I’m really enjoying Periscope, the new app from Twitter that allows live broadcasts direct from your phone. It was launched very soon after its rival Meerkat and has, I think, better sharing and comment functionality.
Both apps, however, offer something utterly compelling — a live window into someone else’s world. In 5 minutes on Periscope, you can jump accross continents, watching forest fires in the Rockies, a sunset over the Pont Neuf in Paris, dinner with a family in Pakistan, or a toddler in Canberra learning to walk. Its magic, in the Arthur C Clarke sense.
With other forms of communication, the most fascinating developments come when the users push the platform in ways the developers had not anticipated. For example, the @ and # functionality in Twitter was something developed by the users and not by Twitter. Continue reading
Category: Diary (Page 63 of 300)
Things that happen to me, or things I do
“I want doctors with stethoscopes not bureaucrats with clipboards”
—David Cameron, 2 April 2015, #LeadersDebate
In tolerant and inclusive twenty-first century Britain, there is still one group of people that the politicians are happy to demonise: NHS managers. During last night’s Leaders’ Debate both David Cameron and Ed Miliband were happy to trumpet policies that would see a reduction in NHS managers and an increase in doctors.
This is obviously a vote winning policy. It’s a simple zero sum equation that ordinary people think they understand. When we experience the NHS, we see a front-line health professional, not a back-room manager. So more doctors and nurses, with less bureaucrats, appeals to the natural biases we have due to the way we experience the health service.
But I was sat next to a doctor during the debates and she ridiculed the policy. If there are less managers in the NHS, then the task of managing will fall to the doctors… Who will have less time to see patients and run clinics! The admin load placed on doctors and nurses is already a chronic complaint.
The NHS is a vast, multi-dimensional organisation. Running it is a huge logistical challenge. The doctors, nurses, and technicians all need to be paid, co-ordinated, and to have precisely the right equipment at their disposal when the patient turns up for their appointment. This requires managers. The patients themselves need to be piloted through a Byzantine network of ‘healthcare pathways’ as well as the literal corridors of the hospital. This requires managers.
Moreover, the government and professional bodies set rigorous standards and targets for the service, which are meaningless if they are not monitored. This requires managers. And the facilities that power the health service are some of the biggest and most complex institutions in our society. They need hands on the tiller to set a strategic direction. This requires managers.
There’s no point in employing more doctors and nurses if you don’t also employ management staff as well. Otherwise the medical staff will end up doing all the admin and that will be frustrating for everyone.
Hurrah for NHS bureaucrats!
“Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.”
—General Robert H. Barrow, USMC (Commandant of the Marine Corps)
There’s a new app in town, called Meerkat. It allows you to stream live video direct from your mobile phone or tablet, with the link appearing in your Twitter stream.
Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior advisor to Barack Obama, writes:
If 2004 was about Meetup, 2008 was about Facebook, and 2012 was about Twitter, 2016 is going to be about Meerkat (or something just like it).
(He is of course talking about US politics). I wonder whether that’s true though: I fancy there may be a premium on asynchronicity—sending messages to people to read when they have time, rather than in the moment. How much value is there in This Is Happening Literally Right Now over the Twitter news model of This Just Happened? Meerkat does not seem to have any catch-up functionality—if you click on a link to a stream that has ended, there’s no way to view it back. Other services like Ustream and Google Hangouts do offer that functionality and I bet the Meerkat devs are beavering away (or whatever it is a meerkat does) to get this feature into the app. Continue reading
Last week the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia hit back at those who have been voicing their dismay at the hideous and inhuman sentence handed down to liberal blogger Raif Badawi.
The Kingdom cannot believe and strongly disapproves what has been addressed in some media outlets about the case of Citizen Rai’ef Mohammed Badowi and the judicial sentence he has received.
While we regret the aggressive attacks these media have leveled against the Kingdom and its Judiciary system, the Kingdom assures at the same time that it rejects in shape and form any interference in its internal affairs.
Blaming the ‘media’ is a well worn cliché that oppressive regimes like to deploy when seeking to play down their human rights abuses. In this case, however, it’s just flat out wrong. Yes, the media have reported on the Raif Badawi case and published scathing op-eds from the likes of yrstrly. But the bulk of the outcry has been on social media, where hundreds of thousands of people are voicing their distaste for Wahhabi justice.
There is also this:
… the Kingdom unequivocally rejects any aggression under the pretext of Human Rights; after all, the constitution of the Kingdom originates from the Islamic Sharia which enshrines one’s sacred rights to life, property, honor, and dignity.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been one of the first States to promote and support human rights and has on this regard respected all international conventions congruent with the Islamic Sharia.
This is just delusional. By no stretch of the imagination can flogging someone for peaceful political speech be considered a protection of “honour and dignity” or human rights.
Lest we forget, Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights States:
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Together in my timeline last week, two tweets on memory:
https://twitter.com/JonathanHaynes/status/575224380831236096
Ben Philips had all his creative work deleted by hackers. Continue reading