Its a rather long Storify, so I won’t embed it here, but its worth pasting in the philosophical bit about mobile phone’s as an extension of one’s brain:

A mobile phone is not an implant, but it functions a bit like the bionic enhancements of science fiction lore.  Crucially, it should make us more productive, because of the time we save and the time we find (for example, when we sitting down on our commute, or sitting down doing our ablutions).

Read the whole thing.

Photo by Jeen Na

This has prompted me to wonder whether it would be feasible to run an organisation without a website. One could interact and share on Twitter; upload any AV content to sharing sites like Flickr and YouTube; editorialise on Storify and Facebook; publish all flyers and other documents to Scribd; use MailChimp as a mailing list and CRM solution; take money (donations, fees) via PayPal, and organise events on EventBrite. An online shop could be run through Amazon or eBay. Each of these services offers at least some space for a logo and summarised raison d’etre on a profile page, and many allow you to fully brand the pages you create.

What does this model lack? Well, it reduces websites to the sum of their parts. Each service does something very specific, and hones the functionality of that one feature or function. However, I think sometimes generic webspace is a virtue. It allows unexpected and complicated piece of content to be created. Also, I suppose the ‘bundling’ of several different types of content under the same top-level URL is a courtesy to the user.

Dissidents and anti-capitalists, and those concerned about online rights (which should be all of us, but in reality is very few of us) will have another criticism: this approach surrenders your content to third parties. Should you do something horrendous – like call for an end to theocracy in Iran, or remix some of Disney’s content, or be Julian Assange – then those who wish to censor you, be they government agents or corporate lawyers, can do so easily by petitioning these third party sites. In a crisis, you have a lot more control over our content if it’s all archived on your own web space.

Are there companies or NGOs that already use the websiteless approach?

I love stuff like this – it speaks to the idea of a shared humanity and global culture, something that only the internet reveals.

And it is enriching art like this which is likely to be compromised by the propose SOPA legislation in the USA.  Yesterday a number of sites, including Wikipedia, went ‘dark in protest at the proposed law.  SOPA is a US initiative and so its difficult to know what we in the rest of the world can do to support it.  Signing this Aavaz petition (along with a couple of million other people) might be a good start.

It is interesting that despite this decline, new technology can provide a facsimile of the old, communal TV viewing experience. Instead of discussing an episode over the water-cooler or at the school gates the following morning, we all have a ‘second screen’ and discuss it in real time over Twitter. This is not a particularly original observation, but I mention it because it is Twitter that tells me just how universally popular is Sherlock, the second series of which began last weekend, with Episode 2 to be aired later this evening.

Hilariously, given the above paragraph, I did not actually watch the first episode ‘live’ – instead I caught up later in the week via iPlayer. That doesn’t detract from how popular the show seems to be, at least among the connected Twitterati.

There are plenty of explanations for the success. The writing is excellent and funny. Actor Benedict Cumberbatch exudes an autistic confidence that is true to Conan Doyle’s original character. Mysteries and puzzles are always the most popular stories (c.f. the perennial dominance of detective stories over Lit Fic) and the Sherlock series adheres to the rules of a good detective story, presenting all the clues to the audience as they are presented to the sleuth himself.

However, I think it is the representation of technology, and the visual choices inspired by technology, which make the thing feel so contemporary. Holmes receives text messages and interacts with Lestrade on a mobile phone. Dr Watson has a blog, and the villainess of Series 2, Ep. 1 had her own Twitter account (both of which, as is obligatory these days, also exist in the real world and keep up the conceit). However, it is not just that the characters use technology that makes the show interesting, but how the director integrates that into the visual style. Sherlock employs the popular technique of overlaying motion graphics onto the action. It is method made easy by new digital editing tools (see the opening scene of Stranger Than Fiction with Will Ferrell for an ostentatious example of the genre, as is Fifty Nine Productions’ work in Two Boys at the ENO). In Sherlock, the subtle use of this style makes the technology seem fully integrated into the way the characters view the world. The text messages flow past and through Sherlock, he barely has to look at his handset. I think it mirrors the way most of us live, with our eyes flitting between the screen and reality so quickly that it is sometimes difficult to remember how exactly a particular piece of information came to us. It certainly represents the way a large audience segment are experiencing the show. Are they watching Sherlock, or are they watching #Sherlock? Both.

Last week, I managed to irritate legal blogger Jack of Kent (a.k.a. David Allen Green) by suggesting he was being stingy with his links, and then not telling him about it.  This was not entirely true on either count – He was not being as unlinky as I had thought; and I had tried to let him know.

Since David and I have worked together on the Libel Reform Campaign, I assume that he is not going to sue me for trashing his reputation in the Guardian.  However, elements of our exchange got me thinking about issues of ‘responsibility’ in blogging.

Here’s the thing:  When David asked me “why didn’t you check?” I felt strangely short-changed, despitre the fact that I certainly had not checked with him beforehand.  This is because when I typed the original post, I fully expected David to become aware of it. Incoming links and twitter recommendations usually alert people to the fact they are being discussed.  Moreover, I think some part of my subconsicious decided that to cite him was, in effect, an invitation to respond.  The invitation was not explicit, but to me it feels like an integral part of the blogging conversation.

I write this not to try and get myself off the hook for the pint I know I must pay to David, but instead to ask how responsible blogging might be different from responsible journalism. A key pillar of the existing Reynolds Defence (a public interest defence for libellous statements) is the idea of verification before publishing.  But should this hold for bloggers?  What of the idea (which I had internalised until David complained) that the early publishing of comment or allegations on a blog or twitter, is in itself part of the verification and fact-checking process?  For citizen bloggers, publishing a claim online carries the implicit (and often explicit) request – “please help me verify”.

Mainstream media critics of blogging, and the politicians, certainly disagree, and see the publication of anything unchecked as being irresponsible.  I would appreciate thoughts on this from The Man Himself – Could this form of early publication online be considered ‘responsible’, due to the very nature of the medium?

First, the fascinating Brian Kellet writes this, in a fisk of a Liz Jones column about the NHS says:

I’m not going to link to the original story because I don’t want to send visitors to the rag that is the Daily Mail.

Then, in a battle of the pseudonyms, highly respected legal blogger Jack of Kent decides that he is going to have an argument with Gudio Fawkes, but without actually namechecking Guido or linking to the ridiculous Death Pentalty campaign he just launched. I’m particularly disappointed in Jack of K, as he writes, in his very next post, that one should “use links and sources wherever possible.”

Linking out, regardless of whether you agree with the person you”re linking to, should be the standard for blogging, just as it is for academia. It is the link to sources which gives the work credibility. In contrast, anonymous gossip disguised as lobby reporting is one of the reasons why there is so little trust in journalists at the moment (a topic discussed at the recent POLIS journalism conference, where I asked a panel of spin doctors and hacks whether the press should abolish anonymous sources)… and the fact that a tabloid does not have to cite its sources is one of the reasons why #Hackgate could happen.

Moreover, we know that our online bubbles are not as diverse as we like to think. Safe silos like Facebook actually filter content to prioritise those people that you already agree with, and our failure to link out just strengthens the confirmation bias. I disagree with Paul Staine’s worldview and his approach to blogging, but I do actually want to know what he is saying about the death penalty, the better to campaign against him.

So, just as we’ve stopped using the Blame The Daily Mail cliche as a substitute for actual political analysis, can we have a moratorium on the whole “I’m not linking to those people” schtick, please? I know we can Google pretty much anything we want to these days, but not everything appears on page one of the results. Worse, a failure to link looks a bit sly and scheming. Let’s leave the obfuscation and misdirection to those outlets with lower standards: The Newspapers.

Its interesting that, as we move into an era where all the HTML code on our websites have been crafted for you us by the social networking companies, we are are nevertheless still the creators, or maybe the curators, of our online world. As Tom Chatfield put it (paraphrasing Alexis Madrigal) “Twitter is a human recommendation engine of which I am the algorithm.” The same is true of Facebook too, of course, which prioritises those people whose content you most frequently ‘like’. It is also true of Google, which is starting to take your location and your past browsing history into account when delivering search results. The danger with this, well documented with respects to Twitter, is that opinions that differ from your own are eventually weeded out of your personalised stream of information. Mistaken or ill-thought out beliefs are affirmed and not challenged, and our knowledge is weaker as a result. On a macro level, our democracies can become more polarised, with less consusus and a smaller space for compromise.

Once we are aware of this phenomenon, we can of course guard against it ‘manually’, by following people we disagree with, deliberately mixing up our RSS feeds, and otherwise introducing disruptions into the stream. There are two problems with this approach. The first, is that by confusiong or confounding the machines at Google and Facebook (to ensure that they serve you more diverse content) you are actually breaking their business model, because they can no longer target relevant adverts at you. If everyone did this, then advertisers will find other places to spend their pounds and dollars and the social internet services we rely upon may disappear. This is not necessarily our concern, and many people argue that essential web tools should not be provided by corporate bodies at all.

The second problem is that not everyone will introduce these disruptions into their stream. So while I may be reading all manner of different people with different views, they may not be reading me (or people like me) in return!

The worry, therefore, is that the liberating and equalising effects of the internet may begin to fizzle out. So far, we have been trumpeting the fact that anyone can become a global publisher with just a few keystrokes and clicks of a mouse. In recent years, once a website has been published, the author had the reasonable expectation that the site would have an equal chance of appearing, when a person looked for that subject matter on Google or other search engines. In the near future, this is unlikely to be so.

My final thought: I wonder what moral obligations Facebook etc have to me, to not filter what I publish on the web… Is there a free speech issue at stake here?

The panel at the Through A Web Darkly event. Dan Hind, Evgeny Morozov, Ben Hammersley, Tom Chatfield

Jalena Lecic, whos photos were stolen and posted on the 'Gay Girl In Damascus' site

Angela Philips of Goldsmiths College, at last Friday’s POLIS conference:

A Major skill for journalists is to learn how to authenticate sources

Or, words to that effect! I made the note on twitter and therefore may have paraphrased. To fully authenticate the quote readers will have to watch the video of the session when it becomes available.

This quote stuck out, because twice in two weeks, I’ve been quick to share information online which has then been questioned and discredited.

The first was the damning testimoney of an “executive of Sony Music UK” who described how Simon Cowell grooms and sexualises young performers, in his quest to find a British Justin Beiber.

Ronan was privately auditioned by SYCO scouts on two more occasions and, as is usual practice on BGT, he was “invited”  to audition for the show as a “preferred” contestant.  At the same time, Ronan and his parents were “required” to enter into a contract with SYCO.  Like all SYCO contracts, it is heavily  weighted in favour of the label and are notoriously bad, even in the cut-throat world of the music industry.  Simon effectively signed Ronan for life and he’s got little or no chance of ever  getting out of it…unless Simon decides to terminate.

Now the improbable perfection of little Ronan Parke has always made me feel uneasy, so I was quick to share the story on my Facebook page.  However, the original post quickly disappeared from the website where it was posted and Simon Cowell issued such a strong denial over matters of fact that I felt it rendered the acusatory, anonymous post unreliable.  The following day, James Ward posted an excellent analysis of how the attack was propagated by a twitter account @ukLegion, which has also now disappeared from Twitter.  I shared James’ link on Facebook too.

Earlier this week, reports emerged of the abduction of a Syrian blogger in Damascus.  I duly tweeted out the links on the @englishpen feed, because that is precisely the sort of information we are supposed to share.  However, by Thursday it emerged that no-one can be found who has actually physically met the blogger, Amina Abdallah Arraf.  It appears the photos posted on her site are fake, but it is not clear whether the entire thing is an elaborate hoax, or whether she has cleverly covered her tracks by ensuring that if no-one has met her, no-one can unwittingly betray her.  I was reminded of the Ali Abduleman disappearance in Bahrain in March – I am still not clear whether he was abducted by security personnel, or has simply gone into hiding.

I have several things to say about this.  The first is that linking to hoax information is clearly embarrassing, no two ways about it.  Here’s my worst example, although to be fair it was reminiscent of a real story.  As the Literally Unbelievable blog shows with its comments on The Onion articles, other people are much more gullible than I.

The second thing is to say that, nevertheless, the internet can work as a sort of fact-check engine.  The act of sharing a link does not and should not imply complete endorsement.  In the case of the SyCo smear I, at least, was quick to share the original article and the rebuttals.  In this example, one could say that the act of posting/sharing is also an act of verification.  When you publicise some text, does it stand up to scrutiny?  If not, you have learned a fact about the world, which you also publish.  This method is something that bloggers understand inately.  However, in formal journalistic and legal circles such a practice would still be lumped in with ‘publish and be damned’ as irresponsible journalism.  But it is more akin to open-source fact-checking.

I will also say that internet publishing has the huge advantage over print in that it allows corrections to the original article.  In the case of Amina Abdallah Arraf, the three highly reputable news organisations I linked to (Al Jazeera, the New York Times and the Washington Post) were all able to correct the original article.  This, I think, lessens the possibility of misinformation spreading.

Finally, this issue puts me in the mind of Ste Curran’s Monica, a play about a fantastic and witty online friend who turns out not to be real.

Two links to share.  First (via Kottke, inevitably), Dazzle Camoflage for Faces.  Using the same principles that the Navy used to foil submaries in the First World War, its possible to confuse facial recognition software by the clever use of makeup and hairstyles.  The only problem is, to confuse the all pervasive Facebook, one would need to permenantly adopt a makeup style similar to the 1980s New Romantic look, at all times, professional and social.

Second, read this diverting short-story by Paul Ford, ‘Nanolaw With Daughter‘.  When companies can gather very specific biographical, personal and location data about you, they can send you targetted law suits:

On a Sunday morning before her soccer practice, not long after my daughter’s tenth birthday, she and I sat down on the couch with our tablets and I taught her to respond to lawsuits on her own. … We had gone to a baseball game at the beginning of the season. They had played a song on the public address system, and she sang along without permission.

Eynulla Fatullayev speaks with friends immediately after his release. Photo: English PEN / Turxan Qarışqa on flickr

Some good news: Eynulla Fatullayev has been released in Azerbaijan. I reported last month on the demonstrations I have attended on his behalf.

An immediate tweet discussion of the news caught my eye.  From @dontgetfooled

Wow. So “clicktivism” can work after all?

This refers to Amnesty’s clever little Twitter campaign launched earlier this week (here’s my contribution). @mePadraigReidy responded thus:

clicktivism, + several years of work by @tasheschmidt from Index, Article 19, @englishpen and, of course @amnestyuk

It is worth pausing analyse the success of this campaign and unravel the various elements. It is of course wrong to say that “Twitter released Fatullayev” although some media outlets will report it as such. My formulation would be to say that the Twitter response was made possible only because the groundwork had been laid by groups like ARTICLE19, Index on Censorship, Amnesty International and yes, English PEN. This ephemeral and intangible “awareness raising” is often undertaken as an act of faith – there are few metrics to measure how effective such campaigns are. As a campaigner, it is particularly encouraging to see how this work does actually pay-off in the long term. Communicating this to our donors and members is the next task.

We also cannot discount the other effects. @onewmphoto said:

With news of the release of Eynulla Fatullayev following @amnestyuk‘s Twitter campaign, also talk of a ‘Eurovision effect’ on FB #Azerbaijan

Again, it is useful to have a demonstration of how a particularly nebulous cultural activity or action actually has a real effect. Eurovision, and other types of International comings-together, are always accompanied by grandiose claims about ‘understanding’ and ‘cultural capital’ and fraternity between the human nations. (I am thinking of the World Cup and the Olympics as the Ur-examples of this). However, although there are country-themed parties and school projects aplenty, it is rarely clear how this translates into ‘soft’ political power or influence beyond our borders.

The Fatullayev case is therefore a good and welcome example of where these cultural events do have benefits. As soon as Ell and Nikki won the Eurovision Song Contest two weekends ago, the mainstream media and the social media became peppered with negative and savvy stories about Azerbaijan (it was my job to contribute some of them!). I do not think for one moment that @PresidentAz reads anything I write with my thumbs. But I do know that we all contributed to a critical mass of short sentences that together was of a significant size to be noticed. It is definitely the case that Azerbaijani officials, linguists and supporters would have been aware of this chatter. Having all these discussions in the public forum of Twitter and Facebook (and ensuring through hashtags that said officials were aware of the conversations) would have left them in no doubt that a Eurovision PR headache was awaiting them in April 2012. Such were the circumstances that made it easier for the Azerbaijani Government to release Fatullayev, than to keep him detained. The Independence Day Celebrations on 28th May provided a face-saving, patriotic excuse to act, despite the fact there was no material change in Eynulla’s case or situation.

It would be prudent to note some obvious caveats. First, Eynulla Fatullayev was pardoned – his conviction was not overturned. This places his release as a gift of President Aliyev, not the just functioning of the law. This is not ideal.

Second, this release of a prisoner does not mean that the space for free speech in Azerbaijan is getting wider. In fact, the opposite may be true, as the Government on Baku proposes new ways to restrict discourse online.  A much more difficult campaign, not centred around a free speech martyr, awaits.