As you may have figured out, my name is Matt Griswold. This is where I think aloud, tag the trappings of the interwebs, and rant about all things interesting and ridiculous. You can reach me at mgriswold[at]gmail.com
You wouldn’t tell it by Bloomberg’s language, but Merckle’s Volkswagen bet lost out to one of the most masterful hacks of the financial system in history. For those of us who don’t live and breathe finance, this is that story.
Amazing story.
The following comes verbatim from Jack Valenti's 1982 testimony before congress on "Home Recording of Copyrighted Works". Most interesting in hindsight is the fervor with which Mr. Valenti - chief spokesman for the MPAA until recently - decries the rise of the video market which would be Hollywood's windfall for nearly two decades following.
And 6 out of 10 films do not retrieve their total investment period. Now, what are you going to do right on top of that? There is going to be a VCR avalanche. Exports of VCR's from Japan totaled 2.57 million units in 1981. No. 2, the United States is the biggest market. No. 3, February 1982, which is the latest data, shows the imports to the United States are up 57 percent over 1981. This is more than a tidal wave. It is more than an avalanche. It is here. [...]
Now, is this all? Is it going to get any bigger? Well, I assure you it is. Here is the weekly Variety, Wednesday, March 10. Head1ine, "Sony Sees $400 Billion Global Electronics Business by the Decade's End," $400 billion by the decade's end. In 1981, Mr. Chairman, this United States had a $5.3 billion trade deficit with Japan on electronic equipment alone. We are going to bleed and bleed and hemorrhage, unless this Congress at least protects one industry that is able to retrieve a surplus balance of trade and whose total future depends on its protection from the savagery and the ravages of this machine.
Now, the question comes, well, all right, what is wrong with the VCR. One of the Japanese lobbyists, Mr. Ferris, has said that the VCR -- well, if I am saying something wrong, forgive me. I don't know. He certainly is not MGM's lobbyist. That is for sure. He has said that the VCR is the greatest friend that the American film producer ever had. I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.
What is clear in the above, and the long history of technophobia from the media industry as so admirably outlined in Nate Anderson's 100 Years of Big Content Fearing Technology, is that big media is in fact a staunchly conservative (small c) culture... prematurely attacking change out of deference to an idyllic status-quo and all too often relying on acts of congress rather than spirited movements of innovation to cope. This is not a new phenomenon.
Exhibit B: 
Buried in between the lines of this brief correspondence, Edison seems to diplomatically rephrase a frustration for the slow tide of mass adoption... that is, not just REACHING "the average man" but also convincing him to "accept" the cure.
Of the six driving forces behind Apple's booming revenues, half didn't even exist 10 years ago... there's a lesson in that. (via @adamphosho)
When ecosystems change and inflexible institutions collapse, their members disperse, abandoning old beliefs, trying new things, making their living in different ways than they used to. It’s easy to see the ways in which collapse to simplicity wrecks the glories of old. But there is one compensating advantage for the people who escape the old system: when the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity, it is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future.
Clay Shirky makes a compelling argument against the rise of bureaucracy and complexity - applicable to business, government and the fall of once-sophisticated civilizations - leaving media executives to wonder if they are even capable of making the change their industries now demand.
Well worth the read.
I think it's a compliment to the progress of America and women that I naturally find this letter to be so completely shocking. Presumably written by the post-depression era HR director (isn't HR always depressing?) of Walt Disney's up-and-coming studio, this letter is an telling artifact of the times.
I have to wonder if Disney soon revisited this policy 4 years later, after all of their "young men" had to trade their ink for ammo in the buildup to World War II? A great find by @shayasaka!
