A fascinating link that has been doing the rounds recently is the Live London Tube Map by Matthew Somerville. The link is meant to be here, but at present (24/6/2010) it is not active… probably because so many people re-tweeted it and I guess it makes pretty heavy demands on the servers of Transport For London, who provide the raw location data.
I know many people share a fascination for watching or listening to events and processes that happen in real-time. During the shuttle missions, I like to listen to the communications between the astronauts and Houston; ATC audio holds the same fascination, as does FlightRadar’s graphical representations of live air traffic around Europe. Chris Heathcote has created a page of TFL cams, showing live images from London’s roads; and subscribers to the Shoreditch Digital Bridge project are just as keen to watch each other via CCTV as they are to watch actual programmes.
The appearance of Matt’s tube page inspires me to post a short concept for an urban game that I wrote a few years ago, uploaded to a wiki, and then failed to develop much further. It is reproduced below. I sense that Foursquare may actually perform many similar functions, though I haven’t used that platform yet. Either way, it would be great to get some input from people like those who run LiveFiction and Hide&Seek.
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Category: Diary (Page 151 of 300)
Things that happen to me, or things I do
The World Cup and European Cup can both be relied upon to kick-start debates about national identity. All the flags of St George we see about still conjure memories of sinister appropriation by far-right groups, and national identity is the natural topic of conversation if we are already debating xenophobia. Over at Pickled Politics, Sunny has been musing on the English Defence League and their ridiculous manoeuvre to stop the sales of ‘Anyone But England’ T-shirts, on the grounds they incite hatred.
I left a comment there about how the problem seems to stem from the lack of an adequately defined ‘English’ identity, brought about because other identities like Scottish, Welsh and Irish, or Black-Asian-Minority-Ethnic, tend in part to be defined by their not-Englishness or their not-Whiteness. And I enjoyed the metaphor I settled on at the end:
Personally, I think this calls for more multiculturalism, not less. by this, I mean the mindset that cultures can meet and exist within individual identities (rather than in communities). Those from ethnic minorities are, it seems to me, most adept at reconciling the competing claims on their identity. To take the case of Sri Hundal, our host here: he can be Indian, Silkh, English, British or European as the circumstances dictate. We all live within a giant Venn Diagramme of overlapping affiliations. I think the intellectual contortions of the EDL/CEP are simply attempts to avoid recognising this – a game of political Twister, if you will, which becomes more and more ridiculous at every turn.
I often worry that the sort of multiculturalism I support should more accurately be described as the ‘melting pot’. However, that would look unattractive as a Venn Diagramme: one big circle. The perpetual and unresolved diversity has value if we are each to make a genuine choice about our way of life, and diversity of thought and opinion is essential for democracy and progress too… So I am sticking with ‘multiculturalism’ for now.
Meawhile, I’ve also been listening to old Philosophy Bites podcasts, 15 minute introductions to some of the major issues in contemporary philosophy. Specifically, Anne Phillips on Multiculturalism. I enjoyed Phillips analysis of why multiculturalism is the least worst option for dealing with a society changed by global migration:
If you set up multiculturalism as opposed to mono-culturalism, then I think you have to say that multiculturalism is the way forward, because mono-culturalism is inequitable, its oppressive, its coercive. But what I would argue for is what I, rather polemically, would call a Multiculturalism without Culture. One that is no longer premised on these very solidified notions of culture, which I think encourage and promote cultural stereotypes, which in themselves prevent us from developing the kind of multicultural diversity I would support.
I see Anne Phillips has written a whole book called Multiculturalism without Culture. The recognition that cultures are fluid is an essential piece of the puzzle.
I am becoming quite the agitator these days. English PEN has been on its second demonstration of the month… this time outside the Burmese Embassy in Mayfair.
Those with keen memories will recall the 64forSuu.org campaign we ran last year. It is June again, and so the National League for Democracy Leader will be 65 years old, tomorrow. My photos recording the protest to mark her birthday tomorrow are below.
Last week, Anthony Painter launched a Digital Election Analysis he wrote for Orange. A key conclusion was the that the eager awaited ‘Digital Election’ we had all been expecting (after the fantastic Obama ’08 campaign) simply failed to materialise, and it was TV wot hung it. My thoughts on the events were blogged elsewhere. However, since Sunny has just posted his provisonal Blog Nation programme, I will offer a quick addendum to my earlier thoughts here, which is simply that it is the Labour Leadership Election which will prove to be the Digital Election we have all been waiting for.
I note that David Miliband is becoming prolific at posting AudioBoos (short podcasts, for those not yet up to speed); and Ed Miliband’s campaign team are turning around a particular type of on-the-hoof, off-the-cuff campaign video with efficiency. Tom Watson MP, former Minister for Digital Engagement, is running Ed Balls campaign, so I am sure we will see some innovative uses of social networking courtesy of the man from West Bromwich. All the candidates seem to have Twibbons, an innovation which I fucking hate but others seem to enjoy.
The difference here, compared to the General Election campaign in April, is time. Much like Barack Obama’s gruelling journey to the White House, the campaign for the Labour leadership will be a drawn-out affair. It will allow all five candidates to experiment with the different technologies on offer, and develop a deeper and more sophisticated conversation with their party… and each other. Groups like Compass, The Fabians, LabourList, Left Foot Forward and, of course, Liberal Conspiracy, will also be able to plan and launch multiple interventions, as will entirely independent initiatives like the unofficial Ed Miliband for Labour Leader campaign. Who knows, we may even see some ‘swift-boating’ or negative campaigns, like #KerryOut – the doomed attempt to unseat Kerry McCarthy MP from Bristol East through the medium of Twitter.
The next hustings event is tonight, and is hosted by the Fabians. Expect your Twitter streams to be cluttered with multiple, competing commentaries. Expect images and video to pop up online before the weekend. There will be no spin room where Machiavellis, Mountebanks and Madelsons can suck our attention away from the substance of what is being said, and the digital commentary will count for much more that it did during the #LeadersDebates in the spring. This is the Digital Election we have been waiting for, so get stuck in.
We’re only three days into the World Cup, and already I’m tired of the drone. I speak not of the Vuzuvelas, but of the naysayers who dismiss the World Cup as being somehow xenophobic. Laurie Penny was at it last week, now quoted approvingly by fellow Orwell Prize nominee Madame Miaow. Even my friend Ste Curran was at it earlier, and I expected better from him.
These curmudgeons assume that any time two teams from different sides line up against each other, it is inherently warlike. They assume that whenever anyone chooses to support a team based purely on nationality, they are indulging in a form of blind patriotism akin to the worst excesses of political nationalism. And while the tone of these writings is, yes, a little knowing and light-hearted, I detect real sentiments of contempt in what they say. How strange that these writers cannot perceive the knowingness of the football fans at which they sneer, the tongue-in-cheek tone with which real sports fans approach their passion.
In particular, the charge of ‘patriotism’, or of any kind of ‘ugliness’ does not stand up to even the most cursory of examinations. Christ, you do not even need to go to South Africa to do this – the evidence is right there on the TV screens. See those idiot fans, cheering and leering behind the po-faced TV reporters? Look closely at their shirts, their face-paints, and you will see the colours of many teams, of many countries. The fun of a football tournament like the World Cup lies as much in the meeting of new people from distant shores, as it does in actually watching the game itself. The rowdy fans at Rustenberg and elsewhere know this – it is why they bother.
I think that it is precisely because football is “only a game” you find its purest form in the international competitions, not the club game. In the latter, I think the naysayers have a point – the excessive sums spent during tough economic times on ringers from overseas does seem obscene, bizarre and unsporting. By contrast, managers of national teams are limited in who they can pick. They cannot buy in new talent from elsewhere. In this sense, their situation is closer to the game as most of us play it – you’re stuck with whoever is available. At school, teams are usually organised arbitrarily along classroom divisions, or else by means of the dreaded ‘line-up’ so despised in the childhoods of the sportingly challenged. Either way, the talent pool is limited and the team is stuck with whoever they are given. In pub and amateur football (or any kind of team sport, really) you are similarly limited to whoever can get off work or out of bed in time for the 10:30 kick-off. Likewise in kids’ football, which tends to operate on a subscription model over which the person picking the team has zero control.
The fun of most sport, indeed, of most games, lies in these arbitrary constraints. We agree on some rules to abide by, and set ourselves other random constraints (such as the players, the cards, the dice)… and then we try our damnedest to win. The fact it is all made up; that we have chosen to spend our time like this; that the outcome does not actually matter to our lives one iota; that it is entirely and necessarily divorced from our day-to-day existence: That is where the ‘sport’ exists. The fact that it doesn’t matter is precisely the point, because it is an escape from things that do matter. Pointing out the futility of the exercise, usually by reference to the well worn “grown men kicking a pig’s bladder” cliche, is like the irritating snoot who tells everyone else how the magician does his tricks, thus spoiling the show.
Cheating in sport is despicable because it similarly breaks the suspension of disbelief in which the rest of us have colluded. Related, I think, is the way in which the obnoxious amounts of money spent on footballers’ transfer fees leaves a sour aftertaste: buying in new players seems like an attempt to rig the initial conditions. The presence of Kevin Pieterson in the England Cricket team makes many of us uneasy, despite his undoubted talent… because switching nationalities looks like an attempt to rig the initial conditions.
Football is so popular because most of us have the emotional intelligence to be able to buy in to the spectacle. The utter frivolity of what is at stake is the perfect excuse for a great big global party, in which people of all ages, from all continents and from all religions, can participate. The simplicity of the rules means literally everyone can understand what is going on. Yes, there have been idiots who use football as an excuse for violence… but the game was always the excuse, and not the cause of that particular type of stupidity. These men do not define the sport, and they are a dying breed. In their place steps an ever growing number of sports fans who just want to watch the game with their friends, old and new.
Are we wasting too much media attention on the unfoldings of a meaningless tournament in South Africa? I find it hard to be annoyed. Once every four years, the eyes of all of humanity turn towards the same place. Everyone, whether they like it or not, is distracted by the same thing. It is not religious, it is not violent, and it cannot be bought. Its a delightful phenomenon, one we should cherish.
English and German Fans mix in Cologne, before a World Cup 2006 fixture
Cross-posted over at Liberal Conspiracy.