"...perfect representative of the emirate"

One reason to follow international news is to see what the rest of the world thinks about you. And not just out of curiosity. What the world thinks affects investment, trade, tourism and a nation's influence in the global arena.

So what's the world think about Abu Dhabi? We had a glimpse this week in an IHT business article headlined (in the print edition) "With little bluster, Abu Dhabi takes the stage." Reporter Landon Thomas Jr. says Abu Dhabi "is looking for attention --just not the kind of flash-and-dash that Dubai is known for." The reporter suggests that "the suave aplomb" of Khaldoon al-Mubarak, the 32-year-old director of Mubadala, Abu Dhabi's development fund, makes him "the perfect representative of the emirate."

Dubai = flash-and-dash? Abu Dhabi = suave aplomb?

Based on what you see and read in the international media, what do you think the image of Abu Dhabi is?

And Infomercial Winner Is.....

The A+ offered in the last post goes to Athra and Sara Saleh, who didn't waste any time after class in finding Obama's 30-minute infomercial on YouTube. And the informercial got a big A+ from American viewers. The New York Times called it "a smashing ratings succcess." It was even more popular than the last game of this month's World Series (baseball, America's national sport) and last year's American Idol finale!

Leslie Moonves, CBS chairman and the man who brought reality shows to TV, said, "I was shocked by the number Obama was able to draw. It's just a stunning number."

Sample the informercial on YouTube. What images do you think cut across cultures?

PS:
Athra and Sara Salem each will be awarded an A+.

If a picture is worth 1000 words......

....then what is a 30-minute campaign "spot" worth? Maybe we won't know until after the U.S. election results are in next Tuesday. But Obama just made television commercial history by launching an unprecedented infomercial running 30 minutes. Goodbye 30-second sound bite! He will be running three different 30-minute commercials each costing a cool US$1 million. Lots of Internet press on this, including a World News report from ChannelNewsAsia, a MediaCorp News operation.

First class member to post a link to viewing the commercial online, gets a big A+. Share your findings under comments for this post.

Widening the Community of Knowledge

Earlier in the semester we talked about how Gutenberg and his movable-type printing press literally unchained the book, giving more people access to information. Before the Gutenberg Revolution, the only books common folk saw were the huge, hand-copied Bibles chained to church pulpits though who could have spirited one away? In less than a century, Venetian printers had shrunk the book almost to pocket size. Soon books of all kinds were being carried everywhere.

And it happened again today. IHT headline: "Google reaches 'historic' deal to settle copyright lawsuits." Story says the deal will "allow readers to search, buy and read millions of books online and accelerate the shift of the printed word onto the Internet." The Christian Science Monitor, a small but well-respected newspaper, just announced it is going all digital in April. The move to Internet-only will allow it to cut costs without cutting its eight foreign bureaus.

Yes, My Good Lady, What News May I Serve You Today?

It occurred to me that by starting this blog, I have become your news butler, serving up tasty little tidbits of news to please you. That’s just what Nicholas Negroponte predicted would happen, but he was thinking of a robot, not a professor. “Don’t squirt more bits at me,” said the M.I.T. computer scientist and Internet visionary way back in the 90s. You gobble up millions of bits every day, by the way. Bits are the basic unit of information in this digital age.

Negroponte could already see that we would all soon be overwhelmed by the information coming at us through the Internet. What he wanted was not more bandwidth but “intelligence in the network and in my receiver to filter and extract relevant information.” That’s where the news butler or “interface agent” would come in. “Image a future where your interface agent can read every newspaper and catch every broadcast on the planet, and then, from this, construct a personalized summary.”

Writing inWired magazine, he contended that we really don’t want more “info grazing” and “channel surfing.” We want help, help in making sense of it all. Maybe he’s not talking about a news butler but a blogger.

PS: Squirt me some more bits.

I WANT YOU!!!!

Last week the U.S. Embassy came to class to talk about political cartoons (see earlier post). Naturally the presentation included the famous poster of a bearded Uncle Sam with the message I Want You for the U.S. Army . The poster such a hit in WWI that popular demand brought it back in WWII. Its creator James Montgomery Flagg (1877-1960) claimed it was “the most famous political poster in the world” and he may have been right. But the image originated not as a poster but as a magazine cover. He drew it for Leslie’s Weekly in 1916, which featured Uncle Sam asking “What Are You Doing for Preparedness?” Full Story

The image just inspired the September 27-October 3 Economist cover, which featured a bald Secretary of Treasury Paulson in Uncle Sam clothing pointing out of the frame with this entreaty: “I Want Your Money.” Images in the media are powerful. Why do you think Flagg’s Uncle Sam has been so much copied for over a century?

Brain on Blog/Blog on the Brain

I'm hanging out in the office long after everyone else has departed for the weekend, because I am seduced by a broader, faster bandwidth than I have at home. But even here it was something of a Zen exercise to connect to Your Brain on Blog, the podcast that The Atlantic packaged with Andrew Sullivan's "Why I Blog" piece from the November issue. The promo promised two guys -- Sullivan and an Atlantic associate editor who blogs the presidential campaign-- reflecting on "the narcotic appeal of blogging and the occupational hazards of thinking quickly." Made me wonder if bloggers have time to think at all. Where's the line between blogging and babbling?