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May 18th, 2010
Who knew the smile of Gordon Brown could be such a beautiful thing? After thirteen years in power, culminating in the intense three part drama of the televised debates, we had become over-familiar with Gordon’s “TV smile“, a cartoon contortion so unnatural and forced it looked almost painful. So to see, for the first time, the genuine joy on his face in this photograph bought a lump to my throat.
The photo is one of a series taken by a Guardian photographer Martin Argles documenting his final hours as Prime Minister last week, just before handing over to a waxwork phallus who was now claiming the job having won 36.1% of the popular vote. Behind Gordon, figuratively, is the job; over his shoulder are two of the men who may succeed him as Labour Party leader. Before him, and embraced by him, is his immediate future; some long overdue time with his two boys.
I was only dimly aware that Brown even had children, it is to his honour that they hadn’t been paraded out as electioneering assets during a campaign which, more than ever before, was fought on the message boards of mumsnet.com. By comparison, David Cameron wrung every drop out of the unborn foetus he liked to ferry around with him.
Gordon’s two kids are roughly the same ages as my own boys. I miss my boys while I’m out the room, so seeing this photo really hit home what a shitty stick any leader is struck with. I could never say I loved my country more than I loved my family; whether I should feel pride or shame in that I don’t know, but I think it goes without saying that Gordon’s evident joy at the relinquishment of responsibility, and the opportunity to, for the first time, get to see his boys grow up, is very deserved. Particularly remembering that, during his time as chancellor, there was a first Brown child, who never got as far as her first birthday.
Despite my political leanings being more toward the Liberals these days, I believe history will be kind to Gordon Brown’s legacy. He steered HMS Britain through some very stormy waters, rather than just catching a swelling wave and riding it home like Blair did in his first term. But, as Iraq, and the Digital Economy Bill proved, when an administration starts to listen to lobbyists more than the people who elected it, the time had come for them to go.
I am cautiously optimistic about the new boyishly handsome civil partnership we now have leading our big gay village. If we have to have a Tory in charge I’d rather it was one so vain and desperate to be popular that he will actually attempt to win the favour of the electorate, rather than just obeying the lords, financiers, and newspaper magnates who gave him his slender lead. Although the idea of multi-millionaire expenses fiddler, George Osborn as chancellor, in such an unsteady economic climate fills me with fear, and may already be the first firm flush of a country about to disappear down the toilet.
Seeing the shiny faced smarm of Cameron, next to the youthful eagerness of Clegg, recalling also the maniacal grin of Gordon’s predecessor Blair, it makes me wonder if we will remember Brown as the last of a certain breed of UK Prime Minister, those with camera unfriendly faces. There is no sane reason for a leader to be required to look good on TV, and, as Gordon proved, some faces shouldn’t be made to smile. Not until there is actually something to smile about.
Posted in fatherhood, philosophy, society |
March 7th, 2010
The scientists keep asking: “is evolution over?” Such a stupid question.
If our society has stopped evolving toward perfecting our survival, instead it selects toward an aesthetic ideal. Material wealth is the measuring stick, and success in this realm is mostly governed by privilege, personality, looks and, occasionally, fashionable skills. It is survival of the prettiest, the boldest and the most charming.
The only problem with these ideals is that they are artificial, they are only relevant within a human perspective of the world, a perspective somewhat warped by our vastly overdeveloped brains. These measures mean nothing to our environment and the elements that shape it.
Deciding if evolution is over is akin to fearing the “end of the world”. The end of the world is not the issue, only the end of human life upon it. We needn’t question if evolution has finished, only if it has finished with us. Our only fear should be that, as a species, we may already be beautiful and dead.
Posted in bad science, evolution, philosophy |
December 14th, 2009
Atoms work together to make cells. Cells work together to form organisms. Organisms work together to form societies, and societies work together to make cultures.
Getting cultures to work together seems to be the tricky one.
Posted in bullets, evolution, philosophy, society |
November 29th, 2009
Ok, I’ve calmed down over the Digital Economy Bill a bit now. If you don’t follow my Twitter (and you should, you really should) you may have escaped my incessantly expressed outrage at Lord Mandelson’s old man’s folly which, I am sorry to say, has lost this labour vote in the next election. Labour’s actions over Iraq were unforgivable, yet still to this voter they remained the lesser of two evils. But the day they start messing with my future livelihood, one has to question one’s own priorities.
There is a lot of good in the bill, don’t get me wrong, in fact it is only the parts on copyright and file-sharing where it falls down. But the proposals in this area are so unbelievably, insanely, dangerously wrong that they over-shadow everything else.
The problem is twofold:
1. Firstly, the powers the government are awarding themselves, to shut off internet access to anyone even suspected of file-sharing, are just plain draconian. And placing pressures on ISPs to enforce them will mean many, many innocents will be punished by threatened service providers forced to err on the side of caution.
Removal of one’s internet connection, in an age where most people bank, shop and connect with their friends online is a severity of punishment seemingly understated. It is certainly far beyond the crime, no matter how serious the copyright infringement.
2. Secondly, the gun is pointing in the wrong direction. The aim of the bill is to safeguard Digital Britain’s future. Not it’s past. The weighting towards the needs of copyright holders, at the expense of the new generation of digital media practitioners (the one’s most likely to be cut off, as their net usage might be greater, and less typical, than their neighbours), serves only to protect a fading status quo, not stimulate the new digital economy.
To most young digital practitioners the problem is obscurity, not a failure to maximise their income. Some digital content owners, myself included, are actually in favour of their work being distributed for free via file sharing. They are willing to adapt to the new “abundancy” economics, because they know scarcity economics no longer have the same relevance they once did.
The software industry and the music/film industry face the same issues regarding their ownership of digital content, yet it is only the latter who seem to be struggling. The (younger) software industry is coming up with ever new ways of thinking about digital economies, none of which is reflected in the Bill. Open Source, for example, may suffer. One consequence on insisting everything online comes with a price tag, is that it gets increasingly difficult to give stuff away for free.
At the time of writing the “Don’t Disconnect Us” petition stands at 27,000 signatures. Which isn’t bad (the successful Alan Turing petition had 32,108), but when you compare it to Lily Allen’s (fast becoming the poster girl for copyright confusion) million+ followers on Twitter, it seems but a drop in an ocean of popular ignorance.
Mine is only one opinion, and one vote, in this mess. But, if you are a UK resident, I can only urge you to consider yourself where you would imagine your digital life to be in ten years time, and if this bill serves your needs. And if you disagree with Mandelson’s vision, express your concerns now while it can still make a difference.
Posted in criminal justice, digital rights, open source, philosophy, society, tech, web |
November 16th, 2009
Here’s my proposal. On New Years Eve 2009 we close Facebook. Hermetically seal it and drop it in a data mine somewhere, as a noughties time capsule not to be dug up for a minimum of twenty years, when it can be gently mocked on a Channel 4 nostalgia show. We’ll look back on it and laugh at the primitive, puerile crap we used to do back then.
Ok, I still log in perhaps once a week, but I feel a bit dirty every time I do. Even only three years old, it feels hideously clunky and archaic now. And ever since the redesign it has felt to me like visiting my childhood bedroom after suffering a stroke. A place once familiar, now slightly twisted. Even so, I’d now find it difficult to sever all these tenuous connections I have re-established with people I’d once lost touch with (probably for a reason).
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger is doing the rounds at the moment, promoting his new book “Delete”, on the value of digital forgetting, how our data trails don’t go away and the dangers thereof. I have talked about this before, and have myself been a victim of private data being used against me, but I still think, having not read the book (uninformed opinion alert) that it isn’t of too much concern.
Although, one thing that does worry me is the effect services such as Facebook have on adolescence and personal development. You can always tell when a Facebook user is of school or college age, because they have a minimum of two or three hundred friends. We wise, cynical old farts might (jealously) insist the majority of the people we knew at this age were probably, at best, acquaintances, but it doesn’t work like that when you’re a kid. It is only when you move on, leave home, go to university, that you grow beyond this stage and start to discover who you really are, and move in more exclusive circles.
Room For Re-invention
An essential part of that personal growth is re-invention. The first thing most young people did when they went to Uni in my day is go through their goth stage, punk stage, emo stage, dope-fiend stage, or whatever was on the fringes that year. This is because for the first time they had the freedom to reinvent themselves, and experiment (and make mistakes) with finding their personal style and identity. This is an important process; it is what separates the individuals from the sheep. It is those without the fear to find themselves who develop both the idiosyncrasy and, more importantly, confidence in that idiosyncrasy, to go out there and change the world.
But surely this is so much more difficult to do while you retain all these virtual connections to the people you went to school with, the people who used to make fun of you of every time you had a haircut, or a new coat. School is all about conformity; that is how the social structure of the playground works. And so is the real world too, if we allow it to be that way. If we enter the world with a status-quo reinforcing web of social connections already in place, it must be so much harder to branch out or grow beyond it.
I may be worrying about nothing. I recently re-read a 10 year old tech-sociology book (for the book, everything is for the book these days) which made a very big deal about how content on demand is going to mean the importance of the 8pm prime time TV slot is going to be lost. The answer that time has given to this problem is: so what? It is simply the way we operate today, from within the entrappings of social media. Hopefully, the iconoclasts of the 21st Century will find their own ways of dealing with it.
Posted in culture, philosophy, society, tech, web |
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