My Observer piece on Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.
ALSO David Runciman’s review of the book is here
Monthly Archives: August 2016
Hypocrisy on stilts: Facebook (closed) celebrating the Web (open)
This morning’s Observer column:
If there were a Nobel prize for hypocrisy, then its first recipient ought to be Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook boss. On 23 August, all his 1.7 billion users were greeted by this message: “Celebrating 25 years of connecting people. The web opened up to the world 25 years ago today! We thank Sir Tim Berners-Lee and other internet pioneers for making the world more open and connected.”
Aw, isn’t that nice? From one “pioneer” to another. What a pity, then, that it is a combination of bullshit and hypocrisy. In relation to the former, the guy who invented the web, Tim Berners-Lee, is as mystified by this “anniversary” as everyone else. “Who on earth made up 23 August?” he asked on Twitter. Good question. In fact, as the Guardian pointed out: “If Facebook had asked Berners-Lee, he’d probably have told them what he’s been telling people for years: the web’s 25th birthday already happened, two years ago.”
“In 1989, I delivered a proposal to Cern for the system that went on to become the worldwide web,” he wrote in 2014. It was that year, not this one, that he said we should celebrate as the web’s 25th birthday.
It’s not the inaccuracy that grates, however, but the hypocrisy. Zuckerberg thanks Berners-Lee for “making the world more open and connected”. So do I. What Zuck conveniently omits to mention, though, is that he is embarked upon a commercial project whose sole aim is to make the world more “connected” but less open. Facebook is what we used to call a “walled garden” and now call a silo: a controlled space in which people are allowed to do things that will amuse them while enabling Facebook to monetise their data trails. One network to rule them all. If you wanted a vision of the opposite of the open web, then Facebook is it..
Assorted links for Monday
The Tragedy of Donald I: Act 1, Scene 1. The Trump story as told by Ellis Wiener (aka Will Shakespeare). Now is the discount of our winter tents.
If wind and solar power are quicker and cheaper, do we really ned Hinkley Point?. Thoughtful piece by Terry Macalister.
Brexit Armageddon was a terrifying vision – but it simply hasn’t happened. Strange piece by Larry Elliott, normally a pretty thoughtful economics editor, which seems to draw premature conclusions from a few weeks’ data. Still, he did vote for Brexit, so perhaps there’s an element of wish-fulfilment here?
Journalists grappling with Trump, day 2. Very insightful blog post by Dave Winer on why American journalism can’t handle Trump. For example, why no explicit discussion of his implicit encouragement of assassination as a way of overcoming political obstacles? Winer asks why journalists weren’t talking about the substance of what Trump said, as opposed to trying to discern why he said it.
Trump’s win-win scenario
Further to John Cassidy’s musings about what Trump is up to, this NYT OpEd by Neal Gabler is interesting:
People run for the presidency for all sorts of reasons. But Donald J. Trump may be the first to run because he sees a presidential campaign as the best way to attract attention to himself. There seems to be no other driving passion in him, certainly not the passion to govern.
He isn’t an ideologue like Ted Cruz, an opportunist like Marco Rubio, a movement builder like Bernie Sanders, a political legatee like Jeb Bush or a policy wonk like Hillary Clinton. For all of them — for any serious candidate — attention is a byproduct of a campaign, not its engine. For Mr. Trump, attention is the whole shebang.
That may be the lesson of his campaign “shake up” earlier this week. The shift is from politics to grabbing attention, and, quite possibly, from winning the election to winning the defeat, which is how he has spent practically his entire career…
Fascinating. Might mean that those of us who are watching the campaign as though it’s about ‘politics’ might be being naive!
Dispatch from a vanished media universe
The New Yorker recently republished Calvin Trillin’s wonderful profile of R.W. ‘Johnny’ Apple, the famous New York Times journalist.
Sample:
There is a consensus in the trade, I am pleased to report, that Johnny Apple—R. W. Apple, Jr., of the New York Times — is a lot easier to take now than he once was. Even Apple believes that. When I asked him not long ago about the paragraph in Gay Talese’s 1969 book on the Times, “The Kingdom and the Power,” which presents him as a brash young eager beaver, he said it was, alas, “quite an accurate portrait,” although he doesn’t recall boasting in the newsroom that while covering the war in Vietnam he had personally killed a few Vietcong—the remark that, in Talese’s account, led an older reporter to say, “Women and children, I presume.” In speaking of those early days, Apple said, “I was desperate to prove myself.” You could argue, I suppose, that, in the words of a longtime colleague, “he doesn’t have to argue the case anymore.”
It’s long, but well worth a read. A report from a vanished media world.
Sharp practice at the FT? Or just sub-editorial licence?
Now, what does this column heading in the FT Magazine suggest? That the paper’s star American editor was on holiday with the Prez.
The impression is corroborated by the puff on the front of the paper.
Now, here’s what the piece actually says:
I was lucky enough to spend last weekend with friends on Martha’s Vineyard. This verdant island off the coast of Massachusetts has long been a playground for the well-heeled, (mostly) liberal crowd, epitomised by the Kennedys and Clintons…
The ‘friends’, however, were not the Obamas. And the article is mostly a complaint about how inconvenient the presence of the President and his entourage makes life in the Vineyard for the mostly well-heeled liberal crowd.
One expects this kind of misleading puffery from the Daily Mail. But from the august FT???
Phones, photography and the Snapchat factor
This morning’s Observer column:
Living and working, as I do, in a historic city that is swamped by tourists in the summer, I regularly get the opportunity to do some photo-ethnography. You can tell someone’s age by the kind of camera they are using. Elderly folks are still using point-and-shoot compacts. Middle-aged folks are sporting “prosumer” digital single-lens reflex cameras (DSLRs) from Canon, Nikon, Fuji and Panasonic. But as far as I can see, everyone under the age of 25 is using a smartphone, possibly with the assistance of a selfie stick.
This is partly because the main reason young people take photographs is to post them on social media, and smartphones make that easy to do. But that’s not the whole story. Those who are more serious about photography tend to upload their pictures to photo-hosting services such as Flickr. Guess what the most popular camera for Flickr members is? Apple’s iPhone – by a mile… Read on
Assorted links for Saturday
Joe Stieglitz on what’s wrong with the EU, why policy-makers persist with bad ideas, and more.
“The concept of ‘cat face'”. Terrific (long) LRB article by Paul Taylor on machine learning. Best non-technical account I’ve seen.
The leak of alleged NSA hacking tools is genuine. For those who are interested in the UK’s Investigatory Powers bill, this is what ‘Equipment Interference’ looks like.
The 98 things that Facebook knows about you — just so you get the right ads, you understand.
Consequences, consequences…
A new kind of apprenticeship
Now here’s a really interesting idea. The Office of national Statistics is offering data analytics apprenticeships to school leavers with good mathematics results.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has begun recruiting the UK’s first data analytics apprentices.
Aimed at people with relevant A levels or equivalent experience, the ONS data analytics apprenticeships scheme provides an opportunity for talented individuals to work on some of the most exciting analytical and policy questions facing decision-makers and wider society. The scheme will lead to an accredited level 4 diploma.
ONS Deputy National Statistician for Data Capability Heather Savory said: “ONS is looking for the best people to take full advantage of cutting edge tools and technologies and to help ONS make the most of the data revolution.
“Our role here at ONS is to provide high quality, trustworthy and relevant analytical evidence about our economy and society to help people make informed decisions. There could not be a better and more exciting time to join us, and start a career in data analytics as the UK’s first apprentices in this field.”
There are six places on the scheme, based at the ONS’s Newport office, where its new Data Science Campus is located…
Terrific idea. Terrific. Also neatly undermines the widespread notion that apprenticeships are all about plumbing.