A Plagiarism in Plaid

To the Editors (Daily Telegraph)
Date: Jun 3, 2007 5:29 AM
Subject: A plagiarism in plaid?

I noted with interest that Liz Hunt's recent opinion piece — Immigrants have bags of ambition (June 2, 2007) — was a nice reworking of my April 13, 2007 essay, Bags and Stamps, published on my blog, Koranteng's Toli.

While I appreciate that this means that I have readers in high places, the norm when remixing on the web is to include a link to the originating source of the material.

I'll assume that this was a minor oversight on her part and, for what it's worth, she adds a little colour, her personal perspective and indeed some original reporting - not a bad remix - she certainly channeled my words and ideas quite effectively.

Still one wonders about these things... A cursory examination reveals wholesale, shall we say, lifting of said words and ideas.

It is also ironic since the essay was ostensibly about the ecstasy of influence, as Jonathan Lethem would have it, and concerned itself with a high profile appropriation, if not plagiarism, by Marc Jacobs of Louis Vuitton fame of the notion of "Ghana must go bags" as used in the work of Ghanaian artist Senam Okudzeto. That the Ghanaian writer who connected these dots together is himself (inadvertently we'll assume) written out of the conversation is quite something to behold.

"Out of Africa always something new", wrote Pliny The Elder. There must have been a second part to his observation: "Things to be used but not acknowledged".

A further twist, this essay is part of my ongoing Things Fall Apart series which I am hoping to publish as a book - I am quaint that way. It had been suggested to me to send it to the New Yorker or similar. It now appears that I have a nice postscript for the essay, if not a further essay topic, one addressing the lines between journalism and blogging and the influences and overlap thereof.

I am unclear whether Liz's piece was published in the newspaper or only online. If the former, presumably there are well known procedures for corrections of editing errors, errors of omission or indeed (and God forbid) errors of commission - that is the domain of so-called intellectual property, copyrights and such.

If the latter, I'd appreciate a link.

The internet being what it is, I am glad to have the option of commenting directly on the piece in question through The Telegraph's website and 'having my say' in that forum. I'll demur for the moment and intend to publish my query on my website. Perhaps your response or indeed that of your reporter can occur on my grounds.

Still, the currency of the web is the link, I don't think it is too much to ask for a link. It simply adds to the conversation.

Best regards.

Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah

P.S. For further fodder, I took a few minutes to provide a little juxtaposition of the two articles, nothing exhaustive but illustrative I hope - a link in other words - and here I hesitate to reuse a title I had suggested in my original essay:

Click here — Bags and Stamps: a plagiarism in plaid

As a study in contrast, consider this sampling and judge for yourself:

Koranteng

Liz Hunt

In Ghana and most of West Africa we call it the "Ghana must go" bag. Last year Sokari Ekine revealed her own bag woman tendancies and opened the discussion - she's a connaisseur. In response, Georgia Popplewell noted that "in Trinidad I've heard those bags called Guyanese Samsonite". We learnt that in Germany, per contra, they are known as "Tuekenkoffer" or Turkish suitcase. In Boston I've heard them referenced as Chinatown totes, and called Bangladeshi bags in England, presumably after the 1970s influx of Bangladeshi immigrants.

In Ghana, it is known as the "Ghana must go" bag; in Germany it is "Tuekenkoffer" or the Turkish suitcase; in America, the "Chinatown tote"; in Guyana as "Guyanese Samsonite" and elsewhere as the "Bangladeshi Bag"

Do note that the author completely misses Georgia's nuance by transposing Trinidad to Guyana. The point is that the naming is done by the natives - looking down onto the teeming masses of refugee or downtrodden immigrant Others. Thus Nigerians named the bags Ghana must go, Germans named it Türkenkoffer, and so forth. Thus this is not a simple copying and pasting, there was reordering and some conscious editing done in the article, and perhaps the immigrants coalesced into one indistinguishable mass. This is of a piece with the general disdain for said immigrants that the rest of the author's commentary indicates. We can also skip over how Boston becomes America in the coining of "Chinatown tote". The rest of the article I'll suggest is equally enlightening.

Soundtrack for this note

I normally offer playlists to accompany my writing, in this case we'll go with Abbey Lincoln, she has been on my mind lately.

Abbey Lincoln - Throw it Away

From her extraordinary 1995 album A Turtle's Dream, the lyrics are inspirational and I hope she'll forgive me for reproducing them here with attribution.

One day I found these magic words
in a magic book:

Throw it away. Throw it away
Give your love, live your life
each and every day,
and keep your hand wide open.
Let the sun shine through,
'cause you can never lose a thing
if it belongs to you

[Update June 5, 2007 3:31PM PST]

My inbox, the comments and clickstream on my website all tell an interesting tale. The global audience of modern travellers and sedate web surfers who frequent this joint have sprung into action, mice and keyboards at the ready. Even some who normally remain dark matter have sent head nods of recognition if not sympathy or empathy (and links of course - this is the web). It's comforting to know that I'm part of such a community.

Sokari who started this global conversation is suitably outraged, as is Georgia, and presumably that prolific fellow named Anonymous. Sattva helpfully pointed out that even the typos were faithfully reproduced in the Daily Telegraph - the Türkenkoffer Tragedy as it were. The Telegraph columnist has no idea about the depth of fortitude of the interlocutors she dismissed - bags of ambition is the least of it.

It's been a day or so since a Telegraph editor read my query and I, like many, have been slightly expectant as to their response. I know also of at least one outraged toli reader who deigned to comment on Sunday on the Telegraph's website - annoyed that I hadn't immediately published this note on my blog on Saturday. That comment has not been published and indeed, as I write, the article's web page is unchanged since Saturday.

The initial silence from the Telegraph's offices, like all silences, can at once be seen as eloquent and troubling. Eloquent in suggesting that one's concern was deemed trivial or not worthy of a response and all that implies. Troubling because of what the cynical might proffer as the worst reading of the matter. If someone could be so reckless as to brazenly and casually pass off others' words as their own, one inevitably wonders just how long such things have been going on. We have seen recent high-profile examples of such effrontery in journalism.

Such actions would also show a certain contempt, for editors and audience alike. As an editor, I would worry about the compromise of a publication's reputation and want to proceed carefully. Allegations of sloppiness and/or misconduct are serious, and reflect on people's careers and livelihoods, not to mention the bottom line of the organizations that relate to them. This is the tangled web of The Reporter and The Editors. I place my faith in The Editors in this instance.

One theme I've been considering in this series is 'who is writing the script?' and I've even suggested a word to cover the behaviour I've observed: huhudious. I trust instead that Telegraph editors are simply not wanting to rush to judgement. Let's hope they will be thoughtful in their eventual and considered response.

I do appreciate that The Reporter advanced the story - indeed she adds one important and original nugget: the name and background of the putative Chinese manufacturer of our Ghana must go bags. Another potential addition is the model name and price of the Louis Vuitton plaid appropriation - although that last could be figured out by following the links I sourced in my original essay. These are the kinds of things I would undoubtedly have followed up on as a professional. With The Reporter's kind permission, I will include these points (after quite scrupulous fact-checking of course, and with attribution) when I do finally submit my article to editors for publication in a magazine or book.

Liz Hunt, at the prompting of The Editors, has kindly replied to my query and I've linked our email exchange below:

Click here — Liz Hunt - Plagiarism Exchange

It's a very creative defence, the most revealing phrase being "how our researcher came to your blog". Thus she cannot but acknowledge that I was a crucial source of her story - the damning spelling mistakes, let alone the juxtapositions that a few minutes revealed, don't offer a leg to stand on. A friend had posited an underling factor in this business, but who knows about these things; she can best inform us. Anyway you can judge her motivations and thought process for yourself. Her response is unedited as she requested.

I do wonder about her use of the word "refute" and whether she has since taken a peek at my blog, because most wouldn't dare brazen this out. But maybe it is that in my culture I have a different appreciation of shame. Still I'll acknowledge the protestations of "good faith" - although the evidence is lacking in my opinion. I do believe in the golden rule but I'll admit I have no words for her.

In the meantime, I wait patiently for the response of The Editors. They are the ones I addressed my note to, and they are well versed in honour and the calculus of damage limitation. There is enough going on in my life that I won't go out of my way to press the issue. I thought I'd enjoined in a beautiful conversation, but a gift bestowed with open heart seems besmirched by notoriety. I will say that this episode leaves a sour taste - quite tangible in real life, that not even Abbey Lincoln's sultry and bittersweet exhortation can cover. Blogging shall be fitful at best for the next few weeks. I will in parting add a couple of stanzas to my original poem

Bags and stamps

Modern travellers
Packing our bags
Seeking out stamps
The mementos of exiled souls

Ghana must go versus Louis Vuitton
Observing a hustler tradition
Enjoining a global conversation

The Reporter and The Editors
Immigrants and their ambition
Plaid bags and plagiarism

A Busy Person's Guide to the Curious Case of Liz Hunt, Plagiarism and The Daily Telegraph

A couple of links for the busy observer...

• Some findings of fact.
  We write, you decide.
• How doth the little crocodile
  Rachel, ever succintly, weighs in on the matter, her global voice and journalistic viewpoint further clarifies the conversation. Fair and balanced.

[Update June 15 2007]

So. Twelve days later... As we continue to wait for The Daily Telegraph editors to weigh in on matters of plagiarism, I thought I'd lighten the mood a little and follow up with some of the visual responses I've received to the Bags and Stamps essay and to this note.

The first came from Elia, whose visual sense is more acute than mine and came up with this great collage which makes the point more effectively than I had. My spanish is non-existent, but a Babelfish translation indicates that a very kind label had been launched towards this joint; a head nod back in your direction, Elia.

Guyanese Samsonite Musings

Georgia, our Trinidadian informant on the "Guyanese Samsonite" business, took the following photo in a market in Scarborough, Tobago. She was also threatening to follow a lead and head out in the pouring rain to photograph a woman she had passed a day earlier, sans camera, who sported one of these bags that featured a flowery addition to our plaid stylings. Please don't risk your health on my account, it's just a bag!

While on the Guyanese Samsonite angle, one wonders when that name was bestowed on the bags. I wonder if these are the same bags that not just the Guyanese, but also the Trinidadians and the Jamaicans, were carrying in the 1940s and 1950s when that immigration wave happened, and Britain was welcoming them for their cheap labour. Their struggles were what the famed Trinidadian writer, Samuel Selvon, lovingly chronicled in The Lonely Londoners which also has piercing insights on African immigrants at that time.

The cover art indicates slightly different luggage:

The literary evidence points to similar bags of exigency as when a family suddenly appears and handbags an Trinadadian immigrant at Waterloo station. Described in Selvon's pitch perfect voicing of Caribbean patois:

A old woman who look like she would dead any minute come out of a carriage, carrying a cardboard box and a paperbag. When she get out the train she stand up there on the platform as if she confuse. Then after she a young girl come, carrying a flourbag filled up with things. Then a young man wearing a widebrim hat and a jacket falling below the knees. Then a little boy and a little girl, then another old woman, tottering so much a guard had was to help she get out of the train.

"Oh Jesus Christ," Tolroy say, "what is this at all?"
"Tolroy," the first woman say, "you don't know your own mother?"

Tolroy hug his mother like a man in a daze, then he say:

"But what Tanty Bessy doing here, Ma? and Agnes and Lewis and the two children?"
"All of we come, Tolroy," Ma say.

The goodwill for those Caribbean immigrants was beginning to run out by the time he published his novel and he catches the flavour of that historical moment in the paperbags, flourbags and indeed in that stylized prose.

Staying on the Caribbean theme, and with another stylist, one wonders whether our plaid bags were similarly depicted by Patrick Chamoiseau in the mythical slums of Martinique or whether his urban griot, Solibo Magnifique, would have spontaneously declaimed any odes to them as he walked through those grand markets. The cover art you'll see is again ambiguous.

Appropriation a l'Africaine

Sokari mentioned that the trend in South Africa was to rebrand the plaid bags "with shiny maps of Africa, elephants, soap powder and all sorts". The idea is to badge them with Made in South Africa labels. I quite agree, why should the Chinese have all the fun, and profit, even on these cheap goods? The Wife called this the Fubu effect, reinvention and appropriation. Sokari kindly sent along these photos that make the point quite effectively.

Forget your garden-variety shoppers with heavy loads to pick up, I trust even the tourists will be picking them up, I certainly would. She adds: "photos were taken in April in the Jeppe Street / Bree street areas of downtown Joburg. I have a blue version of the red one which cost me 10 rands". They come in "blue, red and green and large, medium and small". A great knockoff with a little profit to boot.

Still, as with book covers and types and faces, these too present a certain image of Africa: zebras, elephants, safaris etc. While certainly more colourful, fun and perhaps "authentically African", the more arresting images to my mind are those of the marketplaces in which they are found, and the context in which they are used. The streets of downtown Johannesburg and the activity therein draw me in, as do the marginalia of the Tobago concoction. Those marketplaces are as much a part of Brand Africa or Brand Caribbean as the fashionable and camera-ready versions.

I'm reminded of what Hilaire Belloc wrote in The Modern Traveller

Oh! Africa, mysterious Land
Surrounded by a lot of sand
And full of grass and trees,
And elephants and Afrikanders,
And politics and Salamanders

As long promised, that 1898 tome will be addressed in a coming installment of our meandering series, it is indeed an invigorating antidote to the later Heart of Darkness...

Finally, and in a different direction, I ran across the work of Bay Area artist, Jenny Hurth, this past weekend at an art fair in Berkeley.

Another bag lady, she makes her bags from recycled banners from trade shows and conferences - essentially the garbage that these marketing events and ceremonies engender.

I think the notion of recycling is quite apt, and works well in terms of encapsulating historical memory and rescuing it in a tangible, utilitarian, and, in some instances, fashionable repository. I'll try to connect her with Senam, they should have much to talk about.

[Update June 21, 2007]

My good friend Nate, riffs on our "South African Street Merchant Bags" and considers containers in one big boxy multicoloured metaphor. He also sends along a bag "bought in Vilankulos, Mozambique. It's a re-sewn flour sack." Dig the back lighting.

He adds as an aside:

Reminds me of how flour companies in the US used to use sacks that had floral patterns printed on, once they realized farm wives were using the soft cotton material to sew dresses out of. I think Williams-Sonoma now sells "flour-sack" kitchen towels, designed to mimic the better properties of towels made from actual flour sacks.

I too have batakaris from the north of Ghana made from flour sacks. They feel more comfortable than the ones made with more conventional materials and lining. As we have seen, their utility too goes beyond flour and general market duty, and spans the world, from Mozambique to Trinidad, to Ghana, England and Middle America. This reinvention is only fitting: Humanity knows no boudaries.

Connecting dots further, I'll simply point to this image from a slideshow in Hanna Rose Shell and Vanessa Bertozi's wonderful documentary Secondhand (Pepe) about the history of used clothing and immigration - and more on said documentary later. Simply note the presence of our Ghana must go bags in the midst of the bend down markets in Haiti where the cast-offs of the First World are bartered and reinvented in the comfort of the Haitian landscape.

Credit: Vanessa Bertozi (licence)

Perhaps others can provide their plagiarisms in plaid, I'll be your bag man, collecting your visions. I'm quite easy to contact and will happily link if need be — that business about attribution on the web... Links do cost so little.

[Update July 1, 2007]

The Wife, while conducting research in an unseasonably chilly South Africa, points out a piece she came across in this week's Sunday Times at Johannesburg airport, Get a handle on original fakes. It's a bit of a late pass on Marc Jacob's expensive appropriation, or rather his plagiarism in plaid but it is a good example of how one would expect journalists to cover the story,

Nechama Brodie has written a sharp and insightful piece with a reflective perspective and original reporting. Further, she contributes a few more terms to our bag vocabulary. Apparently in South Africa, they are known as "raffia" bags or as the "Street GM" which meshes well with Nate's "South African Street Merchant Bags" characterization. Interestingly there is no trauma involved in the naming, these are generic names. One wonders whether the large influx of Zimbabwean immigrants fleeing the bleak desperation of that rogue called Mugabe in recent times will change that perception. From what I understand, South Africans are beginning to resent the refugees in their lands and, curiously enough, brand them generically as "Nigerians". Will be soon be hearing cries of "Nigeria must go" as the natives start resenting the immigrant upstarts? Or is it rather the case that Zimbabwean's, with their rich tradition of Ndebele textiles, have not had to resort to our bags of exigency as they flee into political and economic exile? Perhaps they use baskets as they take flight? Inquiring minds want to know.

Grandiose Parlor points us to some videographic evidence, an AFP news report on Zimbabweans fleeing the brutality and economic deprivation that is the lot of those living under the thumb of that rogue.

It is difficult to watch these kind of images and see proud people sleeping rough in churches in the cold South African winter. How does one handle the rogues that cause these things? It is no comfort to notice the presence of our Ghana must go bags by acting as literal comforters for a few that choose a blanket of soul made of our plaid polypropylene bags. I'll wager we'll soon be hearing "Zimbabweans must go" (Zim must go?) before too long.

Returning to lighter thoughts and perhaps to rogues previously discussed, I do like Brodie's poetic title. "Get a handle on original fakes" could very well be the best strategy to apply to our smug and admitted plagiarist at the Daily Telegraph.

Our dear Liz Hunt isn't even saying "I smoked but I didn't inhale", like Mr Clinton famously did about his youthful indiscretions with marijuana. No, that would be too easy. Rather it's a case of

"I smoked, but it was for a good cause. And incidentally I resent you accusing me of smoking as much weed as I did smoke."

Oh well hubris springs eternal, the celebrity got to her head; a diluted sense of noblesse oblige... We shall take our time formulating the appropriate response.

Bags and Stamps - the photo set

File under: influence, ideas, fame, plagiarism, Daily Telegraph, Telegraph, journalism, media, blogging, theft, hubris, plaid, culture, observation, attribution, immigration, memory, Ghana Must Go, Guyana, Trinidad, Mozambique, Caribbean, South Africa, Zimbabwe, literature, ethics, morality, values, life, photography, Fallen Angels, Things Fall Apart, toli

Head Nods - Toli Turns One

The toli turns one year old today... Hence some anniversary musings and some head nods...

"The 15 people for whom I'm famous are a very diverse lot and pull me in lots of directions."

"Koranteng is also a little bit nuts, which is appealing." - The Guv'nor

"I should probably only listen to one voice at a time."

"I'm all about the synthesis; I welcome the cacophony." - Tessa Lau

"novel-length diatribes" - Sam Ruby?

"Koranteng provides an explanation, a, er, interesting powerpoint and further links." - David Lobb

"novella length efforts" - Mr Feinberg

"on the written page you are so ... prolific .. that it's sometimes a bit overwhelming" - Justin

"verbose is the word... 'you need an editor' is the comment" - self

"you are obviously interested in writing... I guess writers are a different breed and have to satisify their muses" - Aaron Reed

"We need an emoticon that represents 'nod in agreement'." - JP Morgenthal

Toli Turns One

So I started posting toli at this location a year ago and it has been quite a trip. Some statistics: 115 posts, a little over 2 a week although I've picked up the pace of late to make up for that 2 month existential crisis. 37 pieces on technology toli, 29 on musical toli, 26 on African toli (although one post covered the ground of 15 lengthy posts), 24 on political toli (although this was mostly tangential, I'm not normally overtly political), 20 on literary toli (literature has been scarce of late, something that should be remedied), the rest has been a miscellany of toli of life, whimsy and more including 12 on life in Cambridge which have been very heartfelt. If you add everything up you'll recognize that I very seldom write monographs and, even when I do, I bring a lot of other perspectives to the table.

The archetypal toli intervention consists of snap judgement, changing the frame, case studies and arguments by analogy. When weaving these strands together, I tend to play with which aspects I emphasize and of late it has been more fun to go with the satirical parables to make my points. Sadly I've become more verbose and perhaps this is because I haven't been submitting to the discipline of an editor or a deadline. I'll try to remedy that and aim for shorter cuts; I do realize you don't have to explore absolutely every angle of a thing. As I've been told, you can easily verge into "that stream of consciousness effect and Proust" (thanks for that polite intervention by the way Justin). Also I might play with the layout of the blog to make things a little more approachable.

If I go by del.icio.us, it's the rich web application trail that first drew people and my writing on technology and its effects continues to tickle a certain audience perhaps because it's a little different from the norm. The music intrigues a few; if you vibe with Abbey Lincoln, cook with Rokia Traoré and are musically obsessed, you will strike a chord. Cross-posting at blogcritics also brought an audience my way.

A surprise to me is that per Furl, the most viewed post is about a blanket of soul, a post which actually got no feedback. A little disconcerting but that is ranked by views; by contrast the most bookmarked at Furl are what I expected the Gmail and DHTML architecture bit, my 3rd State of the DOM address (everything is better in version 3.0) and Cultural Sensitivity in Technology which I'm quite proud of. I wish Blogger would give some statistics so I could do some metrics.

[update] I had mislabelled some posts... It turns out that the most viewed post by far, according to Furl, is Merlene Ottey - Ageless Wonder, in which I confessed a crush on that Jamaican regal goddess of athletics which just goes to show that sex sells. Or perhaps it's a commentary about those who use Furl.

I do love music and have a stack of reviews and playlists to share and I'll be sure to repeat the Toli Music Awards in a few months.

Next most popular per Furl is that visual introduction to Ghana. That, I can understand: a photo essay is easier to digest than the 10,000 word rant it was meant to augment although that latter post has been a manifesto of sorts for those interested in Africa and the journalistic impulse. Thus the writings on Africa also tend to be very popular. The travel journalism and the more heartfelt personal writing also gain some kudos from some corners. On the whole though, most of my writing has struck a chord with someone, somewhere and, to the extent that I get feedback in whatever forum, that is a real pleasure.

Of course, I was writing long before this blog, it's a hobby that clears my mind as I mull things over. Writing feeds my curiousity and inquisitiveness. It informs my outlook on life. Still it could be said that I had previously been hoarding my jaundiced prose out of some sense of timidity. You really want to be ready before the scrutiny of others turns on you, just ask Howard Dean about premature exposure of inchoate thinking. Even though the web isn't quite like a political campaign, there's still a leap you have to take to start to engage the world and think aloud in public conversation which is what this blog has been about. A year later, I'm glad I joined the conversation.

Head Nods

If you've interacted with me in the past few months, in person, by phone, instant messaging or email, and apart from the one withering email, the conversation would have inevitably turned to head nods. I've been in such an elated mood of late that I'm all about reaching out and making connections and, when doing that, I nod my head.

I like head nods. I find that we don't do enough of them. Head nods, like hugs, give strength and comfort. These are strange days, full of heartache and the incongruous, the whole world needs some nod heads. There's even a song and dance about head nods that I'll relate at the end of this post. It turns out also that my last appreciation post was a long time ago, about Martin Geddes whose Telepocalypse is still end-to-end perfection.

In no particular order then, here are some long-overdue head nods.

I'm in such a prolific phase right now that I'm a little scared I'll burn out. Working through code, designs and architecture is easy these days, and writing of all sorts is pouring out of me. Indeed my cup runneth over with product ideas, book proposals and the like. You could do worse than grab me for half an hour and pick my brain on any subject matter. Curiously, one of the reasons for this tsunami of creativity is a little matter of a chair, thus I'll start with a head nod to the folks at Humanscale who designed the Freedom Chair that I bought as my birthday present to myself this year (I wonder if the name was an allusion to Freedom Fries). It's the most expensive purchase I've made in a long while (I'm quite frugal) and given how much I paid, I've convinced myself it's worth it. Let me shill: "the chair has transformed my life". Seriously, it happens to be the most comfortable place in my wretched bachelor pad (more comfortable even than the bed or those utilitarian prison futons). Thus you'll find me on it at 5 am and late at night; visitors are surprised that I sit in the chair when I greet them. I'm sure there are other reasons for the creative spark but the chair deserves a head nod.

To Justin Grunau, a great friend, linguist, book lover, ardent opinion-monger, technologist and prolific writer - also a late adopter to blog/wiki/social bookmarking world, but my goodness slow down. You're my sanity preservation lifejacket. And those zingers: "Is Charlie Brown fantasizing this time or did Lucy really let him kick the football for the first time in 30 years?"

To Monsieur Feinberg, dogeared Liquid Preller, duct tape wielder and "polish plumber" of technology. You've been adopted into the toli family, bro. I want to hear the sound of Floot Loops.

To the ever-insightful James Governor, keep instigating at Redmonk, maybe you'll get the good guys at these companies to stop the madness and "think about the children", those long-forgotten users. Sidenote: why is there so much testosterone in the technology industry? Even that disaster named Carly was all testosterone and no substance, why is that? It's all warlike rhetoric. Can't we all just get along? We need to get out of Deadwood. By the way you never did say whether you minded being called The Guv'nor of Redmonk, the cockneyism is intended as a term of endearment but not everyone likes name calling. I don't want my toli to be perceived like Dubya's: always giving nicknames... Anyway head nod at you, Guv. Oh and yes Maggie Thatcher deserves a savaging too and I will oblige eventually but how's this gotcha for a start.

To Tessa Lau, fellow pragmatist and skilled artisan of the Dark Matter of Technology. The IBM tribe has a gem in your Glue-layer Leadership and Unbridled Excellence (GLUE), machine-learning bravado and structure-infering hackery. I should stop gushing but I won't, I'd rather tilt my head askew and nod. Keep leading the way.

To Uche Ogbuji, I was reading something from your blog to The Girlfriend and she couldn't tell what you wrote apart from my writing. "You guys are so similar." She worries that when we eventually meet, we'll have a fatal personality clash because the shared aesthetic and interests seem too good to be true. And I will review Common at some point even though you did it all for me. A technology, Okayplayer, West-African immigrant head nod to you.

To James Fallows, many thanks for the head nod and encouragement, it came at a most opportune time. I'll be keeping my mid-Atlantic toli going and will strive to continue to "deftly walk the technology/culture line". We should talk about Kente, Guinea Fowl, and Grasscutter (Akrantie) and your time in Busia's Ghana (I too have tales about Bolgatanga). Did you know that Ghanaians won't eat imported chicken these days? We should also talk technology. I was reading one of your Techno-files pieces in The Times (from a few months ago, I'm so behind), Finally, Sisyphus, There's Help for those Internet Forms, I thought you'd appreciate my take on these things: the folktales, B-movies, coinages and thoughts on bleach.

To Jackie Malone who got me to moonlight at Inside Lotus (which I've sadly been neglecting) and whose encouragement, enthusiasm and kind words about my writing were so liberating. I'm still working on the pitch for IBM Press, O'Reilly and Wired. And yes I do need an editor. I hope you're enjoying your retirement. As you know, I love tomorrow.

To Jon Udell, I'm enjoying this great conversation we're participating in on technology and its effects. From the big picture to the little things that matter, you lay it out with clarity and verve. Let's do dinner at some point when you pass round this way. A head nod from the back of the bus.

To Hanna Russo, Rob Weir and Margaret O'Connell, my Axis of Empathy throughout my professional career. The best-kept secrets at Lotus, glad to see you blowing up IBM Software Group, God knows it needs some manhole explosions.

To Ethan Zuckerman, so much to say. Well we'll be having our beers shortly... Thanks for prompting the Chris Lydon connection. My heart's in Accra too. A head nod from North Kaneshie.

To Sam Ruby, you atomic radical simplifier you, a head nod: +1

To the powerful Richard Schwartz, let's do this crypto thing.

To James Snell: REST By Example. A Show Me The Code head nod to you.

To Mark Pilgrim, your groove made me start this blogging toli. I'm sure I'm not the first to ask, but how about diving back into blogs now that the skunkworks of monkeyed grease is done? The Unloved HTML button and other Folktales is only an African version of your Headers and soul.

To Martin Romano now at Bowstreet, the unsung hero of Bleached Unobtrusive DOM Scripting (BUDS) and many other theatrics from Freelance Graphics, to eSuite to K-station, who built rich web applications before they were called bleach. I still have the emails where the visions were laid out and will publish them for historians of technology to ponder prescience and innovation. I stand on your broad shoulders and nod my head to you. Regards to Sue and the baby.

To Chis Anderson, the Long Tail is where it's wired. I was very flattered about you calling this joint "deep but beautifully written". I don't quite know about the "clearly a genius of some sort" characterization; that's a hard standard to live up to, but I'll take all the praise I get, "of some sort" being the operative phrase. Oh, and I'll be laying "The Pitch" on you at the end of the year if my writing keeps on track.

To Noel Weichbrodt, a Barely Legal Programmer, I appreciate what you do and with style. Plus you hipped me to Cobb thus an Afro head nod to you. And with The Wife blogging hmmm, watch out.

To Sokari Ekine, Paa Kwesi Imbeah, Kenya Hudson, Akinyi Arunga, Bubu, Ory, Kwasi, Afromusing and all the others writing about Africa. The sound of your voices gives me great comfort.

To all my friends at Lotus who have made work mostly a matter of play from GPG to eSuite, to K-station to WebSphere Portal to ODC to Forms to Workplace and beyond. Elena, Chris, Lily, Ping, Willie, Angela, Adam, Joyce, Paul, MaryEllen, Bill, Mary, Eric, Asima and the list goes on and let's not forget Theresa who didn't make it but who lives on for all of us. You've all been a source of strength and learning, it continues to be a pleasure. When I recount to others that my experience of software development with you has one of collaboration with historians, linguists, dancers, physicists, musicians, artists and only the rare computer scientist many can't fathom that I am talking about the same profession. And that's the point, good software engineers are not fungible. It will be 10 years at Lotus/IBM on Sunday and I'm proud of what we've built. I hope we can stand up and take credit for our achievements and continue pushing collaboration, communities and ultimately, cool and usable software. We are fighting the Good Fight Against Technical Arteriosclerosis ©, unthinking careerism, the Boltons of the world and rank bureaucracy because we recognize the primacy of those who who use our products.

I am no one's "find". I was raised by a village called Lotus.

To some of my ever quotable fellow travellers in technology pragmatism: Coté, Reginald Braithwaite-Lee, Bill de hóra, Ryan Tomayko, Les Orchard, Mark Baker, Bob Haugen, Robert Sayre, David Lobb, Phil Wainewright, Adam Bosworth, JP Morganthal and others, Rest well and nod your heads.

A belated head nod to the View Sourcerer in Chief, Joe Gregorio. I point everyone to the RESTful web you're weaving.

To T.V. Raman, Mark Birbeck and Aaron Reed, the XForms dream draws nearer... I'll stay on the case. A distilled pattern head nod to you.

To my latest IBM connections... Dale Schultz, I'm with you in the fight against the curse of the ampersand, the hyphenated parable, the mangling of euro symbols or Rokia Traoré, a globalized head nod to you. Chris Ferris, rant on you standards natterer you, Bill Higgins, grassroots pragmatism is the thing, let's do this and David Singer, I'm with you.

On a personal note, to Sozi and Meriel who are Philly bound, you are a few of my favourite things. A cheese-steak laden head nod to you.

To "Ennis", it's so hard to believe you're not Ghanaian. And deconstructing politics and strange bedfellows like you do is a rare skill. I'm digging Sepia Mutiny. Have some waatche and a head nod on me.

To Frances who brought my voice back. See you in the building. Lights Out.

To the two Mikes, forever nodding.

To Kukua, Kweku, Ebo, Zai, Kobi, Rita, Dela, Sanyade, Russ and the rest of London crew, you've got soul.

To the Boston crew, as Digable Planets said last week, "Beantown is Red Hot".

To the French crew, on dit quoi?

To the two Brians, Stout and Sangudi, friends who keep me on the straight and narrow. Two head nods apiece.

To my family, I revel in the joy of small things and our still waters do indeed run deep. I hope my toli lets you know what I get up to when I forget to call.

And to my favourite Historian of Science who will be joining me in matrimony, a loving head nod. I'm so excited to no longer be Mr Flinchy. Bitter Roots was great accomplishment, next stop Oprah's Book Club, West Nile Blues, Atomic Junction and Berkeley next year. I can't wait.

And finally a big head nod to all who I haven't mentioned, the Readers Of The Lost Toli. It seems there are over 100 of you in Bloglines. Extrapolating a little, Bloglines is said to have 40% of the aggregator market share, that means that perhaps 250 people have been tolerating my meandering musings. That is well over the 15 I had expected. Heck, Blogshares even values this joint at $6,807.57, maybe I'll cash in and buy myself some Schnapps. Thank you all for pulling me in the directions you do, and helping me find my voice. I'll try to be more focused in the future, and briefer. Head nods all around.

Nod Your Head To This

And for the obligatory musical coda...

One of my favourite songs is Nod your Head to This by the Kings of Swing (full lyrics).

There was a dance that we used to do to this song in London clubs circa 1990-91, which was something like the tilted heads in Michael Jackson's Thriller video crossed with the robot in Herbie Hancock's Rockit joint if you can imagine such a thing. Picture if you will a dancefloor having a case of collective hip-hop epilepsy. Fire up your file-shaing app and download, this is yet another track in the long tail of music that record companies are ignoring...

And Yes, I'm Comin Fully Charged,
Equipped And Packed
To Make Your Head Bob And Weave
And Swing Forth And Back
It's Like A Tyson Bout
And This Is Main Event
And I'm Electrifyin The Minds
Of All The Ladies And Gents
Cold Swingin Things
The Way It's Supposed To Be
To Make You Nod Your Head,
Yo, Simultaneously
To A Groove That Makes You Move
And Keeps You In Sync
Just Like You're Tappin Your Feet,
Yo, You Do Not Think
About What You're Doin,
But You Can't Resist
The Kings Of Swing Is In The House,
And Hey Yo, Nod Your Head To This

Nod Your Head To This
Nod Your Head To This

It Sounds Funky

Nod Your Head To This
Nod Your Head To This

My Toli Sounds Funky

File under: blogging, appreciation, Head Nods, life, friends, family, writing, toli

Koranteng's Toli On The Radio

So Christopher Lydon called me up at 1pm yesterday wanting me to be on his radio show that evening to discuss the G8 summit, Live 8, Africa, debts, Ghana etc.

This came from out of the blue but I guess that's what having a blog and writing about all manner of things will do; one's jaundiced prose will occasionally hit fertile soil. I believe Ethan, who called in to the program also had something to do with making that connection, my first foray into punditry.

It was an hour long show and I was in the studio with Chris and Calestous Juma, a Kenyan professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The Girlfriend was along for moral support and watched from the control room so I later got a fuller version of the way the show was put together.

Lydon's program is called Open Source and the topic was ostensibly Is Aid Enough?.

You can download an mp3 of the show (it's a big file 24MB, but it should stream in your browser).

I'm surprised I came off okay... I suspect I'm better on the written page than in person. Mostly I was hungry. For some reason, the only thing I had eaten all day was a bar of candy I picked up just before we got to the studio... I don't think it was just nerves, my stomach really was growling.

At a certain point, it seemed that the discussion was turning into a dichotomy of NGOs or universities/technology which I found discomfiting since those are not the only alternatives facing Africa. As an unknown quantity on my first gig as a pundit, I didn't want to jump in and change the frame of the conversation. I'm a little diffident and there's also the respect for elders aspect, in retrospect I should have been a little bolder.

I would have liked to have a couple of women in the mix to bring wider viewpoints to the table. For example, Sokari Ekine of Black Looks, would have brought a far more nuanced dialog, although it turns out that she is in Spain and not Boston like I had long thought. When Chris called and asked for suggestions for what he billed as a dinner party conversation on Africa, I was a little at a loss to point out those others who I read and enjoy. I guess the onus would be on folks like me to have 5 names at the tip of the tongue so that those voices would be called on in the same way that I was picked up into punditry...

I think I made a couple of cogent points during the program which discussed Africa, luggage, aid, debt, cell phones, radio, universities and various other things.

On Luggage

Africans typically travel with huge amounts of luggage - we have lots of responsibilities to our extended families. When I was a teenager, I once had to carry a television as hand luggage for an aunt of mine, she didn't even blink when the airline agent was almost incredulous that she would make a youngster attempt to carry that beast. My aunt simply wasn't about to pay any excess luggage fees and it worked, the agent took pity on me and checked in that piece. Another aunt used to say as she packed what seemed like the world into her suitcase,

"You just have to make sure you don't show the strain when you carry the bag."

Thus I mentioned the following.

• The luggage allowance on British Airways flights from London to Ghana is 40 lbs for economy fares and 60 lbs if you travel business class.
• The normal trans-Atlantic allowance is 70 lbs for economy fares on all airlines (say London to Boston).
• On the other hand, on British Airways flights from London to Lagos, Nigeria, the allowance is now 120 pounds per piece.

"It’s a matter of pricing power. They [the Nigerians] have the numbers, they have the economic activity, and because of that, British Airways, which 5 years ago did not even allow you to get frequent flyer miles to travel to Africa, now not only do that, but now for Nigeria, they will let you have almost double the luggage allowance that trans-Atlantic flights would have. So the Nigerians are moving."

I truly believe this. Ghana might be a current darling of the international community but with a population of 20 million, we simply do not have the kind of internal market that will allow us to weather oil at $60 a barrel like the US is doing without much pain. We are "helped" now that many of our neighbours are basket cases, and consequently this focuses a lot of development activity on us, but ultimately we'll never have the kind of pricing power that 100 million Nigerians will have.

I didn't mention the other statistic that underlies my point about Nigeria moving: the installation of 1 million cell phone lines in Nigeria in the past year. And anyone who has had to deal with the acumen of Nigerians in whatever sphere knows that if that society decides to advance, it will change in very short order. It will still be difficult, unwieldy and disorderly, but it will move and possibly even faster than India or China will.

In my Strange Bedfellows and the Journalistic Impulse piece, I asked

"Why can't we be like the Indians for whom it increasingly makes a lot of sense to stay put back home or to even head back from abroad?"

Chris picked up on that and pressed me to address that very same point; it's a question that I ponder daily but have no satisfactory answer for.

I alluded to my manifesto about what is taking place in many African countries and you'll notice nary a mention of aid, debt or the West, even though all those can play a part in the answer

The messy business of development is about countries where three centuries of history are simultaneously taking place. The challenge is to creatively find ways to move the laggards into this century and the next. Giving goat herders mobile phones is only a first step.

I managed to get in a couple of customary toli zingers during the program:

"It takes two to do the corruption tango"

when the discussion inevitably turned to charity, handouts and rogues. The corruption tango is something I addressed in passing earlier on. It deserves a fuller treatment at some point. Right after that comment, someone called in (an American businessman) talking about trying to do business in Nigeria and how everyone wanted handouts and paraphrasing here "how he had to pay if he wanted to get anything done" and the "mentality of the people on the street". The juxtaposition was inspired and all credit is due to David Miller who is a great producer. A great corrective was then supplied by Ethan who mentioned that in all his dealings, and there have been many, he has never paid any bribes.
And:

"I’ve never seen money return from Swiss banks."

Despite the amount of shaming that the Swiss and others have endured in recent years (at the expense of the Holocaust lobby and others), I can guarantee you that the bulk of Mobutu, Savimbi or Abacha's money (let alone what we know about General Pinochet's dealings with Riggs bank and the like) will never be seen in their native countries, it is destined to be played with by Swiss and American bankers. I hope to be proved wrong but if you believe that all the money will be repatriated perhaps you're still waiting for the discovery of Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Anyway it was a great experience, I want to do more...

It's funny, I'm more interested in the process of putting the show together than on the show itself. So I was completely at ease in the studio or chatting with Chris. As I've mentioned before, I've seen my mum do this countless times: at 1pm call around and try to put together a show for the evening - figure out who's in town, try to gather names of "interesting" folks, sounding them out quickly to see if they can talk, if they are quotable, quick-witted or ponderous all the while thinking about what the framing device will be etc.

In many ways the conversation I had when Chris cold-called me was even more interesting than what was ultimately broadcast, and looser also because there wasn't a particular angle that he had in mind. As you might know I too have a roving mind... We have a shared love of journalism in general, and radio in particular, and it was a great thing to see him at work. I think I mentioned the impact that mobile phones and FM radio stations had on ensuring clean elections in Ghana in the 2000 elections. It takes a lot of nerve to steal ballot boxes if your car license plates and description are likely to be phoned in and broadcast on various FM stations. I have long been a fan of his interviewing style and it seems that he got a lot out of his time in Ghana. I hope to continue the conversations we begun.

I believe I had the last word in the program; the question was something about what one would say if one was able to have 30 seconds with President Bush at the G8 summit. I started to say something about wanting "a level playing field" in world affairs but midway through my sentence, reality struck me, a level playing field is a tall order in the light of manifest destiny or The Long Thief in the Night. Thus I cut my thought short and simply ended with

"Just listen."

That's really all that that one can hope for from them. Lots of people have opinions on Africa, and many are quick to pontificate and prescribe solutions. But it would be good to hear the breadth of ideas that come from the continent itself; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's is only one of many. That's what makes me add my voice to the cacophony of the blogosphere, not that I have any particular insight, but rather that I can add value to the ongoing conversation. Maybe somewhere, someone will indeed "just listen".

Soundtrack for this joint

• Ice T - Radio Suckers
  I love radio, it can be more vital even than almost any medium and Ice T here samples that great line from Public Enemy's Rebel Without A Pause

  Radio Suckers Never Play Me

  Now that there's a little toli on the radio I can't complain
• Video might have killed the radio star as Buggles proclaimed but blogging is reinventing her as Chris Lydon is showing with Open Source. It's a lot of fun.
• Musiq - Juslisen
  Are you listening Messers Bush, Blair, Chirac and Schroeder? Is this a conversation or is it just one party talking?

See also: Chris Lydon Radio Toli

File under: Chris Lydon, Calestous Juma, WGBH, Open Source, radio, Africa, Cambridge, Boston, G8, aid, Ghana, debt, corruption, globalization, global voices, web, blogging, politics, economics, toli

On an Ambiguous Adventure

A short note to Kenya Hudson who unilaterally declared an end to her blog experiment the aptly-named Ambiguous Adventure...

A couple of comments/observations:

Those who research the blogging phenomenom have noted that:

• The vast majority of blogs are abandonned after 90 days.
• Most bloggers experience an existential crisis at some point. Usually this comes down to the blog not living up to their expectations. There have been numeous high-profile instances of this.

I've noticed, in the past few months, that life has intruded more than a little on your ambitious adventure causing a little matter of ambiguity to come into the picture.

I believe that you're in good company and 10+ months of blogging would be well beyond the call of duty as those statistics would attest. We all blog for different reasons and get pulled in different directions. For my part, my crisis came after 6 months when various insanities at work and other life issues raised their head - some of which continue to this day.

My blogging hiatus and its consequent resolution came from a curious direction and I was surprised that my voice returned, refreshed by a 96 year old woman who calls me Frank and who caused the discovery of a community I didn't know I had.

But to engage you a little, Kenya, I'll simply suggest this: there's a paucity of voices such as yours on the web.

I am hoping that you'll rather consider this period a time out rather than an end. Unilateral acts are a little much in this day and age. Just ask the Croats about declaring independence in the past decade knowing that opportunist Milosevic types were itching to take you on and the costs they have suffered. Or take these recent ones for example which led to this: Zimbabwe Slum Dwellers Are Left With Only Dust. Metaphorically, and with some tongue in cheek, you're leaving your slum readers in the dust a la Robert Mugabe and lobbing some tear gas surreptitiously supplied via Malawi to boot.

Thus I'll also suggest a different track. I have long seen this web thing as a conversation engine and even though some conversations fizzle out, many will pick up the strands and you've started quite a number that we, your readers, are all trying to digest and weave together.

And will you resist the opening about Mugabe's continuing misdeeds (and the sanctions-breaking Malawi connection) that begs for your kind of dissection? If I wasn't spread so thin I'd be weighing in myself on the idea of a government preparing for over a year for the propitious moment to raze the accomodation of and destroy the livelihoods of 300,000+ of its citizens without notice and moving them into camps under the guise of "driving out the rubbish" (and political opposition) - something that reminds me of what happened repeatedly in Nigeria under military rule in the slums of Lagos and other towns; a government so far removed from the everyday concerns of those it is supposed to serve. I've touched on slums and squalor in the past, I wonder what you thought about that piece or my other ramblings.

And since I know you don't confine yourself to Africa, how about this one: Bitter divide over plan to wall in Rio's slums. Should we be building walls around modern day ghettos (to prevent the collateral damage of stray bullets ) or deal with the social ills that give rise to the gangs, Bus 174 episodes and Cities of God?

I'll also ask you some of the questions that I've been asking the technical audiences I've been speaking to since the African toli has been scarce of late:

• How did you get on the web?
• What caused you to land your flag on this here internet?
• What caused you, your friends, or family to live, shop and commune on this here web?
• And what will it take to make you stay?

The internet is full of mysterious wonders. As an example, The Girlfriend and I were emailing links to her graduation pictures to friends and family and all of a sudden we saw some photos from the graduation at Tech, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology at Kumasi A friend in Ghana, upon seeing her photos, signed up to Flickr and spent a few minutes uploading their graduation photos at some Internet cafe or other (or maybe it was a couple of hours, internet connections being what they are in Ghana). I can't tell you how wonderful it was to see the colourful glimpses of graduation done Ghana-style among the global graduation tag at Flickr even if only temporarily (the photos were since made private for some reason much like you're heading for the private sphere). And indeed we've already seen some great visions of the Ghana goes Flickr meme. Great sights and the sound of those voices again...

Lastly, a matter of serendipity:

Last summer, I lost my copies of the novel of your eponymous blog, Cheikh Hamidou Kane's L'aventure ambiguë both the original and the decent translation. Well I think I lent them to someone, I'm always giving out my best books and have for example, bought Camara Laye's L'enfant noir and Ken Saro-Wiwa's Sozaboy at least 5 times, not to mention Milan Kundera's Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Julian Barnes' A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters or Patrick Chamoiseau's Texaco which speaks cogently to the slum life that is the modern wold.

Rather than heading to Schoenhof's Foreign Books and bankrupting myself on books as I normally do since my wishlist is so huge and I too believe in compulsive book buying, I've been periodically checking Amazon and eBay for a used copy. Thus it was that last Thursday, some kind soul sent me a pristine copy of the book which arrived in a battered envelope (it had been advertised as being in acceptable condition). This internet thing is something: receive one of African literature's greatest works for $4.50 after just 2 clicks?

That I received the book on the same day that you apparently went all formal and declared a case of unsustainable blog development is a cause for some head-scratching on my part.

I'll be re-reading said ambiguous adventure in coming weeks, right after I'm done with Suzan Lori-Park's Getting Mother's Body which you should also read if you haven't already. A friend hipped me to it and its vibrant and cacophonous sound of the African-American experience is asserting itself in my ear whenever I can spare fifteen minutes - far more refreshing than the increasingly sclerotic Toni Morisson. And Lori-Parks has more groove than almost any living writer or playwright; I hope you managed to catch Topdog/Underdog if it passed your town (there's even a DVD about the struggle and creative process behind that great achievement. By the way, did you hear that Terry, and by transposition, Stella now has now lost her groove in a mix of sexual confusion, age and cultural misunderstanding. That could be the next entertainment in our silly season of discontent now that MJ has been released from a hysterical witchhunt.

I've been looking forward to engage you in the conversation about the ambiguous adventure, asking for example how the novel measured up with Mariama Ba's Une si longue lettre which I would have thought was more in your line (which again has a good translation). This short note is turning out to be a long letter... And for the record, what caused you to go with The Cheikh's words in your allusive blog title?

And what about Kwame Gyekye's Tradition and Modernity that I spotted on your reading list a few months back, I read it last year and have alluded to it in passing. We find ourselves mediating tradition and modernity daily and I wonder what the analogues of the blogging world were in the traditional past. Gyekye would have some provocative thought on the issue I'm sure. I also picked up a used copy of his African Cultural Values. All secondary school children should read it and not just Ghanaians or Nigerians, all American kids would do well to get some of his flavour and learn about cultures that have influenced the world but that aren't normally advocated. And why the hell is the book out of print in this country? Isn't he the greatest? A philosopher from the old school full of scholarship and learning and still vitally relevant today. I've been meaning to start that conversation on tradition and modernity for a while. But will I have a forum? And, if so, will you lead the way?

Do take your time before you resurface, I know it's difficult to regain balance. I fear there is much I don't do justice to myself. Still I firmly believe in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's maxim:

Any idea which couldn't stand a few decades of neglect isn't worth anything.

Thus a literal and figurative head nod in your direction Kenya.

I remain subscribed in Bloglines.

File under: Africa, Kenya Hudson, blogging, life, balance, conversation, communities, web, literature, politics, slums, letters, philosophy, ambiguity, adventure, Ghana, writing, toli

On Blogging at IBM

Fellow traveler, James Snell, points out IBM's newly published blogging guidelines and policies:

You can read them at length there, they seem fairly reasonable, even if couched in the obligatory corporate PR self-congratulatory bromides about "innovation-based companies". I wonder, are there any companies that claim to be anti-innovation?

Blogging@IBM

IBM blogging policy and guidelines

Responsible Engagement in Innovation and Dialogue

1. Know and follow IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines.
2. Blogs, wikis and other forms of online discourse are individual interactions, not corporate communications. IBMers are personally responsible for their posts. Be mindful that what you write will be public for a long time -- protect your privacy.
   [snip]

Use your best judgment... Ultimately, however, you have sole responsibility for what you choose to post to your blog.

Don't forget your day job. You should make sure that blogging does not interfere with your job or commitments to customers.

The day job injunction is one about focus. When it comes to Freedom of Expression, companies know that they can't control what someone does on their own time and indeed that it can make the workplace a happier one if employees can pursue their muses. My own management chain have worried periodically about my focus. It hasn't been much use telling them that the Technology toli is actually my attempt to gain ideas that feed back into the day job or indeed that I've been blogging about Forms Glue of late. Or even that my education has been all about learning to handle balance and coping with daily insanity of which there is much in large bureacracies. Some just look at the blog and get scared by the veritable outpourings in this land. "How can he possibly write all this they must be asking?" Well I do have weekends, mornings and nights, right? At least I hope I do... Of late the 5am to 7am shift while drinking tea, reading the news and enjoying the early morning sun has been very productive and prolific. Thus at best they can only give a gentle reminder, day job doesn't even get a number in the guidelines.

The good news is that I have only pressed against the spirit of a couple of these guidelines. The one about "Clients, partners or suppliers should not be cited or obviously referenced without their approval" in particular.

And for these I would invoke the "Use your best judgement" plank as a justification.

I like to link. Like the hyphen, the hyperlink is promiscuous, sociable and an assertion of interest. Hyperlinking is the singular power of the web style; a link shares the googlejuice around and often shows that a human has made a judgment. The judgment is value neutral and doesn't imply anything other than interest (or sometimes dissent). The controversies over linking, deep-linking will continue to be fought until this is more widely understood. Links also get spammed but that's another story. A shout out to The Power of the Schwartz or to Sun & Sun (a frequent victim of The Ampersand Curse) is just that: a shout out. I certainly am not going to seek approval to link to these fine folks.

And as far as picking fights goes, it often isn't the wisest thing but sometimes it serves to clear the air (see On The Importance of Biting Satire for example). I've noted:

Sometimes you have to resort to the down and dirty column.

I like my satire savage. It should be vicious, biting and deeply heartfelt. The targets should feel a sharp wound.

Less said on that however.

I would say a similar thing about the "Use a disclaimer" item. This is a weasely concession by overly freaked-out folks to keep lawyers employed. I do recognize that the things I cross-post at the official Inside Lotus blog should have a different tenor, coming as they do from company hosted facilities and presumably, in that respect, I am acting as the public face of Lotus. Thus I take a greater care with my words in the toli that surfaces on that forum.

On the other hand, I think it is obvious that an individual doesn't speak for a company.

In legal terms, and as the son of a lawyer, I can confidently say that a disclaimer adds no value or protection whatsoever. If someone objects to your blog post, website or email, and if they have deep pockets (say the Scientologists for example), they can, and will sue willy-nilly and tie you up in court, protestations of disclaimer notwithstanding. The wonder of the lawyer lobby is that it manages to keep risk aversion and litigation at such a high pitch in the cultural zeitgeist. It is true that oftentimes, the market will tar you with the brush of guilt by association; in economic terms therefore it is wise for companies to worry about such things. But a certain humanity is often lost by blandly avoiding controversy. There are many a company with Strange Bedfellows all over the world (whether it is in the pursuit of oil, gold or blood diamonds, paying bribes to people while later tarring said countries with the brush of corruption. It takes two to do the corruption tango.

If you really did believe (as for example many executives did in the apartheid era) that it was imperative to share in the fruits of the sweat and tears of others - sanctions be damned! like Reagan and Thatcher maintained) then one should indeed expect swift retribution from the marketplace if appropriately sensitized. I remember Barclays Bank paying a heavy price in the 1980s for such an attitude (and it is only 19 years later that they are emboldened to return to South Africa). I can think of many such examples and perhaps you could point me to your favourites e.g. watching a nice liberal mother explain to her 4 year old son why the Del Monte can of peaches from South Africa had to be put back on the shelf and the Waitrose brand peaches (without the colourful logo) substituted, circa 1988 in Brent Cross shopping centre in London.

Now employee blogging is much the same as employee use of any technology, be it phone, email or the web. Oftentimes, the use of said technology can be very productive and useful (in moderation) and indeed it can sometimes save lots of time and keep the employee focused on corporate business. If I'm able to arrange renewal of my license over the phone or the web during my lunch break, I presumably wouldn't have to take an afternoon off work to head to the DMV. I recently joked in passing about how I recently had to respond to an anonymous email from some department or other to justify maintaining my office phone since it had seen relatively little activity in this era of instant messaging and email. It is incidents like that that lead people to talk all too often about "faceless corporations". That legal fiction of personhood is frequently invoked by companies but often conveniently forgotten when the lights go out.

American society is deeply litigious and gets stuck on the notion of explicit adherance to the letter of the law as opposed to the European notion of staying within the spirit of the law and letting an experienced judiciary adjudicate when the boundaries are overstepped. This means that there is a vast industry of tax and accountancy lawyers who specialize in weaseling out of the letter of the law with new tax shelter products every year engaged in an arms race with the IRS.

In this vein I would suggest that if Lotus was Old Europe, that IBM is heartland America, a New World of slightly puritanical rectitude. Coming from a culture that is often reacting to the fights between these two elephants, I would say that each approach has its merits and that perhaps the grass should have some say in these things.

Sometimes of course, this excessive concern for litigation has benefits for society, for the greater good as it were. Cambridge sidewalks tend to get cleared fairly quickly when it snows since people who twist their ankles and fall in front of your house will get their 50 cents and more in legal revenge. In comparison, English and French sidewalks were treacherous in the winter time - it often felt like a tightrope or walking the plank (in my tradition of metaphorical excess). There is also huge innovation in the kinds of cups that are used for coffee to prevent litigation-induced scalding. I don't drink coffee but I am amazed at what I see people holding when they walk out of Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks. It's Nuclear Star Wars leading to good old Teflon all over again.

The 401K account, which is about the only thing other than the plain providential, and literal, lottery, that Americans will have for retirement if Dubya and Cheney have their way with Social Security - what with their continued focused and highly selective war-mongering, and deficit spending like proverbial Palm Wine Drinkards, is just a case in point about this phenomenon. A lawyer took a look at the tax code, found a loophole and now every dinner table conversation is about the 401K. Following up on the same idea, it is plain fact that the Roth IRA is the most popular political and economic innovation of the past decade. Bless you Senator Roth, wherever you are, you citizen you.

On the other hand this is the same tendency that leads to much inhibition. The US has half of the world's supply of lawyers and the world's largest insurance industry and for good reason. I shouldn't even mention the reinsurance industry and the whole stack of derivative products founded on this litigious risk mitigation tendancy.

Playground swings are no longer as fun since manufacturers have shortened the rope to prevent high velocity and now parents will strap you in like a pilot. Where is the thrill of youthful daredevil inventiveness going, I ask? My cousin famously broke his arm as a child on our playground swing and he is much the better for it. He bacame a far more sensitive soul once he had to be confined to a cast and realized his limitations and the wisdom of the repeated warnings of his parents and entire family. Actually it was the traditional healers of his father's village of Taviefe in the Volta region of Ghana who set his arm in place, armed with their inimitable herbs and centuries-old experience. We turned to tradition as opposed to modernity. A great respect for tradition and confidence in his roots was fostered in this experiece. Certainly in family lore we all know better where we come from.

I can't imagine my Auntie Grace filing a lawsuit against the swing manufacturer, or her sister in whose backyard the great swing was to be found, or perhaps even her nephew, me, who was in attendance at the fateful fall and who didn't intervene. That however is the degenerate kind of thing that would happen, and does happen fairly frequently in the US where the ties of family and societal culture are sometimes loosened into anomie.

There are already far too many emails emanating from corporate accounts with noxious disclaimers, clogging up mailing lists everywhere and causing comprehension problems. They are a public nuisance and there is no reason to add further disclaimers to the mix.

As you might have guessed, I dissent on that front, my Blogger profile simply says "Oh, and I work at Lotus/IBM". The Girlfriend Fiancée says that that tag line is "a little unprofessional" but it wasn't chosen without care. This joint is an individual one, this is a someone's voice you are hearing, engaging and thinking aloud in public conversation.

I think that suffices. What do you think?

Update: My friend Justin adds some Mediocre Indian Cuisine to the advertising mix. Join me in welcoming another jaundiced Lotus/IBMer to the blogosphere. He started the blog before these newfangled stamp of approval thingimijigs were published and we are all the better for it.

There is another post lurking