The Secret is Timing

Buddy Hackett had a joke where he would get you to ask him, “What is the secret of comedy?” and then right when you said “secret” he would shout out “timing!” Old joke.

But still a good one. Some things, like “timing!” don’t change that much over time. That said, some things do—and have, like timing, itself. We live at a dizzying clip. Many who long for the “good old days,” whatever they were, say it is the decay of morals, etc., etc.

It isn’t. Actually, it is all a matter of what Marshall McLuhan called “the medium.” (Less famously, he also said, “Invention is the mother of necessities.”) That is, the biggest change has come, now that we are in the post-atomic “information” age, from information itself. Not the content, but the medium—more specifically—the speed at which information flows.

Sounds pretty obvious? Wish everyone was paying more attention to it, then. Because a lot of our societal policy decisions, both domestic and foreign, hang on the speed of the medium, the invention of this new technology. And the folks running the various shows seem at a genuine loss to deal with it.

It’s a new reality and almost no one is even looking at what it’s doing. How fast did the LoveSan.worm sweep the planet today? Answer: one day. That’s how fast the Internet can go down and cripple the global economy. Not to be morbid or in bad taste, but how fast can a terrorist blow something up and bring the world markets crashing down, even if only for a while? Answer: one day.

Then consider, for example: It took almost ten years to turn the public off to the carnage in Vietnam. Right or wrong isn’t the point. Just, “Why?” Short answer: Because for most of that time folks didn’t get to see the war over dinner. And even when they did, towards the end, it was in little “three network” news snippets on the evening news.

It’s all different now. We can pretty much watch a war in real time on cable TV, or via the Internet, or both simultaneously, multimedia-izing it like crazy…and until it makes us crazy. An interconnected world is even more fragile, it turns out, than a more chaotic, and less globalized one.

We are about two generations (I mean the 18-month computer kind) away from taking it to the next step. Namely, virtual reality depictions of real combat that you can immerse yourself in at home, like a videogame. We will be not only watching war that way; we will also be waging it that way, using drone aircraft and robotic tanks and the like to fight against live opponents from the air-conditioned comfort of a Florida control room. I make no moral judgment on this—after all, this is war I am talking about. To me, the idea that there is a more moral way to wage war vs. a less moral one is questionable at best, ludicrous at worst. But I digress.

Our leaders have totally failed to work this burnout rate for the acceptance of war into their war-waging equations. Clearly, they are talking about staying the course, a regrettably resonant historical term, in terms of five years. I give it five months, max. If we aren’t out of Iraq, or more accurately, if Iraq isn’t out of my living room by year end, the present Administration better be get ready to pack its boxes and clear out.

Likewise the half-life of Bull and Bear markets. The chart today looks like the brain waves of a seizure victim. Up and down, ratcheted by every scrap of information at the speed of a bit rate. No kidding. This is a long understood phenomenon on the Street. First came the carrier pigeon (the originator of this technology was Reuters himself). Then the telephone arrived (which gave rise to the growth of Wall Street, and increased volatility). Now we have the era of the computer (which began to move into mainstream business, all brokerages, in the mid-1960s). Each in their time “sped” information faster by a quantum leap—and led to ever-quicker market actions. The Internet created an explosive volatility for markets in the later 1990s when online trading really took off. You can see how difficult it has proved for the “leaders” to stay ahead of that curve!

Another example of information acceleration comes from the present California recall campaign. A day after Arnold declares he’s running he’s already being pushed by the pundits (Schwarzenegger so far avoids specifics in race) because he hasn’t already put forward his complete plan for the State. He took a few days to get his tax returns out to the public—and he didn’t yet reveal every little thing. You’d have thought he was ducking the issue.

The point is, things move at the speed of the information. Always have. When it took weeks for news to travel by horseback, then we all had weeks to adjust to it. Now everyone, including society’s leaders, shakers, movers and the like, has to take it in and respond to it in a matter of seconds.

Today a breaking news story, a scoop, an analysis piece has a lifespan measure in minutes…and not that many of them either. If Buddy was still here, you’d ask the question, “What is the secret of reality, of truth or just of the news?” And just when you said the word “secret,” he’d yell out “timing!”

And he’d be right. Before you even got to the reality, truth or news of a thing, its time would have already past.


¶ 4:41 PM