| His Space
But the man who built the world's only truly global media company has a classically entrepreneurial answer. “We'll figure it out," he says, flashing his cat-that-ate-the-canary grin. One of the great things about being a self-employed billionaire mogul – besides traveling in your own Boeing 737 and getting to play yourself on The Simpsons – is that you don't have to talk like a management consultant. News Corp. culture is famously seat-of-the-pants; managers who can't live by their wits quickly fall by the wayside. But more than that, Murdoch revels in spotting unfilled gaps and unmet needs. “Everything we've ever done is about giving people choices," he says. “The Net has a billion people looking for news, sports, and entertainment. Another billion are on mobile phones, and another couple of billion are coming up behind those.
Desperately seeking Osama
The goal was initially to capture Bin Laden, but a friend once told me that if your notion of what your film will be hasn't changed by the time you get to the end, then you didn't listen to anybody. You walk through a door and there are three more that take you in a new direction." The new direction didn't stop Spurlock from travelling, with cameraman Daniel Marracino, to such far-flung regions as Morocco, Israel, Egypt, Leeds (sadly, destined for the cutting-room floor) and Afghanistan. It just tweaked the outcome. Spurlock is an affable man whose laid-back charm and goofy humour are evident during interviews with journalists, religious leaders and ordinary people across the Arab world. One of his lines, an offhand inquiry about the whereabouts of Bin Laden, raised a huge laugh from the Sundance audience.
Column: Please be my friend
It was interesting to hear because it brought up two questions: Can they talk about anything else (after all, there is a war going on and the threat of invading yet another country), or do they choose to keep the banter shallow to appeal to everyone, the lowest common denominator factor?I'm thinking it's a little of both but more of the latter. By choosing to only talk about what others are perceived to be interested in, people expand their circle of friends. Used to be, in their quieter moments, people would reflect on ideas and topics that would provide meaning, e.g. religion, politics, social issues. Now there are no quieter moments. With a cell phone tucked between the ear and shoulder and fingers clicking across a keyboard, people are using their reflective time to either promote themselves or conform to others.
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