“Anything we say in advance of a pandemic happening is alarmist; anything we say afterwards is inadequate.”
- US health secretary Michael Leavitt, speaking in 2006.
The fable of the prodigal TechBro
Maria Farrell (whom God Preserve) has written a fabulously sharp essay about the phenomenon of Founder’s Remorse — the way guys (and they’re always guys) who made a packet out of drinking the Zuckerberg/Tech Kool Aid eventually realised that what they were doing was not exactly good for humanity — and quit to spend more time with their money. Not content with stepping off the surveillance capitalism treadmill, however, they also want to be loved and admired for their signal moral and ethical courage. And swathes of the mainstream media are falling for these faux mea culpae. All of which is just a bit nauseating, especially to those activists and contrarians who have spent decades critiquing and challenging the tech giants.
Farrell’s essay is well worth reading in full, because that’s the only way of catching the Swiftian edge of her satirical disdain, but here’s a sample to whet your appetite:
The Prodigal Son is a New Testament parable about two sons. One stays home to work the farm. The other cashes in his inheritance and gambles it away. When the gambler comes home, his father slaughters the fattened calf to celebrate, leaving the virtuous, hard-working brother to complain that all these years he wasn’t even given a small goat to share with his friends. His father replies that the prodigal son ‘was dead, now he’s alive; lost, now he’s found’. Cue party streamers. It’s a touching story of redemption, with a massive payload of moral hazard. It’s about coming home, saying sorry, being joyfully forgiven and starting again. Most of us would love to star in it, but few of us will be given the chance.
The Prodigal Tech Bro is a similar story, about tech executives who experience a sort of religious awakening. They suddenly see their former employers as toxic, and reinvent themselves as experts on taming the tech giants. They were lost and are now found. They are warmly welcomed home to the center of our discourse with invitations to write opeds for major newspapers, for think tank funding, book deals and TED talks. These guys – and yes, they are all guys – are generally thoughtful and well-meaning, and I wish them well. But I question why they seize so much attention and are awarded scarce resources, and why they’re given not just a second chance, but also the mantle of moral and expert authority.
Great stuff.
COVID-19: the choice
Basically, governments have to choose between public health and the economy. This is, ultimately, the message of this Editorial in The Lancet:
So far, evidence suggests that the colossal public health efforts of the Chinese Government have saved thousands of lives. High-income countries, now facing their own outbreaks, must take reasoned risks and act more decisively. They must abandon their fears of the negative short-term public and economic consequences that may follow from restricting public freedoms as part of more assertive infection control measures.
Yep. And, above all, they must not copy the US
Quote of the Day
“There are decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen”.
- V.I. Lenin
So how would you describe the current moment?
The consolations of ‘self-isolation’
It’s interesting that a few friends have mentioned the publication of The Mirror and the Light, the third and final volume of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, as a good excuse for self-isolation. These are mostly pretty busy academics who would really like a fortnight’s break that’s been ‘legitimised’ by public safety measures — time that they could enjoyably spend in Mantel’s virtual world of Tudor England.
Which made me think of the only time when I have been really ill — way back in the mid-1990s when I had a bad case of influenza. It was the first time in my life when I felt unable to get out of bed and so I decided that it was legitimate to stay home and do nothing. Except, of course, that I didn’t ‘do nothing’. I started to read about the history of computing and came up with the idea of writing an account of the origins of the Internet. Thus began the process that eventually led to A Brief History of the Future. So that particular period of self-isolation turned out to be amazingly productive.
Quote of the Day
“For most of my adult life, “going viral” has been a good thing. Coronavirus has ruined the metaphor. It has reminded us that the world is not as controllable as it appeared.”
- Henry Mance, Financial Times, 7/8 March, 2020.
How a global health crisis turns into a state-run surveillance opportunity
This morning’s Observer column:
When Barack Obama was US president, his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, had a useful motto: “Never let a serious crisis go to waste: it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” The Chinese authorities have clearly taken this to heart – as evidenced by the unprecedented scale of their geographical lockdowns and quarantining, restrictions on movement, industrial slowdowns and heightened surveillance.
At this distance, it’s impossible to judge how effective these measures really are. But all the experienced China-watchers of my acquaintance tell me that one should never underestimate the gap between realities on the ground and the story as told from Beijing…
Quote of the Day
Some mathematicians are birds, others are frogs. Birds fly high in the air and survey broad vistas of mathematics out to the far horizon. They delight in concepts that unify our thinking and bring together diverse problems from different parts of the landscape. Frogs live in the mud below and see only the flowers that grow nearby. They delight in the details of particular objects, and they solve problems one at a time. I happen to be a frog, but many of my best friends are birds. The main theme of my talk tonight is this. Mathematics needs both birds and frogs.
What would you do if you were quarantined?
As Ian Bogost points out, many us would just do what we mostly due anyway — work away at home, watch Netflix or TV or cook or do some gardening in downtimes from when we’re actually working. I had an email today from a busy guy who said that, in a way, he’d rather enjoy being told that he had to ‘self-isolate’ because it would give him time to think, to catch up on all those books on his bedside table, and maybe even to write some stuff for himself rather that for a publisher. “You already live in quarantine”, says Bogost. “Being holed up at home has never been more pleasant.” He might be right.
Zzzzzzzzzz…..
Seen on a train recently.