https://twitter.com/steishere/status/278802769559818241
Ste complains that a steam train has caused delays to his commute. I find it amazing and bizarre that the station or the rail company have seen fit to pre-record a message, saying that delays are caused by a steam train. Is that a regular an occurrence?
One thing I have always thought particularly sad is that the rail companies have a pre-record for “due to a fatality on the line.” It is clearly a frequent enough occurrence to be a necessary annoucement to have in the library, which is sad in itself. And yet it also offends that something so serious and sombre should be delegated to the robotic system. Perhaps I am being an old fashioned ‘digital immigrant‘, but it feels like the sort of thing that should be announced live. I suppose it is a harsh thing to ask the station managers to do.
My worry stems from the fact that there is a cadence and a timbre to a real voice that a pre-record does not have. When we cede these tasks to a machine, we lose a whole set of human interactions. We only notice this when the subject matter is something so exceptional as a death.
Is this just modernity? Am I being overly sentimental about routine and repetitive information? It is not as if most of these announcements are declarations of love or philosophical debates.
(See also: my piece ‘Encountering the Submerged‘ from almost exactly seven years ago, on the aftermath of a railway suicide I saw in Glasgow; and ‘The Best People Aren’t People‘ about non-human tweeters with personality).
Author: Robert (Page 127 of 328)
Right. We all got a bit distracted there for a moment. What were we talking about? Oh yeah…
Almost all the debate about #Leveson so far is over whether the Government should introduce statutory regulation of the press. The other grave issues covered by the Inquiry, and Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations for how to fix them, seem to have prompted less discussion.
The tunnel vision of the political class, and it’s obsession with press regulation, is partly to blame for this. But it is also the fault of Lord Justice Leveson himself. He offers a detailed plan for how a new self-regulatory body might be emboldened by some kind of law… but fewer ideas on how to regulate the way the media interacts with the police and politicians.
This is a shame, because the ambivalence of the police to the practice of phone hacking (if not outright collusion) was the most shocking of last year’s revelations. It was the failure to properly investigate the phone hacking that made this controversy into a bona fide ‘gate’. Had the police done their job, and not sought friendship and favour with the News International titles and other tabloids, then the entire controversy would have amounted to nothing more than a few criminal prosecutions. Continue reading
It’s encouraging to see that a group of Tories have formed a campaign group in support of gay marriage. Let us hope it hastens the day when the Government put the necessary legislation in place.
At the end of 2012, I assume the Liberal Conspiracy website is not best place to make arguments for gay marriage. There is a sense of preaching to the converted. Far better that the core case is made on places like Conservative Home. But Christmas is coming, which is the perfect opportunity for us all to debate the issue with relatives or friends who may not yet be persuaded.
Over the turkey, then, you may hear a version of the tiresome talking point trotted out by Peter Bone MP over the weekend: Marriage has been defined as “between one man and one woman” for hundreds of years. This really seems to be all the opponents of gay marriage have left – a feeble call-back to historical precedent and utterly discredited religious authority. They fail to follow up with a persuasive “and this is a good thing because…” Any arguments for why exclusively heterosexual marriage might better than extending the marriage ‘franchise’ fail in the 21st Century (for example, no-one these days seriously suggests that marriage is primarily about procreation).
Second, many people try to hide behind religious reasons for their opposition. “It is Adam & Eve, not Adam & Steve!” Yawn. To that soundbite, it is worth pointing out that in the Garden of Eden story, the very first thing that God says about His creation, is that man should not be alone (Gen. 2-18). By contrast, the position of the Christian churches currently requires gay people to be alone. It is a pro-loneliness, anti-Genesis position.
The prefixes “pro” and “anti” remind me of the ongoing political arguments over abortion, where the battle is over language as well as facts and values. The campaign for gay marriage needs to be similarly mindful of language. For example, the Coalition for Marriage uses the language of preservation, where in fact their policies suppress the possible number of people who can get married. The opposition to gay marriage is anti-marriage and anti-family, and should be framed as such.
The Duchess of Cambridge is pregnant, and my Twitter timeline and Facebook wall have immediately been filled with curmudgeons complaining that the issue of #Leveson and other important stories will get buried. I think this may be an over-reaction – there will be other news reported in the papers tomorrow.
Most of the comments in my timeline were meta – discussions about the discussion, not a discussion about the news itself. This is unsurprising because of course, there is no actual analysis that can be done on this kind of story: Kate is pregnant. The kid will be born about 7 months from now. They will one day be monarch, regardless of gender.
I have little patience for those complaining about the level of coverage. Britain is an immensely influential country, and a new head of state – one that could potentially reign for decades – has just been designated. We went nuts for discussion of the US Presidential election, and the French Presidential election. The opaque appointment of a new Chinese leader was also well documented. Why should the emergence of a new British Head of State be any less talked about?
The madness is not the level of coverage given over to this story. The madness is that British heads of state are still chosen by the hereditary method. If you are annoyed, irritated or angered by the news overload, but you’re not a republican, then you’re just being inconsistent.
Meanwhile, in Qatar, this free speech outrage:
A Qatari poet has been sentenced to life in prison for inciting the overthrow of the government of Qatar and insulting the Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani and his son, the crown prince, reports say.
The verdict is likely to prove an embarrassment for Qatar which has worked hard to cultivate a progressive, modern image, and is currently playing host to a major international climate change conference.
The charges relate to a poem that 37-year-old Mohammed al-Ajami, a father of four, recited in 2010 before a small, private audience in his flat in Egypt. One audience member subsequently posted the poem online.
Al-Jazeera (a channel that yrstrly appeared on earlier this year) is funded by the same Emir Sheikh Hamad and has not yet covered the story, which is a glaring omission that undermines its otherwise growing reputation.
I think Al-Jazeera English (based in London) should take a leaf out of the BBC handbook, and start scrutinising this journalistic omission on the part of its head office in Doha. That would be very much in the spirit of the current media moment.