Robert Sharp

Barrister

Author: Robert (Page 122 of 328)

Netflix knows I am just a sheep

4 February 2013 / / 0 Comments

Never have I felt as much like a sheep, a follower, an automaton, a mindless drone, a bundle of predictable synapses, as when I read this paragraph:

For almost a year, Netflix executives have told us that their detailed knowledge of Netflix subscriber viewing preferences clinched their decision to license a remake of the popular and critically well regarded 1990 BBC miniseries. Netflix’s data indicated that the same subscribers who loved the original BBC production also gobbled down movies starring Kevin Spacey or directed by David Fincher. Therefore, concluded Netflix executives, a remake of the BBC drama with Spacey and Fincher attached was a no-brainer, to the point that the company committed $100 million for two 13-episode seasons.

Yep. That’s me. God, I am so predictable that people are making a lot of money mining my honed, considered and long thought through preferences (that just happen to be exactly the same as millions of others).
I feel slightly humiliated. And yet, I am still looking forward to watching more episodes of House of Cards this week. A lot of the time, we choose to be manipulated, so long as we are entertained.
Later in the article, Andrew Leonard sounds a note of caution:

If Netflix perfects the job of giving us exactly what we want, when and how will we be exposed to things that are new and different, the movies and TV shows we would never imagine we might like unless given the chance? Can the auteur survive in an age when computer algorithms are the ultimate focus group? And just how many political dramas starring Kevin Spacey can we stand, anyway?

Internet Trolls and White Hot Suns

28 January 2013 / / 1 Comment

In the Daily Telegraph, Alasdair Palmer laments trolling and the unpleasant tone of online discourse. He recommends a toughening of the libel laws to deal with this problem.
I think Palmer is mistaken on three counts.  First, he fails to recognise that trolling, anonymity and defamation are three distinct concepts.  It is perfectly possible to be an indentifiable ‘troll’.  Many newspaper columnists write weekly articles that are almost indistinguishable from trolling, and I am always surprised at just how much hate and bile people are prepared to post in their own names.
Second, most trolling is not defamatory.  It is just insulting.  The Defamation Bill is exactly the wrong place to deal with trolls and online bullying.
Third, Palmer allows the trolls to become a synedoche for the Internet.  As a journalist and columnist writing for a national broadsheet, I am sure that Palmer’s experience of online discourse is pretty unpleasant.  But he mistakes a part for the whole.  If one were to fly a rocket to Mercury (or even just take a trip to Death Valley) one might induce that “the Universe is very hot”… when in fact these are just pockets of extreme temperatures in a Universe that is on average very cold.
So it is with the Internet, which feels as infinite as the Universe in its breath and depth.  The message boards on national newspaper websites are the equivalent of stars in our galaxy – extremes of heat.  But as soon as one visits a specialist, local, niche, hobbyist or personal website, the conversation cools.  The tone of comments on this blog, for example, is consistently civil.
If we really want to raise the tone of the debate on the Internet, we need not abolish anonymity.  We just need to turn off the comment functionality on the big news media websites!  They are too big and unweildy to have a proper conversation on anyway.   Personally, though, I would advise against such a manoevre: Like big hot stars, the large news sites have a gravitational pull, and draw all the trolls into their orbit, leaving the rest of the Internet a calmer place to explore.

Is alcohol a placebo?

28 January 2013 / / 1 Comment

Alcohol makes people do very strange things, doesn’t it?  From ‘On Being The Sober Guy At The Party’ from The Shapes and Disfigurements of Raymond Atrobus:

I’ve seen people at parties strip
deep into the naked night.
I know their names,
I’ve seen them crawl on the floor
WOOF WOOF! I’M A DOG!

And yet, perhaps alcohol affects people from different cultures in different ways.  Here’s ‘Satoru’, one of the narrators in David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten:

I’ve seen foreigners get drunk in bars out in Sibuya and place, and they turn into animals. Japanese people never do that. The men might get friskier, but never violent.  Alcohol just lets off steam for Japanese. For foreigners, alcohole just seems to build steam up. And they kiss in public, too! I’ve seen them stick their tongues in a grope the girl’s breasts. In bars, where everyone can see!

These passages remind me of this article by Kate Fox of the Social Issues Research Centre, which suggest that the effect of alcohol is more in the excuse it gives us to break social barriers and revert to base behaviours.

In high doses, alcohol impairs our reaction times, muscle control, co-ordination, short-term memory, perceptual field, cognitive abilities and ability to speak clearly. But it does not cause us selectively to break specific social rules. It does not cause us to say, “Oi, what you lookin’ at?” and start punching each other. Nor does it cause us to say, “Hey babe, fancy a shag?” and start groping each other.

The effects of alcohol on behaviour are determined by cultural rules and norms, not by the chemical actions of ethanol.

So perhaps alcohol is actually a sort of placebo.  We think it causes us to become gregarious, rude, aggressive or transgressive.  And so we become those things.
(Photo from CollegeHumour.com)

Interviewed on Free Expression in Vietnam

25 January 2013 / / 0 Comments

The General Secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party Nguyễn Phú Trọng was in the UK this week, so English PEN wrote a letter to David Cameron, asking him to raise our free expression concerns during their meeting.
I was interviewed about the visit by Voice of America’s Vietnamese Service.
http://youtu.be/BHfd_SRhKWc?t=50s
There is an accompanying article.  This is the key quote:

Thủ tướng Anh nên quan tâm đến việc các doanh nghiệp Anh có nên đầu tư vào một nước như Việt Nam hay không khi mà nạn vi phạm nhân quyền, vi phạm quyền tự do bày tỏ quan điểm đã trở nên quá rõ ràng đến mức như vậy.

Essentially: When writers are being locked up, how can you trust what is reported from within Vietnam?  Why should British buinesses invest in a country where information about the economy and corruption may be suppressed?
Those of you who don’t speak Vietnamese may appreciate a Google Translate version of the page.
 

Recommendation request for e-mail delivery system

24 January 2013 / / 0 Comments

Dear Internet: please recommend an online service that can help me automatically distribute computer files via e-mail.
At English PEN, we have begun to produce e-Books as part of our literary campaigning.  Our recent Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot is a good example of this – It puts more literature and creativity into the world, in response to an act of censorship.
In that project, the e-Book was available free with a voluntary donation.  But we wanted to capture the e-mail addresses of everyone who downloaded it.  I used a tweaked version of a WordPress contact form plug-in to ‘reveal’ the download links after a person entered their e-mail address, but this was an inelegant method.  If downloaders wanted to revist the page, they had to enter their address again. And there was no validation of e-mail addresses.
Are there any online tools that manage the distribution of documents or computer files?  I need a simple system that will take a person’s e-mail address, log it for me, and then either send them a unique download link, or simply e-mail them a file.
I imagine that the Shareware Developer community must have some kind of solution in place for this task?  Can anyone recommend such services?  Or is there a WordPress plug-in I have missed.  Obviously I have a preference for free services, as the projects I run are all not-for-profit.

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