This week's reading response except ...

... there is NO assignment this week. Fool!

At least the universe can have it. Not that anyone but me inhabits this backwater of Cyberspace. (That's not a complaint by the way.)

The longer the course goes the more I wonder if I’m deluding myself about my ability to read this modern, online world of ours. Is it, I wonder, that I’m on the wrong side of the cusp of change to see properly what’s happening? At (almost) 59, white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant, male and comfortably-enough off in my middle-class bubble I’m not quite too old to be entirely cut off from the Internet era (unlike, let’s say, my 85-year old mother who – despite 10 years of family effort – simply doesn’t get it. Won’t even switch on the laptop we bought her to Skype her son in Australia unless her youngest son, my brother is in the room).  But those personal characteristics of mine also, perhaps, exclude me from having any (let me call it) organic sense of the ‘new normal’; the profoundly altered online sphere of social relations that’s arisen as a result of information technology changes in the last two decades or so. 

"What's wrong with this Internet connection?"
Photo: AP

In short, reading Jaron Lanier’s article (from You Are Not A Gadget) I find myself wondering, am I more like my mother than I think? I may correspond by e.mail, have Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin accounts, blog and live quite a bit online but is it within an already obsolete paradigm – one of the last generation of Neanderthals, co-existing with the Homo Sapiens but doomed to extinction?

That’s a long way of saying I’m moderately sceptical about Mr. Lanier’s pessimistic fears. So my response concentrates on a key aspect of his article; the need to build protection against crowd-thinking and the hive mind. 

For most (but I concede not all) of Mr. Lanier’s article he expresses concerns about crowd-thinking / hive minds as if it’s a new phenomenon, an unforeseen and harmful result of the lowest common denominator pattern of social relations engendered by online environments. Clearly, though, the absurd / foolish / dangerous / incomprehensible behaviour of crowd thinking / hive minds can be seen throughout Modernity’s history, for example:

• The tulip bulb ‘mania’ of 1637 (the crowd-thinking / hive mind character of which was discussed as early as 1841 in Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds) 
• The rise and catastrophic consequences of Nazi Germany.
• The mass-hysterical response of vast swathes of the British population in 1997 to the untimely death of HRH Diana Princes of Wales.

The phenomenon is not new. Whether or not the Internet has accelerated, deepened or materially altered (Lanier suggests for the worse) our crowd-thinking / hive mind tendencies is debatable. In his article, searching for what he might see as an adequate response to or defence against the hive, Mr. Lanier (commenting on works by Suroweicki and Taleb) suggests, it seems to me, an old-world, elitist framework of rule-setting as safeguarding:

"Maybe if you combined all our approaches you’d get a practical set of rules for avoiding crowd failures. Then again, maybe we are all on the wrong track. The problem is that there’s been inadequate focus on the testing of such ideas." 

I disagree with his conclusion there. History frequently tests human potential to err through crowd-thinking and we fail time after time after time. 

It seems to me – as has probably always been true – the defences against the worst excesses of crowd-thinking and the hive mind remain greater transparency, informed choice and active engagement within a democratic, pluralist framework. The creation (and power) of the Internet may not alter those fundamental requirements which, to date, we have never fully realised in any human society. And the Web may also introduce new, more powerful barriers that protect the interests of the already powerful. But the search for safeguards that Mr. Lanier proposes must not be outsourced to or remain with the architects and designers of the machine. They must be involved, of course. But just like the rest of us, as active citizens.

Funny ... if it were not so depressingly true

Ben Jennings cartoon in today's Guardian

Essay deadline looms - John Donne

The Sun Rising

John Donne

              Busy old fool, unruly sun,

               Why dost thou thus,

Through windows, and through curtains call on us?

Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?

               Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide

               Late school boys and sour prentices,

         Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,

         Call country ants to harvest offices,

Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,

Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

               Thy beams, so reverend and strong

               Why shouldst thou think?

I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,

But that I would not lose her sight so long;

               If her eyes have not blinded thine,

               Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,

         Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine

         Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.

Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,

And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

               She's all states, and all princes, I,

               Nothing else is.

Princes do but play us; compared to this,

All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy.

               Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,

               In that the world's contracted thus.

         Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be

         To warm the world, that's done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;

This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.

Toasted

Hot cross and straight line buns by Spike Deane, 2016. Yummee.

Obscured vision

Jeremy Bentham's panopticon

This week - on my ANU course 'Digital Culture' - we've been looking at the potential of the Web to become the core component of a dystopian future. One of the readings set for our discussions is a 2014 article, The Net is not a panopticon by David Weinberger. As my response below makes clear I was far from persuaded by Mr. Weinberger's argument.

Wednesday’s lecture has made me critically re-appraise David Weinberger’s essay ‘The Net is not a panopticon’ which, initially, I had (more or less) discounted as a Panglossian thought bubble; not much going on there, I thought. However, reflecting on the lecture’s references to dystopian texts (particularly Huxley, Orwell, and Dick and movies such as Blade Runner (1982), The Terminator (1984) and Brazil (1985) – all of which I know quite well) alongside the chronology of surveillance-related legislation in the USA, it’s impossible (for me at least) not to find the complacent naivety of Mr. Weinberger’s quasi-analysis deeply troubling. 

Re-reading the essay, three cultural references popped into my head, quite unbidden. At first they seemed mildly ridiculous, superficial; daft indeed. But in an odd way they help crystallise my revised response and frame my critique more firmly within a dystopian paradigm of the Internet akin to an Orwellian / Brazil future. These were my thoughts:

• Mr. Weinberger’s article may be Internet journalism’s version of Bobby McFerrin’s 1988 hit single ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’  – whimsical and dislocated from reality. Coincidentally both McFerrin’s video and Weinberger’s essay feature re-assuring performances by characters in bathrobes. Proof positive, perhaps, that “we’re fine … with who we are in the new public of the Web” as Weinberger puts it. 

• A high-security, hi-tech panopticon prison features in Marvel Studio’s Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). (Incidentally – from which our intrepid band of heroes escape to meet a criminal mastermind at a location named Knowhere). As ridiculous as this may sound, the approach taken by the character Groot (“travelling as [a talking raccoon’s] personal houseplant-slash-muscle”) to circumvent the prison’s hi-tech surveillance potential is almost a metaphor for how I see the limitations of dystopian fears (to some degree credible) that underpin legitimate concerns about the clear evidence of convergence and centralisation of government and corporate institutions co-operating to capture, retain and store data about and from the nation-state’s citizens. In short, Groot walks up to the panopticon’s power source and rips it from the wall.  The jail goes dark, the computers go down, a riot ensues and our heroes escape. 

Surveillance states pre-date the Internet. Enemies 
of such states (righteous – such as those who opposed McCarthyism or in Soviet Russia circulated The Gulag Archipelago in samizdat formats – or malevolent such as ISIS) behave – after a fashion – like Groot. They operate offline, below the radar, strive to leave no trace. To personalise these matters to some degree, the Australian State could, I suppose, waste even more of our taxpayers’ money searching through my metadata to determine whether or not on a Sunday morning I watch BBC Television’s Match of the Day of Saturday soccer highlights from the UK via a VPN. But if I strapped a self-detonating waistcoat to my chest tomorrow to match the tragic and senseless violence in Belgium recently there would be no trace of my inclinations or potential so to do anywhere online [NB: in case it needs to be clarified … this is intellectual speculation for the purposes of completing an assessed work at the ANU, not reasonable grounds for suspicion]. So, although Weinberger grossly underplays the potential for the Internet to be developed by surveillance states as time passes, I think there remain limits and democratic protections that can and should be built and defended ‘before it’s too late’.

• Bringing me to my third and final reference. It was - I thought as I re-read - that Mr. Weinberger can’t see the wood for the trees. The new technologies of the information age do contain, within their (over)reach, potential to support, bolster and empower totalitarian, authoritarian surveillance states. His six-point deconstruction of the risk of society developing or allowing the creation of a new, online panopticon misses the point. If – Orwell suggested when – the
  
  surveillance state takes over, its mechanisms and architecture will not look like an 18th Century Benthamite block. It will look quite different – more like our shiny new Web – and superficially appealing. That, of course, is what the Trojans said about that nice horse the Greeks left them as a gift.

Waltz With Bashir

My film course at the university is moving on to documentary-making this week. The text for the week is Ari Folman's animated film, Waltz With Bashir (2008). I missed it when the film was released so it's been good to catch up with it. Controversial at the time and retaining its capacity to unsettle viewers today (if my fellow students at ANU are anything to go by) I'm glad I've seen it now.  

Walter Benjamin in Paris in 1939
Pic: Gisela Freund

The reading around the film, especially an article by Ohad Landesman and Roy Bendor (conference presentation on the article can be seen here - beginning at 23:40) offered plenty of food for thought. The article makes a good case for reading the film in complex, interwoven ways - anti-war film, trauma narrative, recollection of lost memories, the flight of a generation of men from the realities of their own pasts, personal and national guilt, and more. 

Among other ideas explored through the film and in the article I encountered the notion of the factical, a concept (from Martin Heidegger) I had never met before. Who knew memory could play such tricks on us? Maybe everyone but me. And Walter Benjamin's construct of the dialectal image. What a loss - one of the innumerable - that man's death was as a result of the Fascists of the 1940s.

London Has Fallen

Please. Just Say No!

Two hours of my life I shall never regain

Brevity is an art form

Low floor bus "at present". No telling what height it will be in June.

So I wrote an e.mail to Dumfries and Galloway Council in South West Scotland on Monday ...

Hello,
We are visiting Scotland in June (we live in Australia). We are travelling to Belfast for the weekend (3rd to 6th June). Our ferry tickets are booked.
I use a wheelchair. I cannot walk at all and, therefore, cannot climb stairs into a coach or bus
I see from your web site that Route 350 – operated by McLeans – runs between the Stranraer ferry terminal and Cairnryan ferry terminal. I want to ask if that service is wheelchair accessible?
Regards,
Dougie Herd

And came the reply ...

Dear Customer, 
Thank you for your enquiry.We have now passed this to the relevant department and asked them to respond. 
Kind Regards, 
DG Direct 

Followed today by ...

Dear Mr Herd
I refer to your email below.
At present this bus is low floor
Regards

Confirmation we can travel from Ayr, where my mother lives, to Belfast and back over land and sea by public transport. When I started out on this wheelchair malarkey - thirty-two years ago - I wouldn't have been able to make it into the train station unassisted ... never mind the rest.

Back to the future

Sitting in the shade of the house this morning there came a moment of epiphany. It was hot. The late summer sun - following on from what record-keepers report today is the hottest February recorded in more the seventy years - the front garden looked stressed  That's not helped, of course by the poor soil here in Canberra.

Spike stood opposite me, across the garden, beneath the shade of the trees at the roadside. It was pleasant over there, she said. And that's when epiphany struck. A lawn. Give up the almost certainly doomed attempts to cultivate vegetables in the meagre soil under a burning sun. Grow some sort of hardy grass with underground watering of some description. We can grow vegetables in large terracotta pots (as our wildly enthusiastic tomato plant is proving ... I know, I know ... a tomato is a fruit not a vegetable but you get my point). We shall redirect lost water from the roof to the pots, the apple tree that'll be going in and the grass.

Spike and Thistle-the-cat will have a shaded spot to sit or lounge or sleep in summer. We'll have grass. How retro. Who knew?

We are sailing ...

Ship ahoy! Pic: Stena

Almost all the 'nuts and bolts' of our trip to the UK in a few months are in place now. I've just finished making our Web booking for the ferry crossings between Cairnryan and Belast where we'll see my old mate Trevor Gill perform the role of Bottom in The Royal Shakespeare Company's A Midsummer Night's Dream. How exciting is that?

We have all but one of our flights booked now, both our ferry trips (Belast and Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands) and all of the hotel accommodation in Tokyo, Prestwick, Belfast, Kirkwall, Edinburgh, Manchester, Weymouth, London and Singapore. And all the accommodation is wheelchair accessible. Hasn't the world changed in thirty years. All that's left to do is book the travel between 

• London and Prestwick, 
• Prestwick and Belfast, 
• Prestwick and Aberdeen, 
• Aberdeen and Edinburgh, 
• Edinburgh to Manchester, 
• Manchester to Weymouth and 
• Weymouth to London. 

All train journeys, apart from the first leg. The online booking system at Scotrail hasn't reached the 6th June yet. I think that will tick over tomorrow. Choo, choo!

No one (still) expects the Spanish Inquisition ... do they?

I am mildly perplexed by my response to Week 4 readings on my course, Digital Culture: Being Human in the Information Technology Age, at the ANU. I ask myself repeatedly, “why am I not more concerned? Why am I comparatively relaxed about the future?” It’s a worry (for me if no one else) because I’m not naïve. So, the erstwhile left-wing activist in me wonders why I’m seemingly complacent in the face of evidence of increasing concentration of access to and control over the world’s information in the hands of a few (just one?) giant corporation(s)? I don’t have an entirely satisfactory answer; personally or intellectually.

Siva Vaidhyanathan in the Introduction to The Googlisation of Everything and Eli Parser in the Introduction to The Filter Bubble both make compelling cases for what one could describe as citizen vigilance or oversight and greater transparency over Google and (by implication) any information platform or gatekeeper exhibiting monopoly tendencies in the digital age. Parser’s observation (in 2011) that a paradigm-shift occurred in December 2009 with the personalisation of Internet searching seems beyond dispute seven years after the fact. As both Parser and Vaidhyanathan observe / predict / caution-against the processes of Internet searching – particularly the cultural, technological and market dominance (perhaps even hegemony) of Google – have moved with startling speed from the domain of ‘cute new idea from the geeks in Silicon Valley’ to a position of ubiquity.

John Milton. Pic: Cambridge University

Omnipresent and perhaps omnipotent, the Google search may become so powerful, so influential – even essential - that if it continues unchecked, with little or no scrutiny, and outside any semblance of democratic framework, future generations may not think at all of its corporate construct, its imperatives or the technology’s mechanics. Google – like the sun to Neolithic humans – will simply ‘Be’. The power of information technology itself, the deep as well as superficial benefits we derive and enjoy from search engines such as Google (my personal spectrum of Internet searching in the last few days includes finding the complete text of John Milton’s Areopagitica for ENGL3005 at the ANU to John Oliver’s critique of Donald Trump[1] and much in between) may increasingly be taken for granted, seen almost as a natural part of the human condition rather than a purposeful project at risk of accelerating beyond public accountability.

The history of convergence that permits (possibly encourages) information industry monopolies, recounted in Wednesday’s lecture on the Course, coupled to the increasingly sophisticated (and secret) algorithms at the heart of rapidly developing technological capabilities of both hardware and software do justify the questions and concerns raised by Parser and Vaidhyanathan. One cannot help wondering, however, if their articles / books from 2011 were – even at the point of publication – already too late; urging us to close the stable door long after (in Information Technology terms) the Google horse had bolted.

As Vaidhyanathan points out, by 2011 the dynamics of the relationship between us and ‘the machine’ had already been irrevocably changed. We are no longer Google’s customers (allowing the possibility that we might have been, once upon a time) “we are its product.” We may see ourselves as purposeful seekers of information, freely and consciously selecting Google as our search engine of choice. The reality may indeed be opposite. We are data packets being delivered to any corporate entity willing to pay.

A partial explanation for my relative comfort about our current circumstances (but not a justification arguing against the need to protect the future through citizen vigilance within a democratic framework) may be found in the past; with John Milton’s Areopagitica oddly enough. It is a famous historical text sometimes misrepresented as a defence of unfettered free speech when in fact its reach is much more modest. It is a powerfully argued case against pre-publication (but not post-publication) censorship and an appeal to legislators not to sanction a single all-powerful, state-sanctioned publishing house and system of official licensing of published works – all that’s fit to print so to speak.

The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco

The optimist in me sees parallels between Milton’s period (and his recent past age) and ours. By which I mean, humans protected and extended their access to and use of information, including written works. (To be clear: I don’t advocate a return to Medieval practices that would hang, draw and quarter people who illegally download Game of Thrones.)

The Protestant Reformation emerged as opposition to the Pope’s omnipotence routinely enforced by his agents using brutality and violence. Radicals were burned at stakes for diversifying and democratising access to information (e.g. printing the Bible in languages other than Latin). An oligarch – it could just as easily have been a Chinese Emperor or Russian Czar – sought to exercise total control over their world’s information – the content (words in Latin), platform (the book), delivery (the priesthood), access (attend church and hear the words being read out by a priest). The algorithms of the day, governing who got access to which packets of data, were set secretly by Cardinals in locked rooms.

Francisco De Goya - Inquisition

We got beyond the copyright protection practices of the Spanish Inquisition. The optimist in me believes / hopes an engaged citizenry, producing content (even if it’s no more than cat videos at times) as well as consuming content, will find was to survive, circumvent, use but not succumb to Vaidhyanathan’s ‘Googlisation’.

---

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGc2nN9OguQ from ‘Last Week Tonight’ Show on HBO

Looking forward to this ...

The man who gave the world self-assembly furniture

Gillis Lundgren. Pic: Bilder i Syd

A man I had never heard of before today has died. Vale Mr. Gillis Lundgren, fortuitous inventor in 1956 of flat-packed furniture and designer of the self-assembly Billy bookcase. 

We currently have eleven of them; ten up and bearing books, one still in its cardboard container waiting for Spike to finish the job. Gillis Lundgren, an unsung hero of modernity. A man who influenced the lives of tens of millions of us. Me included.

Mr. Angry from Gilmore comments ...

Failed politician and former Chief of Staff. Pic: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Down here in Australia there has been a flurry of journalistic activity arising from the anticipation of the publication today and extracts from a book about the downfall of Tony Abbott, former Prime Minister of Australia.  Much of the current excitement revolves around the fall out last September from perceptions (which means tittle-tattle and gossip) within the parliamentary Coalition group that Mr. Abbott might have been having an affair with his Chief of Staff, the reputedly fearsome Peta Credlin.

I neither know nor care about the depth or otherwise or the precise nature of the pair's personal relationship. It's simply none of my business.

Tony Abbott has, justifiably in my view, refused to comment on or respond to questions about whether or not he and Ms. Credlin have indeed been inside each others underpants. But if I understand correctly what Nicki Savva, the journalist and author at the centre of row, has asserted or reported in her book it's this. She doesn't allege or comment on claims our former PM and his Chief of Staff were at it. She does, however, quote from named sources in the former PM's own political party (who have subsequently gone public) who confirm that Coalition gossip about unfounded, firmly-denied and unprovable claims of an affair were what finally tipped Abbott Government supporters over the edge to unseat their leader.

But the whole 'did they / didn't they?' business of salacious tittle-tattle misses the point. And even the defensive Mr. Abbott sought to turn the gossip to self-serving advantage. In having a go at the (presumably) false and almost entirely irrelevant question of sex (unless you're Mr. and Mrs. Abbott or Mrs. and Mr. Credlin) Tony Abbott sought to reclaim his tarnished reputation by defending his own and his Government's political records and so-called achievements.

It was at this point of reading an article in today's Guardian that Mr. Angry from Gilmore added to the frenzy by submitting a comment below the line of my favourite journal.

Abbott said in a statement on Monday the best response to the book was “the objective record of the Abbott government”, 

It's none of my business and I truly could not care less about Tony Abbott's sex life. 

NOT - INTERESTED - IN - ANY - WAY - SHAPE - SIZE - OR - FORM. 

But it is disturbing how demonstrably delusional Mr. Abbott seems to be. The 'objective record' of the Government he led - and of which the current PM was a member - was so astonishingly bad, so inept that not even his Tory mates could do anything but dump Mr. Abbott - unambiguously the worst, most incompetent, failed Government leader in Australia's history.

My saving grace is that 16 fellow readers recommended my comment. One reader, however, contradicted my assessment, suggesting that 'stopping the boats' was part of the good 'objective record'. A Guardian reader? Please.

Painting the windows

Not quite what most people mean. Spike has been painting our windows. Love it.

Final booking made and paid for

After a week or so of back and forth with hotels in Singapore trying to confirm the existence or otherwise and circumstances of any wheelchair accessible shower area ...

• Novotel - no but have a good day
• So Sofitel - yes but there's a marble bench
• Ibis - yes but it's in a single-occupancy room

Rendezvous Hotel, Singapore

... we finally made a booking today. We'll be staying at the Rendezvous Hotel on Bras Basah Road. It's central, near the art gallery and museum, not far from Raffles if Spike insists on another Singapore Sling. I'm hoping it won't be too far from a Singapore Chilli Crab dinner which I missed out on last time we were in Singapore (my mother sought out more familiar fare).

This booking means we've arranged wheelchair accessible showers at every stop on our trip: Tokyo, Prestwick, Belfast, Kirkwall, Edinburgh, Manchester, Weymouth, London and Singapore. That's nine towns or cities in five countries. Ten years ago, maybe more recently than that, I doubt if I could have arranged that. Thirty years ago, when I first started travelling between continents, it would have been impossible. 

So we're moving ahead. There is some way yet to go but all one can ask is that we keep moving forward, keep making progress. The Dougie Herd who boarded that flight to Hong Kong back in 1988 would be impressed how far we have come. And he would be pleased to know he would play his small but important part in kicking along greater inclusion. For sure, though, he'd tell me to keep up the work because we've not yet reached the end of the road.

America ... just say no.

Even the preppy, white-kids who predominate at the Conservative Political Action Conference have this man pegged for the self-serving, megalomaniac charlatan we know him to be. Please America, just say no.

Rave on John Donne?

Earliest known image of John Donne, around 1590

I'm back with the metaphysical poets, in particular John Donne. This morning's English Literature lecture focused on the social, religious and political context for his work and our course director, Dr. Ian Higgins, gave an impressive, historicist-reading of key poems from the poets early, libertine period.

It's not hard to be seduced by the bravado of the early-period poems, their common tongue, their focus on sex, the irreverence of their implied commentary on the hierarchies of the poet's time. He would lose that outsider's edge as he advanced through Courtly patronage and his misogyny seems never to have been far from the surface in any period. But here we are, more than 400 years later and there is still much to be said for and learned from the inventiveness and daring of a poet who would be dead by my age. 

We looked at one of his post-coital, morning after poems in today's tutorial. As Van Morrison urged, Rave On John Donne.  Well ... up to a point Van, up to a point.

The Good Morrow by John Donne

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

Three priceless points

PTFC makes it two in a row against St. Johnstone

Who would have thought something as ordinary as football could matter? But I was very pleased indeed to read this morning that my team had won away from home in the Scottish Premier League. We rise to seventh place and despite the hard games ahead (against numbers one, two and three in the League - Celtic, Aberdeen and Hearts) our future in the top division looks secure for another year. Phew.

It seems one can take the boy away from the football but the game remains within the boy. The beautiful game indeed.

John Oliver on Donald Trump

Spot on and priceless.