But back to Morozov and Lanier. It was only thanks to a tweet by Esther Dyson that I discovered and read this evening a thoughtful piece about the two books written by Maria Bustillos, and I decided that Lanier’s gets the higher spot on my summer reading list. Then I found that Bustillos also wrote a long and worthwhile article on Udacity and MOOCs, which I recommend you read if you liked my short and techno-optimistic blog post about online education last month. Then I had do do some work, and then I have to get some sleep – you know what I mean. If you don’t have time for the books or the debate, do read the articles.

Lanier’s book has two covers, so he gets two pictures in this post. I do prefer the UK one, with its delicate blossoms.

When it comes to innovation in learning, particularly MOOCs, it’s probably safe to say that Stanford takes the cake.
- Rip Empson, TechCrunch, Apr. 3, 2013

Every time I get to go back to Stanford, I have something to look forward to. This week, during the STARS Volunteer Leadership Assembly, it’ll be the talk by Engineering professors John Mitchell (pictured), Vice Provost for Online Learning, and Tina Seelig, Executive Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, titled “Hot Topic: Leading the Way in Online Education”. And a hot topic it is indeed. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman gushes over the transformational potential of online education (read articles here and here). Stanford President John L. Hennessy – a big believer in online technology – is discussing the future of education with alumni everywhere on his 18-city global tour, Stanford+Connects (and I look forward to the Paris meeting in September). Online technology makes star teachers massively more accessible for our children, and may well make the promise of lifelong education come true for my generation. Did I ever tell you how proud I am to be a Stanford alumna? Oh yes I did. I really am.

An era ended in November 2011, although some of its protagonists are still stubbornly holding on to whatever consensus they can gather today. But we still don’t know what the new era looks like. We had about a year of Mr. Monti’s necessary but painful austerity; Mr. Berlusconi’s party eventually pulled the plug on Monti’s government, shortening its life by a few months. Campaigning was rough, bitter, and mostly content-free. The only party to campaign on a credible platform of economic liberalism and reform, newcomer Fare per Fermare il declino - which had ignited the hopes of many entrepreneurs and professionals -, was trounced in the February 24-25 elections, did not even clear the hurdle for a single seat in Parliament, and promptly proceeded to succumb to internal infighting; it didn’t help that founder Oscar Giannino turned out to have claimed a Chicago MBA he had never earned. Instead, the emerging force to be reckoned with turned out to be the Movimento 5 Stelle, a “non-party” led by Beppe Grillo, which readers of tea leaves had credited with about 20% of the vote in pre-electoral opinion polls, but which eventually got close to 25%.

With a tripolar Parliament, stuck in the sheer implausibility of a trust-building exercise among the troops of Messrs Berlusconi, Bersani, and Grillo (who personally hate each other’s guts), and with the poor showing of Mr. Monti (who only carried about 9% of the vote), it will be a tough task indeed for President Napolitano to pick a Prime Minister who stands a chance of forming a stable government. Napolitano himself is at the end of his mandate, and cannot send Italians back to the polls; his successor, to be elected in May by Parliament, would have to do that. Any government that is formed now will probably have a minimal mandate in view of a foreseeably short lifespan: electoral reform – something the parties could not agree on under Mr. Monti – would have to be its centerpiece, since everybody knows that the system bequeathed by a previous PdL-Lega government (and nicknamed porcellum) isn’t cutting it anymore. Fiscal reform, economic growth, and jobs, as crucial as they are in this emergency, just seem too big a mountain to climb for anybody in this political weather. Mr. Bersani briefly held out an olive branch to a disdainful M5S in the form of an eight-point program to build consensus; trouble is, not even his followers can remember what those eight items are about.

In the meantime, yesterday the newly convened House and Senate managed to choose their Presidents. They are two newcomers to politics, a former UNHCR spokeswoman and an anti-Mafia magistrate, voted into office in the lists of the Pd and its left-wing ally SEL, shrewdly picked by Mr. Bersani but shrilly denounced by Mr. Berlusconi’s people as “occupants”. The Senate presidential election only went through thanks to a few votes by M5S senators, whom Mr. Grillo promptly proceeded to excommunicate, although he cannot be sure of who they are (the vote was secret).

It is hard to tell whether Italians, in voting so massively for the M5S, have merely expressed their angst at the protracted recession of the past few years and their anger at the privileges of the old political caste, or whether they are truly buying into Mr. Grillo’s anti-Euro, utopian “degrowth” ideology. The threat to the European project, though, feels real enough that Giorgio Squinzi, head of industrialists’ lobby Confindustria, was compelled today to warn that its think tank had estimated at 30-40% the immediate GDP loss from a Euro exit by Italy.

This weekend, European institutions are not doing themselves a favor in the popular view by imposing a harsh haircut on bank depositors in Cyprus as a condition of the country’s bailout; and fears of contagion may cause yet more instability in the markets, playing into Mr. Grillo’s hands. True, Italy has a long tradition of short governments, unable to complete their full five-year term; and some believe that an M5S-led government would quickly flounder due to its members’ inexperience. Yet, such protracted instability is hardly to be wished for in a country that stopped growing practically a generation ago, and needs to find a way out of the doldrums more than at any point in recent history. Politics is the art of compromise: we will need all our artistry to pull this one through.

• Board governance depends on where you sit. This piece is about the different perspectives of the non-executive director, the CEO, the chairman of the Board and the CEO-chairman. The author, William George, has held all these seats – and it shows.
• Tapping the strategic potential of boards. Too many boards just review and approve strategy; they can do better.
• Elevating technology on the boardroom agenda. How to have a play a more constructive role in IT strategy.
• Engaging boards on the future of marketing. Yes, customer engagement is a board-worthy matter, too.
• Modernizing the board’s role in M&A. Many boards, reluctant to cross the line between governance and management, miss opportunities to help with building value in M&A.

Bonus feature: the first modern organization chart (1855), a true class act by railroad engineer and manager Daniel McCallum. You can see the board of directors at the bottom of this exquisite tree.

Parliamentary elections would be held at the end of April, and middle- and upper-class people, especially young people, were registering to vote in record numbers. Affluent, educated candidates were coming forward with platforms of radical change: accountability, transparency, e-governance. While independent India had been founded by high-born, well-educated men, by the twenty-first century few such types stood for elections, or voted in them, since the wealthy had extra-democratic means of securing their social and economic interests. Across India, poor people were the ones who took the vote seriously. It was the only real power they had.

Technology. NEDs today must be aware of the profound impact technology is having on all areas of commerce around the world. This is true across all sectors, not simply consumer-led industries.  [...]

NEDs also need to understand the commercial impact of social networks, digital media, e-commerce, mobile and other technologies. Online platforms are changing the way customers interact with brands and are therefore driving new business models. Understanding how they work is becoming essential to any boardroom discussion about corporate strategy. As new technological platforms and trends inevitably emerge, NEDs will also have to stay continually up to date and informed. One of the crucial effects of new technology, particularly social media, is that it shifts power into the hands of the consumer. If boards are to stay abreast of the nuances of digital communication platforms, they will need NEDs with specific knowledge and experience to help frame strategic discussion around these areas. [...]

For instance, in the last year twenty-three percent of NEDs appointed to the boards of FTSE 350 retail companies had some form of online experience. This represents a marked increase from just five years ago when only seven percent of NEDs taking up board positions had such experience.

On the basis of special market conditions, the Bank may be compelled to introduce negative interest rates. A new provision has been added to reflect this option.

Any interest shall be credited to or debited from the account on an annual basis.

Today, Facebook opened up Graph Search for me. Is it just me, or does the tutorial start from your school, too?

Yes, it’s a good assumption that I would want to find my Stanford friends.

The poster child for the tutorial is Dave. I haven’t talked to Dave in a long time. We have to reconnect.

Hello to Kevin, Laura, Peter,  Lesley, Sanu, Phil too!

And: Gianluca, good choice.

In his life of VS Naipaul, Patrick French remarked that it might be “the last literary biography to be written from a complete paper archive”. I sense something similarly historical about Coetzee’s achievement, a power of pre-internet concentration and application that has now been eroded in Version 2.0 people. A mental discipline that can stay trained on things for longer than other minds, without flinching; that can push thoughts, or sentences, one step further than they would normally go.

A quality of, in a word, seriousness. Coetzee says somewhere or other that, for a certain kind of artist, seriousness is an ethical imperative. So why do I find myself wanting to be so unserious in his august presence? To dwell on all those things that cannot be related in the polite literary profile, or the rigorous academic paper. Such as: what does it mean to be obsessed, perhaps unhealthily obsessed, with an author? And: why don’t black South Africans read or talk about Coetzee? And: why am I beginning to think that his work should not be taught at the University of Cape Town – or at least that a 10-year moratorium on Coetzee studies should be declared?

While I was traveling in South Africa, I happened to read in the Financial Times the winning piece in the 2012 Bodley Head/FT Essay Prize, by South African author Hedley Twidle. It is in turn ironic (“Droves of students arrive from Wisconsin and Ohio to spend a term abroad, filling the Coetzee sign-up lists”), surprising (“Coetzee, the staff informed me, is a regularly shoplifted author”) and clever (“…a question that all literary scholars should put to themselves on a daily basis: “How can you know anything about literature if all you’ve done is read books?””). Read the full piece here: you won’t understand anything more about Coetzee than you already know, the unknowability of the subject being among the postulates underlying the essay. But you will learn a bit about literary obsessions, seriousness, unseriousness, and a country that is “as irresistible as it is unlovable”, South Africa.

South Africa’s Gini coefficient—the best-known measure of inequality, in which 0 is the most equal and 1 the least—was 0.63 in 2009. In 1993 it was 0.59. After 18 years of full democracy, South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world. [...]

In the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, South Africa ranks 132nd out of 144 countries for its primary education and 143rd for the quality of its science and maths. In the Department of Basic Education’s national literacy and numeracy tests last year, only 15% of 12-year-olds (sixth graders) scored at or above the minimum proficiency on the language test. In maths just 12% did.

Nelson Mandela, the universally revered 94-year-old “Father of the nation”, was released from hospital a few days ago and is reported to be recuperating at home. Yet, after his monumental achievements, how many opportunities has the country missed since then? How much of its potential has been lost to a dysfunctional political system, greedy politicians, and bogus theories about AIDS?

During my trip, I felt safe, as a tourist should be – just a bit unnerved by metal gates at the entrance to every little shop, reminding me that things can get occasionally dangerous. I did not feel I saw the new black ruling class: that has to be, I reckon, a Johannesburg (and Pretoria) phenomenon. Blacks and whites mixed at the popular tourist attractions, such as the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town and the Cango Caves in Oudtshoorn; but the wine country was very white, restaurant and hotel patrons were invariably blond and blue-eyed, and they mostly spoke Afrikaans. I do not recall seeing any mixed-race couples – apparently a more common sight in Paris more than in Cape Town. Being a tourist, I did not test people’s education nor witness the country’s incompetence and corruption. I left with mixed feelings: the place is beautiful, but hiding very deep wounds.

In the picture, a Cape Town view from Table Mountain.