Talking the future with RD/S
Thursday, October 12, 2006 at 11:22AM Taping went well with the film crew.
As usual, no one could find the house (new subdivision that appears on no maps). Last night the limo CNBC sent arrived just in time for my wife to point me out on the TV to the driver.
Today, I had to field 6 calls from the cabby ferrying Kamran Agasi, a senior-level guy in the famous Royal Dutch/Shell "scenario group" (officially known as the Global Business Environment unit). The local camera and sound guys did better (only one call).
We started around 1:15 and taped for an hour (picture of that scene to be posted). We did it in the living room, but none of that will be apparent in the resulting "movie," because they threw up a green screen behind me, although one of our island bar chairs made it into the production (I had to sit on something with a low profile).
I ended up speaking a lot more on China than I expected.
Something dawned on me in all of the exchange: the biggest mismatch right now in the world is American hubris and Chinese lack of self-confidence. We need a "flow" of American surplus ego to the deficit-suffering Chinese, otherwise known as mentoring. That flow happens, and the world is awfully likely to work out (all scarcity fears aside--and yes, I realize there are more Julian Simons out there than Tom Barnetts) WRT globalization. Absent that flow, the question is how many bad situations can we collectively muddle through.
Fascinating, but that was the key takeaway from the New Map Game for me.
Good news from RD/S: Jeremy Bentham, current scenario group boss, will be in Beijing for my talk this time. Getting pumped!
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