Buon Natale da Milano

A very 21st century take on the Nativity... Enjoy and a merry Christmas to one and all!

Thanks to Granito973

Quote of the Week

"Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution." (the Shirky Principle)

- Clay Shirky

Ode to OOglies

Saturday morning TV - I just came across this programme called OOglies. I must say, these characters are great, even though they could've been anthropomorphized a bit more lovingly. They're just so familiar: the paraphernalia of my every day life in a more than familiar world, instantly recognizable as an urban 21st century lodging. The show's premise is that, when we're not there, our household objects come to life, usually hellbent on all manner of stunts, and often involving doing pranks on each other. The show's creators have perhaps come up with a winning formula - let's just hope they use it effectively.

I think it was Paul Johnson who marvelled at the capacity children have for seeing - to a child, seeing is believing - an average sock as having a life-force of its own. (Towels, apparently, are especially popular characters among infants.) In this vein, it's great how the show animates the most mundane of household objects with a personality and conatus of their own.

It almost reminds me of what it was like having that ability, exhibited almost exclusively by children, of rendering inanimate things into life, often willingly but sometimes subconsciously. For us adults, well, we have cartoons, video games and drugs. Not quite the same, but let's be thankful for what we've got.

In any case, I'm sure the inhabitants of pastoral England would have also recognized the world of Wind in the Willows - so they'd know what I'm talking about. Disney got it, for his time; and Pixar, while they undoubtedly make the finest children's movies these days (I still haven't gotten my head around how good Toy Story 3), their protagonists tend to summoned from a mid-20th century mind, such as the great Walt.

These OOglies dudes, however, their movie minds are furnished by our turn of the 21st century urban home. If these guys play their cards well, and come up with longer, more intricate storylines, they could become great. I, for one, am already a fan.

Flashes of inspiration

Evening Standard, 16 September: "They won't care because of the 'come and go' nature of participants [sic] - catching one person doesn't mean much. I'd say it adds nothing but fuel to the fire - if 'anynymous' had one goal, it would be that a group of strangers with the same ideals cannot be stopped by halting the actions of one person." These are the words of Yuki, a very 21st century revolutionary.

What would his predecessors - the motley crew of freedom fighters, terrorists and other fanatics of centuries past - have done for such a capability? The success of these heroes to some, villains to others, was always dependent upon the force of their leader's character. Victory would be the result of his (Boudica and Joan of Arc would be rare examples of her) ability to instil enough fervour in others so as to create a loyal following with which to mould the world toward their goal. Whatever their cause célèbre, the tools employed were word, paper and fist - which makes for a lot of blood, sweat and tears.

These days, however, the World Wide Web allows activists, hactivists and slactivists, along with other more dangerous unmentionables, to take root at any time, in any location, as long as they have broadband. Demagogues never had it so good. Even nature requires her seeds to travel by water, ground or air, but we have overcome such spatial constraints when disseminating ideas around the world. So, a nifty mechanism, being connected.

Could someone please make an animation of the Earth from above with small flashes indicating whenever someone, somewhere gets hitched to a cause and takes it upon themselves to lash out against the world that they cannot tolerate. It would probably be quite a pretty sight, flashy too, and scary, to boot. I suppose a nicer version could be made with flowers indicating each time someone, somewhere donates to charity or gets involved in a good cause.

The internet has, alas, the potential to unleash a perfect storm - so let's make sure the good flowers outnumber the flashes, shall we, however Manichean that may sound. On second thought, that sounds more like hippy-talk. Ah well, so be it, I still stand by the point.

Quote of the Week

"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge."

Bertrand Russell

Wikilogue

The first time I came across WikiLeaks, I thought what a great idea. It's online nature gave it a level of impunity from state actors and it was therefore a formidable tool for making governments more accountable to their citizens. It promised to empower whistleblowers around the world, to be a thorn in the side of elected politicians and dictators alike, should they think of dusting over any shady dealings. So, commendable stuff, surely.

Since releasing WikiLeaks some four years ago, the founder, Julian Assange's work has been at considerable cost to himself. He has received death threats and his freedom of movement is severely curtailed - as tends to happen when one is wanted by several governments.

I'd still be applauding him if all these sacrifices were due to a simple, altruistic compulsion to promote freedom of information. On this occasion, however, by publishing documents that identify facilities around the world which the US State Department perceives as vital to American security, Mr Assange has taken an unwise and unhelpful step, from exposing injustices already committed to placing people in clear and present danger.

The earlier sections of these Embassy Cables were more interesting than revealing. There was little of real consequence, for example, from learning what American diplomats really thought of our European leaders. Nor was it stop-the-press news that the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was of the view that Saudi Arabia helped raise funds for Sunni terrorists.

The Cables contained another 250,000 or so letters and snippets like these, but the majority of the information in them did little more than provide a glimpse into the views and mindsets of the American foreign policy machine. 


That said, the straight forward language deployed by the US officials did probably ruffle a few feathers around the world and complicate some international relationships - which is another factor Assange doesn't seem to have troubled his mind with. Indeed, as a result of putting this information in the public domain, diplomats and officials will doubtless be less candid in their future correspondence - something that is surely not conducive to good public policy or amicable international relationships.

In any case, publishing detailed information on hundreds of military and civilian buildings, Assange inadvertedly began aiding and abetting those out to harm the United Sates and every other country identified in the documents. He has placed everyone who works at these facilities in direct danger, and indirectly endangered all of us those who rely upon the facilities and the services they provide - that's you, me, us.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind said that this leak bordered on criminal, and it certainly did fulfil the criteria of recklessness in English law at least. Publishing this material did and does entail a foreseeable risk that some nutjob or disgruntled visa applicant decides to find the nearest place whence to vent their anger at the US - or against another community or government. If advising terrorists on the best targets around the world is not recklessness, then please enlighten me as to what is.

This week Mr Assange wrote that, "WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time, we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed." But WikiLeaks in no way vets the people accessing the sensitive information it provides - so for who's benefit are these documents supposed to be for? And what part are they to play in what Assange is out to accomplish? Does he really consider it useful, for example, that everybody is allowed unfettered access to detailed information on the gas pipelines that are most important for European security?

Judging by how his wikirays seem to be projected solely on the US, he has a beef with America, quite likely with its foreign policy and global dominance in particular. He's probably out to create a more just and equitable world order as well. This would be fair enough and good on you, of course, but I find it difficult to believe that he would be so stupid or naive as to not realise that the only people likely to benefit from this information are those out to harm others. How will Assange explain his role, should an intentional tragedy occur in one of these places.

This disregard for the safety of others reveals how he's actually less a champion of freedom of information, the common good, and more a person on an anti-US quest. In this instance at least, the collateral damage that may ensue is of no consequence for him, as long as the main target suffers.

Even his colleagues seem to think so: In the NYT article "WikiLeaks Founder on the run, Trailed by Notoriety", they are said  to be "abandoning him for what they see as erratic and imperious behaviour, and a nearly delusional grandeur unmatched by an awareness that the digital secrets he reveals can have a price in flesh and blood." According to his colleagues, it was also his decision alone "to release the Afghanistan documents without removing the names of Afghan intelligence sources for Nato troops."

His actions are thus guided by a most shallow form of utilitarianism where the end always justifies the means. By putting the health, safety and security of others at risk solely to further his agenda, he puts no premium on the intrinsic value of others, and sees us only in terms of our utility toward fulfilling his plan. He doesn't even allow for any discussion or debate on the wisdom of his actions, he just does it, whatever the consequences.

These particular leaks are no longer about freedom of information: they are about one person putting others in danger so as to further his singular world view. He is, in short, an idealogues - and they tend to be dangrerous.

UPDATE: Some former employees of WikiLeaks have just released a new website, OpenLeaks. Although not fully operational yet, according to the creators, the main impetus for creating the new site was to have a democratic and accountable organisation for helping whistleblowers, rather than that lead by Assange, who they accuse of behaving like "some kind of emperor or slave trader."

Data vs Words

Bowman inside H.A.L., 2001 A Space Oddyssey

My wife just showed me a text message that I had sent to her last summer. In it, I noted (on good authority - I'll provide the source later) that some number crunchers (or word munchers?) have calculated that we humans created more data in 2009 than we have in all of our previous 5000 years combined. That's a lot of words, numbers and the stuff that holds them together.

Brings to mind 2001: A Space Oddessey, by Arthur C. Clarke. In the prologue, he tells us of the civilization that created the Monoliths, and how they began to externalize their consciousnesses with the aid of technological devices - robot parts for the body and hard drives for the mind, if you will. Could the internet be the beginning of some similar kind of process for us?

A lot has also been said recently of the effects that information technology will have on our memory, thought processes and such, but if the above fact is correct, then either we created an awful lot of rubbish in 2009 or the human race has been mighty lazy for the last five millennia. I would tend toward the former - God only knows the depths of the murkier side of the internet. Anyway, just a thought...

PS. the Big Day was an absolute success: everything went brilliantly, the wife was stunning and Yours Truly is now a very happily married man!

W-Day -1

The day before The Day. Everything has been organized to military precision. Over the past five months, the plans drawn up by the formidable General Valentina have been executed to the most minute detail, with logistics, sourcing and production support provided by Yours Truly. All is going to plan - but, then, from out the blue, trouble appears.


First, the Finnish union for air cabin crew threatens strikes, which are set to begin four days before the wedding, creating considerable worry for our guests arriving from dear aul Pohjola. To make matters worse – or infuriatingly surreal, actually – the National Mediator, Esa Lonka, refuses to reschedule his two week holiday in the forest to attend a national defence course. So, while he's with his buddies, playing war games by day and drinking around the fireplace by night, the talks to avert a strike are in a motionless limbo. And, incredibly, there is no-one to take his place as apparently he's the only person in the entire country who's qualified to negotiate such industrial disputes. The talks to avert the strike are thus allowed to progress only for one day per week (Saturday), two weeks running.


Mr Lonka does have the Finnish legal system behind him – national defence is a right for every man - and, in a typically Finnish manner, he insists in availing of it. He is quoted as explaining his decision, "the National Mediator plans any talks around his own schedule". The training was in no way compulsory, but he added as justification "the course is renowned as a good one." The fact that thousands of people would be affected by his decision, both personally and financially, does not seem to come into his equation. And so, with the abetting of this self-serving and sanctimonious git, the strike begins – forcing many of our guests to change their flight plans.


Meanwhile, a perfect storm is brewing. The coldest November in decades has arrived and snow storms hit England, closing down Gatwick airport and affecting the entire transport system of the South East - again creating havoc for our guests, forcing some to make their way to London via Riga, Oslo, Berlin and other distant lands.


After the English Ministry of Frost calms down, however, its Irish counterpart decides to throw a temper tantrum of its own. Subzero temperatures and heavy snow fall in Dublin disrupt both airports and roads - creating a virtually impregnable pincer movement affecting anyone wanting to travel. Four people have already had to pull out as a direct result, and, at present, Yours Truly still doesn't know whether the rest of the Dublin contingent will make it out from the no longer Green, now more White Isle.


But that's not all. The Italian familia has been struck down by a virus, meaning several immediate family members had to pull out at the last moment. In addition, some guests missed their flights for lack of boarding cards, while others have problems with their hotel bookings. Heathrow also doesn't disappoint, luggage gets lost on the way. Mamma mia...


We shall see how the rest of the day pans out; who will make it, and who will unfortunately be left behind. They say all is fair in Love and War. After this week, I'd like to add that all is also possible in them - for we are currently experiencing the The Fog Of Love! At 1158 hours, my thoughts are a) I cannot wait until tomorrow b) this is all worth it because of Valentina c) this is the last time we do this d) I'm incredibly touched by the lengths to which our guests are going to make it over e) what else can go wrong? f) bring it on, I'm only just getting started and g) needs must I stop writing now and snap back into action.

Polis is man writ large - Part 1

From humble beginnings...

London: the ageing grandeed of the world

Having lived an eventful life, rich in experiences and filled with culture, politics, business and the lot, this man of gravitas, eloquence and intelligence now spends most of his time in a stately mansion amidst the riches he has accumulated over the years.

He prefers to see to his responsibilities from the study these days, from where he can also catch up on the latest news and take care of his correspondance, while reclining comfortably on his winged, fine leather chair; every now and then refreshing his thoughts with a sip of cognac (only the finest, of course). The room is lit by a grand fireplace situated a few metres in front of his desk, and, although he still works hard, he has become prone to letting his mind wander - the flickering light often enticing him to follow how the objects around him become illuminated for a split second before falling back into the shadows. The soft sound of classical music also adds to the ambience of enlightenment - he still derives great pleasure from the way concertos and arias instruct his ossicles to stimulate his mind.

London, today, is more than comfortable with his surroundings. Perhaps he should be, after all, he owns many of the greatest art-works ever created, along with volume upon volume of history, litareture and science, and a myriad of arcitechtural masterpieces, both new and old, subtle and stunning. And any thorough inventory of his would also uncover countless cultural treasures from home and abroad, and a vast amount of wealth, albeit mostly in illiquid form. 

He knows his possessions well, for each of them is imbued with deep meaning: it's own story appended with that of how it came to be in his possession - reminding him of earlier conquests, victories and setbacks. They make him proud, for they are his proof of an eventful life and a productive career. Thus, with a statesmanlike air of grandeur, he now breathes easily, no longer having to show off his status - it is self evident.

London does, however, have doubts about his future: how much longer will he be able to sustain the effort and high standards required to support such wealth and glory?  He also finds it difficult to trust this responsibility on others because, in his mind's eye, they fail to grasp fully how creation and development must be a perpetual work in progress if one wishes to excel like he did.

Saddled by this disconcerting thought, which murmurs at the back of his mind,  his age has, alas, forced him to begin retreating from the frontline of worldly affairs - although others would actually whisper in private that his services are no longer required to the extent that they were before. Perhaps, he thinks, this must be the fate of every great man, should they live to an old age: to become valued less for action and more for advice.

Now that his conatus has begun to whither - tempus edax rerum - London looks inward. Instead of focusing on further gain and conquest, he rests his thoughts on his dominion; on his priceless collections of ideas, innovations and artefacts.  He delights in how their temporal and geographical breadth are still unsurpassed by any other place - save for that of the whole world itself.

As he has also seen a lot of what this world has to offer, he is uniquely capable of fully appreciating the finer things in life: he can easily distinguish between the different schools of art, and in painting, for example, he not only understands how pigments create hues, but he is also privy to to the untold references they point to. London still spends hour after hour cultivating his mind and soul with the vasts amounts of knowledge that can be found in this veritable Alexandria he created; just like his taste buds are tickled daily by cuisine and beverages from the four corners of the earth. He delights in enjoying his privileged position - a luxury earned over centuries of hard work.

As the horizon of twilight creeps ever closer, this gentleman lives less for influence and more for enjoyment, safe in the knowledge that he's already achieved long lasting greatness. Rather than trying to outwit old age by continuing the endeavours of his youth, he now focuses on his accomplishments - power, after all, inevitably sides with the next generation. The way he acknowledges this is a sure sign of his confidence.

To a world city

Everybody looks good on Facebook

I went to see The Social Network yesterday and, by Jove, it’s a superb film. It would’ve been easy for David Fincher, the director, to make a blockbuster about Facebook by just focusing on pokes, Farmville, mafia knights, or whatever useless game you can play there; or, equally, he could’ve made a romcom starring, say, Jennifer Aniston and Luke Wilson about how this particular “.com” can start and end relationships – a 21^st century update of You've Got Mail, if you will. The sheer number of Facebook users alone would’ve guaranteed huge takings at the box office.

But for anyone who hasn’t seen it, you will only get about 2 minutes of Facebook in this movie – the other 118 minutes are a cinematic tour de force about genius and the price of friendship. The creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, doesn’t come off well in the movie, although, even he, the central antihero of the story, can’t compete in assholedom with how Sean Parker, creator of Napster, is portrayed in this film. By the way, what does it say about us – or possibly just me –that a charismatic jerk tends to be perceived as being much worse than a geeky one?

So, a great film – go see it if you haven’t already – but I digress. I was actually going to write about why this tool, so ubiquitous today (at least in the West), caught the attention of millions with such lightning speed. In seven years it has grown from a college prank (FB’s predecessor, facemash.com) to a must have social tool boasting over 500 million users, and counting.  As the movie notes, “Facebook me” has begun to supplant the usual “call me” when eliciting contact from others, at least among younger generations.

To give some idea of the sheer scale of how Facebook impacts our world today, in the movie, the creator of Napster brags with some reason about how he changed the music industry forever. True enough, downloading and sharing of copyrighted material P2P is bringing a swift end to the days of a £15 CD bought from HMV, and Parker was indeed the first to popularize downloading music – most often for free. To say that he totally transformed more than an industry, however, would be an exaggeration because people still listen to music like they did before, even if the format has changed. Likewise, the business model used by record companies has simply evolved from a big investment to get the whole album, to buying just the interesting bits with small instalments. Plus ça change.

Facebook on the other hand... We are faced every now and then with new technologies that transform the how and why we do what we do: papyrus scrolls to pigeons to morse code to mobile phones, for example.* But this virtual world we are now moving into, spearheaded by Facebook, might actually change the very nature of how we human beings are.

Before I go any further, however, for the record, I don’t have anything against Facebook. I use it and I like it and I will continue using it because it’s great. And fun. And useful. It's simply great. It helps me to keep in touch with my friends, and with people from my home towns and beyond. It also entertains me in many ways and I like seeing what my classmates from primary school are up to even if I haven’t seen them in for years. In short, for me, it acts like a delightful glue connecting and unifying my past selves with whoever and wherever I currently am.


Now back to the matter at hand. Perhaps it’s just a logical extension of the internet applied to our every day affairs, but, as the movie hints on several occasions, Facebook is actually far more than the medium it works on. This is because of how it transposes so much of what we want and crave (popularity, friends, coolness, wit, sex, intelligence, looks, etc.) into a virtual world where we can have it all, and it does this to a far greater effect than television, another sign of our times.


The way people spend time on the website – unique visits to Facebook have a longer duration than any other website – refining their profiles, looking at and uploading pictures, corresponding with friends or playing games; adding likes and dislikes, filling out surveys... You know the drill. This myriad of simulacra provided by Facebook and its affiliates has created a new world unto itself. And day by day we move more and more of our lives into the realm of this virtual world. Facebook has achieved this by creating a space for us where we can be that what our egos want us to be, and nothing less, if I may put it in such a Freudian way.

Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook

In this light, its popularity is unsurprising – for what could be more appealing to a modern individual than a virtual world where people will only see and learn of you that which you want them to? It’s kind of like the 80s fashion of wearing and advertising your musical allegiances with band pins. Facebook, however, takes this psychology a quantum leap further by enabling people to clothe their virtual self in the finest of garments their imaginations can come up with. We can add bios, photos, interests, books we’ve read, status updates about our latest thoughts, links to songs and articles we like – basically we are allowed to design and change our whole (virtual) self at the touch of a button or two, and, most importantly, everybody else will be informed about it instantaneously.

Rousseau would have been horrified. Our Facebook self could be construed as an extreme example of his major gripe with society, that of veiling ones’ self with garments (read false advertising) in order to look and feel superior to others. Indeed, Facebook must be New York Fashion Week to his idealized state of nature where "there is a removal of all cultural clothes", which he thought are like "garlands on our shackles" because of how they constrain, distort and ultimately disfigure our interactions.

In today’s Sunday Times, Caitlin Moran quotes a recent article, according to which up to 40% of the information we give online is fabricated. She thinks this isn’t too bad – after all, we also do a lot of this in real life, only offering to others the information about ourselves that we want them to have, and, hey, sometimes adding an embellishments or two. Or three. I think she misses the point, though: the thing that makes the Facebook fib so much more powerful, alluring and addictive is that it doesn’t happen in real time. When social networking, you and I can create a fantasy “Me” at our leisure, from our home, or from wherever we are, day or night, and all the while we are safe in the knowledge that “I am in control of this conversation”. This 21^st century form of interaction is devoid of interlocution, and therefore you drive the narrative at your will.

That’s why Zuckerberg’s idea has such power. It feeds off and into our vanity, fantasies and egotistical yearning to be heard, to be seen, to be respected, be loved; and it does so by giving us total control over our social output. For at the end of the day, this is Facebook: a place with no bad hair days where we can take all the time we want to come up with that killer line without ever risking an embarrassing silence or an unintended faux pas.

Contrast that to real, everyday life as it has been through millennia, where things go wrong, where we often take our foot from our mouth only to put the other one in, and where we usually end up being far less impressive to others than we would like. A social existence where we must interact in real time and think on our feet, even if we might end up chewing on them, that is the real world.

It does kind of scare me, the thought of how big an influence this mode of interaction may ultimately have on how individuals see themselves and behave with each other, and by extension how society works. This is because Facebook, as a technology, panders to one of our lowest common denominators, vanity – just like Big Brother encourages people to judge and look down on others. That’s why I fear for the next generations, who grow up without ever knowing that there was a time without the distinction of “Friend” and “Facebook Friend” – and Jove help us if people begin to conflate the two. Even if this is overly dramatic, Facebook could be to society what the splitting of the atom was to science: an amazing tool and achievement, a game changer, but one that could also make things alot worse.

Maybe that’s just the conservative old-fart me talking – after all, who’s to say the FB Way isn’t as good as how our fathers and forefathers lived? Well, if Facebook isn’t just a fad – and I don’t think it will be because it’s simply too good a tool even if it’s name may change or some FB 2.0  might arrive – I would say it has the capacity to influence the deepest foundations of culture and society, namely who and what we see ourselves as. It could influence our interactions more than perhaps any other invention since... well, I’ll actually have to think about that and come back to you later because rarely does the way we humans conceptualize ourselves change to the extent of bifurcating ourselves into two worlds – the real and the face. Would that Rousseau were here to comment, he would probably do a better job!

In any case, the movie is great – do check it out – and I’ll try to think of other paradigm shifts, as Kuhn would say, that could rival this one, brought about by an obnoxious genius called Zuckerberg.

* Did you hear this story in South Africa, where a company with two offices got so annoyed by how slow their broadband was that they filled a USB stick with data, which they attached a homing pigeon. They then began uploading an identical amount of data to their other office via their broadband connection simultaneously as they set the pigeon off to do its thing. Believe it or not, the pigeon won and reached their sister office first. Nature 1, Internet 0.

The first post

It's often said that, when writing, the first line is always the most difficult. Luckily for me, though, I'm literally about to start my last week as a bachelor. In exactly seven days and 11 minutes, on December 4th, your humble narrator will be tying the knot at Kew Gardens, London, with the beautiful and inspirational Ms Valentina.

People often talk of wedding jitters before the Big Day and, although I must admit to experiencing some butterflies when thinking about the day, overall, I just can't wait for it to begin. Anyone who's played their part in an important match or performance or such will recognize the feeling: I just want to go out there now and do it. In this case, the event is the rest of my life - but my luck is doubled by having the most amazing fianceé - this takes any pressure away because I know it will be sweet. 

So with that, the metaphorical champagne bottle is shattered on the hull of this blog. Welcome to any and all who might come across it - and all comments most welcome.