Syzygeist

Open Sesame

One of the arguments I have been trying to make since 1995, when we first envisioned the global scenario called "T+0" - an increasingly transparent world - is that the Internet would become a universal solvent that could dissolve any organizational construct (including authoritarian regimes) from the top down, bottom up, outside in or inside out.

One of the profound challenges that we all face now - from individual to family to corporation to government to society - is how to adjust to the accelerating openness and transparency brought on by the web and associated technologies (of which the cell phone may prove the most potent).

Consider Bahrain, whose royal family just tried to block Google Earth because just plain folks were able to look into private estates, homes, swimming pools, yachts, etc, and see how the rich really live, and how that small country is dominated by the wealthiest among them. Also consider Spain, where SMS messaging helped generate massive spontaneous protests in Madrid and Barcelona the day following the terrorist attacks (and two days before general elections), when citizens felt the Popular Party-led government was withholding information about the perpetrators of the attacks to further their political cause.

These are telling examples of the challenge of openness (and the natural attack on any proprietary position) that web-based and mobile information technologies are bringing to the world.

Likewise the speed at which the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko with Polonium 210 is becoming an issue for Vladimir Putin - not just the news and information about the death, but accusation, innuendo, reaction, etc. as the world is invited to focus on the nature of the KGB-influenced Russian government.

Not only facts but inference can be spread at the speed of light to reach into more corners of thought and opinion than ever before.

This is obvious. What is not so obvious is whether truth eventually wins in any battle with lies. Facts about the ownership and distribution of land and resources in Bahrain, the most web-connected of the Arab states, are relatively easy to establish and to circulate, which gives the rulers an opportunity to respond. And how they respond will be a test of legitimacy. Who killed Litvinenko will be far harder to establish, but in the absence of knowing, human intuition usually defaults to the darkest interpretation. In that case, Putin will be perceived to be guilty whether it can be shown or not. His response will remain under scrutiny, and the public view that develops will dog him through history.

One thesis about this state of increasingly open affairs is that whatever can be known will be known (if not now, then sooner than later). Moreover, whatever is being concealed (either known or suspected) will take on its own nature as people are free to speculate, and to spread their speculation ever more broadly, whether point-to-point on cell phones or one-to-everyone on the World Wide Web.

Mahmood al-Yousif is becoming a destination source for Bahrainians wanting to know how to circumvent web restrictions and see their wealthier countrymen's property via photo-sharing sites. Bahrainians (and everyone else who wants to) are also learning how to download software, get technical advice, disguise their locations and access sites that their government wants to protect.

These developments underscore the challenge of openness to individuals and regimes still trying to operate according to an obsolete world condition - that people in power can successfully conceal themselves in the trappings of the old information realities, whether paper stamped "Secret!" or other channels controlled by the authorities.

Information wants to be free, someone famous once said, which was a bit misleading. Information is indifferent. It requires that someone have it and do something with it. People, however, do want to be free, and free of the idea that someone - particularly their own government - is deliberately hiding the truth from them, even if an ugly one.

Six Degrees of Separation

The title of this blog is a fabricated word, made from a combination of syzygy and zeitgeist. Its stated definition can be found on this page. Readers are invited to submit their own definitions, which if judged superior by the originator (or by other readers), will become the definition. In use is proof, so to speak.

(A story is told, apocryphal or not, that the word “quiz” was invented in the context of a bar bet between two Irishmen. One bet the other that he could not invent a word from scratch that would stick in the language. The bettee allegedly went into the men’s room stall, scrawled the word “quiz” on the door facing the toilet. For some period of time afterwards, those with time to contemplate and some natural sense of curiosity came back into the bar to ask “what is ‘quiz’?” and the meaning was born.)

Be that as it may, consider whether the following true story of a professional business man’s travel day is a true syzygeist of its own.

I had gone to San Francisco to meet with a client about various strategic matters – including whether it should reconsider being bought by Company A. Company A had made a previous offer, had been refused, which led it to acquire Company B, a similar firm to my client but with lesser technology. (Just remember Companies A and B.)

I flew back to New York the next day and went directly to Oceana, a midtown restaurant where I was to have dinner with another client, the CEO of a Japanese bank. (He does not figure into this story, except that he was late, so I went upstairs to the bar.)

The bartender asked how I was.

“Exhausted,” I said candidly.

He then asked the young woman at the other end of the small bar (the kind with lots of polished wood and stacks of wine bottles to the ceiling) the same question.

“Sick of working for a huge company with no vision or purpose or leadership,” she said, or words to that effect. Her disillusionment was palpable.

Well, this led to a brief discussion in which she suddenly blurted out, “Well, I worked on the acquisition of Company B by Company A. So I know something about this field, and I think I could be happy working in a place like Company B.”

“Really!?” I exclaimed. “That is astonishing. I have just come from San Francisco, where Company A and B – those two in particular - were a vital topic in a day-long meeting. What are the chances of that?”

And, I went on, if she was truly sick of working for a visionless behemoth, and she truly likes what Company B does, she should look into my client, which I happen to know has superior technology, an inspiring vision about the future of the field, and is run by truly superb people, including one of the leading scientists in the world.

Well, this was incredible, she said, and she wanted to talk more, but really she had to go, but did I have a business card? (No, this was not a come-on, but more on that later.) I did not, my cards were downstairs in my briefcase, but I could write my name and office number down in the little book she produced from her handbag.

I had just written my first name down when she looked at me with amazement to ask: “You’re not Eric Best, are you?”

“Okay, this is getting a bit weird,” I said. “Do you think you know me?”

“I have had dinner at your house,’ she said.

“Not while I was there,” I said. “I would have remembered.” (This was not a come-on either, although she was memorable by almost any standard – obviously bright, accomplished, unassuming, clear-talking, and not unpleasant to look at, an observation for which I feel I need not apologize.)

“Not only that,” she went on, “I have been at your family house in Maine, this summer, and you weren’t there either. I am a close friend of Bridget and Charles Best, your nephew, and they invited us to dinner while they were house-sitting for you this summer.”

With this she gathered up her things and raced off to her next appointment, mumbling something about how she never visited this bar before and in fact never goes out drinking alone after work.

She did not stay to answer my existential question, which seemed appropriate given the circumstances: Did she think this meeting, in which I was so well positioned to question why she would wish to work unhappily for a big company when she might work much more happily for a small one – and I had the name and title of just the company – was pure chance? Did she believe in pure chance or did she ascribe significance to events of this kind. Was this, in other words, somehow meant to happen?

She did not have time to explore this before departing, and it is perhaps not meaningful that she left her credit card behind (later retrieved after I sent her an email to tell her). What is more curious is what follows.

Fast forward to the next morning: I had arrived home late, gone to bed, and now was seeing my wife and children at breakfast. I began to relate the extraordinary tale of the meeting at the bar, when my wife interrupted.

“And this was the woman who had dinner here this summer while we were away?” The expression on her face and in her voice I can only describe as one of those expressions that a married man may occasionally hear or see in his wife on the topic of some other woman, in whatever circumstance she may have appeared.

“Yes,” I said. “But how did you know?”

“Go on, finish your story,” said my wife, “and I’ll tell you.”

So I did, and she did. It seemed that my meeting at the bar – let’s call her Veronica – had immediately called my nephew’s wife on her cell phone. Bridget was at that moment shopping in Soho, and got off the phone to encounter Sarah, my wife’s best friend, who was plumbing the same aisle at that moment. The Oceana tale was related in some form, and Sarah, within minutes, then called my wife to relate her version of the tale. What inferences or implications emerged in this version I can only speculate.

So within 20 minutes of Veronica leaving the bar, my wife got the news that her husband, supposedly at dinner with a Tokyo-based CEO, was in a midtown bar in career conversation with a thirty-something.

Now, whether male or female, married or single, you must marvel at the degrees of separation in this story, and also its commentary on the nature of life, and perhaps of business.

Veronica, it turned out, is highly qualified to help my client in the business challenges at hand. I know this because I urged her to send him a resume, she did, and it impressed the CEO.

And Veronica suggested in an email that this may lead to a career change, if not to my client’s company, then at least away from the place where she unhappily works.

I take the time to blog all this not only because it appears to be a syzygeist, but also to reflect something about the new information economy, vitally networked by people criss-crossing the business and geographic landscape, preoccupied with similar topics, armed with cell phones, and likely as members of the professional class to frequent the same kinds of joints.

A recent book called “Fooled By Randomness” will make its own comment on my question – was this pure chance, or did it have meaning? You may put yourself in one of two groups to be found in the world, the ones who say chance, and the ones who say meaning.

As for me, it is a reminder that Manhattan, at least, is a smaller town than you might think, and anything that can be known, will be known. Maybe that is a meaning to give to syzygeist, an alignment of ideas (or events) to which one may or may not respond appropriately. Yes, and what can be known, will be known.