The World Is Phat

[Inspired] The Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2010

By ROBERT DAVIS SHAVER JR on December 5, 2010 10:43 AM | | No TrackBacks

Foreign Policy had a fantastic feature this week enumerating the top 100 global thinkers of the year. Some of their choices were expected, some not; but all were people who are creating meaningful change in our increasingly globalized world.

It's a great list, full of fascinating people with brilliant ideas. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates were #1 on the list for the Giving Pledge they have been asking billionaires around the world to make, committing to donating much of their fortunes to confront the world's big problems like global warming, HIV/AIDs, food production, and illiteracy. Much of the work has been channeled through the enormous Gates foundation, to which Buffet has pledged 99% of his wealth. As FP said, "Gates's agenda is now the global agenda -- and he and Buffett won't stop until they see it through."

The list enforces some ideas I've picked up through the course of the semester in IST 445H. First, it seems that profound change takes profound vision. Might be an obvious statement, but it's an important one giving the relative decline of Americas position economically and politically over the last decade. For us to turn ourselves around we need leaders like those profiled on the list. Obama was supposed to be that for us, of course. Where's the change we need, Barry? (Surprisingly Obama was ranked #3 on the list.)

Another lesson I took away from the list was that private individuals often have as much power as government officials. Moreover, the real power for change comes through public-private partnerships such as many of the Gates foundations initiatives in Africa. And some of the most surprising entries on the list-- like George Soros-- only got there after spurning traditional opportunities. (Soros made an unprecedented $100 million donation to a human rights group, the largest ever to that type of organization.)

The entire list is well worth a scan. One of the most interesting things I noticed? When asked to choose between the iPad and Kindle, nearly all said the latter... guess there's a correlation between long form reading and great thinking. In any event, Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos (Amazon's CEO) shared the #17 spot for "reinventing reading." What a world we live in. So head on over to FP and see the rest of the feature.

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[Inspired] WishVast Sits at Intersect of Socialization and Globalization

By ROBERT DAVIS SHAVER JR on December 5, 2010 10:19 AM | | No TrackBacks

In my most recent post for this blog, I explained why I think the infusion of social on the Internet is a complimentary force to globalization. I termed it 'socialization' but am no longer sure that's the best term, given the alternate definitions that world already has. A rose by any other name is still a rose though, and I still believe that the capability for individuals and devices to exchange meaning in many ways with little difficulty or cost will enable the next wave of globalization.

I recently signed up to take EDSGN 497C with Khanjan Mehta. The project I will be working on-- WishVast-- seems to sit at the intersection of social and global in a very exciting way.

Basically, WishVast is a trust-based social commerce platform engineered to work on mobile phones and through a web portal. Watch the video below for a more thorough description of what it does.

It's like eBay went to bed with Facebook and the UN in a crazy ménage à trois. The possibilites are pretty fantastic. Imagine a farmer in Kenya connecting directly to Walmart's African operation and selling his produce to them directly, circumventing wasteful middlemen and giving the farmer an opportunity to build his social credibility through an honest transaction. Imagine a knowledge worker in India who connects through the platform to make a website for a small business owner in State College, PA, a Joe Local who does not trust the foreigner automatically but is able to rely on the trust mechanism as a metric to judge the honesty of a potential freelancer.

What happens when there are literally no barriers in the knowledge marketplace? When workers and companies can create mutually beneficial exchanges regardless of physical location. There are so many trends at play with WishVast and I can't wait to get started and see where I can add value. Globalization is being spurned on by social technologies and I want to be a part of that.

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[Inspired Post] Socialization is Important as Globalization

By ROBERT DAVIS SHAVER JR on December 5, 2010 10:06 AM | | No TrackBacks

Globalization is the process by which national economies become interconnected. It's a process of integration and collaboration. And frankly, it's a bit boring to me at this point.

I have considered the world to be flat for as long as I have had the capacity to do so. I grew up with the Internet, not with the USSR.

I am more invested in the information economy than I am in the stuff economy. That's why I think the most exciting trend in our current cultural milieu is not globalization, but socialization.

Socialization is the process by which things and people become interconnected. Think of it as the micro-scale equivalent of globalization. Socialization is Facebook and other social media; it is Ebay and other digital marketplaces; it is

I began thinking about socialization the other day when news broke that Google was considering purchasing Groupon for more than $5 billion. Groupon, Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare, Twitter... all the biggest names online have social as their core experience. Socialization is a complimentary and just as powerful force as globalization. I have some ideas how the two intersect but for that you'll have to wait for my next post...

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[Inspired Post] The Future is Just Beginning

By ROBERT DAVIS SHAVER JR on December 5, 2010 9:52 AM | | No TrackBacks

Pandora's Box perhaps it is, but the world has entered a technological age which it does not yet fully appreciate.

I'm not referring to simply the Internet, though I truly believe that Tim Berners-Lee will go down in history as one of the world's most influential inventors of all time.

The Internet is powerful in its own right. Multiply it by the power of existing industrial and consumer technology and you get a fully networked environment, one in which data flows unhindered from node to node and person to person in search of the most efficient outcomes.

The Cluetrain Manifesto famously says that markets are conversations. Sure, they are, but I believe in the future that more than just people will be involved with those conversations. Devices and the data/information they produce will play increasing roles in the future.

Consider supply-chain technology when RFIDs allow inventory to let a warehouse know it's there. Or strawberry harvesters that can adjust their ripeness specifications based on global demand to minimize waste and maximize profits. Take this, let industrial technology progress a decade as we wait for AI efforts to begin producing deliverables, and imagine where we'll be.

The future is just beginning. What will you be doing when it gets here?

[Inspired Post] Who's Emulating Who? LOC Blocks WikiLeaks

By ROBERT DAVIS SHAVER JR on December 5, 2010 9:35 AM | | No TrackBacks

It's undeniable that the Chinese have their eye on America's singular position on the world stage. As I've mentioned in previous posts, there's tons the United States can do to correct its course and ensure continued triumph of the American spirit.

But we have got to start helping ourselves first... we have got to start correcting some of the problems Friedman pointed out in his WikiChina column, we have got to improve our educational system, and we have to stop censoring information.

Wait, what?

Yes, that's right... America has begun censoring the information it allows citizens to see.

Now, it's hardly to the scale of the Chinese operation, but a number of US government institutions have begun censoring what WikiLeaks information Internet users can access.

Talking Points Memo reported on Friday that:

The Office of Management and Budget today directed all federal agencies to bar unauthorized employees from accessing the Wikileaks web site and its leaked diplomatic cables.

Other US agencies to block access to WikiLeaks information include the Library of Congress and the Department of Education.

This is absurd, in my opinion. The information is public and no act of God nor government can make it private again. Rather than sticking their head in the sand and trying to disabuse staff from seeing what's going on, the government needs to initiate a massive public relations campaign to explain why these kind of cables are being written and what they mean for American governance. This kind of act also contravenes the principals of digital public diplomacy which my IST 445H group will be presenting about on Tuesday.

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[Inspired] From WikiChina, Friedman Lampoons

By ROBERT DAVIS SHAVER JR on December 5, 2010 9:21 AM | | No TrackBacks

In his latest column for the New York Times, Thomas Friedman takes the recent WikiLeaks cable cache to make a point about what China thinks of the United States right now.

Things are going well here for China. America remains a deeply politically polarized country, which is certainly helpful for our goal of overtaking the U.S. as the world's most powerful economy and nation. But we're particularly optimistic because the Americans are polarized over all the wrong things.

Friedman goes on to point out the following as reasons why the Chinese should be optimistic about America's polarization: TSA restrictions, Russo-American relationships, the Citizens United decision, poor transportation networks, quagmire in Afghanistan, climate change, rare minerals, etc.

As usual with Friedman, the piece is more pomp than circumstances. China has tremendous economic power, but its domestic culture is not nearly as strong as his column might suggest. Perhaps the inverse is true for the United States, our economic power relatively speaking has been better but our domestic culture is still the world's culture. Moreover, our military force is still unsurpassed. America's national security is always an important issue, but Friedman is exaggerating the Chinese threat.

That's not to say that China doesn't scare me... and indeed the things Friedman points out are all indeed bad for America. It's tough to see how the polarization we currently have in our country could begin to dissipate. Perhaps after the new congress takes its place, but more likely is just more political gridlock. Any ideas on how we can prevent the implicit fear in Friedman's piece-- Chinese domination of the US-- from coming to fruition?

Bonus: For a real look at how the Chinese media has interpreted the WikiLeaks scandal, check out this video...

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[Inspired] Walmart Spreads Stores, Democracy Worldwide

By ROBERT DAVIS SHAVER JR on December 5, 2010 9:10 AM | | No TrackBacks

This week Walmart announced it had purchased a controlling interest of South African retailer Massmart Holdings for more than $2 billion, making it suddenly the third largest retailer in Africa.

The purchase is part of Walmart's increasingly ambitious plans for global expansion, a necessary task given the omnipresent to increase the corporation's bottom line in hopes of keeping its stockholders appeased and its valuation robust. Being the world's largest retailer is no easy task.

Now Walmart is hardly unique in its need to search abroad for emerging markets. Whether through subsidiary corporations, acquisitions, differentiated marketing, or just plain old expansion, transnational corporations we know and love are becoming the companies that the rest of the world knows and loves too.

There are a few positive effects from this, at least according to Thomas Friedman. In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman put forth the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention. In The World is Flat, Friedman suggested the Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention. Both basically argued that two countries engaged in trade or connected through supplychains will probably not go to war with each other. Empirically speaking, the theory has been proven false, but it inspired me to take the idea further.

What effect does Walmart's growth have on the international spread of capitalism and democracy? Of course, Walmart needs a capitalist structure in which to operate, but there could be a significant link between the advent of capitalist society (and the diffusion of wealth) with the advent of democratic society (and the diffusion of power).

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[Readings] The Race to the Bottom is a Good Thing

By ROBERT DAVIS SHAVER JR on November 7, 2010 1:53 PM | | No TrackBacks

There's something that Rivioli does that really annoys me. Friedman did it too a few times. They both will spend the majority of a chapter talking about a problem-- in this case the race to the bottom-- and then in a paragraph appended to the end of the screed will note that what they're saying isn't actually true, and that the real situation is much less severe than they had led the reader to believe. But by that point the damage is done and the reader is convinced that such a problem exists. It reminds me of this little segment from a roast of Bob Saget:

The final chapter in section 2 of Travels of a T-Shirt in a Global Economy is what prompted this little diatribe. Rivoli spends the majority of section 2 talking about the race to the bottom, but then in the final chapter of the section, at the end of the chapter no less, has this to say:

The market forces were pushing in the same directions as the activists. Wealthier workers are increasingly likely to eschew garment factory work, and factories have responded by trying to woo workers with higher salaries and better perks, ranging from roller rinks to swimming pools. A worker in a South China shoe factory explained the transition simply: "Now it's not the factories choosing me. It's me choosing the factory." And researchers continue to confirm the commonsense proposition that better working conditions are a market-led result of higher-skill industrialization.

My problem is that if she's saying market forces in fact push towards a raising of standards for those involved in the low-end production of goods (something that historically has happened often, like when the industrial revolution raised living standards in Europe), then why does she imbue the term 'race to the bottom' with such a negative connotation?

I guess what I'm saying is I'm unconvinced the race to a bottom is a bad thing. Moreover, I'm unconvinced that Rivoli actually thinks it's a bad thing.

The race to the bottom-- a stupid term if you ask me-- is more explicitly termed as the downward pressure put on prices by market forces. Of course this happens. Of course governments have to create systems that protect the most likely to be taken advantage. And to be sure, that seemed to be Rivoli's main point, that market forces themselves aren't bad if activist groups and enlightened governments push for industrial standards and create other types of protection for labor.

[Readings] King Cotton and America's Competitive Advantage

By ROBERT DAVIS SHAVER JR on October 30, 2010 11:23 AM | | No TrackBacks

It's not often that posts on Gawker, one of the world's most popular general news blogs, strike me as commentary relevant to the topics we discuss in IST 445H. More often, the blog writes about political scandals and celebrity gossip and corporate greed and any other number of topics that strike at the public id, the kind of content we hate to admit we love.

Yet a post published on the site recently struck directly at the discussion of subsidies and cotton that we've been exposed to through Travels of a T-Shirt in a Global Economy.

The headline reads:

Kill King Cotton For the USA

The post itself is surprisingly well reasoned. I know the author, Hamilton Nolan, better for his media commentary than for his political analysis, but he raises some interesting points.

For one, Nolan notes that cotton prices fell by 15%, and that while cotton farmers think this is bad, it is in fact great for consumers. Obviously. It's also good for the apparel companies, whose valuations and profits had dropped because of the high costs.

Nolan makes the point that America should move away from cotton, but it's at this point in the post that I felt his analysis suffered (can't blame him though, he probably had Nick Denton on his back to get it out quickly).

Nolan concludes his post by saying:

We as a nation have so much more to offer the world than just quality Texas cotton, neatly spooled white gold. We have a man who's eating nothing but potatoes for 60 days. They don't have that in China--cause they can't find enough potatoes, haha! But seriously folks, we also have the Exxon corporation, which raised its quarterly profit by 55% by raising prices, which you were all "happy" to pay. That's true American might right there. We can all rest easy.

You can't run a Caterpillar tractor digging up an ancient Native American graveyard in order to build condos with cotton in the gas tank, as Ben Franklin said.

Telling America to move away from cotton is hardly enough. What Nolan doesn't get in to, and what Rivoli explains in her book, is that very sizable subsidies support Texan cotton farmers such that they can sustain their cotton-based businesses despite the fact that America has no real marginal advantage in the industry. There's so much more that we could be doing! Imagine if cotton subsidies were directed towards reeducating cotton farmers. The economic impact would be much greater long-term than simply throwing good money after bad so Representative Joe Schmo from the Texas Fifth gets to keep his seat!

American politicians need to have a backbone when it comes to these kind of subsidies. There needs to be a real movement towards budgetary soundness. Too many fields that don't deserve our funding are being supported by subsidies like the ones that go to cotton farmers.

CSIS: Crisis in the Gulf Energy Policy Simulation

By ROBERT DAVIS SHAVER JR on October 23, 2010 4:23 PM | | No TrackBacks

This past weekend our IST 445H class visited Washington, DC and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Rather than recap the entire weekend, I am going to focus on the policy simulation that we did on the second day at CSIS.

The policy simulation was ostensibly the portion of the trip that the week of readings proceeding the event were inspired by. The readings were broad in scope but generally focused on the question of how America can improve its energy security. Though there was some nuance to the arguments presented in the documents, the core truth seemed to be that for America to be energy secure, she must diversify the sources of energy consumed and work towards making the country a more competent player in a new energy economy.

It was this significant overlap of understanding, the fact that there seemed to be a consensus to at least some degree about the road ahead, that was at work in the first part of the policy simulation, in which we were asked to generally recommend three policy planks the sitting Presidential administration should pursue in pursuit of a more energy secure America.

That part of the policy simulation was just the teaser though, a bit of rhetorical stretching before the main course.

And it's in that main course, the meat of the policy simulation, that I learned an important lesson about Washingtonians in general and energy politics specifically.

Summary of Energy Policy Simulation Situation
An ostensibly Arab Sunni terrorist cell has sunk two oil-carrying vessels in the Gulf of Oman. Energy markets and news organizations are beginning to react to the attacks. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Kohmeni is blaming the United States.

The CSIS staff asked us to advise the President and his council on what his administration's response to the situation should be. Our group approached the situation directly, seeking to answer the question: What should the President do today to make this situation less volatile? Here's the slideshow we presented.

Our response (that last slide, a joke, aside) was very much based in the short term. In that, we differed a bit from other groups, who incorporated more of the general knowledge we had about energy security into the framework of their responses and who made more long-term recommendations than we did in their responses.

Our group ended up winning though, and I think that tells us something about Washingtonian politics in general. It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day challenges that come up in office, and talent is promoted accordingly, with people who can put out fires and handle unexpected incidents gracefully taking positions of power. Yet what America needs more generally is long-term thinkers, people who can contextualize the immediacy of day-to-day life with 10 and 20 year goals in mind for the country at large and an understanding of how the grand drama of American politics looks from a birds eye view.

Our response was focused on tomorrow. Other groups focused on the day after tomorrow, how the President should prevent this kind of thing from happening again. But that kind of proposal will never be immediately popular and it takes a great deal of political capital to take an idea of that magnitude from initial pitch to final sale. The questions CSIS staffers asked us seemed to support this observation too; they were focused more in the immediate ramifications or political reality of the suggestions given to the stand-in Presidential staff. Since our response didn't contain any really ambitious proposals, we didn't have to answer as many tough questions.

Yet tough questions are exactly what should be asked right now, that's for certain, our political system just doesn't seem to be particularly good at answering them. So my question to you, my dear reader, is whether you agree? Does Washington promote short-term strategists over long-term thinkers? Do the tough questions go unasked in favor of the day-to-day challenges office presents? And if you were there, what did you think of the policy simulation?

Photo via Andrea Tapia on Flickr