June 5, 2006
Fareed Zakaria is sounding alarms in this week’s Newsweek by posing a fashionably cliched question: How Long Will America Lead the World?
Among the highlights is the well-documented erosion of science and technology education in the U.S., as the country is becoming a postindustrial society that “specializes in consumption and leisure.” The rise and rise of China and India is also a “real and daunting” challenge.
Still, Zakaria argues, America has a lot going for it. First, its sustained dominant position in higher education. Second, the American economic system of succesful commercialization of technology. Last but not least, benign demographics characterized by the ever-inflow of skilled workers.
Upon closer look, however, we believe the three forces are inter-connected and centered on immigration, of the right kind. The U.S. remains the most attractive destination for overseas students, taking 30 percent of the total number globally. A chief reason is the opportunities afforded them after school. The idiosyncratic American value system of equating success with money, or glorified materalism, is immensely attractive to people of poorer countries with little or limited means, who are hungrier and more desperate to succeed. Putting the best and brightest among such people in a risk-awarding business culture with an “unusual combination of an entrepreneurial culture, a permissive legal system and flexible capital markets” yield the fabulous successes of Google and Apple.
As Zakaria keenly points out, “openness, innovation, immigration and flexibility” have served the U.S. well in the last six decades by creating new industries, new technologies and new jobs. If China and India learn to take the best features of the America system and enhance them, they will be able to catch up to, and perhaps surpass, America in the decades to come. We have yet to be convinced of contrarian views.
We have called Yahoo! our virtual “home” (read: homepage) for the last few years, despite Google’s ever-increasing popularity, not the least for Yahoo’s News tab, which is managed by human editors, as opposed to a “computer program” at Google.
The different approaches help crystalize the two companies’ different philosophies: Yahoo! maintains it’s a media company while Google is an unabashed technology house. Tom Foremski wrote recently that Google News is a good example of a media cherry picker. Content producers allow Google access to their sites because Google in turn gives them access to advertising markets they wouldn’t have been able to reach or afford otherwise. Without the free access, Google wouldn’t have had sufficient content to organize, aggregrate and package for resale at a very low cost.
So it would be for the benefit of the Googl’ing public to know who feed Google’s machines the scoops. There have been reports that Google News “unintentionally” skewed to the right. Some content providers were accused of ‘gaming’ the system, a practice they called “optimization”.
Yahoo!, by contrast, believes “News is far too human of an endeavor to rely 100 percent on automation.” A small editorial staff programs the Yahoo! News front page as well as plucking out hidden gems that appear on other sites.
Given that MSM is taking a thrashing from both left and right, blogsphere has exceedingly become extreme, a digital service with machines “cherry picking” news may seem a better alternative when media bias has entered the lexicon of everyday life. Caveat emptor.
Yahoo! has added a new feature, “Today in History”, which we find interesting.
To wit, 38 years ago today, June 5th, Robert Kennedy was assasinated in Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel. Two years ago today, former president Ronald Reagan died of Alzheimer’s disease. On the economics front, 68 years ago today, the U.S. went off the gold standard. Perhaps more news-worthy, today is the 283rd anniversary of Adam Smith’s baptism in 1723, as noted by Dealbreaker.
Of course Yahoo! “directs” the online traffic to Yahoo! Search by providing links to those historical events and otherwise factoids, as well as “related information” highlighted by an distinctive purple icon.
While the magazineland is buzzed with “Condé Nast Portfolio“, the new Condé Nast business gloss to be launched in May 2007, the irony is not entirely lost.
At a time when BusinessWeek, Forbes and Fortune, stalwarts of the genre, are all in arguably irrevocable decline in readership, Condé Nast looks set to buck the trend by betting on a high-end monthly. Part of the confidence comes from Condé’s understanding of the demographics of their audience. The company’s executives expect men to account for 60 percent of its readership and the median age of all readers to be 42. No sooner had its much-anticipated name unmasked than “Business Vogue” begun doing the rounds in rivals’ halls.
The epithet is fitting because Condé Nast is known for its high-end consuming facing glossies, such as Vanity Fair, Vogue, Condé Nast Traveler, Golf’s Digest, etc. The company hopes to attract business advertising, or ‘cross sell’ Portfolio to those high-end advertisers who already have established relationships with its other high-end magazines.
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