As I mentioned in the last post, I seem to be a glutton for punishment. So, three days after I return from Sydney, I will be jetting off to London to deliver a special version of the Web 2.0 Executive Bootcamp. I have had the great fortune to work with Scott Gavin of Applied Trends and I think we have put together a great day of learning. If you will be in London on September 30, come join us!
(England, July 2, 1508) – In the latest edition of the Ye Atlantic Monthly, Nicholas of Carr despairs over the toll that books and reading are taking upon the minds and spirit of man. A noted jongleur and philosopher, Nicholas attests that he and many members of the jongleur guild are losing their ability to sing epic poems from memory. He plainly believes books are the cause. “It is as if these instruments are agents of Lucifer trying to steal away God’s gift of memory”, he laments in the article. And the danger may be more than the loss of the jongleur gift. While it seems ludicrous, Nicholas foresees a future in which even peasants have learned to read books. People from every class would lose the ability to remember even the simplest parable or psalm as they rely on the insidious books to remember it for them. While admitting that relying on books would provide him more epics and ideas to share with his audience, Nicholas worries that doing so will weaken his mind and spirit. “To rely on the crutch of a book when I sing a poem cheats my audience and demoralizes me,” declares Nicholas of Carr.
OK, unless you are an Atlantic Monthly reader, you are probably thinking that this is a very strange way to start a post. If you would like to better understand my lame attempt at parody, please read this:
Nicholas Carr’s love/hate relationship with technology have given us very interesting food for thought such as Does IT Matter?, The Amorality of Web 2.0, and his recent, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google. All his works are thought provoking and often challenge ideological extremism and divisiveness that tends to echo rampantly in the blogosphere.
I will leave the critical diatribe to others (see Jay Cross’s petulance). This is a blog on learning and performance improvement. So, in that regard, let me share the ideas that struck me as I read the article:
Acquired ADD – Carr laments how he and colleagues can’t read lengthy articles any longer. They have been conditioned by the Web (so he contends) to do drive-by reading (my term d’art), only gathering the information they need and then moving on. Yea, so? Let’s face it, we are moving into an attention economy. My time is valuable, I need to get what I need to perform and move on quickly if I want to remain competitive. And when I do compete well enough to win some leisure time, I will still “scuba dive in the sea of words” (Carr’s reference to deeply reading a whole book). But that book better be engaging (which is rare in non-fiction) or I’ll quickly find another book that is. Does this mean we are worse readers, or just demanding better quality reading?
It’s the Economy Stupid – Like it or not, we all have to compete in this dynamic economy. That means using the best tools available to innovate, solve problems, and out produce your competitors. Carr shares that pathologist Bruce Friedman’s feels his thinking has taken on a “staccato” quality – “scanning short passages of text from many sources online.” So? If the only downside is you can’t plod through War and Peace any longer and the upside is you perform more efficiently, I’m OK with that.
The Brain : Mind Barrier – Carr’s most dark and insidious concern throughout the article is that we are flirting with a future where machines have surpassed the human brain. He even claims that the Google gang stated that “we’d be better off” if are brains were replaced by an artificial intelligence (I’m guessing they stated “supplemented” instead of “replaced”). Indeed, Carr closes with his fears of a 2001: A Space Odyssey world where “people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine.” Well, that makes for a nice, spooky movie, but it is fiction. To make that leap, we would have to agree that the brain and the mind are one. We would have to have concluded that self-awareness, reasoning, cognizance, and intelligence are all just a by-product of an efficiently wired brain. I don’t believe that conclusion is already settled and universal. The Web may become an ancillary brain for us, but it can never replace the human mind.
Maslow on Google – If we drop the economic argument (after all the market may not always know what is best for us) of performance improvement, how does Carr’s claim impact us as individuals? Will our collective inability to finish lengthy tomes upset our personal success? If it does turn out that a “staccato intellect” results in me better meeting my needs, it is well worth it. To contemplate this, let’s revisit Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as influenced by the Web:
.Learning 2.0 – And finally onto what this blog is supposed to be considering: How do people learn differently in this new, Web-driven era? Carr’s article included many examples of how new technologies (such as the mechanical clock) have literally changed the way we think and behave. Carr’s basic concern is the Web has ruined our ability to read deeply which (he references to the work of Maryanne Wolf) will ruin are ability to think deeply. (Which begs the question: Can illiterate people think deeply?) There is certainly no research to support that assertion, yet. But there is no doubt that the Web is changing the way we work and learn. So, the important question for us in learning is: How does our pedagogy have to change to support this new way of working and learning? Even if this new era of acquired ADD does not alter our brain function or our ability for higher-level thought, it is a death knell for lengthy (boring) learning – whether it be in a classroom or online. We need to move from structured learning programs to flexible, nimble chunks of instruction along the lines of what used to be called “electronic performance support systems” (and is now just called “Google”). This does not mean the extinction of complex learning programs, but those programs’ design and delivery need to radically change. They must rely on more self-directed, mentor-monitored learning that is tightly integrated with daily job performance to meet the learning and development objectives.
So ends my Nicholas Carr inspired prattle. If you made it this far, I congratulate you! Your Web-induced ADD is not as advanced as Bruce Friedman’s, who is quoted in Carr’s article:
“I can’t read War and Peace anymore. I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”
Today I had the great pleasure of presenting a session on Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 at MIX08 Italy in Milan. I was there as a guest of our strategic partner in Italy and Germany, Reply. The day was kicked off with a keynote by Microsofy CEO, Steve Ballmer (see videos here). There are other posts about his comments on Yahoo! So I thought I would just share some of my thoughts on the other parts of his talk (and the follow-up Q&A).
Content + Community + Commerce was the mantra for the talk. This seems to be there way of recognizing that software is not the main driver in IT any longer. Now it is all about getting people what they want (content) in a social experience of their choosing (community) and, of course figuring out how to monetize that (commerce) so you can stay in business. The one thing that struck me from the talk was that the only monetization model he talked about was advertising. While I’m sure they are considering service subscription models as well, he didn’t mention it. During Q&A the theme came up again when he said the reason they were after Yahoo! was that they were a advertising and marketing platform that was already at “critical mass.”
Software + Services is the solutions theme for Microsoft. This is there take on how they will help us serve the C+C+C from above. Despite Ray Ozzie’s release of Live Mesh and some observations that MS finally sees that software is dead, Steve stressed the continued importance of software. He described how software will evolve in an environment that wisely balances desktop, Web, enterprise, and devices. Seems to me the “software vs. services” debate is semantic posturing. In either case we will still need engineers writing code that moves bits.
“Consumer, consumers, consumers.” That quote and his discussion of consumers was the only part Steve’s talk that made me cringe and think they still don’t get it. In this day and age, no business should look at their users/customers as consumers. I agree with Matt Jones’s definition of consumers. The people who use our products are our partners, not mindless consumers. Empowering people to partner with us to make our products better is at the heart of Web 2.0. If Microsoft does not get this, they are going to have a tough row to hoe.
Looking foward five years. Finally, perhaps the most animated and interesting part of his talk were his visions of the future of computing. They really were about services (supported by software) that reflected the pending convergence in media and technology. To paraphrase badly, he told a brief story envisioning a future when he is golf watching “TV” and shouts “Hey Bill, did you see Tiger sink that putt”. His intelligent “TV” would recognize that Steve wanted to say that to Bill Gates and would instantly find if Bill Gates was available for Steve. Bill’s “cell phone” would let Bill (sitting on a beach somewhere) know that there was a message from Steve and play the audio of Steve’s comment as well as the video of Tiger’s putt. Steve would respond, “that was nice – what kind of ball is he using?” Steve would rewind the video, zoom in on the ball, click it and get instant information about it and a link to buy it. He would tell Bill the brand and order two boxes for them. This was just one example of his crystal ball gazing – he also discussed ePaper and projectable surfaces.
Overall, his talk was interesting but didn’t break any new earth. But it did make me wear a tie. I try to avoid wearing a tie like I try to avoid root canal surgery. When I asked my Reply hosts if a tie was required for my presentation, the response was something along the lines of, “we know Americans don’t really wear ties – let’s wait and see what Steve does…” So, I was counting on Steve to go tieless. Wisely, he chose to show respect for the host culture and he wore a tie. So, I followed suite. The most difficult part of the whole day was remembering how to tie my tie…
Just a quick note: If you will be in Milan on March 23, drop by the Crowne Plaza Hotel for MIX08 Italy. Steve Ballmer and his Microsoft crew will be giving the Microsoft spin on what is hot in Internet development in the morning. I will be joining a host of colleagues from our Italian partner company, Reply, for additional presentations on delivering Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 solutions in Italy in the afternoon. So, if you decide that Milan sounds like more fun than another year of Web 2.0 Expo in San Fran, drop on by!
Here is some undoubtedly errant math from a former AOLer (me):
In December 2005, Google purchased 5% of AOL for just over $1 billion, pegging its market value of about $21 billion. The Washington Post ran this article today:
Murdoch and AOL Join Fight Over AOL
So, from the numbers in the article (notably all based on hear-say and conjecture), I did some back-of-the-envelope math:
Supposing first that Yahoo’s contention that the Microsoft offer of $42 billion undervalues them, let’s give them a 7% markup, bringing their current value to about $45 billion. From the article:
“Under the terms of the possible Time Warner deal, the AOL unit would become part of Yahoo. In exchange for AOL and an undisclosed sum, Time Warner would receive a 20 percent stake in the enlarged company, said the source, who cautioned that the terms were not final and that the deal could founder.”
I’m going to ignore the “and an undisclosed sum” to make my fuzzy math easier. Assuming the 80% of the new venture that Yahoo would keep reflects their current $45 billion value, then the resulting entity would be valued at about $56.25 billion. So, Time Warner’s 20% would be worth about $11.25 billion.
Now, that probably does not reflect the full current value of AOL. Earlier in the article it states:
“Yahoo, meanwhile, is working out a complicated deal to acquire most of AOL from Time Warner, the world’s second-largest media company…”
I’m guessing the part they won’t buy is the AOL access (i.e., dial up) business. It’s not news that Time Warner is seeking a buyer for that already, but I haven’t seen any guesstimates of what the selling price would be if they can find a buyer. So, I’m going to pull a sale price out of my elbow (see – clean language Mom!) and say they could sell it for $1 billion. That would give AOL a current market value of $12.25 billion (under the deal outlined in the Post).
So, loads of fuzzy math aside, that means since the Google purchase in 2005, the value of AOL has dropped 40%. Let’s compare that to the TWX stock price. On December 21, 2005 (the day after the Google purchase was announced), the TWX closing share price was $15.58. Yesterday it closed at $14.43 – a drop of 7%. If what Google paid in 2005 was just, and the AOL value tracks with TWX overall (a great simplification), then AOL’s current value would be about $19.5 billion.
So, if all the fuzzy math and conjectured prices in today’s article are correct, one (or more) of three things is true:
Given the conjecture in the post article, “In the unlikely event that both deals close, News Corp. and Microsoft would control Yahoo, MSN, MySpace and AOL…” and the fact that Google can decide to sell (or keep) its 5% of AOL this July, 2008 is going to be a very interesting year for AOL.
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