Another Favorite Leaves the Scene

One of the chief reasons I subscribed (note the past tense) to Barron's was to read Alan Abelson. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who missed his penetrating observations:

Alan Abelson passed away last week at the age of 87, and his absence from this column over the past few months has been noticed by its legions of loyal readers. We fielded scores of inquiries from folks whose weekends invariably started by turning to Alan's column. They clearly missed the enlightenment and sheer enjoyment he provided.

Over the 46 years that he had been writing for Barron's he had accumulated a vast array of sources that furnished insights on finance, the economy, and markets that were not available elsewhere. But what made his column a must-read was its dry humor. Here is Alan Abelson on the fiscal cliff negotiations:

While the world waited with bated breath for resolution of the bitter battle of the fiscal cliff, the telling moment of that monumental clash between the warring parties was an exchange a few steps removed from the Oval Office between the speaker of the House, John Boehner, and his counterpart in the Senate, Harry Reid. It was a chance encounter. Reid, a few hours earlier, had delivered a speech on the Senate floor excoriating Boehner for refusing to bring measures for a vote in the chamber he has putative control over, measures that would have averted a potentially disastrous plunge by the economy into the abyss. Still boiling with indignation, Boehner jabbed a finger at Reid and snarled "Go f--- yourself." (We can't repeat verbatim what he suggested Reid do; we are, after all, a family magazine. Suffice it to say it's an act that requires a degree of athleticism beyond that possessed by most mortals.)

We can't imagine another business publication daring to present the same content so amusingly without, er, going over the cliff. Another unique voice has left the scene. R.I.P. © 2013 Stephen Yuen

Half-guilty As Charged

Yesterday's post used "disruptive" and "disruption" to describe the impact of 3D printing, and I apologize for using a term that is now an overused cliché:

[Disruption has] become an all-purpose technology industry buzzword, drained of meaning. A “synergy” for our time.

The complaining writer defines the proper use of the term, at least from his point of view [bold added]:

What makes disruptive innovations so deadly is they’re not better than your product. They’re worse. Anyone who needed a mainframe at the dawn of the personal computer era would find a PC to be an incredibly lame and underpowered alternative. So you ignore the alternative in favor of meeting the needs of your customers and perfecting your product. But the disruptive product keeps iterating and improving and selling to people who didn’t need mainframe computers but who do have use for a cheap, flexible PC. Soon enough, the PC market has swamped the mainframe market and your firm is on its last legs. You’ve fallen victim to the innovator’s dilemma: Your own success in the mainframe market blinded you to the real trajectory in the industry.

Well, at least I used the term properly. The output of 3D printing is far below the detail and quality of a machine shop, but the speed and low cost make the tradeoff compelling to many would-be Edisons. In fields as diverse as photography, music, fashion, and education traditional methods may still be best at the very top, but for the vast majority of uses digitization indeed proved to be disruptive.

Speaking of disruption and the old ways, Happy May Day, everyone. © 2013 Stephen Yuen

The Flotsam of Authorship

One of my perennial resolutions is to clear the clutter. However, if I were ever to become a famous writer (or merely just famous), I might come to regret acting on that resolution. Broker Ken Lopez sells the "flotsam of authorship" to libraries:

[Norman] Mailer sold his 1,062 boxes for $2.5 million in 2005 and died in 2007. In 2003, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein sold 83 Watergate boxes, also to the [University of Texas], for $5 million. After 20 years of marketing for the likes of William S. Burroughs (dead) and Peter Matthiessen (alive), Mr. Lopez puts prices for interesting paper piles at $30,000 to $300,000.

While the likely reason for inaction is lassitude, the article has come up with two convenient rationalizations for not cleaning up the detritus of creativity: 1) The piles of papers may be worth money some day; 2) Future researchers will be keenly interested in studying the processes of a unique mind. One such posterity-conscious author is Ronlyn Domingue [whose novel is ranked #504,217 in Amazon at this writing]:

Ms. Domingue, who is 43 and lives in Baton Rouge, has one published novel with two on the way. She writes in longhand, types it up, makes changes by hand, and dumps it all into a box in her closet marked "Archive." She has willed the box to Louisiana State University, her alma mater. "I never thought of asking for money for it," she says.

One of the advantages of being older than Ms. Domingue is that illusions about self are easier to recognize and dispel. The clutter resolution stays.  © 2013 Stephen Yuen