At UC Berkeley I loved taking part in seminars. If the weather was fine, we might go out and sit on the freshly mown lawn. The occasional hummingbird would join, hover, and move on. Dogs drifted in distractedly, lay down – head between their front paws – and fall asleep. We met to discuss a swath of readings, the TA coordinating lightly the proceedings. There was time for a flirtive smile, or wondering about a waft of perfume.

Webinars are “top down affairs”. The speaker speaks – at best assisted by PPP – and then takes questions. In twitter format. That the space for writing the question was absurdly small (no more than two inches, which I shared with a smiley) may be due to poor design.

When the medium is the twitter one does not create a conversation. Theodore ZELDIN, Oxford don and great historian[1], has long wanted to reintroduce “conversation” into our times. He has started a world-wide movement[2]. In his small book on the topic[3] he defines conversation: “Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they just don’t exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn’t just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards.” (pg. 14)

The twitter message is at the opposite end of this vision. It is a shout for attention from the crowd. It is so short, so lacking in reflection and nuances, most of the thought is “lost in translation”. It is an opportunity for the speaker to jump from topic to topic – and to dominate the thinking. Politicians’ press conferences are akin to webinars: words are flashed (sometimes by compliant journalists) and the politician rambles on.

We do this in the mistaken belief that we are more efficient. We are not. What ZELDIN calls “creating new cards” – is lost. The differential between the speaker and the participants, even more, the distance between participants is just too great.

Compressing a message to twitter size loses all the nuances. The best twitter is MUNCH’s: Scream – with a smiley added for disambiguation, so as                         to soften the strident impact of boiling down thought to slogan.

Socio-psychologists are alerting us to the fact that we are very subtle persuading machines;  soft (if not short) messages are persuasive. Slogans sway, but do not convince.

Now take a different approach. In China, the CCP gathers officials at “Party universities” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfaRdSswaUA&feature=player_embedded for what I’d call extended seminars. These are not Party Congresses, where the Party line is handed down.

Here the framework is relaxed, and conducive to conversations and subtly conducive to “harmony” – the CCP’s great objective. Participants are led to consider, and invited to take responsibility for, the “whole”. It begins with morning gymnastics: a way to take responsibility for the self as whole of body and spirit.

Far from me to believe that these people who attend Party Universities genuinely worry about “harmony” and “the good of the country”. This is a far better attitude to take, however, than  the “think local, and the whole will take care of itself” which underlies Western worldview. And short conversation to twitter.

In commenting such news, one could argue substance – query e.g. why Mr. WOLF’s proposals fail to include reform of capitalism’s core: bankruptcy laws. Survival of the capitalist system is predicated on effective bankruptcy far more than on profit. Bankruptcy better be quick, definite, and definitive. The aim is to cleanse the system of all that’s “unfit to survive”. Regrettably, bankruptcies, like nostalgia, are no longer what they used to be – now all sorts of excuses are found to avoid them, from “too big to fail” to “restructuring”, artistic cooking of the books, and what not. A big firm must try very hard to achieve ultimate capitalist respectability: going bankrupt.

No. I’d rather take one step back and shed a tear for Cassandra.

In Greek myth Cassandra was blessed with foresight, and cursed with the fact no one believed her. Her own fault, mind you. It appears that she had promised Apollo to become his consort, but changed her mind, thus incurring his wrath: though she retained the power of foresight, no one would believe her predictions. Clytemnestra killed Cassandra, as she lay in bed with Agamemnon.

For some time already the flaws of this avatar of capitalism had been there for all to see – one did not need Marxist credentials to spot them. Nothing Mr. WOLF says in his editorial, therefore, is novel or surprising to the vigilant. These flaws have been discussed; and the warnings of the various Cassandras were not heeded. In fact, the authors were mocked at and marginalized. Mr. WOLF meanwhile wrote elegiac books like: Why globalization works. His authority grew and grew.

Now Mr. WOLF has discovered that capitalism has flaws. He has even broken a taboo: he proposes pro-actively addressing inequality and jobs. His justification is as barefaced as: “It is important if it is politically salient. It is.”

Now that Mr. WOLF has endorsed reform, it is in the “mainstream”. Well-informed opinion-makers will support it, and even Parliament and Congress might make a favorable reference to this goal. Whether these institutions will take the medicine remains an open question – one point of Mr. WOLF’s reform proposals is to “introduce curbs to purchasing politics”.

Can we expect rehabilitation for the Cassandras? Hardly. More likely Mr. WOLF will take credit, despite the fact that he did not lead, just chose the right moment to jump, thus preserving, nay, increasing his authority. While those who crossed the Sinai Desert will die before entering the Promised Land, Mr. WOLF is about to lead believers in the country of reform.

This is nothing new. Even Jesus did not care much about Cassandras. According to Matthew 20:1-16 Jesus says that any “laborer” who accepts the invitation to the work in the vineyard, no matter how late in the day, will receive an equal reward with those who have been faithful the longest.

Welcome to the vineyard, Mr. WOLF.

There are heaps of them, for this is one catastrophe where just about everyone lived to tell the tale. So many tales – and at least twice as many theories, conjectures, plausibilities, suppositions, deductions, and other assorted reasonings from incomplete facts clashing.

Among other things we are witness live to the fight for control of the narrative. At the moment the fight about the “moral high ground” is fore-fronted. Who will bear ultimate responsibility: the captain? Headquarters? God – as in “act of God”? In the end it is mostly about economic interests: who is to pay, directly or indirectly?

Public opinion will decide whether the ship was “too big to sail”, or whether the shipwreck was indeed an unforeseeable event – like Chernobyl a long tail coalescing around inexcusable ineptitude (stupid people are most dangerous: cleverness might be predictable, but stupidity is infinite). After the shock has worn out, either people will trust suitably revamped and possibly renamed ships, or they’ll desert them, bankrupting the company or even the industry. Too early to tell.  And the ongoing economic crisis may blindly roll the dice instead of the public: by the time people have made up their mind to become once more passengers it may be too late for the “big ships” - given  their excruciating dependence  for profits on a “full house” – to sail again.

Meanwhile, all involved plus the baying media and the twittering social sites tell their story, coopt or discredit other stories, slip in distracting elements. The swirl of the arguments and the flotsam of facts will continue until out of this swill emerges a dominant story, on which public opinion subjectively bestows ”authority”, while putting all others in the shade. This is a akin to a sudden shift in wind, unpredictable, but worth watching, in order to experience its forerunners.

Diplomacy in the end is also (today even mainly) about “controlling the narrative”. A good diplomat will be keenly aware of this. There are two intersecting narratives: the internal one in the negotiating room, and the public one. They are interrelated, for they are both based on persuasion (otherwise it would be a diktat), but far from identical.

The external narrative addresses public opinion, for the people must endorse the outcome of the negotiation. The aim then is to ring-fence the negotiation: to set the scope of the politically possible. Such a campaign is geared to securing moral high ground – and the emotions that go with it. It is based on the duality of right/wrong. The weaker side will take refuge, if at all possible, on moral high ground.

The internal one better reflects the balance of power. Skillful diplomacy may change the result of the negotiation somewhat, but on average, I’d say, it closely tracks power. Naked power is best displayed in all its lewdness behind the Green Door (if one remembers the porn movie of the 70s) of the Green Room.

As long as the world was neatly divided between ideological lines, each side controlled the public (or external) narrative in its own territory. Neither side skimped on the means – they were justified as “for the good of the country”. Facts were far less important than  legitimacy of authority – a long term proposition.

In a multi-polar world with internet thrown in, the control of the public narrative is much more difficult to achieve. Upstarts  challenge the legitimacy of engrained authorities and their subalterns. This is what  Al-Jeezira did with CNN and BBC (it was successful – but it also happened to have the contingent advantage of operating on the “home-turf”). Social networks on the net are the latest avatar of this challenge to authority. It is not just “push”, it is also “pull”. After awakening from the narcosis of ideology, many people act as scalded cats. They wallow in conspiracy theories. No story will account for all the facts – just too many of them to fit in a neat and linear narrative. People will gladly knit other stories from the discards. The standards here are far less rigorous: the alternative narrative need not be true, just plausible, or simply baffling. Critical is the recognition that nowadays no authority is alone or enjoys long term and unquestioned legitimacy. It has become catch as catch can.

In the case of the Italian ship, what looked before an a unitary “command and control” structure is breaking up, whith each element of the chain seeking autonomy and the right to its own narrative (scampering for the high ground in a competitive race). It all reminds me of the impending demise  of the Soviet Empire, with all its components breaking ranks to achieve or salvage autonomy and independent legitimacy.

Worth watching as the process unfolds.

The Constitutional basis for SOPA is:  Article I,  Section 8,  Clause 8 of the  US Constitution, known as the Copyright Clause, which empowers Congress: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Please note that this “exclusive Right” is not labelled “property”, like land or building, but it is coached as conditional right – it is to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”. For this purpose, the author is given the exclusivity – what dumb economists like me call a “time-limited monopoly”.

“Promotion” is a public purpose. The US Constitution could have provided for a public bounty. The Government did not have the financial means, and in any case it would have been difficult to sort out the good inventions from the bad. It cleverly down-loaded the responsibility of providing the bounty on the consumer. Far from being a right, an Intellectual Property Right is an implicit tax in order to foster a public purpose.

Somewhere along the current “path-dependent outcome” the promotional purpose has been elided and the term “Intellectual Property” introduced; it was then assimilated in political discourse with Property, which is protected by the Bill of Rights[2]. Michael H. POSNER, US Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, in a speech held on January 17, 2012, states: “You can’t break into a theater and steal the movie reels and you can’t steal movies online either.”

Any literalist student of the US Constitution would agree: we are dealing here with a bounty, not an absolute right. While we may approximate a fair bounty by a time-limitation, circumstances of the product may create excess.  An easy jingle may yield the author dozens of millions in a few days. Whether there is a public purpose in the jingle I leave to the reader to decide.

People sense the gross excess, do not consent, and react by capping the bounty. This is obtained by sharing the product for free – what the act calls “piracy” – how ironic! In fact it is a tax-payers’ revolt. Note that the author/performer still makes a pile – which I’ll freely grant him.

May I conclude that the current system, based as it is on extracting monopoly rents, chronically under-rewards, that is grossly fails the Constitution’s intention? R&D on diseases of the poor or rare diseases are crippled by the fact that there is no market for them.

And I may query whether the transformation of visual arts into something akin to a stock exchange, where the value of “works of art” (now protected by IPR) are traded like commodities, serves the public purpose: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts. But I’d sure like to profit from it. I’d gladly leave Damien HIRST my body to include in one of his art-works (his sections of a cow have made him millions), provided he retrocedes to me my share of the bounty – NOW.

“Command and control” or “principal and agent” management philosophies are much the rage these days, and even the public function is being pressed into this mold. I’ve been highly skeptical of them. What might have happened on that fateful night has only confirmed my prejudices.

No one knows for sure what happened. This is the first time, however, that a major accident has been visualized live by the participants. The many photos, films, and recordings highlight a command structure buckling and breaking under stress, and unable to carry out its primary function, to preserve passengers’ lives. Parts of the structure held, and performed splendidly; other parts just failed. The courts are unlikely to consider the outcome as “acceptable under the circumstances”.

In a chain of command, the whole chain is no stronger than its weakest link. Between the impact at 21:42 and the evacuation order at 22:58 more than an hour passed without executive action being taken, and in the end the second in command on the boat may have proceeded on his own responsibility in ordering to evacuate.

During this period, the crucial link in the chain did what one would expect in a “command and control structure” to happen: the captain made it his priority to maintain the “integrity of the chain of command”, informing his superiors and, presumably, possibly asking for instructions which, given the unusual circumstances and the scanty information he could have provided, were hardly forthcoming. The proper reaction would have been delegate the information function, and to act independently, and implement (or improvise) emergency procedures.

Given the circumstances of the accident, I would have understood the captain taking himself out: his loss of legitimacy was beyond repair. He neither disqualified himself, nor took charge. He dithered. And the structure surrounding the captain failed to kick in immediately with a substitute. This is what happens when, in a vertical line of command, all redundancies have been eliminated, and lateral initiatives are frowned upon. This is, in my view, structural, for any ex ante provision for possible “failure” of a link would be perceived as undermining authority.

Let me stress this point, for it risks being drowned in the quaint trope of “sole command on board a ship”. It is inherent in a ”command” structure that its has immediate responsibility for the good functioning of the chain under its control, as long as it is in a position to do. When verification is just one phone call away, HQ should have actively explored and verified the facts, e.g by calling other members of the crew, rather than relying solely on information it knew might be tainted. Secondly , a man who has been involved is such a major mishap is not fit to continue in command, irrespective of his responsibility for the event. A general who has lost a battle is relieved of his command at once. HQ should have taken him out, and replaced him. It did not do so.  It should have been the responsibility of the “command” to set out proper procedures for disastrous failure of one of its agents.

If a chain of command without redundancies is created, quality control is of the essence. If, as it now seems, the Captain has a record of reckless behavior, and the system failed to spot it, then the system is at fault. “Command and control” structures in theory allow for information to flow to the command center. But such information is filtered and manipulated self-servingly along the way until it is transformed into obsequious babble.

Systems with redundancies, alternative information channels, and substitute chains of command in an emergency may be less efficient – to many they may seem all too chaotic for day-to day comfort.

Yet, when meeting the Black Swan…

As it is, in just one night the company has suffered grievous if not fatal loss of good-will. The very class of boats may be declared “too big to sail” – a singularity which may reverberate across the whole sector. The tragedy is that we discount “Black Swans” and begrudge the small daily insurance costs of having a redundant system. This leaves us vulnerable to rare and unlikely events which, we have deluded ourselves, we can spot a mile away – or 10 feet under water.

We only need to learn from nature. If I hit my finger with a hammer, rather than the nearby nail, the “order” to withdraw the finger does not go up to my brain for conscious action to be taken. The order is given locally, well before the brain is informed of the mishap.

PS: There have been thousands of shipwrecks over the centuries. Survivors from shipwrecks created narratives of the heroic captain. These narratives may have even all been true. Based on such “experience” we hold the firm conviction that sole command (“the capitan is master on his ship but for God”) is the best way to save a ship in distress. This is literally a case of “survivor bias”. We don’t know the circumstances of all the catastrophic losses. In many cases inept sole command may have caused the loss, and in many other cases it may have made no difference one way or the other. Such are our strongly held convictions.

I don’t want to dwell into the specifics of the New Zealand law, but comment on the likely drive behind such laws.

Food security has become a major government concern. Under the “precautionary principle” every food contamination scare leads to ratcheting up of food safety standards by the government. I’ve been aggressed in Milan (Italy) by an irate customer because I’d touched a head of salad in the supermarket without using a throw-away glove – I did not know this had become unlawful (outside the main centers this law is mainly ignored, by the way). This latest safety measure is spreading by emulation: throw away gloves have made their appearance in Swiss supermarkets, and many greens come now in sterile wraps.

With tougher standards compliance and enforcement costs shoot up. Rationalization is called in to stem the surge. Economies of scale favor large producers who can easiest adapt to the new standards. Diversity is discouraged as we move toward “best practice”.

Next global competition takes foreign producers into the orbit of national regulations: if they want to compete in a country, they too have to comply with the standards. A further round of rationalization (this time of standards) takes place as international agreements on food safety standards are negotiated.

Every time I drive to nearby village of Worb I wax nostalgic at the sight of a derelict roadside stand where, 50 years ago, I bought delicious ham, and tasty bacon. It was such a treat. The butcher shop has long shut down – and I may have played an unwitting part in its demise, as I was a negotiator in an agreement between Switzerland and the EU about TBT in the food sector. When Switzerland decided, one way or the other to align its regulations of the EU market, it also bought in EU food security rules. They were so stringent, the “mom and pop” butchers could not follow suit. The whole artisanal food chain shut down: the wholesale slaughterhouses were not interested, hence not equipped, to deal with small batches of home-grown animals. Aspects of national and local culture were destroyed – in the name of “food security”.

In the olden days the rule was “caveat emptor” – buyer beware. Food security was enforced mainly through local gossip, as well safe cooking procedures, and common sense.

Then the government came into the act – by popular demand. More and more responsibility shifted to the public sphere – mostly by necessity; increased knowledge about (hidden) sources of food poisoning demanded scientific knowledge beyond the capabilities of the harried house person (I do much cooking).

Sharing food security between the supplier, the state, and the consumer, is a “three body problem” – it is inherently unstable and chaotic. The tendency is for the consumer to abdicate more and more responsibility – the state becomes the “great attractor” (of chaos theory fame). Once in the “passive mode”, consumer ignorance feeds on itself. Big business and big government collude, claiming they keep enforcement costs down. Diversification with its unending variety yields to standardization – and “safe” albeit tasteless meat.

Have costs been truly lowered? In all likelihood it is an illusion. Even “best practice” is seldom totally failsafe – it is safe and low cost only on a day-to-day basis. When it fails – a catastrophic and excessively costly “black swan” event may ensue. What has been saved now goes out the window to deal with the calamity.

The shipwreck of the Costa Concordia (too big to sail) off the Italian coast highlights the hidden consequences of grievous error or mistake, which undermines “best practice”. Sure the boat was “best practice” in safety, comfort and low cost for the experience – until it was driven onto a reef. Then the system collapses. In addition, if tourists no longer trust these mega-hotels on the swell the outcome of the event may be the demise of the whole industry and technology. Such is the fate of path-dependent outcomes.

An alternative regulatory strategy may be for both state and citizens to share responsibility in a structured fashion. Sharing responsibility is alien to a “culture of truth” – for malpractice lawyers may not be able to pin blame precisely. It is also alien to a culture of “division of labor”, which flips the individual back and forth between his active role as “worker” and the passive one as “consumer”.

The sun, the earth and the moon are a “three body system”. Far from being chaotic, the presence of the moon in all likelihood so stabilized the earth’s rotation that life could emerge. Sharing responsibility in a structured way may not be logically perfect, but it works – sometimes.

PS – Advocating “God-given human right freely to cultivate food” is dangerous hyperbole, for it debases the very concept of “human right”. It reminds me of my youth at UC Berkeley. We were forever making “non-negotiable demands” – from weakness.

What about the responsibility of government weather forecasters for their mistakes, especially mistakes with grave consequences for society? Are they immune because they are ‘official’?

What about professional responsibility in general? What about the responsibility of those who did not alert society about the financial crisis or even contributed to it by their actions, whether intentionally or out of negligence? What about the moral responsibility of the army of experts and academics whose social function should be to see beyond the here and now and alert us about coming problems?

What can be predicted?  If it is not possible to make a reliable weather forecast (natural science), how can we forecast financial markets or political developments?  Instead of addressing us with overconfidence, should experts and professionals accept the objective limitations of predictions in both natural and social systems? According to Kahneman in his seminal book Thinking, Fast and Slow, if they show any doubt, experts are likely to lose  our trust.[1] Humanity seeks certainty even when it does not exist.

Have we moved far from the old joke about the Indian Chief and the weatherman?

Winter was approaching and Indians asked their new Chief if the winter would be cold or mild.  The new Chief did not know old tricks and could not provide the answer. Just to be on the safe side (precautionary principle) he told his people to start collecting wood for a cold winter. But at the same time he went to the city to ask the weatherman for advice. Not knowing the exact answers, the weatherman told him that the winter was likely to be very cold. So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood in order to be prepared for a very cold winter.  In a few weeks, he went again to the city and asked the weatherman how he could be so sure that the winter would be so cold. The weatherman replied: ‘The Indians are collecting firewood like crazy.’

Regardless of the coldness of the winter, both the Indian Chief (unofficial) and the weatherman (official) forecasters will do the same for the next winter …..

If the issue as described above is the whole story, what is now before the Delhi High Court (DHC) adds a twist to the age old issue of the responsibility of the provider (of the transmission support) for the content that is transmitted. Take two equivalent cases:

• Assume “objectionable” material is sent through the mail. Is the Post Office bound to vet the content of every letter? Would the DHC block postal traffic if the Post Office fails to devise mechanisms to check and remove objectionable material? I doubt the DHC would act in this way.
• Assume “objectionable” material is put in an “advertisement section” of a paper. Is the newspaper bound to vet the content of each advertisement? I suspect jurisprudence says it does.

Different standards are upheld – depending on the judicially perceived feasibility of “vetting”, and, I’d say, the prejudice of the court. If the Postal Office belongs to my country’s friendly Crown, it will get off easily when it declares itself unable to do the vetting. Internet providers are all-powerful “foreign devils”.

But the core issue before the DHC seems to me actually to be another one. In the olden days the main issue was one of (political and morals) censorship – the state vs. the individual. The DHC case and other similar cases, however, appear to refer to Government involvement on behalf of privacy rights of third parties.

• “Objectionable” material about real places and people is put into a novel – e.g. the novel is set in sea resort, which is described as “dreary”. Or a hideous crime is described as taking place in a named neighborhood. Is the publisher bound to vet the content of the novel, lest such “collateral” comments be judged defamatory? It is, apparently: in France a host of lawyers go through a novel to purge it of any derogatory material it may contain regarding real persons and places. I suspect that Baudelaire’s quip: “pauvre Belgique” or Zola’s social novels would no longer be permitted to see the printer’s ink, nowadays.
• A gyration of this is taking place in Switzerland, where GoogleMap has been enjoined to blank out faces and number plates of cars in front of buildings it has photographed.

A similar scenario appears now to be before the DHC. The DHC is not asked to protect the interests of the state (India is a secular state) but ostensibly to protect the rights of private persons – those of Mr Vinay Rai and religious people like him – in this case to have his religious feelings untrammeled by offensive images.

Please note the extensive interpretation of the right. Protection extends, beyond immediate exposure to offensive material, to the very notion that this material exists and is available. Mr. Vinay Rai need not see the offensive pictures, while he surfs the net, and he will not, unless he actively seeks them. He objects to the very fact that they be there, protected by just a click from unwary eyes. Formulated in another way, the enforcement of morals – no longer much of a public issue – remerges as conflict over private rights.

The DHC seems to argue that there is a privately held right to have the state censor religiously offensive material – which is available on demand – in order to protect “personal feelings”. If this is the case, then holding such material in the privacy of the home would also fall under the right.

The Swiss Hugh Court has ruled that assisted suicide – which is legal in the country – could not be carried out in the privacy of a specified building because this activity infringed on the right of the plaintiff to pass undisturbed. Mere awareness the act might be carried out inside justifies judicial intervention (would this right also extend to orgies?). A subsequent referendum validated the right to assisted suicide, so Isuspect the judgment will hardly be enforced – but it sets a precedent.

The battle over the “freedom of access” no longer is bilateral: between the individual and the (politically) oppressive state, but a triangular relation where the state is asked to intervene as a “protector of a private right”. It has a subsidiary interest in the matter to the extent that the circulation of religiously offensive images may be inflammatory.

Cynically, once provider “vetting” is introduced to protect privacy, it will be extended by the back door to serve politics. Darkness parading as white knight – an irony fully worth of George Orwell.  Note further that the “self-censorship” by a provider is unregulated, subject to neither judicial nor political review, and thus likely to be much more sweeping than the official one, which is bound by the Constitution as well as its need to sustain broad legitimacy. The provider will apply the “precautionary principle” quite broadly, given that he has no interest whatever in the content, and he may even provide the service for free. The state threat to shut the provider down is disproportionate and effective.

*

PS: In astronomy a “three body problem” was proven by Poincaré not to have a unique or absolute solution, but to be inherently chaotic.

The man thus portrayed himself as being under twofold constriction. First it was the music playing, then the “others” dancing – so much for a CEO, who got hundreds of millions of $  per year for “deciding”. He admitted he was doing nothing more than follow the “piper’s tune”.

But is it true, is “following the piper” and “do as others do” – to the bitter end the only strategy worth pursuing?

When I was at UC Berkeley, Wells Fargo Bank was second to almighty Bank of America. In those days the signature of Wells Fargo was still the stage coach – now such nostalgia has yielded to a red square. The bank had a whiff of the AVIS slogan to it – you know “we try harder because we are Nr. 2”.

Many things have come and gone since then in the financial world. Financial wizards blitzed Wall Street with complex ways to make money from shunting it around, as if banks were not first and foremost pumps taking money where in the real economy it could best be used – like water in the desert, making it bloom. When you circulate water you worry that nothing get lost on the way – you do not expect it miraculously to swell up without end. It was like intending to feed the crowd with a few fish and lumps of bread.

Well, it was (once more) no more than gambling, trying to make money with money, rather than putting money to good use.

The costs have been horrific. Here just a few of the consequences:

• Much capital was put into housing – durable goods, but consumption goods nevertheless. This capital did not go into making the economy more productive;
• As capital went into banking and houses, industrial production migrated abroad, and labour skills were lost, not to be replaced;
• The best brains went into delivering ever more complex financial instruments – rather than support innovation in the real economy;
• When the bubble burst taxpayers were landed with the bill. The banking system was “too big to fail”;
• As the value of their homes declined, what little capital workers had invested in their overpriced houses went out the window first. Selling and moving to where a better job is beckoning became well-nigh impossible – for they no longer have had starting capital to resettle with. Labor mobility, one of the great strengths of the US economy, seems to have declined significantly (Iam told from the trenches), making a recovery more difficult.

The bubble inflated greed. Creativity yielded to corruption – in massive amounts. At the moment law-suits for about 190 billion $ have been lodged, and litigation will keep fattening corporate lawyers for years to come[1]. Former employees, fearing jail, are revealing the gory details in exchange for immunity. This may represent a further drag on recovery, as provision is to be made somehow for judicial outcomes. Renewed trust will be hard to come by.

And where was Wells Fargo – the ever-striving Nr. 2 – in all this? 19 lead banks “followed the piper”- but not Wells Fargo.  The bank is free of lawsuits with regard to the subprime bubble. The former Nr.2 has meanwhile become the largest bank in the US in terms of capitalisation[2].

How come? I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that it has much to do with one man who did not “follow the piper” – but followed what he thought was right in the long term. The man is Warren BUFFETT, whose company is an important shareholder in Wells Fargo.

I argue sometimes uncertainty is so pervasive that action is little more than gambling. I argue often that we live in and of illusions. This may be true, but it seems also anecdotally true that one is able to see through the fog of the future and chart a strategy.

How? My guess is by letting the actor not stand in the way of the act – doing the right thing as reality – not one’s ego – tells it.

My hat off to you, Mr BUFFETT.

Switzerland has just gone through the trauma of “whistle-blowing”. The head of its National Bank has been party/accessory to an insider deal. A political figure violated bank secrecy laws and “blew the whistle” on the transaction. The defense proved weak and vacillating, if not inept. The Head of the National Bank resigned.

The Department of Justice will now investigate whether there is enough evidence to drag the whistle-blower into court. The National Bank will sedulously write “good governance” rules.

Without entering into the specifics and legalities, I see three culpable “errors”.

• The insider deal, no matter what, flies in the face of good governance.
• If proven, violating bank secrecy laws is a crime in Switzerland, and should be dealt with sternly. The fact that it was all a political vendetta, of course, is totally extraneous to the behavior of the political figure as well as the acribious pursuit of retributive justice.
• The worst culpable “error”, however, and the one which has yet to find its expression in the chattering press: is something else. The Head of the National Bank violated the iron political rule: Thou shalt not embarrass your government.

Take a look at the real world. Consciousness and brain cannot be separated neatly – there is no homunculus (the soul) running our brain (the body): everything is intertwined[2]. As any IT engineer knows, hard- and software are made for each other, and are intrinsically joined, and they co-evolve.

Let’s look now at the internet and consider the issue of “unbiased access to information” on the web.

Raw information is never innocent, we know that. There is a close fit with mainstream ideology. History is written by the literate and the victor – the elite – and alternative views simply go unrecorded or are suppressed[3]. Increasing the sources of information, in particular through social networks, may help, though at the expense of verification (mankind being exceedingly prone to illusion and gullibility, we are suckers for plausible lore, particularly when unverified).

So far information is manipulated “at the source” – which is bad enough. Given its mass in the WWWeb, information no longer is directly available, however; it is mediated through search engines like Google, bing, or whatever[4]. Information is thus manipulated a second time – by the search engines.

The algorithms that underlay the working of these engines reflect all sorts of plausible rules as well as commercial concerns: those of the provider, who offers his search engine for free, and those of the advertiser, who aims for as many hits as possible. What is the outcome for the goal of “unbiased access to information” on the web? I don’t know, and I suspect the providers don’t know either.

Amazon provides me with an inkling of what might be going on. If I choose an author, Amazon will recommend other books by the same author. If I chose a topic, say a biography, it will suggest clones. Why Amazon thinks I’d go for duplicates is a mystery to me. Fortunately for Amazon, it allows private reviewers. For me their input is critical. My own algorithm is simple. I tend to read negative reviews: they are usually few; either they are decidedly bunk and easily spotted, or they have a point worth noting. The precautionary principle kicks in. Quite often these critical reviews suggest alternatives. Posted reading lists are also useful: together with the reviews they allow rapid survey of the topic. In the end I get what (I think) I want – despite Amazon’s well-meaning but ineffectual recommendations.

My hunch is that search engines implicitly yet effectively favor the “mainstream” over diversity and tend to confirm prejudice over challenging it. They strengthen and support authority as against valid arguments. To the extent that they are driven by ex-ante and self-fulfilling choice criteria like “most popular” they have limited informational validity.

If the situation is as I suspect it, search engines create positive feedbacks that validate the “most popular” news item over the truth. One of the most common human is heuristics is: “do as others do – they may know”. It is rational. If someone yells “fire”, it is better to step out of the theatre rather than verify. When all use this same heuristic, however, we get a stampede. Mankind’s great strength – the wisdom of the crowd[5] – is nullified.

Search algorithms may create informational stampedes, and in an internet age such stampedes soon become informational firestorms that engulf any discussion. Add to this our inherent tendency (and ability) to infer from imprecise information – hence to skip the reasoning in order to applaud the catchy phrase. Again, this ability – what we have here is a basic Bayesian inference module – may be critical for long-term survival. In the here and now it may lead us terribly astray: self-delusion may be reinforced because of our tendency to jump to conclusions[6].

Is this all bad? It depends.

In science “truth” is not obtained by validation or plebiscite. All knowledge is what has not been falsified – yet. Science “advances” through falsification, and search engines that make it more difficult for falsifiers to emerge, because they are either relegated to the bottom of the search heap or down-right suppressed, hinder science.

In the political sphere, on the other hand, consensus on action (or inaction) in the face of risk and uncertainty is the goal. Instruments that facilitate consensus may be useful – or manipulative[7].

At the moment I’m not allowed to input the search algorithm: I’m totally in the hands of the service provider. Ideally, I should be able to manipulate the algorithm in accordance with my needs. Alternatively the service provider may need to explicit his criteria, so users are aware of the biases underlying the search. Remedy may be advised. Or, finally, a political discussion over the criteria underlying the search engine may become necessary, in order for policy to influence the formulation of the algorithm.

Whichever the way forward – the “search technology” for one is NOT neutral and separate.

His argumentation is catchy, but muddles the issues; Mr. CERF, it seems to me, ends up shooting himself in the foot.

When he states: “the US never decreed that everyone has a ‘right’ to a telephone”, he means “universal service” – a telephone line strung to each and every door, or country-wide total network coverage for every citizen. Indeed, there is no right to total (or free) coverage - just as “freedom of the press” does not entitle every citizen to a free copy of the NYT every morning at her doorstep.

When he states that “freedom of access” should ensure “freedom of speech etc.” he refers to the political conditions under which people who have access to communication media are entitled to communicate among each other: free of government interference. This personal right is e.g. enshrined in the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

“Freedom of speech” is an abstract right. Its exercise necessarily relies on technologies: from the human voice to paper, radio and so on – and must apply automatically to all supports through which it is exercised – internet being the latest (but certainly not the last) kid on the block. When radio or TV emerged in the US no one seriously argued that the “right to free speech” as enshrined in the First Amendment did not apply to them “because they were only an enabler”. As long as content and support are inextricably wedded (and control of the content would be through the support) Mr. CERF’s argument “technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself” is spurious.

The UN Declaration on Human Rights (UNDHR)[2] and the European Convention on Human Rights[3] are clear on the fact that the abstract right is embedded in the technologies.

Mr. CERF goes on to make a distinction between “human right” and “civil right”. He likes “civil rights” better than “human rights”. He argues: “Civil rights are different from human rights because they are conferred upon us by law, not intrinsic to us as human beings.”

By the same logic, Mr. CERF would reject the US Declaration of Independence, where it states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” – for its character is “self-evident” and universal. He would however endorse the Bill of Rights as positive law.

“Human rights” are not self-executing: they represent legitimate aspirations – not obligations. Their role is to provide universal legitimacy for these aspirations. No government may be exonerated from addressing the moral obligation on grounds of cultural “exceptionalism” – cultural or otherwise; and it would have to justify to public opinion world-wide any curtailment of the aspiration.

On the other hand each state ought to strive and concretize such aspirations through appropriate legal means, if and when politically and materially possible. This is not always the case, as US history retells. The Bill of Rights enshrines personal and political rights. Exercising such rights effectively presupposes economic independence – President Jefferson saw it that way already, when he hailed “free yeomanry” as the basis of the Republic. President F. D. Roosevelt proposed in 1944 that a “Second Bill of Rights” be passed to make the broad aspiration of economic rights secure in law. He did not succeed[4]. There is no “civil right” to hold a job today, though we may hold a universal aspiration that all have one, and Art. 22-25 of UNDHR stipulate such “rights”.

Would Mr. CERF really be ready to trade the universal aspiration to politically unfettered “internet access” for a commitment to equivalent enforceable and judiciable civil rights in this matter?

Mostly I shrug off such complaints. I just have to focus on how painful the dentist was, decades ago. Rather than imagining my past self as a minstrel strumming and singing to his Dulcinea, I muse about what it meant to be a chattel slave, or ponder the fact that most people then went hungry – chronically (in XIX^th century France some peasants hibernated – in order to survive the winter[2]). As for the available food, my God, was it monotonous, and bad! The Irish, living exclusively on potatoes, were among the best-fed people in Europe…

I tend to scoff at the kvetiching of my contemporaries: if they don’t understand today’s life, it’s their own fault, I feel. Over the few years at university they expected to accumulate a small “intellectual capital” on which to live comfortably ever after. Alas, times are a-changing. That capital has long ago warped into genteel obsolescence. I have a hard time, while reading widely and wildly, to find anything I learned many years ago that still has currency today. Well, basic maths being the exception (the electronic calculator has replaced my mental skills, however, and I found myself wavering while doing multiplications with a pencil). But otherwise? Non-fiction books published before 1995 are suspect, and I’ve tossed out several I’d set aside then for later reading: out-of-date! Most of the “hard sciences” has mutated in ways unimaginable when I studied them diligently at university. History? Switzerland for one has lost its Founding Fathers – they simply never existed[3]. Even philosophy, this bastion of timelessness, is admitting “experimental philosophers” who shun the overstuffed chair for the lab and fMRI.

Without intense and ongoing argument with emerging knowledge one is hopelessly lost. Alas, I observe: after chance side-lines them, people tend to coast along on auto-pilot – and take on a sport, from sailing to golf (at best they become doting grand-parents – culture is transmitted by grand-parents, not by parents, who are otherwise engaged). Their intellectual curiosity withers on the vine like forgotten grapes in late autumn frost. No wonder they do not understand today’s world.

Just as I was wallowing once more in such comfortable self-righteousness I found this quote from Johan HUIZINGA, who magisterially wrote on the waning of the Middle Ages fifty years ago:

One of the fundamental traits of the mind of the declining Middle Ages is the predominance of the sense of sight, a predominance which is closely connected with the atrophy of thought. Thought takes the form of visual images. Really to impress the mind a concept has first to take visible shape.[4] (pg. 284) (my emphasis)

As Alfred W. CROSBY[5] tells it, beginning with about 1250 an epochal shift from qualitative to quantitative perception of reality took place in the West. Egalitarian clocks that could be heard all over town replaced the ungainly (and elitist) sundial – breaking up continuous time into tic-toc quanta driven by mechanical escapement. The abacus was reintroduced (it has been forgotten for 1’000 years), and Schoolmen organized and indexed the wealth of secular wisdom flowing in from the Middle East, so each argument could be retrieved and analyzed rather than mystically revered or obsequiously obeyed.

This shift was subliminal – growing slowly from scattered specks like fungal colonies in a Petri-dish until the whole surface of daily life was covered. This “measuring attitude” had no deliberate direction – it simply expanded like rhizome by analogy and imitation. The Renaissance emerged suddenly, as the critical mass was obtained.

“Atrophy of thought” went together with this shift in mentality. It takes less time to visualize a new skill than to verbalize from it. Also the skill nestled in the common man – the trader or the artisan – before it rose to reach reflective high culture.

Could it be, I wondered, that we are living through such an epochal shift? In the past words would travel – now it’s living images. We can see the Orient well before we are able to describe it in words, let alone understand it. Could it be that the new generation is so engrossed with this new capacity that it has temporarily stopped thinking in order to enjoy it and explore its possibilities?

Pace my kvetching contemporaries – might a New Renaissance just be around the corner? If so, it might just bear mongrel features from many civilizations and cultures as they mix and mingle…

The Doha Round in WTO looks like being dead in the water. Wails are heard from many shores while protectionist interests frolic behind rhetoric-swept dunes. Has multilateral diplomacy met its ultimate challenge and been found wanting? Temperamentally I hate recriminations, and I’m always looking for a way out – even if the way may be crooked and twisted, and hug the cragged landscape rather than slash through it as a four lane highway would.

What happened? WTO has over 150 member states, all sovereign, and all different in culture and level of economic and political development. In procedural terms: achieving consensus in reasonable time on a reasonably effective package of trade liberalization is probably beyond the current approach of “like-minded groups” concluding on the base of  ”nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”. Just too many variables – we have Poincaré’s “three and more body problem” – and no predictable outcome can possibly emerge from such “chaotic” conditions. In substantive terms: convergence toward more liberal trading rules got ahead of economic convergence among the economies: economic and political diversity, in the current crisis-overshadowed context – was just too great.

Flashback: Jagdish BHAGWATI – a dyed in the wool free trader – has long berated Free Trade Agreements (FTA) as the scourge of the multilateral trading system[1]. He called these agreements disparagingly “bowl of spaghetti”. That’s just cultural prejudice, by the way: my Italian culture and my own EFTA ties make me love “bowls of spaghetti”.

Serendipity and analogy rule my thinking. Musing early this morning on the structure of our brain, I just happened to compare the current orthodoxy concerning the brain’s structure to a “bowl of parallel decision modules”. A spark had jumped to BAGHWATI’s “spaghetti bowl”: could biology’s systems, I wondered suddenly, provide a useful analogy through which to reassess WTO’s outlook?

Ecology provided a first hopeful lead: how does nature deal with intractable diversity? By isolating small islands of relative homogeneity first within which flimsy structures take foot. Experience is transformative and cumulative: over time these small islands evolve and transform diversity until it is no longer intractable, but complex. Mmm… could FTAs be such “small islands of relative homogeneity”? Let’s think further along these lines, I said to myself.

Genetics now chimed in: Evo-Devo[2] has consigned the orthodoxy of the “bowl of parallel selfish genes[3]” to the dust-heap of natural history. As a (biological) system becomes more complex, it evolves opposite and complementary strategies: parts of it specialize, and parts of it become generic, and “organize” the specialization. “Meta-structures” emerge. Could also this analogy be useful in pointing to an evolutionary future of WTO?

Please note: these are fragments of a conjecture, not a theory. The conjecture’s role is not logically to constrain, but to facilitate imagining possibilities. Reality will discard or add – a Darwinian process by the way.

Assume that groups of countries “specialize” by creating an FTA among each other. We soon have a bevy of FTAs: membership may not be mutually exclusive. FTAs could provide a nourishing soil on which trade liberalization flourishes: it is first tested with like-minded and –structured countries. This is akin to jumping from the edge of the pool rather than the 4 m springboard: it quickly proves “doable” and dispels many a paranoid scenario of instant economic doom. Over time significant benefits ensue and strengthen the case for trade liberalization.

FTAs are not all alike – they come in all sorts of stripes and flavors. They are not just “anything goes” agreements, however. Meta-rules concerning what qualifies as an FTA are set out in Art. XXIV GATT/WTO. They are rather vague: within each FTA “free trade” covering “essentially all the trade” will be achieved over (variable) time. Jurisprudence on FTAs is lacking: these agreements have been notified to WTO, but never approved, or litigated.

If FTAs are akin to specialized body cells, strengthening FTA rules in WTO would tend to enhancing meta-structures, and eventually leading to a differentiated, though integrated, world trading system. In the end FTAs may become effectively obsolete as they are superseded by a final WTO package, or they may become units of a functioning articulated and layered complex system. Whichever way, far from being the wrong turn away from trade multilateralism, here we have a – admittedly somewhat devious – way toward the trade liberalization goal.

To pursue the biological analogy, FTA may be akin to a “free trade vaccine” that allows the national economies to integrate across borders without undue major side-effects. The key is the liberalization experience. Once a national economy learns to react to liberalization by moving on, the fear of being left behind recedes.

A possible collective strategy may then be:

• Let “thousand flowers bloom” – i.e. take a benign look at the creation of FTAs;
• Improve the working of Art. XXIV by addressing the notifications that are on the table, and trying to distill from experience improved “meta-rules” that better reflect the economic realities;
• Directly or indirectly bring “dispute settlement”, which is currently dealt with within an FTA, within the purview of GATT/WTO;
• Establish an Art. XXIV jurisprudence. Case law is more context- than principle-driven, and a hopeful half-way house for emergent meta-rules.
• Go eventually for a revision of Art. XXIV GATT/WTO.

Protectionist interests have defeated the Doha Round: until economic conditions have changed “WTO-antibodies” nestled in populist politics will prevent any progress on the main road to liberalization. Antibodies are very specific, however. They are less likely to react to changes or improvements in “meta-rules” (like Art. XXIV GATT/WTO). My final and tactical conjecture then is that in the short term focusing on FTAs and FTA meta-rules in WTO will be less controversial than a direct multilateral approach. Waiting for Godot…

I’ll agree at any time that this adaptive strategy is neither orderly nor predictable. In pursuit of freer trade, however, I’m prepared for fustigation even with “al dente” noodles. Of course the outcome will be imperfect. But as in the eponymous movie with Marylyn Monroe: if one “likes it hot” one has also to accept its ending quit: “no one is perfect”.

We also invite you to make suggestions for the main developments you expect in 2012 (the 2012 list will be compiled in early January).

This fantastic animal is a “unicorn”. The miniature was part of an exhibit on Mughal and Deccani Painting at the Rietberg Museum in Zurich[1]. By the way, the collector was Konrad SEITZ, a German diplomat and writer.

An artist’s whim, in obvious violation of the principle on non-contradiction so dear to Western mind? Think again.

Daniel SCHECHTMAN won this year’s Nobel Prize for discovering crystals, whose atoms are placed neither in “orderly” nor in “disorderly” fashion, but something in between. What is more contradictory than such a structure? Yet it exists.

Nature at its most fanciful? Yes, but the human mind did not wait for SCHECHTMAN to discover this property of reality. Arab tilings[2] created centuries ago

are built on the same counterintuitive and mysterious principles – in reverence to inexpressible God.

As I’ve often maintained: diplomacy is where there are no rules… or logical principles – just reality.

In IV^th century Constantinople, it is reported, disputations were held in barbershops about the essence of the Christian Trinity. Was the Son of the same substance as the Father, and when did the Son “separate” from the Father? Everyone felt entitled to mouth his own opinion on such transcendental issues. Actually it was a battle of wits, and it all ended as such battles usually do: the autocrat had the last word – both Constantine and Theodosius closed the discussion and enforced orthodoxy by police action[1].

Discussions on the merits of technology have replaced theological discussions nowadays. Everyone believes himself an expert on the effects of nuclear or solar power. The likelihood of sudden climate change is either asserted or questioned with religious intensity; and GMOs and other manipulations of all-too-patient Mother Nature are either damned or praised with conviction inversely proportional to factual knowledge. The dismal science – economics – has more experts than insights; economic gurus tout their survivor biases as truths – until submerged and drowned by ever discontinuous froth of reality. Riding the next crest other gurus are appear to loom large until also this whitecap rolls over.

Ignoramuses proudly exercise their constitutional right to contradict the thoughtful. With so many fingers wagging and pointing into all possible directions, it is not surprising states find it difficult to chart a course of action. To compound difficulties, globalization defeats unilateral action, so the cacophony over policies is repeated when countries gather to reflect on what is to be done. Policy matters become ensnared in recriminations about the past and haggling over burden-sharing. Achieving a majority around a policy (let alone a consensus) is predicated not on sound advice, but on coalescing disparate interests. How do we get ourselves out of this predicament?

“Democracy is the worst system of government apart from all the others that have been tried” muttered Winston CHURCHILL. Kenneth ARROW pointed out 50 years ago that if three people have different preferences about three things, no democratic majority can emerge. This is today’s conundrum.

Democracy worked quite well as long as it was used to secure what Isaiah BERLIN called “negative freedoms” – curtailing the power of the state over the individual. When it comes to achieving convergence on a common project, however, (exercising BERLIN’s “positive freedom”), democracies seem to dither and dawdle, trying implausibly to do the right thing by society as a whole as well as each individual. At this point charting a path across precipitous mountain terrain is best obtained by populist assertion that the earth is flat.

In a thoughtful article[2] David RUNCIMAN points out that just as democracies turned to temporary autocrats in the past (the Roman dictator, who ruled for six months) to get the country out of the mess, they seem nowadays to prefer replacing the autocrat with the technocrat. Italy and Greece are run by proconsular technocrats who enjoy the trust of the international creditors.

“Democracy is all about throwing out the rascals” – mused Karl POPPER[3]. We cannot throw out the policy problems with them, however, hence the belated recourse to technocrats rather than the (un)usual suspects an election would round up. This reflects (I am quoting RUNCIMAN here) what TOCQUEVILLE defined as democracy’s fundamental vice: fatalism. John Stuart MILL qualifies it as: ‘Western’ fatalism, which is the belief that we can know how things will turn out, because the scientific order of the world follows regular patterns. By the way: both Marxism and its most decided antagonist, the Austrian philosophical school, share this benign view of historical forces (their difference is over whether the ‘h’ in history should be capitalized or not).

Autocrats failed because they never knew when to relinquish power. Meanwhile autocrats have learned their lesson as well. In China “managed autocracy” provides for orderly succession and the illusion of change – autocracy is no longer tribal, but institutional. In Russia autocracy has down-sized to hit-and-run cleptocracy[4].

We are living in interesting times.

Here, North Korea will break with one venerable practice of funeral diplomacy: that of bringing together even the most feared enemies. Funeral diplomacy, as Berridge wrote, has a function “for foreign friends of the deceased to confirm that the new leadership remains wedded to their relationship and for foreign rivals to explore the possibility of a change of heart”.[1]

In some cases, funerals have served as a turning point in diplomatic relations. In April 2010, Russian diplomacy used the death of the Polish president Kaczyński as an occasion to reset relations between Russia and Poland. Every detail was carefully planned, including the subliminal message the attached photo conveys. Unlike many other statesmen, who could not go to the funeral because of the volcanic ash cloud in Europe, President Medvedev attended the funeral in Warsaw.  By showing his head next to the airplane engine, the Russian public diplomacy team conveyed the message of Medvedev  risking “his head” to attend, and ultimately, attaching high relevance to the funeral and to relations between Russia and Poland.

By not inviting foreign leaders even from friendly countries, Pyongyang sent a clear message for “business as usual”.

Take Italy: taxes each category of revenue at the source. Salaries and income from capital are not cumulated. Income from shares is taxed at a flat 13% (now 20%) rate, and this payment is liberatory. The reason is corruption and incompetence of the fiscal administration (corruption and incompetence usually go together). After trying for decades to obtain transparency, fiscal authorities just gave up on cumulating sources of income toward progressive taxation. Since Berlusconi came to power, furthermore, accounting frauds are no longer a crime. Industrial innovation has yielded to creative cooking of the books. The “black economy” is now estimated at 25% of GDP.

Not only are social policies over-generous in Italy, they are administered in slovenly ways. A study of the geography of invalidity pensions shows regional concentrations that strain belief. Health care is riddled with abuse: in the Campania region 65% of all babies are delivered by “Caesarean section” (WHO expects 15% of all births to require such procedures).

These anecdotes are not censoriously retold, but to point out a major difficulty arising after an international agreement has been signed with great fanfare: implementation. Administrative cultures in partner countries may be so different as to reduce the value of an agreement to little more than symbolic gesture (and a unilateral commitment).

After Germany reunited, hosts of public servants were sent from Bonn into the Eastern regions to take the administrative structures in hand. One spoke then of “Beamten-bombers” landing in Berlin. 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall the fusion of administrative structures seems to have made some progress. This involved 18 million people – which is nothing compared to the task ahead of improving administrative structures and instilling a coherent public service ethic across the Euro-zone. Whatever political decisions are cobbled together in Brussels, the challenge ahead for fiscal and social policy integration of the Euro-zone countries will be implementation.

Past experience with convergence of administrative cultures is not encouraging. How subtle cultural differences might be can be gauged by the “piece of string” in the upper left hand corner, which holds the pages of the administrative file together. If work is organized around this piece of string, the file moves from desk A to B sequentially (and there are many opportunities for misplacing the file). The British Commonwealth relied on the “piece of string”. Photocopying (and scanning nowadays) may allow for parallel administrative processing – but only within the specific administrative unit. In the Swiss Canton of Berne a building permit requires 36 administrative steps – one at a time.

The problem is that an issue which moves out of the “policy hype focus” may be forgotten and neglected before it is resolved. These issues will no longer get the attention of politicians and necessary funding. The early demise of a no longer fashionable issue may endanger all of the work done previously.

How do we make sure that important issues don’t get obscured with new topics and concerns? Any argument for/against the “policy hype cycle” hypothesis?

Unfortunately, the UNFCCC framework, in my view, goes about the task in the wrong way. It postulates there is certain knowledge about science, technologies to be employed, and countries’ expected contributions. To achieve the anticipated results it imposes targets, legally binding universal obligations on all countries as well as sanctions for renitence. This “command and control” approach, which is inherently suspicious of the intentions of participating countries, focuses on overall and individual shortcomings rather than achievements and creates fertile terrain for mutual recriminations. That it underrates the role of adaptation would be an added concern.

Massive resource transfers from the “haves” to the “have nots” should assist poorer countries in coming to grips with the problem; implementing this is likely to create new sources of potential conflict.

In the end individuals and firms worldwide are called to identify with the goals and contribute voluntarily to the objectives of the agreement. Broad legitimacy is needed, based on deeper understanding on the issues involved. A castigatory approach is hardly conducive to higher virtue. The increasing skepticism surrounding the UNFCCC approach reflects in my view a deep-seated lack of legitimacy.

Overall, the “command and control” approach may be seen as “neo-colonialist”, as it reflects poorly the vision and aspirations of much of the non-Western world. Tweaking the UNFCCC framework is unlikely to bring much relief, and I’d expect negotiations to continue in a halfhearted way, with finger wagging, pointing, and recriminations dominating the procedures.

Given that climate change mitigation would be the first global treaty which should unite all countries around a common goal – rather than creating a balance of interests – the moment may have come to let other civilizations but the West propose a common approach to tackling what is to be a constant concern for the future. Each civilization has its own worldview and approach to collective action[1] – the West certainly has no monopoly on this.

Concretely, I’d invite China’s best minds as well as those of like-minded civilizations of the East to approach the issue with a view to creating a lasting collective framework of action towards mitigation of climate change – in accordance with their worldviews. I would not presume to set guideposts. On the contrary, I’d strongly recommend that existing approaches be discarded, yield to the thought experiment: “If we were in charge, how would WE do it?” This thought experiment could parallel the ongoing UNFCCC negotiating process with a view to a rendez-vous and evaluation in say 2013.

Zheng He successfully sailed the Indian Ocean with flat-bottomed junks ten times the size of the Western caravels, which plied the same waters a few decades later. May be what is needed today to get out of the current desultory impasse is a new kind of vessel – or worldview.

First, in some cases, regardless of diplomatic skills, political differences cannot be overcome easily. Such situations are rare, but they exist.

Second, diplomacy requires time. Faced by pressures from the financial market, the EU had to act ‘yesterday’. It did not leave the UK enough time for a diplomatic manoeuvre that would have softened its decision or ultimately allowed it to devise a ‘refusal by delay’.

Third, and probably most surprising, the UK was not provided with some sort of face-saving exit strategy, something which could, perhaps, be described as ‘alibi diplomacy’.

Any other thoughts and reflection?

I’m no fan of the UNFCCC Treaty. Not because I don’t believe climate change is a problem – it certainly is, along with other serious problems that beset humanity and the world. To me the Treaty has inherent flaws. We should rethink the whole underlying assumptions and objectives, rather than leave the conceptual framework in place, and tinker with it in the hope this hopeful monster will ever function.

Canada has now withdrawn from the Treaty – ostensibly because US and China have not signed on. It is not so much a sign of Canada’s “selfishness” – as maybe the consequence of the unthinking application of the “polluter pays principle”. The Treaty targets a country’s CO₂ emissions: countries that produce emissions are responsible for abatement measures. In a globalized world with a high degree of division of labor, some countries produce goods (e.g. manufacturing countries like China and India, and raw-materials-rich Canada and Australia), while others concentrate on “CO₂-clean” services. Rich countries may have the largest CO₂ footprint nowadays, yet not be big emitters. When we tax the producer hoping for the consumer to behave, we have the well-known “tax incidence problem”. The transfer of the abatement costs from producers to consumers is not automatic or in full: it is a function of market power, and the producer may be stuck with part of the abatement bill, and in any case he has to make the investment up front. The sanctimonious finger-wagging of those who no longer produce CO₂ emissions yet sport large CO₂ footprints does not help.

CO₂ lasts in the atmosphere a very long time. The “West” emitted to its heart content while industrializing. In doing so it developed technologies and created wealth. Had the “West” been “CO₂-wise” then, industrialization would have taken much longer. Now the “West” wants “late” developers not to pollute on their way to catching up with it – given the technologies they currently employ, this means in fact slowing down their development. How fast CO₂ intensity[1] can be brought down is difficult to estimate, given that many “old” technologies inevitably linger. Between 1995 and 2005 China reduced its intensity by 28% and the US by 18%, but the China’s intensity is thrice that of the US (not adjusted for the fact that China is the manufacturer of last resort).

Sharing the benefits from the past would be a reasonable approach. The US$ 100 billion Green Climate Fund would be a step in the right direction. Is it workable? Experience with development[2] is not too promising. Massive resource transfers tend to go to waste.

Most damaging, however, are the assumptions underlying UNFCCC, which are counterproductive in my view. On the one side experts “know” for sure what’s to be done, how and how much – as if anyone did. Scepticism about the long term evolution of our climate grows in proportion to the forbidding examples of impending doom[3]. Quantitative targets are set, to which compliance is compulsory –to be enforced by pecuniary punishment. Canada would have had to pay over $ 14 billion in fines next year.

The centralising “command and control” approach reflects the underlying worldview that cooperation can only be enforced from on high. Alas, to presume non-compliance is to invite it. If there is something we should have learned from history is that cooperation may come natural to mankind – but only if it is based on consent. What the UNFCCC System seems to lack today is legitimacy, and strident prophecies of blood-curdling doom will not yield it.

The goals of the UNFCCC are to bring CO₂ emissions under control as well as (a) atone for past sins; (b) share today’s burden fairly; (c) prevent future catastrophes – and all this done fairly. Too many objectives – too many burdens are heaped on our shoulders. While we bicker about targets and “fairness” everyone is holding back lest voluntary or adaptive efforts be ignored when determining abatement obligations (meanwhile goodwill among many mutates first into jaded indifference, and then into smoldering guilty denial).

The curse of “path-dependent outcomes” now comes into play: no one dares to change course and risk losing face. Yet fundamental change is needed. What is to be done? If the key issue is legitimacy, jumping the gun to implementation would be counterproductive. Haste has cost us 20 years so far, and continuing along this strategy may not improve much on the current situation.

Emulation rather than recrimination might be a better strategy and “best efforts” what we can hope for, at least in the near future. Is it going to be enough? I don’t know – I’m not a prophet. The only thing I know is that kicking an obdurate mule hardly is the answer.

Formally speaking, the architecture of the EU’s digital diplomacy is likely to involve her department (digital agenda) and Ashton’s EEAS (European External Action Service, the EU diplomatic service). In this way the EU will follow a clear global trend (e.g. US, China, India, Brazil) of more intensive involvement of diplomatic services in Internet governance, previously the main responsibility of telecommunication and ICT ministries. The full EU’s digital diplomacy  should involve all EU Commission directorates that deal with development, security, human rights and other aspects of Internet governance, to avoid the risk of “policy silos”.  It also seems that Kroes will conduct multistakeholder  digital diplomacy by consulting with civil society, the business sector and academia, both within and outside the EU.

Substantively speaking, Kroes has outlined the EU’s digital diplomacy priorities in her recent statements on Internet governance. In her speech at the Internet Governance Forum in Nairobi (September 2011), she introduced the framework of the EU’s digital diplomacy under the name  Compact for the Internet.

In other statements and blogs she zoomed in on specific issues of the EU’s Internet governance policy.

• On the infrastructure and standardization baskets: spectrum and the Internet, Internet of things, ICANN – IANA function, IPv6.
• On the legal basket: online privacy, the right to communicate (no disconnect strategy), copyright on the Internet.
• On the development basket: ICT for development.
• On the economic basket: open data, innovation and investment.
• On the socio-cultural basket: protection of children, Internet freedom.

During the forthcoming period, the main challenge will be to arrange these building blocks together with EU’s foreign policy priorities, especially in potentially delicate areas such as online freedom of expression.

Let us follow the emergence of the EU’s digital diplomacy.

The 1991 Maastricht  Summit started with 11 members opposing Germany’s proposal for early recognition of Croatia and Slovenia. The summit finished in the early morning with all 12 members endorsing Germany’s proposal. During a  long night of horse-trading, France, the main opponent of early recognition of the ex-YU republics, negotiated compensation on Euro-monetary matters and decided to withdraw its opposition to the German proposal. Other EU members followed.

Faced with Milosevic’s attack from inside, and no EU support, Ante Markovic –  the last hope for a  peaceful transition for  Yugoslavia –  resigned on 20 December 1991.

What happened after December 1991 is a well-known and very painful history with a hundred thousand dead, a million refugees, a destroyed economy, and the implosion of the value system and the respect for human dignity in the Balkans. The whole region, with the exception of Slovenia, was like a time machine going back in history.

Twenty years later, the Balkan countries are exhausted. Fortunately, today, there are not as many armaments in the region as there were in 1991. Moreover, although destructive sentiments are still present, there is no adrenaline for new fights. Somehow, people just want to drop anchor in a quiet harbour, especially in anticipation of the coming global economic thunderstorm.

Croatia will become an EU member state in 2013. Tomorrow (9 December 2011) the EU summit will discuss the Serbian candidature to the EU. Serbian, often masochistic diplomacy, has done a lot, especially on the rhetorical level, to make its own candidature difficult. On the substantive level however, Serbia delivered on the most important aspect for Europe: sending all war criminals to the Hague.

All in all, Serbia is ready to become a candidate (still a long way to membership, a process which may last years, as in the case of Turkey).  Since there are many checkpoints on this long journey for EU-membership, the strong German opposition to Serbian candidacy in this early phase is puzzling. Let us speculate about possible reason.

The first reason could indicate Germany’s intention to signal its strong focus on upholding law and order in the EU. This already started with the Greek financial crisis. While Serbia is not a shining example of a legal state, it is not so very different from other Balkan states, including some EU member states. Moreover, Serbia will have time to fix its legal and juridical system on the long journey to EU membership.

The second reason, which is more realistic, is that Germany is playing for its domestic public, which is tired of EU enlargement.  Still, this argument is not particularly strong, since other countries, such as France and Austria have even more enlargement-sceptical populations, but they support the Serbian candidature.

The third reason, which could be the most dangerous, is the punishment of Serbia for what it did in the Balkans in the 1990′s.  Hopefully this is not the case, especially for Germany, which was on the receiving side of a senseless punishment policy after  World War I.  The international punishment of Germany brought about the end of the Weimar republic and the emergence of Hitler.

The fourth reason for Germany’s opposition could be Ms. Merkel’s personal uneasiness  with Serbian politicians, who are well known for breaking their promises. Her body language showed this uneasiness during her last visit to Belgrade.

Whatever the reason for Germany’s policy, we have learned from the last 20 years that the Balkans can produce more history than it can consume. Today, the Balkans is ready to ‘import’ a new history in the form of core values and the rules of European integration, one of the most fascinating political projects in modern times. The Balkans are keen to do this, even now, when the grand EU project is in its deepest crisis. This opportunity should not be wasted.

Investment means sinking costs now, in order to obtain benefits somewhere in the future. There are many “worthwhile” projects in disparate areas, including but not only climate change abatement measures: they’ll all bring costs and benefits, some big, some small, some soon, and some far into the future – which to choose?

Rational choice demands that costs and benefits streams within a project be compared: clearly a benefit in ten years’ time has not the same value as the same benefit tomorrow. A comparison may be made by bringing back all costs and benefits to the same base- and time-line. We discount benefits and costs with the “social interest rate” to a single common time-line – say today. This allows one to determine whether benefits, so recalculated, outweigh costs or not. I obtain a benefit/cost ratio. All B/C >1 are ranked, and implementation occurs from the best one down.

Before I move further, let me clarify one thing. The “social interest rate” in akin, but not congruent with the interest rate we know from everyday life. The mechanics are the same, but the choice of the number reflects different values. I use the term “social interest rate” to highlight the fact that its value reflects the wishes and the vision of the whole social group (somehow determined), not the narrow and skewed view of the financial markets, or God forbid of the minister of finance who holds the strings of the public purse. These two dance to a different tune (we’ll have to reconcile our dreams to the current contingent reality – the financial and budgetary context – soon enough).

Though we may use “dollars” to calculate the B/C ratio, the term simply (and roughly) explicates trade-offs to be made in order to achieve the desired goal, which may be “saving lives”. In order to “save X lives” Y dollars (or resources) have to be invested. It is morally not a matter of indifference how many lives one saves with fixed amounts of money or resources. The $ sign is does not mean “putting a price on life” – it just tells us what a choice entails, using “dollars” as units of account.

This also implies that if our goal is “saving lives”, we should assess, compare, and rank ALL projects which “save lives” – not just the segment thereof, which just grabs our attention, or is on the negotiating table. If “saving lives” is our goal, then it should be a matter of indifference whether we invest in fighting dysentery or we try to prevent climate change and its consequences. The “social interest rate”, when impartially used to compare ALL projects, helps us to do exactly that. It allows us to go beyond the narrow objective under discussion and compare across a wide variety of worthwhile projects.

The “social interest rate” only sets the stage for choice – it is a necessary condition. It is not a sufficient condition, however. To get to what is necessary we need to view the political, financial and budgetary context. The context defines both the scope and the limits of public investment. Even though we may not do all we should, the “social interest rate” would ensure that we do the right thing. Or does it?

A low “social interest rates” expresses our concerns for future generations. If the “social interest rate is low, we care a lot about future generations. That’s generous of us. Choosing a low “social interest rate” has its discreet charm – in form of consequences – which the altruistic planner should be aware of:

• Low rates favor projects with large sunk costs. Today’s technology is thereby frozen far into the future. We risk plunging for technologies that may soon outdated and difficult to scrap – we’ve seen this with nuclear power. We lock ourselves into sort of paradigm: splurge now, regret at leisure.
• Low interest rates also freeze our priorities way into the future. A commitment to say CO₂ abatement programs becomes irreversible – we have sunk so much money into the projects – even should further science or experience reveal that our original fears were exaggerated, or should new issues need tackling at once. We lose flexibility, and possibly act in a paternalistic way.
• We make large resource transfers to future generations. Both wealth and technologies should be more abundant in the future than today – on past experience. Why should we collectively subsidize groups who may be fully capable of taking care of themselves?

The future is uncertain – it contains many unknown unknowns. The best we can do is to commit irreversibly as few resources as possible.

What can the Indian Government do in a situation such as this? Can (and through what means) India force the takedown of the fake website of the Indian Consulate in Geneva? Let us make a few legal speculations.  If the website is registered under the .ch domain, the government of India may take action based on Article 28 of the 1963 Vienna Consular Convention request of receiving state to provide  “full facilities for the performance of the functions of the consular post”. The closest analogy would be that India would have the right to close any building which claims to be Indian Consulate General. But, in the online world, this is not likely to be effective. Governments cannot just order national Internet registrars to remove a website. Earlier this year, the US authorities request to remove “wikileaks.ch” was refused.

If the fraudulent website was registered under a generic domain (.com, .org, .net),  the situation is even more complicated, since the responsible registrars could be located almost anywhere in the world (most likely in the United States). The possibility for legal action, even on the level of theoretical speculation, is almost non-existent.

The fight against this fraudulent website is likely to be even more complicated with introduction of new generic domain names over the next few years. In addition, the possibility to identify and stop fraudulent activities on the fast-growing social media (Facebook, Twitter) is even more limited.

In this context, Indian General Consulate did the only thing it could do, practically speaking. It made a public notice. The impact of this public notice could be stronger if it was done in the most prominent online spaces instead if, or in addition to traditional printed newspapers (in this case, the International Herald Tribune).

…………..

They are people of sound but straightforward intelligence, people of simplified and limited sensitivity and a cool heart, but not without heart or any sensitivity; capable of deception, but not closed and mysterious, still less underhand; strong, but not rough; quick and decisive, but not hasty or impulsive;  realistic, sober, but not dry and dull.

They need to know a certain amount, but there should be no trace of erudition or pedantry in what they know, and their knowledge should agreeably surprise and perhaps impress those with whom they are speaking, but never embarrass, offend or shame them.

It is the same with their courage: they need to have it, and it should be sound and reliable, but they should display it only in extreme circumstances and bear it as they bear arms which everyone knows they have, but are never seen.

They must also have imagination, but only in a certain degree, enough for a man to see every issue from every point of view and with all its possibilities and immediate consequences; anything more than that is both dangerous for them and damaging to the work they are doing.

Who could confirm and list everything that those who wish to devote themselves to this service ought to be?

• They should be versatile and straightforward.
• Not arrogant, but naturally self-assured, even at times proud.
• they should not despise small details (never, in any circumstances!) but they should know how to stay somewhere on the borderline of pettiness and pedantry.
• They should be conscientious in everything, but without excessive zeal.
• They should value the moment and always make use of it, but also know how to leave time to have its effect.
• They should have many, varied interests in people, objects, art, games and entertainments, but not surrender themselves to passion or the intimacy in which a man completely forgets himself.
• They should be a bit human, and never inhuman; ready for everything and capable of anything, but not heartless or monsters.

That means, in effect: living constantly on two levels, the personal, human one and the official, inhuman one, but never in any way showing or betraying to anyone on which level you are at any given moment, or better still: not yourself being completely aware of it, which is the surest way of not betraying yourself.

In a word, you need to be a person of a particular kind without appearing to be, but always and in everything to give the impression of an ordinary, average man.  You need to have a hundred abilities, but strictly controlled in many different ways.  In general one could say of people of this kind that their ability lies more in a good and proper balance between different qualities than in the value of those qualities themselves. So that, roughly speaking, while each of those qualities is average, the whole that they constitute should be orginal and above average.

………..

Nuclear technology for electricity production emerged as part of designing submarines for strategic nuclear warfare: It was the child of the Cold War (I still remember the excitement of Nautilus’ first trip to the North Pole). Once developed and tested (and paid for by the military) the technologies so developed were then put to use in civilian power production.

The political decision to develop nuclear technology for warfare had three consequences for the civilian applications:

• Military necessities dictated the use compact technologies. This design bore specific risks for their subsequent use in civilian life: all redundancy had to be foregone to reduce dead weight and volume, so safe containment became a weak point. Secondly, “fail-safe” technologies, which would have required more volume, were ignored (“fail-safe” nuclear technologies were available then, but were inherently poorly suited to military purposes).
• National security overrode any environmental concerns about nuclear waste disposal. Given the urgency, the problem was simply not addressed. Had the issue been raised then, the population involved might have grudgingly accepted siting of waste as patriotic duty. This was no longer the case when patriotism yielded to commercial considerations.
• Political, rather than economic, considerations drove and paid for the expansion of nuclear power. Civilian applications were collateral, and the subsequent transfer amounted to hefty subsidies – the US military essentially paid for the development costs of much of the hardware. Not to be outdone, other governments followed suit. Furthermore, what may have been collateral benefit for a super-power became a necessary component of military deployment for lesser ones. The economic intermeshing of civilian and military nuclear programs is best seen in the case of France.

One should be also aware of the “fashion” as well as the “political” aspect. To have nuclear energy was to be “modern” (The Atomium, built for Expo ‘58 still graces the Parc d’Osseghem in Brussels, but looks quite incongruous now). “Atoms for peace” – the American initiative in 1953 to make nuclear energy widely available to all states ready to accept international safeguards on civilian use of nuclear energy – led to a “fashion” of building such power plants, irrespective of economics.

Once transferred to the civilian sector, nuclear power became a “path-dependent outcome” – it was cheaper (and politically easier) to continue than switch. This phenomenon was exacerbated by the lumpy character of the technology: plants are big, last a long time and “stand-alones” are not viable[1]. Consequently economic and political interests remained intertwined – until the technology hit the safety and ecology wall. Counterfactuals are difficult to evaluate, but one may justly regret the hasty political decisions cum subsidies that led to the irreversible choice of creating a civilian nuclear energy sector.

One lesson to be drawn is that decisions to develop long-lasting technologies tend to have irreversible consequences. We should be cautions, for our technology choices often essentially foreclose options: we are locking today’s values[2] as well as technologies far into the future.

We all make mistakes, and markets have their share of mistakes. I would not automatically trust the market, or believe naïvely that “the market is always right”. Nothing compares, however, with autocratic, albeit well-intentioned, sovereign decisions. The world is replete with politicians’ failed follies. And they invariably are big.

Subsidies play a central role here. Like surgery, they are invasive, and severely affect the market. It might be done successfully[3]; it needs to be done at times. When they create “path-dependent outcomes”, the effects of subsidies, however, go well beyond mere budgetary implications. The long-term distortions that follow may far outweigh the direct benefits and costs.

Traditional tungsten filament light bulbs wasted a lot of energy by heating up the universe. A few years back we were told to replace them – on “ecological” grounds; now they are being banned.

A neon-tube based technology came on the market. It saved a lot of energy and  was expected to last 10-15 years all right, but it also had several drawbacks: it still costs about five to ten times the price of a regular bulb, it takes time to reach full luminosity, and (but we were not told) the bulbs contains mercury: full recycling would be essential for ecological reasons, difficult, and dangerous. No one ever told me whether the savings were worth the extra cost. I replaced the bulbs in the whole house anyway.

A new LED-based technology has just come on stream. It saves 80% of energy compared to the original tungsten bulb, it has instant luminosity, and it will last 25 years. No indication is available on recycling. The novelty price is likely to be horrific, but it may come down in time.

Let’s forget the issue of recycling. The key economic issue in my view is the longevity of either technology. With the neon-light based technology I was promised 10 years of “peace of mind” – except that three years later a new, even longer lasting technology came on stream. Switch again? Having mad the large investment in a long-lasting but comparatively inferior technology, I’ll be loath to switch,

Rationality would require me to stick to the old tungsten bulb, until the waves of technology have settled: too much technology, in particular long lasting ones, leads to wastefully sunk costs and poor allocation of resources.

The other issue is ecology. Recycling the neon-light based technology has hardly begun, even here in Switzerland: after all the first major wave of rejects will only arrive in a few years (so in accordance with factory promises). If we all switch from this bulb to the LED-based now, we’ll have a lot of mercury to dispose of. Where to go? Is the country ready for replacing neon-based with LED-based bulbs?

Lord Stern, in his report on the economics of climate change, has used a low interest rate to justify heavy up-front investment in CO₂ abatement technologies. He would have patted me on the shoulder for buying neon-light based technology. His “go go go” approach does not look too bright, in retrospect, does it? Low interest rates favour large investments up front – which create sunk costs, and thus rigidities downstream from the investment decision. Imagine if a government plunging for a long-lived technology in 2007, only to be confronted with a far better one in 2012.

BTW: my local electricity board has congratulated me for being 23.4% more efficient than my neighbours. Splendid. My electricity bill was 930 CHF last year. I saved 214 CHF by comparison – a dinner for a family of four in a medium level restaurant. This is why the dedicated website of the Board only informs about quantity, not about cost savings. And even doubling the cost of electricity would not make that much of a difference in my own behavior: most of the electricity the household consumes is indirect.

Analogous to the Titanic saga, the level of panic determines the level of damage of the financial crisis. The panic on the Titanic was controlled by a calm captain and the Cruise-ship band, which continued playing as if nothing was happening.

Today, it is too easy to criticise EU leadership. Yes, leaders carry a lot of responsibility for the early response to the Greek crisis, but currently, the EU band is playing quite nicely, and so far, is controlling panic, at least in the public sphere (perhaps it still needs to convince Moodys and the other financial guys). The conductor (Merkle) has taken up the baton and with it, control; the rhythm section with two Marios is not bad. EU Commissioner Oli Ren, having been trained in the Balkans, has the stamina to sustain long concerts. The rest of the band is gradually getting in shape.

Will the band manage to control the panic till the Charpatia arrives? The first test will be the EU Concil on 9 December. Hopefully, the Charpatia will have a sufficient stock of rum and vodka. But where will it sail with the survivors (with us)? Most likely towards Asia via a melting Antarctic navigation passage!

While you are thinking of possible itineraries for the Charpatia have a listen to the audio support for this blog by Rod Stewart.

“Our collective challenge is to look beyond the current economic model, to an economy in which people count for more than what they consume, and in which they consume according to need instead of according to an artificially constructed desire.

This is where Asia becomes important. Companies seeking refuge from stagnant demand in the US and Europe are looking eagerly to Asia to consume more, and Asian economies are also seeking to ignite domestic demand as a way out of the export growth model. If this happens without taking into account environmental sustainability, it could doom our planet.”

Ms. MAR is certainly correct in highlighting the problem of sustainability inherent in the current growth model. Jared DIAMOND has worked out, on the back of an envelope[2], that granting every person on earth a life style comparable with that of the US would correspond to increasing world population from 7 to 72 billion – with current consumption patterns.

Yes, world population is gingerly edging toward equilibrium: it may level out at somewhere between 7 and 9 billion. Women, by becoming educated and choosing quality over quality of offspring[3], have brought this about (some governments have meddled in this matter, and so have religious institutions). Has technology allowed us to escape the Malthusian trap? No, it only has granted us a short reprieve, in which to tackle the unsustainable consumption levels, which come with education.

The task is daunting: how to rein in such “educated” consumption? Economists have indications that such consumption above basics does not truly satisfy “needs”. We perceive well-being today not as absolute levels of material satisfaction, but rather relative levels. We are confronted with mutual ratcheting up of expectations: if my neighbor has a car, I’ll need a bigger car, or at least a home theatre. No equilibrium level is possible when my neighbor is my standard of satisfaction.

Despair? Wait a minute. We may have a useful approach under our very nose – so obvious, we don’t even notice it. One of the (few) glories of the XXI^st century is the greatest assemblage of knowledge ever attempted – Wikipedia (and its clones in other languages as well as regional or thematic declinations thereof).

Currently, the English Wikipedia alone has over 3,804,619 articles of any length, and the combined Wikipedias for all other languages greatly exceeds the English Wikipedia in size, giving a combined total of more than 8 billion words in 19 million articles in approximately 270 languages.^[2] The English Wikipedia alone has over 2 billion words,^[3] over 50 times as many as the next largest English-language encyclopedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, and more than the enormous 119-volume Spanish-language Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana.

In 2005 the English-language Wikipedia more than doubled in size, and many smaller wikipedias have grown by a higher multiple.

Only in June 2011, there have been more than 11 million edits in all Wikipedias and 3.6 million in the English version.^[2][3][4]

Wikipedia has emerged from a few process rules[5], and the voluntary effort of unpaid contributors. This is enshrined in the fourth rule:

Respect and be polite to your fellow Wikipedians, even when you disagree. Apply Wikipedia etiquette, and avoid personal attacks. Find consensus, avoid edit wars, and remember that there are 3,806,369 articles on the English Wikipedia to work on and discuss. Act in good faith, and never disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. Be open and welcoming, and assume good faith on the part of others. When conflict arises, discuss details on the talk page, and follow dispute resolution.

Respect among Wikipedians is the “currency” of Wikipedia – and so far the voluntary system seems to work.

Let’s reflect for a minute: the most gigantic effort of gathering knowledge has emerged without prodding, and without reward, just on the basis of mutual respect.

Wikipedia grew from contributions of participants that reflected their abilities: some provided substance; others polished style, corrected grammar, and did the necessary and often tiresome work of improving quality. Readers are now asked to provide feedback, and suggestions. Asymptotically Wikipedia will become the best and timeliest general-level assembly of knowledge humanity is likely to achieve[6].

The participants’ material needs are being met elsewhere and otherwise. We have a gaping chasm between their contribution and material reward. This gap is filled by mutual respect.

Spontaneity and lack of link between contribution and material reward are mediated by respect. Is there a lesson here we should ponder?

Two world-views square off against each other here. One is built on the “top-down” approach. Command and control is linked to material reward: it’s the age-old “carrot and stick”. The élite sets the goals, and manipulates the levers of power, the rest follows. This model has worked wonders in the past. Sustainability of this model is predicated on two conditions: (a) the goal must be “right” (or the élite will lose Heaven’s mandate) and (b) the stick be wrapped in ideological silk, resp. the material rewards be plentiful. Ideology and reverence replace respect in this model.

The other is the “collaborative” approach, which is built on emergent social cooperation, spontaneity, and mutual respect – what we have seen in the instance of Wikipedia. Adaptation by trial and error replaces goal-setting, and respect replaces constraint. This model has also met with success in the past, but has mostly succumbed to predatory, and then tributary, behaviour initiated by an élite. We are beginning to recover success stories from the dust heap of history[7].

Each generation is confronted with the existential choice: “top-down” or “emergent” systems? The first runs on spoils, the other on respect. Pragmatically I’d argue that a “spoils system” is no longer sustainable.

So we are left with the task of building more and more on mutual respect – and to adapt accordingly, if we want to survive. The Axial Age has created across the Eurasian Continent value systems built on respect (moving with the sun, we encounter Confucius, Buddha, Jeremiah, and Socrates). The vaule systems were co-opted into the “top down approach”. The common task ahead of us would be to recover these value systems. After so long, this is not an easy way: more like turning a super-tanker on a dime. But then, humanity is extraordinarily mutable.

In his excellent book: The geography of thought[1] Richard E. NISBETT points out that the Greeks never warmed to the concept of O (zero). Though considered, they rejected it, on the grounds that it represented a violation of the principle of “non-contradiction”. Zero is both a reality (as number) and a non-reality (as value). The concept of O (zero) drifted into Europe from the East. This is not the only example of Greek pig-headedness: Plato abandoned mathematics for geometry so as better to conceal irrational numbers, which undermined his view of the world as “rational”.

NISBETT’s book was published at the height of the controversy with “Asian values”[2]. The controversy was a “political game” – meanwhile the ascendancy of Asia (and China in particular) has muted the debate.

The book is grounded in experiments – which is a huge step forward from the telling (and stereotyping) anecdote. It presents a large amount of evidence to the effect that Easterners[3] and Westerners[4] differ in fundamental way about

• the nature of the world; in
• the focus of attention; in
• the skills to perceive relationships and to discern objects in a complex environment; in
• the character of causal attribution; in
• the tendency to organize the world categorically or relationally; and in
• the inclination to use rules, including the rules of formal logic. (pg. 189-190).

The experiments are clever and illuminating.

According to the experiments three principles seem to underlie Eastern thought (pg. 174 – 177):

• Principle of change;
• Principle of contradiction;
• Principle of relationship, or Holism.

The West relies on the law of identity and the law of non-contradiction, which takes it into abstraction and disregard of context; it is a static and mechanic worldview, which contradicts the Eastern view of perpetual change.

“So what?” – a Japanese friend asked me.

The main reason for reading about experimental results – rather than anecdotes (or cross-cultural lore) – is:  “The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity”[5]. Knowing that there is a “geography of thought” is a good way to read some sense into our own hectoring. It might help us to stop and think, rather than dismiss, the “other’s point of view”. Curiosity will kill the cat – but also self-righteousness.

Will these insights take one further? I don’t know. We are all different; such awareness, or even knowledge, is no patent medicine. I’ve always considered context as an essential part of any policy problem: I am exhilarated to discover, therefore, that others think alike. My being befuddled suddenly turns into wisdom. In the West context is often frowned upon: one must have “principles”, one must have a “clear line”. Maybe – sometimes. In other moments it might be simply a problem of communication – a failure to elaborate on how context impinges on decision.

Will globalisation move us to ward “homogenization” of thinking? The author is the book glosses over the subject in the Epilogue – it’s the major flaw I’ve found. I’ve learned to drive both on the right and on the left. I can do either, depending on the situation. Doing so has enriched me: I can drive into a lamp post anywhere in the world now.

“L’une des merveilles du monde

est la faculté des hommes de dire ce qu’ils n’entendent pas,

comme s’ils l’entendaient,

de croire qu’ils le pensent

cependant qu’ils ne font que se le dire.”

Paul VALERY – Cahiers I, p. 452-453

Which may translate roughly as

“Don’t believe everything you think. Thoughts are just that – thoughts.”

“Know yourself” – proclaimed the Oracle of Delphi. From the mouth of the High Master of Ambiguity this injunction could be nothing less than ambiguous. Socrates, through Plato, took it to mean that this path could lead to “truth”: “The unexamined life is not worth living”, said Socrates at his trial. We have been examining our lives ever since, hoping to grasp the truth and understand transcendence.

The oracle’s instruction could also have meant skepticism – awareness that “everything is illusion; it is also an illusion to believe one can live without illusions”. A Zen master said that – I can’t get my hands on the exact quote. Or, in the words of the modern philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein I quote as title to this entry: “My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.” Paul Valéry is just one of the many warning us along these lines: Don’t believe everything you think. Thoughts are just that – thoughts.

This is not just idle musing – it has implications in real life (and diplomacy – though whether diplomacy counts as “real life” might rightly looked at with some skepticism).

I’ve come across an example recently. Jean-François Billeter, a Swiss sinologist, has accused François Jullien[2], the eminent dean of French sinology, of mis-translating basic concepts of Chinese thought. Jullien does not translate, for instance, the term “Dao” – or uses a set word “Way” – irrespective of context. By so doing he ascribes “depth” and reverence to what we do not understand – but also distance and separation: the word “Dao” remains mysterious, and we love words that imply force and direction, rather than simply signify.

This translation decision leads to a vision of Chinese civilization as “different” from our own human experience. Words like “harmony” and “immanence” are derived, and said to characterize neo-Confucian philosophical thought, and are contrasted with our “truth” and “transcendence”. The myth that “East is East, and West is West and never the twain shall meet” is entertained – according to Billeter.

Confucius was part of the Axial Age[3] – the period where philosophical enquiry first emerged across the Eurasian Continent. But his thought became part of Chinese history, and was set to political use after his death. The Qin Empire was born in 260 BC, in a battle where allegedly 400’000 enemy soldiers lost their lives. It was a state “organized for war”[4]. It collapsed right away, as it was built on naked oppression. The Han, which quickly succeeded the Qin, used the classical Confucian canon as state orthodoxy – naked power was replaced by (oppressive) ideology. The power of the local gentry was neutralized by coopting them into a bureaucratic system, where the emperor was the source of political authority, and the entry examinations system ensured compliance with the Confucian orthodoxy. The reward was the elegiac illusion that the bureaucrat could be more than that; he could be a “literatus”. This explains in part the fascination the West had around 1700 with the philosopher-bureaucrat: the road to power was to be intellectual merit, rather than ancestry.

Far from being pure “philosophical enquiry”, it might be argued, hereafter Daoism and Neo-Confucianism became the ideological buttresses of the authoritarian state – akin to Western (religious or secular) ideologies that sustained later totalitarian systems. These two ideologies have endured for two thousand years, and might anew help sustain the current regime in China, by proclaiming to be part of the country’s “immanent culture”, thus concealing their authoritarian spots.

I do not wish to arbitrate between Billeter and Jullien’s points of view – just to draw attention to the fact that a worldview inevitably is a political choice. We may not be able to escape such “nonsense” – but we may at least become aware of it.

Diplomacy, as it builds bridges across boundaries and cultures, can reinforce or attenuate such worldviews, and recognize either diversity or commonality. These are far subtler ways to assert a “clash of civilizations” than those of Samuel Huntington.

Reports are the lifeline of diplomatic services, international organisations, and many other institutions. Thousands of reports are written daily as a result of meetings, projects, and other events.

Reports are becoming voluminous. The availability of a medium with almost no cost (computers) and the convenience of copying and pasting make reports much longer today than in yesteryear. And the longer they become, the less likely they are to be read and ultimately the less useful they will be. How to report effectively has become a key organisational issue for many diplomatic services and other organisations.

Here is one historical digression that could hint to a possible solution. One of the best diplomatic reporting dates back to the nineteenth century when sending cables via telegraph was enormously expensive. Diplomats, mainly US, had to craft every telegraph carefully (others used carriages till the early twentieth century).

Could Twitter provide a solution for long reports or at least hint in which direction reporting should move? Limited to 140 characters, instead of long e-mails and blogs, Twitter forces us to keep our communication concise and focused. Perhaps we should consider restricting the length of (diplomatic) reports?

Recently I experimented by reporting using Twitter from a few events. It required a complete immersion into the events with a high level of concentration and a lot of energy. After tweeting from one session (90 minutes) I felt physically exhausted, proving vividly that the brain is the main consumer of energy.

What were my findings?

• My experiment in vivo confirmed McLuhan’s premise that ‘the medium is the message’. Even further, the medium shapes our thinking. My wife has noticed recently that my verbal communication has become shorter and more concise (Twitter style), which might not be a bad thing at all.
• I had to make sure that my tweets were interesting, relevant and useful. If I write boring tweets, nobody will read them – even if they are only 140 characters long.
• I also had to think about the context in which my followers would read my tweets. Tweeting from an event on the Balkans, I wondered what my followers knew about the region. Writing engaging tweets and understanding the sociocultural context in which tweets are read is vital.
• One great advantage is that tweets serve as mental hooks. It’s easy to forget exactly what was discussed at an event but if I tweet, I can still vividly remember what was discussed days later. Memory hooks have developed as a collateral advantage of tweeting.
• One weakness of my tweet-reporting is that my tweets were more my interpretation of the event than a factual summary. It is probably matter of personal approach. Tweet-reporting can be factual.

We will continue an experiment with tweet-reports. Mary Murphy is conducting research on diplomatic reporting in the Internet era. Your comments and suggestions to Mary would be useful. (MaryM@diplomacy.edu).

I also promise that my next text will be more twitter-style (i.e. shorter and concise).

As additional reading on diplomatic reporting I suggest the following papers: Ambassador Victor Camilleri’s background paper, Aldo Matteucci’s proposal on How to use Wikis for Diplomatic Reporting, Ambassador Kishan Rana’s background material on Feedback in Diplomatic Reporting, and Ambassador Nabil Fahmy’s reflections on Diplomatic Reporting and Media Coverage of Events. An example of Tweet-reporting by Andrea Glorioso from the Council of Europe Meeting on Internet and Human Rights.

ANNEX: Tweet-report from the morning session at the GCSP’s Conference on the Security in the Balkans (9^th November 2011)

• Like in time machine; back to Balkans themes at GCSP even; met a good friend Vesko after +20 years; compared hair-styles (I lost

• Against historical fatalism in Balkans; historians prepared joint history book (like French/German); not used in schools YET bit.ly/sqkbGh

• Need to change mindset; my small contribution – book on Compromise in Serbian bit.ly/sSZCZA

• @TimJudah1 with realistic optimism about Balkans: No news is good news; Balkans is boring

• Agree with Judah for 3 reasons: 1. end of Balkan geo-narcism: center of the world, bridge among civilisation

• 2. end of transition of communist elite into tajkuns; they feel less threatened; look for law and order

• 3. without elite manipulation people will find solutions (common sense, invention, initiative)

• Balkan is tired of ethno-nationalism; no stomach for big narratives; comic and failed HDZ fear-campaign against Serbs

• M.Todorova: Recent success of Bulgaria due to 3 lost wars in 20-century. Serbia lost 4 wars recently. Some hope

The crisis was avoided by very skilful negotiations led by Mexico and Norway which created a mechanism to address some of Indonesia’s concerns.

This virus diplomacy crisis has opened up the issue of the ultimate limits of ownership in the modern world. Are there any? Does ownership extend to anything that could have economic value (e.g. knowledge of viruses – ways to develop a vaccine)?

Here is detailed analysis of the Indonesia virus case.

The last major UN conference was the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS, 2005).  There are some follow-up events, but their ‘policy energy’ and mobilising impact cannot be compared to the major UN conferences held in the 1990s (Rio-1992: Earth Summit, Vienna-1993: human rights, Cairo-1994: population, Beijing-1995: women, Copehnagen-1995: social development).[1] These 1990s conferences focused attention on global issues. They generated in-depth studies, reflections, and global debate.  They addressed issues in comprehensive ways, highlighting cross-cutting aspects and reducing the risk of silos in global policy. They increased understanding and global awareness and produced agreements, plans of actions, and declarations.

Why did they disappear from global politics? One fundamental reason was the dominance of ‘doism’. In the last 10 years or so, it has been important to do something. Why to do it, or what direction to do it in, or with what purpose has not been as important.  One of the reasons why we have gotten ourselves into economic trouble is that while we are active and doing things, we often think that broader issues will be sorted out by some invisible policy hand.  Doing has been positive per se. In this context, big UN conferences were considered no more than unproductive and expensive talk shops.  They were too slow for our fast-moving world, even if we were sometimes moving in the wrong direction.

With hindsight, we can say that UN conferences could have served as a useful reflective moment when we could have stepped back and thought about where we were going. The more people were involved, the more we could have avoided the confirmation bias of so-called experts who dominated policy space. The usual criticism of UN conferences focused on long speeches from Castro or the like, but very often we forgot the thousands of people thinking and discussing issues such as climate change, women rights or population. These conferences provided buy-in from people worldwide. Without participation, there is no implementation. Modern problems ranging from the financial crises to climate change, directly affect the lives of ordinary people. These people need to be consulted or at least offered a genuine possibility to be heard.  The 1990s conferences played this role to some extent.

The gap in global policy created by the end of 1990s conferences is becoming increasingly obvious and perhaps this is  why such conferences may be refashioned as global forums. These forums cannot be exactly what the 1990s conferences were. The world has moved on.

• Today, it is much more difficult to agree globally on a new treaty or convention. The 1990s tide of conventions completely withdrew in the first decade of the new millennium. With emerging economies and regional players, interests are much more diversified and it is increasingly difficult to reach global agreements. Climate change and trade negotiations are but two of the latest examples. When it comes to ‘tangible outcomes’, therefore, forums must be much less ambitious than those 1990s UN conferences.
• The Internet has created a global policy space.  Empowered by the Internet, people want to have more say, not only in national politics but also on the global stage. E-participation can extend participation beyond a narrow policy-circles.
• Forums must be processes; the events themselves are simply conveyance points. Most of the interaction should happen online before and after the main event.
• Forums may coincide with likely ‘de-spin’ development in the global communications space. ‘Occupy’ movements do not use microphones or megaphones. Like people in the old Athens forums, they use their voices. Global forums may follow this development by increasing substantive discussion and reducing the use of  ‘media megaphones’.

Forum will also pose certain challenges:

• Their function should be clearly stated. Global forums should be places for global policy discussions and decision-shaping. They should not be an excuse for lack of decision-making or inactivity when there is a need for more concrete and legal action (e.g. adopting conventions).
• With their defused structure, forums have few rules. This enables interactivity and inclusiveness, but also creates risks that the space could be easily hijacked by the loudest or the most skilful in, for example, using social media. This lack of rules could be a disadvantage for the weakest (i.e. those not proficient in social media, introverts, those coming from formal cultures). In a few years time, we may be discussing how to make sure that the voices of digital migrants  are heard among the much louder digital natives (i.e. those experienced in using social media). Who will the new minority/majority be? Potentially, those whose means of communication are limited so they  cannot have their say. When the weakest come from developing countries, this can create an additional exclusion dimension. The Internet Governance Forum, as a global policy ‘in vivo lab’ has initiated substantive discussion on the impact of informality (lack of procedures) on potential participation inequality.

Keep this in mind when you are developing the ‘next’ global forum!

Usable door

Unusable door

Here is my contribution for the World Usability Day. I tried to open the door in the left photo by pulling the left side and then pushing. The door remained closed. I moved to the right side. I pulled it. Again, nothing. Finally I pushed the door. Open sesame! The other side of the door is better (right photo), in that the company name gives a clue as to where to push/pull and makes the exercise less complex. Whoever installed this door obviously didn’t think that people might have to open it from both sides! Any other example of unusable things on the World Usability Day?

Recently, US military supported a comprehensive research comparing personality test (big five) and Facebook interaction. The research finds a high level of correlation between personality types and the use of Facebook. Extroverted people have many Facebook friends but few exchanges. The opposite applies to introverted people (a limited circle of  friends with intensive communication).

Is there a professionally preferable social media?  For diplomats, it is probably blogging. Diplomats are very cautious about written communication and the ambiguous writings that could be developed in short tweets or in Facebook conversations.

Any thoughts?

At the weekend I saw two movies: Spielberg’s adaptation of Tintin The Secret of the Unicorn and Michel Haznavicius’s The Artist.  Both movies are set in the1930s. Spielberg put Tintin on steroids. Tintin’s wit and charm disappeared in constant action and visual fireworks. Spielberg overdid it. 

The Artist is the opposite. It is a silent, black-and-white movie that tells the story of technology and progress, through the revolt of the main protagonist, brilliantly played by the French artist Jean Dujardin, against making ‘talking’ movies.   For him making movies is an art of expression and body language, which should not be diluted by sound. The artist is losing his Don-Quixotean-type battle against talking movies till the very end…… (see the movie).  The Artist shows how so little technology could convey powerful messages. Spielberg’s Tintin shows how a lot of technology can minimise the existing message. And, even more telling,  the cinema was packed for Tintin and empty for The Artist.

It is a very valid point and it matters! While in the early days, prefixes e-/virtual/cyber/digital were used interchangeably, today they indicate a particular policy approach or belonging to a particular policy circle.

For example, cyber is used mainly in security circles due to the Council of Europe Cybercrime Convention, which was adopted 10 years ago. If you can recall, in 2001, the term cyber was the main prefix. Everything was cyber  – diplomacy, universities, love, music. Since then, in the strange way of language evolution, cyber has gradually disappeared from public use, but has remained in use in security circles (ITU’s Global Cybersecurity Agenda; NATO’s Cyber defence policy, Estonia’s Cyber Defence Center of Excellence, …)

Fascinated with the ways in which words move in and out of favour, I have followed the evolution of the use of prefixes during the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) process.  Back in 2002, the prefix e- was very fashionable, largely because of e-commerce. The first use came from business circles who saw the Internet mainly through commercial lenses. e- was more directly pushed in the policy space. In the EU’s Lisbon Agenda (2000), e- was the most frequently used prefix. It is not suprising that the EU influenced the use of e- at the Pan-European Bucharest Regional Meeting. e- became the main prefix in all WSIS texts, including the final documents documents from WSIS-Geneva (2003) and WSIS-Tunis (2005). WSIS implementation is centred on action lines including e-government, e-business, e-learning, e-health, e-employment, e-agriculture, and e-science.

If you listen carefully, e- is not as present as it used to be. Even the EU has abandoned e-  recently, trying, most likely, to distance itself from the failed Lisbon Agenda. Today, digital is fashionable. In the past it was used mainly in development circles to represent the digital divide. Today,  the EU has a Digital Agenda for Europe. Great Britain has digital diplomacy. The USA has digital diplomacy but the International Strategy for Cyberspace.

Try to think of what you associate these prefixes with. Is the first association with e- business, cybersecurity, and digital development? And what about virtual? Has it been virtually abandoned?

Participants at the London Cybersecurity Conference 2011

How many things have changed between 1875 when the ITU held its historical telegraph conference in St. Petersburg and today, when, many participants are attending a cybersecurity conference in London. Not much. In 1875 one of the most controversial issue was the balance between the protection of free communication and the need to protect security and public order. A compromise was reached through an age-old diplomatic technique: diplomatic ambiguity. While Article 2 of the St Petersburg Convention guaranteed the privacy of telegraph communication,  Article 7 limited this privacy and introduced the possibility of state censorship. The USA refused to sign the Convention because of the censorship Article 7.

As in 1875, the 2011 London Conference started by stating the need to strike the right balance between freedom of expression and cybersecurity. Although, many argue, and rightly so, that freedom and security do not excluded each other, it is very likely that when it comes to the policy formulations this balancing act need to be established.

The first morning of the London Conference showed an interesting focus on cybercrime (not military security) on the security side of the scale, and freedom of expression (not privacy) on the human rights side of the scale. Let us see how the balance will shift by the end of the conference …..

Learning, like digestion, is challenged by our biological limitations. On average, our short-term memory can hold eight pieces of information, which are forgotten quickly when new information arrives. The latest cognitive research shows that the consolidation of long-term memory takes much longer through a complex interplay of the cortex and the hippocampus. Teaching experience and cognitive research show that new knowledge is best acquired through a gradual process that takes time. If the knowledge is crammed in all at once, learning is not possible. Paradoxically, slower can be faster. Books online, millions of podcasts and information at our fingertips cannot push these biological and cognitive limitations that we, as humans, have.

Increasingly typical

This is why, in this era of obsession with speed, my visit to the College of Europe inspired me to think of  ‘slow knowledge’. The College of Europe is based in an old building with a big library. There are computers, but the rush of technologically driven places is absent.  I was particularly fascinated that at the conference itself, only about 15 out of 150 participants in the conference room used notebooks and iPads. It is not surprising that the conference generated a high quality discussion. Participants were present both physically and mentally, unlike in most of today’s conferences, where at least half of the participants are somewhere else via the Internet, although physically sitting in the conference room itself.  Bruges, often called the Venice of the North, provides an appropriate setting for slow learning.  Ancient buildings, small streets, water channels, the many pubs and restaurants are well-suited for reflection and thinking.

During the official dinner, I mentioned this ‘slow knowledge’ concept to a few of my hosts. Their reaction was indicative. They were apologetic for the fact that the College is not fast and ‘modern’ enough. In the current lingo of speed and efficiency, ‘slow’ has negative connotations, even when it is actually faster, as is the case with learning.

“Success drawing” reminded me of a question on my entrance exam to diplomatcy of the former Yugoslavia. A member of the examination board pushed a paper across the table and asked me to connect two dots diplomatically. The absurdity of the question helped me to answer it “correctly”.

“Straight lines” are simple visualisation of our rational and scientific approach to life and planning. The further we move from science to real life, the more the lines get bent. A new curve is formed in the line by each requirement of emotions and perceptions, institutional dynamics,  and politics, to name a few.

Recently, I discussed with colleagues limits of planning in social media projects. In social media, which, of course, is very “social”, the lines are rarely straight. The usefulness of planning is limited. At the same time, we have to plan, since the success of a social media campaign depends on a well-organised and sustained campaigns. It is paradoxical situation or yet another  confirmatoin of Niels Bohr’s famous quote:

Profound thruths are recongised by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are obviously absurd.

These words are spoken by young aristocrat Tancredi – in the novel The  Leopard, by Tomasi di Lampedusa. These words are loaded with decadence, cynicism,  resignation, and even despair. Change is self-defeating – it only leads to renewed  stasis.

These words are quoted endlessly, so at the end of a desultory diplomatic  negotiating round, after a tactical struggle under the rule: “nothing is agreed  until everything is agreed”.

At the other end of the world, four hundred years ago, the Japanese  swordsman Miyamoto Musashi was saying just about the same thing: “Among the important elements of this science  [On footwork] is what is called complementary stepping; this is essential.  Complementary stepping means that you do not move one foot alone. When you  slash, when you pull back, and even when you parry, you step  right-left-right-left, with complementary steps. Be very sure not to step with  one foot alone.”[1]

Come to think of it – it makes perfect sense. If you are in an optimal equilibrium,  well balanced on your two feet, to achieve a different equilibrium, you need to  move both feet. For, if by moving  just one foot one could improve the equilibrium, one would be badly positioned to begin with. By moving one foot only, on the other hand, one only would destroy  the original equilibrium. If we want things to stay as they are, everything  will have to change.

Note the essential difference in outlook, however. Here change is the  source of new equilibrium and opportunity. Change is forward looking and  dynamic – and creative. This reflects the Daoist worldview – proper equilibrium  of yin and yang generates qi. Qi is “vital energy” and “breath of life”,  and inevitably linked to proper balance of yin  and yang[2].

The  stiff and strong

Are Death’s companions

The soft and weak

Are life’s companions.

Therefore,

The strongest armies do not  conquer,

The greatest trees are cut  down.

The strong and great sink  down

The soft and weak rise up.

Daode jing (Ch. 76)

Now I’m not writing this to give a lecturette on Oriental philosophy – but to  point to that qi got missing in  translation. Everyone in the West knows about yin and yang – what about  the resulting qi? So engrained is our  dualistic conceptual framework – we don’t even realise that a most important  element is missing.

When speaking to the “other”, and particularly when preaching, rather than  listening to the “other” (as in a “command-and control” top-down diplomatic  structure) we may create huge difficulties in communication by eliding the “other’s”  worldview to fit our mental framework.

Which reminds me of my 1972 visit to Ifakara in Tanzania’s deep south,  where Mao Zedong’s were then building the Tazara Railway meant to link Tanzania  and Zambia. One of the Chinese workers has set upon himself to teach local  workers from Mao’s Red Book. He stood, waving the booklet, while the workers  rested lazily under a huge mango tree. At a distance, I watched the scene, standing next to a Swiss Franciscan monk. He assured me: “Chinese will never  make inroads here, for the Chinese have all come without their women. Africans just  can’t comprehend living without women.” I respectfully nodded in agreement, stealing  a look at his cassock.

Ha!  Ha! Ha!

If my expression is joyful I will feel less  oppressed;

Worldly troubles will be transformed into a  joyful expression –

To feel oppressed on behalf of others in the  end is no help:

The great Dao can still emerge in the midst of  happiness.

If the state is able to be happy; the sovereign  and his ministers will unite in joy;

In a joyful reception hall father and son will  join together.

Abundant happiness among brothers lets the  thorned tree flourish;

If husband and wife can be happy the will  harmonize like the Qin and Se.

How could host or guest tolerate a lack of  pleasantness?

If superior and subordinate have joyful sentiments, differentiation will be all the more strict.

Ha! Ha! Ha!

(probably Luo Ping, who also did the painting)

I
have argued for a role of poetry in diplomacy. This time, it is laughter. As  Musashi says: one has to practice it every day.

Jua Kali

Earlier this morning I was asked to chair an introductory session on the IGF. We were supposed to explain to complete novices what Internet governance is about. Quite a big task! I used the metaphor of jou kali. The Internet was developed through  jou kali or unintentional creativity. Initially, it was created to connect computers not people. But people started communicating … e-mail was discovered later on … people at CERN, trying to find a solution for document management ended with HTML and WWW …. the owner of E-bay trying to exchange his wife’s PEZ dispensers on the Internet discovered a new business. The list of such jou kali solutions is a long one.

The “problem” started, step by step, when jua kali solutions created the Internet we have today, a critical information infrastructure of modern society. It is as if the  jua kali economy driving on the roads of Nairobi became the basis of the Kenyan economy and society. Internet governance was faced with one of the most critical challenges of modern society: how to preserve its  jua kali creative energy, while making sure that the Internet is secure and run in public interest. This is the underlying question of all Internet governance debates. Ultimately, it is what the IGF is about.

At the event itself, the IGF crowd is going through its annual ritual. Some patterns have been established with GigaNet and APC pre-events. One innovation is the High Level Ministerial segment. One experienced IGF-er passed the comment that even after six years, we have not managed to put different IGFs ‘in the same room’ . While ministers had a ‘blue sky event’ with speeches on broadband and major achievements, the sky didn’t look quite as blue in conference room next door where civil society and academia warned us about growing risks for the Internet. How can they communicate? Can we harness this diversity of views and ideas?

The Nairobi IGF is an IGF in transition. It will pose more questions than provide answers. Sometimes, the key is to ask the right questions. However, it is important that we make a start on providing some answers when it comes to IGF itself. Can it fill the widening gap in global Internet governance? How can the IGF adjust to fast changes in global policy? What needs to be changed and what should remain as it is?

Even a quick glimpse of the IGF agenda shows that this will be the main theme: Improving the IGF: How can we get the most out of IGF Improvement Processes? Enhanced Intra-Stakeholder Diversity and Intra-stakeholder Balance in Multi-Stakeholder Internet Governance, Mapping Internet Governance, IGF Improvements, Internet Governance Principles: Initiatives Toward the Improvement of a Global Internet Governance, Reflection on the Indian Proposal Towards an IGF 2.0, e-Participation Principles, e-Participation Principles

The IGF experience shows that e-participation can bring people into the processes, ensuring that the diversity and complexity of voices are heard.  E-participation can help close the gap between the limitations of traditional meetings and the growing need for people to be involved in global policy. Even the most successful IGFs don’t have more than 2000 participants. What about the remaining billions who will be impacted by Internet policy but have no input into the process?

E-participation can also help effective negotiations. Can thousands people in the room really discuss issue? Not realistically. Most studies show that 12–15 people is the optimum size for substantive discussion. Beyond that, events move into ‘megaphone diplomacy’. Here, effective e-tools can also help by aggregating different views and harnessing different voices.

Over the course of the last give IGFs, we have seen the gradual evolution from e-observation (broadcasting/webcasting) into the first elements of substantive e-participation. Remote hubs gather people at local events. This year more than 40 hubs will play an integral part of IGF-Nairobi. They will provide unique input by linking global discussions in Nairobi to local contexts.

E-participation at the IGF provides a rich experience and the basis for the next step. Now that we have tested and proven the basic concept and technical structures of e-participation, it is time to study the principles that should guide this important tool. DiploFoundation is organising Workshop 67 to be held on 29 September at 9 am Nairobi, (EAT UTC/GMT +3) where participants and panellists will analyse and propose basic principles for e-participation in global policy processes, as well as noting guidelines for e-participation that emerge during the workshop.

The output of this roundtable will be a draft list of principles for later discussion. These principles will not simply be guidelines, such as: ‘all panels should have a remote moderator to interact with remote participants and facilitate their interventions in the sessions’, although we expect to hear and note such guidelines as well. Rather, the objective of the workshop is to gather input for principles such as (informal draft possibility) ‘E-participation, and specifically remote participation should be offered to ensure inclusion of unheard voices in global policy process meetings.’

Your ideas and input are important to this process. If you will not be in Nairobi for the IGF, please try to join us remotely, following the links that will be available at http://igf2011.diplomacy.edu/ during the IGF, from 27–30 September. You are also invited to post your ideas here for inclusion in the discussion. How can and should e-participation be used to reduce the digital divide? What should be the standard e-participation framework for international policy conferences and policy processes? Your voice is important. Let us know!

If you walk, you get more of the street buzz including local corner shops, Shisha-smokers, street gamblers waiting for naive tourists, chess-players in the Bastion park. Time moves slowly.

If you are on a bike, you are in ‘globalisation rhythm’. Bikers are the most rational and pragmatic navigators of Geneva. Geneva is flat and you can easily reach any point within a maximum of 15 minutes. Bikers move with  purpose.

Car navigation is the most mysterious. The city planners discourage people from driving cars (narrowing Rue des Lausanne). Drivers are usually people who are forced to use  cars, either to transport children from school to other activities, or perhaps diplomats doing it out of protocol or the super-rich doing it for security reasons. You can see the frustrated expressions of people sitting in Rolls Royces caught in the traffic jam near Mont Blanc bridge. The frustration of waiting in  million-dollar car when others are walking “free of charge” around the lake contrasts sharply near the bridge.

Public transport is  probably the most representative of how the Geneva population moves. You have everything from lonely ageing people who use public transport to socialise, Roma musicians who play their way through, and bankers in their dark suits.

Last Sunday I navigated Geneva in my mind by visiting a few places linked to great philosophers. We can think of other tours of humanitarian Geneva, ‘the Geneva of prominent exiles’, … . Think of some other Geneva tour, be it imaginary or real ….