Celebrating Thomas Kuhn

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My (longish) Observer piece celebrating Thomas Kuhn and his remarkable book.

Fifty years ago this month, one of the most influential books of the 20th century was published by the University of Chicago Press. Many if not most lay people have probably never heard of its author, Thomas Kuhn, or of his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, but their thinking has almost certainly been influenced by his ideas. The litmus test is whether you’ve ever heard or used the term “paradigm shift”, which is probably the most used – and abused – term in contemporary discussions of organisational change and intellectual progress. A Google search for it returns more than 10 million hits, for example. And it currently turns up inside no fewer than 18,300 of the books marketed by Amazon. It is also one of the most cited academic books of all time. So if ever a big idea went viral, this is it…

Prematurity

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I’m indebted to the many readers of the International Herald Tribune who spotted my obituary and emailed to convey their condolences. Just to put the record straight, I am not and have never been:

(a) 73
(b) a reporter
(c) an editor, or
(d) dead.

I do, however, claim a certain amount of sly wit.

In fact, the hack memorialised in the Trib is James M. Naughton who was

“a prank-loving White House and national correspondent for the New York Times during the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations and later a senior editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer for almost two decades.”

My namesake also maintained that an occasional prank was essential to the spirit of journalism,

“and he enthusiastically abided by that belief, earning a reputation for twitting colleagues and candidates alike. He once turned up at a presidential press conference wearing the head of a chicken costume; another time, in Philadelphia, he had two motorcycles roar round his newsroom to liven things up. Good for morale, he said.”

A man after my own heart.

Premature obits have a long and honourable history in journalism. The classic case is Mark Twain’s celebrated riposte to his: “reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”. One of my earliest mentors was the wonderful Claud Cockburn, who was very kind to me when I was an undergraduate in Ireland. In his respectable years he had worked for The Times and at one stage was sent to China to cover some obscure conflict in which he was reportedly killed, The paper duly published a brief obit, which he then read with glee and cabled the Editor saying “HAVE READ OBITUARY STOP KINDLY ADJUST SALARY ACCORDINGLY”.

In the summer of 1968 my girlfriend (later my first wife) and I stayed with him and his wife Patricia in Brook Lodge, their ramshackle but splendid house outside Youghal in Co. Cork. As we were leaving, Claud asked me what I proposed to do with my life. I replied that I was thinking of becoming a journalist. “Well then”, he said, solemnly, “you must remember that there is one golden rule for success in journalism: libel someone famous early in your career “.

Put not your trust in the Cloud — any cloud

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This morning’s Observer column.

Most of the iCloud users of my acquaintance seem very happy with it. No more worrying about back-ups, or having out-of-date calendars on different devices. In return for an annual subscription, the great Church of Apple takes away the existential angst about data security that plagues less fortunate folks. And for as long as they stay within the enfolding arms of the Church, that blissful state will continue. That this is rather too good to be true should have been obvious to even the meanest intelligence, but it took a personal disaster last week finally to explode the illusion that single-church, cloud-based systems are the answers to everyone’s prayers.

The victim was a well-known technology journalist and iCloud subscriber named Mat Honan…

Lots of good stuff about this topic on the Web — for example this piece by Bob Cringely.