Doomsday seems to be closing in. The cream of financial analysts, investors and management consultants all agree that the financial crisis is deep and inevitable, and will have effects for many years to come - irrespective of what happens to Greece now, and [insert your favourite next here] later.
Time to despair, flee, hide? No.
In 1942, Mario Capecchi was a four-and-a-half year old orphan, left to fend for himself on the streets of northern Italy during World War II, living in various orphanages and roving through towns with groups of other homeless children, and almost died of malnutrition and typhus. By any means, he was in a much worse situation than any reader of this blog.
In 2007, shortly before his 70th birthday, Mario Capecchi won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
It's time to build our future.
(For those who'd like to know more about the remarkable life of this amazing man, here is an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica, and here is his first interview after being awarded the Nobel Prize with the editor-in-chief of nobelprize.org)
At TEDIndia, Hans Rosling provides a superb bird's eye view of social and economic progress since 1858. The overarching question is "when will India and China overcome the United States and United Kingdom in terms of income per capita and life expectancy?". (Soon, but don't get scared just yet)
Since Italy has been lagging all countries above in the last decade, our turn will be earlier...
Massimo Mantellini says (my quick translation, powered by Google):
«We are a wonderful country. Only in a wonderful country can the Government justify its failure to allocate funds to broadband by saying that technological development, a priority everywhere else deemed essential to overcome the crisis, will be the top priority for the Government immediately after the crisis is over. What's more, the Government can comfortably express these concepts, without anyone asking why the bridge between Calabria and Sicily and the new motorways in Lombardy (over 4.1 billion Euros approved in the same meeting in which the 800 million Euros for broadband were blocked) weren't similarly postponed.
We are also wonderful for other reasons. Firstly, because the stop-and-go over the last few months between the Government and the Telcos, who are anxious to get their hands on public funds for broadband, ends with the Government not even slightly embarrassed of having made promises that vanished in thin air. We are also wonderful because the Employers' Association one day yells for the abolition of the IRAP tax, and the next day is shocked at the lack of investment in broadband, following the very convenient argument that everything is equally urgent, as long as the money is not theirs. And we are wonderful even thanks to the political opposition, who rant today about inadequate investments in innovation by the Berlusconi government, forgetting their own, absolutely identical, shortcomings less that two years ago.
The situation is what we're accustomed to: an overwhelming predominance of words over facts and a tedious uniformity of views on issues that would instead require creativity and a search for discontinuity.
And the context is that of a country that is far from a virtuous path of innovation not so much because of infrastructure, but rather in its values and ideals. The overwhelming assumption, widespread at all levels, is that the day in which 100% of people will be reached by broadband, the issue will be definitively resolved. We bask in the sociological analysis of so-called "digital natives", as if to say "look, maybe today the landscape is bleak, but tomorrow's adults, who grew up in the era of the Internet, will have other needs and other expectations". Are we really confident that this will happen? We suggest to the many enthusiastic supporters of "digital nativity" that they visit a university, where those young people who grew up with e-mail and YouTube spend most of their time, to get an idea of the level of "technological culture" of this country. They would go home with somewhat less confidence.
The 800 million Euros for broadband are indeed important and the recent decision of the Berlusconi government is consistent with the usual myopia to which Italian politics has accustomed us over the last decade. Nothing that we haven't already seen, nothing that was not reasonably expected. But the latest Government's decision worsens only minimally the gigantic problem of a nation that has the same love for technology of that of cats for water.
We need long-term policies centered on schools and technological literacy, we need authentic information about the value of the Internet, we need incentives targeted at families to address the cultural impasse of the 50% of Italians that continually upgrade their expensive smartphones and still don't have a computer at home. We need to talk about the Internet, even on TV, as the great opportunity that it is. And then of course we also need better infrastructure, but without deluding ourselves that the problem lies all there.»
This has been the first real pause since the beginning of this blog. It's not that I've had nothing to say. On the contrary.
I saw first hand how the global recession, kicked off by the subprime crisis in the U.S. in 2007, is now determining the crops grown by Akha people in northern Laos, close to the Chinese border. Quite simple really (slowdown of the automotive industry and of private spending, reducing demand for tyres, less consumption of rubber by Chinese tyre factories, less need for them to look as far afield as Laos for rubber trees...) but still quite startling if you think Akha people live in remote hillsides, earn their living from rice and sugar cane on the local market, and have no access to the news since they only speak Akha, of which there is no written alphabet. It goes without saying that they wouldn't know what you are talking about if you mentioned CDOs, credit crunch, G8 and G20, GM/Chrysler rescue, Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, etc.
Luckily, they have grown an alternative source of income with sustainable tourism, thanks to excellent work over 10 years from GTZ, the German cooperation agency. Allowing a limited number of tourists in their villages (and only one day a week,) and managing the tours themselves, should hopefully enable them to preserve their way of life while opening up to visitors, and save them from the fate of other native populations, many of whom haveallbutdisappeared.
A little more than 200km south of the Akha villages (a 12 hour mostly off-road drive) lies Luang Prabang. Three years ago, this was a town undergoing reconstruction thanks to international aid, with a few decent hostels here and there...and a great atmosphere. Today, it has flourished: the street market has been moved south to give it more space, local shops have sprung up selling all sorts of local goods, there's plenty of accomodation of all sorts...and free wi-fi in many cafés and hostels. IMHO this is what progress and development is about, although plenty remains to be done.
A sad comparison to back home, where free wi-fi for tourists and visitors is unheard of, despite tourism being a pillar of our economy. Just one small symptom of the structural decline Italy is experiencing since the beginning of the decade, not just against emerging markets like China but also against all our Western peers. Adding insult to injury, our leaders don't seem to notice or even suggest the worst is over, despite plenty of early warnings that the decline is structural.
----- UPDATE: Marco Tullio Giordana also said it well in the 2003 film "La meglio gioventù" (The best of youth).
(in Italian)
-----
Are we condemned to fightover our own little slice of a shrinking cake, or will we be able to get the cake growing once again?
Still, there's a time to write, and a time to pause to listen and reflect. To start again, with renewed vigour. That's why pauses are needed, and why more will come to this blog.
«Sono in aeroporto a CVG. Leggo le notizie su Obama e su Berlusconi. Sono abbastanza stanco e queste letture da un lato mi entusiasmano e dall’altro mi deprimono.
Da un lato c’è un uomo che con compostezza, equilibrio, lungimiranza, vorrei dire saggezza, sta cercando di mettere mano a problemi gravi degli USA e del mondo nel suo complesso.
Dall’altro, dobbiamo assistere a questa telenovela fatta di foto, veline, voli di stato. Certo, non è con questo che si fa opposizione. Ma un presidente del consiglio perché si mette in queste condizioni? Non dovrebbe avere la serietà e la prudenza di comportamenti sobri, da presidente del consiglio? Nel frattempo smentisce il governatore di Banca di Italia che invece ha ragione, e ridicolizza chiunque non la pensi come lui.
È veramente una situazione triste. E non si intravede all’orizzonte nessun Obama che sia capace di avere quell’autorevolezza e quella serietà, vorrei dire, di cui avremmo bisogno.
Si parla tanto dell’antiberlusconismo e lo si critica. Certo anche Obama dice che non è dalle differenze che si riparte e si costruisce. Ma lo dice dall’alto di una autorevolezza e di una credibilità che da noi non c’è. Senza credibilità come ci si può confrontare? E nel centrosinistra quando si avrà il coraggio di parlare di soluzioni praticabili per il paese e non solo di sterili denunce o, peggio, proposte troppo spesso qualunquistiche?
Avremmo bisogno di tanta serietà che invece non c’è, nè da una parte nè dall’altra.
Questo è il problema, molto più del debito pubblico.»
Quando l'avranno capito tutti comincerà a cambiare qualcosa.
An interesting side effect of social media, on historians' view the past.
«There is a cliche that many people often share about history, and how it is written by the victors. The conquerors across the world, for the most part, are the ones who transcribed the history for others to read. [...] The history today will be different. With technology and social media, we have the effortless ability to capture our individual truth and experience in minute detail and save it on shared servers for the world to access hundreds or thousands of years from now. Ironically, this fact may make the study of history that much more complicated, as historians in the future will have many versions of truth to study and contrast.»
Note to self: remember to read this again in 2059 and post the answer.
(First seen on Quinta's weblog) Baekdal.com has a simple yet insightful interpretation of the role of media in history, challenges advertisers and PR professionals to look at the future...
«Ask yourself. Are you still trying to get journalists to write about your products? Are you still making websites? Is your social networking strategy to ‘get a Facebook Page'?»
...and attempts a forecast through 2020.
«In this article, we are going to take a little tour through the history of information - or more specifically where to focus efforts if you want get in touch with other people. It is really exciting time, because we are currently in the middle of the most drastic change since the invention of the newspaper.»
To put the current state of Italian media, you should probably have a look at 2002.
«The greatest threat facing our country [Italy] is not really public debt, GDP decline, insecurity in urban outskirts, or lack of integration of immigrants. It's rather the widespread perception of crisis that frustrates and makes us feel directionless, holding us from designing our future. When an entire nation stops imagining its own future, someone else will do it...against it.»
It reminds me of a great quote from Quinta's weblog (originally by Davide and Luigi)
«Too bad for the country that can't imagine that in 10 years' time, among its main corporations there may be some that today don't even exist.»
Regulators and politicians worldwide have recently come up with all sorts of attempts and proposals to regulate P2P file sharing, enforce IP rights on digital content, punish unruly behaviour (e.g. PirateBay). So far, little progress has been made:
Lots of arguments between stakeholders (see, for example, this from Quintarelli)
Little agreement on what the debate is about (this, again from Quintarelli, who's been very vocal about the issue, especially on his Italian blog)
...and very little meaningful progress.
Now Giavasan (via Mantellini) comes up with an metaphor for the whole thing.
After all, when refrigerators became affordable (1927), consumers (families) could access new ingredients, created new recipes, and ultimately had much richer meals at home, while businesses and professionals (such as restaurants and restaurant chefs) certainly had to adapt to the new environment.
Restaurant chefs, for example, now publish recipe books (instead of asking regulators to uphold their IP rights over a recipe and try to prohibit everyone else from "copying" it!)
Restaurants surely had to diversify their offer: more sophisticated, exotic, or otherwise "special" (instead of asking politicians to ban the use of refrigerators at home!).
Are artists the new chefs, and media companies the new restaurants?
I think so, and maybe artists and media companies would do better if they spent more time researching alternative business models, rather than fight a battle that they can't seem able to win.
«If you reach for the stars, you might not quite get one, but you won’t end up with a handful of mud, either.» -- Leo Burnett
«If I am not for myself, who will be? If I am not for others, what am 'I'? And if not now, when?» --Hillel
«The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.» --George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists
«All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing» --attributed to Edmund Burke
«God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.» -- attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr
«Ci sedemmo dalla parte del torto, visto che tutti gli altri posti erano occupati» --Bertolt Brecht
«Happiness is not a state of mind, it's a way of life» --Anonimo
«There's no such thing as a complex solution: either it is simple and workable, or it's not a solution!» --Anonymous
«First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.» -- adapted from Martin Niemoller
«It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change» --Charles Darwin
La visione di Daniele
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Quando un po’ di anni fa Salvini decise di occuparsi di me scatenandomi
addosso la sua premiata macchina del fango, un oliato meccanismo di
coordinata viol...
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