As a self-appointed member of that exotic species named “internet entrepreneurs”, I was interested in Fraser Nelson’s article in the current issue of The Spectator.

The summary of the piece states: “… the Conservatives are taking their cue from the West Coast of America: the land of Google, Stanford University and venture capital. They want to rebuild Britain in California’s image: dynamic, high-tech, green and ‘family-friendly’.”

That is a good idea … up to a point.

California has its exhilarating high points for sure. It also embraces deep pits of madness. As a melting-pot State with many right-on East Coast emigres, plus millions of Hispanics up from the South, mostly illegal, it lacks the sense of cohesion Britain once had, and still does in some parts of the country.

California has an annual income roughly the same as the UK’s. Recently it was said to be overtaking Britain and would soon be the world’s fourth largest economy, taken by itself. We won’t know if that’s really true until the dust settles from the current depression.

On this side of the duck pond, we tend to see only two aspects of the State: Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Both conjure up images of starlets on roller skates, propelling themselves along wide pavements against a background of endless sun, sea and sand to the sound of the ululating Beach Boys.

We blank out the forest fires, the frequent earthquakes, the smogs, boot to bumper car jams, crime, and the cute chaos of the place. It’s a young person’s environment, maddeningly obtuse about lots of things, always eager to jump on any passing whimsy that offers a new thrill.

Incubator of the future, yes, but also progenitor of a million tried and rejected poppycock schemes. The Brits who wash up there are usually attention seekers, like actors, singers and graduates of Performing Arts schools.

California is also hard work. Michael Arrington, who built up TechCrunch from nothing, has had a series of health problems from overwork, including exhaustion, nervous and heart complaints. He recently received serious death threats and was spat on in a public place, requiring a month off work.

TechCrunch.com is a blog-based content network that evaluates startup enterprises and their products. It’s no place for the fainthearted apparently.

Duncan Riley, who originated The Blog Herald from a quiet corner of Western Australia, graduated to TechCrunch and spent some time in the Valley. His observations on the crazy greed of the place, its supercharged way of life and general attrition against human health and sanity, contributed to my own decision not to move there at the height of the boom.

And yet the lessons of the Valley and of the Californian and Seattle-based tech scenes can be learnt and imported by a new Tory administration.

Britain needs to manufacture more, especially high tech equipment and derivatives. Silicon Valley specializes largely in internet-based software and services, but it doesn’t make the hardware. The metal and plastic bits are cheaper to produce and assemble in the Far East, and that will remain so in the future.

The operating software, which the Valley does so well, is deferred design and therefore part of the manufacturing process. No-one will buy a generalist box of tricks with no room for applications.

There is also a third level in the making of computer technology, that of application writing — the creative bit. The operating software contains a series of APIs (application programming interfaces) which allow outside creators (programmers) to add products and services to the basic design.

Increasingly, these services are being dangled from “the cloud”, a magical place in cyberspace where software applications and APIs reside for public use. Software on hard drives is going rapidly out of fashion at the punchy end of the market.

The British happen to be very good at these secondary and tertiary levels of the manufacturing process. One thing holds them back.

The national curriculum and the educational establishment relentlessly discriminate against “abstract thinking”, the basic skill for succeeding in these areas. Universities are encouraged to subvert their course lists in favour of cottonwool subjects like media studies and sports management.

In Britain, you can select students for State schooling only in areas of music, sport, and other physical and dexterity arts. You can’t select for mathematics or disciplines which require abstract thinking, like philosophy, theoretical physics or logic.

Stupidly and destructively, the Labour party has created all manner of taboos against it, raising any proposer of academic selection almost to criminal status. So far, the Conservatives have gone along with this for a quiet life. They fear the demonizing power of the left, which is far nastier than they are.

That amounts to national suicide, especially for a country that was, within living memory, responsible for 55 percent of the world’s primary inventions and discoveries.

If George Osborne wants to mimic West Coast Silicon Valley or Seattle, let him sort out that problem first. Britain needs to train its own software engineers, not import them from India and the Far East.

Globalization will take a long time to recover from its recent catastrophic fall from grace. We need to look carefully at ourselves and incubate the future here at home. Empire building abroad can wait … for now.

John Evans

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TechCrunch is reporting that secret merger talks between blog search engine company, Technorati, and Canadian blog network, b5media, have collapsed.

The reason given was a personality clash between b5′s CEO, Jeremy Wright, and Technorati’s Richard Jalichandra and, according to b5 “a lack of transparency on Technorati’s part during due diligence.”

Judging by that, this “merger” didn’t really stand a chance. One wonders if Technorati took it seriously.

Toronto-based b5media has apparently been looking for “merger partners or acquirers” after failing to raise more VC money — it has so far received stage-one funding of $2 million. It seems Technorati has also had its financial problems.

The notion of a mass roll-up of blog networks to make ad sales more attractive and economical has been around a long time. Personally, the dynamic of that approach has still to be proved to me, especially in the current financial gloom.

Technorati has a big name, but is largely associated with a failure to live up to its billing. B5media has relentlessly stuck to its remit and expanded to 340 blogs.

I’ve long since lost faith in this horizontal model, which basically claims that small-scale content sites multiplied n-hundred times add up to a better business than three or four wowsers, or a tight-niched, product-based network, like Glam or TechCrunch. In this case, less is almost certainly more.

No “blog” network has really scaled up to the point where direct-response ads can be replaced with brand advertising. To sustain a company the size of b5 in personnel terms alone, that’s what it takes.

I’ve no doubt b5media will disagree, but they are faced with a double whammy : the brick wall of scaleability in the middle of a credit crunch.

Declaration of interest : I worked for b5media for a few months when it started up, and I am now the owner of a rival content network, Syntagma Media.

The New York Times has a rather gloomy piece on how bloggers are dropping dead like flies, apparently overcome by the strains of the 24/7 global internet culture.

Personally, I’ve not known a blogger who has slumped lifeless over a keyboard (touch wood). I imagine people pass away at inconvenient moments in many professions. Blogging and writing from home must have its share of dicky tickers like any other walk of life.

However, the NYT has chapter and verse :

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December. Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

From these few examples you would have to subtract the number of deaths and heart attacks in the general population to arrive at a guesstimate of internet publishing’s real rate of attrition.

No doubt there are serious stresses and strains working in the new online environment. However, a word of caution. Anyone who has worked for newspapers to tight daily deadlines will recognize the same pressures and symptoms. Journalists are not notorious for their alcohol consumption for nothing.

And try slaving in a factory, repetitively doing the same tasks thousands of times a day. Or surviving the water-cooler politics of office life. Worse, the back-breaking toil of farm work. There are no easy options in “the world of work”.

Methinks the problem lies, as ever, with meetings, travel, networking and other inconsequentials of the wired-up sector. Networking for the internetizen means Twittering and Tweeting incoherently to hundreds, maybe thousands, of “followers”, mostly without a shred of benefit to the bottom line. Email is another source of stress and should be stamped on ruthlessly, as Michael Arrington of TechCrunch wrote a day or two ago.

The Times has this quote from him, “‘I haven’t died yet,’ said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. ‘At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen. This is not sustainable,’ he said.”

Syntagma’s advice : drop the Tweets, do the paid work efficiently — a three-hour morning should suffice — then get out of the house on a long Photowalk, or maybe to the golf course or coffee shop (preferably without a Hotspot), and forget about the Labours of Hercules. He was a mythical character and is not one to emulate.

As I’ve written many times here, the entrepreneur’s nightmare is to lose control of your business creation during the expansion process and then find yourself dumped by the incomers.

Whatever happened to Duncan Riley, for example? Now thriving at TechCrunch, he wouldn’t be a man you would want to lose in a hurry.

That is the cautionary tale of JPG Magazine, an online and print business that morphed into 80/20 publishing which resulted in disaster for its founders.

The story is told at some length by Derek Powazek, who describes himself as a thinker, designer, and writer in San Francisco.

His conclusions from the experience are :

If it’s any help to other entrepreneurs, here’s what I’ve learned.

1. Make no assumptions when it comes to roles and responsibilities. Like my dad says: “Someone’s gotta call quittin’ time.”
2. Communication between partners is mandatory. And you cannot communicate with someone who is not communicating with you.
3. Decisions aren’t decisions if you have to keep making them. Set on the course and stick to it. If you keep talking about things that have already been decided, nothing will ever get done.
4. When someone says one thing, but acts in a contradictory way, you have a choice between believing their words or believing their deeds. Believe their deeds.
5. Never let anyone tell you what you want. When someone says, “You don’t want that,” what they really mean is, “I don’t want you to have that.”
6. Don’t stay where you’re not wanted, respected, or happy. Even if it’s your company.

That goes without saying, but it’s still worth reminding people that business is a tough environment unless you hold the best cards.