Silicon Hutong

History for Geeks (like me)

In the Hutong

Trying to keep the TV off

1947 hrs.

Apart from being an all-around fan of things technological (geek), I have over the past few years become fascinated by the history of computing and information technology. You may guffaw, given that so much of all of this has come to pass during our lifetimes, but I've always been a history buff (I was one course short of making the national history honor society in university), and I've always found that a mashup of two of my interests is usually worth exploring.

I started by adding the quarterly Annals of the History of Computing to my IEEE membership each year, and was amply rewarded. Not only are there some incredible stories from the past 50 years that can only now be told, we are now able to look at the evolution of information technology from an historical perspective. 

There is also a growing library of books on the topic, like ENIAC, the Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer, Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer, Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac was Made, and Tracy Kidder's superb The Soul of a New Machine, which was written as journalism but now serves as excellent history. 

So I was interested when I got an invitation a couple of days ago from the IT History Society to join their ranks. I took them up, even though it looks like it is still early days for the organization. If you are the least interested, membership is free and it looks quite cool. The organization is supported by corporate members like Intel, HP, Symantec, Microsoft, IBM, and Applied Materials, and counts among its institutional members some of the leading lights of the Internet, like the Association for Computing Machinery, the IEEE History Center, the Internet Archive, and the Smithsonian. 

Check it out - the membership form is here.  

A bloggers eye view of tech in Asia

In the Hutong

Honorable mention is more than good enough

1849 hrs.

If you are looking to get a feel for what is happening in Asian technology generally and the region's online world specifically, do check out OpenWeb.Asia.

It's just getting going, but it's already on my Daily Scour list. Kaiser likens it to an alltop.com site focused Asian technology news and blog resources. 

Discovering: Alltop

Starbucks Guomao 1

Culling CJW cafe from the list

1315 hrs.

So Guy Kawasaki is regularly Twittering and blogging about his new web venture, Alltop.com, which promises to deliver all the top blogs, all the time, delivered by topic-specific categories. As with all his ventures, we in the Hutong wish Guy luck - he's one of the good guys, and deserving of whatever good fortune life sees fit to shower upon him. 

If his China section is any indication, the site is well worth a look. Bit of a challenge for many of us in China, however, who must deal with Net Nanny's ongoing discomfort with feedburner et al.

MindMeat for Businesspeople: ChangeThis

Nordstrom Ala Moana
Watching the Party Secretary search for her Mother's Day gift
1052 hrs local

If you have an interest in business and management, either aspirational, functional, or academic, one online resource that is well worth mining is ChangeThis.

ChangeThis, for those who haven't run across it, is essentially a repository of manifestos - public declarations of principles - by people who think deeply about an aspect of business, leadership, people, or life. Each manifesto averages around 14 pages and comes packaged in a consistent pdf format for easy downloading, reading or printing.

The level of contributions is consistently high. Early contributors included Tom Peters, Seth Godin, and Guy Kawasaki; the latter, like many of those contributing manifestos, took the opportunity to summarize the key points of his most recent book.

Not all contributions are useful or relevant, and some are downright irritating, but the worthwhile and thought-provoking content far outweighs the self-promotional and boring.

A starter selection:

"Competing in a Flat World: The Perils and Promise of Global Supply Chains" by Dr. Victor Fung and Dr. William Fung, Group Chairman and Group Managing Director (respectively) of the Li & Fung Group;

"The Hard Reality of Semiglobalization...And how to profit from it" by IESE professor Pankaj Ghemawat, who doesn't think the world is so flat after all;

"Marketing Mismatch: When New Won't Work with Old (Riffs on a Meatball Sundae" by author and marketing gadfly Seth Godin;

"The Elongating Tail of Brand Communication" by Ogilvy's Mohammed Iqbal;

"Work is Broken: Here's How We Fix It" by the late Marc Orchant;

"Seduced by Success: How the Best Companies Survive the 9 Traps of Winning" by Robert Herbold, former COO of Microsoft;

"Ideaicide: How to Avoid It And Get What You Want" by consultants Alan Parr and Karen Ansbaugh;

"The Gobbledygook Manifesto" by public relations strategist David Meerman Scott

"100 Ways to Help You Succeed/Make Money, Part II" by uberguru Tom Peters;

"The Greening of Business: Recent Trends and Remaining Hurdles" by Green to Gold author Andrew Winston.

Cross-post: Erudite site

The Lido Office Building, Beijing 
Eavesdropping in Korean 
1505 hrs.

In an Internet filled with fluff and flame, there are still a few websites that speak cogently to the highest parts of your frontal cortex.

One that I enjoy immensely - especially when I virulently disagree with it - is Arts & Letters Daily, a site owned and operated by the Chronicle of Higher Education. The links on their front page would make for weeks of brain tickling reading.

The editors have some very clear ideas about a lot of their subjects and choose their links accordingly. On some topics their selections tend to skew toward a clear viewpoint (they are moderately anti-religion, to put it generously), and quick survey of their recent links about China suggest a fairly skeptical view among editors about China and its prospects:

China's Valley of Tears: Is Authoritarian Capitalism the Future by Slavoj Zizek

China's Syndrome of Lawless Growth by John Lee, the author of Will China Fail?, in The Australian

The Great Leap Backward? by Elizabeth Economy in Foreign Affairs

 
A Nation of Outlaws by Stephen Mihm, author of the recent superb historical perspective A Nation of Counterfeiters, from The Boston Globe.

My Short March Through China by Gary Rosen from Commentary

Big Red Checkbook by John Feffer in The Nation 

So enjoy, but be aware that despite its pedigree as a publication catering to intellectuals, there is a clear - possibly unintentional - editorial bent at work.

Cross-post: Outsourcing Insight

In the Hutong 
Culling the herd 
1657 hrs.

It is perilously easy to plunge into one's navel here in China, to be absorbed by all things Chinese and to lose sight both of the global context in which we all operate, and the way China is seen in other parts of the world. While I'm a vocal advocate of immersion as a way to understand the way things work here, I've also learned that understanding China demands currency in global business, economic, political, and security affairs.

I tend to read for insight as much as information, and by trial and error I'm gradually honing my reading list to ensure that I've got a good balance of both.

Each year, as a habit, I go through a culling process to ensure I'm getting the most for my time - and my cash.

Stuff I'll be paying for in 2008:

1. The Economist - Still the best - if not the only - truly global news weekly, The Economist should be creating tremendous pressure on Time and Newsweek to improve their level of their coverage. Given that the latter two publications are perfectly happy to remain middlebrow (and thus likely doomed to meld into the deepening grey goo that is print media), their often-brilliant and always-engaging British rival looks to dominate its niche (and our attention) for some time to come. I mean, come on - any magazine that would run a cover photo of Kim Jong-Il with the caption "Greetings, earthlings" is the kind of publication we all should be reading.

2. BusinessWeek - What I appreciate about this publication is that, unlike Forbes and Fortune, BW rarely plays the role of business fanboy, and so delivers stories that ask discomfiting questions and that catch trends ahead of the curve. What I typically do is first listen to editor John Byrne's weekly podcast on the cover story, then I dive into the magazine (which lands in my laptop courtesy of Zinio even before it lands on US newsstands.)

3. The Atlantic - I like to have one monthly that runs thoughtful stories in my media mix. Esquire runs a close second and Vanity Fair third, but I find that they spend too much time covering matters of parochial interest. That bums me because Dr. Tom Barnett, the grand strategist who wrote The Pentagon's New Mapand A Blueprint for Action is a regular Esquire contributor. The Atlantic also offers access to over a decade of back issues online, which is one of my must-haves when subscribing to a publication.

4. IEEE Spectrum - Thirty-two pages of condensed innovation once a month, Spectrum gets pigeonholed as an engineer's magazine, and that's unfair. If you want a clear, unhyped view of the direction of electronic and computer innovation, this is the publication for you. I used to love reading Wired in the old days before Conde Nast got hold of the thing. Every year when I get back to the U.S. I'll pick up the latest copy at the newsstand and decide if I want to subscribe. I only wish they'd produce a downloadable electronic version. Ah, well.

You'll notice there are no dailies on the list. I have to admit to being conflicted. On a day-to-day basis I really focus on the China-related stuff, and my RSS reader tends to serve very well for that. I didn't renew either my WSJ or my FT subscriptions when my credit card company issued me a new card number following a security breach. I have no desire to send money to the News Corp publications, especially as it looks like WSJ.com is going to be free in a few months, anyway. I do, however, sorely miss the writing of the WSJ's and FT's China reporters - they all deserve to be in newsweeklies that would appreciate their long-form stories.