RUTHERBLOG

According to Wired Magazine, the average American spends 8 to 9 hours a day in front of a screen. Based on the premise that information consumption should be as healthy as food consumption, the magazine suggests this as a ‘balanced diet’ in this information-overload age:

Now, I’m reasonably media-savvy, and the very existence of this blog indicates how much I’ve embraced Web 2.0. But there’s one thing about the research findings and the pyramid that has me perplexed:

What’s happened to work?

Popularity: 8% [?]

(Populist philosopher Alain de Botton says that he loves his new project – a £30,000 fee for writing a book about Heathrow. He says that airports are “the imaginative centres of our civilization.”

On the day his appointment was announced, I was in Terminal 3, on my way to Stockholm. So here’s my immediate take on the subject. I doubt BAA will want to sponsor me.)

For all their polish, pomp and circumstance, airports are really nothing more than meat processing plants.  Forget the glamour and excitement – as the cannibals would say, you are a long-pig with luggage.

Like a process-engineered version of Dante’s Inferno, there are three circles of hell through which you must pass to achieve the very reason for your visit, to whit, boarding a plane. So sophisticated and devious have the architects and designers become in their black craft, that these stepping stones to the world have seemingly become destinations in their own right.

(Indeed, I know someone who proudly boasts to have visited every international airport in the US, in some cases deliberately diverting his route – at considerable cost in time and money -  to complete his quest. Then again, at one point he had also visited all 92 Football League grounds, often without a match being played, so we won’t take him as the norm. Or normal.)

The ingenuity of these halls of Beelzeebub is their ability to distract you from their real purpose. You may be presented with overt messages about Efficiency, Security and Pleasure, but subliminal goal is far more invidious: to strip you and your fellow travellers of all sense of personal identity and free will.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

CIRCLE THE FIRST: The Coding Hall

Check-in: cavernous, functional, shining like a kitchen in a glossy magazine, a seething mass of bodies fighting for space. Everyone in a hurry. You are a wo/man on a mission.

The first circle is designed to disabuse you of this self-delusion. You are about to entrust your soul to others, and you must do as you are told. This will be a personal transformation, from complex being filled with hopes, dreams and aspirations to a carbon-based logistics packet.

If you’re old enough to remember ‘The Prisoner’, you’ll recall Patrick McGoohan’s mantra “I am not a number”. Airport designers have seen through this, recognising that even abstract digits have meaning (a birthday, a phone call, unlucky 13), which would be a lifeline back to your sense of self. So at check-in, you are transformed into a barcode.

From Freddie or Janet or Suzy or John to thin-black, thick-white, thick-black, thin-white, thin-black… You have no more individual identity than a shrink-wrapped steak on a supermarket shelf.

In recent years, the dehumanizing process has gone a stage further, with the introduction of e-tickets and self-check-in (a clue in itself: any term with two hyphens is most certainly the work of the devil).

In keeping with the times, airports now ‘empower’ us to remove our own soul. The smiling, reassuring face of the desk clerk has been replaced with touch-screen pods that guide you through the  eight steps to a seat, including probing security questions like ‘could anyone have tampered with your luggage without your knowledge?’ – a conundrum to keep the most capable philosophical mind engaged for the rest of the journey.

Get to the end of this test, and you’re in the system. Onto the next level – the airport equivalent of crossing the River Styx.

CIRCLE THE SECOND: The Disrobing Portal

Great interrogators know that the way to the truth is an indirect path. Similarly, the servants of the Prince of Darkness know that before they completely strip you of all identity, they must reinforce negative aspects of your personality, so that – at the moment of transformation – you give up everything willingly.

They achieve this by playing on your conscience. Air travel is, indeed, a guilt trip.

From the moment you take your boarding pass from the check-in pod, you are subject to forces of scrutiny that would make St Francis have doubts about his motives with animals. You are a suspect, and over the next half an hour you will question every action leading up to this journey.

Notice that YOU will question. The sophistication of the technique is masterful. There are no shining lights, no spills under fingernails, no water torture. Just a sly second glance at your boarding pass, a doubtful ‘hmmm?’ as you try to make a joke with an official,another check of your nine year-old passport photo, and you’re willing to confess to every cross-border crime on Interpol’s “Most Wanted” list.

In the midst of this, as a diversion to really throw your sense of self into a tailspin, you are asked to remove all liquids from your hand-luggage. The ignominy is not the removal; rather, it is having to place them into a sandwich bag which you carry before you, a bottled insight into your personal habits.

The doubts about your guilt are now joined by an overwhelming sense that everyone can see you have a dandruff issue, two deodorants, and an ointment that comes with its own applicator.

“Guilty until proven innocent, guilty until proven innocent” the voice in your head is shouting. Which is just where you’re meant to be, because then the priests take over.

In their green shirts and latex gloves, they are the judge and jury of The Disrobing Circle. With gentle authority, they offer to take away the pain by taking away the objects of personal identification: the items that make you ‘You’, and all that you have done wrong in your life.

Your coat, your jacket,your belt and, most importantly, your shoes. There is nothing – NOTHING – quite so levelling as standing in socks in a public place, and realising that the tip of your big toe is showing.

Your watch, your computer, your Blackberry. And through the nakedness and vulnerability, comes relief. For a moment, you are free – from schedules and emails and text messages; from having to chase the incompetent and answer to the insecure.

You are free, and willing to give yourself up completely.

You wait while the priestess at the screening monitor takes an inexplicably long time looking at YOUR bag. What can she see? Did you forget to take out your nail clippers? Is taking a water pistol to the office such a good idea?

The priests on the other side of the portal beckon you forward. You have removed all items of metal, save for your fillings, but you still hold your breath as you walk through.

And sure enough an alarm sounds. Instinctively, your hands go forward, ready for the ‘cuffs. This is the key moment. Everything that has gone before has been ritual, everything that follows will be reinforcement. But in this moment, your fate is in the hands of a man or woman with the power to damn you for eternity.

You are asked to stretch your arms outward. It is a symbolically charged position. You are then patted from head-to-toe, as the priest looks for your sense of self-worth. Occasionally, he or she will use a whining wand, which will be waved over you seeking your will.

And then, it is over. You have passed through. You are cleansed.

You collect the accoutrements from the previous world, but now they are no more than items of convenience, devoid of all identification. They are without meaning. You may pass into the final circle.

CIRCLE THE THIRD: The Chamber of Consumption

Inevitably, such a process leaves you feeling empty. The physical stress can result in hunger, the psychological damage cries out for a new sense of identity.

The architects understand that better than they understand planning regulations, and so they have created an emporium of entertainment to give you comfort and solace.

You can shop.

Coffees and crepes and cakes. Sandwiches, salads and side-orders. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and tea.

Perfumes and papers and pearls. Cameras and cognacs and chocolate. Duty-free and conscience-free, you can shop ’til they shut the gate.

Sit and watch fellow travellers as they kill time in a permanent amble, lost souls drifting from outlet to outlet, without purpose, without reason – other than to rebuild a sense of self through consumption:

“We never thought we needed a sonic toothbrush, but with a £30 tax saving, you can’t say no, can you?”

“Don’t you think Champagne” – that’s a six year-old child, not a drink – “would benefit from a waxing kit?”

“Well, a 50-inch plasma must fit in the overhead bins, otherwise they wouldn’t sell them.”

The key to the success of air-side retail is that it one-step removed from daily life. There are no Matalan or Argos stores here; every brand is upwardly mobile, as befits the direction of your flight.

Like the planes overhead waiting to land, so you circle in a holding pattern, waiting for the hours to pass and your boarding to be displayed. You might buy an ‘airport’ edition of a novel that you’ll never finish, another adapter plug that you will again leave in your hotel room, or a third medio cappuccino that will later add to your jetlag woes.

And while you tap away at your mobile or watch the football in the bar, consider these (contradicatory) problems:

If were so “time-poor” why do we waste so much of it doing this (where ‘this’ = nothing)?

And in all the schooling, university education, on-the-job training and personal development that we’ve received, why have we never learned the fine art of waiting?

Popularity: 10% [?]

In a recent radio interview, Alan Ayckbourn recounted going for a drink with a young Harold Pinter, and the two of them being accosted by a man with the opening line:

“I think I may have murdered my Mother-in-Law”.

After they had listened to a convoluted tale of family members being pushed up chimneys, Pinter gave some sage advice, which the stranger gratefully accepted, drank up and set off home.

“What a strange fellow” said Ayckbourn.

“Was he?” replied Pinter.

Ayckbourn observed that this sort of thing never happens to him, but that it was a common occurence for Pinter – as if he was so utterly submersed in the universe of his drama that it was, indeed,  his reality.

An interesting but uncomfortable notion, as the following type of exchange becomes all too frequent in my world…

* * * *

A voicemail today from HM Revenue and Customs.

An anonymous messenger with the warmth of corrugated iron asked to speak to a Director or signatory of Company XYZ (a spin-off company from my main business). It gave me a number and a reference to quote, then set me a deadline by which they must hear from me.

I called back at once. One ignores HMRC at one’s peril.

I was put on hold.

A recording told me that they were sorry they couldn’t answer immediately, but were very busy, and would pick up my call as soon as someone became available.

I held some more. The message repeated the apology.

A little more piped music; another apology. By this time, I was so glad that I had returned the call so promptly.

After five minutes a woman answered. Who was I and what was the company name? I gave her both.

“And your address and postcode?”

As I conduct virtually all business by email, text and phone, I very rarely give out the postcode. I told her I didn’t know.

“Then we can’t process the call if you can’t answer the security question.”

But you called me.

“Sorry sir. You have to answer the postcode for security purposes.”

Hold on.

(Sitting at my PC, I typed in the company name to Google and accessed its website. The Contact Us page.)

I read her the postcode.

“That’s correct. And what’s the company telephone number?”

What are you asking that for? You called me.

“It’s for security sir. I can’t process this call unless you give me your ‘phone number.”

I read her the company telephone number.

“No. That’s not the number we have. That’s not your phone number. Unless you give me that information, I can’t take this call any further and help you with your enquiry.”

But I don’t have an enquiry. YOU have an enquiry. Remember, you called me.

“But we have to ensure that we’re speaking with a representative of the company. And if you can’t give me your number…”

I am giving you my number; that’s the company number.

“Well it’s not the number we hold sir. Could this be a direct dial number?”

Could be. Tell me what it is and I’ll confirm that.

“I can’t do that sir. It’s a security question.”

Well, is there anything else you could ask me? Is there a password or do you have the names of Directors. I could tell you that?

“Just a moment sir.”

More music.

“How much PAYE did you pay in March?”

I have no idea. It’s not information that I carry round in my head.

“Don’t you pay people?”

Yes, of course we pay people – or more accurately, we have a finance department that pays people. You could speak with them, but as your message specifically asked for a Director or signatory, I called you back.

“I’m just going to put you on hold.”

Another 20 bars of music.

“Sir?”

Yes?

“I have another question, which I need you to answer if this call is to go any further forward.”

OK

“How many P14’s did you issue last year.”

I am silent.

“Well, in that case, I suggest that you contact your local tax office to ask them to give you the information that we hold on our system. Then you can call us again and we can deal with your query.”

But as I said before, I don’t HAVE a query. You have a query. You called me. Tell you what; as you hold the information, why don’t you call me back?

“Well, I’ll still have to ask you security questions.”

Like what?

“Your telephone number…Will that be all sir?”

You tell me; I’ve just failed a security check on a call that you asked me to make.

“If you get the information, then you can call us back.”

Err, before you go…

“Yes?”

Are you going to record that I did call you in response to your earlier message. After all, it insisted that I call back by Tuesday, and as today is Friday and Monday is a public holiday, it’s getting a bit tight.

“I have made a record that someone called, but that they failed the security questions.”

So you haven’t recorded that a Director or signatory of the company DID call back.

“No sir. I could only do that if you had answered the security questions.”

But then… oh, forget it.

Popularity: 75% [?]

Sit looking at a blank blogging screen for long enough, and eventually the most unlikely memories arise as you search for an opening sentence. It’s just happened again, which explains why this piece doesn’t start in Schenzen, but on a train in a story by David Nobbs.

“Cupid’s Dart” was a TV film that Nobbs wrote in 1981 for Thames TV ‘Plays for Pleasure’ (he’s since adapted it as a novel, which he published a couple of years ago). The details are a little sketchy, but one scene – and one line in particular – are still vivid.

Philosopher Robin Bailey (Uncle Mort in ‘I Didn’t Know You Cared‘), is sitting on a train opposite a very young, punkish Lesley Ash. As conversation ensues, Ash reveals that she is a ‘darts groupie’. Bailey ruminates for a moment, chewing his pipe as only Bailey could do, then says a line that has become an integral part of my conversational toolkit:

“There are worlds of which we know nothing.”

You must have these moments; the moments when someone gives you a name or refers to a company that is a significant force in the world, that you are supposed to know about, and you have no knowledge of it whatsoever.

(Again, in the early 80s’ I was lodging in the house of a wonderful old New Zealand lady called Margaret. In the summer, we’d sit out drinking tea under her buddleia, and I’d try to inform her of the events of the day. I remember one evening, mid-conversation, she screwed up her eyes and nose and with Kiwi musical intonation asked:”Who’s Mich-ael Jack-son?” There are worlds of which we no nothing.)

Here’s an example: the company is called Magna. Ring any bells? It came up n conversation with a major Client a few years ago. They had just signed a partnering deal which would provide significant revenues for both parties in the coming years. “Who are they?” I said.

Tumbleweed rolled under my chair as the meeting observed two minutes silence to mourn the passing of my career.

The most patient person in the room explained: Magna is the most diversified automotive supplier in the world. It designs, develops and manufactures auto systems, assemblies, modules and components. It’s output includes bodies and chassis, powertrain systems, vision systems, exteriors, interiors, roofs, electronics, doors, tailgates; its customers include Alfa Romeo, Bentley, BMW, Chrysler, Chevrolet, Citroen…you get the point.

It virtually builds every car on the road. It’s a $27bn corporation employing 77,000 people at 242 production plants and 86 engineering / R&D centres in 25 countries.

I’d never heard of it.

This is not a complaint nor a plea from my defence team. Quite the reverse: I find it wonderful that such things can happen; that no matter how complete a picture you think you have of the world, the are vast continents that are uncharted.

So imagine my delight in stumbling across BYD.

BYD started life in 1995 as a battery company, then diversified into LCD, plastic casings, mental components, camera lenses and keypads. Indeed, it is now the Magna of the mobile phone business.

More recently – and for the purposes of this piece, with beautiful symmetry – six years ago it branched out  into motor manufacturing. In January 2008 at the Detroit Motor Show BYD launched the F6DM, a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. Two months later, it launched the second model, the F3DM, at the Geneva Motor Show.

It has stolen a march on ‘Big Auto’ and will start selling in 2010.

BYD is, of course, Chinese. It has 7 factories, employs 130,000 people (including 10,000 researchers), and is aiming to be the world’s Number 1 car company by 2025. Like the Koreans before them, and the Japanese before that, BYD is re-writing the rulebook.

I don’t know whether to be unimaginably excited by the scale of change that China is and will continue to bring to the world, or unspeakably terrified. I just count my blessings that I don’t work in the motor industry.

For while BYD says that its name can mean ‘Build Your Dream’, for Detroit – dependent on government bailouts – the nightmare is just beginning.

Popularity: 48% [?]

So, you’ve built a very successful business. You’ve put heart and soul into it, burnt the midnight oil, taken risks, made sacrifices, reached your goals. You are now richer that Croesus and more famous than the Queen.

Next step? The business biography.

You interview some ‘co-writers’, select one you like, set to work and within a few months your draft is off to the printers. The promotional tour is arranged, the Richard & Judy session diarised, the launch party on your yacht is in hand. Then the publisher calls:

“What are we going to put on the front cover?”

Well obviously, it’s going to be a picture of you; after all, you are your brand. But you doing what? Sitting behind your desk; shaking on a deal; walking the golf course?

No; it’s going to be a portrait, direct into the camera. You’re going to connect with the reader. You’re a straight talking exec, so you’re going to look them straight in the eye.

All well and good. But the big question is still unanswered: what are you going to do with your hands?

Can’t decide? Then here’s the Business Bio Arms  Guide. Body language speaks volumes: chose carefully.

The Defensive Cross is the most popular option (see above, and many others in the genre), even though it makes you look like you may have something to hide – which, given the frank advice you’re offering, is somewhat counter-productive. Facial expression is important here. Too smiley, and it’ll look like you’re giving yourself a hug because you’re so wonderful. Too serious, and you’ll  look like a nightclub bouncer (but hey – you ‘mean business’). .

The Lean Iococca is only a safe choice at the end of your tenure. Hands linked at the back of your head, body angled back in your seat, shirt under-arms displayed for the world to see – this is a great pose if you’re running a dry cleaning business, but otherwise you’ll seem incredibly smug. Especially if the business that you personally saved is now dependent on multi-billion dollar government bail outs.

The Engaging Clasp. Don’t lean back, lean forward. Rest your forearms on your knees, and interlock your fingers. The readers will be interested in you because you are be interested in them. You are the warmer, softer, more human side of business. It doesn’t all have to be swearing and fighting. This is not a polemic; it’s the beginning of a dialogue.

The Cool Cut really only works if you’re in the fashion business. Look like you’ve spent too much time worrying about your appearance and you’ll look like you’ve spent too much time, well, worrying about your appearance. But that’s OK if you have fashion in your portfolio. Careful about that one-hand-in-the-pocket, though: for every person who sees you as nonchalant and debonair, there’ll be someone else thinking that you’re counting your change.

Shoulder the Blame. Only to be undertaken when all the skeletons are already out of the cupboard and it’s time to clean house. More a confessional than a self-celebration, it only works for those who can handle a little humility and are willing to be stand-up, admit mistakes, learn and move on. A paradox, this one. The least appealing look, but you probably have the most to teach.

The Supporting Hand(y). Not to be attempted if you do not have the time to listen to Thought for the Day, never mind to write one. Probably not suited to those still in the thick of things, or with anything left to prove. Can make you look like you’re listening to a conch shell, but that’s okay because it implies deep seated, at-one-with-the-world, wisdom. For the eminence gris only.

The Trump. Don’t even think about it.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Like Mum, we went to Iceland – although for us it was an 8-day journey along the south coast of unspeakably wonderful geography, rather than a quick dash through 12 aisles of frozen food.

Our guide, Helga, was enthusiastic and well-informed, our fellow travellers friendly and fun, the weather unusually warm and clear.

And yet all the time we were there, a question kept nagging away in the back of my head: How does this place work?

It has a population of 300K, two-thirds of whom live in Reykjavik. There are four institutions of further education. Like their Northern European colleagues, their quality of life seemed, well, high quality.

It couldn’t all be based on fish?

At the time, the best I could come up with was a two-part answer:

1) everyone has at least two jobs. They’re an industrious lot, the Icelanders. As an example, Helga was also a schoolteacher and she knitted hats and gloves, sold through craft shops.

2) cheap energy. Iceland straddles two tectonic plates, the American and the Eurasian. As they shift, so the country splits in the middle by a couple of centimeters each year, with the gap being filled with magma, Earth’s Polyfilla. Being so close to such an energy source also generates masses of hot water that’s easy to tap.

Water is to Iceland what oil is to the Gulf. Case in point: metal giant Alcan ships raw aluminium from Australia to Iceland for processing. That’s cheaper than doing it locally.

So with these two strands, I wove a not-entirely satisfactory answer to my question, put it away in the mental filing cabinet under “Life’s Imponderables” and moved on.

And today – like an amateur sleuth in a cheap murder mystery – I got the final clue that unlocked the puzzle.

Debt.

No one knows how much (if they do, they’re not telling), but enough to send the value of the krona down by 25% in a day and for shares in its banks to be suspended. Enough for Prime Minister Haarde to address the nation last night, warning that the country could be drawn into bankruptcy unless drastic measures are taken.

There’ll be plenty written about this by people better informed than me. But even I can see lessons in this:

* However good something looks, reserve judgement until you’ve checked under the covers;

* Follow your instincts – if it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t right;

* “Let not vaulting ambition o’erleap itself.” OK – that was Shakespeare, not me. But he usually makes the point better than most of us.

Popularity: 8% [?]