Dana Blankenhorn

Tsunamis vs. Waves

As soon as it became apparent that Democrats would win the U.S. House, analysts began asking whether this was a “wave” election.

It wasn’t. It was a tsunami.

It’s easy not to understand this because most political scientists aren’t taught the difference between a wave and a tsunami.

The waves that daily hit the shore of the Bonzai Pipeline, on Hawaii’s northwest coast are often 12 feet high. But a wave, no matter how high, will break upon the beach and do no damage, except perhaps to the surfer who doesn’t catch it right.

A tsunami, on the other hand, is caused by forces deep inside the Earth.  A tsunami may be shorter than an ordinary wave, but it will do tremendous damage, because of the enormous power behind it.

The Rebirth of Journalism

The business of journalism is to organize and advocate for a defined audience. (To the right, a business journalist as a young man.)

A place, an industry, a lifestyle. That means aggregating a collection of people around a common cause or interest and interpreting the world through their eyes, for their benefit.

Thanks to Google and Facebook, but also thanks to the lack of vision on the part of people running the business, journalism has suffered grievously in the 25 years since the Web was spun. I once asked, in the 1990s, “how hungry are you,” suggesting that newspapers could offer more than billboards along the information highway. They could lead people down the sales funnel, even transact business and help with support, I wrote.

Being a writer, I was ignored. Probably would have been ignored if I were on the business side. Because journalism was divided along functional lines – newspapers, magazines, radio, TV. They had no idea how to deal with this Internet thing.

What journalists still don’t understand today is that the cloud has broken down all the functional lines. There are no more newspapers, no TV stations. Yet web sites run by these companies still act like they are. The New York Times still pretends to be a newspaper covering New York and its suburbs. CNN.Com still pretends it is a cable television network.

The Rebirth of Journalism

The business of journalism is to organize and advocate for a defined audience. (To the right, a business journalist as a young man.)

A place, an industry, a lifestyle. That means aggregating a collection of people around a common cause or interest and interpreting the world through their eyes, for their benefit.

Thanks to Google and Facebook, but also thanks to the lack of vision on the part of people running the business, journalism has suffered grievously in the 25 years since the Web was spun. I once asked, in the 1990s, “how hungry are you,” suggesting that newspapers could offer more than billboards along the information highway. They could lead people down the sales funnel, even transact business and help with support, I wrote.

Being a writer, I was ignored. Probably would have been ignored if I were on the business side. Because journalism was divided along functional lines – newspapers, magazines, radio, TV. They had no idea how to deal with this Internet thing.

What journalists still don’t understand today is that the cloud has broken down all the functional lines. There are no more newspapers, no TV stations. Yet web sites run by these companies still act like they are. The New York Times still pretends to be a newspaper covering New York and its suburbs. CNN.Com still pretends it is a cable television network.

The 1979 Game

When you win the popular vote by 9.5% but still lose ground, as Democrats did November 6, your problems are systemic.

The result underlies tech’s obligation to come out of its shell and fight for the political system that birthed it.

Tech moguls have done some things. Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, Marc Benioff bought Time Magazine, Laurene Powell Jobs bought The Atlantic. The key to gaining more power will be in creating journalism business models beholden to tech interests.

Tech must do to Bizarro Carter what oil did to Jimmy Carter, and for the same reason -- to protect its self-interest.

The Climax State

One advantage that biologists have over economists and political analysts is a clear understanding of a “climax state.”

A climax state, whether it’s a swamp filled in by peat, a redwood forest, or a planet filled with huge dinosaurs, is the most vulnerable thing in nature. It only looks stable. But a fire, or any sudden conflagration, can destroy it utterly. Mankind has, in the last thousand years, created such a climax state.

This was all described to me in the summer of 1991, when we took our family vacation around our home state of Georgia and found ourselves riding in a canoe through the Okefenokee swamp. Our guide described how the life-and-death competition among plants and animals leaves organic matter behind, which fills in the water and creates little islands, which are eventually connected as more water disappears. But these islands are highly flammable. A fire in the swamp clears them out, leaving a new swamp for creatures to compete in.

It's lack of competition that makes ecologies vulnerable.