Print and the Progressive Agenda

By Scott Gerschwer

“We stand athwart history, yelling ‘Stop’”

---William F. Buckley

It must be painful to be a Conservative in the current political environment. President Obama is proceeding with his agenda with you or without you; the cherished but clearly misguided notion that every problem we have can be resolved with tax cuts to the rich has been discredited; more importantly, the cult of greed and unenlightened self-interest has been undermined by its own leadership—the CEOs, bankers and politicians that ruthlessly served themselves at the expense of others. My college students today are better people than the students I taught in the Eighties and Nineties: better adjusted, with a greater desire to help others, post-racist, post-sexist, unafraid of the diverse population we live in whether it is ethnic, racial or based on sexuality. Good kids that we can be proud of: the seeds of a great society.

A disclosure: I am a life-long Liberal and a Brooklyn Democrat. For five years I worked for an elected official who fervently believed that government not only can but must be part of the solution in people’s lives. That being “of the people” means nothing if you aren’t “for the people.” We helped hundreds of people in our district and even beyond, fighting the good fight against bureaucracies, insurance companies, overly-aggressive real estate brokers and others that stood in the way of the pursuit of happiness (email me if you want specific war stories). We also persuaded local businesses to pitch in—hospitals sent nurses to our senior population centers to check blood pressure, blood sugar, along with other screenings and programs; locksmiths gave seminars on how to best secure to the home, etc.

The thesis of this column is that technology can help businesses communicate in a more human way with stakeholders. In a similar way I believe that our values as a people need to be reflected in our government—budgets need to reflect our interests not only for security but also for education, caring for our neighbors, seniors, soldiers coming home from war. Here’s an example: after 9/11 a friend of mine emailed me that the government could keep his tax rebate check if they put his name on a missile aimed at el-Qaeda. It led me to wonder what else he might give his check up for: better education for our children? Safer streets? A box of fruit for every WWII veteran?

Clearly the country moved to the right on many issues after those attacks. After all, a conservative is a liberal who got mugged: we got mugged, big time. But after eight years of abuses and incompetence, of freedoms lost and values compromised, of the abandonment of the greater good by the greedy few, conservativism has lost its luster. Consider the New Voice of Conservativism: radio hosts who are unbound, unintelligent, unbelieving (in many cases), unlearned and unenlightened. Rush Limbaugh is a performer, not a thinker. Sean Hannity is a sock puppet, willing to repeat again and again whatever his Conservative Masters tell him to serve. The person who approved Bill O’Reilly as a television host is borderline irresponsible. It’s easy to miss William F. Buckley, whose quote above is at least charming and poetic if misguided. It’s also telling: Conservatives are fearful people. They are afraid of change, afraid of progress that may leave them behind, afraid of an evolving society that isn’t what it was in what they think of as the good old days. Fearful like we all were every time the color code went to orange during the 2004 elections. Fearful that someone will take their hunting rifles away. Fearful that straight white men with obsequious straight white housewives in straight little houses with white picket fences won’t be the norm anymore. 

But times are changing. There is a new face of America. It’s intelligent, worldly, smiling, determined, competent, young and full of promise.

The progressive agenda is moving forward, with or without you.

Communication is changing, too. Postal mail volumes are down: I don’t agree with letting them slip away without a fight and as I’ve said here before there are ways to stop the slide (PMG Potter, I’m still waiting for a call). But if we let them slip away we must replace postal mail with another communication vehicle: candidates are already lined up. Print is largely dead. Sorry. But all the teeth gnashing and hand-wringing about newspaper circulation that I read about at www.nytimes.com  leads me to an overwhelming question: is there a better way? Commuters may still read newspapers. Some were, last I checked. But fewer of us commute these days because of this box I’m sitting in front of. This morning already I have read the sports sections of two NY dailies, the editorial section of the Times, the New Republic, The National Review (yes, but only online), and headlines from around the world.    

I’ve written in this space about Interactive Collateral Management—the last frontier for enhancing MarCom, a wonderful tool for communicating better with prospects and customers. In the past I’ve written extensively about electronic bill presentment. Corporations and the government need to get away from outdated tools, broken processes, and legacy systems which just don't make sense any more given the direction the world is moving. And lest we forget, the technology that drives these initiatives drives my green age. The environment is and should be number one on the progressive agenda.

We’ve got to embrace the changes that are coming. The USPS can survive but it must become less reliant on over-land travel and more reliant on technology that can help them achieve their mission of taking the mail that Last Mile. New environmentally-friendly technologies are a core part of the progressive agenda because they will help us re-create the ten million jobs that were created between 1993 and 1997. New technology will help us increase productivity as happened in the Nineties—but in a sustainable way, without the fast decline of a bubble bursting.

The print/mail industry must embrace the change and adapt to new channels and new technology. Education must become a life-long endeavor. Productivity-enhancing skills must be learned by everyone. Everyone does their bit. Print and the Progressive Agenda do not have to be incompatible.

Last week, President Obama announced that secretary of technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia Aneesh Chopra will be our nation’s first Chief Technology Officer. According to tech writer Tim O’Reilly, Chopra “grasps the power of open source software, Web 2.0, user participation, and why it's better to harness the ingenuity of a developer community than to specify complete top-down solutions.” He also “expressed his enthusiasm for the idea of a "digital commonwealth," a recognition that technology can help us to come together as a society to solve problems and create value through common effort.”

In addition, a quote from a Governing magazine article on a Virginia venture capital experiment is also encouraging: "More important, and more unusual for the bureaucrats, he gives them permission to fail," Governing says. "You can't innovate, Chopra tells them, without taking a gamble every now and then."

For more from the source, go to: http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/26/aneesh-chopra-innovation-technology-breakthroughs-chopra.html 

This is good news for our industry. Public Printer Robert Tappella, and Postmaster General Jack Potter should be among the first to sit down with Mr. Chopra in order to discuss new initiatives to strengthen communication channels in our country and to help define the role that print and mail can continue to play in our society.

I’ll conclude with something Mr. Chopra told Tim O’Reilly:

Technology provides us with new ways to coordinate, new ways to govern and to regulate, but we should never forget that these are merely means. The end is a better society. And that starts with us.

A new era is upon us. HVTO has a role to play and the means to make it a sustainable reality.