Facebook and Its Followers

I have been on Facebook for number of years. In my student advising days a computer sciences major encouraged me to join. Ironically he seemed to be a shy kid. A shy kid introduced me to a club with about 600 million members! I don't use it much. But I see that some people use it all the time. Facebook appeals to those seeking self-expression. But don't we all seek self-expression? The only requirement is the knowledge of typing. You have an audience-- your Friends, or at least those friends who logon. You express a point-of-view. But Marshall McLuhan explains there is no point of view in the electronic world. Information comes at you from infinite directions. There is no margin and no center. What is a point-of-view in a simultaneous world? Everything comes, goes and leaves. The experience of expressing yourself is real. We have become creators of news. The guy, Jason Russell, with the Kony 2012 video presents an interesting case. He felt passionately about Uganda and children and produced a video that got 80 million hits-- possibly a record success. He was overwhelmed by the criticism of his piece, so the theory goes, and had a breakdown. He made himself part of the story and the criticism felt especially personal. So you have to play the internet carefully or be the kind of personality confident enough to weather the firestorm of comments. Andy Warhol warned about that 15 minutes!

Goldman Sachs and The Forbidden Dance

Remember the lambada, "the forbidden dance" from Brazil? Goldman Sachs, once regarded as a "best in breed" investment firm, may have  become the forbidden firm of Wall Street. One of their hotshot employees wrote an editorial for the NY Times telling how toxic the scene had become in the corridors and meeting rooms of Goldman. The leadership had gone to hell, he explained. At one time they actually considered the needs of their clients. This philosophy, placing client needs above all else, provided a rudder for the ship. The new rudder has a different goal-- making more money for themselves. Nobody tries to figure out what effected the change. The answer cannot simply be the passage of time (i.e.-- as time passed, people became more corrupt). Actually 143 years had elapsed since Goldman Sachs first opened their doors or whatever gets opened up at investment banking firms. I'm not sure they want the general public headed through the portals so maybe they open up a side door or maybe a secret trapdoor? But something changed beyond the scope of the company and contributed to the chaos of money grubbing so evident around the entire Wall Street scene.

The biggest change over the last 20-30 years has been the computer. The computer increases speed and transparency. Suddenly consumers could engineer their own trades with almost the same visibility to the stock environment as the insiders pulling the levers behind the curtain. Once we saw the Wizard and his methods the whole ruse was about to tumble. The last five years have been Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall and all of the SEC, congressman and regulators struggling to put Humpty back together again. Without the public confidence you cannot return Humpty Dumpty, the rules of the game, back together. And so the future looks chaotic on the financial front. A new system probably has been forming up outside of our awareness. We look backward for historic explanations. The historical record does not explain what is going on-- because that is all BC (before computers).

SXSW is Happening

This week is SXSW conference in Austin, a gargantuan of a successful idea from the Lewis Black mindset, the editor of the Austin Chronicle, Austin's free alternative newspaper. To all things free many gifts are bestowed. Try figuring out the magic of SXSW and what a catalyst, aphrodisiac-like attraction the event has become for the movers and shaker-bakers from every coast, hill and valley. My thought is that calling Austin the "Live Music Capital of the World" helped ignite the magic. When you can name it, then you claim it. The genius who invented "Live Music Capital" sparked the thing and SXSW, a play on the Hitchcock film title, "North By Northwest," was also marketing genius. Lewis Black, a movie maven,  was an RTF grad student at the University of Texas in an earlier incarnation. RTF means Radio-TV-Film for the uninitiated and SXSW means South By Southwest. SXSW began as music festival and now has three parts-- interactive, film, and music-- a sturdy three-legged stool if there ever was one.

The most controversial element so far occurred at the Interactive portion (computer people) of SXSW. Some company, how's that for a generality, hired homeless people to act us wireless hot spots, which as I understand it means they provided places, like human towers, where you could get wireless access to the internet. Some said the idea was piss poor, underlining the narcissism of high-powered techies who have the illusion that life begins and ends with them. The rest of the people are carbon life forms. Others liked the idea that the homeless people had been included on some level. Talk about a digital divide! I'll look at my laptop, smart phone etc. while you just hold that lamp.

Oh well, some things are so reeking full of irony that you can hardly comment, they comment on themselves. But there was something very allegoric about the whole issue, an Aesop's Fable of sorts. There once was a man with a laptop computer and another man holding a microwave antenna....

Go Outside

Go Outside. This was the article of an Austin American Statesman article from the other day. American kids don't play outside, eat sugar and suffer from diabetes, don't exercise and have become obese. And when you stay inside in an air-conditioned environment your body does not have to cool itself down. We burn less calories by living in an "air-conditioned nightmare," as Henry Miller said in the title of his 1945  novel. Leave it to a novelist to figure out air conditioning signaled a step down a slippery slope way back in 1945.

So what's the alternative to living inside in an air-conditioned nightmare. Go outside! What will you find out there? Who knows... never can tell. I have been walking the hills of a nearby neighborhood.

A friend explains Andrew Breitbart's early demise as a case of him being "too tense because he could not control the future of the world..."

Giving up control... now there's a theme!

Why do we prefer outside to inside? In days of yore the outside was a dangerous place, full of wild animals and physical threat. We tamed the American continent and built incredible infrastructure and well-insulated houses. The suburban palace is a programmed environment. Temperature controlled. Media systems come in through the flat screen televisions. We can even broadcast ourselves now on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, punching away on laptops and cellphones. Why leave the house? (see paragraph one)