Only an EU bureaucrat could have written this:

The development and acceptance of new technologies have led to the emergence of new media channels and new kinds of content. The emergence of new media has brought more dynamic and diversity into the media landscape; the report encourages responsible use of new channels.

In this context the report points out that the undetermined and unindicated status of authors and publishers of weblogs causes uncertainties regarding impartiality, reliability, source protection, applicability of ethical codes and the assignment of liability in the event of lawsuits.

It recommends clarification of the legal status of different categories of weblog authors and publishers as well as disclosure of interests and voluntary labelling of weblogs.

What does it mean? Honestly, your guess is as good mine. A couple of smart people think that the EU is moving closer and closer to making an attempt to regulate blogs.

If you read the whole document, it sounds like a grievance manifesto from a journalists’ union. Taken in that context, it’s not hard to see how the EU could use protecting journalists as a pretext to online regulation, labeling, mandated impartiality and all the rest.

I don’t have enough experience with EU reports to decipher this sort of prose. (Which in itself is a commentary on the problems of the EU.) But I know that I what I’ve read makes me very nervous. And glad that my server resides happily outside of the EUreaucrats jurisdiction.

Recently, the great folks at Public Affairs News, which covers the UK and European PA industries, asked me to write a review of Clay Shirky’s outstanding new book Here Comes Everybody. The review has been published in their May issue, but it’s not on their website, so here’s a reprint:

Too often, books focusing on so-called ‘web 2.0’ seem an endless repetition of the same old talking points. But Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody offers a refreshingly different, thoughtful and scholarly perspective.

Here Comes Everybody is full of insights, and is a must-read, especially for those who suspect that the buzz about the internet’s impact is over-hyped.

At its core, this is not a book about the internet. Instead, it’s really about social behavior and group dynamics.

Shirky’s conclusion that the internet has fundamentally altered the way people form groups and, more importantly, what those groups can accomplish, is spot on and well argued.

‘Social tools are dramatically improving our ability to share, co-operate, and act together. As everyone… adopts these tools, it is leading to epochal change,’ he writes. In isolation, that view sounds delightfully theoretical and detached, but what’s the practical impact?

One of Shirky’s central arguments centres on the concept of mass amateurisation. In the same way that the printing press brought the written word to the masses, the internet is equipping anyone with an interest with the tools necessary to take on almost any task. In public affairs parlance, we might call the same concept by a different name: democratisation.

Anyone who has observed the effectiveness of well-funded NGOs backed by hundreds of thousands of supporters has seen its impact. This, Shirky would argue, demonstrates the de-professionalisation of public affairs.

For sure, relationships are still important, but because the internet makes it easier for groups to form and take action, public pressure on elected officials is going to become even easier, more frequent, and more effective.

One can reasonably argue over whether this development will ultimately result in better government policy. But it is now beyond question that it is happening.

While specialists will always be necessary to help clients navigate the vagaries of government, when it comes to making an impact, public affairs practitioners have a choice: adapt activities in light of the societal changes that the internet is sweeping forward or be tethered to methods and approaches whose effectiveness will steadily decline in coming years.

(Cross posted at the day-job blog.)

Dr. Joyner nails it:

There’s a reason that freedom of speech and freedom of press occupy the same space in the Bill of Rights; they’re inextricably linked. Without information to form opinions, the ability to express opinions is meaningless. Conversely, information is useless unless one is free to share one’s opinions.

And there’s more:

America’s early journalists were merely citizens interested in the news. There was no such thing as J-School and the concept of credentialing would have seemed absurd. Over time, however, journalism moved from a craft to a profession, with many of the accouterments of the latter. This has been mostly, but not entirely, positive.

Professionalism arose out of a dark period in American media. Yellow Journalism and a tabloid mentality stripped newspapers of any value, since people had no reason to trust what they were reading. A canon of ethics was necessary, including the expectation that reporters attempt to present information objectively and truthfully. Theoretically, at least, opinion was to be clearly labeled and distinguished from factual reportage. In reality, of course, that ideal was never reached. Given that human beings staff newspapers and other media, it was never attainable to begin with.

Joyner’s discussion of these fundamentals of freedom and the professionalization of the media spring from a larger dialogue about the role and responsibility of citizen journalists.

In his new book Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky embarks on a lengthy and useful discussion about how technology has driven the mass amateurization of work previously limited to professionals. His most compelling example harkens back to the invention of the printing press. Moveable type brought information to the masses. It also made thousands of scribes irrelevant. (Or redundant, in the parlance of the UK.)

Needless to say, the scribes didn’t take kindly to the printers. The monks considered the ink-stained wretches beneath them — a scourge undermining the written word. But when, nearly a century after the printing press was invented, a leading scribe wrote a lengthy defense of his profession, calling forth the weight of history and tradition, he sought the broadest audience, and so he ensured his essay was printed on a printed press.

Today, we find the professional media zealously (and ineffectually) guarding the gates to their castle. The difference between professional and amateur is no longer relevant. Each is capable of gathering and distributing the news, and each must have the freedom to do so. Arguing over the scope of credentials is akin to quarreling over how much water to put in the bucket while your house burns to the ground. It’s the freedom that matters, not the credentials.

I don’t get to blog about my work all that often. Nor do I get to talk very often publicly about how cool it is to work with political experts like Tony Blankley and former Congressman Toby Moffett. Now I get to do both.

Tony and Toby and doing a cool new webcast for Edelman called, naturally TNT, wherein they take a look at some of the big issues and topics of interest in the Presidential campaign.

In this first episode, they talk about the role of Iowa and New Hampshire and also discuss whether early primaries and a long election are good for the U.S.

Check back at the TNT YouTube channel for future episodes.

It’s been an amazing few days here in Los Angeles, and I’ve really enjoyed the chance to experience Windpower.

At the end, a few topline thoughts:

• The wind industry is a real industry. From ball bearings to gears to trucking, we’re talking serious capabilities and serious dollars. And then there’s the manufacture of the finished products. The towers, the blades and the generators themselves. It’s extraordinary.

  
  A GE generator for a wind turbine.

  On Monday, Senator Tom Daschle suggested that the industry “can be bigger than the entire dot-com revolution. This can have the same economic impact.” That sounds a little over the top to me, but only a little.

• From a political standpoint, wind power is one of those rare instances where Left and Right can truly agree. If you’re a pro-business conservative, it’s easy to get behind a substantial and fast-growing industry that promises to be a long-term boon to the economy. If you’re a left-leaning, environmentalist-type, you can be thrilled that a growing industry is providing a real solution to global warming. When it comes to Congress, that ought to translate into broad, bi-partisan support for things like the renewal of the wind energy production tax credit. After all, conservatives like me support tax incentives for businesses all the time. And we can make progress on global warming through a sensible tax reduction. That’s awfully unusual and, I think, very excititing.
• No matter what form of power generation you prefer, we’re going to need more transmission lines. (Read a great primer on this topic here.) Remember the northeast blackout in 2003? At that time, experts told us that we needed a major upgrade to our power grid. They reminded us that our grid is decades old. Now, with more wind and solar coming online, we need to bring power from places like Montana to places like Las Vegas, and we’re going to need new transmission lines to do it.

These aren’t the only thoughts though. During my time in L.A., I’ve gotten to meet some great bloggers, and their coverage of Windpower is starting to appear.

Start with David Anderson, the founder of Green Options. Then check out this post from Randy Riggs at Ecogeek. And if you want all of the details, don’t miss the great event-focused blog by the folks at Renewable Energy Access. And, if you really want all the details, don’t miss the Windpower 2007 YouTube channel, which has complete footage of a couple of the expert discussions.

And we’ll see you next year in Houston at Windpower 2008.

So, if you saw the post about In-n-Out, you know that I’m in Los Angeles. I’ve come west to attend Windpower 2007, a major convention and trade show put on by my client, the American Wind Energy Association. (And I should say that I almost never blog about my clients. Indeed, this will be only the second time. But my test is simple: I would blog about this even if my client wasn’t involved. And I promise that my coverage will reflect the fact that I like both my client and the issue.)

I arrived Saturday, and watched as exhibitors put the finishing touches on nearly 100,000 square feet of exhibitions. The floor is, in a word, incredible. Every facet of the industry is represented. From the major players like GE, Vestas, and Clipper that build the massive turbines and generators to the folks who build every component of those turbines. (Yesterday, for reasons that remain a mystery even to me, I snapped a photo of a table full of pipes and conduit. I’m telling you, they have everything here.) They even have small turbines that you can add to your home or business.

A few months ago, I wrote a post about my visit to a wind farm in rural Pennsylvania. The title of the post was “Wind Energy is for Real”. After seeing the show floor here at Windpower, that title seems even more unnecessary and silly than it did at the time. Don’t believe me? Check out the show’s Flickr feed. (Full disclosure: I’ve had the privilege of shooting some of the show’s photos with my cool new Cannon Digital Rebel XTI.) You’ll see unbelievable displays, including a complete “nacelle” — that’s the part of the turbine that sits on top of the tower and houses the generator — brought in by Spanish turbine maker Gamesa. The nacelle weighs 170,000 pounds and was positioned to the millimeter on the show floor to ensure that it wouldn’t fall through the floor into the parking garage below.

I have to say though, in my personal opinion, the coolest display at the show isn’t the giant nacelle. It’s the Vestas booth, which brings home the advantages of wind energy in the starkest possible terms.

Last week, Jim and I debated whether and how it was appropriate to combat global warming. Here’s a great example of how we can do it in a way that helps our environment, and creates new jobs in a high-tech manufacturing industry.

Indeed, just last week, the National Association of Manufactures Shoptalk blog wrote favorably about wind power.

As I commented to a friend at the time, finally, we have a way to help the environment that left and right can agree on.

I’ll be reporting from Windpower 2007 as the week goes on. So will a number of other great bloggers including our friends from Green Options, Treehugger, New Energy News and others. Thus far, the folks at Renewable Energy Access are providing the best minute-by-minute coverage.

If you have comments or questions, throw them in the thread below. I’ll try to answer them whenever I can.

Back in March, I wrote about the myserious disappearance of bees across the country.

Today, the Los Angeles Times reports that scientists may have found the cause.

A fungus that caused widespread loss of bee colonies in Europe and Asia may be playing a crucial role in the mysterious phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder that is wiping out bees across the United States, UC San Francisco researchers said Wednesday.

[snip]

The current loss appears unprecedented. Beekeepers in 28 states, Canada and Britain have reported large losses. About a quarter of the estimated 2.4 million commercial colonies across the United States have been lost since fall, said Jerry Hayes of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services in Gainesville.

But later, the good news.

If [a virus] N. ceranae does play a role in Colony Collapse Disorder, there may be some hope for beekeepers. A closely related parasite called Nosema apis, which also affects bees, can be controlled by the antibiotic fumagillin, and there is some evidence that it will work on N. ceranae as well.

No one knows for sure, yet. Hopefully, this is a step in the right direction.

We need those bees.

Here’s a topic for discussion - considering how my co-bloggers are generally enthusiasts of new media. Andrew Keen writes in the Weekly Standard about the dirt-cheap user-generated ads run by Doritos during the Super Bowl:

IT’S AMATEUR HOUR at the Super Bowl this year. On Sunday, 90 million television viewers on CBS will be subjected to commercials made by “You”–Time magazine’s Person of The Year for 2006. Three Super Bowl XLI advertisers–Doritos, the National Football League, and Chevrolet–will all be running 30 second commercial spots made by amateurs. The Web 2.0 revolution in user-generated content has infiltrated the American living room. These amateur creators, who Time praise as “people formerly known as consumers,” are now providing the entertainment at the biggest event in the media calendar.

This is not good news. The shift from professionally produced to user-generated advertising makes us poorer in both economic and cultural terms. The arrival of user-created commercials at Super Bowl XLI represents the American Idolization of traditional entertainment–the degeneration of professional content into a “talent show” for amateurs.

We, the conventional television audience, are certainly losers in this new fashion for user-generated advertisements. We have traditionally watched Super Bowl commercials to be entertained by memorable ads. Often, these commercials are more memorable than the game. Occasionally, they even represent significant cultural moments in American history. Few of us, for example, can remember who won Super Bowl in 1984 (Los Angeles Raiders 38, Washington Redskins 9), where it was played (Tampa), or who sang the national anthem (Barry Manilow). But most of us can remember the Chiat/Day produced, Ridley Scott directed, commercial for the Macintosh computer, with its Orwellian subtext and its indelible explanation of why “1984 wasn’t going to be like 1984″.

As I hear about the hype and buzz surrounding user-generated content, of YouTube, blogs, fan fiction, etc., I’ve wondered if I was in the minority of… well, not really liking much of it. The crap-to-value ratio seemed like searching for needles-in-a-haystack/diamonds in the rough. Sure, maybe there are some untapped creative geniuses out there, but finding them in the mess is an arduous task. Yes, blogging brought some new, interesting, insightful voices to our attention. It also gave a soapbox to a bunch of loud and obnoxious loons.

On paper, this is why we have the media structures that we do — the multiplex is supposed to give you the best movies available at any given moment, the papers and magazines the best writers, the publishers the best authors, the television the best shows. Radio, personalities that you actually want to listen to for an hour or two, or just good music.

We like to believe “anybody can do it!” And indeed they can. But not everyone can do it well. Sometimes professionalization has its benefits. In the writing/journalism sphere, I will say from personal experience that having editors is sometimes frustrating, but generally, they’re there for a reason, and often they can actually improve the quality of the work.

Flip-side: I don’t always like what mass media has to offer, either. And yes, when you see the umpteenth movie in which Eddie Murphy plays ten parts and they’re all loud and annoying, or the tenth movie in which Hannibal Lecter eats people, you want to kick Hollywood so that they try something new. But I’m not sure user-generated content is telling us much more than there are a lot of starving artists and garage bands out there. And generally, they achieve modest success for a reason.

Cam: How about we just say most content in general sucks these days. Seriously. With all the crap that’s on television, I watch 2 1/2 hours a week (24, House, and The Office). I can’t tell you the last time I bought a cd from a “popular” artist. There’s just a lotta crap out there.

Marshall: Sorry, but Keen is spouting elitist horse poo. I agree with our two commenters, who both observe that one of the Doritos commercials was the best of a very weak Super Bowl crop.

More broadly, blogs and other online tools that lowered the barrier to entry on everything from video to book publishing consistently demonstrate that there are great minds and talents out there who are no longer subject to the whims of gate-keeping editors. This can’t be anything but a good thing. Granted, there’s a lot of crap. To be sure, not every writer is Hemmingway. But that’s okay. Every person does and should have a voice.

Here’s what we know for sure. Bloggers, even the bad ones, are better informed and more likely to engage and influencers others than the average American. They consume enormous amounts of news. They think, and they express opinions — even if those opinions are often less than clear. That’s real dialogue, and it can only be good for our society.

Jim: Okay, the general opinion so far seems to be pretty supportive of User-Generated Content. Maybe I’m being too hard on it. I do tend to think that people get better at skills (writing, singing, putting together web-videos, etc.) with experience. (Back when I was cartooning, somebody once described it as, “you have 10,000 bad drawings in you; the 10,001st will be good. So get started on those 10,000.”) and that the rise of user-generated content has brought a lot of rookies into the pool, with the results about what we would expect. But I’m judging this new media while it’s still new; in ten years, bloggers may be as useful and informative as any other media.

And yes, it is good that the gatekeepers are less powerful than they used to be, and now anyone can set up shop and try their hand at these new fields.

Last week, my friends at the American Wind Energy Association were kind enough to take me out for a tour of a wind farm in Meyersdale, PA. AWEA recently became a client, so the trip was an opportunity to see wind at work up close and personal. (UPDATE: I completely forgot to thank the great folks from FPL, the energy company that runs the facility we visited. They made us feel right at home.)

If you’re like me, you probably have a lot of out of date notions about wind energy. You might think that the whole notion is a little bit pie-in-the-sky — a product of idealistic hippies who somehow managed to slip through engineering school.

It turns out that wind is a serious player in our electric grid, and its contribution to keeping our lights on grows every day. Indeed, wind energy relies on mature technology that’s been tested and improved for almost thirty years. Recent technological improvements have made wind turbines more reliable and consistent. And the demand for wind is growing. Companies like GE (also an Edelman client), Siemens and BP Alternative Energy see wind an important investment.

I knew most of this before I headed north to Pennsylvania for the day. I got into the car thinking that wind energy was pretty cool.

I had no idea.

We arrived at the site shortly before noon. It had snowed the day before, and there was a fresh white powder on the ground. But the storm had gone and left in its wake a perfect, crytsal blue winter sky. (Although, it was a little brisk. I believe the temperature topped out that day at a balmy 5 degrees on the Farenheit scale.)

The turbines sat on the top of ridge overlooking the town. They were much taller than I expected, but they didn’t overwhelm the landscape. Indeed, they were an attractive part of it. And there was nothing industrial about them. They simply sat on their spot and turned, nearly silent. Of course, with each revolution, the turbines were sending electricity down the mountain and into the power grid.

And that’s the coolest part of all. Here’s a technology that can produce a significant part of the energy we need every day, and it’s totally, completely 100% clean. There are no emissions. Period. No mountain tops that need removing to strip mine their fuel. No wells that need drilling. And no carbon dioxide drifting into the stratosphere to contribute to our slow bake.

I was a believer in wind energy before I went to Meyersdale, but the trip really brought it home for me: there’s so much we can do. We just need the will to do it.

And for once, I remembered to bring my camera. Here’s a photo that I took:

Cam: As an Oklahoma boy, I can attest to the feasibility of wind power. OG & E (Oklahoma’s big electric company) gives consumers the choice to purchase electricity from their windfarm in the western part of the state.

Marshall: UPDATE II: Some guy who subs himself an “energy consultant” has apparently learned how to use Technorati watchlists, and he’s posted a lengthy comment. Just for the record, I think much what he’s proposing is way over the top.

As to the other question in the comments — the wind is unaffected.

Jim: Oh, sure. We all just sit back and fall for the Marshall Jedi Mind Trick. Wake up, people! Where do you think all of that wind in Pennsylvania comes from? Canada! You people think you’re ending our dependence on Foreign Oil, but all this will do is expand our dependence on Foreign Wind! And sure, the ”American Wind Energy Association” sounds like a good, all-American group. We know this giant, corporate-dominated industry by its more familiar name: Big Air.

Obviously, we haven’t even gotten into the theories that the world has reached Peak Wind. Every time the cost of wind goes up — largely because of increasing wind demand in China and India — we hear the familiar calls for breaking into the Strategic Wind Reserve. Or, as Tom Friedman prefers, increasing wind taxes to reduce our wind usage. Isn’t it long past time to increase the fuel economy standards on hang gliders and hot air balloons? It’s long past time to break the power of the international Wind Cartels that are manipulating the market!

(Okay, I know next to nothing about this topic, so I just took my BoilerPlate Talking Points Cliche-o-matic and stuck “wind” in for the other, more frequently discussed sources of energy.)

First foie gras, then trans fat. Now they’re after our iPods?!

I noticed this story while browsing around Pat Cleary’s ShopFloor blog, and it took my breath away.

From the Independent (of London):

A member of the [New York] state Senate, Carl Kruger, has declared war on “iPod oblivion”, introducing a draft law that would make it an offence for anyone to be plugged in when they are crossing the street, punishable with a $100 (£51) fine.

I’m SO glad that the NY General Assembly is here to protect me from myself. Soon, they’ll have done such a good job of protecting us that we’ll be living in small, padded rooms, looking forward to our state-mandated 3 meals a day.

More coverage from Wired and the Associated Press.

Sheesh.

Jim: Has any local lawmaker ever lost their job for proposing a stupid nanny-state law?

Really, I hate to be such a nattering nabob of negativity, but are stories like this reinforce my cynical suspicion that a generation’s worth of failure in America’s schools has purposely generated an unthinking, sheeplike public that wholeheartedly believes that there is a legislative solution to every problem.

“This electronic gadgetry is reaching the point where it’s becoming not only endemic but it’s creating an atmosphere where we have a major public safety crisis at hand,” said Kruger in a telephone interview with Reuters.

Okay… no. Hear that? No. NO. NO. We do not have “a major public safety crisis.” You want to see a major public safety crisis? Hurricane Katrina. 9/11. The L.A. riots back in 1992. The blackout. Anthrax in the mail. THOSE are major public safety crisis. People getting hit by cars because they don’t hear them coming is Darwinism at work.

In a decent society, state senator Kruger would be pelted with rotten fruit and vegetables during every public appearance for clogging the state legislature and wasting the public’s time with this inane psychotic power grab, that literally assumes the authority for the state government to approve of the way we cross the street. Mom and Dad gave up that regulatory authority when I was like, six.

Cam: From my cold dead ears, good sirs. From my cold dead ears.