The New York Times article on Steve Jobs' health is making quite a stir today.  Fred Wilson, who has already made his feelings known on this issue, had this to say...

Steve Jobs is an arrogant fuck who thinks he's above the law. He's also the most amazing technology CEO/entrepreneur working right now. He's way better than Bill Gates (who isn't working anymore) and the Google duo in my book.

Apple and Steve are at the top of their game, pushing the envelope in so many ways. But Steve is wrong to try to hide his personal health from the media, the market, his customers, and his employees.

Steve's health is not a private matter as much as he'd like it to be. Apple's stock is off between 15-20% in the  past 45 days in the midst of one of the most powerful product cycles (iPhone) we've witnessed in the tech business.

On Steve Jobs' Health I'll say one thing and one thing only. 

Steve Jobs has no responsibility to reveal anything about his health BUT Apple has acted irresponsibly here.

This isn't hard folks, Jobs' answers to the board and he has a responsibility to disclose issues to them.  You are not on the Apple board, so he has no responsibility to you.  In fact, just the opposite is true.  Telling the world of a possible problem would only give the competition an advantage making it the absolute last thing he should do. 

With that said, where Jobs' and the board have failed is in allowing Apple to become the "Cult of Steve".  That is really the issue here.

The stock is falling not because Jobs'  has a health crisis but because he's set up no backup plan should he have to step down.

THAT is the point.  But that isn't as much a failing of Jobs' as it is a failure of the rest of Apple's governance.  A corporate system works on the principle that employees are mercenaries in regards to their own circumstance but that they collectively act in the interest of the company.  So while each employee will try to get as much as they can when it is time to negotiate their personal circumstances they will act in the interest of the company when negotiating with every other employee.

Apple's board has been remiss in letting Jobs' run the place like his own personal fiefdom which has now resulted in the outside world thinking Apple has no future without him.  But in that scenario Jobs' was acting exactly like he should as an employee.  It is Apple's board that has really failed stock holders.

The Quick Aside About Quoting Fred Wilson...I quote Fred Wilson because I have a history of commenting on him and this issue and I think his comments here illuminate something about the "Transparency Movement" that's important. 

It is one thing to say "I believe in being transparent" or "I would like to share all my health information publicly" (as Mr. Wilson has said he would like to do).  But it is quite another to say "I demand that same behavior from everyone else"  which is exactly what Mr. Wilson is saying...

The technology revolution that Steve has had so much to do with has changed a lot of things and one of them is transparency. You can't hide stuff anymore. So honesty is the best policy.

So when I speak out about transparency keep in mind that part of the reason I'm so against it is because I know the people who endorse the idea are also those who would demand it of the rest of the world.

A couple of days ago I (grudgingly) brought up the Playboy Hottest Blogger contest to spotlight one of the bloggers who I thought was talented and largely unrecognized (Brigitte Dale just to give her that much more promotion). 

Well apparently, not all the bloggers are happy with the attention...

So it turns out that at least a couple of the women bloggers featured in a recent Playboy article that asked “Who’s the web’s hottest bloggers? Vote now and we’ll ask her to pose for Playboy.com!” aren’t very happy about the feedback they’re getting. In particular, they aren’t happy that Playboy says they’ll invite the winner to pose nude for the magazine, or that they are being compared to the other bloggers via a poll to determine who’s most attractive.

Now, the important thing to remember here is that the bloggers were contacted by Playboy and asked if they wanted to be part of the Playboy feature.  The only thing they weren't told was that (a) Playboy would ask the winner to pose nude and that (b) the article in question would be a poll. 

On the posing nude...I mean...its Playboy.  If you have some moral objection to women posing nude than you aren't going to want to be featured there in the first place.  I could understand if they insinuated the winner "had already agreed to" pose nude but all they've said is that they will "ask" the winner so that isn't the problem.

Much more likely, I think the issue is with ranking. 

That's the point I wanted to address here, or more accurately, the point...<dramatic pause>...behind the point.  The blog world is built on this idea of Transparency (popularly chronicled in a book by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel entitled Naked Conversations).  There's this idea that if we're all transparent than everyone will know everything and the world will rejoice in all the honesty.

But here's the thing, Transparency is a trick.  It doesn't work.  Not only doesn't it work it generally does more damage than anything else. 

That's where we get back to the Playboy thing.  People don't want to know how they rank against others.  Even if they say they do.    A 40 year old woman will often tell her husband she wants him to be able to "tell her anything" but I assure you she doesn't want to know he thinks his 20 year old secretary is more attractive than her.  Concealing things isn't always a bad thing.

Excessive transparency is built on this 1960s era idea that all things are concealed for a nefarious purpose but the truth is we conceal things to benefit others around us more often than not.  In fact, under the theory that most people aren't bad, concealing things usually benefits others more than it does the person doing the concealing because they have to bear the burden of whatever is being concealed alone. 

Surely its a judgement call on each person's part and some will choose to conceal things they shouldn't but that doesn't justify an all or nothing approach to transparency.

Anyway, there's nothing that can be done here.  Playboy certainly can't remove people mid-poll and the bloggers who have objected have no leg to stand on because they were informed in advance (they actually have less than no leg to stand on because they've already reaped the benefits of the click through traffic for about 2 weeks).  But its a lesson for anyone wanting to do such a poll in the future.