End of the metaphor?

I’m reading Jeff Jarvis’ book “What Would Google Do?” and have come to the part where he recommends that web content be put in a format that is easily identifiable by Google.

This has a subtle impact on written communication style. Just as speakers of global languages change to accommodate non-native speakers (using fewer idioms or slang, for example) so too are people changing the way they write in order to reach a wider online audience. This online change is very different from George Orwell’s rules on effective writing.

Jarvis recommends that dentists with an online presence not call themselves “smile doctors” or anything apart from dentist. In other words: remove the metaphors (whether they are elegant or not) in order to be indexed by Google. Orwell’s comparable rule was: “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.” Orwell did not recommend against the use of metaphors, but rather recommended being inventive in their use. He never lived to see a search engine.

So now we have another potential point of change for global languages. The desire to optimize search engine results will remove some of the poetry from the everyday written language so that we may reach a wider audience.

Michael Lewis article on The End of Wall Street

A friend sent me an article by Liar's Poker author Michael Lewis about The End of Wall Street .

In the article he expertly weaves in anecdotes about subprime mortgages, CDOs, rating agencies and his old boss, John Gutfreund, former CEO of Salomon.

I heard Gutfreund speak at the 2002 Columbia Business School panel that that Lewis referenced in this article. Oddly enough, the panel was held on the eve of the first year corporate finance final and so it was sparsely attended. It was a surreal event -- Gutfreund didn't weep, but he almost broke down when he recounted how proud he was of his son's decision to become a teacher. Having read Liar’s Poker years before, I sat there, puzzled that many of my investment bank bound classmates who had the most to gain from hearing Gutfreund and the other speakers were still studying for the corporate finance final, unlike myself.

Will your data be your destiny?

It is not enough to work to protect your own data these days. You must also think about how the myriad organizations you deal with protect your data, whether or not you have a choice in the matter. Let’s look at a few examples and consider their implications.

Web browsing habits from the home, which may bring out the lowest common denominator in many people, though mostly innocuous, were initially ordered to be revealed by user name in the Viacom v. YouTube case before bulk views was agreed upon.

Many people have grown accustomed to using publicly available online resources where the implicit way these same resources are managed changes over time. Over the years we’ve seen companies that provide free email turn specific messages over to authorities, such as when Yahoo provided a journalist’s email to his government which then imprisoned him for divulging state secrets.

An employee of PA Consulting Group lost a memory stick with unencrypted data on tens of thousands of prisoners in the UK. The worst here is that the loss itself does not represent the real incompetence. I’m sure people will continue to lose things well into the future. But my guess is that the data were unencrypted and on a memory stick simply for the convenience of working with them in that format. It was probably PA Consulting Group policy not to work that way, but with a tight deadline, less safe timesaving methods were used.

There are further examples of how corporations do not protect personal information simply because they do not deem it worthwhile. For example, ConEd online account information (address, phone number, email) is available simply by inputting an account number. No password is required.

The Princeton Review published personal information and test scores for tens of thousands of students on its website.

There is also the possibility of data theft after information is turned over (we see enough examples of thieves stealing or companies losing credit card, social security and other personal data).

Protecting personal information is not solely in the domain of the individual. Companies that have access to personal data will continue to lose this data in the future. We just have to ask that they do a better job of protecting this data to begin with and give individuals a clear and easy to use option of keeping their data private.

Seriousness to the individual of the following:
Viacom v. YouTube: low to medium, depending on ability to identify individuals from the data.
Yahoo email share: high, since this resulted in a prison term for the journalist.
PA Consulting Group memory stick loss: potentially high.
ConEd: medium. Mostly a risk of identity theft or unintended pranks such as changing address or payment schedules.
Princeton Review posts student data: low to medium. More of an ability to snoop on data that will eventually be revealed to schools to which the students apply.
Credit card or Social Security data theft: medium to high. Opportunity for identity theft and fraud.

Sunday, August 18, 1805

I recently read the Journals of Lewis and Clark, a nearly day-by-day account of the expedition sent by Thomas Jefferson to survey the Louisiana Purchase. Here is one journal entry from Meriwether Lewis on his birthday, while passing through what became the state of Montana.

Sunday, August 18, 1805

“This day I completed my thirty-first year and conceived that I had, in all human probability, now existed about half the period which I am to remain in this sublunary world. I reflected that I had as yet done very little, very little, indeed, to further the happiness of the human race or to advance the information of the succeeding generation… [I] endeavor to promote those two primary objects of human experience, by giving them the aid of that portion of talents which nature and fortune have bestowed on me, or in [the] future to live for mankind as I have heretofore lived for myself.”

With improved health and longer lifespans today, maybe people can get away with having this thought at age 39, instead of 31 (though Lewis only lived another four years). But still, for someone who had achieved much at a young age, what a journal entry.

A riveting definition of impact

An online search of some business and innovation keywords led me to the following sentence used by a well-known organization to describe itself:
“Make a difference. Make History. Our products have captured the attention, imagination and loyalty of generations of diverse individuals since our founding over 150 years ago.”

Any organization that can claim to have such a rich cultural impact over a century and a half while also appealing to individuals to join and “make a difference” and “make history” must be quite impressive. I tried to guess what organization it was. I was way off. The above sentences came from a Levi-Strauss ad.

No disrespect to Levis or to the fashion industry but jeans were not the first thing I thought of when the search engine presented me with that sentence.

But then again, as the world has moved from local, customized artisanal production to mass production handled by global entities, the sheer size of these organizations does allow them to claim wide impact on the way people live. At large scale, whether clothing, food production, communications, transportation, retailing, or entertainment, a more efficient process or innovation in design can truly have an impact on millions of people.

The Levis ad later states that it had an impact on “activewear for women in the early 20th century” (could it have helped the passage of the 19th Amendment?) and led the “casual businesswear revolution of the 1990s” (would dotcom employees have worn suits instead?). If Levis thinks of itself in these terms, then why don’t more organizations appeal to individuals similarly?

The pastry that changed my life and a new stage for business

I recently sampled a kouign aman made by my friend Romina, who is a pastry chef superstar and an amazing person. Her kouign aman immediately became my favorite pastry. Too bad she lives two thousand miles away.

Romina was in NYC recently and worked as a stagaire at a couple of restaurants here. The concept behind the stage is that a chef will work in another’s kitchen for a day or so in order to get exposure to other techniques or cuisines. Restaurants are certainly businesses and I began to imagine whether non-food business managers could offer the same courtesy to colleagues from other organizations.

What would work the same:
- The stagaire agrees to respect specific innovations of the organization itself
- The stagaire actively contributes to the new organization
- The stagaire quickly learns and appreciates what could apply to his/her own business back home

What would work differently:
- The timeframe would need to be longer. A one-day stage in an office probably wouldn’t suffice, whereas a one-day stage in a restaurant would
- While anyone in an organization as a stagaire would be trusted by the owner/manager, their presence may be viewed differently by compliance organizations and other employees. Security issues would need to be addressed
- In non-food businesses, the stagaire may be better off observing, sitting in on meetings and discussing with the manager at day’s end

In a sense, the traditional management consultant is something of a reverse stagaire, going into a new organization for a time to bring in ideas and processes from outside and not necessarily having the relevance to apply what he/she sees on the client side to the consultancy. Other than consultants, typical business stage-like exchanges include the formal (case studies, articles, best practices) and the informal (talking business outside of work). It’s important to do this, no matter what business you’re in.

Photo fakes, data loss and co-evolution

Over the last year there have been some high-profile photographs that initially caught the world’s attention and were then revealed to be fakes.

Picking some that I followed in the news we have the recent famous photo fakes from China (which for some reason are all animal-based) and include the wild tiger, photo contest pigeon shot, and antelopes by the new train to Tibet.

Now we also have augmented photos from the recent Iranian missile launch.

Sure, photographs have been altered since there has been photography and some fakes have lasted more than 100 years before being found out (such as one from the US Civil War). Intentionally doctored photographs were more difficult to make but certainly were made in the past.

One thing that all of the above examples have in common is that the doctored photos improve upon the composition of the original. The other thing they have in common is that they lessen the belief that we have in the photographic image, especially those from official sources. Further, the notoriety of these fakes will not dissuade people from creating more fakes; rather, more care will be taken and future fakes will be harder to spot until fake-spotting techniques also advance, resulting in better faking techniques, ad nauseum.

The issue is one of co-evolution. That is, once there is a way of protecting something valuable – a lock and key, for example – eventually someone will develop a way to pick the lock. We see this in areas as varied as encryption technology, the recent man-in-the-middle attack that freed the hostages in Colombia, elongated trumpet-vine flowers matched with elongated hummingbird beaks, and so on.

This continuous development of ways to break through security requires that corporations continually step-up controls on sensitive data. It is also why we can always expect to hear about examples of unintentional data loss in items as varied as social security numbers, pension data and credit card numbers. Mistakes also happen (a laptop with sensitive data is left on a bus) and databases are hacked. Since we have to share some degree of personal data in order to easily maneuver our way through this world, we need to prepare for eventual possible data loss. Therefore, corporate (or personal) data security is not only a question of what you do to prevent data loss, it is about what you do after it occurs.