‘Smart’ homes? Not yet

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My Observer comment piece on what the Internet of Things looks like when it’s at home:

There is a technological juggernaut heading our way. It’s called the Internet of Things (IoT). For the tech industry, it’s the Next Big Thing, alongside big data, though in fact that pair are often just two sides of the same coin. The basic idea is that since computing devices are getting smaller and cheaper, and wireless network technology is becoming ubiquitous, it will soon be feasible to have trillions of tiny, networked computers embedded in everything. They can sense changes, turning things on and off, making decisions about whether to open a door or close a valve or order fresh supplies of milk, you name it, the computers communicating with one another and shipping data to server farms all over the place.

As ever with digital technology, there’s an underlying rationality to lots of this. The IoT could make our lives easier and our societies more efficient. If parking bays could signal to nearby cars that they are empty, then the nightmarish task of finding a parking place in crowded cities would be eased. If every river in the UK could tweet its level every few minutes, then we could have advance warning of downstream floods in time to alert those living in their paths. And so on.

But that kind of networking infrastructure takes time to build, so the IoT boys (and they are mostly boys, still) have set their sights closer to home, which is why we are beginning to hear a lot about “smart” homes. On further examination, this turns out mostly to mean houses stuffed with networked kit…

Read on

Tyrannised by email? Here’s how to fight back

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Lovely advice from Hannah Jane Parkinson

Here’s what I suggest. Taking a cue from my boss, I’m going to be turning on my out-of-office reply when I actually leave the office in the evening. On time. For homeworkers, or flexiworkers, that means when your shift is over. Because an automated out-of-office email that reads:

“Hi. Thanks for your email. I’ve finished work for the day and I have left the office. I’m now bathing my son and about to watch that new drama – the one with Ben Whishaw – and have a couple of glasses of pinot, but if anyone asks I’ll say it’s one. Might even order a takeaway. I’ll be able to answer your email in the morning, when I’m being paid to, at around 9am. Have a lovely evening too.”

Our oldest enemy is now our friend. Likewise our enemy’s enemy

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Cameron’s non-strategy in bombing Syria is beyond parody. Or at any rate, the only writer I can think of who would be up to lampooning it would be Evelyn Waugh. Glenn Newey, writing in the LRB, nails the surrealism of the bombing policy:

As Obama said the other day, France is the United States’ oldest ally. Meanwhile we British, too, stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our oldest enemy, hailed this week by Cameron as ‘friends and allies’. In the Orwellian perma-war, memory is slavery and amnesia emancipation. Signifier-flotation rules. Yesterday’s cheese-eating surrender monkeys emerge as a bastion of civilisation against the ragheads du jour.

Notoriously, back in 2003 when Chirac was sensibly blocking Bush and Blair’s pursuit of a Security Council mandate for the idiocy in Iraq, the US Congress diner rebranded French fries and toast as ‘freedom fries’ and ‘freedom toast’, which others copied (regrettably I haven’t traced a use of ‘freedom letters’). But now a higher trump has blown, as it did a hundred years ago when Gaul and Saxon, with the tsar, united to carve up Ottoman domains including Syria and Iraq. Now these two dog-eared ex-imperia, both pawing at the top table with their nukes and permanent UN Security Council membership, are again burying their old contention.

Labour’s dilemma, nailed

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Great Bagehot column in the Economist. Sample:

What is going on? I see it as evidence of two deep cleavages in British and Western politics. The first is the gulf between instrumental and expressive politics. The former involves winning elections in order to wield power and change things. The latter involves seeking fulfilment and personal satisfaction by interacting with symbols, attending events, declaring positions—in short, signalling things about oneself. With the decline of mass classes and monolithic ideologies it has become increasingly hard to combine the two sorts of politics. So the two are drifting apart. Government is becoming more technocratic, political activism more colourful and the gap between the two wider. Arguably this affects Labour more than most. The party has an unusually idealistic culture compared with its European counterparts (with its roots in Christian socialism and Bloomsbury utopianism, traces of both of which live on in Mr Corbyn) but was also founded with the specific intention of winning elections (for which read the relative pragmatism of most of his MPs). The Labour leader’s defining trait, however, is that he has no interest in general elections, opinion polls or indeed the views of any Briton outside a crowd of supportive activists and campaigners so small as to be electorally insignificant.

The second cleavage is that between social liberalism and statist socialism. Here, too, Labour has traditionally been a coalition. For every Denis Healey there was a Tony Benn (Hilary’s much more lefty father); for every Hugh Gaitskell a Nye Bevan. Here, too, the two sides have become harder to reconcile. Globalisation, an increasingly individualistic, consumerist culture and the decline of heavy industry have expanded the rift between the prescriptions of the party’s moderates and those of its hard-liners. All claim their interpretation of its eternal principles is the truest. But few would deny that they have more in common with members of other political families than with each other.

He goes on to review four possible scenarios for Labour. None of them good.

In the bleak midwinter, droning on

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This morning’s Observer column:

Well, Black Friday has come and gone and this columnist has missed the boat – again. But if the marketing mythology is to be believed, countless millions of our better-organised fellow citizens have been dutifully clicking and purchasing.

This year, however, is slightly different because something new will have appeared on the wishlists of tech-savvy shoppers: drones. A quick search for them on Amazon.co.uk brought up 46 different models before I got tired of scrolling, ranging in price from under £20 to over £1,200. And over at the Apple store, they’re selling the Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 Power Edition Quadricopter, a snip at £299.95.

And that’s just the amateur/hobbyist end of the market. At the “serious” end, things rapidly get expensive…

Read on

LATER And you thought I was joking.

Well, see here:

HM Loyal Opposition goes AWOL

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Corbyn_alone

This is such an extraordinary picture that I am inclined to think it’s a spoof. The Prime Minister is making a statement to the House of Commons — about the strategic defence review, no less. In other words, about the future of the country’s armed forces. But the Labour Parliamentary party — and the Shadow Cabinet — have gone AWOL, leaving their Leader sitting alone on the Opposition front bench. I don’t care what these cretins think about Corbyn: this is a Parliamentary democracy and it only works if there’s a functional opposition. That’s what Labour MPs were elected to provide. Instead of which they are sulking in their tents because their party elected a guy they can’t stand.

LATER It’s not a spoof. Channel 4 News has a video showing them slinking away.