Dana Blankenhorn

The Real Obama Message

44.

That is Barack Obama's current age. He was born in 1962.

That means none of the 1960s trips that have defined the last decades affect him. By the time Barack Obama was 13 the Vietnam War was over. Ronald Reagan was shot when he was 19. All the arguments about the Nixon Thesis -- which are arguments about the 1960s -- can go right over his head, and everyone knows it.

Obama is the first post-baby boom politician to reach a stage in his life where he might run for President. Americans are hungry for this moment. We are tired of the 1960s. But more important, we know, instinctively, that the Nixon Thesis has passed its sell-by date. The Nixon Thesis of Conflict is irrelevant to our current problems. It doesn't ask the right questions, let alone come up with any answers.

We're looking for something new, anything new, and Barack Obama represents that.

It doesn't matter much what he says. He sounds (in many ways) like Bill Clnton, triangulating between extremes, defining a middle ground. And critics are right. This means he hasn't made hard choices.

But the same can be said for tens of millions of voters his age and younger, men and women who have watched politics being defined by events that don't concern them for two decades.

The trips and dramas of baby boomers -- what we did in the war and what we did in the war against the war -- don't matter any more. In point of fact, they don't matter to most baby boomers. I was born in 1955, at the height of the baby boom, and Woodstock happened when I was 14. I had a draft number of 55 in 1973, and no one was called. I watched the decade on TV, but it wasn't really my struggle.

Rice Science Friday: The Zeolite Database

Every week, it seems, I'm finding some new piece of brilliance from the chemistry department at Rice University, my alma mater.

This week is no exception.

Michael Deem (right) and his crew at the biochemistry department are using distributed computing technology to build an enormous database of zeolite designs.

Zeolites are porous minerals with hundreds of industrial uses. They're used as catalysts in everything from gasoline to detergent to aquarium filters.

There are about 50 naturally-occurring zeolites, and over the years scientists have created another 180.

Zeem's database of zeolite designs has...3.4 million. And it's growing.

This Week's Clue: Final Five: Cycles of American Politics

The e-mail version of A-Clue.com ends next week, and I am closing it out with five essays featuring the main topics of this 10 year endeavor.

A-Clue.Com will continue, here, at this blog, with weekly essays available via e-mail or RSS feed.

Enjoy.

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As I wrapped up my work on Always-On, it was clear to me that politics would determine whether the work could proceed. And the politics didn't look good.

I have covered the intersection of the Internet and politics since 1996, and by early 2003 I became intrigued with the work being done in Burlington, Vermont by supporters of Howard Dean. I went there in June, with my lovely bride of some decades, and some copies of my Moore's Law book. I warned them that they would soon become a major tourist attraction. I was right.

But events afterward got away from my power to predict. The Scream symbolized a larger problem with the Dean campaign structure. They were unable to scale the intimacy found by early users of their blog. Rather than upgrading the technology they sent a huge crowd of supporters into Iowa, a state that insists on intimacy, and their campaign was treated as an invasion by the locals.

Worse I saw the whole campaign being portrayed on TV as though it were 1968 or 1970. What was done then by various candidates was of no less importance to the media than what was going on in Iraq. Everything was seen through the prism of the earlier time.

This was not what should have happened, I thought. The year 2004 was 36 years removed from 1968, and going back another 36 years brought us to the rise of FDR and the New Deal. I noticed that another 36 years back brought us to the rise of Populism, and another 36 again brought the Civil War into focus.

 

McCain vs. The Blogs

Back in April, my first entry in The 1966 Game was to equate Hubert Humphrey, the eventual 1968 Democratic nominee, to Republican Sen. John McCain.

Since it was my first entry, and I mainly wanted to lay out ground rules, I didn't spend as much time as I should have explaining my reasoning, and instead moved on to the question of Richard Nixon.

My point, back then, was that McCain is the "designated successor" to George W. Bush, the man charged with extending the Nixon-Reagan-Bush Thesis of Conflict even beyond its 40 year limit, and a man destined to fail.

I think the fact McCain has now offered a bill to kill blogs (in the name of protecting us from child predators of course) is just another proof. It came just a week after Newt Gingrich, supposedly a rival for Republican affections in 2008, called for an Internet Sedition Law (to protect us from terrorists, of course). (For those who wish to read the "legislation," here's a PDF version.)

This is what inevitably happens when a Thesis expires, and it always occurs after the Thesis is first rejected in a Congressional election. Its proponents decide to take it to extremes. In the 1960s we had hippies and Black Panthers, LSD and anti-war violence. Today we have fascism in all its forms -- religious, cultural, and now literal.

How Much Further Can Apple Go?

The lovely bride and I were at the Apple Store at Lenox Mall recently, with our teenage son, and the place was (as usual) mobbed.

It's clear this has been the Apple decade. Much as the 1980s belonged to Microsoft, and the 1990s to Web start-ups (Netscape, Yahoo, etc. etc. etc.). Apple defines the landscape. Which is interesting, given that Steve Jobs had, until this decade, been considered a rank failure next to the Great Mr. Gates.

Which goes to show you that there are times for strategies. Apple's has always been a hyper-proprietary strategy. This was a weakness in the 20th century, because it kept Jobs from winning the computing market share his software deserved.

Today, however, nearly the entire value-add of hardware consists of software. The stars have aligned in Jobs' direction. DRMs, Chinese mass production, the primacy of design, computing as consumer electronics. This is Apple's time.

Which leads everyone asking, for how long, and how far can it go?

Freedom as an Obligation

The idea that freedom carries obligations with it is the most universally accepted yet universally disputed point one can make.

Freedom isn't free. That's what all the conservative bumper stickers say. Yet what they mean by that is quite different from what I think. They mean freedom carries with it an obligation to fight, on behalf of the nation, however the government defines the national interest, and however that government may be constituted.

In the world of open source, which I cover at ZDNet, there is another way of looking at this question, as put to us by Richard Stallman (above). You are given something, free. You can use it, you can see it, you can change it, you can add to it. But in return you have an obligation to give your changes back to the community, in the same way the original software was given to you.

The whole idea of open source as a business movement is in fact a reaction against Stallman, and this sense that freedom carries obligations.  Stallman calls his movement FOSS -- Free and Open Source Software.

Licenses other than the GPL, however they differ in their details, are simply a way to fudge this obligation in some way, in the interests of profit. You don't have to share, or you have to give us credit, or your improvements belong to me, or you can only share if it's going to certain people. Changing the obligation of freedom in the name of someone else.

One of the big business trends of 2006, by the way, is that GPL licensing grew among open source businesses, while licensing under other terms declined. Most notably, just recently, Sun decided it would make Java open source, under the GPL.

The Popular Will Comes Before the Leaders

One of the great secrets of democracy is that its leaders generally follow the people.

Each generational change in our history has been preceded by a great popular movement, and the first Presidents of the new thesis actually leaned against that movement in winning election.

1. Abraham Lincoln was not a radical Republican, not an abolitionist.
2. Populism rose as a separate party that could win elections in 1894, two years before it was embraced by the Democratic Party of William Jennings Bryan.
3. Franklin Roosevelt was elected as an antidote to radicals on the left and right who threatened to tear down the system in the Depression.
4. Richard Nixon was a compromise choice in a party enamored of Ronald Reagan.

All these popular movements eventually rose to power, but all were strenuously resisted by the Washington media and the Washington establishment, every step of the way.

So it is today. A lot of "netroots" bloggers express constant consternation over this, but it's a very typical historical pattern. The pattern is the proof these thinkers are on the right track. A Thesis in its last days is believed by almost everyone, is treated as inviolate, even though it has become useless, refusing to even see the coming crisis, let alone a potential solution.

The focus on that problem, and the solution, always comes from outside.  And outsiders  at a time of crisis  often see things far more clearly than anyone in Washington possibly can. 

Fight Tyranny At Home

In his valedictory address as UN Secretary-General, at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, press reports state Kofi Annan criticized the Bush Administration.

But what did he say, specifically? Here are what I consider the key paragrahs:

In short, human rights and the rule of law are vital to global security and prosperity. As Truman said, "We must, once and for all, prove by our acts conclusively that Right Has Might."

That is why this country has historically been in the vanguard of the global human rights movement. But that lead can only be maintained if America remains true to its principles, including in the struggle against terrorism.

When it appears to abandon its own ideals and objectives, its friends abroad are naturally troubled and confused.   

And states need to play by the rules towards each other, as well as towards their own citizens. That can sometimes be inconvenient, but ultimately what matters is not convenience. It is doing the right thing.

What he was saying, quite directly, is that the United States under this Administration is betraying its ideals, betraying its own Constitution and laws, becoming, potentially, the Great Satan its enemies call us.

These are not just words. This was not just an academic exercise. This hits very, very close to home.

A New Project

Over the weekend I took on a new job, and a new blog.

Its name is the A-Tech Review. The aim of A-Tech Review is to become a virtual "trade paper" for what is variously called assistive technology, adaptive technology and accessibility technology. That means everything from the awkward-looking "mouse" some use when they have carpal-tunnel syndrome, to screens and interfaces that help the visually-impaired, to entire systems enabling quadriplegics to access a page like this. And everything in between. That's the beat.

 

The boss is Martin K. Bayne (above). He was known as "Mr. Long Term Care" back in the 1990s.  He was a powerful advocate for the needs of people who require home nursing care, or any form of long term care, in order to live productive lives.

But his own disease process has moved on. Some time ago he was forced to move into a nursing home. Most of the 140 or so folks with him there are a generation older than he is. But they all share the pain, and indignity, associated with terminal illness.

Know this. Life is a terminal illness. No matter how well you may feel now, you are just a potential moment away -- a gun shot, a diagnosis, a traffic incident -- from being in Martin's position. And (God willing) we're all heading there, in our own time. Time wounds all heals. Aging is not for the faint-hearted.

I also have a personal dog in this hunt.

Our Biggest Mistake

A true Crisis is so enormous in the psychological landscape of the nation that intellectuals frequently make the mistake of analyzing the next crisis solely in terms of the one that came before.

It's especially easy to do this time around because Iraq is so much like Vietnam. It's an attempt to “win” a land war in Asia where there is no effective opposition from those Atrios lovingly calls “dirty fucking hippies.” And it has failed.

So we have historians like Rick Perlstein (left) spending their time going over the last crisis period, from 1965-72, thinking they can find the lessons that will keep things from going wrong this time. What he may find is short-term fame and glory.

That's what Richard Hofstadter (right) found doing much the same thing in the run-up to that very crisis.

I have tackled Hofstadter before here. Books like The Age of Reform were seen as ground-breaking when I was a child, and were still required reading for me in college. But what gave Hofstadter his apparent depth was the fact that the previous two crises were economic in nature.

The 1896 crisis which gave us Populism and Rrogressivism, and the 1932 crisis that gave us the New Deal, both involved economic questions like labor's relationship with capital, and business' relationship with government. They resulted in a host of reforms the Bush Administration has (ironically) spent much of its domestic energy fighting to undo – economic regulation, antitrust, labor law, a progressive income tax. His is truly a bridge to the 19^th century.

And to nowhere. Because the next crisis is not the last crisis any more than the last crisis was the one before. At the end of Hofstadter's life he became completely absorbed in the crisis before him, writing The Paranoid Style in American Politics, which endorsed the coming Nixon Thesis of Conflict. The result of his own vision, in other words, was to only see the next hill.