The Silent "I"

Movie Review: The Fifth Estate

My husband and I went to see The Fifth Estate on our weekly date night this week (Alternate Title: Julian Assange is a Big Weirdo). We had to choose between that and watching the Red Sox play the Cardinals in the World Series, two teams we like watching about as much as we enjoyed the his 'n hers colonoscopies we got when we turned 50.  We both like Benedict Cumberbatch, so we thought, how bad could it be?  and visited our local multiplex. We live on the edge, I know.

The Fifth Estate tells the story of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, a website that allows whistleblowers/pissed-off employees to post confidential or even classified documents on the site anonymously.  The idea is that if the information is out there, without any kind of editing or explanation, corruption can be exposed to the light of day.  WikiLeaks didn't edit or filter the documents, just published them for the world to judge.  The film poses such heady questions as: Is it morally responsible or ethically to post information that could potentially expose individuals who assist in intelligence operations? Where do we draw the line between individual privacy and national security? Is Julian Assange a hero or a villain? And more importantly, what's up with his hair?

The opening sequence of the movie is a history of media, from the invention of the printing press to Twitter, all boiled down into a 5 minute montage of clips. It's kind of like the "I See Dead People" montage at the Oscars.  The story is told through the point of view of one of the WikiLeaks founders, Daniel Berg.  In the film, Julian Assange sees Daniel as more of a trusty  minion than co-creator. even though nobody else seem to care except Daniel.  Daniel is portrayed as the wide-eyed innocent with a heart of gold, while Assange is the crazy visionary with a sketchy background involving cults, hackers, and bottles of L'Oreal Platinum Blonde #37.

Assange is the Willie Wonka to Daniel's Charlie, with Assange introducing Daniel to a world of pure imagination and possible revolution on the internet. The big wide web is symbolically represented by a vast room filled with desks with computers on them, with anonymous users sending in information to WikiLeaks. The filmmaker uses symbols like this to good effect, because watching two guys coding for two hours would be even worse than watching a Cardinals-Red Sox series for a Giants fan.

Boiled down to its essence, the plot is the same as the  Jobs nerdmance: Morally grounded boy meets megalomaniacal visionary; the pair create something big from nothing but a dream; tearful break-up ensues. (See also: The Social Network's Zuck and Eduardo nerdmance gone wrong).

Benedict Cumberbatch played the Cumberbatch role, which is to say, the Steely-Eyed, Socially Awkward, Genius-Liar. Cumberbatch gnaws his way through a whole warehouse full of scenery, with the other actors looking on in awe. Or maybe terror.  I like Cumberbatch and enjoyed watching him on the BBC Sherlock series, as well as the reincarnated Star Trek films. This performance seemed to be a mash-up of his prior performances, though I'm told he does a brilliant Stephen Hawking that is quite different from his other roles.

Overall, I'm glad we saw the movie, since the details of the WikiLeaks saga have always been confusing to me. I'm not sure that it is any more clear to me now or how much of this was fact and how much fiction. Daniel and the hive of newspaper editors come across as principled and thoughtful, whereas Assange's primary motive seems to be to get attention due to a crappy childhood. Like my mom always says, "No matter what, they always blame the mother."

I imagine that the real Julian Assange must be getting bored hanging out in the Peruvian embassy eating ceviche, reading reviews of this movie, and attempting to discredit Daniel Berg.  In the movie, he's always going to or coming from some exotic location or another and stirring the internet pot, so sitting inside an embassy for a year must be pretty tedious for him. I suppose the possibility of going to jail in Sweden or to Gitmo would be worse, so there's not much incentive for him to leave.  If he gets truly bored, there's always the World Series.

APEC Summit on Women & the Economy

Romi Haan was a housewife in South Korea with a problem: how to keep the floors clean without spending hours a day doing it.  Because of the ondol tradition of heating homes through the floor, Koreans spend a great deal of time at home in a central room, on the floor.  As Romi says, "Koreans live on the floor. We sleep on the floor. We eat on the floor. We sit on the floor. We play on the floor." 

Keeping the floor clean is serious business for Korean women, and means daily washings, down on their hands and knees.  Romi wanted to free herself of this daily chore, or make it a little easier for herself and her friends.  So, she imagined a steam cleaner to do just that: clean the floor with less effort and cut the time spent on washing the floor in half. It was a way to get women up off the floor and out into the world.

When Romi approached a bank about a government loan program to get her product made, the bank officer asked her, "What company did your husband bankrupt that makes you now have to work?  Are you doing this for him?"

When she told him that her husband was not the reason she wanted to go into business, he didn't believe her. Her application was denied. Romi didn't take no for an answer, and persisted with her dream. She mortgaged her home and quit her job to pursue her invention.  She was able to get her business up and running in three years, but faced other hurdles. 

When Romi tried to market and distribute her product, she was met with skepticism and disdain by male buyers for department stores. She would go in to talk to them, and they would ask her, "Why do you need a steam cleaner when you have a vacuum cleaner?"

She explained that a vacuum cleaner would sweep the floor, but her cleaner would mop it. After an hour-long discussion the buyer would ask again, "Why do you need a steam cleaner when you have a vacuum cleaner?"

Ten years later, Romi Haan is now the CEO of a multinational, multimillion dollar appliance and beauty products company, Haan Corporation. She is one of the few female CEOs in South Korea, and her business is thriving. She represents a new breed of Korean women executives and a model of successful entrepreneurship. Her story is not atypical of the challenges that women face in the global economy, but her success is unfortunately too rare.

I was privileged to hear Romi's story firsthand at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Women & the Economy Summit in San Francisco recently. The conference brought together women leaders, government officials, diplomats, and corporate innovators to discuss actions to improve the lives of women in the Asia-Pacific region, and by doing so, the world's economy. Recognizing that women are a vast, largely untapped resource for change and growth, the group spent a week in San Francisco working on plans for change.  This was one of several meetings around the Pacific Rim leading up to the APEC Summit in Hawaii in November, which President Obama will attend.

The Conference Keynote was delivered by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a woman who has inspired a generation of women to enter political life to try to dismantle the political barriers that keep women from fully participating in economic growth.  Secretary Clinton's speech was a call to action, for all nations to tap the power, creativity, and drive of women to help elevate all people, across all regions.

Barbie & Ken Explain It All To You

The Island of Misfit Toy Testers

All these toy recalls are make my head hurt.  You'd think I've been sucking on some Aquadots or something.  It's making my head hurt, because once again, George Bush's cronyism and inability to hire competent people at the highest levels of government is coming back to bite us.  This time, it's not us exactly, it's our kids.

Nancy Nord is the head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, an agency that is supposed to be monitoring imported products and "saving lives and keeping families safe."  She's been offered additional funding by Congress to hire more inspectors (currently, there's only one).  She said, "No thanks."  I first got notice of this from an e-mail from Mom's Rising a few days ago. 

The MomsRising e-mail noted that their reaction was "You've got to be kidding me," when they heard about this, which was my reaction as well.  As a manager, if someone offered me money to hire additional staff, I'd take it in a New York minute.  Why on earth would she turn down something like this, especially right before Christmas, when toys from all over the world will be flooding the stores?

According to the Associated Press, Nancy didn't like a couple of things about the appropriations bill, including extending protections to whistleblowers and making it easier for the government to make reports of faulty products public.  So, basically, she's covering her ass against complaints from the toy industry, and at the same time, turning down funding that would provide additional inspectors to protect our children.

That Old Devil Moon

Last night, between about 2 and 4 am, there was a lunar eclipse that produced a red moon.  I know this because I read about it online earlier in the day, and because I was awake at 3 am to witness this magical sight.  The funny thing was, my entire family saw it, too.

I have bouts of insomnia.  Last night, I was fretting over something bad that happened yesterday, unable to quiet some inner voices telling me that I had let my son down in a big way. 

I finally tried to get some sleep around 2:30 am, when suddenly, Frank sat bolt upright in bed, then headed out the door.  I thought he might be going to the bathroom, but when he didn't come back for ten minutes, I thought he might have gone to check on Alex or had an uncommon bout of sleepwalking.  Just when I was about to go look for him, he came back and went back to bed.

When he returned, I noticed Alex coming out of the bathroom.  I got up to see if he was having bad dreams or if he needed anything.  He said he was fine, but couldn't sleep.  I think he was nervous about the first day of second grade.

I remembered the eclipse and asked him if he wanted to see the red moon with me.  He said, "Cool!"

We walked outside in our pajamas and bare feet and stared up at the sky from our driveway.  We don't live on a busy street, so it seemed unlikely we would be seen.  We stared up at the sky together, holding hands and looking at the red mist covering the moon, called the October Blood Moon.  It looked like a hazy red balloon lost in the night sky.

Alex and I stood looking at the marvel in the sky for a few minutes, holding hands.  We went back in and went to bed, and he fell asleep quickly between Frank and me, just like when he was a baby.  I'm sure he's probably tired today, for the first day of school.  But, I think that little trip outside to see something marvelous in the night sky was entirely worth it.

Happy Women's Equality Day

Did you know that August 26 is Women's Equality Day in the US?  This day commemorates the passage of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, giving women the right to vote.  The right for women to vote was first proposed in 1848, but did not become law until 1920, 72 years later.  For 72 years, American women organized, rallied, and fought for the right to vote, something we take for granted today. 

The first country to give women the right to vote was New Zealand in 1893, but women in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait still do not have the right to vote.   Even though the 19th amendment was ratified by a narrow margin in 1920, Mississippi did not officially ratify it until 1983.

Women's Equality Day was first celebrated in 1971, after New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug proposed to mark August 26 as Women's Equality Day.  I had the honor of meeting Bella Abzug in 1980 at a rally.  She was a formidable, charming woman with a great passion for social change and women's rights.  She died in 1998.

In 1995, at the World Summit on Economic Development in Copenhagen, Bella said:

Our struggle is about resisting the slide into a morass of anarchy, violence, intolerance, inequality and injustice.

Our struggle is about reversing the trends of social, economic, political and ecological crisis.

Our struggle is about creating sustainable lives, and attainable dreams...

Because the root of the problem is persistent inequalities and growing inequities.

For us to realize our dreams, we must keep our heads in the clouds and our feet on the ground.

We must marshall our courage and creativity and act together...

If we love ourselves, if we love our young, if we love our country and the earth, -- and we do -- then that same motivation must move us to create not only the words but the actions to remove the great divide between rich and poor.

I hope that all women of voting age in the US will remember what a precious gift it is to be able to vote.  I hope that all women will take to heart Bella's words and know that the first act in the struggle for equality and justice for all people is to exercise your right to vote.

Banner from Emily's List, an organization dedicated to supporting Democratic women in their bids to be elected to office.

Entrepreneurs for Obama, Panel Discussion

The final part of the Entrepreneurs for Obama evening consisted of a panel discussion involving three Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and Joe Rospars, Barack Obama's New Media Director, who agreed to stay on after his presentation.  The discussion was moderated by former California Controller, Steve Westly.  On hand were Seth Sternberg of Meebo, Dave Mandelkern, of QuickHealth, and Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn.

Each of the panelists opened with a few words about why they were for Obama, then offered some advice to the campaign.  They were asked to address the question of how to use technology to inspire people, and what the campaign can do in the next two weeks to use existing technology to their advantage  Later, they were also asked by members of the audience for advice on how to address the facts that the average voter age is 52.5, and the Kerry campaign's mistake of focusing too much on the cities and not enough on the suburbs and exurbs.

Seth Sternberg opened the discussion by saying that he felt the Obama campaign was not so much about technology as about interacting with real people, and that Obama's message reached out to a wide swath.  He thought that the fact that Obama was able to raise a tremendous amount of money in small increments was an indicator of Obama's appeal.  He felt that Obama was someone who really wanted to "hear your issues" and listen to and embrace people.

Seth's ideas for using technology in the near-term were to create widgets for voter registration and fundraising that could be spread virally through MySpace and blogs.  He also cautioned that candidates often become too risk-averse based on polls as the campaign wears on, and that Obama should not be afraid to take big risks.  He stated that the use of technology to mobilize people is fantastic. 

He also mentioned that blogs and social media now influence the press, which influences older voters and those who do not use social media.  I thought this was an excellent point.  Not every blogger has the readership of Kos, but most bloggers have developed a community of people who read them and who are to some degree influenced or engaged by them.  Even a small blog like this one gets offers from advertisers and quoted in the press from time to time.  In the past month, I've spoke to the San Jose Mercury News and the Wall Street Journal on topics relating to family life.  The power of the blog cannot be underestimated.

Dave Mandelkern talked about how California political discussions having an "echo chamber effect."  If past elections had been decided at the Stanford Faculty Club, he quipped, we would be just finishing up Al Gore's second term, perhaps in an unbroken line of Democrats going back to President Adlai Stevenson.  He thought the key to this election is to capture the enthusiasm of California and have it spill over to Florida and Ohio.  There needs to be a way to leverage contacts in key swing states, so that California campaigners are not left cold-calling voters in those states.  Dave thought that "knowing how to count" was a crucial element in winning the election, stating that they not only have to know the metrics,  but also actually get people to turn out to vote.

Dave said that Obama needs to look ahead to the general election and stop the rhetoric of the "red state/blue state" dichotomy.  There are pockets of conservative and liberal voters in every state, and many, many people who are fed up with the current politics in Washington.  Obama needs to be able to tap into that dissatisfaction and reach out to sway voters who may have voted for Bush the last time.

Reid Hoffman echoed some of what Seth and Dave had to say, and added that he felt that there is a "great demand for something new" in this country, and that Obama fits the bill.  Obama has the energy, charisma and willingness to take a stand that people look for in a leader.  He said that he often tells people that "I never thought I'd feel nostalgic for Reagan," but after six years of George Bush, he does.

Reid suggested that the campaign can appeal to older voters by putting voter information in PDF form so that organizers can print out the information and easily hand it out to people in retirement communities or other places where voters tend not to have access to computers.  He also thought that the website was too text heavy and that some of Obama's key points should be put up on YouTube or in video format so that people have more opportunities to hear his voice.  Reid also suggest that the campaign could make use of tools like Digg.

If you look at the Obama '08 website, there is a section called "BarackTV" which has snippets of video of various speeches, but I agree with Reid that he should have more video that is issue-centric, and maybe something that is downloadable. I would have gladly put some video up on this post, if it would have been available, but I didn't want to go searching YouTube to find it.

I think the Obama website is doing a great job of capturing the grass-roots enthusiasm and allowing people to voice their opinions and concerns.  My concern with it is that "echo chamber" effect that Dave mentioned.  People who are using the Obama (or Edwards or Clinton) sites are already convinced that their candidate is the right one, or are trolls there to bait the true believers.  I'd like to see something for those of us who have not yet decided, something that would give a side-by-side analysis of where each of them are the same and where they significantly differ from one another, without demeaning the other candidates.  That said, I don't think that it's the campaign's job to do this; their job is to show their candidate in the most favorable light possible, and they are doing an outstanding job of that.  I got a little choked up watching Barack's mom-and-apple-pie bio, I must admit. 

At the end, Steve Westly gave some closing remarks and mentioned that Hillary Clinton recently hired Ace Smith to run her California campaign.  Smith is well-known in California politics as a negative campaign master.  He didn't see this as a positive sign for the Clinton campaign.  I can't say that I do either, since negative campaign ads are probably the worst thing about elections, and I think turn people off to the point that they prefer not to vote at all.  I would much rather vote for someone than cast a vote against the other candidate.

He also told the story of how Obama is the best unifier of people that he has ever seen.  When Obama came to California in 2006, he wanted to go to Orange County first.  Steve warned against it, and told him he would be better off in Los Angeles or San Francisco.  Obama decided to make his first appearance at the Saddleback Church, an evangelical Christian church in Orange County.  By the end of his speech, Obama was met with a standing ovation.  Steve saw this as a great indicator of Obama's ability to unify and reach out to people, regardless of their beliefs or party affiliations.

I'm not so sure that this was as big a coup as Steve seemed to think it was, since the pastor, Rick Warren, is not normally associated with Falwell, Robertson and other members of the so-called "moral majority."  I think it would be a mistake to write off conservative Christians as a monolithic voting bloc. 

Overall, I had a very favorable impression of the event and the content of the evening.  I felt like I learned something about how the campaign views technology, and how Silicon Valley views the campaign. Steve Spinner and the other organizers were able to pull together an interesting panel of Silicon Valley movers and shakers, a top-level manager from the campaign, and an interactive video-feed (though the technology was not quite up to par, but that's Microsoft's fault, not Obama's).  I hope that I will have a chance to see Obama in person some day.   

On May 31, I will be attending (and hopefully live-blogging) a luncheon with Hillary Clinton.  At this point, it's going to take a lot for her to convince me she's the best person for the job.

Photo:  From Obama '08 Campaign Website.

Entrepreneurs for Obama, Part 2

After the choppy video-feed of Barack Obama, our evening at the Entrepreneurs for Obama meeting got a little more lively and interesting.  Joe Rospars, Obama's Director of New Media, was on-hand to speak to the group about how the campaign is using new media to its advantage.  He gave a Powerpoint presentation (which I thought was very old school), but did a nice job of explaining how the use of the internet has evolved from the Clinton-Dole race of 1996 to now.  Originally, campaigns used the web as static content brochures, which later evolved into a fundraising "bucket" to pour money into, and later into a more interactive environment for people to meet each other and the candidate.

The New Media group within the Obama campaign consists of writers, organizers, designers, and fundraisers who strategize on how to best use the new media platforms to their advantage.  Their primary focus seems to be evolving the website into a place where people can use new media tools like blogging and meet-up software, to voice opinions and share information about the election.  The website is constantly evolving as new tools and ideas are developed by the group.

The secondary goal of the New Media Group is to go outside the website to create a presence on other internet platforms.  Joe mentioned MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook as examples of ways that people can form groups, get information, and show support for the candidate.  Each of these has some limitations.  For example, after a Facebook group has more than 1,000 members, there is no way for an administrator or anyone in the group to push a message out to the group.  There is a Facebook group called "A Million Strong for Obama" that has 350,000 members now, but no way to really use the power of the group to the advantage of the campaign.  He mentioned that Obama now has more MySpace friends than Hillary. 

He mentioned my darling Twitter as an "ugly site" but a quick way to inform people that Obama will be on TV or send out a quick message to people.   And here, I thought it was there so I could find out  what the surf report in Santa Cruz is today, or whether Suburban Turmoil's baby is sleeping more than two hours at a time yet.  Silly me. 

Obama is on my Twitter friends list, as is John Edwards, but my complaint with both of them is that they rarely update on Twitter and often let us know after the fact that something has happened.  Edwards sent a tweet recently that said, "Wasn't Elizabeth great on Larry King last night?"   I would have preferred it if he had said, "Be sure to watch Elizabeth on Larry King tonight."  Otherwise, it's not likely I'll watch Larry King, especially if Dancing with the Stars is on.

Joe also mentioned using LinkedIn and other social networking sites soon.  He talked about Eventful, a site where people can demand that someone come to their town, whether it's Kelly Clarkson or 50 Cent or Barack Obama.  When Obama visited Atlanta, 20,000 people showed up at a rally for him.  They were able to mobilize large numbers because there had been a groundswell on Eventful of people asking for him to come there.

Obama Videoconference

Frank and I attended a meeting of a new group of called Entrepreneurs for Obama, which featured a live videoconference with Barack Obama himself, plus a visit from Joe Rospars, Obama's New Media Director.  This was billed as "an Interactive Technology Forum" for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and members of the venture capital community.  I'm not exactly sure how we got on this list, but it was free, we had a babysitter, and we figured it was a good way to learn more about the candidate. 

Since my addiction to Twitter has grown over the past month or so, I have become increasingly interested in what all the fuss is about this "new media" business.  I haven't decided which candidate to back, although Obama has a certain appeal to me as a mixed-race person, and as his former classmate at Columbia (we graduated the same year).  I was an early Edwards supporter, and still am, but I'm not going to decide who to fully support until I hear what they all have to say.

Overall, I'd say the teleconference part of the evening was a-bomb-a.  The feed kept breaking up, and we only saw jerky still pictures of Obama.  It was like watching one of those awful hostage videos on Al Jazeera, only worse.  Members of the audience were able to get up and ask him direct questions, but it seemed as though every time he started to say anything of substance, it was interrupted by loud, annoying static.  He said at one point, "I swear I'm not doing this on purpose."

The first person who asked a question wanted know why it took him so long to sign on to the Sanders/Boxer Global Warming Bill.  His reply was that they needed buy-in of automakers, otherwise the bill would result in political gridlock.  A nice soundbite (and a pretty good pun) perhaps, but didn't really address the merits of the bill, or whether he jumped on only after it became apparent in the polls that people were behind it. 

I don't doubt that Obama is for measures that would reduce carbon emissions, but I would have liked to hear more about why he now feels this bill is the right piece of legislation to back at this time.  Automakers will go where the profits lead them, and right now it's in SUVs and minivans.  Unfortunately, most of his answer was cut off, so I'm not sure if he had more to say on this topic or not.

In Memoriam