Counting the days

Dateline: above the sold garage in Portsmouth RI, 26 May 2005, 51 days to blast off!

Future-in-Review appearance went well. Just me and Dave Davison on stage at coffee table with him lobbing questions and me in hyper-speed mode on responses, swigging variously from coffee cup and Coke can. Already got some nice emails from attendees. Huge ballroom and everyone behind rows of tables on laptops, so like talking at press conference almost. Got a few laughs, but they tended to dissipate in huge space.

Saw Amory Lovins, as usual. In the past year I seemed to have pulled off the trifecta of Pop!Tech, TED and Future-in-Review, andóif I'm not mistakenóAmory was at all three as well (definitely last two). Always nice to bump into him.

Come to think of it, that trio plus a couple of Highland Forums makes for a mighty handful of top-flight conferences. More reasons for me to be thankful for having written PNM, cause it's hard to believe they happen absent that.

After appearance, got to chat with Sidney Rittenberg after the talk and compare notes on China. If you don't know his amazing story, Google him.

Shared limo to airport with CTO from Microsoft. We exchanged ideas on the differences between Chinese and Japanese cultures. Very interesting fellow, and the conversation reinforced a theme I sound mightily in BFA: America will find itself naturally drawn to New Core more than Old Core in coming decades.

Long flights home saw me work footnotes (putting together my giant three-ring binders of hard copies of citations). Got word from Neil today that unbound galleys come to Mark and I around 23 June and we have til 5 July for the big changes. After that it's mostly proofing. So I am counting out my days and parsing my labor very specifically between now and blast-off day. I pretty much know what I have to be doing on every single day, with very little slack.

Conference call today with Alidade on The New Map Game. With such high-level press in attendance (Atlantic Monthly, NYT Mag, U.S. News, Daily Telegraph from London), we want to be sure no one walks away with any conspiracy thinking about offline wargames in Newport plotting secret invasions of anybody. Had that happen with Jack Anderson on the Y2K work (read his column on my media page) back in 1999. No, we want to make clear to players and press alike that security, while a baseline, isn't some magical trump card in this game. It doesn't rule all, it just informs all. Real victory in this game is when peace breaks out and the Gap gets shrunk. That's why this game will be historic: we'll be mapping potential pathways of success, not merely gaming point scenarios of failure. If we don't imagine the upside, then the downside doomsayers dominate the conversation.

In my mind, this game is the proof of concept. Next one we play in DC.

Here's the daily catch:

■ Not in China's backyard!

■ Return of the Gorbachev in Iran?

■ Democracy starts with women

■ The enduring appeal of young America

■ China connectivity versus content

■ The blurring of public and private = the military-market nexus

■ Strategic fear: what goes around comes around

■ Democracy is a contact sport