A Small Defense of Civility

I found this blog post by Peter Wehner today. It has some great points, and says (better than I've been able to) what I think is currently missing from our public discourse.

It speaks directly to some of the criticisms I've heard voiced by my partisan friends: "Civility does not preclude spirited debate or confrontation. Clashing arguments are often clarifying arguments. Civility does not mean we do not call things by their rightful name. Evil is sometimes evil; and wicked men are sometimes wicked men. Nor does civility mean splitting the difference on every issue under the sun."

My favorite bit: "We can possess civility while at the same time holding (and championing) deep moral and philosophical commitments. In fact civility, properly understood, advances rigorous arguments, for a simple reason: it forecloses ad hominem attacks, which is the refuge of sloppy, undisciplined minds."

I discovered a great nugget of a quote in it as well: “Before impugning an opponent’s motives,” the philosopher Sidney Hook once said, “even when they may rightly be impugned, answer his arguments.”

Too often in the public sphere, we assume that all the arguments have already been uttered, all the cases already made. Surely, we reason, if the debate is over and the results conclusive, anyone who holds a view separate from ours must be craven or disingenuous or ignorant. But that is seldom the case. *We* may be convinced, but the world is a vast place filled with those who have not received our wisdom. If the conclusion is worth reaching, the case must be worth making - over and over again. And when our arguments are challenged - with good faith and reason - we must never shy away from answering in kind. The surest path to failure for those who hold a view is to grow tired of stating why they hold it.

The Momentum of Principle

Here's a fairy tale:

The incumbent party was in disarray during primary season. They had spent the better part of the previous decades in positions of dominance in the Federal government, doing their best to enshrine their beliefs in legislation and court decisions, viewing with alarm and incredulity the growing unpopularity of their positions in certain parts of the country. They were highly principled and eager to fight for their beliefs ... when they weren't fighting among themselves.

During the primary contest, one element of the party believed they should take a strong, no-compromise tone emphasizing their core principles, even knowing that doing so would further alienate the rabid, polarized forces of the other party and possibly lose them the election. Moderates feared the outcome of such a fiery position and argued for a more centrist stance, gaining the upper hand in a painful series of contests. Furious, crying betrayal, the extremists broke with their party, nominating one of their most respected orthodox adherents to stand on their behalf.

Meanwhile, the minority party was having an equally difficult time. A rising group of leaderless, fiery insurgents - featuring prominent evangelicals and freely borrowing religious imagery and symbolism - believed they were on a holy crusade against an immoral government. Nevertheless, within the party itself, conventional wisdom pointed to a moderate, well-respected establishment candidate, but as events developed, party elders were worried that the front-runner was not colorful enough to oppose the coming challenge from their opponents.

After a series of contests, support swung behind a more down-home, folksy character who had lost a visible national election quite recently and never served more than a half term of their single state-level office. This individual, loathed by the other side and weighed down by nicknames and a conscious allusion to a humble background, had shown a gift for oratory and had a proven ability to fire up the base of the party. With a bit of skillful behind-the scenes efforts and loud-voiced support from an enthusiastic grass roots supporters, the radical got the nod.

Meanwhile, alarmed at excesses of partisanship and sectionalism and fearing the outcome of the the radicalism of both parties, a centrist group tried to mount a late-game appeal to reason and decency and reconciliation of the sections through compromise.

The result: a four-way election. Two strong radicals with grass-roots support, on opposite sides of an insurmountable ideological fence, and two moderates - one fatally compromised because of an historical affiliation with a broadly unpopular policies, the other an underfunded outsider.

A plausible fairy tale for 2012? Or, because of the absence of an incumbent running for reelection, maybe 2016? Drop Mitt Romney into the role of flawed establishment candidate, overshadowed by the folksy Sarah Palin. Cast your choice of Democratic politicians in the incumbent roles, and Michael Bloomberg as the doomed centrist/outsider third party candidate.

The astute will recognize the events as the election of 1860. Swept up by a tide of hyperpartisanship and a split field of candidates, the winner was the folksy radical who could fire up the base. This winner gathered no more than 40% of the popular vote, but was so despised by the other side that before even taking office half the country was speaking of open revolt. Before Lincoln won, the north spoke regularly of secession from a United States where slavery is legal; after his election it went the other way.

Okay, am I saying Palin could be Lincoln? Lincoln the candidate, positioned for victory by a mix of principle and circumstance, perhaps. And in other ways: a spotty public service record, a consciously folksy pedigree, enormous rhetorical appeal among his supporters, yes. Most importantly, a polarizing figure for both sides, someone you either love or hate - enough to drive even sober people to extremes of emotion.

But put the personal characterizations aside for a moment, and look at the events themselves. The parallels are a bit creepy, and the implications even worse: imagine Sarah Palin at her victory rally after election night, then imagine the discussions taking place in every blue-state back room. Lord knows what the result might be, but none of the scenarios are pretty.

The parallel breaks down quickly beyond this, of course. It's clear in retrospect that the weight of history was on Lincoln's side - it's impossible to justify slavery in any reasonable way. And of course Lincoln was the radical forcing change on the conservatives in the South - Palin's radicalism is consciously in the name of restoring values, not advancing them. Geography mattered immensely in the sectarian conflicts of the antebellum years; today's blue state/red state divide is more cultural/philosophical.

The moral of this fairy tale is this: the last time we saw a period of hyperpartisanship akin to the one we are living through now, the result was Not Good. At all.

For 150 years, few have been able to credibly imagine a way the country could have avoided the outcome of the period. The momentum of principle - on both sides - made the issue of slavery one that naturally pushed people to the extremes, making even the idea of compromise seem impossible. Most agree that the refining fire of the conflict provided a decisive verdict in the end, and possibly the only resolution that could have resulted.

We are seeing a momentum of principle in our era as well - one which seems at first blush equally impossible to resolve. As Lincoln said, "a nation divided against itself cannot stand ... It will become all one thing, or all the other." He was right, and one wonders if there is any reasonable way to avoid repeating history.

Unless we're smart enough to calm down and avoid making old mistakes. Despite what some radicals would say, our era doesn't have a single issue with the moral equivalence of slavery at its core. We have many more issues, but few are even close to slavery's breadth or monstrousness. Most may prove exceedingly difficult to sort out, but each - when viewed in a calm, narrow way - seems more susceptible to compromise and gradual resolution.

Do we have the will to divert the momentum of principle? Can we avoid the place towards which we are being swept?

How the Conflictariat Works: Narratives

"‘Narrative’ is a marketing buzzword, and it still has some leverage because it has only been doing the rounds for a few years. ... It is a response to people’s growing resistance to marketing of all kinds. They are exposed to subtle and clever messages almost all the time they breathe: they don’t trust slogans, they ignore advertisements – but they do listen to stories."
- David Boyle, UK Political Blogger

In communications terms, a narrative is a set of linked ideas that lies behind what a group does, says and believes. It provides an explanation that doesn't need to be repeated to those who already understand it. In other words, a narrative provides an easy subconscious shorthand to govern thought and action. Narratives make us safe.

The visual metaphor that comes to mind is one of a tree or shrub, where each branch is a rule or statement of belief or fact, and each branch ties in to other branches that support or relate to them. Those who understand a narrative can usually follow the branches forward and backward quite intuitively. Most narratives come back to a big root or trunk idea from which the rest naturally emerge. And these root ideas, at their essence, are stories.

In business, marketing and communications has long focused on crafting narratives around companies or products. The pursuit of slogans, unique selling propositions, branding, mission and value statements, image advertising - all are ways of helping refine a narrative. Our institutions need narratives for their employees, for their customers and clients, and for the world at large to understand them in that easy subconscious way we all find so appealing. Institutions with clear narratives attract emotional loyalty from their constituents; institutions without them become defined by the narratives of others.

A narrative always has certain attributes:

• It implies a story. Narratives have an implied beginning, middle and end. They explain where they came from and where they're going.
• It explains other narratives. If a narrative is a story about the world, then it's natural that it include stories about what it sees around it.
• It implies a big idea. Or a series of big ideas which it connects in a coherent way. A narrative without a big idea is just like a story for toddlers.
• It explains the big ideas. If you have a narrative that explains the problem, a back story that articulates the basic situation, then big ideas can slip into the debate and start uniting a constituency of interest round them.
• It works better when vague. We trust narratives in which we fill in the blanks with our own experiences. At the end of the day, we trust our memories and our own experiences more than those of others. In fact, articulating a narrative in definable terms is one of the easiest ways to alienate people.
• It's personal. To be effective, narratives have to be adopted emotionally by their supporters, and to do that, people must find it appealing in some primal way. A cardinal rule of storytelling is to make the audience 'relate' to the characters and events in the story. This is why social media and blogging have become so effective – because there is something real and authentic at the heart of it, a person, a place, a tale to tell.

Here's a summary of what Mother Jones magazine recently published about the outcome of the 2010 midterm elections in America.

"What does the American economy need, according to conservatives? That's easy. Lower taxes. Smaller deficits. Reduced spending. Less uncertainty. It may be nonsense, but it's not an act. They are 100% convinced that this is bedrock truth, and they tell their story with absolute conviction.

And what's the liberal story about what the economy needs? Don't all raise your hands at once. More stimulus? ... A payroll tax holiday? ... Policies to weaken the dollar? ... A direct government jobs program? Work subsidies? Maybe, kind of, and we're not sure.

In other words, liberals don't have a story at all. In the halls of power and the corridors of the media, liberals have nothing but a collective clamor of pet ideas and peevish finger pointing. So even if the economy does improve, there won't be any way for them to persuade the public that their policies were responsible. For starters, they themselves probably won't really believe it."
- Kevin Drum, Mother Jones

The point here is that the conservatives have done an excellent job of conveying the essence of their narrative, so much so that even Mother Jones magazine finds it clear, even if they don't agree with it. Conservatives didn't accomplish this by laying out a distilled platform of bullet points for public consumption (they did, but behind the scenes). They did it by telling stories over and over again that had as those bullet points as their morals.

It's important to note that narratives need not be comprehensive or all-explaining. Some can be very small in scope and ambition. And they need not conflict or complement to enjoy our adherence - we simultaneously hold thousands of narratives in our heads at any moment, flipping from one context to another. Human beings are adept at holding conflicting beliefs simultaneously - our intellect only bothers to integrate them when challenged.

All this in some ways is simply to state the obvious: we form our beliefs, values and actions based on an accumulation of stories to which we personally, emotionally relate. Humans have always employed narratives in the service of making other people change their behavior, and it is natural for us to become so immersed in our own narratives that we react in contradiction to our own stated values - sometimes violently - to those that threaten or conflict with them. People kill and die for their narratives all the time.

Here's what's new: technology and advanced techniques have made it unprecedentedly easier for groups to use our own narratives against us. The goal of those who do this are often banal - often simply the perpetuation of their institution or the pursuit of a mundane outcome - but more and more involves the accumulation of money and power for aims different from those stated. The individuals who do it are often professionals who have adopted the narrative of their institution quite personally - and believe they are acting in good faith. But in stoking the natural conflicts between narratives in pursuit of their narrow goals - without regard for the broader consequences - they are doing harm.

How the Conflictariat Works: Case Study No 1

One of my Progressive friends sent me this article today:

• "Glenn Beck’s two-part “exposé” on George Soros, whom Beck calls “The Puppet Master,” was so shocking, even by Beck’s degraded standards. The program, which aired Tuesday and Wednesday, was a symphony of anti-Semitic dog-whistles. Nothing like it has ever been on American television before."
  - Michelle Goldberg on The Daily Beast
  

And later this reaction:

• "Fox News host Glenn Beck was criticized Thursday by the Anti-Defamation League, a leading Jewish advocacy organization, in response to a televised segment about the financier George Soros and the Holocaust."
  - Brian Stelter, New York Times
  

My friend was naturally exorcised over all this, citing it as further proof of the criminal culpability of Glenn Beck.

Okay so I'm no Glenn Beck fan. He is the apotheosis of the problem I think is really threatening us as a whole: a self-interested 'conflictariat' with a financial and cultural interest in conflict rather than in governing, sociopathically radicalizing the country and making it impossible to solve real, important problems. Goldberg's article was an opinion piece, finding horrific anti-semitic messages in Beck's television program (kind of like college literature papers find hidden meanings in Shakespeare plays). Stelter's article was about the "furor" it caused.

What struck me at first was that some of the worst quotes in the Stelter article didn't seem to appear in the transcripts of Beck's actual show.

• Stelter: Citing Mr. Soros’s statements about the decline of the dollar, Mr. Beck said, “Not only does he want to bring America to her knees, financially, he wants to reap obscene profits off us as well.”
  >> I can't find that quote in the transcript. I think that's the gist of what Beck was saying, but putting quotation marks around it implies that Beck said it verbatim.
  

• Stelter: Mr. Beck said that during the Holocaust, the 14-year-old Mr. Soros “used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off.”
  >> I can't find that quote in the transcript. Beck does say "when George Soros was 14, his father basically bribed a government official to take his son in and let him pretend to be a Christian. His father was just trying to keep him alive. He even had to go around confiscating property of Jewish people." That's not pleasant, but it's not a lie. Soros himself said that in a 1998 interview on 60 Minutes. Beck doesn't say anything about Soros helping Nazis "ship them off," in fact, he muses (albeit not kindly) on what being forced to live through such a horrific episode would do to a man.
  

So either Stelter is deliberately mis-quoting Beck's actual words to get more sensationalist effect, or Fox omitted the quotes from the transcript. My sense is that the latter is possible but unlikely, given Fox's understanding that once released all media is permanently in the public domain and such a step would be discovered.

But after mulling this for a bit, here's some backchannel I found. The ADL's Abe Foxman is actually a Beck supporter because Beck is a supporter of Israel. Why would Foxman send Beck a letter one week expressing support, and then attack him the next week as an anti-semite, then qualify his condemnation a day or so later? Maybe this relationship is not as simple as we're being led to believe? I don't think these nuances are going to find its way into the conversation, however, because they take time to explain and don't fit cleanly into the narrative of either side. What we're left with from the Goldberg/Stelter articles that Beck is an anti-semite and Foxman is nobly and righteously calling him out.

Here's what I think: Beck is a horrifically damaging demogogue. But as a result of the Stelter/Goldberg articles, my Progressive Jewish friend (their intended audience) will hate Glenn Beck a bit more, be a bit more tempted to view the ADL favorably, and be a bit more convinced that Republicans are evil/racist/anti-semitic. She'll probably view people with critiques outside her narrative (like me) as secret anti-semites or worse.

In other words, her personal anger, distrust and fear quotients just went up, as did the fortunes of the groups and individuals generating the stories.

In effect, my friend's (absolutely well-founded and legitimate) fear of anti-semitism was manipulated this morning by a (very sophisticated) group of professionals and organizations in order to generate money and political support to perpetuate their own existence. The next time she gets her call from the phone bank folks soliciting her money or votes for companies/products/candidates aligned with her narrative, she'll be more likely to say yes.

Fox News and Beck do the EXACT same thing on the other side of the spectrum: overstate or deliberately mis-characterize an event in order to grab a headline and persuade the masses to push the message viral. Which my friend did.

The really amazing thing is that Beck BENEFITS from the New York Times/ADL reaction. Their supporters will never be his, but HIS supporters view their reaction as proof he's on to something. Neither side cares what the facts are or who's right or whether it matters in any real way. THEY BOTH WIN. Goldberg, Stelter, Beck, and Foxman all got pats on the back today for doing their jobs and bringing recognition to their organizations.

This is the game. The news cycle will blow past and few will remember these specifics by next week. But underneath it all, everyone outside the conflictariat who paid attention just got a bit more frightened and distrustful and radicalized. They also got a bit less likely to support compromise with politicians (or citizens or friends, for that matter) seemingly aligned with the opposing narrative. And so it goes.

• "The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems, bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen - or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous flaming ant epidemic."
  - Jon Stewart

Hyperpartisans Holding Us Hostage

There is now a gap between the politically active and the politically dependent - that is, between obsessives who have a stake in the nature of political debate and those ordinary people who have a stake in the outcome of political debate. From cable television to the Internet, we are now living with a political class which has a financial and cultural interest in conflict rather than in governing. - Jon Meacham, Washington Post

This is the red hot center of what's going on in our modern political environment. (Can anyone think of a precedent for this in history? I can't. And all the ones that are close ended *exceedingly badly*...)

The quote was from a Washington Post article about how the current environment is eating Obama alive. The big takeaway is that for the first time in history there is a group of powerful, well-funded, highly-sophisticated people who have a deep self-interest in perpetuating the fight rather than solving actual problems. Republicans stonewalled Obama and were rewarded with money and power, and meanwhile huge issues got left insufficiently addressed. Meaningless votes routinely take place to provide candidates with fodder for the next election. There's no incentive to compromise for either side.

Many of my more extreme political friends would rather have no reform than imperfect reform. If you asked them what they would do if they had to choose between fighting and compromising, most of them would fight - even if that means that people suffer while the battle rages. They laud those who Never Give In. But that's not how it works. The best of our statesmen - even those passionately committed to one view or another (Ted Kennedy comes to mind) - routinely worked with their ideological counterparts. They knew how. Lincoln did it. Both Roosevelts did it. Lyndon Johnson did it.

And I think Obama wants to do it. Many see in Obama what they want to see, but *my* belief is that he sincerely wants to govern. His personal beliefs may be progressive, but I suspect he'd be okay with a partway solution if it represented a move in a good direction. His position on last week's election was "Yes we can, but not all at once." When solving interpersonal problems, my first-grade daughter's teachers say: 'does this move us closer to a solution or farther away'? Children want the world to be perfect overnight, and will throw a tantrum if they don't get their way. Many adults realize that things are messy, take time, and very seldom end up the way they would prefer. But you try to move things forward anyway.

Many people believe that civility means giving in to the other side. But the point isn't to compromise or change your beliefs, it's to put your righteous anger in the closet and treat your opponent with respect in order to get something accomplished. Refusing to talk to the people you loathe (or calling them names) is not how democracy works. It may make you feel better about yourself, and get applause from your like-minded fellows, but it doesn't get laws passed.

I really want to ask my partisan friends to think about this: one side or the other won't win this thing outright, not any time soon. The guy you hate is not going to just give up and go away. Do the rest of us just have to wait for you all to play your silly game until we get ANY kind of health care reform, immigration reform, a recovery, tax reform, energy policy, environmental policy ... and on and on?

Fight the good fight. Don't give up your principles and do your level best to persuade us all that you've been 100% right all along and we should all agree with you. But for god's sake don't hold the country hostage until you succeed.

The Speech I'd Give at the Rally

Jon Stewart is planning a Rally to Restore Sanity on the national mall in Washington, DC on October 30, 2010. Here's the speech I'd give if I could.

I stand before you today as one of the busy majority. I run a small Internet business in Boston, Massachusetts; three kids, wonderful wife, dog. About the only thing interesting about me is that I grew up in Hawaii and went to the same school as Barack Obama. (Howzit bruddah? Go Buffanblus!)

My personal political beliefs are strongly held, but right now? They're irrelevant. I'm here because I'm scared.

People will say that America has always been partisan, and they're right. But it's different these days. And what makes it different is the technology.

Not only has the technology made it cheaper and easier for anyone to rent a soapbox and reach a national audience, but it's multiplied the choices we all have when we pick what to read or watch and escalated the battle for our attention to unprecedented heights. To get our attention - and our dollars - the loud voices need to get more excited, more outlandish, more combative. Sophisticated pollsters and marketers and behavioral scientists get paid big money to come up with new and clever techniques to make us mad - because that means we'll watch their shows, or vote for their candidates. Yelling at each other makes "good TV," which was something CNN discovered on the Mclaughlin Group in the eighties. Now anyone with an iPad can be Pat Buchanan.

Normally this would be welcome - marketplace of ideas, free speech and all that. But our culture hasn't caught up with our tools. Facts are everywhere, but incomplete and contradictory. Expert analysis is compromised by paid-for advocacy and rumored agendas, and in any case most of the lessons of the past seem hard to apply to the present. High pressure business models provide a ravenous maw for the "outrage of the day," but people can't tell the difference between showboating and passion. Righteous posturing is telegenic. Crazy looks like fun.

And the problems we have to solve? They're a bit tricky.

As far back as Bush v. Gore, I believed that the country was more purple than red or blue. I could laugh at the shenanigans of the crazies on both sides, because I knew they didn't matter any more than the hobo on the streetcorner talking to his belt buckle.

But these days, up in Boston, I'm hearing scary things. Not only do normal people routinely invoke Hitler to vilify their political opponents (on both sides, I might add), but they've taken to using violent rhetoric and nihilistic proscriptions. A stranger at a professional event in Cambridge told me casually that Palin supporters needed to be "rounded up." Personal emails compare bipartisan compromise to "giving in to the gas chambers." Talk radio commentators threaten mob violence if elections don't turn out their way. And NO ONE WHO'S LISTENING SAYS ANYTHING. These things are usually said to those assumed to be of like minds, who usually just nod and agree.

When it becomes socially acceptable to threaten righteous violence against your political opponents - and your listeners laugh in agreement - things have gone WAY too far.

It's not funny anymore. It doesn't matter what your beliefs are, or whether you think the Tea Party or MoveOn.org is out of control. You can believe anything you want - be mad at whoever you like, in private. In public, we need to start acting like adults, not children throwing temper tantrums. And the crazier you get, the more you energize the crazies on the other side.

I've found myself asking the extremists in my midst this important question, and I hope we all start asking ourselves this from now on: where is this all going? Close your eyes and picture the end of the era of hyperpartisanship. Your side won.

What happened to the losers?

We need to stigmatize crazy again. When you hear someone talking crazy - make them feel uncomfortable - not for their opinion, but for their rhetoric. EVEN IF YOU AGREE WITH THEM. It won't work - not at first. But if we all do it it might start to stick.

My contention is this: no matter what you believe, the people who disagree with you LIVE HERE TOO. Their opinions matter as much as yours does. Period. Odds are, our country will be purple for the rest of your life, and the best you can hope for is that it shades a bit more indigo or maroon over time. Slow down and let the strength of your ideas persuade them.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have laundry to do.

Xes Will Replace Ys! Sell your stock in Ys!

Just read a blog post outlining the eventual "decline of tangible and analog media". Its premise is essentially that digital distribution of media is better than tangible and print media on many inescapable levels, and that the decline of paper newspapers, music on physical disks (of any kind), and analog phones are inevitable.

First of all, the gist of this post is 100% correct, even if it is a little bit late. Nicholas Negroponte eloquently made this observation in his book Being Digital way back in 1996 (which, I am quite happy to say, is now available in its "vintage" edition). When it comes to media, content is far more important than its distribution system. It was never about the pulp, it was about what the words printed on the pulp meant. Bits trump atoms.

The post itself acknowledges this by saying up front: "It isn’t really an argument ... it’s one of the clearer long-term trends." Fair enough. And the post does a good job articulating both statistics and details to support its basic premise (although honestly, people - if you want to be an erudite new media thought leader, learn not to put apostrophes into words that are just plurals. "CD’s replaced tapes ... MP3’s replaced CD’s" just makes you look silly).

But what got me thinking about this one enough to response-blog about it is how it seems to suggest three things that I've been saying about about "X will replace Y!" prediction pieces since they became mainstream media staples in the 1990s.

Xes never completely replace Ys. The "all or nothing!" mentality of these pieces seems to suggest that the transition is going to be total, and anyone caught napping is going to be sorry. A fair reading of history should confirm that the Xes never completely replace the Ys. In many many cases, Xes just shove the Ys into specialty layers of the economy. Many aficionados (my father was among them) insist that stereo systems using vaccum tubes and needles playing vinyl disks sound better than digital ones - so there's a niche market for specialty stereo equipment using those technologies, and a thriving secondary market for old equipment.

Even the iconic "buggy whip" tale (automobiles replaced horses, so buggy whip manufacturers were left without a market and disappeared) is simply untrue. First of all, buggy whips are still made today, in service of those communities (like the Amish) and other specialty groups who still need ways to urge horses without hurting them. Further, it turns out that a few buggy whip manufacturers adapted their businesses to focus on other markets for their products, and *gasp* are still around: Westfield Whip, established in 1884, still makes whips for the equestrian and specialty riding markets, and, yes, buggies. The argument that buggy whip manufacturers clung irrationally to their businesses while the automobile eclisped them is historically inaccurate, as this New York Times article relates. Apparently the whole metaphor was started in 1960 by a Harvard Business School professor using the example to illustrate his premise that businesses should focus on customer needs, not products per se.

Okay so this is largely a historian's quibble over a rhetorical point. Yes, technology moves on, and businesses would be wise not to equate technology-specific product formulations as forever immutable. True. Or at least "truthy," to borrow a brilliant word from Stephen Colbert. But that brings me to my second quibble.

Xes almost never replace Ys immediately. In fact, if the history of technology illustrates anything, it's that clearly superior Xes don't replace obsolete Ys anywhere near as fast as they should. The fax machine was first demonstrated as an adjunct to the telegraph in the 1840s, and yet widespread fax usage didn't occur until the 1980s. Markets have a certain inertia to them, especially when the obsolete technological formulation of a given product is not terrible about accomplishing the market need. The telegraph worked far better than the technologies it replaced, and the market quite happily exploited its benefits for a century or more before other solutions presented themselves.

Even when technology produces demonstrably superior products, there is often plenty of money to be made during the time the transition occurs. For years while I was in the website hosting business, those familiar with the cutting edge of the Internet would shake their heads, predicting that shopping aggregators or blogs or Facebook Fan pages had already made "traditional" websites obsolete. Their implication was that I might as well give it up now, before I woke up one morning and found that all my customers had migrated to some superior solution. Ten years later, my old "traditional" website hosting business is still a juggernaut, growing hugely, making shareholders quite happy with their returns. The overall market size continues to grow, despite the presence of cheaper, better alternatives, and lord knows how long it will be before the overall market starts to decline in size, let along become reduced to niche status. Even in declining industries, the firms that play their cards right can quite easily provide profits and jobs and services for a generation or more. Which brings up my final observation on this subject:

The first version of the X is almost never the one to replace the Ys. In the mid-90s, it was common knowledge that web-based search would eventually eclipse telephone directories, classified ads, library card catalogs, and any number of other information-pointer services. The examples used at the time to make this point? Hot Bot, Alta Vista and Excite. If they had listened to the hyperbolic predictions of Wired magazine back then, anyone in the directory business should have just thrown in the towel and signed their shares over to Digital and Yahoo. By the way - the yellow pages industry is still huge - I haven't looked at one in a decade or so, but someone still delivers them to my house without my permission.

Invariably, great ideas that render existing businesses obsolete are almost always run by folks who don't really know how to capitalize on their brilliance. Eventually they figure it out (or someone does), but just because the lightbulb goes off for some self-important journalist about the inevitability of obsolescence doesn't mean that the idea they're citing will be the one to do it.

At the conceptual level where most journalists and consultants and analysts (and investors, in my experience) play, the "X will replace Y!" narrative is easy to formulate, predict, and even 'prove.' But in truth, these replacement curves are neither total nor immediate, nor are the exact players or products that will ultimately dominate obvious at the outset. During the time when those inevitable transitions are underway, there is plenty of money to be made - often for years and years - through the old technologies, for those savvy enough to do so. Overall markets may decline, and old business models exploded, but on a firm-by-firm, technology-by-technology basis this doesn't have to be the case.

The key, probably, is not to act like the rhetorical buggy-whip manufacturers, but like Westfield Whip:

• Seek new uses and new markets for your product, developing it where necessary to cater to niches. Go upscale or downscale as market reality dictates, and follow your market savviness to adapt. Be sure not to compromise too much, too fast, on what you know well.
• Always be seeking ways to cut costs and operate better, and don't be afraid to shrink to meet reality. Shareholders are conditioned to want growth, and ever greater returns. - seek capital, therefore, that can be comfortable with steady returns instead. And finally:
• Take the hyperbolic prediction pieces with grains of salt. They're inevitably written by those with more interest in a smoothly-written narrative than anything approaching reality.