The Great Seduction

Wireless devices from Illinois

While a hip New York Times magazine is flaunting her middle-aged self in the tattoo parlor, the heroically square David Brooks is scraping off any vestige of fashionable symbolism from his lillywhite arm. In today's "Alpha Geeks", Times op-ed columnist Brooks dryly charts the ascendancy of the nerd in American culture:

The future historians of the nerd ascendancy will likely note that the great empowerment phase began in the 1980s with the rise of Microsoft and the digital economy. Nerds began making large amounts of money and acquired economic credibility, the seedbed of social prestige. The information revolution produced a parade of highly confident nerd moguls — Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Larry Page and Sergey Brin and so on.

Brooks is, of course, right. Nerdiness is cool. Nerd values, nerd aesthetics, nerd morality, above all nerd sensibility is not only taking over American capitalism and culture, but also American politics. And he is right to situate Obama-mania at the heart of this nerd hegemony:

Barack Obama has become the Prince Caspian of the iPhone hordes. They honor him with videos and posters that combine aesthetic mastery with unabashed hero-worship. People in the 1950s used to earnestly debate the role of the intellectual in modern politics. But the Lionel Trilling authority-figure has been displaced by the mass class of blog-writing culture producers.

Yes, it looks like we will have our first nerd president by the first of week of November. Brainiac Obama -- with his Harvard law degree, cool programmatic rationality and under-stated humility --  is the classic nerd. Hillary and (particularly) the Fonz like Bill, meanwhile, are stuck in the pre-nerd epoch, when it wasn't cool to look or sound like a calculator. Then there's John McCain who is so unnerdish, so uncool, that he's almost cool in a negation-of-a-negation Hegelian sort of way (but who will still get crushed by the wireless device from Illinois in November).

So how does the coolness of the nerd conform (to use an unfashionable word) with Thomas Frank's argument that coolness has been successfully conquered by Madison Avenue. If Frank is right -- and coolness has been successfully commodified by the marketing departments of large American companies -- then what does that tell us about the nerd in a cultural history of American capitalism?

Is the nerd the subject or the object of world history?  Are guys like Obama, Sergei Brin and Bill Gates programming America for everyone else? Or are they unwitting agents of deeper cultural forces -- currents that are dragging the rest of us poor suckers into a nerdish whirlpool of programmatic rationality, under-stated humility and wireless devices from Illinois?

EXPOSED: The New York Times gets tattooed

So this is how the New York Times rewards me. After writing wonderful things about the hitherto authoritative newspaper for years, the old lady has paid me back by publishing the most shamefully intimate confessions of a Gawker blogger called Emily Gould. Appropriately entitled "Exposed", it's the cover story of this Sunday's magazine.   

How the mighty have fallen. Under inane headings like "oversharing", "the feedback loop", "famous for 15 people" Ms Gould subjects us to the most naked manifestation of digital narcissism since the Berkeley bagel, Dave Winer, invented the godawful blog back in the Nineties. Oh dear. In one disgracefully indulgent essay, The Times has sullied its reputation forever. Expect Tom Friedman, John Burns, Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman et al to resign immediately. Journalists with their experience and integrity shouldn't have to compete for space with tattooed young ladies who flaunt their most intimate thoughts on the public Internet.

Note to Times Executive Editor Bill Keller: Why Bill, why?

Traditional Culture Experiencing Zone

I'm just back from a week tour of Seoul and Bangkok where, in between speeches, I experienced traditional Korean and Thai culture. Rather than Buddhist temples or authentic villages, my particular zone of interest were foot massage parlors. That's where key strategic parts of me interfaced with the genuine Asia. And that's where I invested most of my American cash.

Which leads me to the central riddle about the economics of globalization. In Seoul, foot massages started at around $60 for a hour worth of vigorous handwork; while in Bangkok, identical massages cost $8 an hour. It's the same feet, the same product, the same exchange of value, the same sensory experience, the same traditional cultural experience. But radically different economic pricing. Thus, 1 hour of pleasure in Seoul equals 7.5 hours of equally intense foot--happiness in Bangkok.

Does that make Thailand a seven and a half times better country than South Korea? Or am I analyzing globalization with typically myopic American self-interest -- through the traditional culture experiencing zone of my own two feet?

A liberal Islamic conspiracy

A couple of weeks ago, I predicted that Christopher Hitchens would be crowned the world's top public intellectual in the tri-annual online Prospect Magazine poll. As usual, I was wrong. The current front-runner is  Fethullah Gulen, a modernizing Islamic cleric barely known outside his native Turkey. As I reveal in today's Independent, the obscure Gulen has built up an unnaturally large (10x) lead over his nearest challenger. Such is the wisdom of the digital crowd. Or so it appears, anyway.

I'm actually all in favor of enlightened liberal cleric like Fethullah Gulen who is obviously doing a heroic job bridging the giant gulf between Islamic and Christian worlds. My problem, however, is with Gulen's less enlightened followers who, no less obviously, have obviously been busy rigging the Prospect poll. It's just one more irrefutable example of how anonymous online democracy doesn't work.

Speaking of Islamic controversies, I was in Copenhagen last week, the epicenter of the 2005 Danish newspaper controversy over cartoon representations of the Prophet Mohammed. I flew in to do an interview on the popular Danish public tv show Den 11.time. Great city, great interview, great public broadcasting system, great open sandwiches.

And speaking of interviews, read my chat with WPP boss Martin Sorrell for my Independent column earlier this week. Then wearing my less objective interviewee hat, listen to a wide ranging conversation I had with Interactive TV Today's Tracy Swedlow.

Flintstones rather than Jetsons: The End of America?

Just back from New York City, where I flew in and out of JFK on my way to and from Manhattan. According to John Gapper in this morning's Financial Times, I just had the misfortune of travelling on The Pot-Holed Highway to hell. Gapper is echoing the New York Times' Thomas Friedman's argument that America is facing an infrastructure crisis from hell:

A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York’s Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.’s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore’s ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children’s play zones throughout. We felt, as we have before, like we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons. If all Americans could compare Berlin’s luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II.

And here's Gapper on the journey from JFK to Manhattan: 

If anyone doubts the problems of US infrastructure, I suggest he or she take a flight to John F. Kennedy airport (braving the landing delay), ride a taxi on the pot-holed and congested Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and try to make a mobile phone call en route.

So, are Friedman and Gapper right? Is America becoming more third than first world?

I certainly didn't have a third world experience earlier this week. Traveling on a spankingly new Jet Blue Airbus 320 jet from Oakland, I arrived at JFK 30 minutes early, where I read about the imminent "ultramodern" Terminal Five (with free internet access and lots of space for kids to play). I then braved a cab ride into the city. It took me 45 minutes and I spent the whole journey unbumpily doing my email via my broadband Sprint USB modem. In NYC, I headed to immaculate Grand Central Station where I took a quick train to Connecticut. Then, the following afternoon, on my return to JFK, I spent the whole cab ride on my cellphone catching up to friends around the world.

Now, I would much prefer the Heathrow Express to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway?  Of course. And, yes, even Grand Central Station pales in comparison to Berlin's fabulous new train station. But I do have a suspicion that Friedman and Gapper are falling prey to fashionable hyperbole about American decline. Bashing America has become all-too-easy in the dismal gloom of Bush's last few months in office. And I suspect that this pessimism will suddenly lift after November 4th, when the majority of Americans will be celebrating an Obama presidency.

Anyway, I'm off to Korea and Thailand next week. I wonder whether I'll be greeted by Jetson or Flintstone infrastructure.

Americans are not who they think they are

What do Americans want? According to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, they have an "overwhelming hunger" for something called "nation-building". Americans, he thinks, recognize their own national malaise -- the infrastructural crisis, the financial debt, the absence of political leadership. To rebuild America, Friedman believes, requires the values of our parents' generation: "work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means". But this, he recognizes, is a complicated message that requires a special messenger. So, Friedman asks, who will tell the people the bad news?

Who will tell the people? We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country.

The Friedman argument is intriguing. He is the messenger to the special messenger. He is suggesting that "Americanness" is defined by a common misreading of its people's own identity. The bad news is that Americans are living a lie. But the good news, he says, is that Americans are ready for the truth, ready to finally face themselves.

Oh dear: we are not who we think we are. So what, exactly, do Americans think that they are? What are the illusions that they hold in common? What deludes Americans?

It's such an illuminating question that I'd like to come up with my own equally illuminating answer. So, tomorrow, I'm flying to New York City to hook up with a film crew. And, on Wednesday afternoon, we'll go out onto the highly unrepresentative streets of Manhattan to discover the lie/truth about who those poor deluded Americans think they really are. 

Hardly scientific, I admit. But a start, at least, to the great question of our age: What has become of America?

Is new media is killing journalism?

Just back from London where I participated in UNESCO's World Press Freedom Day Debate: "New Media is Killing Journalism" with the BBC World Service and Radio 4's Robin Lustig, Kim Fletcher (ex editor-in-chief of the Sunday Independent) and the Iranian journalist Nazenin Ansari. To get an overview of my argument, see my piece in Guardian Unlimited. The event, held at London's venerable Frontline Club, was sold-out. You can check out the whole debate on the Frontline or UNESCO's UK website.

A word of warning, though. I lost. My argument that new media is indeed killing journalism wasn't popular. I teamed up with Kim Fletcher and we were crushed by the Lustig and Ansari team. We got less than 20% of the wise Frontline club audience vote who decided that new media is not, in fact, killing journalism. Lustig, in particular, performed with his trademark brilliance. That this radio icon, who epitomizes the best of old media, should be arguing in favor of the democratized Internet, might be seen as slightly ironic. But then again, my own role as the amateur defender of professional journalism is also a bit paradoxical.