SPAN: March/April 1998

New Trends in the Power Sector Crisis in Cyberland Sabeer Bhatia: Hotter than Ever

The Arts: Transcultural Exchange

industry MEET in ONCE AGAIN

wi

e

IN FEBRUARY '99

13th IElF 199

The 13th Indian Engineering Trade Fair - Asia's NO.1 Industrial Event, will be held in New Delhi from 12-17 February 1999.

THE INDIAN ENGINEERING

Korea will be the Partner Country at the 13th IETF '99 where it will showcase the best of its technologies, products and services in the Partner Country pavilion.

HIGHLIGHTS • • • •

Over 35 participating countries 65,000 sqm. of space 2,50,000 visitors 150 Product Sectors on display

• Concurrent Shows:

TRADE FAIR

12-17 FEB. 1999 NEW DELHI, INDIA AN ALL INDUSTRY FAIR Asia's largest Industrial Certified

Fair

by:

1st Automechanika India '99 International fair on car workshop & service station equipment (with MESSE Frankfurt).

5th Cleantech Environment '99 International fair on cleaner technologies in the process industry.

9th Enterprise '99 A show for small & medium enterprises and subcontracting services.

2nd Microtecnic India '99 International exposition of production measurement & quality control equipment (with REED Exhibition Companies).

1st Weld India International International fair on welding technology.

[ell) Confederation

of Indian Industry

Trade Fair Department 23, Institutional Area, Lodi Road, New Delhi 11 0003.Tel: 91-11-4629994 Fax: 91-11- 4626149, 4633168 email: tradecii@sdalt.ernetin

SPAN

Toward a Global Open Society

By George Soros

How the Mahatma Met Coca-Cola

Publisher Francis B. Ward

By Shantanu GuhaRay

Editor-in-Chief Donna J. Roginski

Dual Identities and Transcultural Art

Editor Lea Terhune

By Geeti Sen

Associate Editor Arun Bhanot

Krishna Reddy"The Artist Is for Tomorrow"

Copy Editor A. Venkata Narayana Art Director Suhas Nimbalkar Deputy Art Director Hemant Bharnagar Production/Circulation Manager Rakesh Agrawal Research Services USIS DocumentationServices, AmericanCenterLibrary

By ArunBhanot

Art as Business

By Lea Terhune

Roosevelt House-Showcasing Contemporary Indian Art Transforming the Power Business

By Brian O'Reilly

Front cover: Lotus, cast paper, 58 x 76 x 10 em.; a work by U.S.-based Indian artist Zarina Hashmi. See story on page 8.

Beam it Down

By MartinI.

Photographs: Front cover-Geeti Sen. 3illustration by Hemant Bhatnagar. 7-courtesy Coca-Cola. 9 & 10 top-Peter Nagy; 10 left & far left-Geeti Sen. 11 top-courtesy Chrysanne Stathacos; bottom-courtesy Judy Blum. 12 & 13 bottom-Devraj Dakoji, courtesy Atelier 2221 Gallery. 14-15 & 64-courtesy Michael Aram; 14 top, 15 bottom & 64 top-Aditya Arya. , 16-Hemant Bhatnagar.

29-36-Vincent J. Musi. 41-courtesy Anita Ratnam. 42 top-Avinash Pasricha. 46-illustration by S. Nimbalkar. 52-illustration by Suhas Nimbalkar and Hemant Bhatnagar. 5557-Santosh Verma.

STATEMENT FORM IV The following is a statement of ownership and other particulars about SPAN magazine as required under Section 19D(b) of the Press & Registration of Books Act, 1867, and under Rule 8 of the Registration of Newspaper (Central) Rules, 1956.

Romancing the Road

By David Lamb

Poetic Justice

By Joy Harjo

A Map to the Next World

By Joy Harjo

Richard Schechner-There

Is More to Theater than Art

By Meenakshi Shedde

Richard Schechner: Q & A

By Neelima Talwar

2.

3.

Periodicity of Publication Printer's Name Nationality Address

4.

Publisher's Nationality Address

Name

5.

Editor's Name Nationality Address

6.

Names and addresses of individuals who own the newspaper and partners or shareholders holding more than one percent of the total capital

United States Information Service 24, Kasturba Gandhi Marg New Delhi 110001 Bimonthly G.P. Todi Indian Ajanta Offset & Packaging Ltd. 95-B, Wazirpur Industrial Area Delhi 110052 Francis B. Ward American 24, Kasturha Gandhi Marg New Delhi 110001 Lea Terhune American 24, Kasturba Gandhi Marg New Delhi 110001 The Government of the United States of America

I, Francis B. Ward, hereby declare that the particulars given above are true to the best of my knowledge and belief.

(Signed) Francis B. Ward Date: February 2,1998 Signature of Publisher

Hoffert and SethD. Potter

A Blow to the Empire

By Steven Levy

Friction-Free Capitalism and Electronic Bulldozers

By Bill Gates and Michael Dertouzos

Hotter than Ever: Hotmail's Sabeer Bhatia Slamming Gates

By David Shenk

A LETTER

T

FROM THE PUBLISHER

his spring issue of SPAN highlights art of several kinds: entrepreneurial, high-tech and the traditional fine arts. Perhaps now more than ever before these arts intersect in openended, creative ways.

These days the headline' stealers are the techno-artists, the software purveyors, those who build mega companies from scratch. In the United States a debate rages between the admirers and detractors of Bill Gates, who created Microsoft, Inc. and became a billionaire before the age of 40. We zoom in on the debate through the perspectives of Steven Levy in "A Blow to the Empire" and David Shenk in "Slamming Gates." We also hear from Bill Gates himself, along with Michael Dertouzos in "Friction-Free Capitalism and Electronic Bulldozers."

From the cybergeneration that grew up in Gates's shadow a star has emerged, one so bright that Microsoft could not resist capturing it-for a few hundred million dollars. In an online interview to SPAN, Sabeer Bhatia describes how he and his partner Jack Smith parlayed their high-tech know-how and entrepreneurial skills into a new communication concept, Hotmail.

High-tech and entrepreneurship are also evident in the traditional arts. Our cover story on Indo-American cultural exchanges in the visual arts features artists who now utilize computer technology in developing their works. Geeti Sen's "Dual Identities and Transcultural Art" and Arun Bhanot's interview with Krishna Reddy and Judy Blum explore the trends toward cultural exchange. One man who combines art and entrepreneurship with manufacture and delivery is the talented designer Michael Aram. Aram is from New York, but for the past 10 years he has adopted India as his home and workplace. Here he produces a unique line of "things" ranging from tableware to door knobs to furniture. He talks about India and his work in ''Art as Business."

Extending artistic focus to the performing arts, Native American Indian poet Joy Harjo writes about

tribal and global influences on her arts of poetry and music, and how she came to collaborate with Indian Bharatanatyam dancer Anita Ratnam. Still onstage, Meenakshi Shedde profiles American theater director Richard Schechner and his long relationship with India. Schechner was recently here to continue his study of the Ramlila of Ramnagar, on which he has written a book.

Other offerings include "Toward a Global Open Society," in which billionaire financier George Soros outlines his recipe for a compatible world society. Energy generation and distribution is much on people's minds everywhere. The effects of deregulation on power distributionin the U.S. and how it may bring better service is the subject of "Transforming the Power Business" by Brian O'Reilly. Looking forward to the next century, Martin I. Hoffert and Seth D. Potter speculate on the uses of solar power satellites, which may fill the need for renewable energy sources worldwide as fossil fuels dry up.

And there is nostalgia for all those who have traversed the United States east to west by road in "Romancing the Road," our photo essay with striking photos by Vincent J. Musi and an engaging text by David Lamb.

I want to thank those of you who take the time to write letters to the editor. Because of staff constraints we do not run a "Letters to the Editor" column, but we read the letters nonetheless. Praise and criticism are equally welcome. The editor tries to keep it lively; sometimes introducing hotly debated subjects, but we strive to represent all points of view. Not all the views expressed are necessarily those of the United States Government, but they represent a dialogue that has always been a fundamental part of American democracy. The gadfly is a venerable institution, often an important source of fresh perspectives. We are always happy to know people are reading, being stimulated by-and we hope-enjoying SPAN.

Toward a Global Open Soeiety

Our global society contains many different customs, traditions and religions. Where can it find the shared values that will hold it together? This noted billionaire and financier's solution is a universal principle that addresses problems of distribution of benefits and labor, economic stability and the delicate balance of governments and private sector. et me start with the obvious. We do live in a global economy. But it is important to be clear about what we mean by that. A global economy is characterized not only by the free movement of goods and services but, more important, by the free movement of ideas and of capital. This applies to direct investments and to financial transactions.

Though both have been gaining in importance since the end of the Second World War, the globalization of financial markets in particular has accelerated in recent

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Reprinted fram the Atlantic Monthly. Copyright Š 1997 George Soras. All rights reserved.

years to the point where movements in exchange rates, interest rates and stock prices in various countries are intimately interconnected. In this respect the character of the financial markets has changed out of all recognition during the 40 years that I have been involved in them. So the global economy should really be thought of as the global capitalist system.

Global integration has brought tremendous benefits: The benefits of the international division of labor, which are so clearly proved by the theory of comparative advantage; dynamic benefits such as economies of scale and the rapid spread of

innovations from one country to another, which are less easy to demonstrate by static equilibrium theory; and such equally important noneconomic benefits as the freedom Of choice associated with the international movement of goods, capital and people, and the freedom of thought associated with the international movement of ideas.

But global capitalism is not without its problems, and we need to understand these better if we want the system to survive. By focusing on the problems I'm not trying to belittle the benefits that globalization has brought. The benefits of the

present global capitalist system, I believe, can be sustained only by deliberate and persistent efforts to correct and contain the system's deficiencies. That is where I am at loggerheads with laissez-faire ideology, which contends that free markets are self-sustaining and market excesses will correct themselves, provided that governments or regulators don't interfere with the self-correcting mechanism.

Let me group the deficiencies of the global capitalist system under five main headings: the uneven distribution of benefits, the instability of the financial system, the incipient threat of global monopolies and oligopolies, the ambiguous role of the state, and the question of values and social cohesion. The categories are of course somewhat arbitrary, and the various problem areas are interconnected.

The benefits of global capitalism are • unevenly distributed. Generally speaking, capital is in a much better position than labor, because capital is more mobile.

Moreover, financial capital is better situated in the global system than industrial capital; once a plant has been built, moving it is difficult. To be sure, multinational corporations enjoy flexibility in transfer pricing and can exert pressure at the time they make investment decisions, but their flexibility doesn't compare to the freedom of choice enjoyed by international portfolio investors.

There is also an advantage in being at the center of the global economy rather than at the periphery. All these factors combine to attract capital to the financial center and account for the ever increasing size and importance of financial markets.

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Financial markets are inherently un• stable, and international financial markets are especially so. International capital movements are notorious for their boom-bust pattern. During a boom capital flows from the center to the periphery, but when confidence is shaken it has a tendency to return to its source. I have seen many ebbs and flows and booms and busts, and though I fully recognize that international capital markets have become much more institutional in character and demonstrate much greater resilience, I

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cannot believe that the present boom will not be followed by a bust until history proves me wrong.

The risk of a breakdown is greatly increased by the fact that our theoretical understanding of how financial markets operate is fundamentally flawed.

Economic theory has been built on the misleading concept of equilibrium. In my view, equilibrium is elusive because market participants are trying to discount a future that is itself shaped by market expectations. For instance, a company whose stock is overvalued can use that to justify the inflated expectations of its shareholders, but only up to a point. This renders the outcome indeterminate, and it is only by accident that the actual course of events corresponds to prevailing expectations. Market participants, if they are rational, will recognize that they are shooting at a moving target rather than discounting a future equilibrium. The theory of rational expectations makes the heroic assumption that market participants as a group are in a position to discount the future accurately. That assumption may yield a hypothetical equilibrium, but it has little relevance to actual market behavior-and neither market operators nor regulators have ever fully accepted the theory, exactly because they are rational people. I am told that economic theory has gone a long way toward recognizing and studying disequilibrium situations.

Nevertheless, the laissez-faire idea that markets should be left to their own devices remains very influential. I consider it a dangerous idea. The instability of financial markets can cause serious economic and social dislocations.

The question poses itself: What should be done to preserve the stability of the financial system? This cannot be answered in the abstract, because every situation is different. Financial markets are best understood as a historical process, and history never quite repeats itself. The recent turmoil in Asian markets raises difficult questions about currency pegs, asset bubbles, inadequate banking supervision and the lack of financial information which cannot be ignored. Markets cannot be left to correct their own mistakes, because

they are likely to overreact and to behave in an indiscriminate fashion.

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Instability is not confined to the finan• cial system, however. The goal of competitors is to prevail, not to preserve competition in the market. The natural tendency for monopolies and oligopolies to arise needs to be constrained by regulations. The process of globalization is too recent for this to have become a serious issue on a global level, but since we are dealing with a historical process, in time it will.

But whose job is it to prevent undue • concentration of power and to preserve stability in financial markets? This brings me to the role of the state. Since the end of the Second World War the state has played an increasing role in maintaining economic stability, striving to ensure equality of opportunity and providing a social safety net, particularly in the highly industrialized countries of Europe and North America. But the capacity of the state to look after the welfare of its citizens has been severely impaired by the globalization of the capitalist system, which allows capital to escape taxation much more easily than labor can. Capital will tend to avoid countries where employment is heavily taxed or heavily protected, leading to a rise in unemployment. That is what has happened in continental Europe. I am not defending the antiquated European socialsecurity systems, which are badly in need of reform; but I am expressing concern about the reduction in social provisions both in Europe and in America.

This is a relatively new phenomenon, and it has not yet had its full effect. Until re-' cently the state's share of GNP in the industrialized countries taken as a group was increasing; it had almost doubled since the end of the Second World War. Although the ratio peaked in the 1980s, it has not declined perceptibly. The Thatcher and Reagan governments embarked on a program of reducing the state's role in the economy. What has happened instead is that the taxes on capital have come down while the taxes on labor have kept increasing. As the international economist Dani Rodrik has argued, globalization increases the demands on the

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state to provide social insurance while reducing its ability to do so. This carries the seeds of social conflict. If social services are cut too far while instability is on the rise, popular resentment could lead to a new wave of protectionism both in the United States and in Europe, especially if (or when) the current boom is followed by a bust of some severity. This could lead to a breakdown in the global capitalist system, just as it did in the 1930s. With the influence of the state declining, there is a greater need for international cooperation. But such cooperation is contrary to the prevailing ideas of laissez-faire on the one hand and nationalism and fundamentalism on the other.

The state has played another role iri economic development: in countries deficient in local capital it has allied itself with local business interests and helped them to accumulate capital. This strategy has proved successful in Japan, Korea and the now wounded tigers of Southeast Asia.

Although the model has worked, it raises some important questions about the relationship between capitalism and democracy. Clearly, an autocratic regime is more favorable to the rapid accumulation of capital than a democratic one, and a prosperous country is more favorable to the development of democratic institutions than a destitute one. So it is reasonable to envisage a pattern of development that goes from autocracy and capital accumulation to prosperity and democracy. But the transition from autocracy to democracy is far from assured: those who are in positions of power cling tenaciously to their power.

Autocratic regimes weaken themselves by restricting free speech and allowing corruption to spread. Eventually they may collapse of their own weight. The moment of truth comes when they fail to sustain prosperity. Unfortunately, economic dislocation and decline do not provide a good environment for the development of democratic institutions. So the political prospects for the Asian economic miracle remain cloudy at best.

This brings me to the most nebulous • problem area, the question of values and social cohesion. Every society needs some shared values to hold it together.

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Market values on their own cannot serve that purpose, because they reflect only what one market participant is willing to pay another in a free exchange. Markets reduce everything, including human beings (labor) and nature (land), to commodities. We can have a market economy but we cannot have a market society. In addition to markets, society needs institutions to serve such social goals as political freedom and social justice. There are such institutions in individual countries, but not in the global society. The development of a global society has lagged behind the growth of a global economy. Unless the gap is enclosed, the global capitalist system will not survive.

realize that gaining acceptance for a universal principle is a tall order, but I cannot see how we can do without it.

What is the open society? Superficially, it is a way to describe the positive aspects of democracy: the greatest degree of freedom compatible with social justice. It is characterized by the rule of law, respect for human rights, minorities and minority opinions, the division of power and a market economy. The principles of the open society are admirably put forth in the Declaration of Independence.

But the Declaration states, "We hold these truths to be self-evident," whereas the principles of the open society are anything but selfevident; they need to be established by

The benefits of the present global capitalist system can be sustained only by deliberate and persistent efforts to correct and contain the system's deficiencies.

When I speak of a global society, I do . convincing arguments.

There is a strong epistemological argunot mean a global state. States are notoriment, elaborated by Karl Popper, in favor ously imperfect even at the national level. of the open society: Our understanding is We need to find new solutions for a novel inherently imperfect; the ultimate truth, situation, although this is not the first time the perfect design for society, is beyond that a global capitalist system has come into being. Similar conditions prevailed at our reach. We must therefore content ourselves with the next best thing-a form of the turn of the century. Then the global capitalist system was held together by the social organization that falls short of perfection but holds itself open to improveimperial powers. Eventually, it was dement. That is the concept of the open stroyed by a conflict between those powsociety: a society open to improvement. ers. But the days of the empires are gone. a For the current global capitalist system to The more conditions are changing-and global economy fosters change-the more survive, it must satisfy the needs and aspiimportant the concept becomes. rations of its participants.

But the idea of the open society is not Our global society contains many difwidely accepted. On the contrary: the ferent customs, traditions and religions; argument has not even where can it find the shared values that epistemological would hold it together? I should like to put been properly considered, and the idea of forward the idea of what I call the open so- a global open society is often explicitly rejected. There are those, for instance, who ciety as a universal principle that recogargue that values are different in Asia. Of nizes the diversity inherent in our global course they are different. The global society, yet provides a conceptual basis (Continued on page 50) for establishing the institutions we need. I

How the Mahatma Met Coca-Cola The first statue of Mahatma Gandhi on U.S. Government property was recently unveiled at the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

And Atlanta-based Coca-Cola was a sponsor. Coca-Cola CEO Donald Wilson Short says the company has large ambitions in the subcontinent. tnhe annals of big business, there may never have been so curious a combination-Coca-Cola and Mahatma Gandhi. But a bit of India was fixed on American soil with the help of Coca-Cola when a six-foot-four-inch-high bronze statue of the apostle of peace was installed at the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Historians and diplomats described the event as historic. It was the first statue of the Indian preacher of nonviolence on federal government property, and January 24 has been declared as the Mahatma Gandhi Day in the state of Georgia.

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The unveiling of the statue was held amidst chanting of Ram Dhun by Navrang-a NRI musical group-and religious tunes from the Atlanta High School Jazz. And in an effort to keep up the spirit of Indo-American collaboration, CocaCola India distributed 800 cans of Thums Up and Limca among the guests, who included Andrew Young, former American ambassador to the United Nations, Naresh Chandra, Indian ambassador to the United States, and Donald Wilson Short, CEO and president of Coca-Cola India. Coca-Cola's international headquarters is in Atlanta, and Coke sponsored the Gandhi statue.

The company may have been sending a subtle message to its adversaries, who claim Atlanta executives were not keen on marketing the Indian brands acquired from Parle in the much-publicized deal in 1993.

Coca-Cola CEO Short noted that the event was held just before India's Republic Day celebrations for its 50th year of independence, although this wasn't the reason for installing the statue. "The nonresident Indians have been contemplating a statue at King Center for a long time. We were approached at a relatively later stage when we got a request for finances for the installation. Coca-Cola associates itself with pride in many events at King Center. And we are happy to be associated with an image closely identified with India. Even though both Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King were separated by two continents and a generation, they seriously believed in the existence of a law higher than that of the state. And it was in this belief that both preached nonviolence and equality for mankind." Short said he felt fortunate to have grown up in America and experience the influence of Dr. Martin Luther King-who was greatly influenced

by Mahatma Gandhi. Both had significant impact on their respective countries. .

"Coca-Cola's association with the installation of Gandhi's statue came at a time when Coca-Cola India had drawn up a major gameplan for the subcontinent's market-one of the world's largest," said Short. He also agreed that there was, indeed, a message in distributing India's Thums Up, Limca and Maaza at the Atlanta event. "Ever since we acquired the Indian brands from Parle in the $40 million deal in 1993, there has been a stream of allegations that Coke is not interested in promoting these brands. I would say, in line with the Coke philosophy, we intend developing the Indian brands as much as we would develop Coca-Cola in the subcontinent. The idea is not to make Coke an Indian brand. The idea is to develop Indian brands across the world. After all, Indians-who are becoming increasingly global in nature-are extremely proud of their heritage and enjoy anything that comes from their land. We are in serious

negotiations with distributors across the United States, Canada, Singapore, London and the Middle East for marketing of the three brands-Thums Up, Limca and Maaza-this summer.

Donald Short enjoys India, he says. "I am constantly amused at the hustle bustle of Delhi or Mumbai. Despite this, people still share quality time in the evenings in their own homes with others, who may at times be almost strangers. That is one of the most appealing things to me in India. Also I find India to be one of the most colorful countries that I have ever visited." It is, he says, "a remarkably colorful kaleidoscope."

Back to business, Short acknowledges some miscalculations by multinationals about the Indian market. "A whole lot of companies-including those from the United States-misunderstood the real potential of the market. The idea is to have a long-term focus and work accordingly.

Yes, I do think many companies overestimated the size of the market, but let me tell you, there is still a huge market for soft drinks here. That opportunity, in and of itself, is one of limitless growth.

"Our advertising is extremely focused and targeted toward the Indian consumer-to convince them to purchase our brands more frequently. We have made a connection with cricket as well. We are launching a campaign for Limca and another for Thums Up, which will again focus on the Indianness of our operations."

Company strategy is careful, Short says.

"We have chosen in India to step back in time a bit to three A's-availability, affordability and acceptability-because the fundamentals of the business have not been met here. We are only available in 500,000 outlets while many other fast-moving consumer brands are available anywhere from three to five million outlets. There is something I keep telling my people in Indiaplease do not expect dramatic results overnight. Believe in relationships and develop them into mature markets. Our out-

On inauguration day, Coca-Cola provided a taste of India by distributing Limca, Maaza and Thums Up to the crowd.

lets will definitely increase to 600,000 in 1998, which means a six times increase from the status last year. And we will continue to grow at a rapid pace in India to expand our base."

Insiders say the soft drinks giant is already working on a package by which it can-at least by year 2000-sell Coke, Fanta and its other products like Thums Up, Limca and Maaza at an affordable price for the Indian market. In addition, realizing that distribution still remains a low priority for soft drinks companies in India, Coke plans to increase its outlets across the country.

"Our goal is to have a five-rupee price point on soft drinks," says Short, adding that his gameplan is for all the products from the Coca-Cola India stable. "You will see a lot more happening on the Indian brands we acquired a few years ago."

While Thums Up has always been India's leading carbonated soft drink, Limca is the number one brand in the cloudy lemon segment. And thanks to some effective campaigns and market strategy, the brands have grown admirably.

While Thums Up has grown more than 50

campaigns and strategies. And when he percent over the last three years, Limca has grown more talks about his company's policies, he is than 20 percent during the more than ready to back his words with same period. And thanks to the concrete examples. For example, a series new bottling plants and acquiof new campaigns from the stable of sition of Parle's mammoth 54- Chaitra Leo Burnett is already swarming plant bottling network, the the channels and the print media while the Atlanta-based multi national new bottling companies-which will have an initial investment of $760 million-will has been able to register a phenomenal growth in volume. In augment the beverage giant's operations in 1996, the soft drinks giant's strategic areas and ensure quick supply for volume in terms of gallon sales greater market penetration. grew by 21 percent over 1995, "As I think about the marketplace," while unit case sales grew by Short muses, "in Japan there are nearly 23 percent over 1995.

125 million consumers and we sell in excess of 700 million cases. In the Indian Market analysts say, with such involvement and associmarket, we are currently selling over a 100 ation with sporting events in million cases. BUl that is nowhere close to rural India and the three-nathe true market potential. In the case of soft drinks, the opportunities within a narrowly tion cricket bonanza, the perception of Coca-Cola in South defined consumer base is still limitless."

Asia is undergoing a tremenAnd in the process of understanding the market, Short and his team are understand- . dous change. That change translates into an encouraging growth rate of 16 percent ing the nation, its vast populace and its tastes; they have taken India's pulse. For per annum.

"The thinking process is undergoing a example, in Mumbai, Coca-Cola offered a change," says another senior Coke execufestive invitation price of Rs. 7 for 300 ml last year. The move helped double sales. tive, "and this is not just in India but across the globe because that's the way to remain Sh0l1 says there is a good understanding attuned to trans-global cultures." with the bottlers too. "Now I think that you The new management mindset is already . will find most of our bottlers know that we reaping benefits for the beverage giant are working along with them."

Short is busy recruiting people to which had an instant 65 percent market share after its acquisition of the Parle strengthen operations in perceived areas of brands. That was followed by a roller weakness. Recent additions are Sanjiv Gupta from Arnitabh Bachchan Corporation coaster ride, but now things are calming Limited (ABCL) as the company's marketdown. "Just wait and see the way we unfold our plans for India. The penetration level ing head and Rahul Dhawan, from Dabur, will not change immediately. We are not to handle communications with the media. aiming for the moon overnight," says Short.

Business sense in the Indian market has stretched beyond the cola wars for Donald Coke is forging ties for a greater reach across India, a market considered the sec- Wilson Short, who admires Mahatma ond largest in the world. And in tune with Gandhi and likes India's friendly, colorful the government guidelines, Coca-Cola people. His ultimate dream is to provide India has already floated as many as four them all with a cheap Coke "sold for just five rupees a bottle across the length and new subsidiary bottling companies across the country, ostensibly to gear up for an- breadth of the country. That is my dream as other hectic cola wars against arch rival a consumer-based company-a consumerPepsi and newcomer Cadbury Schwepps focused company-and we will relentin the coming summer. lessly pursue that until our dream is accomplished."

D Quixotic as it may seem to his detractors, Short is working to create what he About the Author: Shantanu Guha Ray is a calls the "customer delight" for the Indian market. He loves the idea of having new TV journalist.

Dual Identities and

Transcultural Art The importance of transcultural exchange was evident at a recent exhibition of works by Indian and American artists at New Delhi's India Habitat Centre.

It exemplifies a new trend: the current flowing through the art world now washes many shores, depositing rich resources for artists. ust a decade ago the Festival of India held in the United States focused entirely on the classical arts.

Exhibitions were conceived to draw attention to ancient sculpture and painting, while a show on contemporary art on loan from the Herwitz collection received little notice. The message was clear: India's past heritage was to be cherished, she had secured a place in history with her glorious past-while the contemporary worldview was of no consequence.

Today there is a dramatic change: now major shows and auction houses are dealing with Indian art of the 20th century. It has happened because of the vitality of Indian art and by the compulsions of changing perspectives that are both cultural and political. In the visual and performing arts this international

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cultural encounter has led to new and bold positions.

At the close of the 20th century much of art is about questioning identity: a single identity of birth, country and community.

Often it is about exploring the ambiguities of a dual identity. There is a growing awareness of other cultures and sensibilities across the world. We interact with these cultures with the realization that we can never return to that single regional identity to which we had once belonged.

Many poets, writers and artists are transposed into the new world carrying with them the baggage of memories, of pain and guilt in the displacement of time and space. Others opt for this transformation: to share in this fluid exchange of cultural sensibilities which gives them freedom to question their own world view.

Here I would say that the questioning negativism of the postmodern has been shrugged off; the caterpillar with its many legs (identities) is metamorphosed into a butterfly-radiant in its many colors.

In the momentous decade of the 1960s, when I was a student at Bryn Mawr College and the University of Chicago, when issues like Vietnam and Black Muslims and the incipient upsurge of feminism warranted public attention, we never dared to ask the question of what it meant to be an Indian or a Chinese or a Japanese.

No writings seemed to exist or were published, no plays staged, no art exhibited.

The assertion of identity of being an "Asian American" would not have been possible. Now it is given official endorse-

ment, and Asian communities are given due recognition for their contributions.

A few years ago a symposium was held at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, on the double identity of Asian Americans. The conference at the Asian Art Museum brought together artists who examined their cultural heritage by looking at the work of their parents or their native countries. Downtown at the Yerba Buena Center a major show was held on the work of artists of Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Filipino, Vietnamese and Indian origins. Titled "Asia/America: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art," this traveling show originated from the Asia Society in New York, initiated and curated by two women with Asian roots and intended for American viewers. Artists represented the conflicts of multiculturalism in striking, often ironic, terms. The exhibition was reviewed in Art and Asia Pacific 1995, which summed up: "But those who expect this display to be exotic, noncontroversial and culturally correct are in for a shock.

Selected artworks are iike windows that reveal the personal experiences of emigrants from Asia trying to make sense of bicultural life in the multiracial society of America."

This new imagery in art is often subversive. Dilemmas of yellow/brown skin or problems of language and communication become critical.

In this show work from India was repre-

situation and embarked on a series of graphics which were minimal in their economy of expression.

You might call them abstract, except for the fact that each of them has an actual point of reference, an experience. Her work of 1987 called Flight Log is a sculpted book of pressed paper which cites with poignancy her situation of being "caught" between different worlds.

As you turn the four pages, each page carries one line of text to face the picture, pared down to the essential experience: I need to fly got caught in the thermal could never go back having lost the place to land.

Crawling House, 1994, tin and steel pins, by Zarina Hashmi, an installation at the Nature Marte Exhibition, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, January 1998.

sented by a single but powerful series of bronze images by Zarina Hashmi, who lives in America and teaches at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Her works were recently on view at a group show in New Delhi. Works on paper

by Zarina have always borne the imprint of her predicament. Born in Aligarh, she traveled with her diplomat husband across the world-to Japan, Rio, Paris, Germany, New York. Widowed, she opted to stay on in New York as a professional graphic artist. With sensitivity she objectified her

The experience is drawn from Zarina's favorite occupation of gliding in Delhi: looking down from the plane to see below the boundaries of houses, courtyards, gardens ...territories which are well defined.

But the moment that she dared to fly out beyond known and familiar "home ground," there was always the danger of being sucked into the spiraling wind.

Surprisingly but predictably, the last line faces a blank page-because there is nowhere for her to land. The last page remains empty, awaiting experience.

Zarina describes herself as a sculptor and not as a painter, and her graphics bear this out by being cut and incised with a knife. Initially she also created sculptured forms of pressed paper: organic shapes titled Beej or the Seed, The Lotus and The Spiral, which were her metaphors for India. The cycle of time and regeneration is emphasized by the circle or spiral, of returning to the past.

Then, replacing these symbolic metaphors for her homeland, Zarina began to revisit the memories of her childhood home in Aligarh. The first in this series in 1990 called The House at Aligarh was followed in 1991 with The House with Four Walls, and finally in 1993 with The House with many Rooms. In the series of 1991, each picture carries one line of text, an anecdote if you like, which is conveyed through horizontal or vertical lines or with one simple graphic image.

We begin to see here that abstraction serves another purpose in Zarina's work.

A geometric form, a few horizontal lines or verticals evoke vivid memories; they retrieve the past, or rather they "abstract" from memory what is required. The house with four walls is represented by a square.

A snake in the house is represented by a spiral form.

By the time Zarina exhibited in the "Asia! America" group show, she had developed a definitive form for her situation.

Titled The House on Wheels, it repeats the same image 11 times of a simple house in two-dimensional bronze against the wall.

With the insistent repetition of wheels for the house, she speaks of her itinerant passage through years-in the many houses in which she has lived, of being transient and yet stable. The spiral form of her sculpted images is replaced now by the more stable square.

Not only art in America, but also art in India has begun to examine the COnsequences of dual identity-the transfer and exchange of cultures. In 1998 Nature Morte, the new gallery at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi, invited the participation of seven women artists, American and Indian. Works presented . were by Judy Blum, Jennifer Bolande, Zarina Hashmi, Rummana Hussain, Manisha Parekh, Gargi Raina and Chrysanne Stathacos. This is truly a cross-cultural exchange where similarities in viewpoint between artists are more apparent than their differences.

American Peter Nagy, who curated the show by visiting the artists' studios over the past year, sees the affinities in these . works in terms of their formal qualities rather than in any content. Significantly, the work of each artist appears and is installed as a series, repeating the same image with minor variations. Works by Gargi Raina, for instance, are a series done with sand formations on paper-although she sees in them the fluidity of water. Jennifer Bolande uses the tree as a leitmotiv, processed through the computer.

Manisha Parekh, the youngest among the Indian artists, reverts to her earlier concern with Vessels-although these are more colorful and seductive than when

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Above: Homes I Made/A Life in Nine Lines, etchings with chin-cholle, 1997, by Zarina Hashmi, Nature Marte Exhibition, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, January 1988. U.S.-based artist Zarina Hashmi uses abstracts to represent personal memories of home in India. Houses are afavorite theme.

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Far left: Seed, castpaper sculpture, 1983,

by Zarina Hashmi.

Left: Untitled, bronze, 1988, by Zarina Hashmi.

Above: The Wish Machine, an installation at Grand Central Station, New York, by Chrysanne Stathacos, examined by an officer of the New York Police Department.

Stathacos uses a photo blow-up of a traditional "wishing tree" from a Hindu temple in India as the focal point of her wish-vending machine. Stathacos's works in the Habitat exhibition featured silkscreen and rose petals on khadi silk.

Left: 108 Names of the Ganges (one of seven parts), mixed media on paper, 1997,

by Judy Blum, Nature Marte Exhibition, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, January 1998.

she had last exhibited in a group show.

Vessels refer as much to the woman's body as to cooking vessels, establishing a relation between food and sex. Here again, Rummana Hussain does an installation by repeating ladle spoons with possibly the same connotations. Chrysanne Stathacos, born of Greek parents and living in New York, exhibits portraits superimposed on rose petals-referring to voyeuristic notions of the woman in early photography.

Three installations by Judy Blum, married to the Indian artist Krishna Reddy (see story on page 12) emphasize and also empathize with the geography of India. The first is an exhaustive listing of all railway stations through' the length and breadth of the country, cities and small towns, in alphabetical order. Each "register" of names on a hoard (as in railway boards) is colorfully edged with a border as in Indian miniatures, spilling from one onto the next as in a narrative text.

Through these connected names-of a new vocabulary and unfamiliar territoryyou begin to grasp the herculean task of traveling and understanding the Indian "experience," both physically and culturally. This was brought home by Judy's in- stallation which runs through the middle of the gallery like a railway track. The third register board, imprinted with the 108 names of the River Ganges, refers to the Indian custom of intoning sacred names.

For several artists, the emphasis on crossing over geographical terrain relates to the nature of itineraries, of being "in transition" between identities. The focus on objects-or places-of this world removes from their art any metaphysical or spiritual implications. They refrain from fascination with the exotic or mystical Orient. Instead of exhibiting affinities merely in terms of form or structure, we can see here the connecting threads of viewpoints by women across cultures. 0 About the Author: Geeti Sen is a art historian and critic, and editor of the India International Centre Quarterly. She has authored three books on classical and contemporary Indian art, and has been recently Nehru Fellowship.

awarded

the Jawaharlal

Krishna Reddy

"TheArtist Is for Tonwrrow" hite-haired, elegant and now 70plus, artist and printmaker Krishna Reddy possesses an air of calm contemplation, even when he gestures forcefully to drive home a point. It is the professor in him, no doubt. Even though the art world knows and respects Reddy for his pathbreaking work in the field of printmaking, attested to by over 50 one-man shows, numerous international exhibitions and inclusion of his prints in the collections of some of the world's foremost museums and galleries, the artist himself takes pride in his role as an educator. "I am a schoolteacher," he says simply. In a sense, the release last January of Reddy's latest book, New Ways of Colour Printmaking, jointly published by the Vadehra Gallery and Ajanta Press, in New Delhi is a major contribution to printmaking studies, stemming as it does from Reddy's numerous innovations and experiments both as a creative artist and as a teacher.

Since 1976 Reddy has been director of graphics and printmaking at the New York University, teaching students drawn from every corner of the globe. Says Reddy: "New York is special in that sense. There are 50,000 artists in SoHo alone, where we live. It is an atmosphere which is very inspiring. It's a wonderful feeling to be an international artist."

Reddy's global, multicultural view of art is readily shared by his artist wife, Judy Blum, who accompanied him to New

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Delhi, to participate in an exhibition of her recent series of drawings at the India Habitat Centre. The two met in 1965 in Paris where Reddy was conducting a printmaking workshop. "There is no more a New York school or a European school," she says. "You can see the same art being made in New York as you can see in Europe. There are art worlds all over-in South Africa, in India. So it's no longer New York telling the rest of the world what to do." She adds smiling, "I think New York artists still like to think that路it's still the center of the universe, but it isn't anymore."

Judy also believes that there is more interest in contemporary Indian art in America now than ever before, thol,lgh it would be premature to talk about it influencing American art. "The Queens Museum in New York just did a big show on contemporary Indian art," she says, "and there are four galleries in New York alone that just show contemporary Indian works. This wasn't so five years ago."

India features prominently in Judy's recent works, three of which were shown at the Delhi exhibition, although she doesn't particularly believe living with somebody from India has influenced her creative vision. "It could be, but I'm not consciously aware of it." The works reveal Judy's fascination for maps and names of places.

One work lists the 108 different names of the Ganges-("They are like poetry, if you translate them into English and read

them all together")-while another is an exhaustive list of railway stations across the country, drawn alphabetically.

"I guess, it's just my compulsion to make lists of things," she says by way of explanation. She was surprised when someone pointed to the colored borders of the frames and spoke of their resemblance to Indian miniature paintings. "I truly wasn't aware of that," she recalls. "It's just one of those happy accidents of creation."

A similar "accident" in Paris many years ago led a young Krishna Reddy, who trained as a sculptor at Nandalal Bose's art school at Santiniketan, to printmaking. After a stint at Kalakshetra in Chennai with the legendary Rukmini Devi, where he was head of the art department, Reddy went to Paris in 1951 to "learn and research in sculpture." He was drawn to printmaking when he came across Atelier 17, the renowned ("most avant-garde") experimental printmaking workshop run by the English master printmaker, S.W. Hayter, whom Reddy now considers the father of modern printmaking. The workshop helped to establish printmaking as an independent medium of artistic expression in the Unjted States and other countries. Reddy joined Hayter, working for some time as an assistant but rose to become co-director of the workshop. Among the important artists working with Hayter at the time were Joan Mira, Max Ernst and Gabor Peterdi.

"It was a group of artists experimenting and exploring toward simplicity of technique, in the sense of directness and immediacy," Reddy recalls. "Like in painting. In painting, you take a brush and you can direct your work on the canvas. In printmaking it is not so. Traditional printmaking is very mechanical. So they were reducing it to simplicity, so that the medium becomes very rich." Certain techniques were developed in the workshop to create a "simultaneous process, bringing all the colors onto a single plate using all the existing methods of lithography, wood block printing or silk screen, etc. They used to combine everything."

Inspired, Reddy brought his sculpting sensibilities to the printmaking process, developing ways of bringing colors with

Station to Station, by Judy Blum, mixed media on silk in 32 parts, 23 x 20 Cln. each.

rollers so they could reach different levels in the plate. "I approached printmaking as a sculptor. ..slowly the plates themselves were built up as 1 worked, using burins and scrapers, to become like sculptures." His pioneering work led to the discovery of the principle of color viscosity, a major breakthrough in printmaking processes. His mentor Hayter described Reddy as "a brilliant and inspiring teacher...the initiator of many research projects leading to the discovery of new printmaking techniques .... A highly gifted artist." So when Reddy decided to move to New York in 1976, he was already a famous printmaker, and had visited the United States many times to hold seminars and workshops at universities.

With the passage of years, Reddy has immersed deeper into his feelings for the materials and tools used in printmaking.

"I call it ideas, materials, processes. And they are in total flux," he says. "As a process, printmaking is creative at every level-idea, materials, processes. The more sensitive and closer we are to the

materials, the more pliable they become to our state of mind, adding to the spontaneity and creative intensity of our work."

As a teacher, Reddy tries to inspire his students into this kind of experimentation and exploring. ''I'm trying to promote creativity in art," he says. "The moment we stop learning, we are dead," and recounts how even Picasso toward the end of his life, one night woke up with a start and said, ''I'm learning." The key, according to Reddy, is education. "The artist must engage with the human mind. We must create new teachers among the artists, and also make students more responsible toward learning. They are only blurting out what is known. There is nothing new or creative about it. So we need to encourage research, experimenting and exploring in our education," he says.

He continues: "The artist as an individual is an avant-garde. He is for tomorrow.

He is not to copy what was yesterday because he is looking for something new.

Artists should exploit this creative side of art, and the responsibility will come through that."

0

ART AS BUS Nf;SS After 10 years living and working in India, American designer Michael Aram feels almost Indian. Here he talks about the joys and travails of creating fine things in his adopted home.

People who see his catalog are surprised. They are surprised by the designs.

Then they learn he is an India-based American artist, and-even more intriguing-that his unexpected designs come out of a studio in a Shahpur Jat bylane, near the ruins of New Delhi's Siri Fort. Now a resident for more than 10 years, designer Michael Aram feels Indian yet not Indian, inspired by Indian culture in

a subtle way, letting its boldness work on him creatively. The results are exported to exclusive shops in the United States and Europe, and business is good.

When Aram first came here in 1987 he was a painter and fine artist in New York. He ran a small art publishing company, Ideal Image, which published black and white photography. He is an art historian and painter by training. He has lived in Europe, where he gained fluency in Italian and French, and, of course, New York, where he retains a pied-ii-terre. "I've always been very inspired by classical traditions and art, and I came to India for a month to visit some friends. I got very inspired by the craft tradition here, particularly the metalworking craft tradition, which intrigued and fascinated me so much-especially the migrant gypsy workers on the roadside with their carts. They would just pull up and start forging tools on the road. With no Hindi skills and with a little bit of rough gesticulation and some drawings for them, I put together a collection of decorative objects which were-I entirely foreign to what don't know-not they were making, but nevertheless it was very difficult to convince them to do it."

He laughs at the memory. ''I'm telling them if you can make a hoe, you can make a letter opener. If you can make a shovel, maybe you can make a serving spoon. I tried to convince them that I was really

genuine in my request, even though, of course, to have them stop their work to sample for me was a big deal. I think they agreed to do it just out of pity because of my frustration with communication, or maybe because of the Indian attitude toward hospitality to a foreigner."

His first shipment was memorable, also. "I put together a little collection of objects that I liked, and went back to New York. I met some people who were dealing in contemporary design, and I met the man who is still my representative today.

He represents my entire collection throughout the United States. He said to me, 'Michael, if you can make it, I can sell it.' That was my challenge. I took my first consignment. I made a contact here, a woman who I felt could look after things for me. She sent me my first consignment to New York. It was Christmas time, I remember. The box arrived. I opened it up, and everything was broken. As they say, there is many a slip between the cup and the lip. Anything can go wrong. I think the pieces were probably okay, just not packed well, and everything was rejected.

So after crying," he laughs, "after scrambling, after putting together whatever little money I had left, I came back to India to fulfill my commitments that I had made to my customers. I decided then if I was going to try to do work here, because I was so small, I was going to have to bite the dirt and do it myself-monitoring things from start to end.

"It's been my experience that in getting work done here, there are problems. It is not us against them, it is just people who are trying to make things happen here versus people who aren't. I decided I'd bite the dirt and do it. It's been an uphill struggle. It is a struggle. It's very hard to gain ground in terms of business relations, in terms of the mentality of quality, delivery and keeping commitments. But the plus side is that you can make incredibly extraordinary things if you are willing to bite the dirt, which is an expression I like to use because it's so literal in India. You have to just really dig your feet in and trudge. And it's such a liberating thing. I can make objects here which I couldn't really make anywhere else in the world."

Aram has his own philosophy of art and its accessibility. "I'm not the typical metal handicraft exporter who sells 40,000 soap dishes at $1.25 each. I can do that, but what we try to do is create things which are really extraordinary. My counterpart is not a Moradabad exporter. My counterpart is really the artist in SoHo in New York City, or the artist in Paris. That is my equivalent. So within that niche I've been able to do very well. This is my atelier, this is my Paris. This is my SoHo. Instead of making one chair and selling it for $10,000 we are able to make 500 chairs and sell them for $250 each, maybe-and still be recognized within that atmosphere of good, international design. We're not selling metal handicrafts per se, as most of the people here are. We're selling worldclass design at world-class quality, worldclass packaging, world-class detailing down to the' last, which is a challenge. I think if I weren't doing it that way here, it just wouldn't be interesting.

"If I weren't doing it here, yes, I'd be another artist living an interesting, beautiful life in New York. But my attitude has always been very democratic about work and about art. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with being precious and making exquisite objects, but from my perspective I think it is more interesting .• when you can broaden an audi-

ence. It's a lovely thing hand, each one is lawhen you can walk into bored over, each one someone's house and see has its own mold, each there's an object of yours one is very lovingly there, or you can walk down done. And that's just a street in Paris and there are where I get my kick."

Michael Aram's office objects of yours there. You really cross borders, cross ecois overflowing with his nomic borders-more imporcreations and acquisitions tant. Someone can buy one of arrayed amidst the paperyour pieces that might show a litwork. An unusual, bejewtle bit of soul for five dollars at a eled Ravi Verma rani hardware store, and someone can looks down from a shelf. walk across the street to an art The chairs are, approprigallery and buy something for ately, novel metal designs. $1,200 with just as much spirit beShahpur Jat houses Aram's hind it, and just as much quality, and administrative office and dejust as much craftsmanship. My things are sign studio, as well as packing and shipavailable to more people. And that gives ping operations. "We have workshops me a kick. I'm a nut, I'm a maniac. throughout Delhi. We have about 11 "You pay the price for that," he says, workshops. Each one is a dedicated unit, "but there is something really lovely about and there are about 200 craftspeople employed full time. There's a wide web. being accessible. To make the switch from Most of the finishing and packing work is fine art to decorative art already is a foray into a democratic mold, and for me to be a done in Delhi, just for the control, and for the accessibility." decorative artist and not be democratic would just put me back into fine art. I Aram spends about nine months out of think once I made the jump into the decothe year here, "As much as most Indians," rative arts, the logical sequitur was 'if he quips. He "does" two trade shows a we're going to be democratic, we might as year, one in Paris and in New York. His well be available to people.' And yes, it's . strongest consumer base is America, but Europe is coming along. "Ninty-five pera Bauhaus philosophy in spirit. It would be art for the masses, but it's not art for the cent of my business is generated from the masses in a machine-made sense. It's not U.S. at the moment, just because I'm art for the masses in a 'productionalized' American, and just because I have an infrastructure there. In the last yearsense, it is art for the masses that retains soul in the object." and-a-half I've started showing my work in Europe. It's working well. We are Coffee is served with delicately heavy silver spoons. It is an Aram design, de- showing a tremendous amount of promise in Europe and it's an exciting new market lightful to touch. Aram takes a phone call, for us also." and resumes his thought, "You can sense when something's made with care. Like His designs are less available in India, however. "The problem here is that there these little spoons here.

They are is no respect for intellectual property or design copyright. This has always been not stamped out my deterrent to sell in India, unfortuin China, they're nately. I wish I could say that shop owners not stamped out in Korea, they're themselves weren't culpable, I wish I not mass-produced. could say that manufacturers themselves weren't culpable. Largely because of that I They're produced, yes.

We make hundreds, have chosen not to make the designs available. The other reason is that we-luckthousands, even ten thousands of them, but ily-can't keep up with our foreign (Continued on page 64) each one is made by

ROOSEVELT HOUSE

Top: Ambassador Richard F. Celeste welcomes guests to Roosevelt House. Local art aficionados and a group from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California were in attendance.

Above: Jaqueline Lundquist and artist Gopi Gajwani,in front of one of his paintings.

Right, above: Village, Kesroli; oil on canvas; 152 x 152 em., a painting by Sanjay Bhattacharyya that graces the Roosevelt House entrance hall.

Right: Art lovers-including young Sam Celeste in his mother's arms-at the reception to view the paintings.

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he January reception given by Ambassador Richard Celeste and his wife Jaqueline Lundquist had an unusual purpose: to allow Indian and American art aficionados view works by Indian artists that currently adorn the walls of the ambassadorial residence, Roosevelt House. The paintings will be exhibited there until the Celeste's shipment of paintings arrives from the United States.

J aqueline Lundquist explains, "We have this wonderful program called Art in the Embassy where we can take artworks on loan for the duration of our tenure. Works may be taken from the various galleries or museums that have an agreement with Art in the Embassy. The rule is, it has to be an American attist." Ambassador Celeste was confirmed, sworn in and on a plane to India in a matter of days, so there wasn't time to select and ship the paintings in advance. The Celestes set foot in their vast Delhi residence with no hope of artworks arriving for several months. "The walls of this house are huge and very stark, so we thought we can't live without art for three months," says Lundquist, "so we got in touch with some Indian artists through Art Today." Aman Nath, who is a consultant for Att Today, describes how he met the Celestes through friends. One thing led to another, and Art Today agreed to lend the paintings as a "friendly gesture," according to Director Rekha Purie, who is pleased it worked out so well.

Nath concurs with Lundquist, "They needed to warm up the place." When they saw the paintings, he says, the Ambassador was drawn to abstract works, and his wife to figurative. "The house is so large," Nath says, rather than making them pick and choose, "we thought we should do it generously, in a large-hearted American

way, and let them take all that they wanted." The criterion for the selection, besides personal taste, was that the artists have some links with America-either through study or business affiliation. The artists participating are Sanjay Bhattacharyya, Gopi Gajwani, Suhas Nimbalkar, Sharad Sovani and Jai Zharotia.

But even after the shipment comes in from the United States, Indian art will be represented among the Celeste's personal collection, Lundquist says. "When Dick was here in the 1960s, he met an up-and-coming young artist named Satish Gujral, and probably spent more money than he should have at the time--oh, maybe a couple of hundred dollars, it wasn't so much. So we have a Satish Gujral which is on its way."

"We are art enthusiasts," she says. "Whenever we go to New York City we go to the Guggenheim, we go to Museum of Modern Art. And I studied in Paris for a year at the Sorbonne. My main emphasis was art history.

When our shipment arrives you'll see the art is not very different from what we have hanging on the walls now.

We have very eclectic taste. And I don't collect art because I think it's going to be worth my son's college education. I buy it because I like it, because it has a richer investment potential."

Lundquist hopes to "stay as long as possible in India" so she can make another investment-in travel time. She fell in love with India during her visit here with her husband two years ago, and wants to see as much of the country as she can. "We are enjoying every minute of it.

I love it. I love the people, I love the place. I love bright colors. You see that aplenty here. I love interesting earrings and jewels. So I really feel at home here."

Satellites can capture vast amounts of solar energy and transfer it to Earth on uninterrupted beams of microwaves. Thanks to fleets of low-orbiting communications satellites to be launched in the coming decade, the authors say, solar power may be the energy source of the 21st century.

Low Earth orbit poses its own difficulties, though. Because they whip around the planet so quickly, low-orbiting satellites must possess sophisticated computercontrolled systems for adjusting the aim of the microwave beam so that it lands at the receiving station. These satellites will have to use sophisticated electronic systems, called phased arrays, to continuously retarget the outgoing beam. outer n space, the Sun always shines brightly. No clouds block the solar rays, and there is no nighttime. Solar collectors mounted on an orbiting satellite would thus generate power 24 hours per day? 365 days per year. If this power could be relayed to Earth, then the world's energy problems might be solved forever.

Solar power satellites (SPS) were originally proposed as a solution to the oil crises of the 1970s by Czech-American engineer Peter Glaser, then at Arthur D. Little Inc., at Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Glaser imagined 50-square-kilometer arrays of solar cells deployed on satellites orbiting 36,000 kilometers above fixed points along the equator. A satellite at the "geosynchronous" altitude takes 24 hours to orbit the Earth and thus remains fixed over the same point on Earth all the time.

Th~ idea was elegant. Photo voltaic cells on a satellite would convert sunlight into electrical current, which would, in turn, power an onboard microwave generator.

The microwave beam would travel through space and the atmosphere. On the ground, an array of rectifying antennas, or "rectennas," would collect these microwaves and extract electrical power, either for local use or for distribution through conventional utility grids.

The technology, as originally envisioned, posed daunting technical hurdles.

Transferring electrical power efficiently from a satellite in geosynchronous orbit would require a transmitting antenna on board the satellite about one kilometer in diameter and a receiving antenna on the ground about 10 kilometers in diameter. A project of this scale boggles the mind; government funding agencies shied away from investing immense sums in a project whose viability was so unclear. The

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National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Energy for Development Department of Energy, which had sponThe demand for space-based solar sored preliminary design studies, lost in- power could be extraordinary. By 2050, according to some estimates, 10 billion terest in the late 1970s. people will inhabit the globe-more than In the last few years, however, the communications industry has announced satel- . 85 percent of them in developing counlite projects that suggest the time has tries. The big question: How can we best supply humanity's growing energy needs come to revisit the solar power satellite idea. By early in the next century, swarms with the least adverse impact on the environment? of communications satellites will be orbiting the Earth at low altitude, relaying Dependence on fossil fuels is not the voice, video and data to the most remote answer because burning coal, oil and gas will pour carbon dioxide into the atmosspots on Earth. These satellites will relay communication signals to Earth on beams phere, raising the risk of global climate of microwaves. The transmission of elecchange. (And of course these resources will not last forever.) Nuclear fission reactrical power with a beam of microwaves tors avoid the greenhouse problem but inwas demonstrated as early as 1963, and troduce the so-far intractable problem of projecting power and data along the same disposing of nuclear waste. Controlled numicrowave beam is well within the state of the art. Why not use the same beam to . clear fusion might someday provide an incarry electrical power? exhaustible supply of clean energy-but after 40 years of continuous funding, a The new communications satellites will practical fusion reactor is still not in sight. orbit at an altitude of only a few hundred miles. Instead of hovering above a spot on That leaves the menu of renewable enthe equator, low-orbiting satellites zip ergy sources. But terrestrial renewables pose environmental problems because of around the globe in as little as 90 minutes, their relatively large land requirements. tracing paths that oscillate about the equator, rising and dipping as many as 86 de- Hydropower, the most exploited renewgrees of latitude. Because they are closer able thus far, has significantly disrupted to the Earth's surface, the solar collectors ecosystems and human habitats. Solar, biomass and wind farms would similarly on the satellite can be a few hundred meters across rather than 10 kilometers. And compete with people, agriculture and natbecause the microwave beams they generural ecosystems for land were they the baate would spread out much less than those sis of a global energy system. from geosynchronous satellites, the Moreover, ground-based renewable energy systems, such as terrestrial photoground rectennas could be correspondvoltaics and biomass fuels, generate fewer ingly smaller and less expensive as well. than 10 watts of electricity per square meBy piggybacking onto these fleets of communications satellites-and taking advanter, on a continuous basis. To generate tage of their microwave transmitters and enough electricity to meet demand could receivers, ground stations and control sysrequire developing countries either to ditems-solar vert land from agricultural use, and thus power technology can become economically viable. diminish the supply of food, or to destroy

natural ecosystems, a move that could hasten the onset of global warming.

Solar power satellites would require far less land to generate electricity. Each square meter of land devoted to the task could yield as much as 100 watts of electricity. And the power-receiving rectenna anays-a fine metallic mesh-would be visually transparent, so their presence would not interfere with crop growth or cattle grazing.

A network of solar power satellites could supply the Earth with 10 to 30 trillion watts of electrical powerenough to satisfy the needs of the human race through the next century.

And the flow of power from terrestrial renewables is intermittent. Clouds blot out the Sun; the wind stops blowing; lack of rainfall nullifies a hydro genera" tor. Because these technologies do not deliver power continuously, they require some means of storing energy, adding to overall cost and complexity. A network of solar power satellites in low Earth orbit could provide power to any spot on Earth on virtually continuous basis because at least one satellite will always be

in "view" of the receiving station.

Unfortunately, solar power from space is not yet on the official menu of 21 st century energy options. Since the 1970s, NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy have provided only token funding for the technology. A recent study by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences of potential strategies to mitigate global warming analyzed a wide range of nonfossil energy alternatives-including nuclear, hydroelectric, geothermal, solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, wind and biomass energy-but did not include space power as an option.

Despite the funding desert in the United States, work on solar power satellites has continued elsewhere. In Japan, for example, leaders of the New Earth 21 program at the Ministry of Technology and Industry (MITI) view space solar power as "an essential part in the proper control of C02 levels." MITI has sponsored the design of a kite-like orbiter that would travel in low Earth orbit above the equator, with transmitting antennae on the earthward face and solar collectors on spaceward faces.

In the United States, commercialization of space power will become a reality only if it can attract investment capital and succeed as a business. Fortunately, the private sector seems eager to invest in the communications satellites that could provide the vehicles for a solar power satellite.

Motorola, for example, is putting $3.8 billion into Iridium, a venture comprising 66 communications satellites in low Earth orbit. Teledesic Corporation-a joint venture of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and cellular phone tycoon Craig McCaw of Mobile Telecommunications Technologies-plans to spend $9 billion to deploy 288 satellites.

Looking for a Cheap Launch One important consideration in planning space power is the expense of putting a satellite into orbit. Right now, it costs a thousand times more to put an object into space than to fly it across country by commercial airliner, even though the two jobs require roughly the same amount of energy-about 10 kilowatthours per kilogram of payload. Two fac-

tors account for the extra cost: the army of engineers and scientists required for a successful space launch, and the practice of discarding much of the launch vehicle after each flight.

Launch costs are likely to drop, however, as the demand increases for hoisting large volumes of material into space on a regular basis: the more frequently a launch system is used, the lower the cost per use. Moreover, NASA is seeking a new generation of reusable launch vehicles. The agency recently sponsored a competition among aerospace contractors for a space vehicle with the potential for airline-like operation. The winner was Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, legendary innovators in aircraft design from the U-2 to the Stealth fighter. Lockheed Martin plans to build and test the $1 billion wedge-shaped reusable X-33-a one-half size, one-eighth mass version of a launch vehicle called Venture Star that would'replace the space shuttle for fenying cargo into low orbit. The target launch cost is $2,200 per kilogram-one-tenth that of a shuttle launch. At that price, space power could become cost-effective if satellites pull double-duty as communications relays and solar-power sources.

A solar power satellite should quickly pay back the energy needed to put it into orbit. Start with the conservative assumption that solar power satellite technology would produce 0.1 kilowatt of electricity on the ground per kilogram of mass in orbit. In that case, the energy expendi ture of 10 kilowatt-hours per kilogram to lift the satellite into orbit would be repaid in electricity after only 100 hours-less than five days.

One way to keep launch costs down is to use an inflatable structure as the solar collector. Doing so would maximize the collector's surface area-important to gathering the greatest amount of solar energy-without imposing a major weight burden on the launch vehicle. Deflated solar collectors could be folded into a compact space on board the spacecraft; once in orbit, gas from a pressurized container would inflate the structure.

Balloons in space are an old story. In fact, the 1960-vintage satellite known as Echo I was a balloon used to bounce radio

waves back to Earth. NASA is now studying the feasibility of inflatable structures in space for antennae, sunshades and solar arrays, although not explicitly for solar power satellite systems. An important experimental milestone was the successful deployment by Space Shuttle Endeavour astronauts in May 1996 of the Spartan Inflatable Antenna Experiment-a 14meter antenna inflated by a nitrogen gas canister in orbit.

It is not such a very large step from such an experiment to a solar-collecting satellite that could be assembled in orbit from inflated segments. Were NASA to make research on inflatable space structures a high priority, the knowledge base to make cost-effective low-mass power satellites could evolve rapidly.

One Step at a Time A t first, the solar energy relayed from space would be used only to provide the minimal electrical power needed to run the electronics of the receiving station on the ground-much the way that line current powers conventional telephones.

Ultimately, the satellites would beam down larger amounts of power, which could provide the megawatts of electricity that would contribute substantially to powering a village or even a city.

Scaling up to higher power levels would be straightforward, entailing simply the deployment of a larger amount of solar-collecting area in space. Power would be transmitted through the infrastructure of transmitters and receivers that will then be in place for the satellite communications systems. In this regard, microwave transmission has a decided advantage over conventional cable methods of transmitting power. A microwave system that is 80 percent efficient at sending 1 kilowatt will still be 80 percent efficient at sending 1 megawatt. This is fundamentally different from an electric utility transmission line, where you need thicker, and costlier, wires to carry more power. If too much power is put through a cable, it will melt the insulation.

Some fear that a network of solar power satellites could turn the atmosphere into one big microwave oven, cooking what-

ever wanders into the beam's path. In realThirty years ago, communications satellites were a novelty. Ten years ago, no ity, the microwave intensities that we proone had heard of the Internet. pose would be orders of magnitude below What is certain is that the present push the threshold at which objects begin to for deregulation has led to a scramble on heat up. People would be exposed to mithe part of telecommunications, comcrowave levels comparable to those from puter, cable TV and utilities industries to microwave ovens and cellular phones. enter each other's markets. Some electric While some critics speculate that microwaves pose non thermal threats to power companies want to enter the human health, there is no reliable epitelecommunications business as a way of demiological evidence for adverse effects capitalizing on the huge investment in from microwaves at these low levels. wire and cable that reaches virtually every building in the country. It makes Higher levels of microwave radiation would be found at the rectennas on which equal sense to propose that communicathe beams are focused, but fences and tions companies enter the power business. warning signs could demarcate these areas In practice, consortiums of power and of possible danger. But according to our communications companies might develop the proposed technology together. calculations, microwave intensities even at the perimeter of the rectenna would fall No single piece of this technology within the range now deemed safe by the poses a fundamental stumbling block. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health physics of photovoltaic cells and microwave generation are well understood.

Administration.

A bigger potential problem is that of To move to the next stage, though, will re- . sharing the limited frequencies in the mi- quire a demonstration that all the pieces of crowave spectrum. Motorola has come this system can work together: the solar under fire, for example, because its panels, the phased-array microwave anplanned system will employ frequencies tennas, the receiving stations that separate in the 1.616-to-l.626-gigahertz range, the data signals from the power beams, which almost overlaps the 1.612-gigaand the computers that tell the satellites hertz frequency that astrophysicists tune where on the ground to aim the beams. to when gathering data about the cosmos. . NASA could accelerate this development Radio astronomers worry that interference tremendously by placing into orbit a prototype of a solar power satellite. from a solar power satellite will overThe benefits are too large to walk away whelm the comparatively weak signals from. A network of solar power satellites they are seeking to detect. Motorola promises to limit spillover of its commu~ such as what we propose could supply the nications beams into the radio asEarth with 10 to 30 trillion watts of electrical power-enough to satisfy the needs tronomers' frequency niche, but the issue of the human race through the next cenunderscores the fact that the microwave tury. Solar power satellites thus offer a vispectrum is a limited resource jealously sion in which energy production moves guarded by commercial and nonprofit users alike. Allocation of the spectrum off the Earth's surface, allowing everyone to live on a "greener" planet. Consider the must be addressed promptly and effectively to avoid preemption of space power philosophical implications: no longer technology before it's born. need humankind see itself trapped on spaceship Earth with limited resources.

Whether solar power satellites become a reality will ultimately depend on the We could tap the limitless resources of willingness of telecommunications space, with the planet preserved as a and electric utility companies to enter the priceless resource of biodiversity.

D space power business. So far, neither industry has shown much interest. But About the Authors: Martin I. Hoffert is a prothen, they are for the most part unaware fessor of physics at New York University. Seth of the commercial possibilities. One has D. Potter is a research scientist in physics at to know that an option exists to choose it. New York University.

blaring-feeling for all the world like a million bucks. The Vette was reminiscent of the one Martin Milner and George Maharis drove in the 1960s Route 66 TV show, and I rolled like thunder up the Black Canyon Highway, headed for 66 just past Flagstaff. Then my temperature gauge shot up; steam and smoke poured from the engine. I braked to a halt on the shoulder and turned off the ignition. When I switched it back on, I got only a lifeless click, click in response.

An IS-wheeler pulled over a hundred yards down the road, and the young driver ambled back. "Got problems?" he asked.

"I sure do," I said. He opened the hood and confirmed my fears. "Looks dead to me," he said. "I can run you into the truck stop in Flag if you like. You can get the

Vette towed and rent a car." I grabbeq my suitcase from the trunk and climbed into his lumbering Peterbilt.

And that's how, on a blistering July afternoon, I ended up in a sedate Buick sedan, westbound on Interstate 40, traffic rushing by me in a blurted whoosh. I passed a sign that said EXT SERVICES 60 MILES and turned onto the ramp for exit 123. The road ahead was empty and quiet and beautiful. Seligman and Route 66 were just around the bend.

Angel Delgadillo, the barber in Seligman, remembers when traffic moved through his little town bumper to bumper.

He recalls the Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, their Model T's piled high with everything they owned ("If they were carrying two mattresses, we figured they

were rich," he said); and in the 1940s, convoys of servicemen, some going home, some to war; and finally, people like me, the ones in spiffy cars, windows rolled up, air conditioners humming-a new generation of Californians motoring west past drive-in theaters, Mohawk filling stations, motor courts with names like Round-Up, Wigwam, and Palomino, and Burma Shave signs that advised: BUYING DEFENSE

BONDS MEANS MONEY

LENT. SO

THEY DON'T COST YOU ONE RED CENT.

"Come on, I'll show you around," Delgadillo said. We walked out of his shop and stepped into the past. No trace remained of the three car dealerships and the department store that once graced Seligman. The canopy that hung over the sidewalk was gone too, and the insurance (Text continued on page 36)

Far left: This 1940s bus driver was painted on Kingman Hotel Beale for a 1991 movie shoot.

Left: These descendants of burros-pack animals used in the Gold Rush early this century-throng the town of Oatman looking for a meal.

They live in the wild, and provide entertainment for the town's 100 residents and passing tourists.

Below: Pull up a chair and take a load off your feet. The Snow Cap, a truck stop serving locals, truckers and tourists, sports warning signs and road art of a former day.

s

Left: The grand old highway as reflected in the window of the Old Route 66 Visitor Center in Hackberry, Arizona. Above: Off the road in a Seligman motel, dusk merges with the reflection of a Tv. It was a popular stop when the paved road was completed in the 1930s. Right: The Black Mountains loom behind an old lumber company building in Oatman. Buildings like these were once common sights along western highways.

office and the beauty salon were boarded up. We sauntered down the middle of what once was U.S. 66, not a car in sight.

We stopped at the shuttered adobe pool hall on Railroad Avenue. Delgadillo took out a ring of keys and tried to open the padlock but couldn't find a key that fit. "I don't know why I wanted to show it to you anyway," he said. "It's just full of my sister's junk now."

Beyond a vacant lot, occupied only by a 1948 Plymouth, the steam-heated Harvey House hotel still stood, in pretty decent shape, next to the railroad tracks.

I half-expected to see blue-suited conductors in the lobby and to hear Nat King Cole on the restaurant's jukebox.

But the Harvey House, closed since 1954, was as eerie and still as a graveyard, its courtyard overgrown with

weeds, its windows boarded up. It has been years since a passenger train has called at Seligman, and even longer路 since locals dressed in their best clothes to mingle with travelers and crew on the now-deserted platform. "This was our Times Square," Delgadillo said.

I asked him why he thought so many travelers were still smitten with the romance of 66, and Delgadillo, who is 70, said: "Golly gee, I know we're living in yesterday here, but people love the old road because this is where you go looking for who we used to be."

The road west out of Seljgman dips into Arizona's high-desert plateaus, dotted with junipers and mesquite, red rock cliffs on the horizon. Along it is written a requiem for America's westward migration, on a highway that spanned nearly

"J got out of the car. We were in the mountains: there was a heaven of sunrise, cool purple airs, red mountainsides, emerald pastures in valleys, dew, and transmuting clouds of gold; on the ground gopher holes, cactus, mesquite. It was time for me to drive on."

-JACK

KEROUAC, 0"

the Road

4,000 kilometers from the corner of Michigan Avenue and Jackson Boulevard in Chicago to Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, California, reaching across three time zones, eight states and hundreds of towns. Parts of the old mghway followed the ancient Osage Indian Trail and the first telegraph lines to penetrate the Southwest, and over the years

sections of the route had many names, among them Postal Highway, Will Rogers Highway, Wire Road, National Old Trails Road-but only one stuck: the mellifluous 66, bestowed by the federal government in 1926.

That was the year Mildred Barker was born, and Mrs. Barker, who runs the Frontier Cafe and Motel in Truxton, likes to say, "I'm as old as the road itself." She has lived her entire life in towns along 66, in Arizona, Oklahoma and New Mexico, and now that her husband, Ray, has died and the Frontier is no longer a busy place, one day, she says, she may just close up and go back to her roots in Oklahoma, where her brother has left her a home near 66. . ''I'd hate to leave this highway," she said. "I hang on, I suppose, mostly for Ray. You know, the memories and all. He put so much work into keeping the road alive. No one ever guessed one day you'd be going coast to coast without a stoplight.

We thought 66 would be here forever."

Outside the wind blew. A sign by an abandoned gas station swayed and squeaked on its support. Tumbleweed scudded across the wide, empty road, and the Frontier's marquee said VACANCY. I got to thinking: We have eulogized Route 66 in song and film and written word, yet for the desperate Okies who passed this way, for the gritty townspeople who today choose not to forsake "America's Main Street," surely there's little real romance here. This is a highway of survival, and it's a tough, lonesome place. Maybe what always mattered most was not Route 66 itself but the dream that lay at journey's end. It was our road of escape, the route the disenfranchised traveled in search of a new and better life that awaited just over the next hill. Old 66 lingers in the mind's eye as the symbol of our love affair with going instead of just being. It is the road that transformed me from an Easterner into a Westerner.

The last time I traveled 66 my rear bicycle tire had gone flat as I pedaled into Hackberry, and I passed the very spot, near the closed-up one-room schoolhouse, where I had cursed and sweated and wrestled a new tire into place. That was only two years ago, yet now, in the security of a car as

comfortable as my living room, it seemed the memory belonged to another lifetime.

Hackberry has been virtually deserted, but on the outskirts an old gas station remains, identified today by a sign outside as the Old Route 66 Visitor Center. I pulled off the road and went in. The place appeared empty, but all about, floor to ceiling, were stacks of old license plates, Burma Shave signs, typewriters and a piano, photographs of Edward Abbey, shelves with books by Mark Twain, Thomas Paine, Mahatma Gandhi. Two 200-1iter oil drums had been turned into a wood heater. The repair bay had become an artist's studio, and a salvaged shower door was being used as a solar-heating panel. On one wall a sign said LOS ANGELES 400 WEST, on another, CHICAGO 1900 EAST. From somewhere in the back a voice called out: "You want some coffee, just help yourself. It's on the table. It's not piping hot, but it'll be O.K." A moment later Bob Waldmire walked out. He was barechested, gray-bearded, shoeless. He wore a red bandanna and cutoff jeans.

"Welcome to the crossroads of the world," he said in greeting.

For more than 20 years Waldmire had traveled America as an itinerant artist, living in a Volkswagen van and peddling his work wherever he could. Then, hooked on Route 66, he started drawing wonderfully detailed sketches of life along the road and decided to settle down. He bought the abandoned gas station, filled it with his. stuff, and when the names of visitors from 60 nations had lined his guest book, he wrote old friends: "An endless parade of fascinating folks from around the world have dropped in here, having funneled onto 66 much as the migrants from the Dust Bowl did. They are modem-day pilgrims and are the most excited, happiest bunch of people I've ever met. Their enthusiasm is contagious."

So was Waldmire's. He bubbled on about the beauty of the desert, the lure of 66, and how just the other night he had jogged three kilometers down the deserted road at 3 a.m. But although his original plan had been to stay here forever, he has concluded that one day he will pack up again and move on.

"No road is forever," he said. Nor is man's permanence if he has been both cursed and blessed by the call of the highway, and Waldmire has learned what he has always really known in his heart: Like a lot of us, he is destined to wander.

I took my time, as I always do on 66, meandering through Kingman, up over Sitgreaves Pass with its view of Arizona, California and Nevada, past the crumbled stone ruins of homes and stores, and into Oatman, where the feral descendants of burros that prospectors turned loose when the mines closed during World War II still ambled along the street and over the wooden sidewalks. The two-story Oatman Hotel was temporarily closed, but the front door was open. I climbed the stairs and looked into Room 15, where Clark Gable and Carole Lombard had spent their honeymoon night in 1939.

By all rights, I knew, these little towns along 66 should by now have been reclaimed by the desert, because towns, like people, are born, evolve, die. But the Angel Delgadillos and Ray and Mildred Barkers of Route 66 had kept them alive by lobbying the state to turn the road into a historic highway, thus luring wanderers like myself off the interstate to spend a little time in the America that was. I was thankful to the saviors of Route 66.

Route 66-at least this stretch of it in Arizona-ends near a bluff overlooking the Colorado River. I stopped there and sat for an hour, amid silence and shimmering heat. Only the stone foundation remained from the old Red Rock Bridge, the first railroad trestle over this length of the Colorado. The steel Trails Arch Bridge, which carried some 300,000 Okies into California, hadn't survived as part of the road west either. It had been painted white and now supported a natural gas pipeline. There weren't any markers around to retell the history of a restless nation's journey. But reaching across the river was a new wide span, part of 1-40, and over it sped a stream of cars and trucks to remind us how much times have changed 0 About the Author: David Lamb is a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times.

A Map to the Next TfOrld By JOy

HARJO

(For Desiray Kiara Chee) In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map for those who would climb through the hole in the sky.

My only tools were the desires of humans as they emerged from the killing fields, from the bedrooms and the kitchens.

For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.

The map must be of sand and can't be read by ordinary light. It must carry fire to the next tribal town, for renewal of spirit.

In the legend are instructions on the language of the land, how it was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.

Take note of the proliferation

of supermarkets

and malls, the altars of money.

They best describe the detour from grace.

And the tracks of monsters of our forgetfulness

who steal our children while we sleep.

Flowers of rage spring up in the depression, monsters are born there of nuclear anger.

Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears to disappear.

We no longer know the names of the birds here, how to speak to them by their personal names.

Once we could hear everything

in this lush promise.

What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the map. Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us, leaving a trail of paper diapers, needles and wasted blood.

An imperfect map will have to do little one.

The place of entry is the sea of your mother's blood, your father's small death as he longs to know himself in another.

There is no exit.

The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine-a road of knowledge.

spiral on the

You will travel through the membrane of death, smell cooking from the encampment where our relatives make a feast of fresh deer meat and corn soup, in the Milky Way. They have never left us; we abandoned them for science.

And when you take your next breath as we.enter the fifth world there will be no X, no guide book with words you can carry.

You will have to navigate by your mother's voice, renew the song she is singing.

Fresh courage glimmers from planets.

And lights the map printed with the blood of history, a map you will have to know by your intention, by the language of suns.

When you emerge note the tracks of the monster slayers where they entered the cities of artificial light and killed what was killing us.

You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contain the ladder.

Over in the distance will be a blue field where the deer will come to greet you when the last human climbs from the destruction.

Remember

the hole of our shame marking the act of abandoning

our tribal grounds.

We were never perfect.

Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was once a star and made the same mistakes as humans.

We might make them again, she said.

Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.

You must make your own map.

R

ichard Schechner doesn't have to look like a distinguished American theater director just because he is one. Even so, nothing prepares you to meet an American Brahmin, which is what he looks like. He has shaved his head Brahmin-style bald, except for a little tail at the back of his head. "When my son was born, I had promised to bring him to the Ganga River some day. This year I brought him, and offered my hair to the river in thanksgiving," Schechner explains. He also kept a nine-day fast during the Navratri festival and wears a sacred thread tied around his wrists when he performed a shradh ceremony, to honor one's ancestors, in Varanasi. Above all, he has participated in an upanayanam ceremony, in which a sacred thread is tied across the body, normally performed strictly for Brahmins.

And yet Schechner doesn't come across as one of those innumerable dharma trippers. "I have stayed in India for many months, reading the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita very carefully. And I have been deeply affected by Advaita philosophy. For me, these ceremonies were a cul-

minating gesture," he says. Schechner first carne to India in 1971 to study the country's performing arts. He is artistic director of East Coast Artists, editor of The Drama Review and professor of performance studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. An authority on the Ramlila of Ramnagar, he was recently in India to pursue his study of this ritual performance preparatory to writing a book about it. His busy schedule included an illustrated talk in Mumbai on "Believed-in Theater" under the auspices of the USIS and the National Centre for Performing Arts, and on "Performance Theory" at the Indian Institute of Technology.

Schechner has written extensively about the Ramlila, but what is special about the Ramlila of Ramnagar, across the Ganga River from Varanasi, is that it is performed over 31 days, with the actors and audience moving to different venues as the story progresses-Ayodhya, Janakpur, Chitrakoot, Panchavati, Ran1bagh and so on. Schechner has seen the Rarnlila thrice over 21 years, and written about in his books, Peiformative Circumstances from the Avant Garde to

The distinguished American theater director and authority on performance studies discusses his fascination for the Ramlila of Ramnagar, and how theater is being bumped off the stage and into real life.

Ramlila and The Future of Ritual.

"I am fascinated by the Ramlila for a number of reasons," begins Schechner.

"First, because it is on such a grand scale that I am swallowed up at the end of it. The performance, with its processions and all, can have a cast that runs into thousands and be even larger than the audience. Theater becomes the daily life of the people for that month. Also, art and ritual interact in a powerful way, combining devotion with entertainment. I am also interested in the intersection of theater, religion and politics, because the former Maharaja of Benares is the chief patron of the Ramlila performances and is greeted with 'Har Har Mahadev.' There is also a very complex layering of texts, combining Valmiki's Ramayana in Sanskrit, with the Ramcharitmanas and the samvads or conversations in colloquial Hindi."

Schechner's long relationship with India goes back to 1971, when he traveled for four months all over India studying folk, ritual, classical and modem theatrical performances. He studied Mumbai's tamasha, Calcutta's jatra, Kashmir's bhaand pather and Kerala's theyyam, as well as classical dance forms like Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Odissi and Manipuri, not to mention yoga.

It was part of a seven-month trip through Asia, studying the performative arts of Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Australia and New Guinea. "Asian performances are a chosen specialty, and within that Indian performances are what I know the most about," he says.

Five years later, the Performance Group, which Schechner founded in the U.S. in 1967, performed Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children during a fivecity Indian tour. "We did it in a very visual and physical way, rather than have an academic interpretation," says Schechner. "I could have chosen a Sam Shepard play, but that would have been more American and have to be played in the local idiom. Mother Courage is about a woman and her family, something that anyone can follow. It is about a long war and we came here soon after the Indo-Pak War, so it seemed apt." He didn't specially choose the play or the strongly visual interpretation keeping the Indian audience in mind, though. "I do what I like to do.

If my life intersects yours, that's good. But I script in Hindi and English, and as I know don't trim my sails to suit anyone." my English script very well, I know the emoIn 1983, Schechner directed a Hindi ver- tional tone I want when it is spoken in Hindi." He offers a sampler of gibberish sposion of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, called Cherry ka Bageecha in ken at various decibels, intensities and with New Delhi. The play is about a family that varied emotions, to explain how he knows has fallen ort hard times and is forced to sell when the tone is right. "In any case, I never its beloved orchard to the son of one of direct the subtleties of characterizations, not their former serfs. It is a parable about the even for my American actors. As a director, rise of capitalism in Russia. Schechner's my job is to set the basic rhythm of the play, memorable production willfully threw the work out the sets and move the actor around.

My job is to create the frame in which the acrules of proscenium theater out of the window and, in fact, out of the orchard. And it tors interpret. It's like I am an architect of the was all the more remarkable considering performance, they are the builders."

Schechner doesn't really know Hindi.

This confidence to work in other lan"We performed the play in New Delhi's guages also resulted in Aeschylus's Rabindra Bhavan," says Schechner, his The Oresteia in Chinese, done in Beijing eyes lighting up with the memory. "We Opera style in 'Co-production with the used various spaces around its outdoor the- Contemporary Legend Theatre of Taiwan ater. The action took place in a house, in an in 1995. "I live in a multilingual world, so I do plays in multiple languages," he says. "I orchard where we had 200 trees planted, and at a garden party lit up in the evening tried a Chekhov play in the U.S. in which with hundreds of light bulbs. Conversation one of the characters spoke only Russian, . would take place between the actors inside and I did Faust in which about 20 percent the house, with microphones, and the audiof the play was in German." This might be ence had to peer in from the windows to an interesting element to introduce in catch the action. There were other acts set Indian theater, with its multiple languages. in the orchard or in the garden, where the In fact, Schechner would like to do two audience mingled with the actors at an out- more productions in India-Angels in door party. There was a lot of action hap- America, a play about AIDS, and a bilinpening simultaneously at different venues, .gual Romeo and Juliet, in which one of the so you couldn't catch all of it at the same families speaks English, and the other famtime. At the end of the play, the actors get ily speaks, perhaps, Hindi or Marathi. into a tonga with their luggage and ride out In his book, Performative Circuminto the streets of Delhi, leaving the audi- stances, Schechner related what he was ence behind. It was hyper real, more like a. told by a modern Calcutta group: "Folk forms are in the rural areas. We are from movie than a stage play," he admits.

Manohar Singh and Surekha Sikri of the Calcutta. We have done Ibsen and Chekhov and have our own playwrights." So does he National School of Drama's Repertory still find Indian theater tending to equate Company played the lead roles. Nissar Allana did the sets, and Amal Allana the modernity with Westernization? "No. Over the past 25 years I have seen the theater of costumes. They had a dozen performances, Ratan Thiyam, B.Y. Karanth and Mohan but the response was mixed. "Some were Agashe, and studied the pioneering thought wildly enthusiastic about it, others thought it a bother. They wanted seats to sit in, of Suresh Awasthi, all of whom have allowed non-English, popular, classical and which we had only in Act One," Schechner confesses. "Others found it overwhelming. folk forms to affect them continuously.

True, it might not have been the way Today, most Indian theater uses Indian as Chekhov intended his play to be perwell as Western-derived forms. This is the lot of theater speaking of formed, but I never do plays the way the big change-a playwright wants it. If he wants it done in a your own culture very confidently," he particular way, then he should do it." says. The success of the Prithvi Festival of Directing a play in a language he did not Indian theater in 10 languages in Mumbai understand was not a big issue. "I have the last November certainly bears this out.

RICHARD SCHECHNER: Q & A As a dedicated theater artist you have been deeply concerned about the survival of theater art. Is the survival of theater threatened?

Theater is not an endangered species. What is happening is a reconfiguration of what theater is, and a reduction in the amount of theater defined as the staging of dramas written by playwrights and produced on public stages for paying audiences. This kind of "drama-theater" is finding its niche-a smaller niche than it occupied in the West from the Renaissance through the mid-20th century. Drama-theater has been losing ground throughout the 20th century since the advent of movies. In the 21st century there will be drama-theater, but it will not be dominant. It will stand in relation to a broader range of "performance activities" much in the way Western classical symphonies and string quartets stand in relation to the broad category "music." We have to be careful not to equate a certain kind of theater with theater in general.

I do not consider such a reconfiguration of theater as anything to regret. I welcome the changes. Many of the narrative functions of theater have been taken over by film and television; and other functions-of belief, of direct audience-performer interactions, of site-specific performance-can be achieved only by means of live theater. So, on the one hand, "drama-theater" is diminishing; on the other, "believed-in theater" is increasing. If you think of "narrative" as a theoretical category, it may then be regarded as a way of organizing experience, memory, belief and desire into a more or less causal chain of events. This narrative chain may be tightly linked as in a "well-made play"or very loose and far-ranging as in the Mahabharata.

You have in your theoretical work equated the avant-garde in the West with traditional Asian theater. How valid is this correlation considering the tremendous difference of worldview that exists between the two?

No, I have definitely not equated Euroamerican avant-garde with traditional Asian theater. I have pointed out analogies and influences. In a recent writing, I specify five different kinds of avantgarde that we need to be aware of: the current, the historical, the forward-looking (or techno-oriented), the tradition-seeking and the But Schechner also sees a radical transformation in the evolution of world theater. He expects a lot more of what he calls "believed-in theater," or theater which is more truthful than theatrical, and both actors and audience tend to belong to the same community and share similar beliefs. He gives the example of Ron Athey, an American who is HIV positive. During his performances, he stands in full view of the audience, calmly makes large incisions on the bare back of a seated colleague and draws blood. He then mops the

intercultural. Of these, the tradition-seeking and the intercultural have been most affected by performances in Asia, Africa and elsewhere outside the Western sphere. The influences have ranged from a general tone-for example, Peter Brook-to vigorous research and practice-Jerzy Grotowski, Eugenio Barba, Phillip Zarrilli.

And there has been "internal tradition-seeking" as well, as seen in the work of Suzuki Tadashi in Japan, Wole Soyinka in Nigeria, Habib Tanvir and Ratan Thiyam in India. And these are just a few examples of a very large and important group of artists.

Considering your enduring love for the Ramlila of Ramnagar, how do you guage India's influence on your life and work?

When I am in India, especially among friends in Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai, Varanasi and elsewhere, I feel at home. There is a very special and abiding feeling I get in Vl1ranasiand across the Ganga in Ramnagar. It is not something I can summarize in a few words.

But it is an affinity, an attraction, a sense of belonging, a shanti.

Who knows, if there are earlier lives, may be in one of them I was in Kashi, or will be in a future life. But in speaking this way I am over my head. I regard moksha as beyond my comprehension. I am concentrated on dharma, kama and artha. I am a very practical man, simple in some ways, complicated in others.

As afriend of India and theater enthusiast, how do you view the Indian theater scene?

The most invigorating theater is in the streets, the bazaars, the chowks, the daily interactions of so many people. What I have seen on stage-precious little actually; my time has been taken up by other things-is not so unlike what is seen in America, a more or less exhausted modem theater of drama. But there are strong theatrical presences in India, people who are traditional, conservative and innovative at the same time, like Thiyam and other Manipuri directors, Shyamanand Jalan and Badal Sircar, still working in his very strict pure way, or Amal and Nissar Allana, B.Y. Karanth and P.N. Pannikar.

0 About the Interviewer: Neelima Talwaris associate professor of creative literature and drama at Indian Institute of Technology,Mumbai.

oozing blood on squares of tissue, which assistants clip on a clothesline worked by a pulley, so that the wet tissues circulate over the heads of the audience. In another performance, he has assistants matter-offactly pierce his scalp with syringe needles, somewhat like Christ's crown of thorns, while his chants drone in the background. The audience pays about $12 for these performances. Often they belong to the same "community" as Athey: a majority is usually HIV positive too.

"There is more to theater than art,"

Schechner points out. "As television and films take over the narrative functions of theater, you will see more and more of believed-in theater or community-based theater, which cannot function except face to face with the audience." The Ramlila of Ramnagar is, in his view, one such believed-in, ritual performance with the qualities of theater. In India, at least, it's back to the future.

0 About the Author: Meenakshi Shedde is a features writerfor the Times ofIndia, Mumbai.

Probably the most closely-watched business story in the United States stars its richest and most successful entrepreneur Bill Gates, CEO and creator of the world's dominant software company, Microsoft. The growing chorus of complaint against him includes rival companies, consumer advocates and the U.S. Department of Justice. More obscure foes air their views, ironically, on numerous anti-Microsoft Internet websites.

At issue is Microsoft's monopolistic business practices. The tide of invective against Gates has somewhat subsided as things are worked out in court: Microsoft stock still sells high, and Gates is still received like a head of state wherever he goes, but the love-hate relationship-and the court dates--continue. The following articles examine different sides of the controversy, and also highlight a native son of India, Sabeer Bhatia, whose success story in America is reminiscent of Bill Gate's own.

A8~D" TO THE IAlPM'1 The future of Microsoft is the issue in high tech.

F

ederal Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson had some news for his packed courtroom-he had conducted an informal software demonstration. This got the attention of the litigants before him: the world's most powerful government and the world's most powerful software company. Specifically, the jurist had wanted to test a claim made earlier in the week by the software firm-which is of course Microsoft, run by gazillionaire Bill Gates and staffed by 20,000 overmotivated lightbulb-heads who aspire to Gates's genius, drive and cunning.

Would removing Microsoft's Explorer Internet browser from Windows really grind the computer to a halt? Microsoft had insisted it would.

Leaning into the microphone, the burly, white-haired judge read from notes that carefully detailed his experiment, held on December ]8, 1997. Using a standard-issue Micron computer with Windows 95, he had his technician go through the "deinstall" routine until he got a screen message indicating that Explorer was no longer operative on that version of Windows-a

result that Microsoft had not been able to offer its licensees despite the judge's order. "That entire process," Jackson intoned, "took less than 90 seconds ...and when the uninstall process was completed, Windows 95 functioned as flawlessly as before. If the process is ...not that simple, I'd like to have it refuted by any evidence Microsoft wishes to introduce." Then came this acid comment, which generated titters through the courtroom and, undoubtedly, heart tremors in the American Northwest: "I want to know whether to believe my eyes."

Maybe that little moment won't turn out to be the turning point in the history of 21 st-century technology. But you wouldn't think so from the jubilation coming from Bill Gates's foes. The competitors and consumer advocates who have long been complaining that Microsoft's business practices are unfair now believe that they have a shot at changing things. "For a long time, people said that we were a whiny competitor," says Roberta Katz, counsel for Microsoft's browser foe Netscape. "But now they can see it's a serious issue."

Attitude is focus

has made Microsoft so successful-a relentless, obsessive it wants to go and the smarts to get there.

In fact, the future of Microsoft is the issue in high tech. That's why the U.S. Government's broadside against it is being followed with OJ.-like intensity. Reading the business section these days is like paging through the final book of the New Testament.

The word "Armageddon" keeps popping up. All to address a crucial question: will Microsoft be permitted to continue its domination? Or will government regulation set the parameters of competition in the next era's most important industry? The answers will affect everyone who deals with a computer chip. In other words, everyone.

After years of disarray and futility, the get-Microsoft forces are reaching critical mass. Nine state attorneys general have been meeting lately, apparently to prepare' a tobacco-company-style humdinger court case against the Softies. A Senate committee is conducting hearings about monopolistic practices in software.

The European Commission is entertaining complaints from Microsoft competitors. Bill Gates elbowed aside General Motors and standardized tests to become Ralph Nader's NO.1 target.

Of course, Microsoft is fighting back hard-with such disregard for decorum that some people are baffled by its intensity and apparent willingness to risk bad PR and, worse, the ill will of Judge Jackson. But if its employees were not aggressive, they would not be working at Microsoft. Consider how they responded to Jackson's temporary order. Microsoft had been forcing its Windows licensees (computer makers like Compaq) to also carry its Explorer browser. According to Janet Reno's trustbuster Joel Klein, this practice gave Microsoft an unfair advantage over Netscape and other browser creators. Jackson had said he'd decide the main issue later (with the help of a consulting expert in cyberlaw). But for now, he told Microsoft, just offer computer makers the option of shipping an Explorer-free version of Windows.

This needn't have been a big deal for Microsoft. Most licensees would continue to take the full-blown version of Windows. The question remained how to provide a version without the Explorer's accompanying it. Microsoft's solution?

Fuggedaboutit. It offered two Explorer-free alternatives that no sane computer maker would dare ship in 1998: a two-year-old version of Windows (14 years old in dog-year-like Internet time) or a current version that didn't work at all. Think of it this way: if you won't take our browser, you get either an aging jalopy or a new model sans motor.

And this came under the rubric of compliance. Microsoft also announced it was appealing the entire ruling on the ground that the judge's reasoning was unsound.

Microsoft haters everywhere point to this as proof of what they'd been saying all along: Redmond-ites are rotten. "They're providing a tutorial to the public on what type of company they really are-above the law and arrogant as hell," said James Love, director of the Microsoft-bashing Consumer Project on Technology.

The Microsoft people didn't see it that way. They treated the order like a bug fix. The way they read the judge's ruling (you will be spared the complete explanation, which involves the kinds of terms that appear in on-screen error messages), the letter of law dictates that they had to respond the way they did. If this, um, solution just so happened to benefit them and make a joke of the ruling ...too bad.

That attitude, in a nutshell, is what has made Microsoft so successful-a relentless, obsessive focus on where it wants to go and the smarts to get there. For much of last year, the company has seemed invincible. After its triumphant adjustment to the Internet, it was cementing its dominance in systems and applications, and improving its share in browsers, network servers and databases, all the while insisting that the company isn't nearly as scary as competitors and would-be regulators would have you believe. Forget that its own legal briefs filed in December warn that if the courts delay its next operating system, Windows 98, the entire American economy might topple into the quarry. Its executives portray the company as a scrappy, lovable cog in the glorious machine of American high tech.

"Think about the technology business in its broadest sense," says Bob Herbold, Microsoft's executive vice president.

"Microsoft is a small but important player in that very large industry."

Herbold is being modest. Way modest. While indeed Microsoft's revenue stream is dwarfed by others, Wall Street regards the firm as a virtual titan, worth more than the entire auto industry. And when it comes to computer software, there is Microsoft and there is everyone else. Though Microsoft executives will not admit this under torture, it's obvious to computer users and federal judges alike that the Windows operating system (OS) is a monopoly. And Microsoft is also the dominant force in applications software: its Office suite of products trounces the competition.

Other software shops sweat out the process of winning customers among the people who buy personal computers.

Microsoft, since its programs are standard issue on new computers, thinks more like a tax collector, measuring progress by how much money it earns from each PC sold (about $100). Bill Gates fondly speaks of the day when Microsoft will collect money from users on a subscription basis-just as people write out checks for the cable bill or electric bill, they'll periodically pay the Bill bill.

All of this, Microsoft insists, will happen only if customers are pleased with its offerings. Furthermore, the rapid pace of hightech change ensures that competitors will always get a shot at the champs in Redmond, Washington. In any case, Microsoft's success story does resonate with millions of people who see it as a paragon of American know-how and can-do. When Bill Gates travels abroad, he is regarded with an awe usually reserved for Presidents, divinity or ex-Beatles.

Do not underestimate the Empire. It will take more than a few rulings to knock it off its pedestal.

Copyright Š 1997 Smith-Las Vegas Sun. Reprinted with permission from United Media Syndicate.

So why is it now a target? The Microsoft people think they know the answer: jealously and greed. "There's this weird thing in America about the way we deal with successful companies," says Microsoft Vice President Brad Chase, who also cites "a very effective lobbying campaign" by competitors.

But whatever the reason, Microsoft correctly senses big trouble.

Most alarmingly, one passage in Judge Jackson's ruling indicated he was already pondering the anticompetitive aspects of Windows 98, which will so thoroughly integrate browsing that separating Explorer from Windows would be like removing Nestle Quik from milk after the spoon has done its job. Microsoft's entire strategy is built around this Internet-based OS, and if the government stops this, it's apocalypse time in Redmond.

"We think this is hugely important," says Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft's technology czar. "The Government of the United States is being incredibly capricious with us to satisfy the craven needs of our competitors. In almost every aspect of our business, this will really hurt us. But that's [our competitor's] goal-to hurt us, and help their own companies. In doing so, they will hurt our customers, too."

Actually, Microsoft has a point here. An argument can be made that Internet browsing, an act destined to be as common as accessing a file on one's hard-disk drive, is a natural addition to an operating system. Customers may benefit when Microsoft builds browsing into Windows. If such a move makes the Netscape browser redundant, well, that's tough, goes the Microsoft line. How can something be bad if it's the right thing for customers?

Seems to make sense. But Microsoft doesn't stop there. It claims a totally unfettered right to include any embellishment in the OS, be it a natural evolution or an anticompetitive smart bomb. If it wanted to, the Softies said to government lawyers, it could require computer makers to put "a ham sandwich" into Windows. Judge Jackson indicated in his ruling that Microsoft's right might not be so absolute. And antitrust head Klein wants it firmly established that users will not be forced to munch on software ham sandwiches.

Klein, who considered Microsoft's hostile response to the judge's order "a meaningless remedy inconsistent with the court's ruling," has turned up the heat. He quickly petitioned the court to declare Microsoft in contempt, to slap on a milliondollar-a-day fine and-most daringly-to compel the company to submit any further software releases to government scrutiny, so the Feds can be sure that Bill Gates is playing fair.

That's Microsoft's wotst nightmare. "If the U.S. Government is going to decide what features go into software," says Myhrvold, "it means the end of the software business." It certainly means the end of Microsoft's business plan. Myhrvold cites the hundreds of millions of dollars the company is spending on research into making software more powerful and easier to use. "What's the point of us doing this if we can't put the features in?"

Poor Microsoft. The year started so promisingly and just kept getting better, its stock soaring, its browser share rising, its reviews glowing, its press clips brimming with tales of all its millionaire option-holders. Now the future holds a bleak procession of briefing deadlines and hearing dates. Every day seems to bring more conscripts to the opposition. Most recently, the Justice Department hired as a consultant superlitigator David Boies. And now it comes out that rival software firms have added the ultimate Beltway insider Bob Dole to their lobbying team. (What might he say? "Bob Dole never had an operating system. Had to Web-surf with a pencil. Arrgh.")

Would-be Microsoft-killer attorney Gary Reback thinks that we're now in the opening stages of a long journey toward software liberation. "It's sort of like the situation after the first Star.

Wars movie," he says, referring to that temporarily exhilarating moment when the Death Star was destroyed, yet the rebel forces realized that the Empire was still in control.

Do not underestimate the Empire. It will take more than a few rulings to knock the ruler of the software world off its hard-won pedestal. But right now, facing a lineup of foes that includes master litigators, a former presidential candidate, a leading consumer advocate, attorneys general from nine states and, apparently, the judge hearing his case, Bill Gates might well be wondering if the Force is indeed with him.

D About the Author: magazine.

Steven

Levy

is senior

editor

of Newsweek

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society is characterized by diversity. But fallibility is a universal human condition; once we acknowledge it, we have found a common ground for the open society, which celebrates this diversity.

Recognition of our fallibility is necessary but not sufficient to establish the concept of the open society. We must combine it with some degree of altruism, some concern for our fellow human beings based on the principle of reciprocity.

Any variety of Asian, or other, values would fit into a global open society, provided that some universal values reflect-

other than market values in society. At the same time, it is a much vaguer, less determinate concept. It cannot define how the economic, political, social and other spheres should be separated from and reconciled with one another. Opinions may differ on where the dividing line between competition and cooperation should be drawn. Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek, two champions of the open society, parted company over just this point.

Let me summarize my own views on the specific requirements of our global open society at this moment of history.

We need to establish certain standards of behavior to contain corruption, enforce fair labor practices and protect human rights. ing our fallibility and our concern for others-such as the freedom of expression and the right to a fair trial-were also respected. Western democracy is not the only form that an open society could take.

In fact, that the open society should take a variety of forms follows from the epistemological argument. This is both the strength and the weakness of the idea: it provides a conceptual framework that needs to be filled with specific content.

EadLSociety, each historical period, must decide on the specifics.

As a conceptual framework, the open society is better than any blueprint, including the concept of perfect competition. Perfect competition presupposes a kind of knowledge that is beyond the reach of market participants. It describes an ideal world that has little resemblance to reality. Markets do not operate in a vacuum and do not tend toward equilibrium. They operate in a political setting, and they evolve in a reflexive fashion.

The open society is a more comprehensive framework. It recognizes the merits of the market mechanism without idealizing it, but it also recognizes the roles of

We have a global economy that suffers from some deficiencies, the most glaring of which are the instability of financial markets, the asymmetry between center and periphery and the difficulty in taxing capital. Fortunately, we have some international institutions to address these issues, but they will have to be strengthened and perhaps some new ones created.

The Basle Committee on Banking Supervision has established capital-adequacy requirements for the international banking system, but these did not prevent the current banking crisis in Southeast Asia.

There is no international regulatory authority for financial markets, and there is not enough international cooperation for the taxation of capital.

But the real deficiencies are outside the economic field. The state can no longer play the role it played previously.

In many ways that is a blessing, but some of the state's functions remain unfulfilled. We do not have adequate international institutions for the protection of individual freedoms, human rights and the environment or for the promotion of social justice-not to mention the preser-

vation of peace. Most of the institutions we do have are associations of states, and states usually put their own interests ahead of the common interest. The United Nations is constitutionally incapable of fulfilling the promises contained in the preamble of its charter. Moreover, there is no consensus on the need for better international institutions.

What is to be done? We need to establish certain standards of behavior to contain corruption, enforce fair labor practices and protect human rights. We have hardly begun to consider how to go about it.

As regards security and peace, the liberal democracies of the world ought to take the lead and forge a global network of alliances-that could work with or without the United Nations. NATO is a case in point. The primary purpose of these alliances would be to preserve peace; but crisis prevention cannot start early enough. What goes on inside states is of consequence to their neighbors and to the world at large. The promotion of freedom and democracy in and around these alliances ought to become an important policy objective. For instance, a democratic and prosperous Russia would make a greater contribution to peace in the region than would any amount of military spending by NATO. Interfering in other countries' internal affairs is fraught with difficulties-but not interfering can be even more dangerous.

Right now the global capitalist system is vigorously expanding in both scope and intensity. It exerts a tremendous attraction through the benefits it offers and, at the same time, it imposes tremendous penalties on those countries that try to withdraw. from it. These conditions will not prevail indefinitely, but while they do, they offer a wonderful opportunity to lay the groundwork for a global open society.

With the passage of time the deficiencies are likely to make their effect felt, and the boom is likely to turn into a bust. But the ever-looming breakdown can be avoided if we recognize the flaws in time. What is imperfect can be improved. For the global capitalist system to survive, it needs a society that is constantly striving to correct its deficiencies: a global open society.

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"I am left with no alternative, therefore, but to sentence you to three years aboard the space station MIR. " Drawing by Frank Cotham; © 1997. All rights reserved.

"No calls for an hour, Edna, I'm going to rest on my laurels, "

ON THE LIGHTER

SIDE

"From here we continue on foot, " D rawlOg . b y Shanahan' , © 1996 The

ew Yorker Magazine,lnc.

Secret Management Memoirs.

Drawino by Eric & Bill; © 1998 Tribune Media Services, Inc. o All rights reserved.

Friction-Free Capitalism and

Electronic Bulldozers Microsoft Chairman and CEO Bill Gates and Mil Computer Lab Director Michael Dertoulos ruminate on the IInetwork society" and the impact of the Internet on business and our daily lives.

M

ICHAEL DERTOUZOS: By the year 2007, there will be half-a-billion to one billion interconnected computers.

What will all these computers and the people behind them be doing? They will all be doing three things-buying, selling and freely exchanging information and "information work."

When we think of information we tend to think of pictures, text or sound. This is information as a "noun." But there is also information as a "verb," or information work, which means data that are massaged and altered. It is done by computer programs like Microsoft Word and others, and it is done by people like accountants and tax clerks.

It turns out that the fraction of the industrial economy that consists of office workers who do information work is hugeabout $9 trillion worth of work, or half of the economy of the industrial world. So, much of this new "network economy" will have information work as well as content like text and images flowing over it.

But there will also be free exchanges, things not measured in dollars. For example, I imagine there will one day be a virtual "peace corps"-a gigantic clearinghouse where the providers of help, and those who wish to receive help, can find their place over the World Wide Web. And the direction of help will not always go from wealthy to poor. For example, a Sri Lankan doctor could provide medical advice, through the network society, to a homeless person in San Francisco because it would be more affordable than the medical attention he might obtain locally.

Reprinted from New Perspectives Quarterly, published by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. Copyright Š 1997 New Perspectives Quarterly.

In all these ways, the network movement enabled by the Internet will become fully integrated into our lives. It will be pretty much like breathing air. It will not be a "cyberspace out there" that we relate to; it will be in everything we do. And speech will be the dominant interface. We were born with ears and mouths, after all,. not keyboards and mouses. The technology is adapting to that.

Three Forces: There are three fundamental forces shaping this network society: The first force is.what I call "electronic bulldozers"-the ability of computers to offload human work from the human brain; not creativity or complex things, but simple repetitive work such as processing or annotating. It is time we stopped using our brains for all the simple work and automate that part of human activity.

No economic movement worth its salt has lasted if it has not improved human productivity, It may be that this information movement will take us as high up the productivity curve as the industrial movement did. We may well see a 300 percent increase in office productivity during the 21st century, The second force is "electronic proximity." This is the exciting part of the Web, which brings distant people closer together. It is amazing how big this force is. When humankind lived in villages, each person could reach another 200 people by walking.

When the car came, that number increased by a factor of 1,000 to about 200,000 people who came within our proximity through driving. What is amazing is that this Information Age increases our ability to reach people by another factor of 1,000, to 200 mil(Continued on page 58)

at

ewYear's Day 1998 demanded the best champagne available Hotmail Corporation in .

Sunnyvale~ California. As the old year closed so did a deal between Bill Gates and Hotmail Q~ners Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith. Microsoft decided to acquire Hotmail for a figure analysts estimate to be between $300 and $400 million. Neither Microsoft nor Hotmail divulged details.

What's so.hot about Hotmail? A rev9lutiorrary idea: free E-mail. It's an idea that in less than two years attractedasfin~ny customers as Arrie:riea Online did in six.'.Not only does it providefree.

E-mail, but g19b . ccess. A subscriber caIflog into a HotIilail account from any Web-connected device anywhe,dvertisers foot the :;". ~md.reap the bent(~it f'the ,',unique. gemogr~phic sampler Hotm' .. vides. Yet Hotmail . <"is customers froD,1<'u !}ted'intrusions like 'spaIn"' ming (unsoliciteqjunk mail), viruses and' es of confidentiali In an online lllietview with SPAN, c.o-founaer Sabeer Bhatiadiseu~ses Hotmail and Its success.

Twenty-nine-year:'old Bhatia was born in B~galore. He pursuedstttdie~ in'computer sciertee'af{d went to the United States in 1988 on a scholarship to Caltech. From there lie went on to take' a'mas-, ter's degree in electrical engineering fromStahford University and oeganworking on his PhD.He . decided to jump to the corporate world, and got a job with Apple Computers as systems integrator. He moved on to FirePower. He later developed the free E-mail idea wiili' FirePower colleague'Jack Smith. Despite skepticism, Bhatia and Smith managed to raise $300;000 seed money and launched Hotmail on July 4, 1996. As of the first of this year, the Hotmail subsciiWr base reached 10 milIion~ achieving an original objective of Bhatia's. On December 31, 1997, Microsoft announced thatjt ' acquired Hotmail, which will continue its operations in SunnyvaIe.as a wholly-owned subsidi

N

/

Why does Hotmail work? It is easy to see how free, easy-access Email would go over well with the subscriber, but what about the advertisers?

SPAN:

SABEER BHATIA: Hotmail has a simple value proposition for the subscriber.

Each subscriber gets a permanent, portable and private FREE E-mail account at hotmai1.com in return for providing a few pieces of demographic information to Hotmail. Hotmail agrees not to sell this information to any database marketers or list-providers but rather uses this to target advertising to its subscribers. The advertisers, on the other hand, get indirect access to this database by being able to target anyone or all of the many demographic types within this base of Hotmai I subscriber.

In general there are three types of sites that appeal to WelJcbased advertisers: â&#x20AC;˘ Web-based properties that reach large audiences. These sites reach audiences of millions of users each month.

Examples of such websites are search engines such as Yahoo, Inktomi, Excite and Infoseek. â&#x20AC;˘ Web-based properties that are verticaUy targeted. By vertically targeted I mean that these sites provide content or services that appeal to a certain demographic type.

Examples of such sites are news.com which appeals to computer-savvy users, or Women swire which is explicitly targeted to working women, or the waU-street-journal.com, whose readers comprise those interested in current business issues. â&#x20AC;˘ Websites which have the technical ability to make use of demographic and psychographic data to target advertising.

This reaUy means that if a website collects information about its members or subscribers, it has the technology to control the quantity of advertising and the type of advertising shown to them.

Hotmail is unique in that it appeals to aU three types of advertisers. We have a large subscriber base of 12.5 million users and growing. In addition to this asset, Hotmail has a wealth of information about its users which includes their age, gender, profession and interests. With this data, we are able to carve out demo-

graphic categories of subscribers from within our total base. For example, we can carve out millions of computer-savvy professionals from within our base or identify all working women on our site, based on data they have provided to us.

Furthermore, Hotmail has the ability to target advertising to these groups of users and control the number of ads an individual sees from an advertiser. For example, we can target computer ads to only those individuals who have indicated to us an interest in computers and also show the ad only three times and no more. This

creased subscribers through a promotional campaign a couple of years ago-their system crashed-yet Hotmail mushroomed in less than two years to accommodate more than 10 million customers.

Hotmail has grown this quickly in this short a period of time because it is a simple and elegant yet very powerful idea that was executed well. The real value that we provide to the end subscriber is not that the E-mail account is FREE but that we are based on a ubiquitous platform and require no client to be down-

holma;'

is a form of user-requested direct marketing, .making it more relevant for both the advertiser and the user.

makes for a powerful story that can be effective for both the advertiser-in that the advertising is not wasted on those who are not interested in the advertising-and the subscriber, who need not see the ad any more number of.times that he or she needs to.

Very recently Hotmail has .also launched another product called the MAIL-ME, which is a banner that advertises a certain product or offer to the end user and if the user is interested in more information about the same, it is mailed to him or her E-mail box. If you step back and think about it, this is a form of userrequested direct marketing, making it more relevant for both the advertiser and the user. On a side note, in the traditional advertising world, more money is spent on direct-marketing advertising than in all of print and television.

To what do you attribute your fast growth? How are you able to keep up with consumer. demands? America Online ran into big problems when it in-

loaded, installed and configured. All the end subscriber needs to have is a Webconnected terminal. Hotmail has grown to a base of 12.5 million subscribers by a grassroots-Ievel "word-of-mouth" marketing. We got our initial impetus by a strong public relations effort in our early days, as we had little money to spend on advertising. Our best evangelists are our subscribers who, once they have subscribed to Hotmail, go on to recruit their friends and family into using the same.

This ensures our continued growth,' which now stands at an incredible 75,000 new subscribers each day.

As you have pointed out yourself, it is not an easy task to handle this large a subscriber base, and more importantly, this kind of explosive growth. We've had our fair share of mishaps and problems with our E-mail system in the early days.

But we've re-architected our site twice to provide a reliable, scalable and responsive E-mail system. This is something that a company can only learn by experience-there is no way of predicting when

a piece of software will buckle under heavy load. We've developed every piece of software on our site internally and have taken care to design it to grow to millions of users gracefully. Since our last major rehaul, we have grown linearly in the last year with no major problems.

We are now confident that this architecture will handle the next wave of tens of millions of users. easily. Our strong technology at the back-end certainly is equally responsible for what is now a strong brand on the Internet.

Bill Gates bought Hotmailfora whopping sum, making you a multimillionaire overnight. Gates has been under the gun latelyfor Microsoft's monopolist tendencies, and he has been accused of either buying out or crushing any significant competitors. What do you say to this? Do you think that was part of his motivation in acquiring Hotmail? We don't expect you to bite the hand that just made you a millionaire, but we would like your candid opinion about the software wars going on between Gates and the opposition, which now includes the U.S. Iustice Department.

I think a large part of the motivation in Microsoft acquiring Hotmail and us agreeing to being acquired is that we were on two independent paths which would have inevitably collided in the future. Hotmail was independently evolving into a serious Web-based online service and Microsoft itself had plans to migrate its MSN subscribers to a web-based online service with Our strengths an E-mail component. are also very complimentary-while Microsoft is strong in the development of the platform and products for the desktop, we are a service-oriented company with an Internet focus. The processes and systems that result in great products are not necessarily the same that result in providing a reliable and responsive service. We knew that we would be very successful in this space because we pioneered it. But now with the merger with Microsoft, we are almost certain that we will be the largest provider of E-mail in the world and also

grow into becoming the largest online service in the world. Personally, for Jack and myself, this merger with Microsoft will help us realize our dream of creating the most accessed site on the Internet. Hence the decision to merge is a natural outcome of all these reasons.

On the Department of Justice, Microsoft and Netscape wars, I sincerely believe that the government should stay out of competition in the private sector. I believe that the involvement of government should be minimal in playing a regulatory role. Microsoft has been treated

in the software sector. I can only see this expanding with the success of the Internet as a means of communication and collapsing geographical and political barriers. A large part of the American workforce in Silicon Valley is of Indian origin; I believe this has caused many American companies such as Microsoft, Intel and Oracle to choose India as a natural partner for development of software products and technology. The prominence of English in the Indian educational system is also responsible for the emergence of Indian operations of U.S.-

MiCIosoft is reaping the benefits of the vision of its founder and strategic initiatives pioneered by him decades ago.

unfairly because they have been exceptionally successful in the last few years.

However, if you look at the history of Microsoft, it has been successful because it made the right decisions and forged partnerships with thousands of companies to make its operating system the platform-of-choice. I think Microsoft. is reaping the benefits of the vision of its founder and the strategic initiatives pioneered by him decades ago. I particularly feel this way because I think that India's industry has suffered because of overregulation by the government in the last 50 years.

based companies in the highly skilled arena of high technology. . I started my business in the U.S. because I am a product of the educational system of the U.S. Being in Silicon Valley allowed me to tap into the rich financial infrastructure system of Venture Capital extant only in the U.S. Without the existence of such technical and financial infrastructure, I would not have been able to start and grow this venture.

I haven't had the time to give a lot of thought to keeping a foot in the Indian business world but will consider it more seriously now.

What are your views on IndoAmerican cooperation in the computer sector? Is it changing, expanding? You chose to start your business in the U.S. What motivated you to locate there, and have you thought about keeping a foot in both business worlds, in India and America?

Will you continue to be involved with Hotmail, or do you have new ventures in mind?

There is ever growing evidence of Indo-American cooperation, especially

I will continue to run Hotmail as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft for the next few years. At the moment I do not have any new ventures in mind but am certain I will have one in the upcoming years. As they say, "Once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur."

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lion or more people. Of course we won't reach them all-but we would be able to reach anyone in that circle if we wanted.

This, of course, is both a good and bad thing. Congregations of like people, from seniors to surfers, can be in touch with each other irrespective of how far they are away from each other.

Along with the heightened proximity, however, there will also be info-crimes, info-predators and info-terrorism that comes with the shrinking territory.

A great fear has also arisen that this greater proximity will impose a universal culture on the world, that the dominant power in the world today will impose its culture on others. I don't think this will happen. This new technology has the very strange capability of simultaneously strengthening ethnicity and diversity.

I am a Greek, and half of all Greeks live outside Greece. Half the Jews are outside Israel. Half the Palestinians ...! could go on.

As globalization expands, more people will be outside their countries or the main locales of their ethnic groups. This could lead, 50 years hence, to the very strange situation where the Greek nation is no longer consonant with a land mass, but is really an ethnic network. From nation to network. A frightening thought perhaps, unless we recal1 that the original meaning of the word ethnos describes a group of common origin regardless of their geographic location.

On the other side, diversity, let us look at what has already happened in the European Union. The bridge of a common language, English, has not obliterated national differences, but formed a thin cultural veneer that permits diverse people to communicate with each other. I expect the same to happen with this new medium. There will be no universal civilization, but a thin veneer of shared culture that is going to enable us to understand each other better because we can be in constant contact.

The third force is the emergence of brokers and middlemen. If, in 10 years' time, we have one billion computers, each of them with between 1,000 to one million pieces of information, we would have between one trillion and one quadril1ion pieces of information.

But what is useful to me is not useful to some other person, and vice versa. There is a huge amount of info junk floating around.

That is going to make brokers and middlemen necessary to match up the information this person wants with the information that person has.

Haves and Have-Nots: For all of this positive side, I do believe this information movement, left to its own devices, will increase the gap between rich and poor people and rich and poor nations. Better information helps the rich more efficiently offer and obtain goods and services. This is the "friction-free capitalism" that Bill Gates talks about, and it makes the rich richer. The

poor can neither afford the technologies, nor can they afford to learn about them. So, they are left behind.

The information productivity gap both accelerates and widens.

In the U.S., 10 percent of the GNP is devoted to purchases of computer hardware and software. Germany is around seven percent. Bangladesh is one-tenth of one percent. Where will they find the money to buy the hardware and the software, to pay for the education?

In summary, it is clear we are now in the third major socioeconomic movement of human economic history. We should fear it no less than we did the agricultural and industrial movements that went before. We are, after all, the same ancient human beings. All that is changing is our set of tools.

ILL GATES: It has been said that the personal computer, like

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the telephone before it, gives people a new and better tool of communication. Actual1y, cal1ing PCs "tools of communication" does not gi ve an accurate sense of the full impact of the variety of things people will be able to do with them when connected up to the Internet.

It may be more accurate to think in terms of those who live a "Web lifestyle," and those who don't live a Web lifestyle. What I mean by a "Web lifestyle" is someone who, several times a day, goes to the Web to check for or send E-mail and to search for any topic on which he or she needs information, from airline tickets to the weather to the news.

Those with a Web lifestyle take it as a given that they will turn to the Internet to be informed or to collaborate with others.

Very few people are doing this today. To find large groups that meet the test of a Web lifestyle, you'd have to go to a university campus in the United States where the way to enroll for a course, to get in touch with friends, or just to order pizza, is through the Web. As those kids enter the economy as consumers and more and more people share the experience, they will demand that compa-' nies use the Web in creative ways, whether for paying bil1s, selling products or providing information.

The capacity of the Internet has been greatly overestimated for the next two to three years; that everyone will be buying a car or banking on the Net is hype. If we look ahead over a 10-year period, however, I think the Internet is greatly underestimated.

A distinction that exists today, where people may live a Web lifestyle in their office well before they do as part of their home life, will disappear with convergence of "bandwidth" [the nearly infinite capacity of optic fiber and satellite "pipes" to carry information -ed}. What is available for offices today will be available for homes tomorrow.

Some of the key breakthroughs that are necessary have not

happened yet. For example flat panel screens with wonderful resolution are not yet available. But many companies are working on these breakthroughs in both hardware and software-including visual and speech recognition and speech synthesis, which will be primary ways of working with a computer in the future. What is needed for this to become a reality is a decent camera and good microphone devices, and enough volume of sales so that the extra cost of these build-ins on the computer will be on the order of $1 00 or less.

So, when we talk about where the PC is going, it is important to bear in mind the rapid innovation now taking place, particularly with respect to the interface with the Internet. A year ago people said the Internet and the PC didn't really go together.

Now, when you buy a new PC, the Internet is only two clicks away. You merely pick the service provider you want and are billed for that. Increasingly, everything you need is built into the computer so you don't have to go out and buy big programs.

People now are worried about the complexity of the PC, which is a very legitimate point whether the issue is the time factor of reading through thick manuals or the difficulty of updating software. I have a very optimistic viewpoint here, partly through inside knowledge of research and development being done now, and partly from an understanding of what software can do.

In the next several years, we will arrive at the point where a lot will be going on behind the keyboard in terms of interface with the Internet, but what the consumer has to do to utilize that complexity will be very straightforward. You will be able to just think of the document you want, of the topics you are interested in, and your experience will be that it can be delivered from the Pc.

Compete with Thyself: This is a very competitive business.

No product out there today will be popular in three to four years.

It is simply a question of whether the companies that make today's products are going to replace their own products, or whether someone else will.

When Intel Chairman Andy Grove looks 10 years out at the kind of chips his company will be making, he sees chips with 100 times the speed they have today. With that kind of capacity, software will become a reasonable assistant in helping you in every way in this information economy.

Friction- Free Capitalism:

Above all, perhaps, the PCI Internet interface is going to very dramatically reduce the socalled "frictional costs of capitalism," the problem of matching buyers and sellers of goods and services. The market in consulting, for example, is very poorly mediated today. It is hard to find the right people. Instead of looking at all the possible consul-

tants-their availability, their references and their plice-you usually turn to a trusted friend and take his or her advice on whom to hire. Once tills market becomes optimally efficient, your ability to collaborate with consultants at a distance will be very dramatic.

All this will bring capitalism to new levels of effectiveness on a global basis and really make the world a far smaller place.

The Gap: Today, if you wanted to know someone's standard of living and income, and you could only ask one question, that question would be "What country do you live in?" Where you live today is the dominant factor that determines vast differences in wealth and poverty ..

Ten years from now that will change. The education level will be a much greater indicator of wealth and poverty than the country where you live.

What does that mean concretely? Most jobs today are service jobs. With the World Wide Web, people from around the world will be able to bid for the best price and best qualifications to do those jobs. Networks will spring up to serve demand wherever it appears. You will be able to get video-conferenced legal advice from anywhere on the planet if you are willing to pay for it, and it fits your local needs.

So, everything will depend on the educational system in a given place. India and China make up much of the developing world and, in fact, both have pretty reasonable education systems. And, as is already evident, the motivation to become well educated in these areas is so dramatic that you may actually see a leapfrog situation over some of the presently advanced countries.

And it may not take that long.

Where will the poor countries find the resources to buy hardware and software and educate their kids? I guess it shows my faith in capitalism, but I believe middlemen will emerge who will find ways to equip Bangladesh with hardware and bring in the software so they can take a 10 percent fee on the service work that those people will provide to the rest of the world and for themselves.

The power of capitalism to mediate the gap between rich and poor is pretty incredible. Indeed, I think, year by year, the gap gets less.

There is, however, a big role for government in laying down the infrastructure. And that may become both easier and cheaper when satellite systems with very high-speed bandwidth cover every part of the globe, reducing costs dramatically for linking up to worldwide networks.

The big question mark in my mind, I admit, is education. Will governments rise to that challenge? It is well worthwhile for governments and philanthropists to try to accelerate the change, to make sure it happens sooner rather than later.

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Slamming Gates

By DAVID SHENK

Everybody's talking about Microsoft. Is it techno-angst? Orhas the thrill at the unlikely triumph of a computer geek turned to vague unease at his 40 billion dollar worth and overwhelming dominance? t's kind of funny that Bill Gates has embraced the World Wide Web with so much enthusiasm and investment capital lately, because the Web sure doesn't seem to like him. Try an online search for "Microsoft sucks," and you'll find websites that depict Gates being shot repeatedly, poked in the face with darts, and revealed to be the devil. Offline, Gates's list of antagonists is mushrooming almost as rapidly as his net worth, with vocal detractors in every branch of the federal government, many state attorney-general offices, the national media, brand-name universities and leading consumer-action groups. Cheering on this crusade is a sizable grassroots chorus of software engineers, Web professionals, corporate systems managers and disgruntled customers.

"Whenever I write a column that is critical of Microsoft," says Paul Gillen,. editor-in-chief of Computerworld, "invariably, a half-dozen 'attaboy' letters will come out of the woodwork'Way to go,' 'Stick it to 'em,' 'Evil empire' and 'They suck.' " And when Gillen praises Microsoft? "I get letters saying: 'You're just sucking up,' 'You're in Bill Gates's back pocket' or 'You suck.' " These acidic notes, Gillen says, do not seem to come from a short list of recycled names. "It's a wide and diverse group." Microsoft-bashing has become so common in the Bay Area, says writer Po Bronson, "It's like talking about the weather in Minnesota. I literally have conversations about Microsoft with everybody, every day, all the time. It is omnipresent."

But why? Does Gates really deserve this hostility, or is Microsoft-bashing just a cheap new common currency in an otherwise hyper-fragmented society? Or, worse, are the growing number of Gates-haters simply pawns of high-octane competitors like Lotus, Oracle, Netscape and Sun, for whom Microsofthating is an important part of doing business? A close examination of the culture of Microsoft-loathing reveals an eclectic variety of denunciations-some sound, others specious.

Accusations vary wildly in levels of intelligence, maturity and credibility. Critics are by no means coordinated in their criticism, nor are they always necessarily conscious of the real reasons be-

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hind their antipathy. All of which" would be merely amusing, if it weren't so consequential. There's a serious case to be made for containing the Microsoft behemoth, but it's getting lost amid the name-calling, corporate rivalry and not-so-petty jealousy.

The simplest-and perhaps the soundest-critique of Microsoft is the one that preoccupies the Justice Department and is the subject of the recent hearings in federal court: namely, that the company engaged in anticompetitive tactics to establish what amounts to a monopoly over various sectors of the software industry. Microsoft was able to establish MS-DOS and subsequently Windows as the standard PC operating system by exacting a royalty for every PC sold regardless of whether its operating system was installed. Then the company leveraged its ubiquity and deep pockets to push products like Office, Encarta and Internet Explorer, thus securing market share for products that surely would not have sold as well on merit alone.

Although Microsoft likes to portray all critics as ambitious corporate rivals or failed competitors, the apparent unfairness of Microsoft's rise has inspired an awful lot of sincere criticism.

And the gripes are not all ancient computing history. "To me, there is a difference between competition and what they do," says Mitch Stone, a consumer with no ties to the industry, who created the "Boycott Microsoft" website. "In August 1996, Microsoft began aggressively distributing Explorer 3.0 for free. That seemed unfair to me, a pretty deliberate effort to destroy a much smaller competitor. As a consumer, I couldn't see how that benefited me any, or anyone else either ....There is such a thing as being a good corporate citizen, and deliberate efforts to remove competitors from the marketplace-that's an ethical violation." This is not just Stone's conjecture about Microsoft's intent, mind you: Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's executive vice president of sales and support, confirmed such suspicions in January 1997 when he told Forbes, "We're giving away a pretty good browser as part of the operating system. How long can they survive selling it?"

Microsoft has also perfected the use of "vaporware"-the strategy of quelling interest in a competitor's product through the use of tantalizing press releases. "In their typical vaporware act,"

says Audrie Krause, editor of the watchdog newsletter The Microsoft Monitor, "they say, 'We have this product that will soon be ready.' " This convinces many prospective purchasers to put on the brakes, she says. "It makes people say, 'Well, I guess we'll wait and see.' They've done this repeatedly over the years, and sometimes they don't even ever bring out the product. But they kill the market for another product by announcing way ahead of time that they're coming out with something competitive." Noted examples include Internet Explorer 3.0 for Unix, announced to ward off major purchases of Netscape but never actually released, and Microsoft Exchange, which the company promised would match Lotus Notes, feature for feature, years before it reached that level of functionality.

In a properly functioning competitive environment, rivals who create better products could withstand such pressure. But when Gates is faced with a competitor he can't easily beat, critics say, he either crushes or purchases it-thus eliminating the competition. "Theirs is a praying-mantis business model: they have sex with you, and then they eat you," says Gary Reback, the wellknown Silicon Valley attorney representing a number of Microsoft's competitors, citing a familiar refrain. Such brute force combined with such wealth has transformed arguably the most innovative industry in history into a tightly controlled empire. "The basic model in the industry today is to be bought by Microsoft or to go out of business," observes Andrew Shapiro, a fellow at Harvard Law School's Center for Internet & Society. "Isn't that amazing? There's very little hope of independent success." Software entrepreneurs are in the strange and uncomfortable position, in other words, of having to answer to Microsoft in much the same way that a local factory apparatchik in the Soviet Union had to answer to the regional party boss.

One could make similar analogies about the way Microsoft has attempted to broaden its reach: "It goes beyond high-tech companies," says Bob Ingle, vice president of New Media of Knight-Ridder. "I think a fair chunk of corporate America is terrified of Microsoft, and they want an alternative." During the last dozen years, Gates's Microsoft has purchased a handful of promising software outfits, hired thousands of star programmers and researchers, co-founded a new cable network (MSNBC), snapped up the digital rights to the Bettman archive of still images and invested heavily in cable TV (Comcast), satellites (Teledesic), network computing (Web-TV) and other Internet-related resources. "They are obviously going after the means to control all ways of accessing the Internet," says Microsoft Monitor's Krause.

As important as serious Microsoft monitoring is, though, Gates-bashing is too widespread-and too visceral-to be a fuss over something as nuanced and arcane as antitrust law. Another agenda must be at work, and one need look no further than Microsoft's competitors to find it.

"If you want your company to get some attention," complains Microsoft spokesman Greg Shaw, "you say, 'Hmmm, how might I

get my company covered? I think I'll come down on Microsoft.' " He's dead right, of course, and no one has done more to whip up the hostility than Netscape, Microsoft's archrival in Web browser business. Marc Andreessen, Netscape's co-founder, has publicly compared Microsoft to the Mafia, boasting that his company refused what was supposed to be Microsoft's unrefusable offer to buy them out. "No horse heads in the bed yet," Andreessen said smugly. He also characterized the current Netscape-Microsoft browser contest as Bambi vs. Godzilla, portraying his company as not only the underdog, but also the ethically pure protagonist.

Condemning Gates not only helps companies gain the visibility and public admiration that firms crave; it also serves as ideal internal propaganda. Software is a quixotic and ruthless business.

Vast fortunes are made and lost in very short order, and hardworking employees of ambitious companies easily slip into a bunker mentality. For those tens of thousands of people working off of little more than dark-roasted coffee fumes and stock options, Gates is not just a formidable c路ompetitor. He is also the ideal motivational device-a marionette of hate that CEOs like Oracle's Larry Ellison, or Sun's Scott McNeally and Lotus's Jeffrey Papows, love to yank. (McNeally and Papows, according to the latter, are "co-captains of the I-hate-Bill-Gates fan club.

We just couldn't decide which of us hates him more.") Many thousands of industry laborers hate Microsoft primarily because they are trained to; for example, Ellison recently rallied his troops by displaying a giant computer-generated image of Gates giving Oracle employees the finger.

In fairness, Gates rivals like Ellison would never make headway if their claims didn't resonate with so many software engineers and computer users.

MS "crapware," as some call it, is widely disparaged as inelegant and buggy. (Joke precis: Bill Gates dies and gets to choose between heaven and hell. On his tour of hell, it looks like a beach party, in contrast to heaven's park-bench serenity. After he chooses hell, though, it turns out to be a torturous, skin-flaying pit of despair. Gates asks St. Peter, "What happened to the hell you showed me before?"

St. Peter looks down-from his Macintosh-and says: "Oh, that was just the demo.") The complaints are just too numerous and plainspoken to be mere rival propaganda. Says one information-systems manager, "I hate Microsoft because I am frequently put in a position of solving problems that would not have come up if my customer had bought software from another vendor." Another software professional (both insist on anonymity for reasons of job security) echoes this complaint, denouncing "their dominance of the software industry with crap."

Sentiments such as these have spawned hundreds of Web pages that protest Microsoft's allegedly inferior products. On the Net, there are endless how-many-Microsofties-does-it-take-to-screwin-a-lightbulb jokes, Gates-bought-what? spoofs, and I-hate-Billbecause quips. There is also a deluge of adolescent puns (Microsnot, Microshaft, Microsuck, etc.), a Usenet conference

called alt.destroy.microsoft, and enough gratuitous violence to McCartney saying there isn't very much money to be made in the music business. Gates's pretense of meekness is outrageous and fill a Tarantino script. ("Kill Bill Gates" appears twice as often patently dishonest, but his claim does speak to the industry's peas "Kill Bill Clinton.") An alien logging on from its own planet culiar power dynamics. In a business built on speedy innovation, might wonder if Gates had killed more people than Adolf Hitler, even a powerhouse like Microsoft is not assured future domior slightly fewer.

"It started when I saw my dad using Windows and it crashed nance, or even future success. Though the Windows operating every five minutes," says Chris Mutter, the 24-year-old Austrian system currently dominates the personal-computer market, it is creator of what he claims was the very first anti-Microsoft "Hate entirely conceivable that Sun's Java technology, for example, in combination with a future generation Web browser, could soon Page"-www.enemy.org-which went online in 1994. "I was just angry because here was a company who is the leader in the render exclusive operating systems such as Mac OS and Windows obsolete. Would you feel self-assured as the leader in PC software market and ships its products with that many bugs and limitations." Enemy.org, a member of something called the the telegraph business if you had an inkling that the telephone International Anti-MS Network, features many of the classics in was about to be invented-by someone else? the Bill-hating genre-the "Internet Exploder" and "WinBlows" From this angle, Microsoft starts to look like the all-American parody icons, the depiction of Gates with horns and glowing red quarterback who is in his prime and knows it. And the bashers? eyes, the gun to Gates's exploding head and so on, much of it They begin to look like malcontents who kvetch about the weather clearly the work of adolescent so much that they don't notice the sun coming out. In the acrid digilampooners reacting instinctively to a corporate behemoth. "YOU tal space of the most vociferous Microsoft haters, truth and innuhave been part of a force that endo merge to form a preposterhas done everything humanly possible to ensure that using a comous case against the company and puter .. .is a living hell for any its leader. "Microsoft is in a bind," person without a legal education," says Boston Globe technology writes enemy.org contributor Rune columnist Simson Garfinkel. "If Jacobsen to MS employees who they put out bad software, people might be visiting the site. "You criticize them for putting out bad therefore have to accept that you software, and if they put out good are a subject of hate from comsoftware, people criticize them for dominating the industry." puter users all over the world, and this is our only way to get back at If the software isn't that bad, you." and is getting much better, why But if Microsoft software is so do we love to hate Microsoft so? inferior and the company treats Why have I, for example, casucustomers that badly, how does the ally bashed Microsoft in conversation and in prose (written using company continue to prevail in the Drawing by Agee. Copyright 漏 1997 from the New Yorker collection.

Microsoft Word), or referred to free market? Ruthlessness and All rights reserved. the software-media giant as the deep pockets are not enough to keep any suite of products so astoundingly popular on the con"evil empire" plenty of times (before and after cashing Microsoft sumer and corporate level. Contrary to the stereotype of a comchecks for an online commentary I wrote for the Microsoft pany that possesses a monopoly, Microsoft uses its wealth to Network)? Why does the acrimony feel as prevalent in New York路 improve its products, even if they still remain inferior to some ri- as Po Bronson says it is in California? vals. "This time," Apple co-founder Steve Jobs told Fortune in One spur, clearly, is Gates's wealth. When he was worth just 1996, "Microsoft has the technology to compete on quality." Far three or four billion dollars, it was heady-the unlikely triumph from succumbing to the pride of success and indolence that can of a computer geek. Forty billion, though, engenders in many of come with immense wealth (thousands of current and former us a vague sense of unease, compounded by the fact that it comes Microsoft employees are stock-options millionaires), the comfrom the sales of hundreds of millions of products that, stacked pany is plowing an extraordinary amount of money into increastogether, wouldn't stretch to the end of your driveway, or even to ing the quality of its software. In many cases, Microsoft is the end of your hand. Microsoft, by some accounts, the second bankrolling several competing internal software teams. most capitalized company on the planet, is the only corporate Gates often answers critics by arguing that, when it comes to colossus in history whose entire product line could be eliminated with a giant magnet. information technology, it's impossible to have a true monopoly.

The more powerful reason, though, is techno-angst. The current "In a field like ours," Gates told NBC a few years ago, "there isn't much in the way of power." That's a little bit like Paul phase of the infonnation revolution has been a psychic whirlwind,

for good and for ill. Software-especially Microsoft softwarehas become such an integral part of our culture that it is almost impossible to imagine life without it. (If forced to give up either your personal computer or one finger for the rest of your life, which would you choose? One in three would give up the digit, according to Philip Nicholson, one expert on "technostress.") The remarkable velocity of information and increased demand on consumer attention can also produce significant stress and distraction. Our emerging "attention economy," whereby profits flow from grabbing the consumer's attention, however fleetingly, inevitably yields a noisier, more vulgar society.

In venting our techno-angst, we instinctively take aim at its most visible emblem. Some of us do so harmlessly under our breath, others turn it into a showcase of juvenescence. With the spectacular success of Microsoft, with the understandable fixation on Gates's personal fortune and with his conspicuous efforts to establish himself as the leading visionary of the personal-computing revolution, Gates has been transformed into a potent cultural icon. He isn't just very rich and very famous. Like all dominant icons (Monroe, Reagan, Sinatra, etc.), he embodies an arresting social transformation. We look at him and see our techonological future, warts and all. As the upstart personalcomputing industry has blossomed into a computing-communications juggernaut, becoming-as of late 1997-the largest industry in the nation, we project onto Gates our hopes, fears, dark suspicions-but mostly our (understandable) ignorance. We suddenly find ourselves fastened to an industry that few truly comprehend, but that rockets ahead regardless.

But if critics can't get over their current spate of anger, they may ultimately be doing Microsoft a great favor. For it is precisely the emotionalism of its competitors, says the Globe's Simson Garfinkel, that has helped Microsoft stay on top. "Lotus did great until they started focusing on Microsoft instead of focusing on their customers," says Garfinkel. "Netscape has made exactly the same mistake. Now Scott McNeally is making this competition with Microsoft very personal, swiping at every possible opportunity, rather than focusing on their customers. At the big Sun Java One conference last year, McNeally's keynote was dedicated to why Active X, Microsoft's program, is a problem.

That's really bad. You shouldn't make the keynote of your address bashing another company. And now Oracle's Larry Ellison is focusing on Microsoft instead of his own customers.

Whenever a company does that, they lose."

The case against Gates, if it is going to succeed, will do so on the strength of hopes and not fears; ingenuity, not insecurity; ambition, not envy. A more thoughtful attack on Microsoft would focus, as MIT researcher and software designer Philip Greenspun does, on the importance of innovation and on Microsoft's apparent stifling of it over the last several years. Greenspun is the creator of the infamous Bill Gates Personal Wealth Clock, possibly the deftest online jab at Gates. Here, Gates's steroidal wealth$41.0423 billion at the moment this sentence was written-can be tracked minute by minute. The clock was designed, explains Greenspun, as a swipe at the man who has the gall "to make so

much money writing software that ignores the users." But this is also Gates's secret weapon, Greenspun argues. Truly great software systems, he explains, perversely tend to be extremely vulnerable to competition, because they can be broken down into well-documented components. Thus, any individual component can be replaced by one that is engineered to the same spec. "If you're a bad engineer and you can't quite finish the specs and you think that the specs aren't really needed, then you end up with a nasty pile of code with lots of bugs, a system where the guts depend on everything else," where the software works only with programs created by the same sloppy engineers.

T

hus, asserts Greenspun, Microsoft gets rich not despite but because it produces inferior software. In a fairer world, he says, "companies like Hewlett-Packard would be the winners because they make high-quality products.

It's a shame that the Gates we have is uninterested in technology. Consumers don't know what they're missing." According to this analysis, the real power of the information revolution has been to spur innovation about what technology can do for people. That inspiration has spread through the business, which is why everyone from 16-year-old webmaster James Baughn (author of yet another anti-MS site) to MIT's Greenspun understands that, as spectacular as computing is right now, it would be even more sensational if Microsoft were weaker.

This ethereal argument, rept<ated by Mitch Stone, Gary Reback and most other serious critics, is the abstract sibling of the Justice Department critique, the vaguest and yet by far the most compelling reason for anyone to hate and/or fear Microsoft: consider, in the stunted software culture described by Andrew Shapiro, what we've "already missed, and what we'll miss out on tomorrow and the next day. If there is little hope of independent success from even marvelous innovation, innovation itself is inevitably stifled. This is It's a Wonderful Life in reverse: without Gates, our small towns and big cities might be so much better off.

Short of such a collective critique, it may well be Gates's game to lose. As long as Microsoft keeps focused on its own business, maintains that hungry feeling and stays (more or less) within the bounds of the law, it is bound to remain profitable even as it inspires a continuing spiteful undercurrent.

Of course, technology has a way of turning the tables rather suddenly. Regardless of his company's foresight, toughness, breadth of investment and research, Gates knows as well as anyone that his days as technology king could come to a fairly swift end. At that point, assuming that the end of his dominance would spur a plummet in the Microsoft stock price, he would become an underdog and, thus, a sympathetic figure. Letters would start pouring into editorial offices: "Stop picking on Microsoft!" Politicians would clamor to kiss his children. The Web would start crawling with I-.-Bill sites. People would start arguing about who loved Bill most.

0 About the Author: David Shenk is the author of Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut.

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