Dana Blankenhorn

My Life in Atlanta

I have now lived more than half my life in Atlanta. I was born in New York, but I am an Atlantan. My wife was born in Texas, but she is an Atlantan. My kids are native Atlantans.

Atlanta is both the most wonderful and exasperating city in America. 

It is a town that claims to celebrate its history. But in fact it mostly Disney-fies its history. It fits everything into a false narrative, that of a great, humane urban place rising from the ashes of war, a progressive place, an up-and-coming and growing place.

Anything that seems to question this history gets forgotten. The outright racism of Henry Grady’s “New South” speech of 1881, summed up as “we still hate blacks but we’re ready to do business.”

The 1895 Cotton States Exposition and the re-segregation of the city that followed.

The 1906 race riot, perpetrated entirely by whites spurred on by lying editors competing for the governorship on the issue of who would move against black voting rights faster? Forgotten.

We love Alfred Uhry for his “Driving Miss Daisy,” a fantasy about overcoming racism, but his “Parade,” about the 1912 Leo Frank case (and lynching)? Down the memory hole.

The 1915 Atlanta bag mill strike, which broke the back of unionization in the south for generations? What strike? Give us “Gone With the Wind” instead, the David O. Selznick film which, while not “Birth of a Nation” didn’t have the courage to celebrate future Oscar winner Hattie McDaniel at its premiere?

The Political Fight for Secure Identity

I took a train to Buckhead, in North Atlanta, this week to hear some executives brought in by Bloomberg talk about the future of technology.

They talked about the Internet of Things, what I started calling Always-On technologies in 2003, and the transformation this was creating on devices and in networks. But the view of their audience was negative.

They didn’t trust the technology, because they didn’t trust cybersecurity. With good reason. Because, as I noted here in 2012, the issue is tied closely to that of identity and we haven’t addressed the politics of that yet.

A Place For Me

As a follow on to my piece Boomer Roomers a friend asked me to do an executive summary of what such a project would be about. What follows is a lightly-edited version of that summary. If anyone is interested in working with me on this project, just drop me a line. I’ll be working on the business plan.

A friend and I have been talking about the problems of aging and long term care. I just turned 60. I am still in great health, still working. I am fortunate

But you know what my biggest problem is right now? Making new friends. Finding people who share my interests and outlook. That’s what makes the difference between a long, fulfilling retirement and a short, painful one.

This brings up a story I like to tell. What’s the best thing that can happen? What’s the worst thing that can happen?

For my parents, the worst thing that could happen is my dad (right) won the lottery. He won $189,000 when he was about 65, about when this picture was taken.

Dad only had friendships at work, at his lock shop, so my brother came in and got to “invest” the money in various schemes aimed at growing the business (about which he knew nothing). The money disappeared. My dad had to close the place. He felt guilty. He had no friends. He lost interest in life. He died shortly after.

The Facebook Primary

With every generation in American politics, there is a new industry driving the train.

In the last generation it was oil. Before that, manufacturing. Before that, utilities. Before that, banking. Ever since we ceased to be an agrarian nation, with the outbreak of the Civil War, American politics have been driven by the scene of a rising industry, a ruling industry, and a falling one.

Consider my own time, the era of the Nixon Thesis, 1969-2009. The manufacturing industry was falling, as Detroit was hollowed out. The oil industry was ruling, as Houston and Dallas gave us Presidents and wars over resources. The technology industry was rising, with kids my own age named Gates and Jobs becoming multi-billionaires, and with the Web being spun.

After leaving ZDNet in 2010, my first task was to cover renewable energy, which is the application of technology to power. Oil is based on the idea that you find stuff you can burn, deep underground, you bring it to the surface and you burn it to create power.

Solar and wind have a different set of economics. You create a machine to harvest energy that already exists, all around us. That device remains in place, harvesting energy, for years, decades even. The capital cost of the machine is recovered over time, and the energy produced after it’s paid for is, in essence, free.