In a paywalled Times article this time last week, Hugo Rifkind highlighted our loss of the communal Christmas TV moment. EastEnders can never achieve the dizzy ratings heights of the 1980s, Eric and Ernie are dead, and even the numbers for Her Majesty The Queen’s Christmas message are in decline. Rifkind blames the spread of new viewing technologies as the cause of this: A plethora of channels; asynchronous viewing options like Sky+, TiVo, and iPlayer; and the alternatives presented by DVDs and YouTube.
It is interesting that despite this decline, new technology can provide a facsimile of the old, communal TV viewing experience. Instead of discussing an episode over the water-cooler or at the school gates the following morning, we all have a ‘second screen’ and discuss it in real time over Twitter. This is not a particularly original observation, but I mention it because it is Twitter that tells me just how universally popular is Sherlock, the second series of which began last weekend, with Episode 2 to be aired later this evening.
Hilariously, given the above paragraph, I did not actually watch the first episode ‘live’ – instead I caught up later in the week via iPlayer. That doesn’t detract from how popular the show seems to be, at least among the connected Twitterati.
There are plenty of explanations for the success. The writing is excellent and funny. Actor Benedict Cumberbatch exudes an autistic confidence that is true to Conan Doyle’s original character. Mysteries and puzzles are always the most popular stories (c.f. the perennial dominance of detective stories over Lit Fic) and the Sherlock series adheres to the rules of a good detective story, presenting all the clues to the audience as they are presented to the sleuth himself.
However, I think it is the representation of technology, and the visual choices inspired by technology, which make the thing feel so contemporary. Holmes receives text messages and interacts with Lestrade on a mobile phone. Dr Watson has a blog, and the villainess of Series 2, Ep. 1 had her own Twitter account (both of which, as is obligatory these days, also exist in the real world and keep up the conceit). However, it is not just that the characters use technology that makes the show interesting, but how the director integrates that into the visual style. Sherlock employs the popular technique of overlaying motion graphics onto the action. It is method made easy by new digital editing tools (see the opening scene of Stranger Than Fiction with Will Ferrell for an ostentatious example of the genre, as is Fifty Nine Productions’ work in Two Boys at the ENO). In Sherlock, the subtle use of this style makes the technology seem fully integrated into the way the characters view the world. The text messages flow past and through Sherlock, he barely has to look at his handset. I think it mirrors the way most of us live, with our eyes flitting between the screen and reality so quickly that it is sometimes difficult to remember how exactly a particular piece of information came to us. It certainly represents the way a large audience segment are experiencing the show. Are they watching Sherlock, or are they watching #Sherlock? Both.
Tag: Internet Philosophy (Page 10 of 39)
And now for some Inside Baseball.
Last week, I managed to irritate legal blogger Jack of Kent (a.k.a. David Allen Green) by suggesting he was being stingy with his links, and then not telling him about it. This was not entirely true on either count – He was not being as unlinky as I had thought; and I had tried to let him know.
Since David and I have worked together on the Libel Reform Campaign, I assume that he is not going to sue me for trashing his reputation in the Guardian. However, elements of our exchange got me thinking about issues of ‘responsibility’ in blogging.
Here’s the thing: When David asked me “why didn’t you check?” I felt strangely short-changed, despitre the fact that I certainly had not checked with him beforehand. This is because when I typed the original post, I fully expected David to become aware of it. Incoming links and twitter recommendations usually alert people to the fact they are being discussed. Moreover, I think some part of my subconsicious decided that to cite him was, in effect, an invitation to respond. The invitation was not explicit, but to me it feels like an integral part of the blogging conversation.
I write this not to try and get myself off the hook for the pint I know I must pay to David, but instead to ask how responsible blogging might be different from responsible journalism. A key pillar of the existing Reynolds Defence (a public interest defence for libellous statements) is the idea of verification before publishing. But should this hold for bloggers? What of the idea (which I had internalised until David complained) that the early publishing of comment or allegations on a blog or twitter, is in itself part of the verification and fact-checking process? For citizen bloggers, publishing a claim online carries the implicit (and often explicit) request – “please help me verify”.
Mainstream media critics of blogging, and the politicians, certainly disagree, and see the publication of anything unchecked as being irresponsible. I would appreciate thoughts on this from The Man Himself – Could this form of early publication online be considered ‘responsible’, due to the very nature of the medium?
In my morning trawl through the Internet, I noticed two examples of a practice that has become mainstream: denying the object of your opprobrium a link.
First, the fascinating Brian Kellet writes this, in a fisk of a Liz Jones column about the NHS says:
I’m not going to link to the original story because I don’t want to send visitors to the rag that is the Daily Mail.
Then, in a battle of the pseudonyms, highly respected legal blogger Jack of Kent decides that he is going to have an argument with Gudio Fawkes, but without actually namechecking Guido or linking to the ridiculous Death Pentalty campaign he just launched. I’m particularly disappointed in Jack of K, as he writes, in his very next post, that one should “use links and sources wherever possible.”
Linking out, regardless of whether you agree with the person you”re linking to, should be the standard for blogging, just as it is for academia. It is the link to sources which gives the work credibility. In contrast, anonymous gossip disguised as lobby reporting is one of the reasons why there is so little trust in journalists at the moment (a topic discussed at the recent POLIS journalism conference, where I asked a panel of spin doctors and hacks whether the press should abolish anonymous sources)… and the fact that a tabloid does not have to cite its sources is one of the reasons why #Hackgate could happen.
Moreover, we know that our online bubbles are not as diverse as we like to think. Safe silos like Facebook actually filter content to prioritise those people that you already agree with, and our failure to link out just strengthens the confirmation bias. I disagree with Paul Staine’s worldview and his approach to blogging, but I do actually want to know what he is saying about the death penalty, the better to campaign against him.
So, just as we’ve stopped using the Blame The Daily Mail cliche as a substitute for actual political analysis, can we have a moratorium on the whole “I’m not linking to those people” schtick, please? I know we can Google pretty much anything we want to these days, but not everything appears on page one of the results. Worse, a failure to link looks a bit sly and scheming. Let’s leave the obfuscation and misdirection to those outlets with lower standards: The Newspapers.
Reading this article about the genesis and project management of Google+, a new social network, reminded me of the Through A Web Darkly event I attended at Demos last month. They’ve uploaded a helpful video outlining the main theme of the event – the idea that the ‘personalisation’ of the web might be a problem.
Its interesting that, as we move into an era where all the HTML code on our websites have been crafted for you us by the social networking companies, we are are nevertheless still the creators, or maybe the curators, of our online world. As Tom Chatfield put it (paraphrasing Alexis Madrigal) “Twitter is a human recommendation engine of which I am the algorithm.” The same is true of Facebook too, of course, which prioritises those people whose content you most frequently ‘like’. It is also true of Google, which is starting to take your location and your past browsing history into account when delivering search results. The danger with this, well documented with respects to Twitter, is that opinions that differ from your own are eventually weeded out of your personalised stream of information. Mistaken or ill-thought out beliefs are affirmed and not challenged, and our knowledge is weaker as a result. On a macro level, our democracies can become more polarised, with less consusus and a smaller space for compromise.
Once we are aware of this phenomenon, we can of course guard against it ‘manually’, by following people we disagree with, deliberately mixing up our RSS feeds, and otherwise introducing disruptions into the stream. There are two problems with this approach. The first, is that by confusiong or confounding the machines at Google and Facebook (to ensure that they serve you more diverse content) you are actually breaking their business model, because they can no longer target relevant adverts at you. If everyone did this, then advertisers will find other places to spend their pounds and dollars and the social internet services we rely upon may disappear. This is not necessarily our concern, and many people argue that essential web tools should not be provided by corporate bodies at all.
The second problem is that not everyone will introduce these disruptions into their stream. So while I may be reading all manner of different people with different views, they may not be reading me (or people like me) in return!
The worry, therefore, is that the liberating and equalising effects of the internet may begin to fizzle out. So far, we have been trumpeting the fact that anyone can become a global publisher with just a few keystrokes and clicks of a mouse. In recent years, once a website has been published, the author had the reasonable expectation that the site would have an equal chance of appearing, when a person looked for that subject matter on Google or other search engines. In the near future, this is unlikely to be so.
My final thought: I wonder what moral obligations Facebook etc have to me, to not filter what I publish on the web… Is there a free speech issue at stake here?
The panel at the Through A Web Darkly event. Dan Hind, Evgeny Morozov, Ben Hammersley, Tom Chatfield
Mary Bevan and Nicky Spence in Two Boys Photo: Richard Hubert Smith
Are u there?I went to see Two Boys at the ENO last night. It’s a new opera by the Vermont wunderkind Nico Muhly. As I understand it, he’s not as well known over here as in the USA, but it’s a real coup for the ENO to have commissioned him to write something, two years ago. It is also prescient, or maybe just lucky, that the opera turns out to be about something completely contemporary.
On one level, we could say that the subject matter is literally two weeks old. It’s a tale of subterfuge online, with one character impersonating others (variously, his promiscuous sister, a rapist, an MI5 agent, and an older version of himself) through the Internet. Given the story of the Gay Girl In Damascus, now shown to be An American Guy In Edinburgh, Two Boys is bang on trend.
Having said that, the theme of one person impersonating another is hardly a new one for drama. If we just consider the idea of online subterfuge, Patrick Marber’s Closer does it, as does Ste Curran’s Monica. In this Tuesday’s episode of Eastenders, Shirley stole Phil’s phone in order to send misleading text messages to Rainie. And impersonating a sibling in order to get closer to the one you love is standard Shakespearean fayre. I suppose what this opera reminds us is that Everything Is A Remix. The new technologies allow us to do the same old things, except with a different sheen.
Detective Inspector Strawson (Susan Bickley), the lead character and sleuth of the piece, catches on to the solution much slower than most of the audience, I’ll wager. In recent years we have seen an explosion in time shifting, deceptive story lines, and Two Boys is firmly in the tradition of cyber-realist storytelling. Despite time shifts and flashbacks, it is easy to understand what is unfolding and when. This is reinforced by the repeating lines of libretto (amusingly surtitled in its abbreviated chat form, “u there?”, “ASL?” &ct), which take on new and more disturbing meanings when sung by different cast members, as the deception of fake identities is revealed. Muhly performs similar repetitions with the score too, as familiar refrains return in new, darker ways.
Its a clever ploy that the D.I. Strawson is a middle-aged woman. All good drama gives the audience an avatar, and Susan Bickley is, I guess, the precise demographic of the traditional opera-going audience member. Even if the audience understands the timeline of the story, that is not to say they have an understanding of the online world. D.I. Strawson’s bemusement at the behaviour of the teenagers (“It’s a different language” she says) was certainly shared by much of the audience. During the interval, I overheard some of my neighbours talking about how “It’s a different world, isn’t it…” as if they were watching an opera set in the land of Titipu or some far off world. This seemed to me precisely wrong. It’s the same world as our own, just brought into heightened relief. The Internet does to the human world what opera also intends to do – present a stylised, pared down representation, without all the fuss and confusion. All the better to reveal truths and relationships we may not otherwise perceive.
“To them, it’s real”, those same neighbours went on to observe, with ‘them’ being the young ‘uns, the digital natives. This is true but also patronising, because the speaker assumed that the world of chatrooms and forums depicted was wholly false, while the world she inhabited was real, true, and authentic. I submit that she was wrong, and that the mistakes made by the older of the Two Boys, 16-year-old Brian (played by 28-year-old tenor Nicky Spence), are precisely the same mistakes made by the rest of us, most of the time: specifically, if something is written down then it must be true. This false lemma is what keeps dictators in power, excuses wars and distorts financial markets. It is what allows people to experience a very real sense of bullying online. Written words carry an innate credibility, whether they be incribed on a stone tablet, papyrus, vellum, paper, billboard or screen. Even misspelled lolspeak has value as a sort of propaganda, allowing us to peddle a lie or a version of ourselves that bears little relation to the ‘truth’. It’s interesting and surely no accident that the Two Boys set (by Michael Yeargan and Fifty Nine Productions) was a series of plain grey blocks, onto which a bit of scenery and a lot of text was projected. Inside and outside of an opera house, words allow us to conjure our world.