The New Normal? Or the Great Panic of 2009-2011?

by | Mar 13, 2009 | Innovation Shifts

I asked in my MBA class last night — so what do we refer to about the current financial mess? One of the students called out: “The Depression.”

I put out two temporary names:

“The New Normal” — The past few years have been an overinflated blur of too much buying with no real value. Jobs were created selling things that people didn’t need to people who really weren’t generating the value to afford them. We really can’t go back there again and shouldn’t. The TARP Stimulus Package is going through old pipes into old sectors to bribe people into creating old types of jobs so people can want more stuff again. This isn’t creating new “innovation” or new value for society…minimal retraining…minimal rethinking…so far. So I might call this The New Normal.

The Great Panic of 2009-2011 — Maybe we will “recover” but to what? Maybe we will just gain confidence in the “system” and that we will have jobs and future wealth on the markets going back up again. But we will be jumpy, just like after a major earthquake. A car rolls past, rocks the floor a bit, and you jump and look for doorways. This is my more optimistic name (made more cynical by the timeframe…maybe to 2010?).

I stand a little firmer by The New Normal. There isn’t a chicken in every pot and some people may be fighting for that chicken. I want to figure how we raise more chickens, not just figure out how we go back to selling them pretty dresses to make them look nicer. (I know, bad metaphor.)

We are still applying bandaids and praying for rain. I’m not sure the rain is coming. So if the rain doesn’t come…how do you plan your life and actions differently? What if we aren’t in a world of “more” but are in a world of “divide” and “share”? How do we create Real “more” that society needs, not just wants?

More on this to come.

Google and the “/” Typo

by | Jan 31, 2009 | Innovation Shifts

This could happen to me — I can see this now. I make a typo in a database and accidentally write “/” — and suddenly everything goes wrong on my website.

But I’m not Google. They did this around 6:30 am PST today and typed “/” in a database that identifies malware. And around the world, every search for about an hour on Google identified everything as malware, since every address has a / in it.

Twitter buzzed, but wasn’t too helpful. Lots of things were hypothesized. TechCrunch beat all the press to the table out of their Belgian office. Their posts were helpful, not as much from their stories, but from their comments from the whole world pinging in as to the fact that this was happening around the world.

Users were confused in all timezones. Was this my computer? Should I reboot? Should I complain to my ISP?

Google finally ‘fessed up and said no, it wasn’t stopbadware.org’s database. That site was crunched as many users went there for information, so was of no help. No, someone at Google put a “/” in their database. Their quality control folks were able to identify this and fix it in about an hour total. Blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-site-may-harm-your-computer-on.html.

An hour? In Google Internet time, that’s a big outage for a small glitch.

I had another temporal Google glitch last week. The dates in my Google News search on the left hand side were from the 1800’s — really. When I clicked them, it brought up newspaper articles culled from archives and digitized from the 1800’s. After a few searches, that feature went away. (It was cool, and I’m not sure of why this accident drifted in.)

Glad to hear that Google wasn’t hacked. Disturbed at the ripples. Amused at the temporal impact.

Don’t Mash Me Up. Please. Really. Really, Stephen?

by | Jan 26, 2009 | Innovation Shifts

This Comedy Central piece from Jan. 21, 2009, with Stephen Colbert daring us to NOT mash up his audio book and video of his two-week earlier interview with Lawrence Lessig nearly made me cry from laughing.

The Colbert ReportMon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Stephen’s Remix Challenge

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Then my co-worker, looking over my shoulder, said, “I’m confused. Is he for remixing rights or against them?”

Or is it for or against free marketing in this free market? Where else will this amazing video go?

Great beats and visuals. I was going to say “dude,” but that’s too old fashioned. I am just not as Down as Rap Master Colbert.

P.S. And http://community.colbertnation.com/ has a place for everyone to NOT upload their remixes and you can see all the remixes that everyone has NOT uploaded. 🙂