John Godley

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John Godley, aka Lord Kilbracken, an engaging Irish peer who renounced his British citizenship after Bloody Sunday, has died at the age of 85. He was a war hero (he had a DFC, among other decorations) who, in 1972, returned his war medals to the Queen in protest at the British policy of internment in Northern Ireland. There’s a lovely obit in today’s Guardian which captures something of his individuality and astonishing life. The Times obit is also good.

One of my memories of him comes from an intervention he made in a surreal debate in the House of Lords in 1995 about the ‘Historic Monuments and Archaeological Objects (Northern Ireland) Order 1995’. The relevant passage from Hansard goes like this:

Lord Williams of Mostyn: We welcome the thrust of the order and its purpose. In the 10 minutes or so that we had to pass before beginning this business I turned my eye to Article 42 which makes it a criminal offence for any person who finds an archaeological object not to report it to the relevant authorities, and a separate and distinct criminal offence to be in possession of, or retain possession of, such an object. All agog, I wished to satisfy myself as to the definition of an “archaeological object”. Article 2(2) states that archaeological object,

“includes any object, being a chattel … manufactured or unmanufactured … which is, or appears to be, of archaeological or historical interest and which has, by reason of such interest, a value greater than its intrinsic value”.

As a lawyer I am happy to say that that will cause endless problems in court in the future.

I considered a possible example. In, say, five years’ time, after the next election, the Minister, alas, will no longer be occupying her present situation. If in the next year or so she goes, as she regularly does, to Ballymena, Craigavon or Dungannon and happens to discard a pair of ministerial wellington boots which happen thereafter to be ploughed over and if, subsequently, I happen to discover those ministerial, monogrammed wellington boots, they will have an intrinsic value of about 75p, I suppose, while the value of the materials of which they are composed will be about 50p. However, their historic value (by virtue of their connection with the revered Minister) will be significantly greater than either 75p or 50p. It will probably be in the region of £2.50 plus VAT.

According to the definition I have quoted, that would make them—absurdly, but perhaps understandably—an archaeological object, the possession, or non-reporting of possession, of which would render me liable to prosecution and condign punishment in the magistrates’ court or equivalent. Can that be right? Other than that helpful question, I have nothing further to add.

Lord Kilbracken: My Lords, perhaps I might rise for a moment to refer to the point made by my noble friend on the Front Bench regarding the Minister’s boots. As I understand it, the regulations only apply to objects of archaeological interest. Though I feel sure that such boots may be objects of sentimental interest, particularly to the noble Baroness, can they truly be said to be of archaeological interest?

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I am obliged to my noble friend. In fact the order refers to articles not only of archaeological interest, but also of historical interest. It was the latter adjective upon which I was focusing my attention.

Iraqi quagmire explained

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This is the PowerPoint slide used to brief Donald Rumsfeld about plans for the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. Tells you everything you need to know, really.

I bet Edward Tufte will have this as a case study in the next edition of his legendary pamphlet.

[Source]

Our cognitive bias against openness

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Lovely FT column by James Boyle. Sample:

Studying intellectual property and the internet has convinced me that we have another cognitive bias. Call it the openness aversion. We are likely to undervalue the importance, viability and productive power of open systems, open networks and non-proprietary production.

Test yourself on the following questions. In each case, it is 1991 and I have removed from you all knowledge of the past 15 years.

You have to design a global computer network. One group of scientists describes a system that is fundamentally open – open protocols and systems so anyone could connect to it and offer information or products to the world. Another group – scholars, businessmen, bureaucrats – points out the problems. Anyone could connect to it. They could do anything. There would be porn, piracy, viruses and spam. Terrorists could put up videos glorifying themselves. Your activist neighbour could compete with The New York Times in documenting the Iraq war. Better to have a well-managed system, in which official approval is required to put up a site; where only a few actions are permitted; where most of us are merely recipients of information; where spam, viruses, piracy (and innovation and anonymous speech) are impossible. Which would you have picked?

Set yourself the task of producing the greatest reference work the world has ever seen. It must cover everything from the best Thai food in Raleigh to the annual rice production of Thailand, the best places to see blue whales to the history of the Blue Dog Coalition. Would you create a massive organisation of paid experts with layers of editors producing tomes that are controlled by copyright and trademark? Or would you wait for hobbyists, scientists and volunteer encyclopedists to produce, and search engines to organise, a cornucopia of information? I know which way I would have bet in 1991. But I also know that the last time I consulted an encyclopedia was in 1998….

Old media and the Net

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A guy from the Richard and Judy Show (a daytime sofa programme running on UK TV; not sure which channel) telephoned this afternoon to ask if I’d be interested in coming on tomorrow’s show to talk about blogging. It seemed they’d been reading the intro I wrote for the Observer‘s list of “Websites that changed the world”.

I said that I couldn’t. “Why?” he asked, “are you out of the country?” “No”, I said, “I’m busy tomorrow. I have a meeting.” There was silence on the other end of the line as he digested the astonishing fact that someone would decline an invitation to appear on the show because he was busy. After he’d recovered, the conversation went like this:

Chap: “Well then can I talk to you about your piece about blogs?”
Me: “My piece wasn’t about blogs. It was about websites that had changed the world”.
Chap: “Oh”.
Me: “Blogs are personal websites published by individuals.”
Chap: “Oh. But what do you think are the really big blogs?”
Me: “Eh? What do you mean Big Blogs?”
Chap: “Well, you know like …” (and here he named a Blog written by an alleged London call girl whose notoriety eventually earned her a book publishing contract but whose name escapes me at the moment).

The conversation meandered on hopelessly like this for several more minutes until it finally dawned on me that (a) the chap knew absolutely nothing about blogging and (b) was so locked into the mindset of broadcast TV that he couldn’t actually comprehend the notion of millions of independently-published blogs. For him, as for everyone else in television, the idea of user-generated content is an oxymoron. It slowly became clear that what he meant by “Big Blogs” were ones that had been reported in the newspapers.

Travelling light (contd.)

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Humph! Quentin (who’s in California at Linux World) has responded to the new security regime by splashing out on a Pelican case, if you please.

Military-grade hardware, as used by the best professional photographers. Pricey too. It’s going to make my battered old roll-on case look pretty tatty. Growl.

Meanwhile, back in the UK, the restrictions on carry-on luggage have been eased. It’s now permissable to take a laptop bag as specified in the illustration below (from BBC News site).