Calling all unemployed dot-commers: Join the eWPA!

Laid-off project managers, database programmers, HTML coders and graphic designers: In the wake of the terrorist attacks do you feel even more useless than you did when you were just an out-of-work dot-commer waiting to find out what would happen to you when your severance ran out? Now that military strategy, not e-commerce strategy, rules the day, do all your new millennial skills seem dated? Has the scope of the real human tragedy and loss of life in New York and Washington rendered even your prerogative to whine about your unemployment pathetically obsolete?

Well, take heart, my sister (and fellow) Americans. You, too have a role to play: You can put your computer skills to work protecting your country. Or at least, you should be able to.

That's Mike Kelly's proposal to his out-of-work comrades. Kelly, a self-described "Johnny Web guy" who lives in New York's Greenwich Village, last worked as a design director for the now-bankrupt Web consulting shop Zefer. While he and his clean-fingernailed brethren may not have much to offer in the current crisis in the way of search-and-rescue or "special ops," Kelly argues that there is plenty they can do to help without leaving their monitors. And he's calling on the government to help too, asking for the formation of a 21st century version of the Works Project Administration -- the eWPA.

"We've got people who are sitting on their hands collecting unemployment with good brains, so let's put them to use," says Kelly, 32, taking care to remind me of all the good works of the last WPA that we still enjoy today, such as roads, schools, lodges and murals.

The first project Kelly would like to see a crack team of eWPA database programmers lay into is figuring out how to link up the FBI, CIA and Interpol hot lists to airline reservation systems, so that known suspects would have a tougher time buying tickets.

"There are some huge holes in our security and infrastructure. I think there is a lot that this can generate, if we can engage the minds that are free right now," says Kelly. "It also helps the economy."

On his Web site, Kelly calls on wannabe eWPAers to offer their services by filling out a simple Web form. He says he hopes to gather 10,000 names of ready, willing and able eWPAers that he can then take to the government to petition for the establishment of a brigade of government-sponsored patriotic coders and hackers.

At first glance we thought that the eWPA must be a sick joke, making fun of how little we keyboard jockeys really have to offer, compared with firefighters and police officers and ironworkers and Navy Seals when there's a real deadly crisis. But then we reminded ourselves that irony is officially dead post-Sept. 11, so we decided to take the gesture in the spirit of the New Sincerity that it seems to be offered.

"It would be a way for someone like me to participate -- it's not military service, but it's participating in strengthening and moving forward our country," says Kelly. "I think I, like many other people, have a different relationship with patriotism than I did two and half weeks ago. There is a lot of flag-waving out there, but if you have a skill, figure out how to use it." --Katharine Mieszkowski 11:00 a.m., PDT, Sept. 27, 2001]

- - - - - - - - - - - -

China puts Web handyman on trial

Yang Zili, 30, a Chinese writer and software developer, will go to trial this Friday in Beijing on charges of subversion of state power, along with three other pro-democracy Chinese intellectuals. The charges could bring the men sentences of as long as 10 years in prison.

As Salon reported last May in "The Price of Internet Freedom," Yang drew state attention by acting as a kind of Web handyman to other Chinese intellectuals, helping them get online and publish their writings on the Web. He also ran a Web site, "Yang Zili's Garden of Ideas," that published his own pro-democracy writings. The other men who will stand trial with him are Xu Walin, a reporter; Zhang Honghai, a freelance writer; and Jin Haike, a geologist.

The arrest of Yang and his cohorts inspired an international human rights outcry since the men are hardly the most outspoken or well known of China's pro-democracy intellectuals. The fact that writings published on the Web were enough to invite a charge of subversion troubled international observers.

As part of the arrest, Zili's house was ransacked and he was detained at an unknown location for a month before being officially charged with any crime. --Katharine Mieszkowski [2:30 p.m. PDT, Sept. 26, 2001]

- - - - - - - - - - - -

The Church of Scientology has a cure for terrorism

It's one of the most unfortunate natural laws of the Internet. For every tragedy, there is a spam. After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, we've seen numerous scams purporting to be fundraisers for victims' families and the like. But perhaps the most bizarre thing to appear in our in box this week is a lesson from the Church of Scientology on how to handle terrorists.

Titled "Flourish and Prosper," the e-mail contains a selection from Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's "The Way to Happiness."

For whatever reason, efforts to improve oneself, to become happier in life, can become the subject of attacks.

It is sometimes necessary to handle such directly. But there is a long-range handling that seldom fails. ... The real handling of such a situation and such people, the real way to defeat them is to flourish and prosper.

Oh, yes, it is true that such people, seeing one improve his lot, can become frantic and attack all the harder. The thing to do is handle them if one must but don't give up flourishing and prospering for that is what such people want you to do.

The forwarder of the message describes it as something that "could help us understand what we could and should do." If only it were so easy. -- Andrew Leonard 2:45 pm, PDT, Sept. 25, 2001]

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Why consultants in glass houses shouldn't throw stones

The most recent issue of the McKinsey Quarterly contains an article titled "What Went Wrong for On-Line Media?" The article opens:

"Analysts and reporters have ably chronicled the mistaken assumptions and pure hubris that accompanied the rise and fall of online media sites such as Drkoop.com, Go.com, and TheGlobe.com. ... As our analysis shows, on the World Wide Web, the gap between business plan and market reality was even deeper than suspected. Most on-line media properties were doomed from the start."

Fair enough. But Cameron Crotty, a former product manager at Go.com, informs Salon that the McKinsey report is missing a crucial piece of information. Namely, that McKinsey & Company (along with Web design house Razorfish) was hired by Go.com to help create the version of Disney's elaborate online site that Disney ultimately pulled the plug on.

So who, exactly, was guilty of mistaken assumptions and pure hubris? Far be it from us to attempt to pin responsibility for Go.com's spectacular failure on McKinsey. As Crotty notes, "There is plenty of blame and hubris to pass around." There's also a good chance that this is a case of one hand simply not being aware of what the other hand had done. But in any case, shouldn't a note to readers, or some sort of disclaimer, perhaps have been in order?

Not at all, says McKinsey.

"As a matter of course and a matter of policy and something we've done for 75 years " says company spokesman Andrew Giangola, "we do not publically discuss client work and we don't run disclaimers every time a company we may have worked with is in the McKinsey Quarterly."

"I can neither confirm or deny that we worked with [Go.com] because we don't publically reveal that ever. And secondly we would would never run a disclaimer if we had or had not served a company. It would be just completely impossible McKinsey Quarterly each issue writes about dozens and dozens of companies -- some we might have worked with and some we haven't."-- Andrew Leonard 2:45 pm, PDT, Sept. 25, 2001] [Updated 5 p.m. Sept. 26, 2001]

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Got a tip for the In Box? E-mail us