Check out the links to visual items at the top of Jason Kottke's page of reports from the scene, which he began to compile one month ago today. Kinda discouraging. |
| | Hence, linkmarks: the opposite of rotting links. Ideally all links should be like landmarks: relatively permanent fixtures. |
Great lesson
Reudian Lip
| | I just wrote "errorist" instead of "terrorist." Guess I qualify. |
| | Anyway, check out Terrorist or Not? If you're not familiar with Hot or Not?, go there first, so the joke works. If it is a joke, which maybe it isn't, which is what Adam (from whom I got the link) wonders. |
Scobleization at work
| | I like what Scoble says about tanks rolling out through Santa Clara (great headline: Tanks for the memories, Osama). Very bloggy reporting, and a good example of self-correcting P2P Journalism at work. |
The Number One Burton
| | Just got off the phone with Craig, who told me Google now considers him the Web's Number Two Craig, beating Senator Larry Craig and Jenny Craig Weight Loss Centers. Amazing. |
| | But that's not what he called about. Rather it was to inform me that his better half, Judith, now has a blog: JudithBurton.com. |
| | This is wonderful. Judith is one of the world's most beautiful human beings, in every way you can apply the adjective. It's easy to forget that when whe was at Novell (where she met and did amazing work with Craig) she also did the flat-out best marketing communications work anyone has ever done, anywhere, ever. |
| | She created the Networld trade show, LAN Times magazine, Novell's perfectly positioned logo and color scheme (red, to position against IBM's blue), and worked with Craig and other folks there to create the NetWare Certified Engineer program, now much copied. Plus a pile of other innovations that established the company's leadership and changed the industry. |
| | I met Craig through Judith, actually. And I met Judith because I greatly admired her work and wanted my company's clients to hook up with her office at Novell to do some fun stuff together. It didn't quite happen, but the friendship that blossomed proved far more fruitful anyway. |
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