We Struck Jevons Paradox On 4 Feb 2009

We Struck Jevons Paradox On 4 Feb 2009

And With #TheAudacityOfConviction Told The CEO Of The New York Times The Gameplan

#ZACHMultimediaFromUAEIdeatingForTheWorld

By Zacharias Joseph, 7 Feb 2025

I am part of that generation of Indians and global citizens that had to hire a cycle, in my case at 25 paisa - (around $0.04 according to the exchange value in 1977 of 7.5 INR to 1 USD) - (or was it 15 paisa?) an hour, to dash like a mad, possessed, crazy bibliomaniac addict through the coal spray being hurled my way by ancient shunting steam engines near the college to get to the amazing bibliotheque built by our town's generous business impresario and virtuoso, the Kollam Public Library in Kollam, Kerala, India, to get to the virgin TIME.

One had to seek and search for information and knowledge and to attain that nirvana had to build a vocabulary architecture, for which obstacles and distances had to be conquered.

By cycle during the week, or bus during the weekend, or via a jaunt to the township's miniature version.

If I did not get there at noon on a Friday to catch the magazine before it landed from the librarian's hands into the shelving, and then to the spread-it-all table, boy oh boy, it would land in some torturous, vicious hands that would take that novice starting out on its job and tear it into a shredded noodle of a tome.

Thus I am also part of a generation that in that venerated hall read about the magnificence, omnipotence, and indefatigibility of the all-conquering supremacists, racists, and casteists and how they made their nook of the world and reigned across much of our rock.

The lingua franca of the rich and powerful nations was put to good use by those who supposedly ran a rules-based international order, using the language and the many international structures they had erected in place, no doubt rigged in their favour, to further their case and cause, by the selective interpretation and dissemination of agendas expedient and stories and narratives convenient to them.

Not knowing then nor having insights into how they had managed the same agencies - power structures and grip on power and language - to rape vast swathes of the world brutally and soo to their natives’ histories and civilisational accomplishments to create their versions of their own aggrandised selves while significantly dehumanising, oppressing and brutalising considerable sections of populations around the world.

The oppressors and suppressors of all hues donned the mantle of the imperative innovator.

There was instilled in people like me, mistakenly, a conviction of inferiority, a subliminal self-doubt about our own talents and capabilities.

The more you read and discovered, the more it was about their omniscience. Across the world, spanning cultures and geographies.

As time progressed incessantly and TIME consumption therefore had to change invariably and inevitably, I had to spin out of the playgrounds of infancy, childhood, adolescence, and youth, then crisis-cross various geographies and jobs and reach another confluence.

Then, perchance and as the typical Keralite penchant would have it, I was lucky to cross the pond and enter the wondrous Arabia where even as in historical times people from across the world ply their trade and showcase their ware, like Muziris from where I originated.

The trade winds from Arabia and the Muziris, you see?

And till then used to meeting only my fellow citizens while I traversed from my state and across many others around and afar, I had found that even being from disparate backgrounds and diverse cultures, it was the same aims, ambitions, and dreams that inspired or weakened humans and the underlying animal spirits.

Just around four hours on a plane, and I was in a magical world where people looked different, spoke myriad languages, wore spectacularly different attire, and feasted on delectable, delicious dishes till then foreign and unheard of.

But there was an aura of variance, yet sameness.?

And then suddenly it was as if the world was distilled and put into a kaleidoscope and thrust into my universe.

People from all continents near and far, all races and languages and histories and civilisations became part of my daily life.

And hey, presto, you know what?

They were all like me, with the same dreams and hopes and ambitions and strengths and weaknesses.

I could not see anything inferior or superior in me or anyone else.

We were cogs of a wheel, a large one at that, equally talented and working towards a goal - from wherever one was, whichever nationality, race, language, colour, sex.

Prevarications about the superiority of a few and the inferiority of many were convincingly sent to the depths of the sea of doubt, tied with a millstone, a deadwood never to rise again and trigger vacillations about self-worth.

Every human being is equal and capable of achieving what anyone else could, with obviously the Buffettian ovarian lottery factor, education, exposure and environment playing a massive part in driving individual dreams and obsessions.

TIME was the constant even then.

Through crisp copies that I would pick on my way back from work, at the high-end book agents near the office, I read that CNN and Ted Turner had breathed life into the fuition of Global Village, a Marshall McLuhanian concept that blew my mind when I first came across it while at University in Kerala, India.

TIME and tide never wait for anyone, I had read Geoffrey Chaucer somewhere.

It sure did not.

While all this was going well from the early nineteen nineties, I read about the world wide web, courtesy the same magazine again at the midpoint of the last decade of the 90s, and in the sunset years of that era the internet erupted.?

Was TIME beginning to be remoulded?

I did not have to cycle to the library or pick it up on the way home or wait for the newspaper drop at home or Ammachi's calls to get the news and info.

I would switch on the newly acquired desktop, and after it made an initial, squeaky, suppressed gurgling noise, it would settle down and spring to life, bringing a whole new world into my room.

It suddenly burst into my face as www.somethingawesome.com

And the world was there.

I was everywhere.

At the speed with which I could click.

Information had been democratised.

Knowledge was a click away.

The richest and the poorest could have news at their fingertips. And information. And knowledge. And whatever came with it.

And the?funny-shaped machine and its clunky?appurtenances enabled me to seek out and reach out and touch someone across the seven seas without having to lick a stamp and paste it on an envelope so that both could travel together for a few days to reach their destination.

Or wait for the postman for the outcome, that came back in fancy blue, white and red envelope mostly with George Washington stamped on its countenance and post-marked from some American university town.

Just fire the laptop and it brought news and music to my desktop, I did not have to wait for the top of the hour on TV or the next morning to learn about the goings on.

Then I got busy with my metier, running sales, marketing, and communication units for some of the best banks in the region.

TIME never stops.

The nascent medium had burgeoned, the technological advances it engendered had begun devouring the status quo.

TIME had evolved for me too, I had left my banking job and started ZACH Multimedia, with the aim and tagline: proud to be from the UAE and ideating for the world.

We were passionate about building truly global household brands out of regional ones - we still are.

Equally, we were driven to reengineer global brands and businesses for relevance in the new, disruptive times that gave a platform for the knowledge workers from around the world, in a new world where ideas ruled, not supremacist obsessions and convictions.

[Anachronistically, in 2025 we are seeing a reversal of that inviolable truth, but that will be temporary and reversed in a fraction of time, for such aberrations by a few cannot be sustained and there will be consequential blowback as the courts have already started working overtime to negate ill-conceived Executive Orders and directives.]

Having worked in the confluence of media, technology, innovations, marketing, and business enhancement, what caught the eye early on, was the financial distress of a storied global media brand, The New York Times.

Oops, so what could the new technology, seemingly on a rampage flattening everything on its path, do to dying media facing the onslaught of the new animal?

How could ZACH Multimedia and I solve the issue of the storied, iconic The New York Times and save them from going down under as I had learned from global media monitoring that they were planning to lease/sell their Renzo Piano designed HQ in Manhattan?

For years, while driving to work daily, having seen a wondrous silver arrow emerge from the quivers in the desert sand?and shoot up into the sky to touch the sun, it was but natural that my own aspirations had soared similarly.

Questions began to take shape and swirl in my mind.

Did not have to write them creatively on large white sheets on flipboards, but punched them on the machine into the new power-point, one with my favourite blue design.??

Gave the presentation a name: The Audacity Of Conviction.

Shouldn't the?newspaper go into the inbox, rather than just the post box?

Shouldn't they speak the languages of the internet?

Could they stay American forever, shouldn't they cross borders rapidly on the spine of technology?

How should they be priced?

Obviously cannot charge an Indian and American the same fee, could they?

Was the International Herald Tribune redundant in the new era?

Wasn't it hemorrhaging?money while irrelevantly cannibalizing internally?

Thus was born, from ZACH Multimedia based in the UAE and ideating for the world, a disruptive (not Tumpian, Muskian "destructive," wrongly conflated and misused abundantly now), global business re-engineering, marketing and communications strategy, a comprehensive way forward for The New York Times in the late 2008 after reading about their distress in global media.

ZACH Multimedia had the solution and I was confident of a turnaround.

Absolutely convinced I wrote to the CEO and Chairman and the former invited me for a presentation.

On 4 February 2009, on a brilliant morning in New York, with sunlight reflecting off the earlier day's snow, I made the presentation to the CEO of The New York Times.

In her office on the 16th, the executive floor.

A 64-slide presentation dissecting the extant market scenario, the threats, the opportunities, and the way to get out of the rut The New York Times was in.

All our key recommendations were implemented.

Their storied turnaround is a legend of media bounceback.

#TheAudacityOfConviction was our DeepSeek and DeepSpeak Moment.

When we, ZACH Multimedia, from the UAE and ideating for the world told the Globals Big Brands that Big Ideas Matter, not just Big Names and Big Bluster.

And that all 8 billion plus around the world are equally talented and can create awesome stuff if given the opportunity.

To paraphrase Satya Nadella on AI: "As information and knowledge get more democratised efficient and accessible, we will see its use skyrocket, turning it into a commodity we just can't get enough of it."

The world is yearning for solutions for its myriad problems and only genuine innovation that matters can solve it, not Big Talk from Big Tech and Big Finance.

We struck Jevons Paradox on 4 February 2009 on a beautiful winter morning after a massive snow dump the day before.

With #TheAudacityOfConviction.