Category: Culture

Years ago when I ran professional theatres my principal responsibility was picking a season of plays and/or musicals, then pulling things together to actually produce that season. Planning was based on quite a few variables and data, but you never knew how things were actually going to play out in the end. Show business can be cruel.

There were always surprises. Some good and some bad. Some shows would become surprise runaway hits, others that seemed like sure things would flop. Lose a weekend due to a snowstorm and the bottom line got hit hard.

Of course the choice of plays was always the key variable. I remember sitting in a particularly contentious board of directors meeting as we were nearing a season announcement and a board member was pushing back hard on our revenue and expense projections for what we had planned. He pounded the table and asked, “How can you know what will sell tickets a year from now?” I told him I could project, but I couldn’t know and that I always went into each season saying that if we succeeded as much as .300 hitters in baseball we’d be superstars.

Well, we weren’t baseball players, but we still usually came out ahead of the game with more hits some seasons than others. We held our own. The not-for-profit theatre version of the game I was playing relied on picking and announcing a season a year or so in advance. You’d promote and sell that season to subscribers to accumulate cash and support up front, and then once you were in the season proper you’d push hard for single ticket sales and then after they got a taste, try to convert them into subscribers, then donors.

It was always risky, just like many business propositions. I remember asking that same board member if his business would be comfortable announcing his plans and projecting sales a year in advance knowing all of the risks. It was a rhetorical question on my part because I knew his business couldn’t operate that way. Most can’t.

The entire thing was based initially on a promise, and each new season announcement was a new promise. Each time you delivered a promised season the theatre built or kept trust with that subscriber base. That loyal base would resubscribe based on that trust. Those customers knew there may be a play or two in the season they didn’t care for, but they came back season after season based on the quality of what we offered, and also that we delivered on what we initially sold and promoted.

As an artistic director (CEO) I was the one who was responsible for that trust and never took that responsibility lightly. Yes, there were times we had to change our plans, but the trust engendered along the way helped weather those moments as long as we were honest with our customers and donors.

The above is a long wind up to something I’ve been thinking about lately and spurred by an article I saw on Elon Musk’s latest promises about delivering robots “next year.”

No one thinks that’s real. For the life of me, I doubt he does. Given how many “promises” this guy has made and broken I don’t understand how reasonably intelligent (I assume they are reasonably intelligent) reporters and investors don’t just burst out laughing when the next one self-drives out of the empty garage that is his mouth. But then again, everyone is in on the con.

Musk isn’t alone these days when it comes to talking out of more orifices than human anatomy provides. Our politicians do it. Relentlessly. As do Tech and other corporate CEOs. The politicians you can almost understand because they are allowed to say whatever the hell they want under the Speech and Debate clause of the Constitution, granting them immunity for anything they say while doing their legislative duties. Unfortunately that seems to have spread a bit outside of the original boundaries through various court rulings and a willingness to boldly and brazenly lie at the drop of a hat.

But CEOs are supposed to be under more scrutiny. From their shareholders. From various regulatory agencies. And yet, those like Musk and many of the Artificial Intelligence promoters seem to be able to promise the Moon (or Mars) without ever delivering.

As I said earlier, at some point you’d think intelligent folks would catch on and actually run these Harold Hills out of town, instead of allowing them to continue courting the librarians they want to take jobs away from. If the regulators aren’t regulating and the shareholders keep writing checks I guess those of us watching shouldn’t care if they all end up playing air trombones. (Bonus points for those who get The Music Man references.)

There’s a truism in my business that nobody ever starts out to do a bad show. Yet, some shows flop. I used to believe that no one ever started a business to be a bust. But the flimflammery we’re seeing these days makes me wonder. As long as you can continue to fleece the flock along the way, does it really matter if you ultimately succeed in producing what you promised as long as you score along the way?

Set aside for the moment that anything, well intentioned or not, can fail. But after delivering a string of broken promises you’d think there’d be enough erosion of trust that only fools would continue to pony up their money. Perhaps I’ve just underestimated the number of fools.

My business was disposable. Technology isn’t. Essential as the arts are to our collective humanity, the arts are always the first to feel financial hits in tough times, and generally the last to recover. Technology keeps playing an increasing role in all of our lives and is becoming dangerously essential. Lord help us if an EMP ever goes off.  Watching this new rush into the a world of Artificial Intelligence it’s frightening to contemplate even a small portion of what the promises offer, even as some have already collapsed under their own weight. It’s even more challenging to contemplate what the remaining ones might actually turn into.

It’s one thing to run a smartphone on a beta OS. It’s another when it runs your life for you.

Frankly, I don’t buy all of the promises. The ones that I think offer possible benefits I’m skeptical about. And that’s because I don’t trust the folks offering the promises, the folks funding them, or those rushing to implement them. They’ve all had their chance to earn my trust. There are very few remaining that haven’t squandered it.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.