The Duchamp show at the Barbican.
The sands of time
Is this the most insulting ad ever?
Jaron Lanier and ‘Who Owns the Future?’
From my Observer piece about Jaron Lanier…
Jaron Lanier is that rarest of rare birds – an uber-geek who is highly critical of the world created by the technology he helped to create. Now in his 50s, he first came to prominence in the 1980s as a pioneer in the field of “virtual reality” – the development of computer-generated environments in which real people could interact. Ever since then, he has attracted the label of “visionary”, not always a compliment in the computer business, where it denotes, as the New Yorker memorably put it, “a capacity for mercurial insight and a lack of practical job skills”.
In person, he looks like central casting’s idea of a technology guru: vast bulk, informal attire, no socks, beard and dreadlocks. Yet he also has good people skills. He’s friendly, witty, courteous and voluble. His high-pitched voice belies his physical bulk and he giggles a lot. He’s a talented musician who is widely read and he writes accessible and sometimes eloquent prose. His latest book – Who Owns the Future? – is a sobering read for anyone who worries about what cultural critic Neil Postman called “technopoly” – the belief that the primary goal of human labour and thought is efficiency and that technical calculation is superior to human judgment.
I enjoyed our conversation very much. And found his new book very thought-provoking.
When taking his portrait (above) I asked him to think of someone or something of which he strongly disapproved. This made him laugh uproariously. I got the feeling that he’s not a great hater.
LATER: Jon Crowcroft’s Amazon review of the book.
The road to Maghera
Will Twitter replace RSS?
The Leveson debate: the nub of it
Great blog post by Paul Bernal.
I don’t believe the ‘anti-Leveson’ argument for a number of reasons. First of all, because as I’ve argued before I don’t think the mainstream press that we have now bears much resemblance to a ‘free press’ – it’s just a question of who or what controls it, rather than whether it’s free. Secondly, I don’t think that what’s being proposed by either side will actually do much to fetter the press. It may control one or two excesses, but it won’t do anything that’s not already being done. We already have defamation and privacy law that impacts upon free speech, we already have huge editorial control that prevents some of the really important debates ever reaching the public eye – what’s proposed by Leveson won’t make as much difference as his opponents might think.
Similarly, I don’t believe the ‘pro-Leveson’ group either. Firstly, as noted above I suspect they’re deeply naïve if they believe that even the full implementation of Leveson would really do that much to curb the practices of the press – regulation rarely has the effects that people might desire, either way. What’s more, if they imagine that implementation of Leveson would turn the likes of the Sun, Mail and Express into responsible papers, they’re really living in cloud cuckoo-land. Regardless of Leveson, the Sun will still be full of rampant misogyny, the Mail full of anti-immigrant and anti-European rants and the Express will still billow out homophobia and Islamophobia. They’ll continue to demonise the disabled and those on benefits, twist the debate on Europe and shift the blame for all our problems onto the vulnerable and the innocent. They may not hack our phones, but they’ll still find a way to dig out secrets and private information – and ways that are technically legal, too. The data is out there – and they’ll find a way to dig it out and to use it in all kinds of horrible ways. If we think statutory press regulation will stop this, we’re deluding ourselves.
Yep. The reason that sections of the UK mass media are so awful is simply that there’s a market for intrusive crap. People continue to buy disgraceful newspapers, so bad behaviour is always rewarded, not punished The only thing that would change that would be for consumers to make ethical decisions when buying papers. And they don’t. The elephant in Leveson’s court-room was the Great British Public. But nobody talked about that during the proceedings.
Google Reader, Hitler and me
This morning’s Observer column.
One of the wonders of the online world is the Downfall meme on YouTube. (For those whose time is too valuable to be wasted watching video clips, I should explain that the parody is based on remixing a scene from Oliver Hirschbiegel’s film, Der Untergang [Downfall], which chronicles Hitler’s final days in his Berlin bunker.)
The clip takes the scene in which Hitler, memorably portrayed by Bruno Ganz, launches into a tirade upon finally realising that the war is truly lost and overlays it with subtitles about contemporary issues or events. Thus Hitler rants about the inability of the iPad to do multitasking, that Sheffield United have been relegated or that Twitter has gone down again.
What brings this to mind is that a new version of the meme appeared last week. In it, Hitler is told about Google’s decision to “retire” (ie scrap) its Reader app. “WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY THINKING??!!” he roars. “HOW CAN THEY DO THIS TO US?!! How dare they take away Google Reader. I have over 300 feeds in there!! Have they any idea how much effort I’ve put in? Of all Google products I spend 99% of my time with Reader. Why do they do this?” And so on.
For the first – and I hope the only – time in my life, I find myself agreeing with the Führer. For I, too, am a dedicated user of Google Reader…
It’s interesting — and perhaps predictable — to see the storm of (mainly geeky and journalistic) outrage at Google’s decision. But — as this post argues — it was probably a perfectly rational business decision from Google’s point of view. Most Internet users don’t use RSS, there’s no obvious direct revenue stream from it and Google is desperate for strategic reasons to shepherd its users onto Google+. On the other hand, maybe the reputational damage will cause the company to think again. After all, Google’s prime pitch is that it’s a good Net citizen — campaigning to keep the Internet open and uncensored etc.
Another thought sparked by the uproar is an observation made ages ago by Clay Shirky in another context when he said that what people complain of as information overload is actually a symptom of filter failure. I agree. Every new communications technology in history has led the early victims of it to complain of information overload. But in due course they figured out tools for managing the overload. The Net is no exception and RSS is one of the first-generation tools we devised to handle it.
In the meantime, the important thing for people like me is what to use instead of Reader. The Online Journalism Blog has published a very helpful spreadsheet giving details of the various alternatives. Thanks, guys.
The Top Ten Mistakes of Entrepreneurs
I especially like the one about “befriending VCs”.
Quote of the Day
“If you’re the most intelligent person in the room, you’re in the wrong room”
James Watson
Luckily, I spend a lot of my time in the right rooms.