The New Local

(disclaimer. This blog was typed from Germany on a German keyboard. I am sorry for any errors)


I remember the first time that I was asked where I was from and got confused. It was 2004 at a conference in Koln Germany. You wouldn't think that this would be a tough question to answer, but I found that my difficulty to answer said something incredibly promising about the world we lived in. Here was the confusion. I was married, and my wife lived full time in New York. I worked for my family business called Tech Pro which was located in Summit County Ohio, so I spent part of the week there (where I rented a house) and part of the week in New York (where I rented an apartment). We employed up to 50 people in Ohio. I also was a co-owner of a new company that worked with Tech Pro in a German town called Bruggen. I spent one week out of every five there, and had taken a lot of time, and some pride in starting this with my partner Peter Day. My family business also had sales offices in 13 other countries that I visited often. For the first time in my life I truly felt like the cliched, but relevant “citizen of the world”. I loved this, as it showed that internationalism was no longer an artistic construct, or economist ideal as it was in the early 20th century, but was rather a reality of life.

Now times have again changed and we live in the most hyper globalized world in history, but with a strange reactionary tendency which seems to be at odds with the “citizen of the world” ideals which I so much cared about. We live in a Facebook and Google world, where we communicate globally. Strangely, however, there is a paradox, that we seem to be communicating about the importance of being local rather than global. This is seen in a number of places.


The first is in the buy local movement. While I see nothing wrong with buying local, and actually love the idea of supporting local businesses, the more formal movement does have the unfortunate quality of blinding many people to the value of international commerce. It is global trade, not local, which brings prices down, which makes the world more prosperous as a whole, and encourages technology. There are things that are just better when we collaborate globally, such as certain types of manufacturing, sharing of customs and work principles (think of the Toyota Lean manufacturing model which was Japanese), sharing of natural resources, macro and micro economic experimentation and much more. Even for those who support “buy local” for environmental reasons this can often be misleading as local for most of the United States is considered to be anything within 150 miles. To truck small amounts of goods this distance can often have a worse environmental impact than flying large quantities from other countries. As a solution to this, I do propose urban farming which is as hyperlocal as you can get. So you can see that I don't think everything should be removed from a tight community. In fact one of the greatest things about life now is the rapid rate of increase in urbanization which is better for everyone than rural or suburban living.


The other major place where being global has become controversial is in the recent US Presidential campaign. Talk of Bain Capital and the outsourcing of jobs has basically been a standard lie for both parties. Neither want to discuss the reality, taking instead the less substantive approach of avoiding the real issue. The reality is that we need to discuss the importance of a company's survival and when outsourcing is a good idea. We need to see when it has worked, and just as importantly when it has failed. What Romney should say, and actually Obama should agree with, is that there is not a one solution answer to where to place jobs. They should not always be local. That is a reality for a company's survival and ultimately in providing good jobs both in the United States and abroad. Both Romney and Obama know this, but it is politically incorrect to say it. What could be a politically correct and accurate follow up is that often experiments with outsourcing were not the best solution, and that companies are bringing jobs back to the United States when the conditions work out well.

This brings me back to my own identity. Where am I local to now? I live in Brooklyn, New York, and have a new business in Summit County Ohio that employees people who on average make over 50% more than the state average. That company also sells more internationally than in the United States. So to me I am a proud citizen of New York where I live and contribute by being a Dad and Professor, and to Ohio where I contribute by choosing to have a company and hire wonderful people there. I am still in my mind a “citizen of the world” though, even if that title is not en vogue. Something last night surprised me though. I have been giving TEDx talks in various places around the world. But I never considered, nor do i think TED would want, them to be considered local events in the way that only local topics, and a very small definition of local population would speak. Still there is a TEDx Akron coming up, which is in the same county where I grew up, and owned 2 businesses, including the current rapidly growing technology one. I was told by a friend when I asked about speaking at it, that she believed it was for locals. I said, rudely and defensively, that I am a local. (I did this from Germany and by e-mail by the way) I bring the coolest and best paid new jobs to the area. I use local banks, local patent lawyers, local accountants and our growing staff and I frequent local restaurants, stores and bars. We use local hotels constantly as well, because we are global. If I have to pick a place I am local to, Akron must be a contender, and certainly a place that should ask me to speak at a TEDx Akron. To be completely fair to my wonderful friend she is really great. She even worked with and advises our company (another example of us buying local) and she has helped change the landscape of the community. For me to talk about myself was as it sounds; selfish. She is nominated, rightly so, to speak at TEDx Akron. My worry however is not that I won't speak, which is absolutely fine. What worries me is that others like me, who have homes in New York or other places will not embrace my hometown (Akron) for starting businesses if they are perceived as outsiders, even by the very global TED community. I also worry that Akronites will see themselves as Akronites as a main definer of identity, which will prevent them from embracing globalization. I want everyone to eventually be citizens of the world. The world is too wonderful not to want that. This is not specific to Akron, but general to the ideas I mentioned before. We act more globally every day, but often seem to wish we were not. This is a shame, and should be acknowledged by communities and politicians, so that we can fully achieve the dreams that I had thought I had achieved for myself in 2004.

In Our Agora

In the mid 19th century, and before, American cities had landmarks which were not purely religious, or commemorative in nature even if that was there original intention. Here in Brooklyn, Henry Street has one of the most famous old churches of the Whitman era, which was not so much famous for the gospel being preached on Sundays, but for visiting superstar orators like Henry Ward Beecher, or even writers like Whitman himself, who while not usually going into the church proper, gave lectures just outside. Human history has been marked by people who can speak well, which can be powerful and inspiring, or treacherous and dangerous. The 20th century saw television speakers, who didn’t possess the same concise talent, but still were able to move people, and due to radio waves a Kennedy could do it en masse. Right now however a new phenomena is occurring, in which mass oratory seems to have become a requirement of almost any field from formerly reclusive artists, to architects, theoretical scientists, and even people who grow gardens on their rooftops. The clearest place where this is visible is in the enormous popularity of TED Talks, where the range of ability and expertise ranges greatly, but the ability to give a good talk is nearly universal as it has become the priority of the group. The Moth talks are rehearsed story time of the semi famous, who for 20 minutes are not practicing, or even talking about their expertise per say, but orating to a small room, and podcasting to audiences of millions. I must listen to 100 of these type of small talks per week. They are an addiction of the short attention span want-to-be intellectual like myself, who holds a false delusion of being able to take in enough information in 10 to 20 minutes on a topic to be conversant in the field being discussed. This mass oration with massive audiences has made micro-polymaths of a nation and a world. As I watch these, I feel slightly anxious. We have so quickly moved from an age of specialists, to an age where people are interdisciplinary. Just 5 years ago when I first got involved with the World Science Festival the idea of combining art and science on a grand scale was revolutionary, as those worlds were generally separate. Now I am a part of 10 or more online groups that do this, and they all have excellent spokespeople. So here is the question that I am left with. Have all of us who have wanted these worlds combined found it in the voices of our best orators? I think it is not enough. I am glad that they exist, and that I can spend that time listening, and learning little bits, but in doing so I also realize that the trend can be counterproductive to me, and I would guess to other people.

While online oration is more accessible than ever through Youtube on an I-PAD, laptop, Apple TV and dozens of other devices that are designed for viewing media, there is something else that needs to go along with it, which is to create, and not just consume. Luckily the tools to be creators are better now than ever. Arduino micro-controllers exist for creating electronics, 3D printers, and development kits for programming and visualization. What happens though is that we are stuck with little time , not just because we are watching others in short doses, but also because we are wanting to be them. We are not wanting to be them in terms of artists, architects and scientists, but to be orators of who we are.

To speak has sometimes been ethereal and at other times not. Lincoln’s Gettysburg address is still admired, but only as a written account of an oration. Presidents have been used to being recorded for posterity, but now we all are, and we happily embrace it, perhaps rightfully so. Isn’t this the key to democracy? Isn’t this the Agora of the 21rst Century? What we don’t do though is realize that not everyone can or should be the perfect orator. Some should create song, some videos, some computer programs, and some poems, without ever having to speak to audiences of millions about them. Some should be heard, and seen, and some not need to be. The freedom to adore oration has imprisoned the creative person in the confines of a world where communication is more important than content.

So as I finish this I go back to planning my University lectures which I give every Monday. Last semester they were recorded, and this semester they are not. I feel differently about these two things. Certainly the recorded lectures have the potential of being more important, but when I go back and watch them I realize that I was being cautious. I was trying to be a good speaker. I wanted to be a  good lecturer, and sometimes not taking the risks that I should have taken. A professor should not be judged mainly by the quality of the speech, but rather by the quality of the words.

With all of this said I remain ambivalent about the overall effect on society. What enriches so many, can lead to stagnation by so many others. I guess the only thing I would say is that opportunity is sometimes at your fingertips, not always at your mouth.

Can you be both Sun and King?

I have been thinking about a few people lately, and have ended up asking myself a question: what do Oprah Winfrey, Chris Anderson (head of TED) and King Louis XIV of France have in common? One answer is that they control (or controlled) the vast majority of popular science and arts that reach the public. Now, they all do this in very different ways, but I think that two things can be said of powerful arbiters of information; they tend towards hedonism at some point, and as time goes by the need for exuberance associated with the adulation leads to excess. These cases of similarities may or may not be obvious. The links I see are that these people started with a lot less power than they ended up with. They generally used that power for a number of things, but one of them being to provide the public with what they value as important culture. Oprah was acceptable with Dr. OZ, the reintroduction of Tina Turner to the public and giving away free stuff to women who waited all night in the cold winds of Chicago to see her. Chris Anderson posted daily TED talks free online. At the same time he holds conferences where people can enjoy each other’s wisdom and company, and where he picks generally interesting speakers. The Sun King was gracious enough to allow Molière to take the occasional public tour with his troop, as well as promoting science through court publications. All of this is good, if you don’t consider that for all of those things that trickle down to the public there is an especially elite privileged group behind the scenes. Think of Oprah having Barack Obama over for dinner to ask him to run for President, or the court of Louis XIV.  Even if the benevolent leaders intentions were right, this leads to a type of megalomania which can create a magazine with your own picture on every cover (O), a series of conferences where only a small amount of people are invited for the pleasure of paying $10,000+ to attend, and posts only a a small fraction of them online (TED), or building the world’s most decadent castle (Versailles). It is hard to blame either three, and in aggregate, they have possibly done more good than bad, yet I think they were all more important for society when they were less powerful than they were to become. Oprah didn’t use to have the power to stop vaccines by having a stripper promote anti-immunization propaganda. Chris Anderson didn’t have the ability to create the cultural forces which include only a very liberal, often factless connection to the world’s intellectual treasures, nor did Louis XIV make or break science and the arts of his time. Eventually they did take the air out of the world’s atmosphere, leaving us all with such a powerful source that they had a responsibility that no individual could possibly succeed with.

Here is where I take a larger leap; every time I post a growing frequency of blogs, and gather even the few readers I have, I am doing the same thing, and am at least ethically bound by the same responsibility that I am asking of them (ok, not much Louis can do now I know).  If I look back at my early blogs several years ago I felt no responsibility either to engage my readers (as they were just Mom and Dad anyway), or to not offend. Now I am more careful, though as you can see here I still do take the risk of offending. My readership is not much, but it is growing by mere 10s and I should take that seriously. Perhaps this is a potential issue with blog publishing in general. It is deceptively open. It is a way for news empires to not control the spread of information, yet it is also completely self-regulating. That is wonderful freedom that I am lucky exists, and glad exists, but the potential for an individual to rise from obscurity to prominence without oversight exists every day. Any of us could be the next Oprah or Chris Anderson, and that is thrilling, and an American Dream type proposal. It also comes though with a little recognition that quality does not ascend linearly with power. In fact in many instances it decreases. Perhaps we all need to write with that in mind. And in case you are reading this Chris, please just post all of the talks or none because it might be nice to be king at a TED conference it is too much responsibility to be it every day. And Oprah, I am sure you are not reading, but in case I were to become one of the ultra-powerful that I am discussing overnight, I would have two suggestions. Promote some real science and some jazz music from time to time. As for you King Louis, I will be kind to the dead, and just thank you for “The Misanthrope” and the hall of mirrors.