Used the airplane ride to S.F. to catch-up on some biz reading last week, and I was inspired in three ways:

1. By the current state of the global technology industry, as suggested by the "31 Best Business Ideas in the World" cover story in Business 2.0 (August) …
2. By the futuristic visions of the super-geniuses at work on quantum computing advances (FORTUNE, Aug. 7) …
3. And, by the current state of the hardcopy magazine industry. The FORTUNE and Business 2.0 issues, as well as the latest edition of WIRED (with its cheeky Stephen Colbert cover), held me enthralled from Boston to Topeka.

PR folks are optimists by nature. You can’t "spin" a thing if you don’t have a "glass-is-half-full" world view to begin with, eh? Yet, riding JetBlue, with its DirecTV access to CNN, FOX, et al., I looked up (rosy-cheeked, inspired) from my reading … and grew increasingly depressed at the state of the world.

Do you find yourself fearing that our brilliant future (as a country, as a people, as a species) might tank, due to the various & complex challenges we face? Global climate change + an over-reliance on fuels supplied from increasingly unstable countries + unsolvable Middle Eastern hatreds + rising Anti-Americanism + increasing American bellicosity + deepening income gaps worldwide … Wotta mess.

Do you find yourself hoping, desperately, that we don’t screw it all up? As a PR person, do you paradoxically find yourself tuning out the real news, in order to pitch a sweetened version of your clients’ news?

Trying to sort through the optimism from my reading and the depression from watching the TV, I found myself thinking that mankind is literally in a race. Not between Good & Evil as much as between Hope & Despair, Opportunity vs. Futility.

I hope the optimists win.

Comments