We met in Toronto, from which we both escaped in the midst of our graduate studies – but we keep the habit of meeting every once in a while. When she lived in Paris I stayed with her in her bohemian apartment in the Bastille (and managed to lose the key and therefore had to climb in through the windows in order to let us in), when she moved to Ramalla, she was a regular guest in my apartment in Tel-Aviv. Now in our post-academic lives, she’s been moving around and has the habit of taking me to trips with her. She writes the most lively descriptions of the people she meets, the adventures she goes through and colors the scene with so much excitement and panache that i’m always tempted to book a flight and visit her. No matter where she is.
“come Romimiku come” she tells me – “come for as long as you want” – she writes. And I am booking flights, making plans, rebooking the flights and changing the plans, because Gardissima is like the wind, and all over the place.

Gardi, all smile, and curls and sunglasses

These days Gardi is hanging in Central America – and i am so eager to see her. Getting the temporal-spatial coordinates and understanding where we’re meeting and for how long she’s planning to stay in one place could’ve driven anyone insane, but this uncertainty, I must admit, adds more excitement to the adventure.

So it all started in January. In reply to my email asking if I can come visit her in Mexico around April- I got this email:

(dance, dance, dance)

Yes MOTEK come!!!!! as long as you’d like; 2, 3 weeks whatever. I’ll scrape up and maybe I’ll go to the beach with you. And I’ll take you to Puebla. COME!!!

more soonish

muchos besos

g

The initial plan was Mexico City, Puebla (Gardi’s hometown), and head to the beaches – but then G had to move on….

Motek!!

Sorry sorry OK I’m bored here in MC and I want to go away and finish my book and it looks like the destination will be San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas for about 6 weeks; the problem is that Easter Week happens between the last week of March and the first of April which makes travel almost impossible logistically and financially and I’ll most likely go to Guatemala from San Cristóbal to see my friend francis from there. SO I PROPOSE THAT you join me either in Chiapas (before the end of march but if it is to early, the second week of april OR meet me in MC by mid april) SORRY FOR THIS MADNESS!!! and for not having concrete plans; this is what it looks like so far. It’s super cheap to fly from MC to Chiapas (about 250 dlls round trip) AND OF COURSE I’d be happy to come and meet you here in MC (and we’d stay in Miguel’s apartment) anytime around and after mid-april)

g

a Volcano in Puebla, Gardi's hometown

My response was:

Gardi bella

I have to admit that i’ve never heard about Chiapas before but San Cristóbal de las Casas looks beautiful

and i’d love to come meet you and hang out with you wherever you tell me

so the plan sounds great we just need to decide on the dates

yes – it will be easier to travel after easter – no problem with that – may even work for the best if we’ll plan to meet on the second 1/2 of April – can we meet in Chiapas and then hang out in MC?

could that work?

and how far from MC is Chiapas anyway?

i am excited!

Mexico City out – Chiapas in. I googled San Cristóbal de las Casas and loved what I saw. Started planning my trip when this email reached me:

I made it to Chiapas today San Cristobal is more charming than I remember; wayy more hippies, eco freaks, new age weirdos, yogies and zapaturistas than I exxpected: Hence the fact that I haven[t found a place to stay:I"m running away from them!!
So it's pretty much likely that I'm not going to Toronto in May[...]  SO MUCH WORK!!!!!!!!
more soon guapa i’m exahusted
xoxoxoxoox

I’m so excited you’re coming I can’t waait to see you!

g

Hippies, eco freaks, new age weirdos, yogies and zapaturistas? Sounds like a party. I got really into this trip to chiapas but apparently G can’t stand them, and couldn’t find a place to stay. and then i got this email:

hey motek!!!
I can’t stand it anymore!!!!
This place is too full with the tecnojjipis, ecotourists, zapatourists, gringos handing out glasses to the indians and doing their teeth, organic restaurants, yoga joints, fair trade joints… and not that tthe native population really benefits from all of this; it’s ridiculous; I found a place to stay but it won’t be free till next week maybe wednesday, maybe friday (!!!) SO my best friend from undergrad Francis offered me to come down and help me find a place in either antigua, guatemala city  or somewhere in the jungle (sounds SUPER GOOD)
So I might just do that… when you come I can meet you in San Cristobal (it’s a 12 hr sharut ride); Or meet you in Mexico City (i’d take a flight from Guatemala to MC it’s too far) From MC to Sancris: I left silvia’s house at 10.35, late to take an 11.25 flight i made it and by 2.30 I had a hotel and was sitting down enjoying lunch. You fly from MC to Tuxtla (1.30 mn) and then take a sharut from Tuxtla to San Cristobal (1 h)

g

So it turns out that Chiapas is filled with hippies,”handing out glasses to the indians and doing their teeth”… I guess that’s a good enough reason to move on.

and Antigua is the next stop. Jungles, Volcanoes, adventures – i am in. I love her emails, all energy and caps lock, and exclamation marks. they set my imagination on fire, though i have to admit that my travel agent is a bit exhausted…

Nevertheless – when this email reached me -i really didn’t care anymore….

“hey guapisima!!

Was thinking of you all day
got into Antigua Guatemala last night IT IS GORGEOUS… Yes Antigua is BEAUTIFUL and the places to go to as well; I’m at the very feet of one of the volcanoes (it’s ashing, like my volcano back in Puebla)… 2 others are VERY close.”

ay Gardy! - "The last picture is me below the entrance in antigua to the women's prison'"

she says that the weather is heaven (4 seasons everyday: winter in the morning, night, spring between 10-12, summer 12-4, autumn 4-7) and that she’s already mapped out all the Hippy hangouts around so she knows what to avoid – it’s going to be great, I can feel it. hopefully – no women prisons will be involved…

Having spent so much time locked in our heads (me) and floating in space (him) – going back to noisy Tel-Aviv had to be “trippy”. The sun was setting while we were looking for the right road, and the landscape was so beautiful, so we didn’t mind all the u-turns and zig-zagging. A phone call from a mutual friend who just returned from a “tantra” retreat at the desert – made us crack out laughing, and provided more entertainment for us.

While we were mainly sitting and being (trying to concentrate on our breathe) – our friend experienced the Israeli-spiritual version of “Eyes Wide Shut”. 180 degrees from what we’ve been through… He was being caressed by 15 women lying blindfolded on his beck, jumped naked for hours, danced, danced, danced, and went through various bizarre and intimate experiences. While we were eating boring vegetarian food – he had feasts. While we were contemplating in silence, he was singing and dancing. When he told us he booked a vacation and that he’s going to Osho’s Ashram in India, we burst out laughing. It was so radically different from what we’ve been through…

There’s an unforgettable scene in a rather lame movie called “I heart Huckabees”

Jason Schwatzman plays an eco- activist who sings praise to a rock for simply existing. He stands in a parking lot and reads a poem:  “you rock, rock” – he reads – for sitting and “is”ing. the name of the rock includes its essence – it rocks. it is. it is a rock. hence it rocks to be a rock. what sounds like such a simple thing – is not that easy for us humans, in order to rock, it often feels we need to do things, that being isn’t enough.

One of the lessons i’ve learned during the retreat was to be more attuned to both inner and external noises.

changing perspective helps.
going out of one’s comfort zone helps too.

breaking habits and changing our point of view on reality is so important.

In some of the pictures here Matan tried to look at the world from the point of view of an insect, of a flower, of grass.

I think we’re often missing things because we try to look at them from the outside, from a bird’s eye perspective, striving to learn more about the world by looking at things from a distance. Being more attuned to nature and to ourselves also implies looking at things from within, from below, closing the distance between us and what we’re looking on. I’m sure  insects and flowers and grass experience the world differently, hear and see and feel in different colors and sounds. I bet rocks can also sense the world around them. I am sure that other than being (and rocking) they merge with their surrounding, hence, they do things merely by being.

Whether or not I agree with Sagee, it’s obvious that the Internet, and Internet technology, allows us today access to information beyond anything we knew before. But how does technology affect the way we remember, forget and especially store things in our memories? How embedded are our memory contents in our daily actions? and to what extent our daily actions reflect (and even reinforce) our dependency on technology?

chasing the internet is hard to do

Is it the information overload prevalent in the Digital Age that makes questions of accessibility and storage (terms emanating from our interactions with computers rather than from a psychological, or even cognitive discourse) relevant to our day-to-day conduct?

It seems that the more dependent we become on the technology around us, the lazier we get (or even stupid) and it is commonplace now that our gadgets, and our online “hang outs” and databases, have become extensions of our brain. On these satellites prosthetic memory pieces are easily accessed, usually to supplement, but sometimes to replace real memory access.

I no longer bother to remember which actor played in which film as IMDB has all this info available for me. Same for albums info (release dates, band members, etc.) thanks to websites such as AllMusic.com that keep track of discography for us. I sometimes feel that I can clear my memory from those trivia data pieces, and yet – whenever I need to stretch my brain and dig out a piece of meaninglessness data – I am so proud of myself!

pieces of what

It seems to me that nowadays the online world, on our computers or the cellular sphere (which no one can deny becomes increasingly connected, almost always-on), has become the heir of so many basic skills that we used our brain for not so long ago. Here are a few examples of how our “convergence” with the internet and with digital surroundings have been affecting our inner dealings.

The Spell Checker

I heard several people say that in a few decades no one will know how to spell anymore. As spell checking becomes more and more popular (it practically runs on every software/web service we’re using), more automated (it can already offer just 2 or 3 options), and more and more advanced, we can ease up on remembering the exact spelling of words. Google Wave’s spelling feature, for instance, can even handle a sentence as tricky as “Iceland is an island”, even if it has two type-o’s: “Icland is an icland”

i have a spelling chcker. It came with my PC

AutoComplete

On top of forgetting how to spell, there’s another skill we’re losing. This one is actually not a big threat to human civilization as spelling, but it’s an alarming trend. Especially because it is so distracting and adds to the noise we are already surrounded with whenever we’re connected. Algorithms included in automated search reflect the popularity of the concept of “wisdom of the crowds”. We come to rely on  what other people know, or search for or “just” interested in, and features like “AutoComplete” reflect that. I like to consider the “AutoComplete” as a direct access into the collective memory, in a way.

Having written and researched so much about the ways public and private memory shape and intersect, I am fascinated by this feature. It is merely an addition to the old faithful search box, where when a user begins typing a search term, several completion options (the popular options) are presented. The “AutoComplete” has become a “must” feature in most websites and is considered a “hot” trend in the search and UI worlds. And it’s not limited to words – images can be added too.

This is really a trifle, and still it changes the way we access information stored on our and on other people’s brains.It is in memories’ nature to evoke new and potentially different emotions every time they are recalled. and I can’t help wondering what will be the consequences of relying more and more on collective memory? Will we ever “stop to remember”, will we bother to complete things on our own? “AutoComplete” has also been on the focus of many jokes - they’re even selling merchandise.

and carriers

You AutoComplete me T-shirt

Phone Numbers and  Cell Phone Memories

Evidently, it’s not just the Internet that encourages us to clear room in our heads for details we no longer need to store in our minds. Our handheld devices memories do that too.

I can’t remember the last time I memorized a phone number. It was probably years ago – It surprises me that I still know by heart the phone numbers of most of my childhood friends. Isn’t it awkward that I have all those numbers in my head of flats where the parents of my elementary school friends may or may not live?

I find it even more awkward that I never bothered to memorize the numbers I use most frequently, those belonging to my friends today. And why would I want that? They are all safely stored on my cell phone and whenever I want to call them I simply dial. No need to store  them in my head to.

Our cell phones have more memory spaces than we do (at least effectively…), so we can simply rely on them to supply us with the details we need.

While I am somewhat overwhelmed with the numerous examples and the immense details i have to plow through when it comes to simulating senses online (and the reasons why taste and smell are so much more difficult to represent and replicate on any interface/ machine) – I started thinking about a new project – submitting a paper to a special issue of the magazine “The Philosophy of Computer Science” dedicated to Minds and Machines (scheduled for Fall 2010).

The call for paper (CFP as academics like to call it) lists no less than 27 topics – but question no. 7 immediately grabbed me:

“What kinds of things are digital objects? Do we need a new ontological category to house them?”

Thinking about the ontology of digital being and on “digital identity matters” as some researchers already put it, threw my brain into a conundrum and started that tickle that i guess i am addicted to.

After sometime i realized that even though i may not know much about Computer Science i am rather familiar with digital beings and i’d love to think about how they occupy space in the world, the relationships they hold among themselves, and the differences between digital and physical objects.

I’d like to do a George Perec inspired exploration – and to move from smaller objects (or spaces) to larger ones. Georges Perec was a French writer and a structuralist who experimented not only with language and content but also with form. For example, he wrote a book without the letter E (La Disparition), a 500 words long palindrome and composed crosswords for living.

Georges a un chat

The first item that i’d look at will be the autograph, from there i’ll move to letters (or e-mail to be more specific, including spam), folders, books and finally – libraries. Initially i wanted to write about songs and images as well, but they’re less textual based and the topic is already huge.

There’s also a song i like, which is just perfect for this post – it’s conveniently called “Folder” (!) by a band called “Plastic Operator” and the animated music video for the song was directed by Pete Circuitt.

to be continued…

In fact I still have some CD’s at home. Nothing close to my pre-Toronto days collection (R.I.P)

Pits on top

My friend @EBurcat noted lately that a post is always something that comes after the fact. Looking at what’s left from my CD singles collection i am amazed by the irrelevance of something like a single in the age of music files.

pointless plastic (useless CD singles)

I

Derrida, Trauma, Photography and all that Jazz

D (my ex) LOVED things. HE loved buying CD’s almost as much as he loved listening to them. He loved possessing rarities and limited editions and had an amazing collection. Working in the radio and in the local music industry for years and being a music-head from birth, more or less birth (his earliest childhood memory:  hearing “Breakfast in America” when he was about 1 a year old and pushing his crib towards the radio) – enabled him to have a magnificent collection.

Sebald Sebald Sebald (in English, Hebrew, German) but also some Dellilo, Foer, Hemon

In fact, our study walls were covered with CDs. One of the first things D did after moving in with me was to put up shelves (with some help from @OshikErnst), turning our study into a music room: a realm of CDs sorted  alphabetically, but also by genre (Jazz, soundtracks, boxsets. Hebrew, etc).  It was a very impressive “Wall of Fame”.

Freud, Lacan, Foucault and Art Catalogs (curated by Leah A)

We’re talking about the early 2000’s here. People were still buying CD’s, Napster was popular and music downloading and sharing were only beginning. What an age of innocence…

Did you know that the Hitler Bio can be helpful in preventing small-talk on airplanes? (a genius plan devised by my sista) - try it - it works!

The shelves and CD sorting were a project that lasted several weekends. When we decided to move to Canada it was clear to him that he was taking his collection with him. My task was simpler. I took only my favorite CDs and anything we had two or more of (I remember finding 4 copies of the first Destniy’s Child album…)ץ The rest was given to my younger sister who “inherited” the flat, our furniture, and the rest of our abandoned  belongings (including the empty shelves in the study).

Still in Search of Lost Time

A year went by. My sis also decided to move to Canada. But she didn’t ship her belongings (nor did she have a massive CD collection she couldn’t part with – she’s got a more pragmatic attitude in some realms of life). A. threw away all the plastic jewel cases, bought a big CD case and kept only the discs themselves with the booklets. She brought it with her to Canada. Even today whenever I visit her, my heart still aches at the sight of my former CD collection.

I still have BOXES filled with CDs and books in Canada. It’s been 2 1/2 years since I moved back to TLV and I still can’t bring myself to ship them back. I’m not sure why. I clearly don’t have anywhere to put those boxes, but it’s not that. Somehow I believe that if I haven’t opened those boxes in such a long time, I might as well live without them.

Bleak(er St.)

In my first years of traveling back and forth between Toronto and TLV I imported my most of my books back. I used to carry heavy suitcases filled with books, ask my family to help me carry, had to beg and befriend Custom Officers in order to avoid paying overweight fines.

Funny/ Weird Detective Novels and Some Poetry

But I never “imported” my CDs. They’re still there. And so is my stereo. I guess the two go hand in hand and that I now listen to music only from my computer or iPod, and my music collection is more virtual than physical. As Dylan put it – the times they are a-changing.

Warm Colors Work for ME

D’s CD collection is probably even bigger now (he works in the music industry in Canada). My sister is a proud Torontonian technophobe and doesn’t have an MP3 player. She doesn’t even use the mobile phone i left her (in Canada), she likes using Public PayPhones (for crying out  loud!)

I keep some of the books here - just because i like their color

So, I engulf myself with books. Writing book reviews for Walla! sure helps, I got tons of books for free, but i am running out of space. Maybe Oshik can come over and build some more shelves for me…

It's beyond my understanding how come i have 3 copies at home of Sacks' Musicophilia. So i keep 1 by the bed - just in case

I know that i am partially to blame for the Rain Forests ruin. But isn’t paper more eco-friendly than plastic?

Take Mental Clarity/ Neurozyme

I found “Neurozyme” on the shelf at the Whole Foods branch in Toronto. Been taking it regularly for almost a year now. It’s herbal.  It’s supposed to help me focus. It doesn’t work. YET I keep taking a pill or two whenever I remember. I really like the name. Yes, you can either call me a sucker, or an optimist.

Make coffee

and while waiting for the coffee to be ready i do numerous other things like

Organize my books according to color pattern

i am not that obsessive. i have another library with more books NOT sorted according to color. In fact, it has so many books, it’s no longer possible to see the original organization system…( LOL). I also like to

Make lists

i love lists. They give me a fake sense of control. you write a list, you erase it after an action was taken, or a task was performed. hallelujah. But what happens when some items aren’t cleared and dragged from list to list to list? then it’s chaos again. bummer.

Turn off Twitter

shut down Twitter. bye bye TweetDeck

No. 1 disruption factor. so fun. so addictive. I <3 Twtr but it’s bringing me down – it’s the epitome of the information overload. quick, dynamic, friendly, hypnotizing. Log off is the only way to resist the thirst for knowledge and the desire to chat/ play with my friends that Twitter incites in me.

Become Invisible

invisible. invincible. or maybe just wishful thinking

I remember fantasizing about becoming invisible when I was a kid. This could really happen nowadays. virtually, of course.

Unplug

not killing the messenger (just putting it on hold)

Change status to Unavailable and disappear from the face of the earth. hmmm, or not, merely from the IM.

Swim

this suit was meant for swimming

laps. 40. or at least 30 minutes of swimming. no cell phone. no google. no gmail. no work. no twitter. no nothing. just boring monotonous laps.

and if all else fails…

Try to sleep more

sweet dreams are made of this?

I found out that on some days the battle is futile. it is just impossible to concentrate, to write, to keep my mind in one place and ban it from roaming and criss-crossing several paths simultaneously. on such days (if i am lucky enough and don’t have to be productive) i just gaze, daydream, or hang with my friends instead of looking for focus, mental clarity and ways to avoid procrastination.

(there’s another version of “Lost Cause” video. Universal ban embedding it. that’s a shame. looking for an alternative version was also a way to avoid focus… i guess i am mixing productivity with procrastination)

Sometimes I feel like a bag-lady, carrying so many things around – the bigger the bag, the more things i am tempted to drag along. There’s always a book, a purse, an iPod, a cellphone, a notepad to write “small” ideas in, and often a notebook to write longer pieces, action items, lists a scrapbook of sorts. It’s a habit i started while writing my dis – to write down ideas before they disappear, to get hold of them, a futile attempt to cling to words, those stubborn, magical entities.

book, notebooks, notepad, calendar

cellphones: old & older, both semi-functioning, i-pod, and toy-chimp keeping them company

My friend Yael, one of the most talented writers i know, sent me a short piece she wrote after we met for dinner several months ago. I arrived from work carrying, as always, a bag filled with tons of things. It was winter so I had several layers on (a habit from Canada where the heating is so intense you have to be able to peel off layers quickly once you’re in the overheated buildings if you don’t want to be boiled).This is one of the most beautiful things anyone ever told me, one of the most beautiful things ever written about me. very very flattering:

“I met Romi tonight. A whirlwind [...] Romi is living a life I would very much like to live, and yet she doesn’t seem quite happy about it. Her facility with writing is astounding to me. She has an idea, and just like that, the notebook is whipped out, the pen is scratching, or the laptop flipped open, the fingers racing. No barriers, she just writes and writes. Ideas, thoughts, criticism, philosophy, it all comes out of her. She lives a life that looks chaotic and scattered, but is actually organized in a library with a Dewey Decimal code that only she can decipher, but she does. She possesses mountains of information, about music and books, and art, and things that make your brain go tick, and carries it around with a notebook and a laptop and scarves and things. She has many things with her, possessions, items, colors. She walks in and takes off two or three layers before sitting down. Her presence is things. And ideas, and emotions. It’s exhilarating to be in her company, and also threatening, or maybe not threatening, but intimidating. Here is someone living in ideas. Living in thought, meeting once a week for think tanks, going abroad, living the life. She’s doing it, whereas I only think about it. It’s truly amazing, a hot air balloon in action, without the negative connotations that image may inspire to those who don’t believe in hot air.”

“Dewey Decimal code that only she can decipher” – loved it! what a great metaphor.

laptops - the old, the new, and the borrowed

all together now

yeah, i wish i wouldn’t have to have all those things with me every time i leave the house (for example – why do i need 3 USB drives? why4 pens and 2 lip-glosses?). Has my possession become my obsession? I wish i knew. Or trust technology more. Or have a better memory so i wouldn’t have to carry all this STUFF around. I know that it’s time to move on, but a smartphone, get rid of the iPod, etc. But in the meanwhile it feels like i need a cart instead of a bag, or at least a porter available on days when all this STUFF doesn’t fit into my bicycle’s basket (no wonder why i feel like basket case).

a look from above (everything fits the bag - except there's only 1 laptop here)

Things? Ideas? Possession? Obsession? All the same to me – be it the state of things or my presence in things it’s time to let go. Or get an iPhone…

The relationship between procrastination and time has been on my mind lately. Tried to measure how much time and energy i “spend” on every task i take upon myself. Writing proved to be totally unpredictable, though. Sometimes it takes forever until i am satisfied with what i write, whereas sometimes writing goes smoothly (sadly, this experience is rare… sigh)

Writing is tricky. It doesn’t lend itself to value/money parameters and quality doesn’t really depend on the time or effort spent on each piece. Any writer knows that often you just have to remind yourself that what could be done within the time constraints is the best that could be done – otherwise nothing is achieved. There are no real parameters for measuring creativity and although “Muse On Demand” (MOD) could be a nice service, it has yet to be invented.

I realized last week that some of these “zero productivity” days can paradoxically yield creativity. Whereas I am used to scolding myself for not doing anything worthwhile, i found out to my surprise that procrastination can actually be a good, healthy thing. It is a different mode of work, one that takes place behind the scenes; synthesizing things in our back-burner, so to speak. Work that is done subconsciously requires a different mindset and a different time-frame. No need then to stress, just wait and see. Maybe it’s like fishing… you cast your fishing rod and wait. It’s like ordering food in Sinai, way before you’re hungry… Something good will eventually come up.

Tim Armstrong came to Israel to buy stuff. AOL’s new CEO, Google’s head of US ad Sales until several months ago, is here to shop. At first he will limit himself to window shopping – he’ll take a peek, absorb, get impressions, but his next stop will be at the cash register, where some shopping bags will be filled. Yossi Vardi knows this, and wants to make sure that those bags are proudly stamped “made in Israel”. A veteran like Vardi also knows what needs to be done: last night he played host in an evening organized in Armstrong’s honor at in the ‘Geeks’ Garage’ in Holon. This wasn’t yet another fancy to-do at the Hilton; this one was all about geeks, demos, beer, music, and humidity. Vardi made sure that Armstrong – jet-lagged and heat-stricken in the midst of a whirlwind 10-country tour of AOL branches – would remember last night, throwing in some gimmicks along with the unconventional locale. The purpose of the event, according to Vardi, was to ‘brainwash’ Armstrong into realizing that Israel is a hotbed of creativity and innovation –  that he, as AOL’s CEO, should aim towards.

AOL's CEO Tim Armstrong

The laid-back and relaxed atmosphere encouraged the guests to ask direct questions and promote themselves and their businesses. Those who were a bit shy or hesitant were either prompted by Vardi to speak up or received a “hands-on” interpretation of their questions. A polite question asked by Roy Man, co-founder of the online game SaveanAlien.com, about AOL’s goals in coming years, was translated by Vardi into “with whom I need to talk to promote my start-up?” -  and soon followed by an invitation to send emails to Armstrong’s personal email address (which he was “forced” to surrender). Jeff Pulver,  among the guests, was volunteered to ask a question – and voiced what was intriguing everyone: “what will AOL look like under your leadership?” Unfortunately, Armstrong’s answer was less direct. Armstrong claims that the one thing that AOL needs most is (how surprising) innovation. AOL is soon to celebrate its 25^th birthday – 25 years in which the company has acquired many companies. As far as Armstrong is concerned, the next 25 years are to be as impressive as the first 25.

Good-bye Time-Warner, Hello ???

AOL is going through a tumultuous period: two months ago, Time-Warner announced that it was parting ways with AOL and that the internet company would soon be an independent firm. This split is the final chapter of the failed merge (considered by some to be one of the worst in M&A history) – a merge that never fulfilled the potential of bringing together traditional and new media, instead damaging both firms. The significant decrease in both companies’ revenues made the two boards realize that the sooner they parted, the better.

This means that AOL is now searching for a new path: it is currently a content portal which is having trouble measuring up to Yahoo and Google, and suffering a serious diminishment of advertising revenues – it needs a blood infusion ASAP. This is why Armstrong was recruited to head the company and that’s why he is roaming China, India, and Israel in search of enthusiastic people with a spark in their eyes. This is why AOL Ventures was founded, a Venture Capital Fund to focus on communication, IM, and content – and the synergy between these fields. To sum it up – the coffer is full and AOL is eager to spend. Armstrong fulfilled expectations and praised ICQ and its business model that yields revenues by endorsing innovation. He admitted that he too would like to adopt a similar policy, and generally speaking, “to be more like Vardi.” In fact, Armstrong told us, “Vardi and I were separated at birth, and Vardi is the better looking and slightly younger twin…”. Although Armstrong comes from the world of search, he confesses that that arena is overloaded and therefore he seeks to focus on open code solutions, on communications, and on bringing computers and cellular closer. He aspires that the disconnect from Time-Warner (to take place by the end of 2009) will unleash a wave of creativity in the way AOL operates and perceives itself.

Jeff Pulver during his previous visit (on March 09)

Pulver and the End of Recession

Before coming to Israel, Armstrong’s last stop was India, which may have been why he compared the energy he encountered in the subcontinent to Israel’s. I asked Jeff Pulver if he sees any resemblance between Israeli and Indian entrepreneurs. Pulver, who always knows how to integrate spirituality and economic-philosophical insights in an entertaining and layman manner, began by declaring that the recession is over. “That’s it,” he announced, “the recession is over and good things are to happen already in 2009.” According to Mr. Pulver, in India there are plenty of resources but innovation isn’t necessarily their strongest feature – definitely not at the same quantity and manner it thrives in Israel. Pulver is one of the Israeli hi-tech scene’s biggest fans and supporters and therefore it is unsurprising to hear that there’s no basis for comparison between Israel and India, although Armstrong is more reluctant and ambiguous on this comparison. Pulver does not search for men in suits; he prefers people in t-shirts and flip-flops. In Israel, he says, there are more people achieving the impossible and they do not wear suits. When I asked him if he could come up with examples for recent start-ups that have impressed him, he said that in the medicare and bio-tech fields there are several promising companies and that he liked Waze.com’s dynamic network of drivers (presented at the ThinkNext event hosted by Microsoft earlier that week).
Pulver and I continued to chat about the “state of the Now” and the way the world was once again becoming flat – all the Twitter and Facebook updates have led to an overflow of data that is unimaginable in its quantity. Not only is each and every one of us becoming a compulsive content consumer, but we’re now content producers as well and everything is now suitable for broadcast. Data has gone through a liberation and democratization process, he says, and points out the latest events occurring in Iran as an example. We still don’t know what place corporate companies will have in this flat new world, where Twitter’s brief language and the accessibility of information have changed the rules of the game. Only time will tell whether Armstrong is the man to lead AOL back to the top, but one can hope that if he does, it will be Israeli wind in his sails.

Published in Walla! Tech on June 30th. Translated by Romi Mikulinsky, edited by the multi-talented Yael Nussbaum