The New New Middle East

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Richard Haass’s sobering article in Foreign Affairs opens thus:

Just over two centuries since Napoleon’s arrival in Egypt heralded the advent of the modern Middle East — some 80 years after the demise of the Ottoman Empire, 50 years after the end of colonialism, and less than 20 years after the end of the Cold War — the American era in the Middle East, the fourth in the region’s modern history, has ended. Visions of a new, Europe-like region — peaceful, prosperous, democratic — will not be realized. Much more likely is the emergence of a new Middle East that will cause great harm to itself, the United States, and the world…

Haass is the President of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was chief of the Middle-East desk of the National Security Council for George Bush Snr, and director of policy planning in the state department during Dubya’s first term. Sidney Blumenthal (not the most reliable of sources IMHO) thinks that his views reflect those of James Baker, the man currently leading a survey of the policy options available in Iraq. The Foreign Affairs article is long and detailed. Haass produced a more accessible summary of it for the Financial Times. Thankfully, it remains outside that organ’s odious paywall.

Exploring the web

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I wrote a post on the Guardian‘s Comment is Free Blog about the newly-announced partnership between MIT and the University of Southampton to study “Web science”. Extract:

Ah, poor Southampton (or Soton, as it’s known on the net). It’s about to learn that entering into a “partnership” with MIT is like marrying into the British royal family. As Ry Cooder might put it, you get to ride in the white Lincoln Continental with the red upholstery, but you must learn always to walk two paces behind your “partner” and never, ever assume that you have any rights to the fawning and adulation that followed upon your elevation. MIT doesn’t do partnerships in the normally understood sense of the term; what it does do are pragmatic or strategic liaisons that are deemed to be in its institutional interests. Ask the ancient University of Cambridge, which knows a thing or two about this. Gordon Brown put up £64 million of UK taxpayers’ money to lubricate a partnership between Cambridge and MIT. Guess who got the lion’s share of the loot?

Realpolitik on yellow paper

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From the Economist’s review of Margaret MacMillan’s new book, Seize the Hour: when Nixon met Mao.

Some of the most revealing discoveries Ms MacMillan has made in her researches are the haiku-like memos Nixon wrote on his yellow pads. One, which he scribbled before the talks started, begins:

What they want:

1. Build up their world credentials

2. Taiwan

3. Get out of Asia

What we want:

1. Indo China (?)

2. Communication—To restrain Chinese expansion in Asia

3. In future—Reduce threat of confrontation by China Super Power

What we both want:

1. Reduce danger of confrontation & conflict

2. A more stable Asia

3. A restraint on USSR

Note the question-mark after “Indochina”!

MS Word architect to defy gravity

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From The Register…

Charles Simonyi, 58, is set to become the 450th person in space, and the fifth amateur cosmonaut to fly to the International Space Station (ISS). He also claims to be the first nerd heading for orbit.

He is slated to take off on 9 March, 2007, provided he completes his training and passes all the medical tests.

Simonyi told the BBC that he had three goals: “One of them is to advance civilian spaceflight, the second to assist space station research, and the third to involve kids in space sciences,” he said.

He says he plans to learn Russian as part of his preparation, and will also bone up on the workings of the rocket that will take him to the space station.

“Learning about the systems is part of my engineering curiosity and makes the whole experience so much more interesting when I understand exactly what is going on and, for example, why the flight is safe,” he explained.

After the eight minute journey to orbit, on board a Russian Soyuz rocket launched from the Baikonaur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the software engineer will spend two days travelling to the ISS. He’ll spend eight days on board before returning to Earth.

As with other high profile space tourists, Simonyi has organised his trip through Space Adventures. The ticket to the ISS is thought to cost between $20m and $25m.

One of Simonyi’s more inspired endowments was the money he gave Oxford to establish a Professorship of the Public Understanding of Science — currently occupied by Richard Dawkins.

Handwriting and subjectivity

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I’ve had some interesting conversations recently with friends and colleagues about handwriting. I’m perpetually annoyed and puzzled by my own. Some days it seems legible and orderly, but usually I find it intensely irritating. And I wonder why it varies so much from day to day. Is it to do with mood, or hassle or tiredness? Or something else? In many cases (e.g. the pages of my notebook shown in the photograph) my scribbling seems — to me — to be illegible and hopelessly untidy. Other people’s handwriting, in contrast, always seems to me to be orderly and consistent — even when it’s illegible. But then I discover — from talking to them — that they think my handwriting is neat, orderly, legible and consistent, which it manifestly is not! So is it the case that other people’s handwriting always seems better than one’s own?

Another interesting observation. I spend a lot of my working day with techies. Yet — with only two exceptions — they all carry and use paper notebooks. (The two exceptions carry and make notes on tablet PCs.) It’s clear that the paper notebook has a lot of life left in it yet.

And while I’m on the subject, I’ve been to the terrific exhibition of David Hockney’s portraits at the National Portrait Gallery. The pictures are wonderful, but in a way the most fascinating exhibit is the glass case containing three of his notebooks. I was reminded of the story (no doubt apochryphal) about Picasso instructing a builder on changes he wanted to make to one of his studios. As he talked, he made some sketches of what he had in mind. Then he handed them to the builder and said “How much will this cost?” “Nothing”, replied the builder. “Just sign it”.

Dont think — just report

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I followed a link from Jeff Jarvis’s Blog to Armando Ianucci’s Tate Britain lecture, and was very glad I did. He was talking about why British comedy now has so much political content. One passage stopped me in my tracks:

Comedy is so prevalent now, it’s cool by association. So politicians speak and act according to the rhythms of comedy. Labour trying to portray Cameron as a chameleon – it’s an attempted sketch.

This has come about for three reasons: politicians have stopped speaking to us properly, the media has stopped examining their actions in anything like a forensic way, and broadcast culture has become so watered down, so scared of fact, that people are less inclined to turn to anything other than entertainment for information.

Broadcast journalism today promotes itself not so much on what it talks about but on the method it uses: “Broadcasting 24 hours a day, correspondents in over 50 capital cities, giving you all the headlines every 15 minutes, up to six generations of journalists gathered in one newsroom, making you feel all the news you want to feel, even on Christmas Day.” Hi-tech software and speedy transmission makes everything instant news, but we lose sight of the skilled individuals who can process this random unstoppable flow of information and somehow construct a meaningful examination of it. We need narrative.

I found myself hungry for narrative in the build-up to the war in Iraq. Here, surely, were facts – or, indeed, a glaring absence of facts – that required piecing together. Here, surely, it was clear that political debate was operating on a curiously surreal level. We were being asked to attack a country on the basis that the weapons we knew (but couldn’t prove) it had would definitely be used against us, especially if we attacked it. This Alice Through the Looking Glass logic has continued after the invasion. Now, it seems, it was necessary to have invaded Iraq to rid the world of the terrorist cells who have flooded into the country since it was invaded. The terrorist attacks in London and mainland Europe since are, officially, unconnected with the invasion of a country that was invaded because it had links with terrorist attacks in mainland Europe.

My favourite quotation from the eminently quotable George Bush is a remark he made last year about the constant attacks on US troops in Iraq: “The insurgents are being defeated; that’s why they’re continuing to fight.” It’s a stunning reversal of all logic. Measuring success in terms of how far you are from success. An even stranger utterance came from Tony Blair at Labour’s 2004 Conference when he defended his actions by saying: “Judgments aren’t the same as facts. Instinct is not science. I only know what I believe.

“I only know what I believe.” I find that one of the most chilling statements uttered by a seemingly rational politician. Apart from the fact that it overturns about 16 centuries of western philosophy and questions the entire principle of scientific inquiry, it’s also, surely, how the Taliban get through their day…

Afterwards… I found it hard to believe that Blair had said that, so I checked with the text. He did say it.

I’m also reminded of the “balance as bias” phenomenon which came up in a something I posted in 2003 about Paul Krugman’s Harvard lecture.

Nielsen conference on user-generated media bans blogging

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From Greg Verdino’s Blog.

Today, I am off to Nielsen BuzzMetrics’ clients-only CGM Summit 2006.  The agenda is cram packed with sessions covering all aspects of Consumer Generated Media (CGM) including an overview of where we are today, why people do this stuff, where CGM is going in the future, and how exactly marketers can leverage and measure this powerful channel.  Ironically, the confirmation email I received for the event includes this warning:

“Off The Record: the CGM Summit is off the record, so please no blogging, reporting, recording or broadcasting.”

Hmmm…  So how can you host an event about consumer generated media and not let your consumers, um, generate media?