China Won’t Be Strong Until They Can Accept Dissent

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/06/world/asia/06china.html?hp

China continues to show the world the weakness in their system. Of course, any criticism like this one (from an “ethnocentric Westerner”) will also be seen as an affront to their “benevolent stewardship” as opposed to a genuine wish that they could be come once again the Great Middle Kingdom. Let your culture flourish — don’t destroy it. Wasn’t that mistake made already (i.e., Cultural Revolution)?

Vietnam Internet Firewall: Continued Crackdown

I wrote an earlier post about my personal experience with (Facebook) being blocked in Vietnam. Looks like Vietnam is continuing to apply the pressure, now to bloggers.

In this CNN video, heroic blogger Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh talks about the censorship and harrassment she’s faced since blogging about hushed Chinese mining operations in Vietnam’s highlands.

Vietnam: Stop Censoring the Internet and Bloggers. You are a WTO member. Join the world, or not?

Esquire: Why are you hiding your customer service phone number?

Everybody’s heard a story like this. I’m going to tell mine anyway. I needed to change the address on my Esquire magazine subscription. Dutifully, I went online and found that I needed an account number, which I don’t have, or I could put in my name, which didn’t work. Alas, there was no phone number for customer service anywhere on the web site. I had an old issue (with the mailing label torn off, so I couldn’t find my account number) and there was no phone number for customer service anywhere in the magazine.

Folks, this is 2010. The old days of hiding behind a web site are so, well, 2000.

I searched Google and the first link returned the appropriately titled “Gethuman.com,” where I found Esquire’s customer service number, which is 1-800-888-5400. Called, punched through the convoluted menu to get to a human and got my address changed. The customer service, by the way, was excellent. As I was being sold on another product from Esquire, I did chip in that hiding the number was a bad idea. The person on the other end, while polite, stated: “That’s the way of the future.”

Let me explain the “way of the future”: word of mouth. Continue to use antiquated methods to run from customers and find yourself, and your “secret” phone number, in a blog somewhere — like this one.

Just for good measure, I’ll repeat: Esquire’s customer service phone number is 1-800-888-5400. Press 0 to reach a human.

Asians (Asian-Americans) as the “Model” Minority for Illiteracy, Poverty, Obesity (?)

I just drove 1,000 miles across the American Midwest this past weekend. En route, there were plenty of billboards to look at. Interestingly, many of them were public service announcements. Perhaps even more interesting was the fact that many of those billboards featured images of Asian people that supposedly represented a need group targeted by the public services. Being a marketer in an Asian/American (not Asian-American) household (my wife is a native and citizen of Vietnam), perhaps I (we) are especially sensitive to this phenomenon. But let me recount the billboards we saw:

• Illiteracy – a 30-something Asian man was pictured in a billboard that featured adult literacy programs
• Obesity – a 20-something, fairly round Asian woman’s face was pictured in a billboard that featured obesity awareness/prevention
• Child proverty – an Asian child (female) was pictured in a billboard that attempted to draw awareness to some statistic about American children who live in poverty
• Lupus (disease) – an 40-something Asian woman was pictured in a billboard that advised of the symptoms of Lupus erythematosus, a degenerative tissue disease

Since the billboards were stereotyping (most mass advertising does — that is its nature), I’ll go ahead and stereotype too (without doing proper research on my claims here). Namely, Asians (or Asian-Americans) do not jump out to me as a group of people who would warrant prominent placement in these ads. I do know of the stats in terms of per capita income and living standards (they rank higher than whites in these areas). To that end, I think that illiteracy and poverty would probably be relatively low among Asians. Maybe for illiteracy, they were thinking ESL (English as Second Language), but that’s not the same service as illiteracy programs. And obesity? While there is certainly an obesity problem here in the U.S., if I were putting my marketing dollars to work, I don’t think I’d put a lot of them into targeting Asians. (Ironically, soon after we saw the obesity PSA billboard, we saw one for a weight loss program that featured a stock photo of an ultra-skinny Asian girl in a bikini). Can’t speak for Lupus disease, although I believe it does affect non-Europeans more.

So what’s next, Asians in anti-meth ads?

Does anyone else think this is weird?

The Problem with Twitter: Over capacity at 10pm CDT, Minneapolis

Here’s the problem with Twitter. I just tried to log in to (ironically) demonstrate the use of Twitter for my Communications Technology class:

A system that a whole lot of people rely on … gets a whole lot of press … and is a whole lot of unstable. :-\

Firewalled in Vietnam

So it’s been a while since I ran a post. Part of that reason is that for much of the winter I have been overseas and mostly in Vietnam. Most of the time I was unable to reach WordPress, Facebook or other blogging/social media sites. Asking around, I discovered that (true to “just copy China” fashion) I had been firewalled. And as I have since discovered, true to the reputation of hackers everywhere, people had found a way around it. I’m not going to give away their secrets (which I could never get to work for me anyway, so I guess I’ve lost my hacker credentials over the years), but it leads me to believe that a lot of the great hackers of our day are coming out of these “firewalled” countries … I’m wondering what that’ll lead to.

But the whole situation leads me to reflect on the notion that an analogy exists about how the internet works from a technical standpoint and how people on the internet work from a social standpoint. It’s the same. The internet is designed* to “break up” requested information (in the form of data, e.g., emails, web pages, downloads) and route that information around obstacles (such as downed or busy servers) to ultimately reach its destination and be “reassembled.” So too, people have figured out a way to access the internet by going around obstacles such as government-imposed firewalls. Even in developed countries, where employers have blocked access to social media sites as well, employees do the same “routing around” by using their own devices (e.g., smart phones, 3G netbooks) to access the internet.

I’m reminded of William Gibson’s line from the book Burning Chrome … in reference to “advanced” technology: “the street [always] finds its own uses for such things.”

* – An interesting YouTube video attempts to explain this.

What does “Buy Local” mean, anyway?

I was at a “mom and pop” coffee shop and noticed a sign (in the restroom, of all places) that displayed: “We appreciate your business. Buy local!”

This seems to be a popular mantra these days. But what does it really mean, to implore customers to “buy local”? What is “local”? I think the implication is “corporate” versus “mom and pop.” But corporate franchises are typically owned by a local proprietor. Even “corporate-owned” branches are employing local people, selling goods to local people and paying local taxes. And even if the employees weren’t local, they came from somewhere else to work locally, so they’re local, right? Regardless, they were local to somewhere. Why is this local better than that local? Basically, what makes “local” local? And why is local local better, anyway?

I’m not sure what is gained by limiting what you buy (as much as possible) to local providers. No group of people has ever created long-term wealth by strictly buying goods and services made at home that could have been obtained more cheaply somewhere else. Imagine that as a Tennessean, you stopped trading with people in other states. You would not get your carpet from Georgia. You would not buy your furniture from North Carolina. You would not import Pabst Blue Ribbon from Milwaukee. Life would be actually be pretty miserable.

I think it sounds noble enough to proclaim, but the notion of “buying local” doesn’t hold up under much rational scrutiny. In fact, I see it as basically a strain of conservative isolationism, writ small perhaps, but conservative nonetheless.

America Needs A “Third Place”

A “third place” is a social space that is distinct from the two “usual” environments of home (i.e. “first place”) and work (i.e. “second place”). In both popular press accounts
and marketing/consumer research, third places are often characterized as readily accessible social venues frequented by regulars but open to all comers. Something like a community center, coffee house, cafe or “mom and pop” restaurant. Third places become community congregation points and, importantly, provide a centralized “sense of place” that facilitates creative interaction among people. This interaction can amount to “everyday” social engagement (i.e. water cooler chat, gossip, laughing with friends), but hopefully also includes civic discourse. The idea is to give folks an outlet to talk to one another, and address issues that are important to them as a community.

Compared to what I have experienced abroad in the tea shops and espresso houses of Asia and Europe, the United States has a relatively underdeveloped “third place infrastructure.” I have not examined the historical evidence, but I believe during the early development of the nation, citizens participated more in third place interaction.

Chalk it up to modernization and the rise of digital interaction, but the third place seems to have diminished in importance in American society. While I still see vestiges of third place interaction at Starbucks or even discussions among neighbors in the parking lot at Wal-Mart, these outlets are “impromptu” third places and do not constitute a consistent, welcoming space for regular engagement, which is an important criterion for being a third place. In the case of Starbucks, despite presenting a seemingly inviting space with soft couches and hip jazz music, their coffee shops are largely designed to maintain customer throughput, not congregation.

Perhaps the loss of the third place banter has something to do with the ongoing outbursts and general lack of civility during town hall meetings across America (which seems to have spilled over into congressional engagements). Dramatic changes (perceived or otherwise) in the way the nation is being governed is certainly an impetus for the passionate exchanges during these meetings. But could it be that the prior lack of ongoing face-to-face discourse and dialogue — impromptu town hall meetings on a small scale via third places — has contributed to the current powder keg?

RE: The Greatest Generation (of Networkers)

The Wall Street Journal‘s Jeffrey Zaslow posted an interesting article entitled “The Greatest Generation (of Networkers)” wherein he talks about the Millennial Generation and their seemingly “subconsious” propensity for using communication technologies such as cell phone texting, instant messaging and social-networking applications (e.g. Facebook, MySpace).

The key concern: How can young people get any work done if they are “hyper-socializing” and holding multiple conversations with others through these technologies?

The experts weigh in.

In one corner: They can’t. The communication that is going on is “futile and trivial” (according to one expert cited in the article). What’s more, the interactions with devices and online networks while in the workplace are a drain on productivity. People are goofing off and employers are paying for it.

In the other corner: They can, and because they are multi-tasking socializers, it actually helps their social skills. They’re able to prioritize, optimize, and nimbly handle multiple streams of interaction while quickly boiling issues down to their essence. This, says another expert, is an important skill in today’s work world.

My take is this:

1. The onslaught of hyper-connectedness is here to stay — in the home, at the workplace, in school, and in society. So, we can complain all we want, but the horse is out of the barn. People will have to adjust to the new ways of always-on, always present interactive communications.
2. People have been goofing off at work since time immemorial. Before the internet it was private phone calls. Before phone calls, it was water cooler chat, three martini lunches, and golf. Then (and now) it has been reading the newspaper or daydreaming. Productivity will always be affected by people goofing off. The prohibition of social networking sites in an effort “thwart” drains on productivity is akin to turning off email or preventing phone calls and can actually send signals to employees that you don’t trust them, as Shel Holtz has been arguing on his blog.
3. “Futile and trivial” conversations have also been going on since time immemorial, and even though folks might not be using social media and other networking technologies to wax philosophic about “important” issues such as the meaning of life or how to end world hunger, the “superficial” conversations occurring through social media can actually lend themselves to building and maintaining relationships — something few would argue is not important in today’s business climate. Not all relationships developed through social media run deep. But what applies to interaction in non-work scenarios also lends itself to interactions in the workplace. For example, I communicate with many friends and family members in short bursts and in ways that might seem “futile and trivial,” but nonetheless important. My friend Brian van Huss put it well: If Nietzsche were alive today, even he wouldn’t be talking/writing/publishing “important” content all the time. But he probably would find time to think about such things. And this leads to my final point …
4. What I’m more critical of is the loss of contiguous, uninterrupted blocks of time to concentrate on whatever endeavors one needs to get done … so, can this generation disconnect from these tools when necessary, disengaging the “surface,” and focusing in-depth on issues that need such attention?