Rethinking “Survival”

On Monday, Warren G. Lichenstein, chairman of Steel Partners II, sent a letter to Liquid Audio, advising the company to put itself up for sale. Lichenstein expressed disappointment in the company’s performance (Liquid Audio’s current stock price of $2.25 has fallen 93 percent since its IPO in December 1999). He voiced concerns about management’s ability to implement any restructuring plan and preserve the company’s cash, and noted his disappointment at management’s behavior during a recent conference call and its failure to return phone calls to stockholders. "Please remove your egotistical motives and allow logic to prevail," Lichenstein wrote. "Of course, this should result in a prompt sale of the company or its assets."

The clash between logic and egotism could be said to characterize many of the high profile tech failures over the last year, such as We Live in Public, the surveillance experiment created by former Pseudo Chairman Josh Harris. It could equally be said to apply to an event conceived at the end of August by journalist Laurel Toubey, founder of MediaBistro.com, who invited 200 senior-level magazine editors, television producers and newspaper reporters on a three-day cruise in Caribbean. Even at the time, Toubey’s lavish media junket appeared grossly anachronistic, a relic of the dot-com exuberance of yesteryear, causing this critic to wonder if Toubey intended the event as a form of self-parodic performance art. But if the cruise appeared woefully out of sync with the zeitgeist at the end of August, today, in our post-rupture world, it seems relegated to antiquity.

In criticizing Toubey’s cruise on Monday, pre-rupture, one might have observed that the party is over, and that "survival" is now the issue. But today, post-rupture, such a statement — even the discussion of the topic itself — seems almost grotesque. Post-rupture, the topics for discussion will change.

Covered Writings

One obvious direction for change is the question of security. In March, USA Today broke the news that Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist organization had infiltrated Web porn sites, hiding messages for his global operatives using a technique called steganography. Unlike cryptography, which assumes that messages will be intercepted and uses codes to make sure they cannot be understood, steganography (from the Greek for "covered writing") assumes that if the message is detected whatsoever, the cover is blown. Post-rupture, it seems likely that the CIA, NSA, FBI and other security organizations worldwide will devote greater resources to detecting communications both online and using other digital technology within terrorist groups such as Bin Laden’s.

In addition, it also seems possible that online security will emerge as a primary concern for the streaming industry. Pre-rupture, outside of hacker conventions such as DefCon, discussions of digital security were often restricted to DRM, and concerns about online copyright infringement. But post-rupture, it has been revealed that American economic interests have enemies much greater than Napster, and it seems probable that large streaming data files will become scrutinized as harbors for worms and viruses or worse.

Another possible direction for change is a renewed interest in the news media – perhaps on a scale unseen since the depths of the Cold War. Traffic at MSNBC.com on Tuesday soared to 10 times its normal peak figure of 3 million unique users, as the world looked to the Internet for live updates of Tuesday’s unfolding catastrophe. MSNBC cut many of its interactive and graphics-based features in favor of less bandwidth-intensive text programming, a tactic also deployed by the New York Times and Washington Post.

CNN is providing streaming video updates every 30 minutes in relation to the terrorist attacks at http://www.cnn.com/video/popup/section_framesets/top.frameset.exclude.html. CNN’s live interviews with Kabul-based correspondent Nic Robertson, and its coverage of the Taliban’s press conference Tuesday morning, were conducted using TH1 ("Talking Head") videophone technology developed by Motion Media and 7E Communications. The device, which allowed CNN to scoop broadcasting rivals in reporting news stories in China and Chile earlier this year, is a briefcase-sized phone enabling two-way video communication via ISDN lines and Inmarsat satellite technology.

As security concerns grow in the midst of terrorism, even conferences are affected. This week's IBC conference in Amsterdam will undoubtedly be affected as companies and attendees stay home rather than travel.