On 9/11, Asymmetry, Exponential Change, and Washington’s Culture Challenge

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

As 9/11 comes around again, 11 years on, it’s time to think about risk, asymmetry, and the long term. Because a key lesson of that dark day is a simple one: that advanced technologies and the global communications they have enabled have reset the game of security, once and for all.

Three key reflections as we grieve anew – and look ahead.

The core mission of C-PET, the Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies, is to advance, in Washington, DC, the long view – in which we ask “tomorrow’s questions” as the context for today’s decisions, at the interface of policy and technology. In parallel, my consulting practice Strategic Futures, LLC (akaFutureofBiz.org) asks “tomorrow’s questions” as the context for today’s decisions at the interface of business and technology. The corporate/government relationship, which we all agree is too mired in lobbying and short-term advantage should be stronger and visionary.

1. I wrote some time back that the past decade been dominated by two global experts on asymmetry, neither of whom worked for the U.S. government. Their names were Bin Laden, now dispatched, and Assange, now incarcerated in London’s Ecuadorian Embassy in a situation somewhere between scandal and farce. Point is simple – and I make no suggestion of moral equivalence between them. These two men intuitively grasped the capacity of strategically deployed small means and small numbers to shape global events. There have always been asymmetries of power – I fly tonight to London, where Karl Marx sat writing Das Kapital in the British Museum. But technology has changed the game. And the key issue for our security in Century 21 is how we play it when we no longer set the rules, and they keep being changed.

2. While destructive technologies are developing apace, and increasingly accessible to individuals – synthetic biology, which we have addressed in our Roundtable series in Washington, is one key example; and cybersecurity, another C-PET theme – the principle we need to keep in focus is that of exponential change. While change has always been at a gathering pace, it’s in our generation – powered by Moore’s Law but other factors too – that the impact of exponential has begun to have dramatic implications. We all know this, of course, as a fact. The degree to which it has been absorbed in Washington is another matter, of course.

3. To begin to grasp the implications of asymmetric shifts and the exponential pace of change, we need not simply to be far-sighted (that is, constantly working the long view, future scenarios, asking what tomorrow’s questions shall be); we need to be integrative, interdisciplinary, radical in our patterns and practices quite aside from our thinking. Our politics, in my own view, is in general the realm of good men and women incapable of rising above a “corporate culture” that sets their foreshortened agendas and is dooming us to decisions that take tomorrow for granted. The rumblings of what I have named “exopolitics” suggest a seismic change to come, one that is indeed cognizant of the asymmetric potential of social media and other aspects of our new communications technologies.

So on 9/11, a day that will always be somber to us, let’s take a fresh look at asymmetry and the impact of the exponential change that has given it such significance, for ill and for good; and let’s redouble our efforts to bring about a culture of government in synch with such dramatic shifts and attuned in Century 21 to the values that laid down the foundations of this nation, and the technologies that, in large measure, have resulted from its efforts.

Why is @rupertmurdoch on Twitter? The C-Suite Mystery

Posted on September 9, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Murdoch (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Social, Strategy, and the Mystery of the C-Suite.

My first job – before college – was in a finance company. Customers sent in longhand letters saying they were moving house. In the basement was the high-security “computer room,” with men (sic) in white coats and banks of tape machines that lived on such info. The analog/digital go-between: me. Deciphering the letters, agonizing over how to fit the addresses into 16 squares and four lines on the input form, calling banks (illegally) to track down missing account numbers, and later sticking labels spat out by “The Computer” on the several separate sets of manual files the company still maintained. IT has come a long way since 1970. But if only 4% of CIOs blog, 10% tweet, and –wait for it – fully 74% report through the CFO, it still has a long way to go.

In light of these remarkably low levels of participation by the CIO, it may be less surprising that very occupants of the CEO’s office are personally engaged in social media. The evidence is clear that the culture of the C-Suite is one of nearly unanimous detachment from public social media. The facts are astonishing. Only 16 out of the F500 CEOs have Twitter accounts; and of those 16, hardly any use Twitter regularly. (When I last checked, one of the 16 was Warren Buffet. He had tweeted once.)

One who does, of course, is @rupertmurdoch. But we shall come to him.

What is stunning is the vast gulf between the personal engagement in “social” by the key C-Suite decision-makers, and the mounting evidence – clear, now even to non-techies, non-geeks, and late adopters – that “social” is a key to value. Vast value.

But first, let me head off a comment that 484 CEOs are making as they read this blog. It really is not enough to hire people to handle these things. Especially, typically, young people very junior people, in customer relations roles. The whole point about social is that it’s like saying you’re sorry; you can’t have someone do it for you. We have CEOs and CIOs, effectively, entirely disengaged from the most potent value-driving force on the planet. And part of their disengagement is the idea that hiring kids to monitor this stuff will do the trick. What a fail whale.

So: Latest input that one would have thought would get even the most inert analog executive mind moving: The McKinsey report suggesting up to $1.3 trillion can be released through companies’ forthright engagement with social media has drawn attention in the past week or two. It would however be interesting to note whether there has been an uptick in C-Suite engagement with Twitter, which seems to me to be the touchstone of “getting it” where social is concerned. Further down the totem pole all kinds of social media engagement is in progress (though remarkably there is still a big minority of companies who make no use at all). It’s strategic engagement that counts, and that will come only when the CEO and CIO are setting the pace – and giving evidence that they get it.

That’s why @rupertmurdoch’s joining Twitter at the start of the year was so revealing. Here we have one of the smartest, most controversial, and (face it) also oldest CEOs jumping in. With both feet. As his erratic typing and often unpolished tweets reveal, this is Rupert himself. Not a PR functionary. And he is not just pumping out opinions from on high. He reads the incoming (“watch the language,” he tweeted one time.) And he often answers (he has answered me). He’s found a way to break out of the gilded tower in which corporate leaders are imprisoned to read what his critics are saying, to catch the latest memes, to learn from the 24/7 cocktail party that is Twitter.

At the same time, lower down the organization, it’s plain social media is slowly catching on. Even here the slowness is staggering – 50% of utilities do not even have Facebook page? The headline on this report refers to companies’ widespread take-up of social, but it seems to me it has been slow, sporadic, and – as I have pointed out – almost entirely to the exclusion of the CEOs and CIOs who are the ones most able to develop a strategic understanding of the social revolution underway around them. Point is: Social is not about adding some new media opportunity to marketing, or handling a new customer relations channel. Yes, these are real; but they are far down the list of what is interesting and important.

One well-informed source responded to this argument with the claim that many C-Suite officers are actively engaged in Yammer-like private, secure networks within their organizations. This may well be true, though I have not seen figures. But in fact it adds to the problem. There is a vast gulf between the CEO chatting with CMO and CIO on Yammer, and what @rupertmurdoch and a handful of others have begun to do on Twitter. And if the C-Suite view is that “social” is about Yammer for private chat and marketing/customer relations channels lower down, the net result is a disaster for strategic decision-making.

There’s no doubt that certain types of personality adjust far quicker to social media than others; and age is not the only factor at play (as Murdoch has neatly demonstrated). It’s now a serious question whether those unable to adapt are fit occupants of their C-Suite offices. Well, in respect of the CIO, I don’t think it’s any longer a question. Time for house-cleaning.

Social Media is NOT necessary for the C-Suite . . .? (futureofbiz.org)
The CIO Issue is about Strategy; Strategy; got that? (futureofbiz.org)
The Social Revolution: Customer Service and those who don’t get it (futureofbiz.org)
Most Organizations Still Fear Social Media (futureofbiz.org)
Rupert Murdoch Can’t Stop Tweeting About Mitt Romney (nymag.com)
The $1.3 Trillion Price Of Not Tweeting At Work (fastcompany.com)

5 Labor Day Questions for America

Posted on September 3, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

Henry Ford (ca. 1919) (Wikipedia)

As we celebrate Labor Day in 2012, we confront the hardest questions about our future. The Industrial Revolution, for all its early horrors, offered vast employment opportunities and a higher standard of living for many millions of people. It enabled general education and powered democracy. It facilitated the consumer economy. The vast companies set up by the steel barons and Henry Ford and their like provided lifetime employment for hardworking men and women. The companies remain – but we know that’s all over.

These are my questions. To America, to its leaders, to its people. They aren’t partisan (the big issues no longer fit the partisan divide). They’re tomorrow’s questions. Unless we have answers, we can’t make today’s decisions.

And before we go any further: There is something terribly Narcissistic about “knowledge workers,” people like you and me, who hang on Twitter and blog and one way or another are shaping the future. We claim no superior status to those who labor hard with their hands. We may shape the conversation, but it is to our embarrassment if we do hot shape it to include them – just as the uber-rich are to be despised if they find their self-worth in their net worth. It is together, as fellow members of Homo sapiens, radically equal, women and men, in the equation of human worth, that we are called to tackle the greatest of questions of C21. Kindly join me.

1. How do we create jobs, when the result of our smartest innovative thinking has been to create machines to do jobs for us? (Level 1, this is a problem. Level 2, it’s the end of the world as we know it.) More about this: https://futureofbiz.org/2012/07/23/5-stories-that-make-me-worry-about-whether-the-future-has-jobs/

2. How do we foster innovative, risk-taking culture when health benefits remain tied mainly to jobs? (Listen up, both GOP and Dems; the contrast with Europe is remarkable; in the world’s other main market employment is essentially irrelevant for healthcare.)

3. How do we prepare our kids for an environment in which they will have multiple jobs several careers, but in which far more will depend on their initiative at every point? On their taking responsibility. On their “de-schooling” themselves. (Kids are more cossetted and green-housed than ever before; the worst possible preparation. And this question is not about schools.)

4. How do we re-engineer our public schools to lead the world again? The STEM mantra (science, tech, engineering, math) is exactly that. A mantra. Even if we revolutionize our public schools (ha!) it will take half a generation to make a difference. How do we build a techno-literate culture, at all levels?

5. And the fate of the essentially uneducated? Aside from the millions of poorly-educated and/or poorly-gifted kids, we have a massive underclass who are hard to employ now and are fast becoming impossible ever to employ. Is this the hardest question?

There are answers, in part and pro tem; but unless these are the questions there will never be sufficient focus on those answers to drive home the changes they require.

On the Death of the Man on the Moon

Posted on August 25, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

Neil Armstrong (Photo: Wikipedia)

An odd thing on a Saturday evening to discover on Twitter that the most interesting man in the world has died. And to recall that he had shared my birthday, August 5. There’s a curious boding in birthdays.

I had met him. Met him at an embassy in Washington, DC, where despite the fact he was guest of honor there seemed much more interest in the cocktails than in shaking his hand. So I shook it. And we talked. About the moon, about the occasion, and about C-PET. And our shared birthday.

A man as modest as Steve Jobs, that other defining figure of our technological age, was self-absorbed. A man whose anguish as 43 years were spent by this allegedly visionary nation in failing to build on what he had signally achieved was kept almost entirely quiet (the Obama administration’s space strategy emerging in 2010 finally drew him and his fellow astronauts into polite regret). The first earth-man to set foot on another body in space; who for all we know was the first sentient being ever to do that in the vast expanses of the cosmos. (And before you start poo-pooing and raving about extra-terrestrials, go think for more than 5 minutes about the Fermi Paradox.)

The comparison with Steve Jobs is illuminating in so many ways. I don’t know whether they ever met. It would have been a fascinating encounter. The visionary of the miniature in conversation with the epitome of the astronomic. Together, these two dead engineers define an era, itself the platform that lays claim to the future, a future in which the exponential explosion of digital technology has enabled us to leverage our human engineering capacities beyond all prediction – and which has engaged them to serve ends that history will surely see as equally cool and equally trivial.

It’s Peter Thiel, whom I greatly admire even though I don’t share all of his analysis, who quips that we wanted flying cars and got 140 characters. Had his target been Facebook, on whose board he sits, rather than Twitter, it would have been easier to cry Huzzah! But his point is fundamentally sound. When I was a kid (and, by the way, ran the astronomy club at my English boys’ school), the coolest of all kids wanted to be astronauts. Raise the question now and you are likely to get a yawn, or worse. Anyone who’s into engineering wants to work in the Solar System that for so long circled around Steve Jobs. Micro has displaced macro; the human imagination has become absorbed with digitally-enabled human interaction, so “the social network” seeks, allegedly altruistically though undeniably IPO-ly, to connect all 7 billion of us so we can share our kids’ (and kittens’) pics. This cosmic narcissism stands in so great contrast to the vision of cosmic Columbuses and Vasco de Gamas as to be hard to grasp by those who love children (and kittens) and yet stare at the night sky and lust after both knowledge and presence.

Andrew Keen’s brilliant and non-naive critique of naive digital culture, Digital Vertigo, has forcibly reminded us of the flawed genius of utilitarianism. If what truly matters is for us to be happy, if the summum bonum of Homo sapiens lies not in the beatific vision and the cultural mandate (and if, dear secular thinker, you don’t know what they mean, o boy, you should), or even a post-theistic re-statement of them both, but in a mirror and a merely social network, then who can challenge the Lotos-eaters or their chip-popping couch potato cognates, for whom the good life is merely the life at ease?

This same week, Elisabeth Murdoch, daughter of The Murdoch, turned her family’s business debacle into an exercise in education – in her Edinburgh lecture which the establishment of my former nation regards as the year’s top occasion for media discourse. What is the point of profit, she asked? It needs to have a point. The transcendence milled into human nature, whether or not understood within the Judeo-Christian frame – which set the stage for science as well as democracy (yes, through the proud Enlightenment) – demands always something beyond itself. Else why for modest rewards and ambiguous esteem have so many of our countrymen and women lost limbs and lives in jungles and deserts and mountains far from our alabaster cities? Humans constantly grasp after reductionism, with happiness as its goal and no judgment as to means; at the same time as their striving for what lies beyond becomes frenetic.

And yet, three short years after Armstrong set his feet upon that other cosmic body, we lost interest. Budgets, priorities. And we had knocked the Soviets into a cocked hat. And space costs moolah and does not win elections.

This modest engineer became a Right Stuff pilot and the first walker on another world. 43 long years later we are ambling back into the game. There’s time to make up. Perhaps, with SpaceX and others, we can.

It’s hard to see what sense America makes without a sustained engagement in the future. JFK’s moon commitment and its follow-through across a decade of leaders offer a benchmark of national capability and trans-party vision.

And that takes us back, of course, to the 19th century, where most of what needs to be said was said. And Tennyson’s Ulysses, penned in 1842, the closing lines:

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
  We are not now that strength which in old days
  Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
  One equal temper of heroic hearts,
  Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Ulysses, aged now, sets out on another voyage. It was of course Tennyson who had written 10 years before of the Lotos-Eaters. There really are only two courses. In 1832, and 1842, he laid them bare.

Oh yes, and Tennyson was born on August 6. Close.

Farewell, man on the moon.

———————————————————————-

NASA and the Wrong Stuff:

https://futureofbiz.org/programs/future-of-nasa/

On the Death of Steve Jobs:

https://futureofbiz.org/2011/10/06/steve-jobs-dies-a-generation-ends/

Neil Armstrong, First Man on Moon, Dies at 82 – NYTimes.com.

http://www.news-gazette.com/news/people/2012-08-25/neil-armstrong-1st-man-moon-dies-82.html

Watch Neil Armstrong’s legendary 1969 Moon moment (slashgear.com)

I’m Voting for the Long View

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

USGS satellite image of Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Seal of the United States Office of Science an...

Office of Science and Technology Policy. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m in my favored place for writing, which isn’t even a coffee house (my second choice) but an airplane. Just enough room to type, zero distractions (United Airlines has yet to discover wifi), and as often happens stimulating company. This time, bumped into an old friend. He’s in the space sector, which after nearly half a century of hibernation has suddenly awakened. SpaceX Dragon. NASA’s Mars Curiosity. Suddenly after all that clunky Shuttle stuff (which was also vastly expensive), and the bakolite Space Station, America seems to be moving again.

There are big issues at stake in November, and we take sides. Some of us are highly partisan and fiercely loyal. Others are more nuanced – or more cynical. But through all the electioneering, a striking fact bridges the parties. Washington is too little interested in the one thing that is most in its interests, and ours: The Long View.

What’s even more striking, I confess, is how little engaged corporate America is in pressing The Long View on Washington. Of course, at one level, public corporations operate year-to-year and quarter-by-quarter. But successful corporate leaders are smart at aligning short-term market accountability with long-term growth. How is it that these smarts don’t survive crossing the Beltway?

Before you say I am making this up, here are some recent conversations I have had. Not naming names, though if you doubt me I will supply them in confidence.

I chatted with the CEO of one of the largest tech corporations. Why don’t you guys press for the Long View in DC, I asked? “I really hadn’t thought about it quite like that,” he said. He then introduced me to his top lobbyist in DC.
“Why did he send you to see me?” asked the lobbyist. “That’s not what I’m paid to do. We work with the electoral cycle.”
Then, meeting with the CTO of another tech giant and several of his execs, I put it this way: “You have a strategy unit in your Chairman’s office with a 10-year time horizon. You have R and D people all over the world thinking 7-8 years ahead. Why do you tell your Government Relations guys the horizon is 18 months? Why don’t you align these units in your own company?” ( His lobbyist was in the room and said didn’t disagree with me.)
Then, in a roomful of lobbyists tearing out their hair as the federal budget’s haircutting undermined their efforts (and in some cases I suspect their bonuses), I stated: “There are other groups who can guarantee long-term a vote in the House, whoever wins the election, such as the major pro-Israel lobby, and the NRA, and National Right to Life.” I wasn’t being tactful. “Why haven’t you taken The Long View and worked district by district like they have to get Washington to take it? You have far more money.” Silence.
Then, chatting at length with a former senior exec of another of the biggest tech companies, I make the same point. “Oh we had big disagreements about that. There are now four people assigned to think long-term about policy; with everyone else it’s 18 months. Only one of the four is in Washington.”

I’m not here to challenge the wisdom of the Founders in setting a two-yearly cycle for the House, or the ultra-short-termism of the market. But both of these seem to me crazy ways to do business in a Moore’s-Law-driven world. As I go around saying to business leaders and any pols who will listen, the faster change is taking place the more vital it is to scope the future. It’s counter-intuitive, because the faster things change the more difficult it is. But it’s a core principle of good decision-making. You can’t make today’s choices without Asking Tomorrow’s Questions. The further you go from “political” Washington, the more people get the point. They get it in the strategy and R and D units of these self-same corporations who insist that their hugely-influential representatives in Washington focus simply on the short term. They get it in the less political reaches of the federal government. Few years back I was privileged to be a non-federal participant in Project Horizon, a large-scale strategic planning project led by the Department of State with other agencies – looking 20 years ahead.

But it’s “political” Washington, the democratic driver of every big decision, that is locked into a suicide pact with the “political” levers of corporate America. How could anyone make this stuff up?

I once sat in the office of one of our top VCs out in Silicon Valley to ask for his help in turning all this around. Before politely showing me the door, he said a number of things I shall not easily forget. One was this (it’s close to the exact wording): “When I look out of my window, I see China. We regard Washington as a European city. Why should we be interested?” I mildly offered two points in response. One was the argument I have just been making, that his investment time horizon was out of kilter with Washington’s policy horizon. Another was that every single day inter-governmental organizations (WIPO, WTO, ITU, ILO, G-whatever) have more influence over the outcomes of every dollar he was investing than they had the day before; and the only access point he would ever have to them would be through Washington.

Of course, there are many reasons why we have arrived at this situation. The old-time, regulated tech sector, driven by telecoms but with pharma and others in the vicinity, has a (generally proper) symbiotic relationship with the regulatory agencies and a forward position in ensuring that the legislative environment is favorable (note that I have avoided using the pejorative term rent-seeking . . .). Even moreso, the defense sector – on both the government and corporate sides – work closely on long-term procurement and R and D issues. As a result, these major slices of the tech economy are preoccupied with their own interests in Washington. And while they collaborate in trade groups and coalition settings, their chief DC interests are narrowly defined.

It’s worth noting several sectors for which this approach is especially inappropriate. One is energy. Another is space. Another is infrastructure, but old-style transportation emerging tech-related. Another is the group of industries with high environmental impact. And back of every sector lies the need for policies favorable to innovation. This is not an argument for the feds to get more into regulating or funding new technologies. It certainly is an argument for the long-term impacts of technology, the special needs and opportunities of its innovators and manufacturers, the values concerns that ultimately shape markets and thereby drive value – for these and other considerations to rise up the policy agenda. And if you are seeking metrics: Would it not be interesting if the House Science, Space and Technology Committee were the one on which every top legislator aspired to serve. If the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) had the clout of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). If every policy choice in the legislative and executive branches were rigorously assessed in light of its impacts over 10 years and its integration with anticipated developments in science and technology. For example.

So, how about it, America? I want to vote for The Long View.

Decision-Making In Gordon Moore’s Land (futureofbiz.org)

Earth to Twitter: Social Needs Stakeholder Governance

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

twitter y macworld (Photo credit: juque)

Twitter‘s latest blow to developers and users, the source of lamentation as I write and we all tweet, brings into fresh focus a simple, 3-fold, claim.

social media are uniquely positioned to benefit from high-level stakeholder engagement
it is in the interests of all involved for them to move toward stakeholder governance
yet our lead social media companies are among the least “social” of contemporary corporations.

Mark Zuckerberg has led the social pack with his high (and I believe genuinely meant) claim for a social purpose for social media. At some point someone will decide to work on alignment between such goals, the culture and practices of the organizations themselves, and their governance and funding structures. Some deep innovation in the latter will be needed before “social” settles down as the substrate of our C21 lives.

Facebook Crashes:

Facebook Crashes. My 5 Questions

New API severely restricts third-party Twitter applications | Ars Technica.

Twitter and the Holy Grail: Profit and a Future . . . . 3 To-Do Items

Posted on August 9, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

Gordon Moore on a fishing trip (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As data whooshes out of every pore of the planet, powered by Gordon Moore‘s seismic explosion, knowing what’s useful has become the core skill.

Here’s a couple of data points just in, before I jump the snark and tell Twitter what to do.

First, LinkedIn is coining it. Hand over fist. Revenues up 89%. And multiple streams of it. Surprise, surprise; the stock price is rising. Details below.

Second, Twitter searches are far higher than Bing and Yahoo put together. Details and much more here.

If I ran the Twitters?

1. Think moolah. $10, $25 a month subscriptions. Offer special features, blah blah. Tens of millions of serious users would sign up in a 140. Some of us know we would pay far, far more than that. For the uber-tweeters, don’t we know, this is where social just go serious, personal, professional, essential.

2. Think search. It has made Google and could yet unmake it (though I think that unlike Facebook they may well adapt and thrive). It will move generic. The demand for subscription-based, privacy-enhanced, offerings will grow, grow, grow. I only want one platform open all day, and I want it to be this one.

3. Think governance. Let’s crowdsource a novel structure that pays off the entrepreneurs and investors well, but gives us multi-stakeholder governance. Wikipedia has been the only big platform to go the non-profit route. In a world of sparking social enterprise, let’s get creative. And drive a next-gen knowledge and comms platform that draws exponential strength from “social” and the fact the smartest guys on the planet are on here every single day.

K? Then later today we can discuss something else. On Twitter, of course.

Why Twitter Matters

LinkedIn Reaches 174 Million Members, Revenue Up 89% | The Realtime Report.