Movie Recommendation: The Queen of Versailles

If you like documentaries, as I do, then I highly recommend The Queen of Versailles. The film profiles a rich timeshare guy named David Siegel who married a trophy wife (former Miss America, I believe) and they had a slew of kids. Despite the fact that they lived in a huge mansion in an exclusive gated community in Orlando, they wanted a bigger house.

They planned to build the biggest house in the United States. And they called it “Versailles” because it was modeled after the famous French Palace. The cost of the house would have been well over $100 million. This was before the real estate meltdown. The Siegels, like many other folks, were super-optmistic, and greedy. They were also pathetically self-absorbed, which is why they agreed to let a filmaker named Laura Greenfield follow them around for a few years. Big mistake.

The movie is fascinating because it starts like a typical reality TV show, except instead of Ozzy Osbourne or Gene Simmons, it’s a time-share real estate mogul. A big time-share business is more like a super-rock band (e.g. KISS or Black Sabbath) than you’d expect. So there is the voyeueristic appeal of seeing into the private lives of some quirky rich people, and the people that cater to them.

But what’s really interesting is how the Siegels come to grips with the economic downturn, which threatened every project he had going, including his cherished “Versailles.”

Early in the film, Siegel proudly claims that he alone was responsible for getting George Bush elected because of his work in Florida (which he says, on camera, he doesn’t want to discuss because what he did “might be illegal”). Flash forward to late 2008, when the bottom is dropping out of the financial system, and when Siegel and his tribe have to face some serious cutbacks.

He has to forego his limos and jet plane, and cut his household staff from 13 to 4. His wife’s dogs are pooping all over the mansion and no one has time to pick it up, so they step in crap from time to time. The kids don’t feed their lizard so it dies, and one of them complains it’s because no one would take her to the pet store to get more food (the house is filled with food and no doubt some of it would have saved the lizard).

Clearly they have too much stuff, and not enough people to manage it. But that doesn’t stop his wife from continuing to binge-shop, buying obscene amounts of toys that she has to cram into 3 cars. When they get home they pass through the garage, which is strewn with toys and bicycles that kids don’t play with anymore. They don’t have time to use all the crap they have, much less take care of it.

In the end, Siegel is bitter and astonished that his empire has crumbled. He says his kids they may have to get real jobs when they graduate from high school, and that they’ll have to borrow money for college (he never put any away for their college education). He blames his misfortune on greedy bankers, and never once acknowledges any responsibility for miscalculation or excessive borrowing.

And now that the film is out and getting attention, he’s even more bitter (and unable to accept responsibility). So he’s suing the filmaker for defamation. But a U.S. Judge doesn’t seem to believe his case has merit. What a shock!

One of my favorite parts of the movie is when Siegel is talking to the Orlando real estate agent who is supposed to find a buyer for Versailles (which is only half-way finished). The agent is supposed to be an expert in luxury properties, but she keeps pronouncing ‘Versailles’ with an ‘s’ at the end. It’s a small thing, yet somehow compelling.

Many of the people in the movie have lots of money (or had it), but virtually none of them have any self-awareness. Apparently, that can lead to big problems.

Your cleverly casual profile picture is totally unhelpful. Seriously.

I'm not one to lecture people away from being "down to earth" or "casual and friendly," but lately I've been itching to tell people who have "cutesie" profile pictures that it's probably not a good idea. You know, the picture of them and their wife, or their boyfriend, or dog, or the college rugby team. 

Such a small thing, you say. What is the problem with this?

Nothing at all, if the profile picture was going to be viewed only by people who already know them. But it's not. These days you have to account for the following harsh truth: something you put out there for one group, and with one purpose, will probably be seen by an entirely different set of people, and used in a way you hadn't contemplated.

Let me give you an example.

My iPhone's contact list pulls data from, among other places, Facebook. The profile pictures that accompany most of the people in my address book come, in many cases, from Facebook. I can't say for sure where they come from exactly, but I know that the pictures are chosen by the contact person themselves and not by me.

Let's say I need to send contact information from my contact list to a new business prospect. My usual routine is to send a vCard by email from my iPhone. I tend to do that very quickly without thinking much about it. So I probably wouldn't notice that my old friend has a weird profile picture. Which means that's what might show up when I send the business prospect the vCard.

Maybe it won't matter you say, if you're one of those who wants to keep your cute profile picture. Maybe it won't. But maybe you haven't thought about all the ways that your profile picture will be used in scenarios you hadn't contemplated.

I like to keep things simple. A profile picture should let people know what you look like so they can remember you, or know who to look for when you meet for the first time in a coffee shop or other public place. A profile picture shouldn't be stuffy and formal, but it shouldn't be so casual that it sacrifices some other desirable aspect. There is nothing wrong with a nice close up of your face, taken in a casual setting. 

But a profile picture of you with your four best friends from high school isn't going to help me remember you or find you in a crowded coffee shop. Just saying'...

What's harder to cover: politics or sports?

Nate Silver is a sensible guy, and his analysis of political polls is now pretty much legendary. His 538 blog is now part of the New York Times, and focusing mostly on political polls and trends. But Silver knows a lot about gambling and sports betting in general, having made lots of money in poker tournaments and also having been a Baseball Sabermetrics aficionado.

In a recent Reddit interview (by anyone who logged in and asked him questions) the following wonderful Q&A occurred.

Q.  Which do you find more frustrating to analyze, politics or sports?

A.  Politics. I don't think its close. Between the pundits and the partisans, you're dealing with a lot of very delusional people. And sports provides for much more frequent reality checks. If you were touting how awesome Notre Dame was, for example*, you got very much slapped back into reality last night. In politics, you can go on being delusional for years at a time.

Full disclosure: I said in a NYT video yesterday that I'd bet Notre Dame against the spread.

Yeah, that is pretty much how I feel too. It's sad when you have to confront the basic limitations of humans operating in a so-called "civilized world."

New Years - Resolutions and Random Initiatives

 I’m not big on formal New Years’ resolutions. But, I like to take stock of ideas I found interesting last year, and ones I am intrigued by now. Often these ideas come from books, or are embodied in them.

Books I enjoyed last year:

• Heads in Beds - snarky, insightful account of a young man’s ascendancy in the hotel business. He starts in New Orleans and moves up to New York, and has many interesting adventrues and encounters. He’s an amazing writer, but in addition to being entertaining, he offers practical advice on how to get good deals at hotels.
• No Easy Day - First hand account of the raid that found and killed Osama bin Laden. It was riveting, but the big surprise was the account of how Seals are trained, and how they move up to become members of Team Six. These guys must be the most well-trained athletes in the world.
• The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden by Mark Bowden - I read this right after No Easy Day because it provided detail on how we figured out where bin Laden was. The surprise from this book is learning about the technology related to drones and information sifting.

Books I plan to read this year (or have already started):

• To Sell is Human - by Dan Pink - I always enjoy his take on things. Pink effectively argues that more of us now need to “move” people to adopt our ideas and proposals (e.g. a form of "selling"). Lawyers “sell” ideas or arguments, so this book is relevant to them, and I’m finding lots of good information here on how to be more persuasive.
• The Art of Explanation - by Lee Lefever. The author is the founder of CommonCraft.com, a company that helps companies explain their products by using short videos that make use of visuals. Dropbox is one of their clients and you can see Lefever’s handiwork if you watch the Dropbox video his company created. This book is a great primer on how to explain things better. I’m surprised at how much I am learning, mostly by simply becoming aware of how great explanations work.

New ideas and tools I’ll be paying more attention to:

• Mindmapping - I’ve used these for a few years now, but not extensively. This year I feel like I’ll be mindmapping pretty much every day. The trick will be to develop a workflow that lets me create and tweak my maps from anywhere, and on any device (e.g. computer, iPad, or iPhone).
• Presenting from an iPad - I love walking up to a podium to do a presentation with just my iPad. If I’m standing at a podium it’s really the easiest tool to set up and present from. The only limitation is that once the Keynote slidedeck gets too large it won’t work; and my slidedecks often contain lots of video clips. But if the presentation is not too large it’s the easiest way to present from a podium.
• Webinars - I love doing live CLE seminars. It’s great to get immediate facial feedback, and also I like the social interaction after the event. But the fact is: a lot of what I talk about could be explained better if the audience was at their own computer as I did a live demo from my computer. This is what webinars are optimal for, and I think they’re a great compliment to live seminars. Or they can be useful in their own right. The trick is for potential audience members to know how to log into a webinar, which I think most people now know how to do.

Anyway, that’s part of my list of books and tools I’ll be focused on next year. What about you? What are you reading or trying to learn?

It's the trade-offs, stupid

Technology always involves tradeoffs. Every tool created by humans has situational strengths and situational weaknesses. The trick is to figure out how to balance the risks with the rewards. Then you can make intelligent decisions about how to use technology.

Consider, for example, the question of computer security. Is it safe to use a computer that’s connected to the internet? Depends. If you don’t know how to avoid scams, and you leave the computer open to hackers, then it’s not safe. The hackers are getting smarter, and the scams are getting more clever. But most users are plodding along with the same mindset, generally they’re lax about security. More to the point: they don't understand how to properly assess risk and reward in the digital world.

Why would so many people use passwords like “password” or “123456”? It's because they just want their lives to be easy and believe that picking a simple password is the easy way to remember it. In other words, they’ve traded off easy-to-achieve security for lazy simplicity.

I have a very successful friend who’s made loads of money investing in hundreds of large-scale international businesses. I don’t know anyone better able to weigh the complex risks and rewards inherent in deciding whether to invest in a large company. However, when it comes to assessing simple trade-offs involved in using his trusty laptop computer, he’s completely naive and vulnerable.

For example, my friend can’t make a basic decision about his email. His IT guy set him up with a shared account on an Exchange server. And the IT guy charges him a too much money (according to my friend) to just manage his email. My friend says his Mac-based Outlook program runs slow and constantly spins a beach ball. So, sensing that I know something about technology, he asks me what he should do.

I ask him a few questions about what he wants from an email program. He says his number one priority is to be able to search his 10 years of old emails (which his IT guy reports is 7 GBs of data). He says his old emails are like his filing cabinet of key information from all the business deals he's done. He says it's vital that he be able to quickly search his old emails.

I know what I’d recommend to him, but I tell him to talk to my friend Paul, a smart guy who does tech consulting but doesn't charge too much money. 

Paul tells him that he should migrate his old emails to Google Apps and pay $50/year instead of the many hundreds of dollars he’s now paying. The effect would be (1) save money, and (2) be able to search old emails with the power of Google. This is what my friend said he wanted. After listening to Paul explain the rough method by which the migration would take place I tell him I agree with Paul.

And it seems like my friend is now on the path to a better "email finding system." My friend tell his IT guy what he plans to do, and that he wants him to work with Paul to get it done.

At first, The IT guy says fine.

A few days later, however, he sends an email to everyone (copying me as well) explaining the negatives of “having a cloud based email system,” and of “not having complete control over it.” The IT guy tells him that with Google’s cloud-based email he won’t be able to work on emails while he’s flying. My friend can’t reconcile the negative tradeoffs he’s hearing about from his IT guy with the recommendations he’s getting from Paul. He becomes exasperated and annoyed with everyone for not being able to give him what he wants. He demands that action be taken immediately to end his spinning beach balls.

I read the flurry of emails going back and forth and wince, glad that I am not an IT guy who has to work with people who rely technology, but don't want to do anything to understand it—folks who just want to issue orders, and expect results.

My friend's problem is a common one among tech-unsavvy folk: he wants incompatible things. He wants a result that is the product of no tradeoffs. He doesn’t understand how cloud-based email works, even if it's explained to him several times. My friend (even with access to top-notch advisors) isn’t competent to make basic decisions about his technology, not even the simple stuff that most 15 year olds figure out for themselves. 

Awhile back, my wife set my friend up with a password management program. She explained to him the importance of using tool that would allow him to have strong passwords, and the simplicity of working off of one master password. She set it up for him and then trained him to use it. He tried it for awhile but complained constantly that the program wasn't working properly.

He quickly gave up on the program because he found it too difficult. I’m not sure how he manages his passwords now, but I hope he’s picked something more secure than a phrase that's in every hacker’s “dictionary attack file.” I hope that, but I really don’t expect it. My friend doesn’t understand how to parse tradeoffs that apply to computer technology.

In short, he's the guy at the poker table wondering who the sucker is. Except the poker table is connected to the Internet, and has millions of players. And that's a really dangerous place to be if you don't know how to make sound technology decisions.

Sudden catastrophes, and why hyperlocal news coverage beats traditional reporting

Put a stake in the ground: we now live in an era where aspects of the "journalistic balance of power" have shifted.

I was in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and blogged about it. My blog posts were of limited value to most people, but for those who knew I lived in New Orleans and had a blog they were apparently very helpful. But back then things were very different than they are just seven years later.

Back in 2005 there was no iPhone, and the "smartphones" that existed didn't have useful cameras if they had them at all. Twitter didn't exist in 2005 and Facebook was just getting off the ground. Use of mobile internet was also not available.

Today we live in a world where iPhones (and similar high-caliber smartphones) are everywhere. Those mobile devices are connected to high-speed wireless networks that reach everywhere, and the people who own those devices know how to do a lot of things with them: text message, tweet, post to Facebook, upload pictures or video, and gather useful information from other similarly armed citizens.

The excellent website, Uptown Messenger, run by Robert Morris has done a fantastic job of keeping tabs on events affecting the Uptown area of New Orleans. During Hurricane Isaac his coverage has been peerless. The Times Picayune has to cover a much larger swath of the city, and the same is true for the TV stations. Their coverage is useful for getting a general sense of events affecting the metro area, but not as useful for getting detail about Uptown New Orleans.

Robert Morris has a background in journalism, so he brings that experience to the job. But he also knows how to gather information from other citizens who have smartphones and familiarity with Twitter. This morning a popular local bar called Fat Harry's had a fire. Robert's twitter post (with picture) was uploaded at 8:32 am. The Times Picayune website has a short story posted 30 minutes later, with a similar picture. The local CBS TV affiliate noted the story about Fat Harrys in a Twitter post, citing @UptownMessenger as the source.

When a local state congressman named Neil Abramson decided to drive around and post useful updates using Twitter, Robert Morris began retweeting his posts. Robert Morris has (at this writing) 3,188 followers on Twitter and Neil Abramson has 1,125.

But it's not about how many followers you have. Just as it's not about how many reporters you have on staff or how many watts your TV or radio transmitter has. The question is: who can quickly provide useful information in a time of crisis? If you live in Uptown New Orleans during and after Hurricane Isaac the answer is: Robert Morris. Look at his map of power outages in Uptown New Orleans, which is created using actual users tweeting about which locations have power and which don't.

Entergy's power outage map, on the other hand, has been criticized for inaccuracy (see sample tweets below).

Uptown Messenger's outage map has been much more accurate than Entergy's map, even though the power company should have better information about where power is available. Is this because Entergy can't provide better information on a timely basis, or that it isn't interested in doing so? Doesn't matter. We now know who can, and will.

After the chaos of Hurricane Isaac is forgotten Robert Morris will probably provide relentless hyperlocal coverage of Uptown New Orleans. He seems to have figured out how to monetize this effort. The larger news organizations don't have the desire (or maybe even ability) to do hyperlocal news well. When the next local crisis event breaks out, I'll be tuning in for Robert Morris's coverage of it. And, like many other Uptown residents, I'll be helping him in any way I can.

Interviewed by WVUE Fox8 News regarding social media legislation

I was interviewed by Evan Anderson for a TV segment on New Orleans’ Fox8 News regarding the recently enacted Louisiana law (Act 375), which prohibits online impersonation. The Act makes it illegal to:

• sign up for an email account, if
• you don’t have permission of the person in whose name the account is being created

The maximum fine is $1,000, and the maximum jail sentence is six months. It’s not a crime with harsh penalties, but it would seem to be pretty easy to prove.

Are you suffering from too much information? Here's a quick, simple cure

Everyone talks about "information overload" as though it's an unavoidable problem of our modern society. Too much information is out there and it's coming at us faster than we can digest it. Few people ask: how much of that information is meaningful to me, and how can I filter out the stuff I don't find useful?

Clay Shirky astutely points out that what have have isn't "information overload," but rather "filter failure." We've had more information being produced than any one human could consume in a lifetime for centuries. So, the question isn't "how much information is out there?" but instead: how much of it do we want (or need) to consume?

If you don't want meaningless information to cloud your life then learn how to filter. Start by examining all of the information sources you access (e.g. TV, radio, print media, Internet etc.). Which programs and information sources are you accessing out of mindless habit? Which ones are delivering interesting and useful information that you tend to act on?

Next time you watch a local TV news broadcast and they're blabbering about some misfortune that happened to someone who lives across town that you don't know, ask yourself: is this information actionable? That is, how will it help you in a specific way?

The answer is it probably won't. Most news is really just mindless gossip. And the weird thing is many of us pay attention to this gossip even though we don't know the people involved. It's like that experiment where they put soap operas on a TV in a cage full of monkeys and guess what? Yeah, the monkeys started watching the soap operas.

Do monkeys need to watch soap operas about another species? Is this relevant to their lives? Will it help them forage for food? No, but if you are stuck in a cage and bored you'll watch anything.

You're probably not stuck in a cage, and yet you might be letting a lot of useless information into your life. If so, then don't complain that you are suffering from information overload. Filter out the useless junk. You'd be surprised how much of it there is.

The insidious harm of human habit

We’re all creatures of habit, not just in the way we act. Our thoughts are shaped heavily by habit as well, and there are studies that show that more than 50% of our thoughts (which means our problem-solving) are shaped by deeply ingrained patterns. So when we encounter a new problem we’re almost always trying to find the solution based on a pattern we already know.

Thinking in new ways is hard for us, or so say the psychologists and cognitive scientists who study the human brain.

My sense is that this ingrained “pattern thinking” was fine when we were hunter-gatherers and the world was less chaotic than it is now that we’ve got technology spewing out all over the place. Technology is making everything different at a much faster pace. Using old thought patterns for problems created by technology isn’t a trivial issue. Especially, since our social groups are much larger and the nation-states that these groups identify with.

I’ve been reading a lot about how habits constrain human thought, and it explains a lot of our struggles. What’s weird is how oblivious the majority of us are to this insidious problem. It could make for a really interesting (and enlightening) TV news feature. But mass media is the beneficiary of some of the most useless mind-habits, so I’m not sure they’ll really probe very far when they do stories on this.

Changing any kind of habit is challenging. You have to make a dedicated and continuous effort for at least 21 days, which sounds easy, but apparently isn’t. Changing your mental habits probably doesn’t take any longer, but it involves using the mechanism that makes decisions to do it.

Is it possible to change one’s self-image for example? If you think of yourself as weak and unattractive, can you alter that self-image in 21 days? Most people would say no, or be very skeptical. And most people would not even try. The problem with self-defeating mental habits is that you have to ignore all the thoughts that plant seeds of doubt; and the hardest ones to ignore are the ones you create internally.

Meditation is one way to create some “space” where you can begin to take control of your thoughts, but there are other ways too. I’ve read first hand accounts of famous people who say they’ve done it, and that it changed their lives. I’ve known non-famous people who’ve said they were able to do it.

Is it possible for you? You can either trust the doubters or you can strive to create a belief that something that “seems” unlikely is actually quite possible. Which word do you like better? Yes or no.

Screwing the customer is Job #1

His boss told the young broker point-blank, "you're confused about your job." A fellow broker added, "Your job is to turn your clients' net worth into your own." Blaine wrote that down in his journal.

Was this happening at Goldman Sachs? No, it happened at Lehman and I'm guessing it happens at most of those big financial institutions. And yet somehow these places keep peddling B.S. and getting new clients.

Reflections & thoughts on my 10 year blogiversary

It's been 10 years since I started blogging. And for much of it I didn't really know what the theme was. I was just trying to figure out what I thought about things, mostly things having to do with how technology was disrupting society (and the legal profession, of course).

I'm fascinated by how people react to change.

As we get older we cling to familiar ways, and resist new ones. We all have this tendency, me included. But, over the years, as I paid more attention to "how things tend to work," I realized that resisting change is not a helpful strategy.

Change is ubiquitous and inevitable.

Everything in the Universe is constantly changing. Interestingly, the stuff we humans have created (e.g. computers, mobile phones, the Internet, GPS etc.) is making the pace of change go much faster. The Darwinian mantra for most species on Earth has been "Adapt or die." The new mantra for the tech-laden world that we've created is: "Adapt quickly, or become disoriented and irrelevant."

I don't like being disoriented, so I try to keep up with technology-driven change.

I've been thinking about what the theme of this blog should be from now on. It shouldn't be just about technology, or just about change. I want to talk about fundamental insights, and how we acquire them. Are there some really key insights? If so, what are they? These are the most useful questions to ask, it seems to me.

We have limited lifespans, and we can't control much of our world (certainly not the way we hope to, or pretend to). But there are some things we can control pretty well, and we should focus on those things so we can create better lives.

The passage in this ancient text says it best:

As irrigators guide water to their fields,
as archers aim arrows,
as carpenters carve wood,
the wise shape their lives.

So the core question is this: what kinds of things can we control to shape our lives better?

Does Mass Media Inhibit Critical Thinking Skills?

On TV the other day there was a story about whether doctors in the United States over diagnose ADD and ADHD in children. The number of kids who are on Ritalin and Adderall has climbed in the past decade or so, and so the question is whether that's because more kids have ADD these days, or because it's being more readily prescribed.

The story began by profiling a doctor (I forget his name) who said there definitely is over diagnosis of ADD and ADHD. He was quoted as saying "I'm not saying that there are no valid cases of ADD, but just that some of the kids receiving this diagnosis aren't truly in need of medication." I was paying close attention to how he phrased his statement because I knew what was going to happen next.

Then the story shifted to B-roll footage of a small kid playing peacefully with some blocks. The voiceover was from his mom who described how her son used to be incapable of concentrating, but now that he was taking Ritalin he was fine. Then the dad came in and confirmed this. Finally, the mom was shown on camera emphasizing that, for her son, medication was the only solution.

The segment then cut over to the network anchor and the chief medical correspondent, who confirmed that some kids truly need medication. There was no attempt to address the issue of whether some kids might be taking medication unncessarily.

If you weren't paying close attention (and most people don't when they watch TV), you'd come away with the impression that the question about over diagnosis had been answered, and the answer was that ADD is not over diagnosed.

The mainstream media is not purposefully trying to retard our critical thinking skills, but that's the outcome. Creating video stories is time-consuming. And they want to "tell both sides of the story." Maybe if they had more time they'd find a case of a child that arguably didn't need ADD medication, but then that would imply the parents weren't doing their job. Even if they did spotlight a child with marginal ADD, they'd still need to establish that maybe some doctors don't think that ADD is over diagnosed.

It follows the classic TV story formula: make the story easy to tell, and easy to understand, and don't sweat small disconnect that inhibits critical reasoning skills.

Law school, and 20 plus years as an attorney, have made me hyper-vigilant about information I receive from other people. If someone is making a point I automatically start assessing the way they make the point, and the data that they use to back it up. It's too bad that more people aren't subjected to the training that law students receive.

Here's a test of reasoning that comes from the excellent book by Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow:

Consider this: A study of the incidence of kidney cancer in the 3,141 counties of the United States reveals a remarkable pattern. The counties in which the incidence of kidney cancer are the lowest are mostly rural, sparsely populated, and located in traditional Republican states in the Midwest, the South and the West. Now, what do you make of this information?

Most people (but sadly, I would argue, not all) quickly figure out that the fact the counties in question are "traditional Republican" has nothing to do with the incidence of kidney cancer. The thing that people tend not to focus on is that the incidence of kidney cancer will be lower in sparsely populated areas.

Kahneman argues that we have two modes of thinking: fast and slow. The fast mode gets fooled easily by "merely statistical facts," that is, "facts, which change the probability of outcomes but do not cause them to happen." And which mode of thinking would you guess that television tends to engage?

One final thought: I was watching the Charlie Rose show the other night and he had a roundtable panel of political analysts talking about Newt Gingrich's recent fall in South Carolina and the likley implications going forward. The panel was pretty diverse, and a few of the members were folks you'd see on Meet The Press or CNN. What was interesting was that the level of discourse on Charlie Rose's show was very civil and moved towards a strong consensus: i.e. Newt Gingrich was not likely to get the nomination for various reasons.

If this question were posed on CNN or MSNBC there would be no consensus, and the level of discourse would be contentious. Watching the Charlie Rose panel I was struck by the realization that, even when there is a consensus among rational people of differing views, it rarely gets revealed on mainstream TV shows. Again, I'm not saying that CNN deliberately misleads its viewers. Maybe they don't understand how their approach degrades critical thinking skills.

You'd think that being in the business of "investigating news and important social topics" that they'd move toward understanding their influence on poor reasoning skills. But, as Upton Sinclair once said, "it's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

So the last question for analysis is this: does the media make more money from letting people argue about things that don't need as much debate if they could be explained better?

Lawyers don't want to hear about the future of law involving automation

Last week Jordan Furlong gave a great speech about the effects of automation and computers on the legal profession. Every legal organization that cares about the future of the profession (and that’s all of them, right?) should hire Jordan to give this talk to them. Clearly, he has paid attention to a lot of key trends, and is thoughtful in explaining what it all means.

After his fairly detailed overview of new technologies that are cropping up it was clear that many things that lawyers do are routine, and capable of being automated or outsourced. Lawyers don’t like to hear this, of course.

After Jordan talked about a couple of automated contract drafting tools (Koncision and Kiiac), an audience member made a predictable objection about how lawyers are needed to provided tailored drafting. The subconscious syllogism was as follows: If lawyers can provide tailored drafting of contracts, then the whole contract must be drafted by a lawyer and the automation process is completely useless.

What Jordan was actually saying (as I understood it) was: a lot of the initial drafting can be automated, and then a lawyer can step in to provide bespoke analysis. To me, this makes perfect sense. Let an intelligent system do the boring, grunt work, and then pass the results on to a human brain trained in the law. But lawyers don’t like to admit that anything they do can be done by a non-lawyer or a machine. And yet they can’t even use this higher brain power (that they claim to exclusively possess) to provide tailored analysis of routine things like the contents of regular emails.

I now offer into evidence Exhibit A, which is a typical block of text that appears at the end of every email sent out by many lawyers who (1) do not practice tax law, and (2) rarely send confidential communications:

IRS Circular 230 Disclosure:

To ensure compliance with requirements imposed by the IRS, we inform you that any U.S. federal tax advice contained in this communication (including any attachments) is not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used, for the purpose of (i) avoiding penalties under the Internal Revenue Code or (ii) promoting, marketing or recommending to another party any transaction or matter addressed herein.

Confidentiality Notice:

The information contained in this electronic mail is personal and confidential and is intended only for the person or persons named above. This message and the information contained in this electronic mail may be an attorney-client communication and therefore may be subject to the attorney-client privilege. If the reader of this message is not the recipient named above or an authorized agent of such recipient responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you have received this electronic mail in error, and that any review, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us by telephone at xxx-xxx-xxxx or electronic mail and delete the original message or any copy thereof, whether electronic or hard copy.

This verbiage could be used selectively, as needed. For example, lawyers could create an “email signature” with this text and then insert it only as needed. But they won’t do that; they’d rather just slop it into every email they send out from their business account.

So remind me again about how (unlike machines) lawyers are able to analyze each situation individually.

A 'Kodak Moment' (upon the eve of its bankruptcy filing)

Moral: Saying you understand the digital revolution (even in a clever way) isn't the same as actually understanding it.

Kodak was once a great company that ruled the photographic industry's roost. Today it's in bankruptcy, while its main competitor in film sales, Fuji, is thriving. Fuji, adapted more quickly to the digital world, and today makes some very popular (and expensive) digital cameras.

In 2006 Kodak's CEO Antonio Perez was invited to the All Things Digital Conference in California — hosted by tech guru Walt Mossberg. This clever video created by Kodak's ad team kicked off Mr. Perez's interview. Then it went viral on YouTube and was shared on over 3,000 technology blogs. The video was also played at internal employee meetings and shareholders and investor events. Like I said, it's a great video.

Perhaps when the bankruptcy is final (after Kodak's desperate flurry of "save the company patent suits" have been put to rest), they'll play the video one more time before they flick off the lights. Too bad they didn't use the imagination it took to create this video to run the company. Using imagination to create a cool video is hard, but it's almost impossible to use it to guide a big company into a new frontier; big companies, like all large groups of humans, always regress towards the mean.

The problem with proposed laws called SOPA and PIPA

A few minutes ago I ran a Google search on an author whose name I wasn't familiar with. Top hit was Wikipedia, so I clicked the link. Then I saw the splash page that informed me today is the day Wikipedia is blacked out because of the proposed legislation known as SOPA (PIPA is the companion legislation in the Senate side). A few minutes after that a local TV news reporter called to ask if I'd be willing to talk about the proposed legislation. I tried to deflect, but she was desperate so I agreed to help.

Since I took the time to figure out how to explain SOPA/PIPA to a TV audience, I figured I'd put it out here for web readers. I'll do it in Q&A format to make it track my TV interview (or at least the way I prepared it).

What would SOPA and PIPA do?

Basically, it would give large media companies greater power to sue people who they believe improperly post copyrighted material online.

What's the problem in a nutshell?

It has a inevitable side-effect of threatening 1st Amendment rights. Why? Well, because it will likely be used unfairly by the powerful media companies. Not always, but often enough to be detrimental to the constitutional rights of many well-meaning citizens who use computers to share information online. When a powerful media company decides to sue it may not always be right, but it almost always has more money and leverage than the average citizen.

In short, SOPA/PIPA increase the odds that people who post content online (or share it, or even link to it) will be wind up getting sued. The only way of decreasing the odds of getting sued is to be ABSOLUTELY SURE. But, "sure of what?" The media companies would say "you must be sure that what you're posting, or linking to, isn't copyrighted material."

Important question: Does your mom, who let's say has a Facebook page, know anything about copyright law? Even the people who run Wikipedia may not know enough about copyright law to avoid getting sued. So the thing you need to be ABSOLUTELY SURE about is this: that media companies won't have a different view of copyright law than you have (assuming you have an informed view). If they have a different view then they'll be motivated to sue, and then it's "game over" for the small website or Facebook user. And it's not just websites and Facebook. It's YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, FourSquare, MySpace (apparently people still use this), and any place that you can post to on the web.

So, large sites like Wikipedia will tend to be overly cautious about what they post and link to. And we'll see less information, even if the information they restrict is actually protected by the First Amendment. This is what First Amendment lawyers call "a chilling effect." I'd tell you to look it up on Wikipedia, but it's down right now for a day of protest. If SOPA/PIPA pass it might be down in worse ways than that.

Update: SOPA/PIPA appear, for now, to have lost critical momentum. On that point, I like Scott Adams' observation about this temporary defeat: "From my perspective, the Internet defended itself from a virus that came out of Congress." And as he points out, after citing Maplight, the virus is powered by money which comes out of Hollywood.

Wake me up when Frictionless TV viewing arrives

I have three TVs in my house, and I subscribe to the local cable service (Cox). I pay way too much for TV and I'm itching to cut back on what I pay. Of course it's too expensive. That's a given. But the main gripe I have these days is the annoyance factor.

Everything about watching video or TV is infused with friction and annoyance.

Blueray movies? I have a player, and stupidly bought some BlueRay movies. Waiting for the mandatory announcements to finish is torture. If I suffer through them it's not uncommon for the video to stall because there's a smudge on the DVD. Then I have to take it out and wipe it down. At that point I'm asking myself: do I have the patience to suffer through the announcements again?

I get rentals from Netflix, but I unchecked the "send BlueRay" option. I get regular old DVDs and then rip them to my iTunes program so I can stream them at my leisure. Once I'm done with them I delete them because I don't really want to store movies I've seen. Is this illegal? Probably. Anything you do to try to circumvent the Weapons of Mass Annoyance that content providers are hoarding is almost certainly illegal. If it's not now, then it will be soon.

I have a zillion channels provided by my cable company, but I can't watch hardly any of them. I only watch live sports, and that's limited to football. When I watch I have to keep the remote in my hands at at all times so that I can immediately mute the sound when a commercial comes on. The sound volume jumps so much that it's impossible to think when a commercial comes on.

Thinking during a commercial is probably illegal, and muting the commercial is probably a petty offense. If it's not it will be soon (yeah, I know about the law that Congress is supposedly passing to prohibit volume jumps in commercials, but how long do you think it will take before that becomes a widely adopted practice?).

My daughters both watch TV, but they do it on their computer in their beds. They don't like to watch live TV, or anything with a commercial. They'll find stuff on the Internet that's free. Are they violating federal laws with their computers? I wouldn't be surprised. But, mostly, they avoid dealing with traditional content because it's "predictable and boring."

I hear that Apple is supposedly working on something that will make watching TV more convenient and easy. Unless that involves secretly replacing every network TV executive with a teenager I'm not sure they can really do anything significant.

It's funny that we live in a world where 3D and BlueRay quality video is possible, but people would rather watch degraded content (or nothing at all) than to suffer through the steady stream of annoyances created by the content providers. They're sitting in their fancy boardrooms with sycophants who assure them that hoarding their content like Scrooge McDuck makes perfect business sense.

I can't wait until my daughters' generation gets a little older and the TV execs start trying to figure out why their revenue fell off a cliff.

Now the LSD reference makes sense

When I was ten years old my dad took my brother and some friends to a drive-in movie. He had a convertible and thought that it'd be a great car for watching a drive-in movie. He didn't care what the movie was; it was about an outdoor movie experience. He also wanted to show his date that he knew how to entertain young kids.

The movie was weird, and about 10 minutes in it started to seem inappropriate, but my dad wasn't going to admit to his date that he'd made the wrong choice.

The movie was called Wild in the Streets, which was about the power of young people and how they'd take over the world. The idealistic protesters seized control of the government and went crazy with reform. Eventually they passed a law that required everyone over 30 to retire. Those over 35 were sent to "re-education camps" and were loaded up on LSD. I asked my dad what LSD was. He said it was time to leave, and with wheels spinning as he hastily exited the parking lot.

So many questions persisted (which obviously my dad wasn't going to answer): Why were these young kids so eager to take over the world and push the people over 30 aside? And how could anyone over 30 be considered "too old" to manage society? Making old people take mind-altering drugs? Could anything like that happen? Was my dad afraid of these wild young hippies?

Of course the flower children and protesters didn't take control of the society, at least not in their youth. And the notion that people under 30 would somehow have skills superior to elders is obviously still crazy. Or is it?

Today, technology has crept into our lives and the early adopters are young kids. They start with video games, like my son who beat Bowser in Mario Brothers when he was five (I never got past the first few levels; I blame my law job). They learn powerpoint and have to present with it in grade school. They learn how to get around undesired restrictions put in place by adults who don't understand technology.

When my daughters were in high-school their teachers routinely asked them to help them with their computers. Some of their friends' parents asked their daughters for help with Powerpoint (the kids knew all the settings and options; the parents barely knew how to start the program).

When my daughter started her major in Business at UGA she was required to do an internship, ostensibly to learn from an experienced business person. Instead, the woman who ran an event planning business relied on Bridget to grow a core part of her company: social media. Bridget understood social media because she'd been using it since before there was even a name for the thing we today call "social media." Neither the woman nor Bridget learned much, but the woman got a free intern who added major value to her business that she couldn't figure out how to add.

Bridget is obviously under 30. And she was under 18 when she first started helping adults with their technology problems. And Bridget, by the way, has no interest in technology. At least not any more interest than the average young adult.

But the interest and knowledge that young adults (and even teenagers) have is exponentially higher than adults over 40 or 50. Maybe the "digital divide" is as much about age differential as it is about socio-economic differences. And maybe that will put young people in a position to seize certain kinds of power that will wind up surprising older adults.

I've gotten to the point where it's too hard to work with people who don't understand how to use technology intelligently. When I go to the ABA TechShow, where every lawyer there versed in technology (or at least very interested in it), life becomes easy. People who are comfortable typing on a keyboard, and who readily download and learn new software on their own, are people I can work with. Together we can get things done fast, without having to stop to define small tasks.

I have friends and acquaintances who have no idea how burdensome their ignorance is to someone who can easily navigate tech-hurdles. I'm not sure what will happen to them, but since the rate of technological change is itself changing at a growing rate the prospects aren't comforting. I feel sorry for those people, and I want to help them. But not so much that I'm willing to let them drag me down.

I hope I don't find myself fumbling through this simple online shopping operation. But, whatever happens to me, don't let them force feed me the LSD.

I need a doctor who lessens the pain (of bureaucracy). Stat.

A few weeks ago, my son broke his nose playing ultimate frisbee. It happened on a Sunday around Washington D.C., which is where he lives.  Because there wasn’t much pain he opted not to go to the Emergency Room, hoping instead to get an appointment to see a doctor on Monday morning. Ah, the optimism of youth!

He woke up early on Monday and started calling doctors who were in his insurance network (BCBS). He found an ENT doctor on a site called ZocDoc.  The site allowed him to search for doctors in his area who were covered under his insurance provider.  He ended up picking one named Erik Kass because he had the earliest available appointment (10:15 am that day).  Presumably to satisfy a HIPAA requirement, ZocDoc called his phone for verfication as part of the registration process.  

To his surprise, Dr. Kass called him 15 minutes later and asked if he could come in a little earlier, at 9 AM (to which he happily agreed). Dr. Kass then emailed him several forms to fill out before arriving for the appointment.  

When my son showed up for the appointent he found the doctor managing the whole office by himself.  The doctor quickly scanned the medical details into a computer and started checking his nose out, all within 10 minutes.  Dr. Kass suggested he go to another ENT for the procedure to set his nose.  By the time my son got home he had an email from Dr. Kass, with not only with that doctor’s contact information, but also several other referral options. He went to the first one recommended by Dr. Kass and his nose was fixed with minimal hassle. 

My son describes ZocDoc as “a totally hassle-free way of setting doctors appointments.” He adds that “the only reason went to Dr. Kass was because of his profile on ZocDoc, and the ease at which he could pick a time to meet with him.”  ZocDoc is limited to the major US cities at the moment but is expanding rapidly. ZocDoc also allows you to rate doctors, but only those that you have seen through the service.  

ZocDoc is only part of the equation. The doctor he went to was obviously someone who approaches his art with a keen sense of the patient’s perspective. If it’s possible to email patients forms before they arrive, and send them follow up information after they leave, then why not? For many doctors, using email isn’t what they were trained to do so they don’t make use of it when dealing with their patients. Even though they probably use it all the time to communicate with everyone else.

Next time I have to find a doctor I’ll go see if ZocDoc is up and running in my city. If so, then I’ll use it to try to find a doctor like Dr. Kass.

When their mouths are moving they're lying, when they're quiet they're stealing...

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry is desperate to regain some positive attention after last week's debate gaffe. His poll numbers were declining before that, so now it's time to rearrange the deck chairs.

Now he's proposing legislation to ban congressfolk from insider stock trading on information they receive as part of their congressional duties. This is a great idea, and no doubt Perry could have proposed it before he started his uncontrolled descent, so why now?

Well, first of all Perry is aware that 60 Minutes just did a stinging piece on shameful congressional perks (one of which is the freedom to trade on non-public information that affects stocks). Watch the 60 Minutes clip, but be prepared to get mad.

Rick Perry may have trouble remembering things in a debate, but he's not politically naive. His proposal is a simple calculated ploy, one basd on the assumption that voters in our country are easily manipulated and poorly informed.

Congress isn't going to pass a bill like the one Rick Perry is now proposing. Other people have proposed such a bill and it's never even gotten to committee. But, once again, a similar bill is being proposed by Massachussetts Senator (Rep.) Scott Brown. Let's see how that goes...

[FLASH FORWARD TO 2014]

What happened to that bill on Congressional stock trading?

[SOUND OF CRICKETS]

If you want to brush up on how far those in power will go to manipulate the poorly informed public just revisit the whole Pentagon Papers fiasco. Almost everyone has heard of "the Pentagon Papers." But hearing about it and "being informed about it" are not the same things.

I didn't know as much I thought and then I watched the documentary called The Most Dangerous Man in America. You can watch it instantly on Netflix.

I highly recommend you get up to speed on political manipulation

So here's what you should do. First, watch Most Dangerous Man. Then watch the 60 Minutes episode. At that point you'll fully appreciate how unlikely it is for members of Congress to voluntarily give up their excessive power.

Closely study Nancy Pelosi's reaction when 60 Minutes reporter Steve Kroft asks her a very sensible question about whether the perks she receives are reasonable. She is so taken aback that she's almost spitting with rage. This is exactly what powerful people who have been doing something shameful do when they're first discovered. (Go back and see how Nixon reacted as his misdeeds were uncovered).

Do you think most Americans would perceive the reporter's question to Pelosi as deeply unfair? Is the question character assassination? Or is it a fair question?

Most people would probably perceive it as fair. Unless they have some financial stake in the matter.

There's a huge disconnect between what's reasonable, as percieved by ordinary citizens, and what congressmembers are doing. That disconnect is one reason for the many serious problems we are experiencing now in this country. How did we let the housing crisis get so out of control, for example?

The answer, as always, is a lot simpler when you follow the money. Most of it leads back to Washington, but not enough people are paying attention to this. And so they're easily manipulated.

Politicians call those people "voters."

Cool startups to pay attention to

Wired magazine recently profiled the 7 Coolest Startups You Haven’t Heard of Yet. I’m intrigued by CakeHealth, but my provider (Coventry) isn’t compatible yet. The U.S. health care industry is almost a decade behind where it should be.