Sarah Lacy, Jay Adelson, and Me: Chapter 1 in the Web 2.0 Technology Marketing Industrial Complex

Today, the Digital Media Conference West keynote interview was given by Digg co-founder Jay Adelson. Throughout the day long event, a sense of excitement and anticipation permeated the conference. Yet, I was also struck by more hype. As we move out of the Web 2.0 period and into the next phase of digital media development, powerful, billion-dollar valued social networks (that were babies only five years ago), we are all searching for a new vocabulary.

I was also struck by how lop-sided and impoverished the general conversation was about "users". I was amazing by how much more nuanced and re-oriented the larger "public" conversation about social media must become. Finally, I was sobered by how my very attendance begins a new personal chapter in my dance with the powerful Silicon Valley technology marketing industrial complex. The power and limitations of our current social media communication tools was confirmed both in the final panel and in a Twitter "exchange" Wednesday between Jay Adelson, Saray Lacy and myself.

In the closing panel, Elizabeth Churchill, Principal Research Scientist, Yahoo! Research, emphasized a powerful, critical insight. When journalists such as Lacy or panel moderator, Michael Terpin, Founder of SocialRadius or entrepreneurs like Adelson talk about users, they are, in fact, talking about human beings. Like Doc Searls important reminder to Jeremiah Owyang here, when an individual's technological "identity" is reduced to either users or customers, not humans nor citizens, a very specific ideological narrative occurs with real consequences.

Over the last decade, as Digg exploded, as journalists like Lacy covered the hype, the bubble-bursting and now re-forming, a dominant framework developed that cemented a "user"-generated-content in a "web 2.0" narrative. The title of Lacy's most recent book - "Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0" - perfectly captures this narrative.

I have not read the book and have no intention to do so (at least until I end my job search, but I look forward to it). I am solely interested -- as far as this post and today's tweets -- in Sarah Lacy as a "public brand personality." My focus lies in illuminating the existence a Technology Marketing Industrial Complex. This complex, is fluid, over-networked, powerful, full of venture capitalists, entrepenuers, conference-creating marketeers, technology analysts/bloggers/"journalists", start-ups and of course, "users."

I am interested in TechCrunch's role as a prime node in this complex and how companies like Digg or Yelp are beneficiaries of this specific "Web 2.0" narrative and logic. I am most interested in how the Digital Media Conference, my attendance, and today's dominant conversations demonstrated key fissures and missing elements in how we see "social media" technologies.

Real human beings become users; clusters of consumers using technology tools become "online communities." Some sites are termed social networks, others social media. This is the historical record and like all histories, it represents a specific logic.

Terpin asked Churchill and the panel: when will mobile become "social"? His question was loaded with multiple assumptions. Churchill corrected him: mobile phones have always been inherently social; Terpin was really asking: how will the "industry" monetize users' mobile phone experience? Churchill reminded him that mobile, since its inception, has been an inherently social, intimate communication channel: human beings talking, listening and now texting their close personal relationships.

Earlier, in the morning's keynote interview, Adelson referenced Lacy's book as an aside; he reiterated that he neither hated the VC community, nor did he love VC community (which he also re-stated to me via Twitter). His was a cursory reference; my picking up on Adelson's comment could never cover all the "facts" and would "expose" me to Lacy and Adelson's Twitter replies. But my set of "facts," my passionate belief about the toxic bubble that results from the Technology Marketing Industrial Complex could not be addressed via Twitter. Twitter has created an addictive, adolescent communication experience whose basic architecture prioritizes catchy call-outs and reactive exchanges over more nuanced, quiet, longer form dialogue. Of course, this technology benefits Lacy and Adelson's positions: who both are really cool, popular twittees with thousands of "followers."

My goal was to show how Lacy, and the larger technology marketing industrial complex that is TechCrunch and its TechCrunch50, that is the Digital Media West confernces, have created a very real "communication bubble." On one hand, figures such as Lacy, Adelson, and Terpin interact in "networked" kind-of public digital forums like Twitter. They "share" or "tweet" their opinions on whatever issue suits their fancy. They speak at semi-public, exclusive, expensive industry conferences. They see human beings as users; they have adopted a language of progress traveling from the first pre-9/11 bubble, through the "Web. 2.0" promised land, and are now searching for the proper buzz phrase. Luckily, the third phase of advanced technological, social media tools is an open book.

Lacy recognizes that Silicon Valley exhibits a bubble mentality. At the end of TechCrunch50, she wrote a post, "Memo to Start-ups: You’re Supposed to Be Changing the World, Remember?" (link). Her memo captures a noble sentiment: a call for Silicon Valley to change the world. But it is missing the critical ingredients: humility, a quiet listening skill and a detailed plan of action, created not for PR or promotion purposes, but because such a plan is inherently worthy.

Journalists and citizens, not users, must demand that issues of the public square, that matters of profound civic importance be incorporated into the narrative of Silicon Valley's business culture. This conversation should proceed not with a "go-change-the-world" cheer, but with a quieter, listening to what American society needs. Then, Lacy and Michael Arrington can cheer their next round of start-ups through action, through an increased number of innovative, public good start-ups. It is great that CitySource was an exception to entrepreneurial herd mentality at TechCrunch50, but what exactly are Arrington, Lacy and the TechCrunch CEO, Heather Harde, doing - beside rhetorical jeremiahs - to encourage a different line-up next year?

A final thought: another theme emerged throughout the day at Digital Media Conference West: the 90/10 rule. This rule alludes to how 10% of a site's "users" create the content which the other 90% passively view. The question we all need to ask ourselves is simple and profound: do these powerful technological tools have any chance of empowering our public square and restoring our faith as citizens willing to debate and create consensus around a common good (using social networks to elect a party's leader in a polarized, toxic electorate does not count)?

Will these tools continue to reduce our common human identity from individuals to technological users? Will our children grow up with tools that tap into their deepest human needs -- to be cared for, to grow up in secure, healthy, democratic societies, to live and play in their bodies? Or, will their most profound human needs be channeled into networks under-written by marketeers? Can we as the digital creative community not limit ourselves to either/or's, but with a new degree of humility move forward creating new networks that engage us in way not yet imagined?

Behind Google and Silicon Valley's Embrace of an Ecological "Cloud"/"Wave" Language: A Social Justice and [Real] Knowledge Ecology #FAIL

Over the last twenty-five years, the Silicon Valley venture capital community poured billions of dollars into thousands of start-ups and achieved their greatest success in a then little, now multi-billion dollar company called Google. As the "Web 2.0" period fades, we are entering a new period some termed the "social graph." But a more critical analysis uncovers a real, under-reported fissure between two powerful clusters of forces. On one side rests Google's use of open-source business practices and Silicon Valley's problematic larger appropriation of a ecological language ( "cloud" computing or the Google "wave"). In contrast, there exists a dynamic, vibrant social movements that have been grouped together as the "Knowledge Ecology" movement. These movement promote real access to knowledge by advocating for structural changes on a global level.

Right in the middle of this fissure exists the Silicon Valley Technology Marketing Industrial complex: an "enterprise" responsible for the very "Web 2.0" term (thanks a lot Tim O'Reilly), who are now searching for the new buzzword and #FAIL to see the profound societal cost of their "journalistic" failure, the hermetically sealed, quasi-adolescent world of mucho friends, followers, & traveling "Mashabling," "TechCrunching" festivals, urr, conferences. The most substantive costs and greatest loss: as the "free press" has failed to inform the general public and streghten the body politic, our most intimate, spiritual impulses and bodily orifices -- our ears, breath, sexual organs; our desire for connection, community and play -- have all been optimized for commercial purposes. Just observe people walk out of the movies and count the 10% who don't immediately reach for the cell; or listen to sports talk radio, read Los Angeles Times sports section and see how male sexual, reproductive impulses have been optimized for commercial "performance" drugs and, of course, the wonderful plastic surgery enterprise where women can now tighten their vagina along with the Silicone added to their breasts as toxic female celebrities starve themselves to bare-boned ghouls.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, a democracy depends on its press to provide real news and the Silicon Valley Technology Marketing Industrial complex has been complicit in a much larger #fail: a real, engaged, informative, substantive discussion of material technological, political and real ecological issues with a specific goal: to revitalize our public square and common good, not sell tickets to the next traveling circus, urrr, technology conference.

I discovered the existence of these profound, global human right social movements while studying for my Masters in Communication Management, focused on "online communities." My life changed when I stumbled into the inaugural talk by Cory Doctorow, who was a visiting professor at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy and the first US-Canada Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in 2006-2007 school-year (link). [Editor's note: The audio at the 28 minute and 48 minute mark focus on the basic, core tension between the "open-source" business models and the "public commons," knowledge ecology human rights projects.]

I was also fortunate to participate in the MacArthur Foundation-Funded "Do-It-Yourself" Speaker Series, led by Mimi Ito and Howard Rheingold. This speaker series reinforced, highighted and reached consensus on the need for some non-governmental organization to protect the interests digital media creators (similar to how the organization Knowledge Ecology International had helped promote the Access to Knowledge and Knowledge Ecology human rights projects).

On one side of the divide, activists around the world are struggling to reform intellectual property laws that restrict patients in Thailand or Africa from receiving vaccines. Activists are challenging - even as the media fails to cover - the US government's bullying use of bi-lateral trade agreements to force and protect our one-side Intellectual Property regimes and the corporate titans who depends on such measures. In the United States, various activist projects such as net neutrality, the "Free Culture" student movement and the "Creative Commons" licensing project have emerged, all in response to specific corporation actions. These include respectively the on-going ATT-led effort to add toll-gates and charges to the flow of content via the Internet, to the excessive, abusive use of DMCA take-down clauses by Diebold to chill/silence activists and the mid-1990s, Hollywood-led campaign to shut down the World Wide Web employing both the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown clauses and litigation, which reached a zenith in Larry Lessig's Supreme Court defeat in the Eldred v. Ashcroft.

Around the globe, activists are creating more imaginative projects. Musicians in Brazil are imagining new business models that embrace peer-peer sharing and harness what is most creative, dynamic and imaginative in hacking closed technological systems. Hackers in Africa are re-working their cell phone to empower and create their own communication networks.

In the middle, NOT NEUTRAL, but extraordinarily powerful, there exists our Silicon Valley bubble mentality and the accompanying Technology Marketing Industrial Complex. Here, Google strives to have it both ways: offers the public powerful new "free," open-source tools like g-mail, the Wave or whatever form of cloud computing new gadget comes down the road. But on the down-lo, Google must ignore how their search algorithms and licensing agreements drafted by corporate lawyers behind closed doors with music, television, film, advertising or news corporations directly conflict with the most transformative social justice elements of the Knowledge Ecology movement. They must close their ears, maybe acknowledge, but then move forward and ignore warning about the real privacy risks of "cloud" computing.

Google pursues an ideological world-view where knowledge is free. But the big qualification is that it's free AND OPTIMIZABLE. In the classical, human, truly "ecological" view, information becomes the building block for knowledge, a result and a gift of the hard work and trust found between student and teacher. But in our perverted contemporary ethos, that most basic, unique, precious human gift - knowledge and wisdom - is under-valued and reduced to data and information for users and technologies to optimize.

Our most precious ecological language is being corrupted right between our eyes and ears. We are all listening, hearing the slow, steady, powerful technological wheels turning. But what will happen to our spirits, our need to have quiet, to have protected public and private intimate spaces, where we can listen, grow, learn and hope to access real knowledge?

[Update] On Friday, October 31st, NPR aired a piece covering Google's "win" over Microsoft, stating:

L.A. will spend more than $7 million to switch to Gmail, making it the first city in the country to convert its entire e-mail system to Google software. The District of Columbia uses Gmail on a limited basis. But being a pioneer can be nerve-racking.

Computing In The 'Cloud'

Bernard Parks is an L.A. City Council member. He voted to approve the Google contract, but he's nervous. "There's no place you can go in the world and say, 'Let me look at it,' " he said.

Parks is talking about the way e-mails will be stored in the new system. The move means the city will start to store public data on remote servers instead of internal ones. This is called "cloud computing." It represents a new trend in data storage, and it's at the center of Google's business strategy. The company has plans to create a government cloud[my emphasis] consisting of remote servers securely located throughout the U.S. that would store public data.

Later on, David Girouard, president of Google's Enterprise division,

insists the data will be safe. 'Their data is their data, and not ours...We have no rights to distribute that data or data-mine it or use it in any other way other than to provide the designated service to the City of Los Angeles."

So Google is now in the meterological, quasi-ecological-spiritual business of creating clouds? How exactly does Mr. Girouard's group hope to achieve this "government cloud"?

What a failure by our technology and mainstream press to cover what a true "knowledge ecology" is and how myopic and impoverished our civic spirits have become.

The LAX's David Sarno: Lost in the Clouds

This is a story of two very large companies going head to head in a battle for the future of the heart and soul of the technology world," said David B. Yoffie, a dean and professor of business strategy at the Harvard Business School. "If Google wins, the way that we look at our day-to-day computing will be 100% focused on the CLOUD.(Ed. note: my emphasis - Link to article)

I attended the presentation Google made way up in the "clouds." As usual, The Los Angeles Times failed to provide the full, human rights perspective.

Two summers ago, I had an amazing internship with LA Times Interactive on the fifth floor. Andrew Nystrom, David Sarno, Dan Gaines, Sean Gallagher (then I believe a managing editor, now just promoted to replace Meredith Artley), the two coolest bosses ever, Eric Ulken and Bettie Rinehart, not to mention amazingly cool ladies and gents, with Ms. Lindsay Barnett. My only regret is never having the chance to work with Mr. 1 & Only Tony Pierce.

Even while at The Times, I was a bit shocked by how little attention was paid to the most interesting social movements of our time, the Access to Knowledge and Knowledge Ecology International movements to open up flows of capital, information, knowledge, and finance through information networks [Ed note: the institute, Knowledge Ecology International is the best starting points for resources/information].

The consequences of such a myopic vision are severe:

Memo to David Sarno: Naming is a political act. I guess that they no longer teach this, but Google doesn't own "the clouds." To not question the very syntax and vocabulary created by the Silicon Valley echo-bubble chamber is yet another #fail.

The uncritical use of this vocabulary masks a tacit acceptance of the bull-shit spin wrought by Microsoft, Google and the whole Silicon Valley industrial marketing complex (remember folks, they created the "Web 2.0" gaga to get people to spend money again).

Too bad this high holiday season, tech. journalists can't see changes in media reaching back 5770 years, not the only 20 or so that Bay Area myopics focus on.

[Kol Nidre, My Grandpa Abe and The Fires Burning in Iran, Paki/Afgan, The Palisade's Air & Hollywood's Magical Spirit]

Lewis Haidt remembers his grandpa,
Abe Haidt

This High Holiday season, I find myself reflecting on the life of Abraham Haidt, my paternal grandfather. Abe was born in 1917 and grew up in East Flatbush, Brooklyn.

He was the second child to my great-grandfather, Samuel Haidt, a man who had three wives and four children. Abe’s mother, Rose, (Samuel’s second wife) died in the flu epidemic of 1918. Samuel soon married Rose’s sister, Rebecca Davidson. Samuel’s last two kids - my great-aunt Frances and great-uncle Harold (the baby) Haidt - were born.

It was the height of the Depression.

After Samuel’s death in 1936, Abe helped the family, dropped out of school and found a job. His siblings were able to finish high school and go on to college. My grandfather joined the Army. When World War II began, he re-enlisted and served in Europe. He received the Bronze Star (Ed. Note: 5313 stars awarded to division for WWII service) and France’s Croix de Guerre medal.

In my 20s, as an aspiring independent producer, my focus was on my Great Aunt’s glamour, her Chelsea penthouse and larger-than-life personality. I wish that my focus had expanded; that my grandpa and I had time to share stories, just to listen more to each other. I was too young, too seduced by my own magical thinking, too myopic to give him the psychic due credit, far too imbalanced in my attention and focus.

This quiet gentleman in front of me was ignored.

But now he has received some long over-due recognition and my gratitude, respect and love.

(re-published from Ikar 5770 Yizkor Book (Memorial testimony for deceased family and friends - 250 word limit. Title added.)

Since I'm a Navy Baby
Down w/ these badass Navy Sailors. Fandom at its best. That's what you get born @ Bethesda Naval Hospital. Go NAVY!

Between Kate Puzey and ACTA: The Middle Road for You and I

Two recent posts on BoingBoing are worthy of publicizing and demonstrate the need for more sophisticated and nuanced analysis about so-called "social media" and "social change". They also demonstrate a sad, yet in no way surprising, set of contrasts: two examples of American power, one with a graceful open spirit and the other with a closed, myopic one. Xeni Jardin memorializes the incredible life of Kate Puzey, a murdered Peace Corp activist in Benin, who also kept a blog and photo gallery of her experiences (link). The other by Cory Doctorow documents the ludicrous The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and the corporate supporters behind this super-secret copyright treaty, which the Obama administration has claimed is a matter of "national security."

In the middle are the rest of us, who must decide how we want to impact the world, both using social media tools, but also recognizing the hype, the herd mentality, the obvious idea that social changes requires more than becoming a "fan" or some forms of online action. In the middle are the rest of us, who must decide if the free flow of information is to be controlled by corporate lawyers, some of whose brands are both supporting ACTA and employing the very social media gurus ironically reveling as we write at the geek-fest known as South by Southwest Interactive. Or, will we will embrace both these new forms of marketing, while also ensuring that those is distant lands, who in the past we would never have known of, will also have the same basic access to knowledge, information, and education as the rest of us? Will we finally move beyond the web 2.0, 3.0, yah, yah-hype and embrace the opportunity of more fundamental change?

As we move forward in this conversation, we should be careful not to set up simplistic us/them divisions or fall back on the tired cliches of corporations=corruption. The massive gap between these poles --- let's not simplify the challenge as an noble individual versus evil corporation, as there's a whole network of institutions behind Puzey's Peace Corp mission and there are so people within the corporate world who support innovation and change --- represents the awesome, complex challenge facing all of us. Each of us must negotiate this middle space.

We need more subtle forms of conversation and listening, ones with substance worthy of examining complex issues of networks, communication, individuals, institutions and power. We need new tools and institutions, social media and not, that truly empower global citizens (I'm curious if any of my LA social media peeps @ SXSW have heard of anything new along these lines?).

I'll be expanding more on this in the coming weeks, but I'd love to hear your initial thoughts.

But now it's time to get back to the job search.

Los Angeles Interactive Media Spotlight: Praise the Lord, Tracy, Dean and Jesus (TDJ) Have Come To Save Los Angeles

Tuesday night at the Comedy Central stage, Tracy, Dean and Jesus rolled into town, praise the lord, blessed be he. "Hailing from the Waldorph Christian Parish in Goshen, Ohio, [these warriors] are currently on a mission trip to turn blue states red, starting in the belly of the beast, Los Angeles. Join us for an evening of revival, preaching, the Lord's music, the destruction of Power-couples, and the devil."

Any sane individual who's has studied the powerful ways of the Hollywood movie/myth-making machine will give thanks that Tracy has arrived on our far, Western shores. Composed of Andre Hyland playing the youth minister and rock savior with Mike Mayfield and Paul Erling Oyen as supporting church members, the show opened with an inspiring travel video. Tracy journeyed to Monroe, OH, home of the largest Jesus statue in this Great Land at Solid Rock Mission and gave thanks.

The show then proceeded with Tracy leading the revival, calling up a blasphemous, female sinner - a self-declared PERVERT. But he saved her, forcing the devil out of her belly. Tracy brought the word of the lord to Hollywood and is on a mission. Hollywood has spread its images of glamour, celebrity, sex, hip-hop and more sex and violence around the world. The Hollywood power is immense; the seductive flame of Hollywood dreams still holds great power and Tracy is ready to challenge Hollywood's corruption, head-on

Storming around the room, Tracy railed against the devil, the Hollywood corruption that permeated the Comedy Central space. For a back-drop, this mission -- this desire to bring the Lord to Hollywood -- faces many obstacles. Hollywood is stubborn, determined to protect its own foundation in the face of disruption, whether that be preachers from Ohio or technologies from the World Wide Web. There examples of Hollywood's determination, of the "biz's" awesome power are:

• One, the studio's lobby, the MPAA, wants to break into the home of God-fearing, American Christians and take control of your home movie/television theater.
• Second, they're are attempting to limit Christian-loving European's ability to harness technology in the Lord's full majesty
• Three, their ideological myopia prevents studios from unleashing the glory of technology in its greatest splendor, ultimately enriching themselves and us. Oh, how did our lord love Napster and the musical bounty it unleashed!).

The climax is always the destruction of the card-board devil. This time, Tracy destroyed the devil in its Hollyweird incarnation: the evil-seed of Hollywood power-couples Bradgelina and TomKat.

Andre Hyland is creating true interactive media, exploiting "social media" in all its glory. TDJ has their own website; Hyland has created another persona, "his alter ego Tim Hutchins, a ponytailed douche with yogic aspirations in perpetual confab with his cell-phone headset. Cameras hidden, Hyland yammers improvised quips to no one, shushing passersby or asking for their help with one of Hutchins' ridiculous quests (a blind date, for instance). He invariably loses his New Age cool, screams and dunks his phone into the concrete. (link). Hyland and friends have their GooTube channel, BlondChili (in honor of Cincinnati, OH's Skyline Chili). Hyland exhibits a true anarchic, trickster-tricky spirit, exploiting the web in its most creative, remix-able ways. He challenges our sense of decorum in public, and theatrical, spaces.

God bless him.

PS: Their next show is September 15th at El Cid