Has the Social Media #Bubble Popped? #sm #IPO #Facebook

Posted on June 2, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

I posted earlier on the debacle of the Facebook IPO and some longer-term considerations in respect of the valuation and staying-power of these early-generation social media brands. And they are early-generation. Part of the problem we are facing is that we are in the throes of exponential change. One thing that means is that we have faced dramatic shifts, which we are tempted to see as lasting and offering us a fresh gently-rising plateau as we look ahead. The fact that the exponential, disruptive bombs are getting bigger every day is too hard to grasp. So we don’t try. So we behave dumb. (Yes, there’s a book there to explain what I’m on about; and yes, I am working on it, so there. Back off, plagiarizers, but join the convo!)

Briefly:

1. In general, this is early early days. Which makes future-scoping (a) very hard, and (b) very necessary. More of both (a) and (b) every day.

2. We’re talking about the brands/companies that have been quick out of the box in, essentially, social media round 2. Round 1 was shaped and dominated by AOL; its curious corporate survival and the bizarre Time takeover blur our capacity to reflect on how revolutionary was Steve Case’s invention ( which has pretty much defined everything social since; Zuck owes him big. . . .). The key brands of the past decade have been awarded huge valuations on the naive assumption that the barriers to entry will remain high and that interoperability and utility status is not around the corner. Yeah, right.

3. As we look ahead, we see multiple converging streams that include “social” a la Facebook, social marketing leading to profound shifts in “social business,” CSR/social enterprise parallel and convergent developments as a subset of the foregoing, Gov. 2.0 (3.0), wholly new developments in global governance (of which more in another post), and . . . well, point is, we have just begun. It’s why Facebook and Google, qua biz model and tech trailblazers, are so important. It’s why, qua brands, they will be proved to have been relatively insignificant.

4. While we are at it: Facebook’s curious upcoming vote on a privacy change reminds us that, ultimately, social networks will be mutually owned and driven by crowd-sourced decision-making. I am actually astonished that Zuck (whom I greatly admire) has not tumbled to this. But one thing one learns is that innovators are often successful precisely because they don’t see most of the context, rather than because they do.

The future is social. But that social is not ad-driven, privacy-destroying, IP-wielding, reaping economic profit. It is in general mutualized, open-sourced, and ultimately a thrilling constantly innovating utility environment for much human activity. Getting there is messy, but since when was getting anywhere worthwhile not?

http://nigelcameron.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/facebook-being-dumped-says-reuters-whats-the-real-issue-well-there-are-3/

The Social Media Bubble has Popped.

Federal #Science and Ideology: #DC and the #Valley

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

In a largely historical op-ed in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, Michael Lubell of CUNY and the American Physical Society lambastes the current parties for their inability to agree on the priority of science funding – in marked contrast to earlier efforts over the past generation when, despite differences of emphasis, bipartisan collaboration led to big increases in the public funding of science and technology.

My take? Three quick points.

1. This brings us back to the question of the question. How is it framed? Little by little, broader concerns with budget, disaffection with “big government,” and stories of weird research projects (always findable, and some plainly are weird), have chipped away at the semi-consensus. I think there’s more to it, and am not sure if the big increases in public science finding would continue anyway for several other reasons. But the issue is framed differently now.

2. I sat round a table recently with the CTO of one of our major tech companies and asked him why, when his organization has strategy people working for the chairman, and R and D people working for him – all with timelines of 7-10 years in their heads – they have federal relations people in DC told that around 18 months should be their time horizon. That is, why have not our major tech companies done the heavy lifting in driving forward the politics of the long term? Also a big issue. My sense is that their deciding to do so, and agreeing long-term goals on which for all their diverse interests they can work together, will prove central to the possibility of a prosperous and secure American tomorrow.

3. Back of the conflicting ideological agendas in Washington lies a remarkable degree of unanimity in, as it were, the “corporate culture.” I have written elsewhere about the divide between the District and the Valley (search this blog or see my Kindle e-book Innovation President). It is vast. Our creative, entrepreneurial culture is almost entirely divorced from our political culture. This is true across the parties, and despite fine people and good initiatives. The cultures are deeply misaligned, and few people at either end care. That’s the core issue here. Budget levels, and an inability to collaborate on agreeing them, are presenting problems. Their cause lies elsewhere.

It’s not my view that more money is “the answer,” though federal S and T spend is very important. There are many other questions that need to be addressed if we are going to ramp up American S and T leadership, and resulting innovation, for the next generation. In the past I have proposed the abolition of academic tenure (through an appropriations rider), restructuring of funding agencies (we could start off with a new one taking 10% of existing non-DoD spend and based in the Valley), cabinet positions for the Science Adviser, the CIO, the CTO; and more besides. I’ve also proposed moving Camp David to the Valley (my friends out there are horrified by the traffic implications) – as the first step in the migration of the federal government to the west coast that I believe to be probably inevitable and certainly desirable in the first Pacific century.

Our C-PET motto is Asking Tomorrow’s Questions. It’s all about the questions. Washington is a city full of smart people with answers. Get the questions right and things will change.

Lubell: Science Funding and the Ideological Divide : Roll Call Opinion.

#Apple and #China sweatshops and #CSR at #Foxconn

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

I have written before and at more length about the Apple-Foxconn- Fair Labor issue. Once again these companies, locked in a commercial embrace, are in the spotlight, as another organization reports on working conditions and claims to have interviewed scores of Foxconn employees. http://nigelcameron.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/values-and-the-value-chain-apple-foxconn-and-the-new-csr/

Three observations.

1. Apple’s decision to sign on to Fair Labor was bold but savvy. Growing global transparency driven by the very technologies that have powered the firm offers huge issues of reputational risk as the image of the smartest, high-end western tech company and a vast, sprawling, Chinese manufacturer move into a single frame. But it’s just the start of a process of engagement and openness.

2. Labor standards vary much around the globe, which is (of course) one reason that manufacturing in country A is cheaper than in country B. That is not the only reason, but it is one. At the same time, while human rights are not relative, cultural experience is: A good employer in A may have requirements that would make the firm look a thoroughly bad employer in B. That is separate from specific cultural issues (confessions, and the like) which may or may not be seen as appropriate. Point is, the comparison – like every cross-cultural comparison – needs to be analogical. To use the powerful verb that heads up the article we are discussing, “gruelling” means different things in different places. It just does.

3. That having been said, the effort to integrate “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) into the value chain of the company, illustrated here, is not something to be done in half measure. I have no means of knowing who and how these matters are arranged at Apple. But it is my hope that Tim Cook has people as smart and as powerful in his executive suite handling this set of issues as are handling design and engineering and marketing. If he does not, the effort at alignment between Apple’s spiffy image and the manufacturing behind it will come adrift. The scrutineers have just started their work. The need to integrate “CSR” values with value will prove only more important with the passage of time. Time passes increasingly fast. Secrets hard to keep now will be twice as hard in a year’s time. And the smarts that have aligned design and engineering in the Apple products need to be addressed to an equally strong alignment with the people and their toil who put together these remarkable machines.

I stated earlier that the Apple move to engage Fair Labor could lead to a revolution in Chinese labor standards. I am sticking with my story. By bridging outsourced Asian manufacturing and the elite market for their products Apple has taken a deliberate risk. In a long-term perspective it is an obviously sensible choice. But it will only help if it is relentlessly followed through. Apple does not need more discordant reports like this one. Someone who has Tim Cook’s ear needs to make sure the Foxconn connection is driven with the same energy and passion and resources as every other department of the company. Apple can survive Siri issues. It might not if the “sweatshop” charges started to stick.

Apple’s efforts fail to end gruelling conditions at Foxconn factories | Technology | The Guardian.

#Facebook again: And Biz Models

Posted on May 25, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

Doc Searls has taken the critical analysis of Facebook’s value to another level, by pointing out the fundamental weakness of its ad-supported revenue model. His argument is worth serious reading.

Put a somewhat different way: We assume too readily that exponential pressures mean we can just draw lines up graph paper from anything that has started to work. It’s how startups make their pitch. It may or may not be realistic. The Groupon situation is a case in point. But more tech-focused models also face the same problem. As targeted ads get more and more targeted, especially in the unwelcome context of a “social” network where we are not generally searching for products and services, will they just run out of steam as we run out of patience?

Which brings me back (sorry) to my point: We need innovative biz models to go along with innovative services. Facebook is a social marvel. Its biz model is based on deep privacy mining. Why not a subscription-based service with mutual ownership? It will be a utility soon enough. Might as well plan from the start. Of course, this horse has now bolted, IPO-style. But perhaps a lesson can be learned.

Doc Searls Weblog · After Facebook fails.

#Facebook the Biz Model #socent #privacy #advertising

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

The brilliance of Facebook in idea and execution needs to be reiterated as, finally, its emergence as a huge public company is leading to serious critical assessments of its business proposition.

Whatever privacy concerns we may have (and the evidence is that a majority of its users have doubts as to its trustworthiness in the use of their data), its utility has been established. However tedious some of us can find it – endless likes and comments that could take up all 24 hours of our days if we let them – we shall never turn our backs on digital interface with our various communities of family and friends. Google wasn’t first with search, or Facebook with its form of social media. But they rapidly established the gold standard in these two vast enterprises that had not been heard of when the Berlin Wall fell.

The piece in Technology Review linked below suggests that advertising-supported websites won’t work; and that with Facebook’s collapse will go web-based social networking.

I’m expecting two developments in this space. One is for privacy to rear its head as the sleeping giant it presently is seen to be. Whether in a scandal that threatens one of these major brands, or through the emergence of privacy-focused competition, the basic assumption of Facebook that most people don’t much care about privacy will either end its position as the lead social network or bring it to heel in a radical reform of its approach.

The other, which may be related, is the emergence of subscription-based services – both for Search and for Social. Given, not least, the stupendous success of AOL over a number of years in selling entry to its walled garden, it surprises me that Facebook (and also Google) have not experimented with fee-based, privacy-heavy alternatives.

I see 3 core business models emerging in the B2C web space (aside of course from the Sears Catalog approach that Amazon and Zappos have mastered, which like the QWERTY keyboard, the phone, and the bicycle, is a 19th century survival that works very nicely). 1. Paywalled info – which may well flourish at the high end of journalism as well as, of course, much more highly leveraged financial information. 2. Branded content. This will be huge. And 3. Subscription-based search and social.

Ads did not sustain the bubble that blew in 2000. The eyeballs they garner now are those of savvy squinters who have spent a decade and more jumping across and between screens and seem uninterested in being the victims of the analytics Mad Men who have groped their data.

Which brings me back to the other side of the equation. Why not a social enterprise model – not least, as we have every reason to believe that Zuck is really setting out to connect the world rather than simply be a billionaire.

The Facebook Fallacy – Technology Review.

#Facebook being dumped, says Reuters: What’s the real issue? Well, there are 3.

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

US STOCKS-Wall St rebounds, but investors dump Facebook | Reuters.

Whether Facebook is “worth” $100bn or (as one serious voice suggests) $30bn is neither here nor there – unless, of course, you bought your stake on Friday. The P/E ratio is way out of whack with comparable companies like Google – though, as can be plausibly argued, Fb is on the way up and its biz model has yet to be fledged. But that (see below) is at least as big a problem as it is an explanation.

To my mind, three issues are at stake here.

1. The deeper we move into the digital economy, and the more digitally-powered a company or product is, the faster we may expect the forces of innovation to do their terrible work. That is, companies such as these are already aging fast. I was much amused by the blogosphere discussion last year – as IBM’s remarkable 100th anniversary was being noted – of “which great companies will be around 100 years from now?” The innovation process is not building vast new brands to take the place of those slipping into the sinkhole of the “old economy” 20th century. It is developing pathways of creative destruction along which products, services, brands, companies, will flow with less and less friction. Facebook may yet prove a cash cow before it goes the way of all cash cows. I’m doubtful. But whatever the future holds, the exponential character of digital disruption will ensure it holds it more quickly and more briefly than we would anticipate. (AOL. MySpace. Oh, I know it’s different this time. It’s always different this time.)

2. More specifically, while Mark Zuckerberg has proved remarkably adept at driving his vision and pulling around him highly competent executives to enable it, the Murdoch-style governance structure that gives him enormous power in the public company and its sparkling but remarkably undiverse board do not bode well. This is not the place for a catalog of questions around privacy and business models; suffice to suggest that the lock-down approach that has been adopted is not well-suited to rapid adaptation and response in a rapidly-changing environment. How well the founder’s vision of a company intended for social good that only incidentally plans to make money (I hope that’s a fair summary) will cope with market pressures raises a related set of problems. It is a thousand pities that (as I have argued before) a more innovative and appropriate model than IPO was not developed that would secure the social purpose of Facebook.

3. Three specific factors convince me that within X years we shall not have, say, 3 billion members of a Zuckerberg walled garden. One is interoperability, and the fact that technologically the social media experience will fast become a utility in which hacks and competitive requirements destroy the moat around the castle and in the process the option for economic profit. Second, perhaps through the deployment of anti-trust measures, global governments will not permit the emergence of a Facebook that essentially serves as a private planetary telecommunications and postal system of several billions of members reporting to one man in an office on the West Coast of the United States. Third, and more simply, while Facebook was created for college students it has been driven by teens. Teen culture moves on. And with it the culture of cool. Now everyone’s mom, dad, and grandparents are being recruited to Facebookland, it will be no hard task for the Next Cool Thing to do its thing. Oh yes, barriers to exit are presently high. But that sure isn’t cool either.

Guys, innovation in Century 21 is all about change and disruption. It’s a really bad time to be making bets on the future of terrific inventions and great new companies that have yet to deliver. Which is another reason why the IPO model, as applied to entities like that one, may have had its day. IMHO.

The #CSR Business: Alignment and Transparency in C21

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

In the old (pre-Murdoch) days, The Times of London, which then had a fair claim to be the world’s premier newspaper, promoted itself for years with the tagline, “When The Times speaks, the world listens.” But in the 1960s when I first began reading it the entire front page was still filled with classified ads. The world has moved on. As has (sad to say) The Times.

Pride of place now has been unambiguously ceded to the New York Times, though The Economist, which describes itself still as a “newspaper,” could on a broader definition make a claim.

So when The Economist tackles a subject, even in its often quizzical way, it means it matters.

A piece on “corporate social responsibility” is therefore worth noting. It doesn’t add much to the discussion, but recognizes big shifts from when it was regarded as merely a reputational snow job. I’ve written more about this, including the significance of Michael Porter’s intervention and the concept of Shared Value, in my CSR column for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. (http://bclc.uschamber.com/profile/nigel-m-de-s-cameron).

My sense is that CSR is presently a thoroughly transitional form. This explains the somewhat disordered situation of the CSR community as (let us say) a quasi-profession. The Chamber’s Business Civic Leadership Center and the CSR professional association recently collaborated in a report that noted the lack of institutionalization (training, standards, and so forth). Seems to me that this is not a problem as the whole effort is in transition; indeed, the idea of deciding in high school that when you grow up you want to be a CSR VP suggests a category mistake.

CSR is a nettlesome enterprise in the nature of the case, catalytic in respect of mainstream, old-time, bottom-line businesses; indirectly also in the social enterprise direction; and as a whole a component in a set of fast-moving parts as we are drawn into fresh models of capitalism in a culture sensitized to issues of social good – with brands scrambling for credibility and ever-more transparent windows replacing the opaque screens that used to shield all but the product and the marketing ploys chosen by the Ad Men to present it.

As I have noted elsewhere, I think we need not to be naive in our adoption of Porter’s Shared Value concept as if tomorrow afternoon altruism and the pursuit of profit will have come into perfect alignment. But the tendency is there. Slow but, I do suspect, sure. The values market is increasingly asserting itself as a frame for the more conventional market, and the integration of the two will become progressively more plain with the passage of time and the growth of transparency-hungry technologies.

Of #Work and Its #Future: #workplace #design humans and exponential #change

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

UNWIRED :: WORKTECH 12 New York.

I’m unpacking my thinking after one of the most stimulating days in some time – Unwired’s NYC version of their WorkTech conference that is offered around the planet.

The future of work and the workplace brings together people from real estate, architecture, interior design, human resources, and assorted other silos, with futurists who are anchored in what lies ahead. It’s a brilliant inter-disciplinary mix, and I was privileged to be invited to play a part. I was up second, following Sherry Turkle from MIT @sturkle who opened the day with her elegantly stated critique of social media and its impact (OK, I will let media be single here) on our private and business lives. I see her and Andrew Keen @ajkeen asking some of the sharpest questions about the implications of the digital revolution for our knowledge and relationships. The faster, more complex, and more far-reaching the process of change, the more important it is to frame its challenges. Those with the hard questions tend to have the best ones. We may not buy all their answers, but that’s hardly the point. Answers are needed.

I’ve never labeled myself a futurist, but for a long time my focus has been on what lies ahead – and our problem in preparing for it. So I was second up, and my theme was that problem. It’s best illustrated with what I call The Kink. That is, we look back and see exponential change, a steep curve. We look ahead and we smooth things out – it’s hard to grasp the idea that the future will see changes greater and faster than the past, so we kink the curve. The Kink is today, always today. Another way of putting it: We look back and see the Big Bang. We look ahead and see Steady State. And it’s here, in The Kink, that there lies the core problem of global risk.

More of that another time (there’s a book brewing); for now, some reflections on the future of work in light of yesterday’s insights.

Some things seem very plain.

1. As I stated in my presentation, the implications of AI/humanoid robotics have been far too little examined. This offers a special case of the problem of innovation destroying jobs faster than it creates new ones. My view is that robotics will remove many categories of job from the economy. Some high-level jobs (surgery) and many lower-level – not just manufacturing but nursing aides, cleaning, driving, retail – all kinds of assistive roles – will be completed by machines.

2. In general, the trend toward career changing/contractor self-employed status/project work will continue. It will drive the need for benefit provision (health, retirement) that is not employment-related (an American alternative to single-payer European-style provision may emerge from a revivified labor union movement shaped for professionals/knowledge workers). It will provide companies with far more flexibility, and knowledge workers, especially, with opportunity.

3. Bricks-and-mortar workplaces will decline in significance year by year. We heard at WorkPlace two interesting contrasts from leading-edge companies adapting to the new tech/social environment – moving into a “thin” approach to the office. At GSK, telecommuting is encouraged, personal workspaces are being replaced with a variety of shared and private work areas, and the trad notion of “going to the office” is in decay. At Google, we were told, while the cubicles are endlessly re-arrangeable (legos came to mind), people do not telecommute and they have personal workspaces.

The Fordist approach to office environments, like the closely-related persistence of Peter Principle approaches to advancement, have outlived their logic. It’s plain to me that form will follow function, and that the coffee-shop experience will be more the typical future work environment for “white collar” workers than anything we would now recognize as a business environment. With rapid advances in all aspects of communications technologies and 3-D avatars, for example, turning video-conferencing into something far more effectively replicating the meeting-room environment, there will be a slow and finally dramatic decline in the company office. Brands will wish to maintain locations and buildings, but they will have less and less to do with the actual operations of the corporation. Outsourcing to other nations, now so common, will be followed by outsourcing to machines/machine intelligence and the use of shared spaces by workers.

It’s a surprise to me that the spread of traditional shared office suites, incubator start-up facilities, and collaborative spaces somewhere between the two, have not made the obvious leap to the coffee-house environment where millions of workers (including this one) spend much of their productive time. I foresee Barnes and Noble, for example, not simply with small Starbucks cafes attached, but co-locating with Fedex/Kinkos and hourly hire agencies, with private meeting rooms also, to offer a full-service commercial experience to individuals and small groups in the heart of our communities.

Telecommuting, aside from its unappealing name, has too much been seen as the option of “working from home.” Many of us do not function well in contexts in which we are either entirely alone, or where we have family distractions. And yet whether we have a convenient and congenial coffee house around is a matter of chance. And they don’t print and may be too noisy for calls.

Point is: While it has taken longer than was anticipated (like the “paperless office,” which is in fact being slowly realized, not least thanks to the cloud), digital has destroyed much of the significance of location. While the security issues, not least, will occupy attention as these transitions tale place, we are moving toward a situation in which knowledge workers and the entire white collar class cease to commute long distances, and work in informal environments within their own communities.

And, as with much else, this will happen faster than most of us anticipate. Those who do anticipate will, of course, win. And if as a community we can also engage in serious anticipation, some of the ill-effects that would otherwise flow (such as the benefits issue) can be mitigated.

#Klout me out

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

A neat post from @samfiorella sets out a damning case against Klout and the gamification of influence.

Can You Be Influential While Under the Influence? – Sensei Blogs.

I’ve two things to add.

First, my take on influence assessment mechanisms like Klout has been to see them as a form of eugenics; digital eugenics. For the same reason that biological eugenics was highly credible at the time, Klout is prima facie credible. No-one doubts the fact that real data determine scores – and claims to data-drivenness and science-basedness are powerful. Problem is twofold: First, who selects the data? Second, what is the effect of letting loose data thus selected and packaged on the community as a whole? If you haven’t see the movie Gattaca, you should.

Second, if the social-techno-cultural matrix in which we are all of us engaged were settled and the digital revolution largely behind us, such efforts would have a better claim on our credulity. To that extent Klout suffers from what I have called the Fallacy of the Kink. We look back and see exponential change. We look ahead and smooth the curve. The present is always in the kink. We are at the moment in the foothills to the foothills of this revolution in communications and community. The idea that this is the time for merit badges to be handed out by the Boy Scout leader who can tell who is best at tying knots is risible.

There’s a Latin tag I love, solvitur ambulando: ” it is solved by walking.” It is relevant here. What influence you have is best understood by seeing what influence you have. Klout with its time-and-motion slide-rules and Fordist notions of process definitely has too much.

#California and Destiny: #Valley #DC #China #Innovation #Singularity #TED et al.

Posted on May 13, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

As news keeps coming in of California’s decline – budget, public schooling, even the UC system – some strategic stock-taking is in order.

I have written before of the disastrous divide between the culture of Silicon Valley and that of Washington, DC. Here’s a sample: http://nigelcameron.wordpress.com/risk/the-valleydc-divide/ Part of what I note is that one thing these two highly geographical communities have in common is their mutual disinterest. They are culturally as far apart as any entities in the United States; indeed (as I suggested in the aforementioned commentary) in the Solar System. The nation’s creative powerhouse and its seat of government are seemingly unbridgeable.

I sat in the office of a well-known Valley VC some time back discussing this predicament, and he offered me two reflections that I shall not easily forget. First, “we see Washington as a European city;” and, secondly, “when I look out of the window I see China.”

Well, OK, let’s work with that for the moment. Let California be California. If its interest in engaging in the transformation of these United States runs no further than technology and commercial enterprise, what of the state? As California crumbles, it also hosts most of the self-proclaimed hotbeds of ideas and smart people – quite apart from, though inter-related with, the Valley community itself. Like TED. Singularity University (oddly perched on a NASA campus). The Singularity Institute. (Both homage a Kurzweil.)And a host of other futures-focused centers and projects. On it goes.

But how much interest do they have in what takes place in Sacramento? Is their other-worldliness (OK, I have also written of technoculture a la SxSW, which epitomizes it, as a new fundamentalism) – is it a federal disengagement or does it pertain also in the shambling state they mostly call home? (Yep – SxSW is a Fundamentalist Bible Camp –http://nigelcameron.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/sxsw-nxne-and-the-new-fundamentalism-a-perspective-from-the-analog-polis-of-a-digital-people/)

My concern here is this: California is the United States’ border with China. This is true on several levels. And just as we need to revivify this nation by bringing to a common focus our government and our creativity, we need also to engage with full force the fact that this faux-European nation in the 21st century will live or die by its engagement with Asia. Some time back I suggested we move Camp David to Menlo Park for a start. The President could, I think, do that in a memo. (Main response I got was complaints from Valley friends about the traffic holdups that would ensue.) But in the long term the issue is when, not whether, the federal government is relocated to the west coast. The prosperity and geopolitical status of the United States hinge in part on when and how that transition takes place. The United States has dwelt for two centuries in Europe. In the third, its home will lie increasingly as a Pacific power.

Point is: the Valley culture and the creativity and far-sightedness it represents are the keys to leveraging the democratic and humane values of this nation into the third millennium and across the Asian continent. I am no naive technophile; what I am arguing is that a failure to engage vigorously with the technological future will gravely set back both our values and our prowess. And technology developments must be grounded in a healthy polis.

So, California, what about it? Revamp the state with the smartest and wealthiest and most creative to whom you are home. And give this ailing nation a bridgehead into what comes next.

Jerry Brown: California Needs Cuts ‘Far Greater’ Than Originally Expected.