Growing up, weekends would often consist of my mum somehow throwing together a batch of scones before I had even, bleary-eyed and bushy haired, dragged myself downstairs, bundling them (and myself, and occasionally my sister) into the back of the car…and heading out for a walk in the countryside.
There was tea in a thermos (sans sugar, which involved a lot of grimacing on my part), there was a tartan blanket, there was an occasional surplus of mud. There were streams to leap, there were stones to skim, there were things to climb, there were cute dogs running around that I would never own.
And there was fresh air.
Plenty of fresh air.
London, however, not so much.
And so, on the most beautiful blue-skyed Saturday of the month, armed only with a half-demolished packet of Mini Eggs and a flimsy pair of sneakers, Sam and I made the trek to Richmond Park.
I’m quite certain I heard my lungs actually squeal with relief.
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Recipe for a great Valentine’s weekend:
* A best friend
* Rose wine
* Finding the perfect pair of cullottes
* A walk through the parks of London
* Candy-coloured houses
* An obligatory cupcake
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In the B.G. era (Before Google), “Don’t Be Evil” might have been roughly translated as “don’t drink the last of the orange juice and put the empty carton back in the fridge again, Laura”. Or, “don’t scream as loud as you can when you get in past midnight for someone to come and rescue you from the giant slug camping on the kitchen floor”. Or even, “don’t accidentally-on-purpose flick a teatowel at your sister’s leg and act surprised when there’s a massive *crack*-ing sound and huge resulting bruise on her thigh”….type…suggestions.
*cough*
Anyway, despite not being a card carrying member of the ACLU for reasons pertaining to Britishness, I do, however, entirely support their letter campaign to stop Google teaming up with NSA.
Privacy. Politics. Huge interwebz companies holding back the Hoover Dam of data under the guise of NOT BEING EVIL, and did I mention your emails, information, spying and PRIVACY?
Well, I’d love to stay here and chat Orwell rolling in his grave a little more (except, as Geoffrey Nunburg said, If It’s ‘Orwellian’, It’s Probably Not), only there’s a box-set of the Inbetweeners lulling me with its siren song and inappropriateness.
Night!
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All right, folks.
Apparently, and I may be paraphrasing but, “the age of privacy is dead – despite what Zuckerberg may or may not have said”. Well, that’s according to Michael Arrington, anyway.
Oh, and according to the title, myself and all those of you who also care, are luddites.
Contraire, oh techie blogger.
Yes it may be the era of phone tapping, email exploitation for advertising purposes, and bizarre people who want to show their purchases off to the world via the internets, but I am all for a certain brand of PERSONAL privacy, you know what I’m saying?
The spam in my inbox, targeted advertising and the annoying telesales calls that occur because certain personal information is available to conglomerates are one thing, but a decent amount of discretion in the way I interact with the people in my life that matter, is something entirely different.
Caring about who sees what exchanges on my Facebook wall doesn’t make me ignorant. If you’re going to open your doors to parental figures, Facebook, I want to be able to fine tune what appears to who – something you were really good at prior to this about-face. My boss doesn’t need to see hideous tagged photos because I couldn’t remove them/the person who took them is too dumb to figure out the implications.
Yes, there is the option of just not putting anything personal on your Facebook page, but I joined as a way to keep in touch – in a personal way – with friends, mainly those across continents, and those unable to respond to emails. It grew and matured and threw open its doors…but that doesn’t mean my profile has to throw open mine.
And if someone could make a platform that let me control exactly what information I share, you can bet I’d be there in a second.
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To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
(Macbeth; Act V Scene V)
I’ve spent the last week digging my heels into the new year, procrastinating over the moment I’d have to turn to 2009 and take stock of what I’ve done. After all, I mainly spent the year holed up by my beach, drinking tea with too much sugar and eating scones…didn’t I?
Well, that’s what I thought.
So it came as somewhat of a surprise today that 2009 - which I like to name “The Year I Became A Hermit” - actually was a time of…well…quite some action.
After all I weathered a financial hurricane.
Took freelancing steps.
Executed a career volte-face.
Strengthened (and tested) some political beliefs by running a comms campaign during the Euro election.
Saw an advert for an awesome job.
Quaked a bit.
Manned up and applied for said awesome job.
Won it.
Celebrated.
Returned to London.
Got stuck in.
And in between there were the personal ups, the downs, the flights, the pints, the birthdays, the rainy days, the cakes, the dates, and the countless, countless lists that characterise the passing of many a calendar month.
So here’s to 2010. And ringing in a new decade with purpose. And clarity. And champagne, on top of a snowy hill, under a full moon, toasting the twinkling amber lights of the lake district below.*
Happy New Year.
*Actual description of my NYE. Best night yet.
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Your digital footprint.
It may be baby Cons size or it may be a virtual Sasquatch marker…and it’s always there in one form or another. Most smart people have heard the horror stories of those with no spare greymatter getting fired because of a particularly idioten and ill-advised comment , so they steer clear of posting incriminating stuff.
A quick search on the Googs will bring up similar stories dating back to 2007, so this is, of course, nothing new or surprising.
So - answer me this - what were two large companies, Ogilvy and Publicis (both of whom work in some most forms of communications) thinking??
Publicis - I’ve Got a Feeling (that somebody had a truly awful idea)
Ogilvy’s tribute to their namesake - (A song for which There Are No Words)
…
No such thing as bad publicity, eh?
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She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half words whispered low;
As earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.
(Robert Graves)
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Pour Noel, je voudrais…
(Okay, fine, but it sounds so much more poetic in French…)
Dear Santa…For christmas this year, please bring me:
* The ability to see the woods from the trees
* Time with friends and family, close by and not so
* A great book, a mug of the frothiest hot chocolate, a stormy day…
* One perfect, shiny opportunity
* And this Bellman stove-top Milk Steamer
Posts have been few and far-between while I’ve been settling into my new place of work, avec teh awesome Drew, Phil, Dom, Ben and Luke. But things a brewing and bubbling…not least of all a new banner for this lovely site. Which may or may not be pretty similar to the current one.
See, I’m rather fond of my little stick figure up there.
Maybe I’ll give her a Santa hat. Hmm.
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04.11.
Oh, hello.
Have you seen this? It’s written by a pretty awesome dude. He’s called Jed. Hi Jed. And Jed has done something that I’d hoped would have happened earlier, i.e. coaxed me out of my Blog Cave with something a little inflammable. Okay, not inflammable, more a slow burner of the brain, and I’m going to respond.
For all of you who ignored the first link, I politely suggest a clickey-click, otherwise this entire post may or may not be an exercise in pointlessness.
Okay, good.
Politics. And the internet. According to Jed, should never the twain meet, because it’s not the vehicle for change that Jed assumes people assume it is. Well, personally, I’d say of course not, I agree with you there. The internet won’t ever be the place that produces the change people want 100% of the time. Perhaps not even 10% of the time. But it is one of the vehicles that gives a voice to people who perhaps want to attempt to make a change.
Along with, and not restricted to, protests, petitions, Gunpowder, and dressing like your favourite Marvel character whilst ensconcing yourself on Harriet Harman’s roof.
But it seems, we disagree/agree for exactly the same reasons. In Jed’s political internet it’s too crowded. Too many voices, too many opinions. But I personally think it makes a change from the institution of middle aged, middle class, overwhelmingly male, overwhelmingly predictable, political commentary that we get in the print press and broadcasting. I personally think at the minute there’s not enough good (clue: that was the operative word) political commentary on the internet yet that’s not affiliated with a national institution, whatever the volume.
Also, on the theme of disparate opinions, I welcome the subtleties and more opinions. Because, quite frankly, nobody in the UK seems to believe that you can have small-c conservative tendencies and small-l liberal tendencies without shoving the fence pole up a certain orifice and declaring yourself a Lib Dem ineffectual. While our US friends are allowed these subtleties in political parties because of the size of their country and inhibiting lack of parties, we in the UK are expected to be quite uniform in belief if you declare yourself one party, or the other, or the other. You’re instantly stereotyped. Why? You can walk from town to town, from county to county and hear discernibly different accents. Why should our political beliefs be any less complex, and why shouldn’t they, more to the point, be expressed if there is a suitable vehicle for expressing it? If you don’t want to hear it, Jed, that’s totally understandable, but you know better than anyone how to fine tune your news feed. No-one has to listen if they don’t want to.
“…trying to reach a common goal will still leave each voice slightly disappointed.”
Sure. But that’s life. You can’t have every cookie in the cookie jar, and we all as adults, know that.
“Decentralisation, distilled into a super-local level would still be too far from our expectations if we’re promised total democracy”
Decentralisation to this extent isn’t “total democracy”, it’s Hobbes’ state of nature. Democracy’s practical application means the majority will always win. There are no two ways about it. My gang is bigger than your gang, is bigger than your opinion, is bigger than… It’s simply the way it works, and the sot is that the losers at least get heard. You’re of the minority opinion? Sweet, we’ve got a seat in the corner for you. It’s delightful. You’re going to love it.
The internet (amongst other things) gives this minority opinion a) a voice and b) the chance to perhaps make themselves a bigger minority and eventually the majority. Tide-turning is slow, but cyclical, as evidenced every decade or so by General Elections in countries of representative democracies.
“Giving power to the people will only result in mass disappointment when that power is given to someone in power.”
Perhaps. But I don’t think too many people are under the illusion that, just because they’re fighting the good fight and utilizing the internet while they do it, they’re ultimately going to win. Even ignoring the internet, and doing it the old school way doesn’t always work, so, personally, I’m going to give more credit to the people who are attempting to mobilize through web 2.0 and assume they understand the fundamental hierarchy and the limitation of tools. Wielding the internet is a type of power, but it’s not absolute and I don’t think people who partake are under the illusion that it is.
After all, it’s not at all different to how people have mobilized in the past except for making it a damn site easier. The printing press and pamphlets got there first. Then came the broadsheets. Now we have twitter. Ease is not equatable to guaranteed outcome – in my view the two are mutually exclusive – and I personally think Jed’s sentence smells suspiciously of inevitability. You’ll only lose, so why clog up my interwebs with your thoughts? Be gone, annoying minority, get back to that chair!
So.
“Is the internet a good vehicle for democracy and ‘the voice of the people’? I don’t think so”
Well, in conclusion, sir, I vote, yea. Politics is, and has always been, about communication. The web is the platform of our generation. Not using it for democratic purpose seems such a waste to me. Yes, it means trying to keep a discerning head. But I think it’s a small price to pay.
That said, I would loveloveLOVE the trolls to leave, but that’s in a perfect world and that’ll never happen. And that’s the sad inevitability of my personal imagined political utopia.
*** Disclaimer – I take some of Jed’s sentences out of order. Jed, if you feel this bastardizes/completely changes your argument then I apologise – I wrote and re-wrote and re-wrote this, and as such everything didn’t exactly end up linear, if y’know what I mean ***
ps: My “comments” sections aren’t playing ball right now, so if you have comments, please do email me at laura.tosney@gmail.com and I’ll put them up in a separate post, or (if it’s okay with you Jed) leave a comment on Jed’s original blog post.
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Just a quick one, because it’s amusing me too much to wait for the moment I might get OneFreeSecond to write a full post. But here’s two fun facts for you.
The Government Change4Life Campaign, supposed to promote healthy diets/living, launched around the beginning of the year and cost them around 85 million (according to my source in the Dept. of Health) to advertise.
Cadbury’s, that er, bastion of vegetable pots and whatnot, has lately tripled its net profit and raised its forecast for the year. According to the Times.
Fantastic.
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