Dengl 33 Thoughts on The Sins or Dangers of Information Greed

Dengl 33 Thoughts on The Sins or Dangers of Information Greed

Travelling in Hong Kong I read a piece from the Guardian, on the Murdochs' performance at the Commons, which appeared in the South China Morning Post. The Public Relations advisors did a skilful job of positioning the Murdochs between the Scylla of incompetence and the Charybdis of sentient guilt; and even Prime Minister David Cameron hopes to have slithered off the former hook with a quasi-apology in the Commons. Since the misdemeanours for which News International is responsible and which are now being redressed go back several years, it becomes a time for a wider and deeper refurbishment of practices in print (in the UK, at least, there are supposed to be institutions that discourage malpractice in broadcasting – and nobody knows clearly who might be able to keep noses clean on the internet; some do not want to try, others, do). We want to be clearer about how and what information may be properly obtained, and then published.

Whatever mechanisms arise to take stock and re-set the compass, in the UK – or even elsewhere, they may well look further than merely at News International. Time magazine reports: “As part of the public inquiry into the News of the World scandal, Lord Justice Levenson has the authority to call media editors, proprietors and politicians to give evidence under oath. The terms of reference call on him to examine the "culture, practices and ethics of the press," including their relationship with police and the contacts between national newspapers and politicians”.
There is said to be one other ex-tabloid editor, who escaped a charge of profitable insider dealing by claiming a similarly narrow middle ground of ignorance, whose behaviour should also be judged. (I gather, since writing this, that an article on this has appeared in the UK press).

The safety of landlines compared with the internet: just a technical question?
At least two further questions arise that insightful reporting should now explore: first, what proportion of hacked calls were on landlines, and thus are these more secure than mobiles? and: should we usefully find a new label by which to refer to what was done to the inbox of the murdered Millie Dowler; we need to recognise and label such "active eavesdropping" an 'active hacking', or 're-stacking' perhaps, to distinguish a more intense from a lesser crime (as murder exceeds manslaughter).

On the first point, above, are mobiles particularly hackable? This seems to be implied in at least one report - and that also gives links to several previous ones. It has evidently been acknowledged over two or three years, that mobiles are particularly hackable. Look at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13013577

It is clear that "hacking" (eavesdropping) has been widespread in the UK, and only the most negligent business and/or public person or body worldwide would assume that such misdemeanour was merely a British failing. It is possible though, that in certain circumstances (such as where the security services would be helped in crime detection or prevention) the public would accept, even welcome hacking. What are such circumstances and where are the lines to be drawn?

A longer-shot conjecture - if it is the case that hordes of people have been sold mobiles which are highly hackable (but were not told that this MAY happen by crooks, or journalists (not the same thing?) and certainly, systematically by the ISPs on behalf of advertisers – are there grounds for a truly massive class action, brought by hackees - and indeed anyone who has a non-secure mobile - against the manufacturers or the vendors?

Scope and (in)acceptability of Hacking and some consequences
A teenager hacks the computer systems of the Pentagon. This is a threat to security (and a disgrace, for those who set up the internal data systems) and the teenager is punished. A newspaper approves the actions of a few people who leak the internal affairs of political institutions, defence organizations and the like; other newspapers do not challenge the one that has given a platform to such leaks – they all enjoy discussing the ‘secrets’. The same newspaper runs a moral crusade against its larger rival, which hacks the instruments of celebrities – right up to the members of the Royal Family in the UK. Where are lines to be drawn, how and why, over what sort of hacking is a good or a bad thing in society?

If celebrities try to suppress press intrusion, by legal injunctions, once they have thus called upon the legal system to act not only on their behalf, but as an example of desirable restraint, should they then be required to go through with their move to have the law act on their behalf, with whatever its mechanisms are, and somehow be discouraged from being bought out by the alleged miscreant, who thus short circuits the Law, with the power of money (and greed on the part of allegedly injured parties) in a way that is not available to poorer people?

Finally, where a celebrity who has tried to avoid publicity through injunctions (to prevent information acquired by hacking, being published) is then by-passed by an avalanche of disclosure, how can third parties (usually children of the celebrity) be protected from the distress and even damage produced by the publicity? Might it be necessary to enforce injunctions – with considerable penalties for infraction – allowing celebrities to “get away with it” if they do have vulnerable children (or other such “third parties”) first in the firing line, to protect them?

Hong Kong 21 July 2011

DENGL 32 BEWARE TRASHICACY

Trashicacy Ahoy!

I have come across the exquisite pleonasm ‘competency’; I can’t say where, I can’t say when, I hadn’t the presence of mind to note it down. It joins pomposities such as ‘residency’ (something that geniuses take up) and ‘presidency’ (something from which incompetents are torn down). Such are the verbal treasures we are enjoined to tolerate, even enjoy, by those who celebrate the evolution of language along with the erosion of quality in the accessible English educational system. Luckily, we are told (and see, those of us who live in North West London

http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/7027768/england-their-england.thtml) that rich Russians are riding to the rescue, buying into the model of Wodehousian culture which will need but a small cadre of professionals to sustain. Thus far (I presume) the preparatory school teachers who still know their whos from their whoms, remain mostly English; one can imagine the day, though, when they will no longer be available but have to be replaced by experts trained in elite Chinese colleges. This picture of (upper) middle class England maintained as a theme park has been drawn by the author Julian Barnes (England,England).

Not only are Russians (and other oil drenched Midases) drawn to enjoy the island they see as safe, and intriguingly quixotic, but in one tiny instance Americans come to experience “study abroad” in a context that is historically distinguished, sufficiently different from what they know (?) at home, without being too threatening, and possibly worth storing on the mantelshelf of memory. One such course is “Media in UK” during which some effort is made to disentangle what may be meant by various deployments of the word “media” – which proves to be an extraordinarily plastic term. This course has been told that the European Union (or experts who serve it, who have survived numerous planning meetings in agreeable locations – carbonoxious plane flights, lavish dinners after the deadly business sessions – I know, I used to attend such things) has decided that all member nations should deliver, by December 2011, an audit of the degree in their country of something they call “media literacy”. This has been labelled in various ways,

( the most widely adopted definition of media literacy is “… the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create messages in a variety of forms (Livingstone, 2004, p.5).
Already in 1992 US media educators and activists established a definition for the media literate person as one who should be able to access, analyze, evaluate and produce print and electronic media ( Kubey, 2005) and the UK’s OFCOM uses the same definition )

though it may be challenged that the term “media” has not itself been defined, and ‘literacy’ has been deployed in way that can be called metaphorically illiterate. All this might be discounted as a mere piece of academic entertainment – except that the jamboree is to be paid for by “EU funds” (that is, taxes drawn from those EU countries who can afford them).
Moreover, the audit is to be repeated in 2014 and every three years thereafter.

I have offered suggestions on sensible ways in which to deploy the terms media and literacy);

(I confess I can not see how to insert a link to my paper which is available from me on request - mallory.wober@gmail.com)

but here I alert my friends to a danger I can foresee – which is that a new category of “competency” will presently be devised which may be called “trashicacy”. I realised this last night as I strove to put the remains of a large cardboard box into an outdoor container intended to accommodate paper and card, only to find there plastic bags full of plastic bottles and drinks cans. In the borough where I live this is not (yet) a punishable offence – but one reads that elsewhere it is, so the sanctions may soon ‘come home’. The competent citizen will in future have to analyse and dispose of rubbish of a variety of forms, in prescribed ways. Rubbish is too English a word to live as a metaphor in a bureologism, so trash will have to do the job. The -acy ending is parallel in a thoughtless kind of way with its appearance in (media liter)acy and I have proposed an intermediate –ic- not because it scans better, but for the overtones of tragedy it introduces.

So – I give to the world, a new word – and to the Eurocrats, a new ticket to conferential holidays justified under the banner of promoting the environment and better citizenship in a glorious future – trashicacy. You have been warned.

Dengl 31 Olympics Logo 2011

I have been alerted to a rumpus in Logistan - and it takes a form I had not suspected would arise ....

Zionism, or Nazism in symbols and the new Olympic Logo
A site offering anti-zionist sentiments suggests that the olympic logo evokes the word ZION;
the argument is ad hominem and if one prefers, racist, suggesting that the company which made this glaring error, Wolff Olins, is operated by Jews, who have hijacked the occasion.
I say that the logo offered (and which should have been turned down by the non-Jewish Lord Coe) more resembles the jagged SS emblem - in effect it is NAZI rather than zionist.
Whatever was in (what passes for) the minds of Wolff and Olins, they have certainly pulled a nasty, fast and costly one on the organisers;
but that is not because they are Jews - I suggest that had they been more centrally guided by Jewish principles they would NOT have offered this design - they have offered it because they are not sufficiently Jewish - ie prudent and conscientious. However, look at:

http://engforum.pravda.ru/index.php?/topic/178188-london-olympics-2012-or-zion-logo-controversy-explained/

and from a website based, I believe, in New Delhi ...

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/8331041-london-2012-olympics-logo-controversy

Psychological Conjectures on the Connotations of the 2012 Olympics Logo
When this logo was first aired, I thought this it was ripe for trouble.
I focused on the plenitude of CORNERS throughout the diagram and the corresponding banishment of CURVES =
and, I bore in mind notions I had had published long ago, suggesting that curves connect better with or even lead to a (musical) rhythmic structure of 3 x time - even engaging different parts of the brain than are engaged when the visual designation is jagged and conjures a musical rhythmic structure of 2 or of 4 time - and these are experienceable without engaging any "higher centres", with reference to the two-time body motions of breathing (in-out), walking (left right) and marching ....

in effect, a curvaceous logo aspires (neurologically, even) "higher" while a jagged logo operates below this level;

I am not in a position to generate survey data on the current Olympics logo (and or though it is noteworthy that a google search does not readily point to
data-based assessments of its "meaning").

It may not be too late, even close as we are to the event itself, to inform ourselves better as to how (and if possible, why) people perceive the logo in the way they do, and if and whether their perceptions of the Olympics themselves are coloured at all by the "flavour" of the logo. One might even hope that the designers themselves had even a modicum of empirical data to show that their logo was "creatively" perceived by those who see it.

(my experience in the story of the iTC logo (see the attachment) - also sold by Wolff Olins in the early 1990s - suggests that they can or do do without empirical underpinning of their design(s). I therefore guess that they may not have any such evidence on the Olympic design).

A new study might show that the logo is benign - even positive. One would then withdraw one's concerns, above.
I would be willing to bet on something less simply positive, however.

Dengl 30 Sports Hysteria

I would like tv reports to play down the hysteria that follows intermittent successes - wicket taken, goal scored - otherwise, next thing would be batsmen hugging and kissing every time someone scores a boundary; and what about the goalie? why does he not get a snogfest (sometimes with acrobatics) for a noble save?
- it is just remotely possible that the BBC might agree (if under strong and sustained pressure) to return to a more restrained style of sports depiction - but cricket is all on sky now - and there is no control on them ...
- I suspect that it might be better for players to contain their energy after a success; go back to the play and direct the energy into subsequent performance; a cricket captain might usefully advise an incoming batsman to look at it this way - that the bowler and fielders who have just taken a wicket need a little while to regain their aggression - it is not necessary to comport oneself as a rabbit and think oneself into failure ....likewise, a soccer side encouraged to think this way might more likely strike back very soon after letting in a goal - realising that their opponents may be deluded for a short time by bliss ...of course, a poor manager may not realise this and allow his side to tailspin after an initial setback.
Whatever the psyche of the sport players, I suspect it is corrosive for viewers - and players - to have short term rejoicings reinforced.
By the way, have sports writers (in their excessive and vapid legions) given choreographical labels to the various antics performed - high fives we know - but the knee slide? the Voluntary Abu Ghraib (where players lie upon each other in a starfish configuration) - the Man Mountain (where they jump upon each other, standing - and do we know whether this brings on back injuries?)

Dengl 29 MYTE-ology

My wife Bea has bought a book called Green Cleaning - by Margaret Briggs and VIvian Head.

This is very keen on soda bicarb and lemon and one or two other things... I agree - good.

I cant resist quoting from a paragraph:

"Over the years soda and potash were defined as both natural and artificial products and as vegetable and mineral. Imagine playing the old favourite '20 Questions' with the ancestors - it was hard enough trying to define substances as animal,vegetable or mineral as a science game with primary school children, but at least they have a better understanding of materials through the National Curriculum. Another nugget of information that might corner your imagination for a split second: it wasn't until the beginning of the 19th century that Sir Humphrey Davy decomposed both alkalis and called them sodium and potassium, which are really Latinized versions of soda and potash".

No doubt curriculum is a latinised version of something or other in newly nuggetised English - defined to "corner your imagination" (a latinised version of image - and - ation?) - well - only for a split second ...(a latinised version of secondary - as in education - which is itself a latinised version of - eh! an expression of amazement - dook - an expression of social stratification and -tion - (pronounce shun) an expression of dont spend too long with this boring stuff when you can be texting your friends with the whortleberry under the desk ...

... and soon those who have ascended this ladder of knowledge, skill and competence (the National Curriculum of England & Wales?) are going to throw purse power at the university teaching - if and when they arrive to experience it ...

maybe our grandchildren should aim at enrolling in a Scottish or a Chinese University

the book (partly) redeems itself with a proposal for a:

Dry Shampoo
Sprinkle one teaspoon of oatmeal and one of bicarbonate of soda on your head. Massage in for a few minutes*, then comb or brush out. Again, warm air will help to get rid of residue.
(this presumably means wave the electric hair dryer about - one of society's most wasteful devices, I would have thought) ...
(I can see this being marketed as a Fringe Hair experience during the Festival ...)
*the patience required to continue for 5 minutes of this is much more expected than the split seconds available for nuggets inside the skull ...

MYTE is of course Etym backwards, and the ology tacks on for the ride ....

Dengle No 28 Broadcasting Research in a Surbiton Kitchen

Discovery and Significance of Weekly Reach

“Weekly Reach” means the percentage of the population who are served, at some point during a week, by a broadcast channel or station.

In 1975, audience measurement was mostly a matter of a ‘snapshot count’. The BBC ran a Daily Survey – this asked a nationwide sample “what did you see yesterday” and identified the proportion of a population who had seen each programme listed. ITV ran a “TV Ratings” system replete with falsehood; it measured the proportion of “homes” in which “the set”, being switched on supposedly denoted “homes viewing”. Later, at least partly in response to repeated criticism from the IBA (and its research department – ie, me) the “homes rating” was multiplied by a figure supposed to represent the number of people in a room for that time of day, to give the number supposed to have watched a programme.

In the 1980s commercial television measurement introduced keypads on which each individual (supposedly) pressed a button to show when they entered or left the room; this, with the data from the set meter, gave a better estimate of those who might have seen a programme.

In both cases, of the BBC’s audience research method and that of the commercial system, the focus was on the programme or the time slot – and the size of its audience. The focus was not on the individual viewer, what he or she thought, or felt, or did cumulatively over a day or over a week. During the 1980s the Commercial system of audience measurement was accepted by the BBC (with the – deeply unscientific – quid pro quo that the results of Appreciation measurement – still carried out – would be suppressed). This Broadcasters’ Audience Measurement system was adapted to be able to state how many of a sample will have been present for at least a ‘quorum segment’ of a broadcaster’s provision, during a week; but the system was still (and in the 2010s remains) not focused on individuals.

In 1975 the IBA had been running a weekly diary system whereby those who said they had seen a programme gave it a mark for how much they had Appreciated it. In so doing, they indicated they had seen the programme. As the diary ran for a week it was relatively easy to find who had seen at least one programme on a given channel during that week. This figure, of “weekly reach” – first calculated by hand after data entry on spread sheet on a kitchen table in Surbiton with the whole of a week’s diaries (some 500 in the sample – I well remember doing it) – was gradually recognised within the industry as being of some interest.

In subsequent decades – even over 30 years later – Weekly Reach has become a litmus test of the value of a broadcaster’s contribution. Weekly Reach can be calculated across the population represented at large, or amongst a segment of it (by sex, age, class or whatever social criterion). I argued (in pieces published occasionally since the 1990s) that the test of effective Public Service Broadcasting is a Reach as near universal as possible (probably across more than one channel) combined with a high level of average appreciation, for services delivering the widest possible range of programme genres and approaches – over a broadcasting schedule cycle – ie: a week.

Dengl 28 Obama as Shylock?

Obama As Shylock?
The USA - in the form of the President or Congress or some other institution - is seeking to exact a substantial payment out of BP as compensation for damage inflicted on US animals/beaches/people. This arises from a mishap (we shouldnt misuse the word 'accident') in non territorial waters over which I dont see that the US has any more jurisdiction than does Cuba ...) from an installation which, one is given to believe, was accepted in place by a US regulatory authority (Minerals and Mining something or other...). One can see how cross they are, and one can accept that they do want compensation. BP has ceded that it WILL pay some huge amount.

In doing this, it is said that there will be substantial effects on UK - and indeed on US share values and prosperity. It might be useful, then, to consider how to mitigate the HARM which will be passed along or spread, while alleviating the damage and suffering imposed on US individuals and society.

It also raises the matter of whether reparations in this case will be the catalyst for reparations in other similar cases which may have passed by without any such recognition or restitution, thus far. To my non-professional mind there are the cases of:

a US ship spilling oil on Breton and Norman beaches some years ago
EXXON's Valdez spilling oil on Canadian shores as well as Alaskan ones
Union Carbide's killing of Indian citizens in Bhopal, and of subsequent attributable physiological birth defects
The US military's detritus of explosives and chemicals which, over the years and after the cessation of wars which we may agree were politically justified, have maimed very many people in Asia

Somewhat more subtly, the President's advocacy may be shown to have accomplished two goals - one of earning restitution for victims of the Caribbean oil spill - and that is good; but the other (and perhaps NOT unavoidable) consequence is to depress BP share values with loss to those whose pensions are paid partly out of the dividends therefrom. In this latter function might there be a CLASS ACTION against the President for his ill judged advocacy - in bundling the two consequences together? (Hence the allusion to Shylock, above ...who wanted his pound of flesh, imagining it could be delivered without loss of blood and injury to its human source...) ...
Britain might also consider an action against the President for repeatedly referring to the company by a false name ("British" Petroleum) ((I agree, it was a surprise to me, too, before I learned about "Beyond"* ...but Obama should have known better ...)) thus engendering commercial and trading difficulties for other British concerns..
Of course, we might prefer NOT to explore or take such actions, but this might best occur in a less heated context.

How does one SAY such things - to any useful effect?

* I would have advised BP to employ Beyonce in some publicity, to help sidestep perception of the "British" referent, towards the "Beyond" concept ...
above all, I would have advised BP to anticipate and minimise its risks to a much more convincing extent ...
I would have advised BP, very soon after the explosion, to employ visibly American contractors to try and remedy the situation