Day: July 18, 2006

I left CNET Networks on May 10th, about nine weeks ago. I’ve hinted at my departure a few times here, but I haven’t said much. When I noted the launch of OpenDNS, it reminded me of my silence on the topic of CNET.

I am proud of my five and a half years at CNET. I worked with smart people and contributed to two redesigns of CNET News.com, and helped start the reshaping of CNET. Working with Jai Singh is a highlight of the time, and there are many, many others whom I look forward to crossing paths with over the years. And I cheer for their continued growth, across all brands and sites, with a special nod for the “Red Ball.” (I’m startled and surprised by the stock option issues. CNET Networks always felt like a company that was painfully correct about HR issues.)

Why did I leave?

First, I feared not recognizing when I needed to try something new. Read Seth Godin from a month ago: “Time to quit?” I was promoted in January (up, not sideways), and I was still growing, but I was also somewhat comfortable. I’m usually a fan of that word, but I started to believe that I needed to change to stretch myself.

Second, David got me energized about the opportunity in DNS, and the chance to be a big part of making something small into something very big. It’s a chance, not a right or a guarantee. It was time for me to put my shoulder into something where I could feel the organization move every time. I met the team, and I liked both the people and the ratio: six engineers or web developers to one wanna-be geek (me).

For me, it’s been the right choice. But I still skim all of CNET News.com via RSS every day. I’m looking to buy a new digital camera this week, to replace my Canon PowerShot S400 with something no bigger, physically, with at least the same 4 megapixels, but with a faster shutter speed. I’ll blog the process as a focus group of one for my former colleagues.

Thanks, CNET.

State of Fear, Michael Crichton’s latest, wraps a thriller around two related themes: global warming and the use of fear to maintain power.

Crichton paints global warming as a bogeyman, throwing statistics, charts and citations in the midst of his storytelling as if he were Al Gore’s evil twin. Crichton’s most compelling point about global warming is that we still do not know about weather trends, and what they mean. Since Crichton has achieved global success with films and movies, not just books, maybe we’ll see a visual counterpoint to An Inconvenient Truth in the future.

The second theme connects some large dots. Government needs to maintain a state of fear for the status quo in power relations to continue. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, a character in the book says, the environment has become the cudgel with which politicians and policy-makers keep both the developed world and the rising development around the world under control. I think it’s a bit of a stretch to consider it so planned. Still, I do think that keeping everyone on edge all over the world, even while (by most measures) life improves for most people, becomes easier when we fear the future, and each other. If you fear the future (it’s unknown, after all), then you’ll listen willingly to efforts to “protect” what you have…even if it’s not so grand.

I haven’t focused much on the story. Neither does Crichton, really. It’s an excuse to make his points in a more palatable fashion. I suppose a spoonful of honey makes the medicine go down, after all.

The race is to stop an environmental group gone amok, preventing them from precipitating (sometimes literally) weather-related crises to coincide with media coverage. Our gun-toting, Nature-citating hero drags along the Los Angeles lawyer who has previous represented a large donor to environmental causes. They jet about from Antarctica to New Mexico to the Solomon Islands, and several other distributed points.

Oh, never mind. If you can get past the preaching, it’s an airplane book. I whipped through it this weekend and left it sitting in Logan Airport to save someone the expense of picking it up themselves. Not going on our overflowing shelves.

Travelling cross-country and back without children for a three-day weekend gave me more than a chance to catch up on my reading. I also brought along my current Netflix choice, Ghost in the Shell , or, in the original Japanese, “Kôkaku kidôtai.” This anime version (apparently there is a live-action one) was entirely dubbed in English, fortunately, and quite short (maybe 80 minutes). I suppose I can understand this purist’s quote, from the first review at the IMDB link above:

I find it terribly unfortunate that the only American viewers familiar with Ghost in the Shell are anime fans, many of whom overlook the film’s complexity and see only its nudity and violence.

It was violent, and the movie’s cyborgs do spend a lot of time naked. This feels like entertaining pulp sci-fi, despite the grander claims made for the film. Maybe, as the same individual says, it’s better in the original Japanese…I’ll never know. A small airport diversion, but I won’t rush to see the sequel.