Dana Blankenhorn

Take What You Can Get

The President seems to frustrate his supporters at every turn.

• Rather than confront the military over its misadventures, he tries a Petreaus plan in Afghanistan. 
• Rather than confront Wall Street over its failures he appoints bank regulators whose experience includes the season of crime. 
• Rather than confront the Bush Torture Regime he seems to dither, refusing to endorse either a special prosecutor or a "truth commission," giving the former Vice President and the Republicans every opportunity to defend what they did in public. 

This is just as true regarding The War Against Oil as anything else. "Mr. Obama’s “new” energy policy is more of the same old pandering," writes Bob Gordon of The Auto Channel. He doesn't call us to a war against oil. He just negotiates higher mileage standards. 

Of course as frustrated as liberals are conservatives are, squared. They're mad as hell, but to them it feels like they're raging against the wind. He borrows trillions, literally trillions, he remakes the economy and all the rules, yet he remains enormously popular. It drives them crazy, and we can only pray the Secret Service can do its job.

But there is something else going on. It's something the media is only barely conscious of, so intent are they on triangulating him, on trying to pin him down. 

The War Against Oil is a War for the Economy

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Think of this as Volume 12, Number 20 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Want to get the economy out of the ditch? 

Make something. Make something new, something valuable, something real, something with a ready market. 

Despite what critics felt there was something real about the Internet, which defined the 1990s. The Internet accelerates the transfer of knowledge, and of any knowledge-based value store. It's the most powerful economic accelerant since the creation of the telegraph.

By contrast there was nothing ever real about the economic drivers of this decade, financial services and homes. Not that homes aren't real. But the value of a home has nothing to do with its cost or even its location. It is a measure of the economic value left out there to buy homes. A home sucks money, it only creates money for those who build, assuming someone buys. Thus homes became a natural sinkhole for the confederate money of this decade, soaking up as much as the banksters could create from thin air.

Now that the economy has stopped falling this question becomes vital. On what will we base the next boom? 

The answer is obvious. Energy. 

The Technology on Which Space Depends

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Think of this as Volume 12, Number 16of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Why have so few of us reached space? Why is even the International Space Station a fraction of the size most sci-fi writers predicted a half century ago?

Cost. Specifically the energy cost of getting out of Earth's gravity well.

It's not that people have lost interest. When a company called Solaren announced a deal to install solar panels in space and sell the resulting power to PG&E early this week, so many people rushed to the rail that Solaren's site quickly exceeded its bandwidth limit and was taken down. 

The deal is pie-in-the-sky. It was the utility's presence in the story that made it newsworthy, but in fact that company risked nothing. If Solaren gets its system working PG&E will buy its power. If.

Tweet (cha-ching)

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Think of this as Volume 12, Number 13 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Let's return to the original beat of this newsletter and talk about Twitter.

Twitter is a bridge between the Web that was and the mobile Web that will be. It is simply SMS message which is visible on the Web and can be broadcast as a channel. My Twitter feed is a channel. Your Twitter feed is a channel.

What makes it a big deal is mobility. People Tweet from what we used to call their phones. But with more and more people carrying iPhones and other devices with keyboard-like functionality, it means you can broadcast your thoughts from literally anywhere. This thrills some people, and it scares other people. It also makes fools of lots and lots of people.

When I say Twitter is a bridge from the Web that was, I also mean that it's a product of Google sensibility -- build it first and monetize it later. SMS is the cheapest form of cellular messaging, and was a vital form of communication for years before Twitter arrived. But it is not cost-free.

So there are lots of possible revenue streams for Twitter. Twitter, in fact, provides an enormous revenue stream for the nation's cellular duopoly. It is to their credit that they haven't tried to scarf up more, that they have let well enough alone. That's an important industry turning point. They have made more money with regular SMS revenues to Twitter than they would have by instantly defining it a premium service.

The Google-like scaling success of Twitter has a lot of people who should be worrying about other things worrying about finding Twitter a business model. The ExecTweets idea has already been panned, but my kids came up with one today without even knowing they were doing it.

Contests.

The Influence Game

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Think of this as Volume 12, Number 6 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Since the birth of the Republic media and politics have been one.

When the President quoted Washington at his Inauguration, he was in fact quoting pamphleteer Thomas Paine, whose Common Sense and The Crisis made him the Springsteen of that time:

"America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words; with hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come; let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations."

The American media went from pamphlets to penny papers, from books to urban newspapers, from radio to TV, and politicians always followed. The wisest cultivated the new media, the most devious also excoriated the old.

We are again in the midst of such a media transformation. We are moving from an age dominated by TV (well, cable) to one dominated by the Internet. This has many implications. Depth over drama, transparency over control, an end to the concept of journalists as gatekeepers to one in which we're enablers, using links to empower our work rather than acting-out.

And so we come again to the threat of newspapers to go out of business, unless they're given financial control over the Internets.

Decoupling the Grid in The War Against Oil

Very slowly the U.S. electrical grid is breaking up, and that move will accelerate over the next few years.

How far it goes depends on the utilities, and whether policymakers are willing to force them into the right choices.

You can see the break-up proceeding on an afternoon drive. What started with phones is now extending to speed measurement sensors installed in school zones, and (as I understand) in other areas as well. Waymarketing shows off a large collection of such devices -- tsunami warning sirens, weather stations, ticket dispensers and pay boxes, even trash cans (with compactors).

These can quickly be installed where the grid does not go, and the traffic signs don't go out when the grid goes down.

Watches and other battery-powered devices are likewise going off the grid, in this case the battery replacement grid. Small solar cells on the face of such products provide enough power to run most such devices. I recall having a solar-powered calculator back in the 1990s, so their proliferation is as much a function as reducing the energy drain of the device as increasing the capability of the cell. Expect cell phones to go next.

But the real breakthroughs are yet to come, and are being driven by companies like IBM.

Replacing the Sports Page

What is the most heavily subsidized business in America today?

Sports.

What other business routinely blackmails cities, counties and states into building billion-dollar palaces for its use, then giving these over to billionaires, complete with all the revenue, and no accountability?

What other business can control its own press coverage to the extent sports does?

"Any rebroadcast, reproduction or other use of this game without the express written consent of Major League Baseball is prohibited."

Imagine if Rod Blagoyevich could have enforced something like that!

Yet the biggest subsidy for the sports industry does not come from government, but from journalism.

Every newspaper sports page is a commercial for the teams it covers. Reporters don't actually pay to cover games, the way TV and cable outlets pay to broadcast games, but they are more important than either. Because, as Mark Cuban admitted at his blog this week, they bring in the casual fan.

With local print journalism about to go extinct the industry is losing its connection to the casual fan, who brings with him (or her) an acceptance of all the other subsidies. Without the acceptance of the casual fan, how can cities be blackmailed into building sports palaces and giving them to team owners, or how can university alumni be blackmailed into putting millions of dollars into coaches' pockets in hopes that alma mater will get a mention on ESPN?

Newspapers provide more than coverage to sports. They provide cover. By giving sports prominence alongside government, crime, and Dilbert, they create the illusion that the results of such contests are serious news, and that a championship is "making history." Take away the illusion and it's just a TV show.

Cuban's own proposals on this front are, frankly, pretty lame. Subsidize beat writers through some central authority? And how do these reports then reach the casual fan?

It's not the writing that's the problem. It's the distribution, the wide distribution newspapers provided for over a century. Some of that is held by TV, but local TV news has been losing share as fast as the newspaper industry, and it has been cutting its sports coverage as outlets like ESPN take a greater hold on the imagination.

If newspapers had made better use of the Web we might not have this problem, at least not to as great a degree. We would have it, still, because there are still people who don't go online for whatever reason. But publishers ignored every piece of advice from everyone with A Clue for too long, and now lack the capital to command their online markets even if they had the skills.

The answer, for both sports and newspapers, is the same. Or was. (The cost of doing this goes up every year even while the chances of success decline.) It's a single word.

Directory.

Addressing the Crisis

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Think of this as Volume 12, Number 1 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Despite all the problems of the world, there is a feeling of confidence in America. (Picture from UC Santa Cruz. Go Banana Slugs.)

The Crisis which has been building for a generation, and which has become obvious over the last four years, is finally going to be addressed.

But before we get to work there is something important which bears constant repeating.

It's going to be hard. At times, the task before us will seem impossible. We will be told it's impossible, by many people, we will be told to turn back, to turn away. And we will want to, very much.

Don't expect wisdom out of the opposition or the press corps. The first group got us into this mess and still refuses to own it. The second enabled this mess and still refuses to own that. To a large degree we will be on our own.

Our leaders will come to seem distant, no matter how hard they work to avoid it. The daily grind will consume them, and the minutiae will threaten to consume us as well.

The only hope is to keep our eyes on the prize.

A world without oil.

Spend

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Think of this as Volume 11, Number 51 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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It's an iron law of economics. When everyone is doing the same thing, that is the wrong thing to do. (Picture from Entrepreneur Philippines, a really great online magazine.)

When everyone wants to buy something the market has topped-out. When everyone is selling that's the time to buy. Everyone knows this. Hardly anyone does this.

The rule goes beyond what may seem obvious. Any investment strategy, no matter how sophisticated it is, runs out of steam once it becomes popular.

There is a corollary to this, equally important. Never do what the TV tells you. Once a piece of investment advice is on TV everyone has heard it, lots of people are going to do it, and it's going to stop working.

This is true for even the hoariest of TV truths. Dollar cost averaging, for instance. If you did that over the last year you got hammered along with everyone else. Same with doing what Cramer tells you. This is not because Cramer is a bad guy -- when he kept his mouth shut and used the advice he is now giving, back in the day, he made money for his clients. But once it is out in the air, it's too late. Too many people are doing it, it's not going to work.

So what should you be doing? Now is probably a very good time to spend, and to invest. There are going to be bargains everywhere in the economy over the next several months. It would be very hard to go wrong picking strong stocks right now, although you will have to be patient.

That advice sounds scary, doesn't it? It may even sound crazy. And it's also likely that, like me, you're not in a position to step up and buy right now. Just do what you can. All I ask is that you not put it all in a mattress or (worse) buy treasury bills for zero percent interest. Because that's what everyone else is doing. So it won't work. Inflation means that money socked away in "safety" is going to be worth less when it comes back than it is now.

Reforming Georgia technology

Yesterday's post on Georgia Tech registered a record number of comments for this blog. It's gratifying. I thought y'all had forgotten me. (Picture of Lance Weatherby from Startuplounge.)

It also got me to thinking. How would I change things if I were in charge (not that I am asking for the job).

It seems to me there are two forces at work here -- research and entrepreneurship. The two do not always go hand-in-hand. It's much like my writing about technology. Were I to join a business or organization outside writing, even as its head, I would no longer be writing, I'd be in business. I long ago made the choice to remain a writer.

The same is true for many researchers. The impulse to research, to seek truth and hold little pieces of it in your hand, is not the entrepreneurial impulse. Entrepreneurs are special people, dedicated to building companies that work and make money.

How to marry them?

What Stanford did, in creating what we now call Silicon Valley, was unique, a product of its time. As books like Bill & Dave attest, it came out of a Depression, a War, and a generation that could turn science into engineering, and engineering into products, growing into the really big money while staying true to a public trust.

Maybe we're about to have that Depression. I don't know. I do know our young people are doing great things, that the forces which built Silicon Valley still live.

Just not all in silicon.

Instead it's in using the products of the Silicon Valley revolution -- the chips and networks we're using now -- to solve even deeper problems that the future will be driven. Instead of Germans and Japanese, we face direct threats to the survival of our species, and a genetic revolution that will transform us in this century. (God I wish I were 17 again.)

Georgia's tech effort, sadly, is based mostly in the north-south arc of Peachtree Road and Georgia 400. It is old tech, shaped mainly by old geezers my own age, whose great stories have mostly been written.

That needs to change. How?