Analysis

Google and the Cold War that businesses must play

“What the hell do you think spies are? Moral philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They're not! They're just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me: little men, drunkards, queers, hen-pecked husbands, civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives.” 

The line belongs to Alec Leamas, from the movie, The spy who came in from the cold.  The Cold War, a sordid world of espionage, sabotage, assassination and deception; where governments attempted to outcompete each other through war and other means.  It certainly wasn’t all James Bond and vodka martinis.

Africa, prosperity and its ever-seeking union

In 1940, in order to put a warm glow over their war efforts, the Japanese Imperial Army announced that the reason they were hacking their way through Asia was the pursuit of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

The Imperial Army were not demolishing local governments and murdering people, they were simply chasing out Western imperialists and promoting regional economic union.

The reason this was a complete failure was that “union” - either political or economic - requires that the parties to that union actually want to be together.  A shotgun wedding works as well as a shotgun economy.

And the eyes are always on us

“One can't help thinking wistfully of our father's day, when the world hadn't grown so small. But one could move about in it without being watched so closely. Nowadays, we're treated like demented or delinquent children. And the eyes are always on us,” said Orson Welles in 1955.

Since then, much has happened.  Technology has allowed free speech to spread as easily as the seasonal flu.  It has also allowed governments to track individuals like never before.  Despite this tracking, those who would do others harm seem to have little obstruction to causing that harm.

Copenhagen, Consensus and The Gathering of the Trees

“The trees gathered to agree a response to the growing threat of the Homo sapiens,” said the story-telling old lady who waylaid me in a park.  “After several weeks of debate had passed, up rose Sam Sequoia who said, ‘You have spent so much time in organising and fighting for who will be leader that you have all completely lost sight of your objectives.’”

The tale could almost be a complete summary of the UN summit on climate change which took place in Copenhagen in December.  After decades of research, years of talks and months of preliminary negotiations, the summit ended with a whimper and a partial agreement that is worse than no deal at all.