Historian Niall Ferguson was similarly upset by a negative review. His book Civilisation was eviscerated by Pankaj Mishra in the London Review of Books (a much more credible and prominent platform than Amazon’s product review pages). Ferguson felt he had been defamed as a racist. However, in contrast to Chris McGrath, Ferguson chose a different forum to express his grievance and demand satisfaction – the letters page.
This approach – fighting words with more words – is precisely the kind of counter-speech I advocated in my ‘Way of The Blogs‘ piece for the Guardian a couple of years ago. It offers a form of redress to the aggrieved person, while avoiding censorship, and it is also much cheaper. I think it is a much classier way of dealing with critics, than hauling them down to the Royal Courts of Justice.
When it comes to the environment, there is an awful lot of rhetoric about how ordinary consumers should take action to change the way businesses operate. By choosing green products or services, the hope is that the capitalist system will eventually reward green products. The companies that work with, rather than against, our fragile environment, will eventually make money.
This kind of incrementalism is noble, but it often seems ineffectual and weak. People have so many decisions to make every day about what to purchase, and the ‘green’ option is often the more expensive choice. In these austere times, it is naive to expect environmentally friendly products to prevail in the marketplace, by virtue of their sheer moral strength.
With this in mind, the Ecobond from Ecotricity is – if you will excuse the apt but unimaginative metaphor – a breath of fresh air. The company has green credentials (and a reassuring green logo, too) but the Ecobond is a straightforward financial proposition. Ecotricity is raising money to build a new tranche of wind farms, and is asking investors to contribute to the enterprise. They say they will pay 6% per year for four years on your investment, then return the capital to you at the end of the term.
I am not an energy analyst or a financial advisor, but in the short term, a business that makes money selling power to the UK national grid must surely be a reliable investment.
Its almost as if those people who are actually spending the money to make this work are participating in a leisure activity, rather than an everyday participation in a market that could sustain the local economy.
The new series of Masterchef: The Professionals, which began this evening, has reminded me of why I like the Masterchef franchise. The judges’ feedback is in an entirely different league to that offered on the Saturday night ratings-chasers, Strictly Come Dancing and The X-Factor.
Watching Greg Wallace and Monica Gelati give their comments on ten different duck and leak dishes, I was reminded of David Foster Wallace’s fantastic ‘Present Tense‘, a Harper’s review of A Dictionary of Modern American Usage. In the long essay, Wallace takes on the conundrum of ‘authority’ when applied to matters that are ultimately subjective, such as the use of language. He concluded that the author of the book has earned his authority by showing the breadth of his reading and thinking on the subject at hand.
I see a similar earned authority on Masterchef. Monica Gelati and Michel Roux, Jnr come to the series with quite a significant amount of (shall we say) ‘establishment’ authority, because they run Michelin starred restaurants. But the awarding of Michelin stars is a controversial affair and is ultimately based on the opinions of a small number of elite restaurant critics. Why should we, the hoi polloi who watch Monday Night telly, trust what they say? Masterchef is enjoyable and interesting because Gelati, Roux and Wallace (along with John Torode, who presents/judges the public and celebrity versions of the show) never take their own authority for granted. Each piece of feedback is explained and justified in quite a detailed manner. Even though cookery deals primarily with taste and smells, the audience finds that they agree with and endorse the (subjective) opinions of the judges. We all learn something about cooking as a result, and the show gives us insights we can take back to our own kitchens and dinner tables.
Compare this with Strictly Come Dancing, where the feedback is often extremely generic (“You know what, I really liked that dance, Audley!”), emotive comments based on the person, not the dance being judged (“Anita, you’re such a nice person!”) or riddle with soundbites – Flamboyant Bruno Tonioli’s orgasmic responses seem pre-prepared and designed to entertain, rather than inform. Craig Revel-Horwood and chief judge Len Goodman attempt to comment on the holds or the footwork, but there is scant explanation of how the dances are supposed to be performed, which leaves the audience on the outside of the experience.
X-Factor, of course, is hideously compromised by the fact that the ‘judges’ are also the mentors of the competing singers. Their feedback is tainted from the outset, and – within the context of the show – they lack the ‘authority’ to comment on any given act. This is before we take into account the deeply cynical and disingenuous feedback that implies that the terrible Frankie Coccoza is even in the same league as the astonishing Misha B.
The fact that the judges in Strictly and X-Factor wield their authority without constantly ‘earning’ it accounts, I think, for the disparity between what they say should happen, and the verdict that the paying audience delivers. It’s a funny paradox that Masterchef, which is run in an entirely authoritarian manner by the judges, still manages to involve its audience more than the shows that allow viewers to vote for the winner.
From the Conference website: “It will launch a more focused and inclusive dialogue between key
cyberspace actors from across the world including from government,
industry and civil society. This will aim to develop a better collective
understanding of how to protect and preserve the tremendous
opportunities that the development of cyberspace offers us all.”
Before the conference, The Open Rights Group co-ordinated a joint letter the the Foreign Secretary William Hague:
“This has created a unique opportunity for the UK government to show leadership in promoting the rights of citizens online.
However,
the government’s record on freedom of expression and privacy is less
than ideal. Britain’s desire to promote these ideals internationally is
being hampered by domestic policy.”
The question of whether to use the prefix ‘cyber’, and the problems with the media and the wifi provision, are “process” stories, not the substance of the conference. However, there was a feeling that these issues do betray the fact that the government is behind in its thinking. The kind of people who are at the cutting edge of thinking about the Internet are the kind of people that wouldn’t have made the schoolboy errors described.
Onto the substance. Mark Graham of the Oxford Internat Institute gave a talk on Connectivity and Knowledge Economies
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Just gave a talk at #LondonCyber on “Connectivity and Knowledge Economies” – my talk is available here: http://t.co/yqKrEwoH
All these seem sensible – the online equivalent of a State’s offline duty to collect some tax and protect its citizens. However, the devil is in the detail. As with the offline world, sometimes the State overreaches and legitimate actions are classified as a ‘threat’. To be fair, he seems to acknowledge this:
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#LondonCyber Hague calls for rules of the road for cyberspace but not state or govt controls
This final point is noteworthy. I’ve discussed before how authoritarian governments will become much more savvy in their approach to censorship, ‘bottlenecking’ and choking internet access, rather than simply cutting it off (which is a sign of weakness).
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Bildt cites UN Rapporeteur on freedom of expression – that freedom is an enabler of virtually every other right and freedom #LondonCyber
Former New Zealand Premier Helen Clark discussed how all aspects of development – not just civil rights – can be improved through investment in Internet technologies.
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@UNDP’s Helen Clark discussing need to close digital divide through mobile phone investment. #LondonCyber
We enjoy how Richard Allan is often referred to as ‘Lord Allan of Facebook’ – it speaks to the idea that digital destinations are as worthy and as real as physical localities.
As one might expect, Allan’s message was relentlessly positive… but there did not seem to be any acknowledgement of the sometimes dubious role that multi-national companies play in censoring the flow of free expression.
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lord allan of #facebook at #londoncyber ‘we’re at a tipping point’ as internet moves to ‘centre stage’ of public policy
The answer lies, I suppose, in the points about development. One hopes that the positive benefits of greater participation online outweigh the loss of control. How do we make nervous, authoritarian governments see this?
Not before time. I’ve argued previously, on several occasions, that the existing law enshrined sexism at the heart of our constitution. In my opinion, this has been settled consensus since women were given the right to vote in the 1920s.
Sadly, in many other countries and cultures, the “we wish you were not a girl” sentiment still persists. The Japanese system does not allow women to ascend to the throne at all and elective abortions of female foetuses have skewed the gender balance in India.
By far the best iPhone game I have come across is Trainyard. Is a deceptively simple puzzle, in which the player lays tracks to guide a set of coloured trains from their starting points to a goal. It has all the features of a great game: the rules are few, simple and intuitive. The puzzles are solved on a 7×7 grid, which gives the impression that a correct solution is on the cusp of revealing itself. The graphic design and sound design give you a satisfying mental ‘pay off’ when a puzzle is solved. This all adds to the addictive quality. It is no surprise it is one of the highest ranking games in the App Store.
Until recently, Trainyard’s only flaw was that it had a set number of puzzles to play. When they were solved, the payer had to go cold turkey. Playing a pre-solved puzzle was dull. However, with the latest update, the game’s creator Matt Rix has solved this problem, by providing an ‘engineer’ feature. Players can now create their own puzzle and upload it to Trainyard site for others to download and solve. This adds an element of competitiveness, and also social play, which makes the project as perfect as can be on it’s own terms. Highly recommended.
The ‘engineer’ feature has an interesting constraint. You cannot upload a self-made puzzle to the website unless you have solved it yourself. For a while I wondered why the computer could not already perceive which puzzles were solvable, and which were unsolvable… But then I remembered Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem, as explained to me in the sprawling Pulitzer Prize winning meditation on symmetry, mathematics, loops and consciousness, Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. Trainyard is, I think, a perfect little companion to this bizarre, genre defying book.
The cover of Godel, Escher, Back gives some clue to its esoteric subject matter
Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem says that in any consistent mathematic system will have certain “undecidable statements” which the system will not be able to answer either way. There will be true statements that nevertheless cannot be proven within that system. This holds for Trainyard, which is definitely a mathematic system with just a few logical rules. If you translate the elements of a puzzle (the starting points, gates, tracks, switch points, the colours of the trains, the goals, and the grid) into a mathematic formula (which, of course, you can do because the iPhone is essentially a mathematical machine, manipulating millions of 1′s and 0′s each second) there would be no equation or test that could consistently tell you whether the puzzle could be solved or not. The only way to tell is to run the puzzle, set off the trains, and see what happens. With some puzzles (such as this one) it is actually quite easy for even a novice player to work out that the puzzle has been solved, but the computer has to run it (all 10,603,843 steps) to confirm that fact.
Kurt Gödel
The second link with Godel, Escher, Bach is to do with synapses, and how elements as simple and as binary as a neurones can give rise to enough symbols and signals to constitute a consciousness. Trainyard works wonderfully well as a metaphor for neural pathways, but it is only with the addition of the ‘engineer’ feature that this becomes apparent.
What do we notice when we look at the game in this way? (1) First of all anyone playing the game can see how the same track layout can result in completely different outcomes, depending on the number of trains sent from any given start position. On a related point, it is also interesting to see tiny changes to the track layout can fundamentally alter the outcome, once the trains are set in motion.
One of 3403 solutions to 'A Barrel Roll', one of the puzzles on Trainyard
Through this, one can begin to comprehend how a brain, with very simple building blocks can give rise to huge, complex patterns, which is what is required to perceive and interact with the world. We can see how an apparently fixed set of neurones can act in different ways, depending on the precise nature of the stimulus.
A different insight – one only needs to play Trainyard for a short period of time to see how the same outcome can be achieved in a near infinite number of different ways – for each puzzle in game, users have submitted hundreds of unique solutions. It’s not really important how you get there, just so long as the right pattern emerges. When thinking about brains (artificial or biological), the lesson might be that trying to discover a particular set of pathways could be a red herring. If you were to do so, you would only understand one brain, not The Human Brain. We all have different patterns and pathways in our cerebal cortexts, and it is the different pathways we take to make the same patterns, that makes us unique.
Finally, it is worth remembering the insight of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem. When you get to a sufficiently complex puzzle solution,you can never know whether it will produce the desired outcome, until you set the train running. This will hold for the artificial brains we create on circuit boards and in the RAM of computers – we won’t know whether the pattern we have created will work, until we have tried it. Which means we can’t work out the ‘correct’ pattern in advance. We’ll need to create some process of trial and error – a metaphor for evolution – before we hit on a correct pattern, and win our mental payoff.
Last week, a fascinating storyline emerged in Eastenders. It’s all about the weak standing up to the strong.
Bald bully Phil Mitchell (Steve MacFadden) is pursuing a vindictive vendetta against cheery Minute Mart Manager, Patrick Trueman (Rudolph Walker). Patrick saw Phil’s son Ben (Joshua Pascoe) kissing another boy (Monday) which led Ben to try to intimidate Patrick into silence (Tuesday) This led to an argument which Phil interrupted. He asked Patrick to apologise but this was refused. Phil has therefore ostracised Patrick from Shirley’s cafe, and had him sacked from his glass collecting job at the Queen Vic (Thursday).
Phil is not the only nutter on Albert Square. Two other characters, Michael Moon (Steve John Shepherd) and Dr Yousef Khan (Ace Bhati), are currently behaving in a much more dangerous manner, but their agendas are purely personal. Phil’s behaviour, on the other hand, seems to be more about the exercise of power in general, rather than a personality clash. Patrick is being punished only because he challenged the primacy of the Mitchell clan. Phil needs to be seen to prevail, whereas Michael and Yousef prefer subterfuge.
What is interesting about this new storyline is how this power corrupts other characters. The two most amiable characters in the show, Alfie Moon (Shane Ritchie) and Heather Trott (Cheryl Fergison), are both financially dependent on Phil Mitchell, and both are forced to act unfairly towards Patrick. The young Mitchell generation, Ben and Jay (Jamie Borthwick), certainly realise that their father is in the wrong, but have no interest in challenging him, because their own standing in the community is derived from Phil. Perpetual doormat Billy Mitchell (Perry Fenwick) is likewise an enabler.
Phil has been allowed to get away with such appalling behaviour for so long because of his money. He owns four businesses around Albert Square (the pub, the nightclub, the Arches garage, and the cafe) and therefore has economic power over the less financially secure characters (i.e., most people). Therefore he shows little remorse for psychologically damaging his entire family and almost incinerating everyone in the Vic during a drug-induced rage last year.
However, what is so delicious about the emerging storyline is that this power is now being challenged, and may even be shown to be built on thin foundations. Patrick has made a martyr of himself by standing by his principles and refusing to apologise. This dignity in the face of abuse has inspired an unlikely revolutionary in Heather, who has moved out of Phil’s house in a symbolic gesture of solidarity. The next step will be dissent from within the Mitchell regime that undermines Phil’s aura of impunity. Ben has yet to build up the courage to confess his sexuality to Phil, but when he does that will shatter the unity of the family. Power broker Shirley (Linda Henry) may even take sides against Phil when she returns to Walford.
Now Heather and Patrick have shown dissent, let us hope that other citizens of Walford follow suit. Although Phil is well off, his money is geographically tied to Albert Square. A community boycott would therefore be easy to organise and could have quick and far reaching implications for Phil.
The worry is this: If Phil Mitchell falls, who or what will fill his place. Albert Square is an odd sort of community? On the one hand, it is very tightly woven, and one hopes that this would allow a fairer hierarchy to emerge. On the other hand, the residents have an unlikely appetite for conflict. They are quick to make vocal judgements about other people, are happy to engage in public rudeness and humiliation, and rarely choose reconciliation when it is offered. This lack of a culture co-operation could allow another rich tyrant to step into Phil Mitchell’s shoes. Janine (Charlie Brooks) is my best bet to fill this role – she has just come into a large inheritance and is busy building a property empire on Albert Square. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
My inaugral post on Labour List (cross-posted here) elicited a few responses which highlight some subtlties in the ongoing discussion around the limits of free speech – specifically, the point at which it is appropriate for the state to ban political demonstrations.
First, this from Ben Singleton:
I have no problem at all stopping the EDL marching. Ever heard of Cable Street? This is nothing new. When it comes to fascists the response has to be No Pasaran!
I do however agree that the argument about costs is a bad argument and leads us into dodgy territory. The EDL march should be stopped because they are a bunch of violent racists, not because policing is costly.
While this appears to be quite bolshy and uncompromising, it does draw an interesting distinction – between what it is appropriate for the police to do, and what it is appropriate for other citizens to do. There is something about the fact that Cable Street was not an act of state censorship, but of citizens standing up to repell the fascists, that makes it feel somehow morally better, and I think this is the reason why it has become part of modern folklore. However, this is purely an emotional feeling, and its a bad philosphical argument. If we adopt Robert Peel’s idea that the police are in fact just a particular and peculiar type of citizen, then there seems to be very little distinction between the police stopping a march, and An Angry Mobb doing the same. The question of “At what point do you step in to stop the march?” still remains, something I’ll return to in a moment.
The mention of Cable Street reminds us of Skokie, Illinois, site of a controversial march by American Nazis in 1977. A correspondent of mine e-mails to say:
[The EDL march] resembles the classic Skokie march in America. The issue there was whether or not the fascist marchers should be allowed to wear the swastika: did this constitute ‘fighting words’, which even the first amendment does not protect?
The politicians opposed to the march aren’t saying that the EDL should be banned, or prevented from meeting; they’re against a manifestation of its members beliefs which could constitute ‘fighting words’. It’s a really interesting area of first amendment law. Fighting words are different from incitement, because they are calculated to inspire a reaction, not an action.
I think this reveals my position in the Labour List article as being quite close to absolutist about Free Speech. Could such a position work in the real world? Well, with concepts such as Satyagraha and Christian non-violence (Luke 6:28, for example) in the mix, I do think it is possible to resist the urge to react to ‘fighting words’.
In suggesting this as a way out, there will be those who who accuse me of gross naiveity, but I think that just shows a lack of imagination and political ambition. It expects very little of human beings. For example, ‘A Cleo’ says:
Tower Hamlets is a complex and peaceful community with a lot of pride. If it is provoked by a bunch of thugs, it wont take it lying down. How can it?
This implies that the people of Tower Hamlets are no more than circus animals, incapable of not reacting when insulted. But the easy or obvious response, the one that surrenders to base emotions, is never the only course of action. Moreover, when a group reacts violently to ‘fighting words’, it always means they lose some of their moral high ground and offer a propaganda victory to the provocateurs. By contrast, there is nothing more politically powerful than dignified non-violence.
I don’t think that refusing to react to ‘fighting words’ is the same as pacifism. There is nothing in what I suggest to say that the EDL (or any other far-right group around now, or in history) should be just left to get on with it. A counter-demonstration, a physical presence, is essential – it signals to the communities they seek to intimidate that their views are not shared by ordinary people. And it breaks the ‘epistemic closure‘ suffered by the far-right themselves, offering an alternative viewpoint they cannot turn their eyes from.
Nor is there anything wrong with offering your fists, if and when your community is physically attacked. But – and it is a big ‘But’ – you only retain the moral high ground and win public opinion if you do this after the other side have taken the step from ‘fighting words’, to actually ‘fighting’!
So what we are left with is a form of Brinkmanship, Chicken, Who Blinks First, Eschaton. It is tense and it costs money to put the police in between the two sides, and we all wish we didn’t have to bother. But to my mind, it is essential to the political project of repelling the far-right, that they be given precisely the right amount of rope to expose themselves as the thugs they are. Pre-empting this, however good and just it feels, will only be counter-productive.
English Defence League / Unite Against Fascism protest, by Matthew Wilkinson on Flickr
Here’s a post first published earlier today on Labour List (a new venue for me). I hope there will be comments to which I can respond in a follow-up post.
The riots seem to have brought out the worst in our politicians. You would think our political class would be well aware of the perils of knee-jerk responses and short term expediency, but apparently not. First, a few Conservative MPs (the Prime Minister among them) have called for social networks to be interfered with in times of crisis – an astonishingly cynical and hypocritical idea, given our condemnation of the Iranian and Egyptian regimes when they did the same thing.
Not to be outdone, a group of Labour politicians have now put opportunism and short-term thinking above the principles of good democracy. The leaders of thirteen London Boroughs, together with John Biggs AM and MPs Rushanara Ali and Jim Fitzpatrick, called for a proposed EDL march in Tower Hamlets to be banned on account of the cost of policing, which they say “would simply be too great”.
The potential cost of policing the march wass half a million pounds, which is be no small sum to remove from London’s clean-up effort. But the costs of banning the EDL march will be much higher in the long term. It will fuel resentment among those wishing to march, and award them the status of ‘free speech martyrs’ that they crave, but do not deserve. Their warped view of immigration and their fantastical idea of what constitutes ‘true’ British culture will remain unchallenged once again. This will only lead to more tension and conflict that the police will have to spend time and resources to contain.
Citing costs as a reason to deny political or artistic expression is a classic argument used by despots abroad to suppress internal opposition. Of course, there is no comparison between our democracy and their tyrannies… but that’s an argument that carries zero weight when you’re campaigning for human rights in those places. Cameron’s suggestion that we censor social media, and the Labour call for the banning of this EDL event, will hamstring the fight for free expression elsewhere: “You do it, so why shouldn’t we?”
Worse, this excuse also puts the power of censorship into the hands of the mob. For example, in 2004, a small and unrepresentative group of youths were able to stop performances of Behzti at the Birmingham Rep Theatre (which they found offensive), by threatening to cause chaos that the police were unable to stop, on grounds of cost. Six years later, another theatre had to fight tooth-and-nail to ensure that the police would guarantee the safety of performers in another play by the same playwright. If this precedent persists, then we give extremists like the EDL, the BNP, or Islam4UK an ongoing permit to shut down any gathering they disagree with. Already we’ve seen local councils bullied into withdrawingMoonfleece, a play that challenges far-right extremism… because those same extremists threatened ‘trouble’! Arguments that seek to ban the EDL, however well-intentioned, slide inexorably into the banning of others, and eventually, banning everyone.
When the riots erupted across our cities earlier this month, we rightly saw them as a threat to our way of life. We demanded the police throw all their resources at the problem, regardless of the cost in these austere times. The right to freedom of expression must be protected by the police with equal vigour, and it’s odd that our London councillors have forgotten this.
To argue that the EDL must be allowed their right to march is only the beginning of the discussion. Those who advocate the right to free expression have a moral obligation to challenge those who preach hate and division. No one is arguing that an EDL march will not exacerbate tensions in Tower Hamlets, but these can be diffused without trampling on the right to association and assembly. This is where we need leadership, from those very same elected Labour representatives who signed the letter in the Guardian on Monday. I met and campaigned with Rushanara Ali and Jim Fitzpatrick when I lived in Tower Hamlets – They are both deeply respected in their constituencies. They, together with the Mayor of London and the Metropolitan Police, have both the wit and the standing to co-ordinate and lead a peaceful response to the EDL. Why did they not playing a central role in the Unite Against Fascism counter-protest? So far it has only garnered support from the unions and the mosques.
It is down to our politicians to present the contrast between the thuggery of the far-right, and the vibrancy of multicultural inner-city life, all while respecting free speech. Granted, this is not as simple as just banning the march. But we elect our Members of Parliament and Councillors to take on these difficult tasks, not to engage in easy, knee-jerk letter-writing. Time for Labour to lead.
Police prepare for an EDL march in Leicester. Photo by robotswanking on Flickr
An English PEN commentary on the idea that social media could be temporarily shut down in response to the #UKriots. We wrote lots of tweets on the issue, collected here.
Following the appalling riots throught the UK over the past week, some politicians have suggested that social media services like Twitter and Blackberry Messenger, which are known to have been used by the rioters, could be blocked or temporarily shut down in moments of crisis.
In an emergency Commons statement, the Prime Minister said that extended police powers would be considered, such as the ability to demand that suspected criminals remove face masks.
Among those calling for restrictions were the parliamentarian and novelist Louise Mensch MP, a member of the House of Commons CMS Committee.
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Twitter regularly down for maintenance, and if in a major national emergency police think Twitter and FB should take an hour off? So be it
This form of intervention has serious consequences, which we encounter every day through our international campaigns for Writers in Prison. So we posted a few tweets in response.
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Twitter seems appropriate place to respond to @LouiseMensch and Cameron calls for social media blackouts…
When an organisation such as PEN takes a strong liberal line on free speech, there are always legitimate concerns. We believe it is inconsistent to argue for free expression without also using that free expression ourselves to condemn destructive behaviour (the writer Kenan Malik is very good on this issue).
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That said, free speech advocates like @englishpen have moral obligation to challenge those who abuse free speech rights…
RT @teadevotee: @LouiseMensch if govts had shut down social media during Arab spring we wd call it authoritarian repression. Why different here?@englishpen
From the point of view of the advocacy work we do, this practical consideration is very important. The gleeful way in which Iran and China have jumped on the #UKriots issue is a preview of the sanctimonius accusations of hypocrisy that PEN will have to negotiate, next time we campaign against abuses of free expression in those countries.
Rethinking Information Diversity in Networks Some claim that social networks act like echo chambers in which people only consume and share information from likeminded close friends, stifling the spread of diverse information. Our study paints a different picture of the world.
