Could this be the first time anything interesting has ever emerged from the Eurovision Song Contest? Martin Weller has been musing about it — as was Darren Waters a few days ago.

Martin writes:

I started to watch it, but put a DVD on, then when I looked at Twitter it was awash with Eurovision comments. It struck me that Eurovision was in many ways the perfect Twitter event. It is, in fact, quite boring (none of the songs are any good), so there is plenty of time to Twitter. At the same time, it is quite enjoyable and provokes comment, so there is a desire to share. And you know that it is a communal event, so others will be watching too.

This reminded me of something I read years ago which made a great impression at the time. It was a fantasy. Imagine you’re hovering high above the earth some hot summer night. You can see into millions of homes. A big networked TV show is being broadcast — the kind of thing that used to attract tens of millions of viewers. In each household it’s been watched by one of more silent, passive viewers. The show is crap, and every one of those viewers knows that, really. But still they watch in silence.

And then someone shouts “Hey! This is crap!” And because it’s a hot summer night and it’s a fantasy, his words carry long distances. Other viewers hear them. And then they begin to shout “Yeah, it is crap. Why are we watching this garbage?” And other words to that effect. Viewers are communicating with one another, and suddenly the world has changed.

When I read that, I remember thinking that it constituted a great metaphor for the change from a media ecosystem dominated by push technology (aka broadcast TV) to something much more complex and interactive. An ecosystem in which big companies can no longer dictate the public conversation the way they used to. A much more interesting space.

This morning I spent a while searching for the post that had triggered these thoughts. Initially, I guessed that it must have come from the Cluetrain Manifesto, but I’ve jut re-read it at high speed and it isn’t there. No matter. It’s the thought that counts.

Later: Bill Thompson emails to say that my recollection

sounds like Network, the 1976 film with Peter Finch as the news anchor who gets everyone to go to the window and shout ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more’. Directed by Sidney Lumet.

He’s probably right. Funny how memory plays tricks on one. I could have sworn that it was something I’d read. But, courtesy of YouTube, here it is:

My colleague Robert McCrum is standing down after ten years as the Observer’s Literary Editor. He’s written a thoughtful valedictory piece.

When I joined The Observer in 1996, the world of books was in limbo between hot metal and cool word processing, but it would have been recognisable to many of our past contributors, from George Orwell and Cyril Connolly, to Anthony Burgess and Clive James. Everything smelled of the lamp. It was a world of ink and paper; of cigarettes, coffee and strong drink. Our distinguished critic George Steiner used to submit his copy in annotated typescript.

The business end of books – WH Smith, Dillons and Waterstone’s – was run by anonymous men in suits whose judgments were largely ignored. Trade was trade. Literature was another calling. The atmosphere was dingy, time-hallowed and faintly collegiate. Every October, we all got together in the Guildhall and gave a cheque to the novelist of the year. In 1996, the winner of the Booker Prize was Last Orders by Graham Swift.

Now that world is more or less extinct. Many of the great names from those times (Hughes, Murdoch, Mailer, Heller, Gunn, Miller, Vonnegut) are gone. Books, meanwhile, have been pushed to the edge of the radar. A series of small but significant insurrections has placed the language and habits of the market at the heart of every literary transaction. The world of books and writing has been turned inside out by the biggest revolution since William Caxton set up his printing shop in the precincts of Westminster Abbey.

Heaven or hell? It’s too soon to say…

In the piece, Robert takes a sideswipe at a number of names US literary blogs — to which he attributes growing influence. One of them — Syntax of Things — isn’t overly impressed by his analytical skills.

As always, litblogs don’t necessarily come across as a good thing. In fact, they (we) are blamed for the fall of the great newspaper book review dynasty. Hell, if I knew I had that much power, I’d start a wiffle ball team and take down the New York Yankees franchise forever. Or I’d karaoke so well that I’d be able to rid the world of Madonna once and for all.

One passage from the Observer piece seems to have hit a nerve. It says:

Readers had been posting reviews on Amazon for year. Now these book blogs – in Britain, for example, a highly responsible site like Vulpes Libris – could take over and hand the power back to – time honoured term – the Common Reader. My view is that the Common Reader generates more heat than light. On closer scrutiny, we find that this creature, as fabled as the hippogriff, is just as uncertain as everyone else. The equation of Amazon plus Microsoft has left the Common Reader dazed and confused. How else to explain the extraordinary success in 2003 of Eats, Shoots & Leaves…?

Sigh. This is old-world elitist newspaper writing. It assumes that one’s readers will accept an Olympian stance simply because one has a job on a posh newspaper. It won’t wash any more. As Syntax of Things observes, with irony dripping from every word:

No qualification of highly responsible. Did I miss the seminar or not read the pamphlet that listed the qualifications of responsible book reviewing? Damn, I’ll have to Google around for it. Then again, it could be that it’s written in invisible ink on the back of the hand that feeds everyone this crap and calls it a gourmet meal. Highly responsible for what?

Here at Syntax of Things, we are highly responsible and possibly, in the eyes of outgoing literary editors for major newspapers, highly contemptible for reading books published by a former quality-control manager for a car-parts manufacturer. AND ENJOYING THEM, TELLING YOU ABOUT THEM, AND BRINGING RUIN TO THE SACRED EMPIRES.

God, I love having this power.

Great post by my colleague, Martin Weller.

It was the annual Open University internal conference this week, which had the title this year of ‘Making Connections’. There were some good presentations, but one of the key issues that arose was not what the presenters were saying, but what the audience were doing. My colleague Doug Clow was live-blogging the sessions he was in (e.g. see his account of my Learning Design session). He was told by three different people in separate sessions to stop as his typing was offputting. Doug gives his account here, and Niall backs him up here.

The audience of this blog may find this surprising, since the idea of not live-blogging would seem odd, but it shows we take certain behaviours for granted in our ed tech world. I found it rather ironic though in a conference called Making Connections that Doug should get these comments. He was making connections with people who weren’t at the conference (see the comments on his post), and additionally a few of us were twittering through the conference so we were making connections across the sessions (I set up a Crowdstatus page for those twittering). Making connections is about more than chatting over a glass of wine (although that’s nice too).

I think some people feel it shows disrespect to the speaker that you aren’t giving them your full attention. In fact, thinking through the act of people having laptops or other devices operating during a talk I give, I’m of the completely opposite view. If what I’m saying isn’t interesting enough for you to want to liveblog, twitter, look up sources or take notes on it, then I’m doing something wrong. And, if by some freak chance what I’m saying isn’t interesting, then I’d rather people were doing their email or reading blogs than sitting in my session feeling resentful because they are trapped. Hey, I’ve had people sleeping during a talk before – I’d rather they were tapping away on their keyboards.

Yep.