Robert Paterson's Weblog

True Health - Part 4 - The Push Back to Paleo and what it means

First they ignore you - then they laugh at you - then they fight you - then you win.

Today I am going to explore how we are about to experience all of this as we see the power of the Corporate World - more powerful than the Empire in India - go down. We see it now in media but we will see the final battle in the arena of health and food.

It is going to be in this area where the public will awake and discover how they and their children have been betrayed. I will show you today how betrayal is the key flash point of revolution that spreads the meme beyond the initiating cadre to the mass. 

All Imperialists from Rome to Britain and the Institutional/Corporate World have had the best of intentions. For after all Rome did actually do a lot good things. But the price of Empire is loss of freedom. And in the end this is what we all want. Espcially if Empire can no longer offer good roads, peace and justice etc.

The road to Freedom often starts with a funny man in a dhoti. How the Titans of the Empire laughed at Gandhi then. 

This process of ignoring - laughing - fighting and losing is what happens to the establishment in any paradigm shift. Who in 1935 could imagine the British Empire leaving India?

Who can imagine the Corporate Titans of our own time losing control of us?

Today time speeds by - what took decades now takes years. The Mad idea of working with nature and using her models, is very new. Maybe only 20 years old. In terms of a coherent way of eating and its relation to food maybe a decade. Blogging about this began in 2005!

In less than 6 years, millions are involved. The time of "Ignoring" has past.

The old system's immune system has been alerted. And the laughing and the attacks have begun.

"Paleo" is being talked about by the mainstream media as a joke - the Caveman Diet. Just another fad. Ignoring the point that this is not a diet but part of a larger context of health - that of aligning how we live to our evolutionary past.

Expect more "Jokes".

The "Attack" is all about Food Safety.

We are seeing concerted attacks on people who raise animals in a truly safe way - small egg flocks - people growing veggies in their front yard. They tell the mainstream that this food is not safe. Ignoring that the factory systems food is at the centre of our long term chronic health crisis.

Expect more attacks designed to raise the fear of the public and fear among the pioneers.

They will "burn" them as heretics. In modern terms they will humiliate us and take away our livliehood. And do it all in the context of keeping the rest of us safe from heresy. 

The establishment are powerful not just because they have a few Titans at the top but because there are so many functionaries below them. People who make their living and have their power as a result of being in the system. 

But the smart revolutionary does not attack this group. They depend utterly on the Titan. When he goes they go too. The News of the World staff get fired and cannot be rehired. The Mubarak inner circle and support melt away when their man falls.

But they cannot be ignored - they will be the ones who attack the new. Not the Titan himself.

You cannot win by attacking this system directly. They will crush you.

You win by allowing them to commit an outrage on you! It's very Zen!

The Titans destroy themselves by going too far in their attacks. At some point they outrage the sleeping people. 

In India, the innocents were killed at Armritsar. 

Look at what is going on in England now. The entire political class in the UK now has to step back from Murdoch. His henchmen/women have gone too far.

The people did not mind the Hugh Grants of the world or the Royals being hacked. But they cannot tolerate the families of war dead, of murdered children being the targets. And now that Gordon Brown has been seen as being defiled by the Titan, all can see that the only way ahead now to to sweep Murdoch away.

The people move when THEY feel the injustice and the betrayal.

So now to us. What will be the moment?

I see two tracks tnat interact. The power of social media and the increase in awareness that we are all being betrayed by the system.

The power of social media means that the secrets of the Titans can no longer be hidden. The big betrayals are amplified by social media. The power of social media means that dictators can no longer oppress their people without the world looking on. The more they assault their own people - such as in Libya and Syria - the more inevitable it is that they lose.

So what about us in the west. The scale of the deception and so betrayal builds every day.

• The War in Iraq was based on a lie
• We have also lost in Afghanistan trying to support the unsupportable
• The press is being shown to be mainly in the pockets of its owners - it has done its best to hide the truth
• Wall Street owns the recovery and the people are bereft - there is no growth in employment
• The young in Europe and the old are shut out
• The Euro zone and America's credit are on the knife edge but we were told that we have to pay back the bankers

Meanwhile the old contract is being destroyed

• The pensions that boughtv our obediance when we worked for them are going
• The schools and roads that we paid for are in ruins
• The justice system is being gamed
• Even our water system is for sale
• We don't own our homes annymore
• Our children did all we asked and there are no jobs
• We are told that we are not safe and our liberties are removed

You can add to this list - the reasons for consent are melting.

All of this is coming out of the New Media and the stories get bigger and get more traction every day - the Titans are shown not to care about us. They are shown to be cynical manipluators.

And now we come to the big lie - that our health and old age will be looked after by a Ponzi scheme of the transfer payments. 

This demographic and fiscal crisis will be the battle ground where the revolt will take place.

Rising oil and food prices and the debt crisis will all come together and the people will have nothing to lose by taking the risk of leaving the system. 

The entire basis of the western deal with its people will unravel and the people will be betrayed just when they are the most vulnerable.

So what to do? What do you and I do? Not easy question to answer but just as there are patterns of history that show us how true paradigm revolts take place, there are patterns that can help us see our best choices and what will happen in a pattern sense as the revolt gets under way.

Check back in a couple of days.

 

What I think is really at stake if CPB and Pub Media is Defunded

On the surface the attack on Pub Media is based on the idea that the state should not be in the broadcasting business and that this is especially true if the broadcaster is aligned to one point of view.

There is a point to this. Imagine my fellow Pub Media fans if Fox was to now get government funding - you too might go nuts!

But I think that the reason for this attack now is deeper than that.

And I think that the attack is based on the most human of responses. When something new and true and so dangerous arrives on the scene - we laugh at it. But as the new and the true and so the threat to the status quo gets its feet, the power people in the status quo get an insight. 

They can tell at a cellular level that this new thing could be their doom. And their response?

Please let me explain what I think that THEY see and why THEY have started the Inquisition to root out Pub Media.

In the last 5 years, Public Radio and Public TV have started to find a new role for themselves and it is this new role that scares THEM.

This role of course is a Public Service Media organization that gives people who have no voice a voice in the issues that concern them.

CPB is funding a number of experiments that are having results in this key area of informing more than the news cycle and giving people a say. None of this is done in commercial media.

For instance NPR is running a project called Argo - that has picked a number of issues that mean a lot to us the public and created nodes that roll up into a national network - so for instance WBUR in Boston is hosting a local/national conversation about health and healthcare. Or KPBS in San Diego is convening a discussion about the issues of being a military base Town. Or KPCC in southern CA is doing this on Immigration. 

All of this is largely web based - so the stations are also learning how to expand their horizon beyond the "air" and broadcasting.

There are 12 stations involved and the point is to find out how best to do this - to become a rich centre of information outside the news cycle that can be both local and a national resource. Where the public can find the best information and the best conversation about things that concern them. AND SO be truly informed and SO have a real say.

The new is full of music labels complaining. Not only about piracy but of the tight grip just a few large outlets have on what gets played and the costs of getting air. Well guess which media outlet gives the Indie labels the best opportunity for air at the least cost? NPR Music! Here is how the Hollywood Reporter ran this story.  This idea came directly out of the work done back in 2005/6 by all the stations to find a starting point for offering the music audience a place based on their taste and their time rather than simply playing what the station wanted. The music audience and the musician's interests are well served here. Both sides win. This does not happen on commercial media where the interests of the station those that own it rule.

CPB has also backed TV stations like KETC in St Louis who have been exploring how to put the public onto TV and how to offer the public a safe place to have the conversations that are otherwise impossible in America today.

Now known as the Nine Network for Public Media, KETC has a media school, the Nine Academy,  that is turning out hundreds of citizen videographers,. Giving the people the tools to have a voice of their own. 

In 2009 KETC hosted a national project involving more than 30 markets worst hit by the housing crisis to learn how each local TV and Radio stations could work together to offer people help that they could trust. In each market the stations worked to bring together w ide ranges of resources into local networks of trusted help. This is all but impossible for a commercial station. 

In 2010 KETC has been experimenting in how to host a year long "Conversation" about an explosive topic that normally collapses into rhetoric - Immigration. Most of the content is local and much of it made by grads of KETC's school. KETC is learning how to offer people a civil place to hod string views and how to switch the power from the station to the people. Impossible for a commercial station. 

This year KETC is co managing a project that will also be nation and is highly controversial - On how we might improve our schools. 

What THEY fear the most is that this kind of new role for Public Radio and TV may end up with 

• You being better informed - you will have escaped the sound bite world and in music the play list that THEY want
• You will be better engaged - because you will have the real opportunity to have your voice heard and you will have learned the skills to do this well 
• You and your local community will have more power to change things

THIS is what THEY fear.

We may feel that we could and should have made more progress - but THEY can see it.

They care not about Morning Edition, Car Talk or Masterpiece Theatre.

They do care that you may become more informed and more empowered. Public Media is on track to pull this of and so must be stopped. 

I don't see this as a Left or Right Issue. It is do you want to be part of the solution or be passive?

And who are THEY? Follow the money.

Social Business - How do you get there really

Harold nails this for me. I have been struggling to understand the blockage that keeps so many from understanding.

Might it be that we are so used to dealing with "problems" that have known and rational "answers"? That is what school is. "Robert" 2 x 2 what is the answer?" This is how we learned what a "Problem" was. We also knew that there was a Known answer or a Known Algorithm that would produce the answer, We also knew that the best people knew the answers and the algorithms. They were at the top of the class and now are at the top of the organizations. They "Know".

But as we all explore the shift from machine to network, we may know the theory but actually how this plays out in practice cannot be known in advance. Just as Columbus could "Know" that if he sailed west he would find land but he could not know when or what it would be like or how to get there in detail.

Columbus had to explore and feel his way there.

Crossing America in 1805 was to truly explore. Off go Lewis and Clark into the truly unknown and unknowable. They could only explore and use trial and error. They did know that the Pacific was west, as Columbus knew that some kind of land was west. But that was all. They did know to take the "right" people with them. They selected the best back woods men. They also had a special person - "Sacagawea". She was an Indian woman with a baby.

What did she bring? They knew that they would be in Indian country all the way. She had two powerful things to add to the strength of the party. She knew many languages and the culture - she could connect the explorers to the locals and vice versa.

But maybe even more important, she was a woman and she had a baby.

This sent out a signal to the system that this party was NOT a war party. For without that, even if they had had a male Indian who could be the cultural connector, they would have all been killed before the meeting!

So what do traditional organizations need to "cross the chasm"?

I think that they need to stop thinking that is is a problem that can be resolved by finding a known answer. That the top person can know.

The top person can give herself a break. She cannot know but she can fund the expedition as Queen Isabella did.

So there is the theory - here are some examples from recent history that I know a lot about because I have lived them.

When I worked with NPR back in 2005 the question was "How will social media affect us and what should we do?"

The great thing then was that No One could know the answer to that question. And if by chance one of us did, no one else would just accept that answer.

So what we did was to set up a process of discovery where it was agreed at the outset that no one knew.

We then set off, nearly 1,000 people, on a number of test journeys where groups "Played" with creating stories about what the future might be.

After 6 months a number of pictures of the future emerged that were consistent. All that you now see as being normal for the new media was nailed by these people back in 2006. It was all novel then and no one had done any of this. But this 1,000 people had invented the key principles and had invented stories about how this all worked in the day to day lives of people. They had discovered the world of social media as it might apply to radio.

I thought, wrongly, that most would then rush off and enact them. But this did not happen. Fear still held many back.

But ALL now had a common picture of what was important. A picture that ALL had co created. So while fear may have stopped many from changing, no one doubted the principles of what they had discovered.

The results? There is no doubt in my mind that, while NPR may now have the political fight of its life on its hands, it knows better than any other traditional media organization how to use Social Media. It has also delivered on them as no other media organization has.

Why? In the project we included over 250 NPR staff so the sense of having discovered the truth was well spread. Most of the key facilitators for the project were the senior executives and members of the board too - so there was no need to "sell" up or down. The majority of NPR had done the exploring themselves and could trust their own experience.

The other organization that has really "got it" is KETC - Now the Nine Network for Social Media - Jack Galmiche, the President was an active player in the NPR project and when he got his new job running KETC in St Louis, he also had the experience of creating the future and so the courage to go for it in TV.

KETC has been through many voyages of discovery. All the staff now have experienced the new. Many are now highly adept. They have discovered this for themselves. No one taught them!

KETC is now the acknowledged leader in the use if social media to augment TV.

KETC is now also a viral infector of the public system.

As KETC trail-blazes, it has worked with other stations. In the Facing the Mortgage Crisis project with about 60 across the nation. They too "experienced the new". The best of them then went for it too and now a critical mass of stations have enough practical exploration under their belt to go for it.

They are about to launch a new nation wide project that will cause the infection to spread further.

I think that this idea of a voyage of discovery is much more helpful that the idea of problem solving.

So selfishly how do you do this? Is there a book or a formula? Is there a snappy consultant who will show you how to do this?

No, I think that what has been shown to work best is to hire a "Sacawagea".

The issue is culture and fear of the unknown. There are no snappy answers. As John Seely Brown says in Harolds post - you have to "Marinate" in the situation.

So if you want to be successful, please think of hiring someone who knows the other native people out there and the new culture. Who is a native of the world that you aspire to go to. Who is less of a guide than a trusted friend. Who you can talk to quietly in the evening around the fire and have her hear you out. Someone who risks as much as you do on the journey - or even more than you. Someone who is safe and who helps you feel safe as you take risks.

I think a know a few of these people!

Amplify’d from www.jarche.com

Social business is about a shift in how we do work, moving from hierarchies to networks. The highest value work today is the more complex stuff, or the type of work that cannot be automated or outsourced. It’s work that requires creativity and passion. Doing complex work in networks means that information, knowledge and power no longer flow up and down. They flow in all directions. As John Seely Brown said, you can only understand complex systems by marinating in them. This requires social learning. Complex work is not linear. Social business is giving up centralized control and harnessing the power of networks. It is as radical as was Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management in 1911. The potential of social business is organizational survival. Enterprises must be able to share knowledge quicker than before.  This requires a shift toward something like a starfish framework that not only allows for independent action but also distributes knowledge through all the parts. Social learning is how organizational knowledge gets distributed. Social businesses can learn quicker. The main barriers to social business are cultural. People in charge of most organizations today got there by doing things the traditional way of the MBA mindset. They feel they do not need to change and few are willing to give up power and authority, even if it is for the good of the organization. Read more at www.jarche.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bmrhb

via Amplify.com

Reinventing Public TV?

 

Nearly all in public TV and Radio know that we still have to do a lot more to find out what will be a more vital model. There are all sorts of experiments going on. Such as at KCET that is stepping aside from PBS - Here is a post by Doc Searls on this and a good series of comments that follow.

This promo is about what KETC in St Louis is trying. 

But it is no flash in the pan but the result of 4 years of hard slogging by Jack Galmiche, his team and his trusty "get it done", Amy Shaw. They have crawled, tottered, and now are walking toward a model for public TV that has both the old - great content as TV and also the new - a trusted space where the community can work together to do important things.

Crawling - It all started in 2006 with a simple enough test - we used the showing of the then new series The War by Ken Burns - to see if we could use this show as a Social Object that would teach us how to attract people in the community to tell their stories. Here Bill Ives tells the story of this first chapter of our story. 

Tottering - Our next project was to see if we could find a way to create a safe enough space for the community to get together to help each other get through the Mortgage Crisis. We first tried this at home in St Louis and then were given the chance by CPB to include 60 other stations across the nation. Here Bill tell the story.

Walking - We are now about half way through the next project on Immigration that the promo describes above. Here we have taken a topic that few can agree on and we are trying to find out if we can create a space where people can hear each other and so we hope find a way forward. This is not just about using new media - it is about using new media to have a better social outcome. Bill tells more about us here.  He adds more about how I am using a novel search engine, Darwin Awareness, to find a way though the noise of the web and here about how I hope to use it to see what impact we finally make ourselves. 

When we started we knew that while we had to master the new tools - this was not really about the tools - but about if we could shift our culture. This has been more challenging and painful than I ever imagined. Change is easy on paper and when it involves some one else. But I and the the folks at KETC have found that the work demands that we all have to give up a lot of whom we were and that hardly a day passes when we are not wracked by doubt.

We have a lot still to do. A metaphor that we use is Columbus. We know that land lies to the west. We know that it should be close. We have seen the odd gull and floating logs. But we have not seen land yet and have no idea what it will be like when we get there. Will it be the Indies? Will there be a pot of gold there? Meanwhile, we keep sailing on our course and have to put our hope in the big idea.

Of course when we get to land, that is only the beginning! Then we have to find out how to live there.

Like Columbus, even if we get there and it is fine, we can't stay there alone. We need people who are up for a New World to join us.

Do you want to find a better future of Public TV? If you do, you can help us by joining in and being part of this.

 

KETC Works with Community on 'Homeland' Immigration Project | PBS

Fresh from their ambitious multi-city Facing the Mortgage Crisis project, KETC/Channel 9 in St. Louis has launched a new community-based news project on another hot topic: immigration.  

Homeland aims to "apply public media sensibilities, expertise and capacity to address a complicated and polarizing issue," said Amy Shaw, KETC's vice president of education and community engagement. The project includes a website that will feature original content created by community members and KETC staff, a series of facilitated community meetings in the St. Louis area and across Missouri, and a four-hour nationally broadcast television series. This combination, said Shaw, is designed to "push the boundaries of what public media can do."

According to the site:

The Homeland initiative is the embodiment of what public media can do well -- we generate awareness around the important and complex issues that need to be addressed in our communities, and then we create impact by mobilizing people to address these issues. In the process of talking to people throughout our region, we want to show, analyze and present what we learn. We're not going to tell people what we think about immigration or what is right or wrong, good or bad. We intend to help people embrace and understand the complexity of important issues to help communities address them in a more authentic, rational way.

NineAcademy Trains Community Members

Shaw said the project is "rooted in needs of the community," and it is clear that KETC takes community engagement seriously. Homeland is teaming up with KETC's NineAcademy, a free community media program that trains locals in shooting, editing, and storytelling. The best productions will be featured on the Homeland site and on KETC.

Although NineAcademy has already trained community members ranging from middle schoolers to senior citizens, KETC is intent on "meeting people where they are." Aware that some community members lack internet access, KETC staff has made sure that phone, face-to-face and snail-mailed correspondence is valued as much as online interaction. For example, KETC is experimenting with the idea of "conversations in a box" -- mobile storytelling kits, including inexpensive digital video recorders, that are mailed to community members. When they have finished recording their stories, they send the kits back to KETC for redistribution.

So far, according to Shaw, promotion for the project has been minimal, as the project website is still developing.

Five Sections of Site

At present, the site includes five sections that demonstrate the participatory and collaborative nature of Public Media 2.0, in varying degrees.

360 Degree Perspectives is a blog that explores multiple perspectives on immigration issues, based on KETC's meetings with community members from all spots on the political spectrum, including Tea Party members, far-left groups, and the very wide swath of Americans who don't currently identify with a particular political point of view.

Fact vs. Myth takes a nuanced look at some of the common information and misinformation surrounding the immigration debate. Check out this Fact vs. Myth video created by a NineAcademy graduate DeAnna Tipton:

Your Voice is a discussion forum for community members. Right now, the conversation is heavily populated by KETC staff, but Shaw is confident that the balance will shift over time to allow for more user-directed conversation.

Homeland Series is a behind-the-scene look at the making of the four-hour series that will air in 2011. The broadcast element of this project is, as Shaw explained, "a piece of puzzle," not the be-all end-all culmination of the project. In fact, no pieces related to the project have aired yet, although there has been much activity both online and face-to-face. Community meetings have shaped the entire direction of the project, including the decision to create the four-hour broadcast piece.

Finally, From the Beacon showcases related work from KETC's newspaper partner, the St. Louis Beacon. The Beacon was a partner in the Facing the Mortgage Crisis project as well, providing cross-platform news coverage to the benefit of both organizations.

Challenges

Although the project is developing smoothly, Shaw said that, "We were a bit naive in considering how challenging it would be to take on one of the most difficult and challenging issues of our time." As polarizing as this issue may be, the tone on Homeland remains congenial with only minimal moderation, indicating perhaps that people are tired of the sensationalized, black-and-white coverage of the issue that is often provided by traditional media.

In addition to the polarizing nature of the subject matter, KETC is also dealing with the fact that the station has not traditionally been a news organization. Now, as they experiment with community-based public affairs coverage, the team must constantly evaluate what works and what doesn't or, as Shaw put it, "go through a daily recalibration." The lessons that KETC's staff learn through this project could very well inform a powerful community engagement model for other stations around the country.

In the coming months, the Homeland team will continue to tweak the design and engagement aspects of the project in order to make the site more community-oriented. KETC is also working on some major internal shifting, and a rebranding effort to highlight the station's overall push toward public engagement. In the future, KETC will be taking on more than one in-depth community engagement project at a time. The subject matter for these future projects will come from -- where else? -- the community.

Katie Donnelly is Associate Research Director at the Center for Social Media at American University where she blogs about the future of public media. With a background in media literacy education, Katie previously worked as a Research Associate at Temple University's Media Education Lab in Philadelphia. When she's not researching media, Katie spends her time working in the environmental field and blogging about food.

via pbs.org

Reinventing ourselves - hard hard work!

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

This Is How It Starts « Rosenblum TV

Hitler arrives at Nuremberg for rally 1933 – another very popular orator

Normally I don’t write about politics here.

But not today.

I recently posted a note to Hoda Kotb from the Today Show. She had an item on her Facebook page asking what she should cover in her show.

Most of the answers posted related to shoes or clothing or divorces.  I told her she should speak out about the growing trend to publicly accepted racism in our culture, with Muslims paying the role of the Jews this time.

So far, she is sticking to shoes. Kotb, by the way, is Arabic for book.

The Failings of Public Education

When I went to school in the 1960s, almost all of my teachers were women.

They were women because in those days, the only jobs women could get were teacher, nurse or secretary. And so the smartest went into teaching.

And they were good. Very good.

When new opportunities opened for women in the 70s, (and I am old enough to remember when a woman going to Harvard Business School was still a big story), the smartest flocked to careers as lawyers or MDs or CEOs.  They followed the money.

In the days when women had no choice, schools could get away with paying teachers $23,000 a year, or less for women, and no one said a word – and they were able to attract the best talent in the country.

When other opportunities became available, the schools should have responded by making teaching as competitive as law, and paying as much.  But they didn’t. Instead, we debased the public educational system in America.  Oh, there are still those who teach out of pure dedication, but that’s like asking people to go to medical school and then head off to work for Medcin sans Frontiers. There are those who do, but not many.

I taught for many years at both Columbia University and NYU, and over the course of time, I watched as the level of basic education that my students came in with dropped and dropped and dropped. They were not stupid. Far from it, they were just uneducated – increasingly so. And interestingly, they didn’t care.  Most did not know the difference between Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, and if they had to find out, they could always go to the web and Google it.

What we eroded was a basic foundation of fundamental knowledge, which by now, I think, is pretty much gone.

And the price we pay is that we have created a society without the ability to process information through any kind of historical wisdom.

So when Glenn Beck goes to the Lincoln Memorial and proclaims that he is the true heir to the Civil Rights Movement; when he and his Tea Party follower proclaim that the President is the racist here; when he fundamentally rewrites the history of this country to suit his own ends, one would think that an educated nation would laugh him off the stage.

But they don’t.

They don’t because we no longer have an educated nation that can process what he says through a lens of intelligence.

We have a nation of people who get their information superficially, and lacking in any kind of grounding of basic education, can be easily swayed by demagoguery of the worst kind.

For two generations we have ignored the infrastructure of this country.

Our bridges rust out and collapse.

That makes news.

Well our schools are rusted out and collapsing. And when the education of our nation rots and collapses, its is a whole lot more serious than when a bridge collapses, or deciding which shoes to buy.

What is happening today at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Dr. King’s I Have A Dream Speech is nothing short of pornography. Public pornography based on a collection of lies.

But we have a public that has lost the ability to discern the truth for itself.

This is how it starts.

And if you know anything about history, you already know how it finishes.

But alas, most people don’t even know that.

But they will. Sadly.

via rosenblumtv.com

I quote Michael Rosenblum in full today. For he touches on the peril that confronts America today.

Can America get its Mojo back?

In Jane Jacobs great book Dark Age Ahead - she makes the point that the signifier for a great states's decline is growing xenophobia. Leading to a retreat into a fortress culture. This is what happened to China and what happened to the Muslim world. Both were many steps ahead of Europe but bothy retreated into themselves.

In the "fortress" thinking is not allowed or welcome. As Michael notes - many do not care that they know nothing. There is a pride in ignorance.

Such a society will look to the simple and to demagogues. Such a society will set up the the preconditions of "Collapse" - a structural inability to respond to challenges.

Don't we see signs of this inability today? As I see it we do.

This is why I am passionate in my support for public TV and radio's efforts to expand their role from providing good content to providing a safe place where the community can have a discourse about issues that are important to them.

At KETC in St Louis this effort began with creating such a safe place to help each other cope with the mortgage crisis. Now we are trying to find a way of facilitating the kind of discourse that will enable America to have a better approach to Immigration - an issue that will surely determine America's future as much as any other.

WGTE in Toledo will be doing the same soon on local agriculture.

My hope is that such an approach - of having a local in depth discourse on challenging topics such as who is an American? How we get our food? Jobs and the economy? Health? Education? Is our only chance of breaking out of the polarization of our politices and the over influence of the corporate will.

I don't see any other opportunity? Do you?

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

Dow at 11,000 unemployment not going away - Why??

Despite optimism over recent job gains, one grim statistic casts a long shadow over the recovering economy -- a record 44% of the nation's 15 million unemployed have been out of work for more than six months.

And the evidence suggests that many of them may never completely rebuild the working lives they lost.

Never since the Great Depression has the U.S. labor market seen anything like it. The previous high in long-term unemployment was 26% in June 1983, just after the deep downturn of the early 1980s. The 44% rate in March translates into more than 6.5 million people.

In fact, nearly two-thirds of these workers have been jobless for a year or longer, new Labor Department reports show.

On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke told the congressional Joint Economic Committee that he was "particularly concerned" about the huge number of long-term unemployed.

"Long periods without work erode individuals' skills and hurt future employment prospects," he said. "Younger workers may be particularly adversely affected if a weak labor market prevents them from finding a first job or from gaining important work experience."

via latimes.com

I don't understand the buoyancy of the market. Many of the jobs lost will never return because of the change to structure. High paid union manufacturing jobs are not coming back. St Louis for instance has lost car and plane making jobs and now brewery jobs. Never returning as they were.

7 million households are on track to be foreclosed.

States will have to lay off teachers, police, road workers and civil servants - all this is ahead and on its way.

So why is it now that the Dow is at 11,000?

Two Americas maybe? The casino economy and the rest?

Posted via web from Rob's posterous

Unemployment is permanent and structural - Need for a Reivention

Why am I making such a deal about unemployment? Because it is the main driver for people losing their homes now. There is no remediation if a person has no income.

There are are millions of Americans in the pipeline - who have lost their jobs or who will - who will inevitably lose their homes.

But what about the "Recovery" will they not get their jobs back? Have a look at this chart form the Department of Labor and think more about will the jobs come back in time?

The first thing we see is that the wait to find a new job is now very long indeed. It is in fact "off the chart".

Now look at this chart - what I think it shows is that over the last 60 years that has been a collapse in manufacturing jobs that is systemic and long term. What is happening today is the final curtain for the idea that a person with a high school education can support themselves - that is 75% of the population in America!

This chart tells us that we are back to end of the last depression before the  war made such a difference to manufacturing. It shows us that we have been in a long term systemic decline since 1980. It shows us that there is no quick or easy fix.

On a related note the Unemployment Benefit Trust Fund will run out of funds in the early part of 2010 - so those that are relying onunemployment to keep them in their house will lose that too - unless there is the politcal will to boost the fund in a major way.

So what does this mean?

I don't think that there is a simple rebound in the near future. Traditionally, the jobs come back - but we can see here that they cannot. Yes there may be Service Jobs but no one can own a house on that.

I don't see any way around having to Reinvent the Economy. Find out how to return to a high employment and local focus. Easier said than done right? But there are a lot of people who have a vested interest in finding out the answers. Many of them are already reinventing local food etc. My bet is that if we open our eyes - we see see the real "Green Shoots" and they will be where people who will not give up are trying things that are radically new.

Post Consumerism?

Being middle aged, chubby, bearded and male has had one big advantage. I have joined a club of similar types who have all found some success in the old world but who now profoundly reject it. But this group are more than misanthropes - most of them are very perceptive as well. Here is a gem that came in this morning:

Except for embellished versions of goods and services that were available up to the late 1980s there's nothing any longer to motivate the modest status aspirations of the masses -- which up until then were kept sweet and pacific. Unless they rotate their kitchen, bathroom and garden make-overs faster than ever which, maybe, a quarter of the population may still be able to do in the coming years, there's fat little else to acquire -- to be able to say "I've arrived!" -- "Here I am. I've joined the middle-classes now".

Consumerism as we've known it in the Western world has gone for good now.

It is going to take at least another generation or two before politicians realize this (if indeed they'll have a meaningful role at all in future times -- we'll probably be run by the civil servants, just like the Chinese). Meanwhile, where is status to be found if it's not in the goods we buy?

Well, I'll tell you. Status is to be found by means of much more ancient attributes than merely possessing gewgaws. It will be by skill, ability, integrity and reputation within the many specialized niches which are now so characteristic of this increasingly complex world.

It's going to require a totally new attitude to education. Instead of education being about "expanding one's mind" as those romantic pseudo-intellectuals have been telling us -- and has held sway -- for the past 50 years, it's going to have to be by educating children to levels of specific skills that enable them to get a job in this new complicated world.

Once they have a job and have some status in society then, by all means, it's highly desirable for them expand their minds if they want to. And the best way to do that is for the state to get out of education as fast as possible and let parents' aspirations decide what sorts of schools they want their children to go to.

This itself would take two or three generations before it works its way round to actually upgrading the formative culture within the majority of homes, but why should adults not be given the freedom to choose quality -- as it emerges sooner or later in everything else they buy? What makes education so different from choosing a dentist or hairdresser or buying a flat-screen TV?

KETC - Mortgage Crisis - Measuring Impact

Back in May, we started to think about how a TV Station could help its city cope with the then emerging mortgage crisis. Thanks to CPB, we at KETC got our chance to test our ideas that we could.

The test is over and the results are in. A major part of the project was measurement. We knew that emotion and anecdote - powerful as it is - would not be enough.

How do we measure media? In most cases on air we can get a sense of who is watching. On the web we know exactly who is watching. As we started the experiment to see if a Public TV station could help a community help itself we had to know more - we had to know if what we did - on air, on the web, in person and by measuring itself (Remember in Quantum the act of measurement affects the measured) had an impact.

Would what we did activate action?

Would what we did change perceptions?

Would what we did have a result in improving the health of our community?

Might acting as a social catalyst be the higher goal and role for public media?

Well dear readers, the research is in - yes to all of the above.

A huge thank you to Professor Dhavan Shah and his wonderful team at the University of Wisconsin (see follow on)

One of the points that we measured was the number of calls that the United Way got from people seeking help timed against our on air pieces. Here you can see a massive bump directly related to what we did.

There is more - we found that the act of measuring/surveying had also a huge impact

What do these numbers mean? Are they good, OK or mediocre?

I have shared with you just the highlights - we have a lot more information that tells us that not only were we able to shift beliefs, motivate reaching out and action but also increase support for the station.

It is going to be fascinating to see what happens as this work spreads more broadly in the public TV and Radio world.

It's one thing to bring good content and information to the public. It is another to be able to help activate the public to take back power and control into their lives.

I feel that we are on the edge of a breakthrough - the networked world is finding its place and its organization