Il prestigio è volato in cielo

Cinque anni e mezzo fa lo conobbi, e ci avventurammo insieme alla scoperta del Web 2.0. Mi insegnò, tra le altre cose, che tutti saremmo presto stati su Google, volenti o nolenti, ed era quindi molto meglio dire noi stessi chi eravamo. "Non lasciare che un algoritmo dica chi sei", mi disse. Da cui il sottotitolo di questo blog, nato con e grazie a lui.

Oggi ci ha lasciato, per evangelizzare anche il Paradiso dopo aver contribuito a rendere migliore questo mondo.

Addio Marco, @funkysurfer, funkyprofessor.

Outrage, and some hope

This blog finds this outrageous.

BBC: Ivory Coast forces shoot dead six women protesters, witnesses say


This blog also expects every individual and government who quickly and loudly protests every alleged act of violence in places like Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Iraq, Afghanistan - and more recently Egypt, Tunisia, Lybia, Bahrain, etc - to express their outrage as loudly in this circumstance. Especially those who regularly mention "genocide" and "crimes against humanity" in their speeches.

Two weeks ago, David Cameron said "Countries like Britain faced a choice between our interests and our values ... and to be honest, we should acknowledge that sometimes we have made such calculations in the past ... but I say that is a false choice."

Well done, Mr. Cameron, time to put your foreign policy where your mouth is. And time for other world leaders to follow quickly.

PS This news broke out because the event was filmed with a mobile phone and uploaded to YouTube. Another example of how social media is changing history for good.

Pause, rewind. Listen, then play again. Louder.

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 have all but disappeared.

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.

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UPDATE: Marco Tullio Giordana also said it well in the 2003 film "La meglio gioventù" (The best of youth).

(in Italian)

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Are we condemned to fight over 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.

Negli ultimi giorni questo blog è stato 'chiuso per disgusto'

(in Italian)

Mentre Luca de Biase ci ricorda una verità lapalissiana ...

«Un meraviglioso dibattito sul New York Times che riguarda come i politici superano gli scandali di tipo pruriginoso. Chiedono scusa, si dimettono, si fanno perdonare. Ma nessuno fa finta di niente, in America.»

... Alessandro Gilioli ci mette di fronte a una realtà che molti non hanno colto.

«Siamo stati abituati a pensare - forse a scuola, quando ci spiegavano il fascismo - che la democrazia o c’è o non c’è. Cioè: o si vive in una dittatura, con la polizia che va nelle case degli oppositori e li trascina in galera, oppure si gode pienamente della libertà, del pluralismo, dei diritti di informazione ed espressione.

Quello che sta succedendo in questi mesi in Italia dimostra che siamo stati abituati a pensare male, o almeno in un modo vecchio.

Dittatura e libertà non sono più concetti on/off, ma poli estremi di una linea con molte fermate intermedie, concetti limiti opposti con tantissime vie di mezzo.

[...]

I giornali di destra - compreso il fighetto Foglio - sbeffeggiano a piene mani quelli che parlano di nuovo fascismo, perchè guardate quanti giornali d’opposizione, quanti siti e quanti blog, e quanta libertà d’espressione.

Certo, certo, questo non è il fascismo che conosciamo, non c’è l’Ovra, né il confino a Ventotene e nemmeno l’olio di ricino.

E’ un’altra cosa, molto più light, e il capo ha consenso popolare, eccetera.

Ma tanto bella da vedere, e da vivere, non è.»

Io ricordo dei versi tratti dal pensiero di Martin Niemoller.

«Prima di tutto vennero a prendere gli zingari
e fui contento, perchè rubacchiavano.

Poi vennero a prendere gli ebrei
e stetti zitto, perchè mi stavano antipatici.

Poi vennero a prendere gli omosessuali,
e fui sollevato, perchè mi erano fastidiosi.

Poi vennero a prendere i comunisti,
ed io non dissi niente, perchè non ero comunista.

Un giorno vennero a prendere me,
e non c'era rimasto nessuno a protestare.»

This blog's first anniversary...and its surprising audience!

This blog was started a little over one year ago with the tagline “Me about myself”, which has since remained the true spirit of this blog. (Nothing of interest to anybody other than myself, I thought at the time.)

A couple of months later, I wrote about the unexpected audience this blog was attracting...by now, this thing has gone completely out of (my) control!

• There's been 1.450 of you, unique visitors, of which 300 have visited regularly (typically once every 1-2 weeks, which matches how often I have posted something)
  
• You've come from 367 different cities, from Aachen to Zurich, from Nesseby (70°8'29" North) to Melbourne (37°48'49" South)...
  
• ...in 47 countries across the five continents, from Argentina to the USA, including pretty much every country in Europe, North America, Oceania and the Indian subcontinent...but also Tanzania, the UAE, Singapore, China, the Philippines, etc.
• Apart from the home page, your favourite content has been my contrarian position for Luca Luciani during the Waterloo incident (here), my congratulations to Beatrice Borromeo (vs Bruno Vespa, here), the pearls of wisdom from the Value Partners retreat @ Djerba (here and here) as well as Debora Serracchiani's speech (seen all over the Web, including here)

At this point, the question has to be: where should this go next?!?

The spirit won't change. It can't. But since I have an audience, I ought to listen! Write your comments and suggestions. What did you like? What did you think was irrelevant, inappropriate, misplaced? What can be done better? What else should this be, if anything?

PS Thank you Zampe for getting me to do this in a first place!

You, this blog's surprising audience

It all started in mid-April...this blogging thing looked like fun. Quite frankly, I didn't have a plan, nor any expectations. What should I post? Would anyone read this, and why? Did it make sense to tell all my friends to look at it, only to lose their interest after the first visit? How many people would actually be interested?

After 7-8 weeks, I find the stats from Google are quite surprising...you are a real audience! Here's a snapshot of you, the 227 people who visited up to this moment.

• You visited 434 times, viewed 782 pages and spend on average 2.59 minutes reading this
• You came from 20 countries across the globe: Italy (obviously), various European countries (from Spain to Hungary, from Turkey to Sweden), US (from California to Massachussetts to Texas), Latin America (Mexico, Brazil and Argentina) and Asia (China, India, Singapore, UAE)
• You often came by clicking on links to here (FaceBook, LinkedIn and other blogs) but a surprising number typed the address by hand, and 50 of you found this on Google

Now, here's the scoop. 55 of you have visited more than 10 times! This blog has a loyal audience! Who are you?!?!? Please don't be shy, leave a comment...I'm dying to know!