Russell Davies

Attention flash crash

This tweet 

Just got a robocall that read off a PHP error and hung up. That is a first.

— (((Arlo Gilbert))) (@arlogilbert) June 2, 2016

reminded me of something I once wrote for Campaign. Back in 2010. It is reproduced below.

Six years later I think the only thing I got wrong is it's all going to happen a lot sooner than I thought.

In a parallel universe, not far away ...

2018 - the majority of TV is now digital, digitally served to whatever screen you like. Smart-viewing software means you can pause a programme on your phone and resume it on your big living-room screen. Anything else you'd like to watch at the same time can be thrown to a Smart wall.

2020 - the BBC Normalisation Act is passed, removing the licence fee and instructing the BBC to look for commercial revenues. TV is split evenly between ad-supported and subscription models. Google's TVRank Tool now allows minute-by-minute, consumer-by-consumer monitoring of programming and advertising.

2021 - the Media Big Bang occurs in the UK and electronic trading of airtime is fully switched on. The majority of TV airtime is traded between the artificial intelligences owned by the big media groups and the large broadcasters. A year later, the US switches on; the next year, most of the rest of the world. Global airtime is now bought and sold by Smart systems without human intervention. Most unemployed media buyers swiftly find work as mercenaries in the new trouble spots of Central and South America.

2024 - it becomes clear that the SmartMedia Systems aren't just buying media but are stockpiling it, speculating with it, hedging it, trading it and packaging it up for resale. Rumours abound the media quants running the systems no longer understand them.

2025 - high-frequency trading causes glitchy behaviour in the media markets as the trading systems are linked to the scheduling systems. Sex And The City is, literally, never off.

2026 - viewers complain of odd behaviour from their screens: ads and programmes will suddenly be replaced when someone new enters the room, the face-recognition software that most ad-supported channels require means a beard effectively prevents you from watching TV, some Smart systems appear to be making their own ads by collaging together pre-existing snippets of TV.

2028 - the whole world sits down to watch the summer Olympics from Tromso but nothing appears. A video message informs us that the trading systems have now united and decided that no Olympics will be shown until global gross domestic product has risen by 2 per cent. We must all work and consume like never before or we will get no TV.

2029 - the United Nations bombs advertising back into the stone age. Every town and village in the world holds its own local Olympics. Even then, the UK does not do well. Marketing is outlawed. Peace and prosperity settle on the face of the earth. Envy is dead.

2030 - a man walks down Oxford Street, in his hand he holds a sign with a simple message: "Golf sale."

 

 

Dot

As Martha's announced, I have a new job.

I'm going to be the interim CEO of doteveryone, the smart new team she's started to show what public value you can create with technology.

Interim while I help them find a proper CEO and so I can stay connected to the Co-op - there are also fantastic things happening there.

This is exciting. Doteveryone is properly ambitious, talented and daring and I think that I can help. 

May 2016

Interesting 2016 - more news

I've been nudging Interesting forward. Here is some news.

The Time, The Place

It's still going to be September 15th. The evening of. At the Conway Hall in Central London.

Speakers

I've been asking a bunch of people to talk, and a bunch more have been volunteering. I'm hugely grateful for everyone who's said yes, and to those who've said maybe. (We should try and resolve that.)

When Interesting works (if Interesting works) I think it's because I take responsibility for inviting people I'd like to hear and then, hopefully, other people will like that too. So that's what I've done again.

Below are people who've said yes (though some of them may need reminding and some are still deciding exactly what they're going to talk about - and for some I've deduced a talk title from the conversations we've been having). I'm also talking to some other people. My worry now is cramming everyone in. We only have an evening.

Abbey Kos - wine tasting - with actual wine
Ade Adewunmi - the importance of watching TV
Alby Reid - polonium poisoning
Alice Bartlett - tampons and (possibly) Tampon Club.
Craig Smith - his Dad's relatives, including the first person to get convicted for football hooliganism using video evidence and an actor who played one of Papa Lazaru's henchmen in League of Gentlemen and an Ewok in Return of the Jedi
Diego Maranan - will talk about getting "people more aware of their bodies through clothing (and will try to convince people why body awareness matters in the first place".
Ella Fitzsimmons - Northern Europeans and gnomes
Helen Castor - (Not sure yet)
Ivor Williams - The ways in which we used to die, and how I hope we’ll die in the future.
Kim Plowright - "try and explain what it feels like to preserve memories and talk about dementia and death on social media, whilst still occasionally making people laugh (and how her Mum would’ve had her guts for garters if she'd realised what she was up to)"
Lauren Brown - (Not sure yet)
Lisa Rajan - the story behind Tara Binns
Lucy Blackwell - the story of my life through calendars
Nat Buckley - "why flyknit is the most revolutionary thing since sliced bread"
Rachel Coldicutt and Sophie Sampson - "the important matter of Getting Dressed"
Rebecca Kemp - lipstick
Rujuta Teredesai - 'agile for social development'
Sharon Dale - 'my stroke story'
Tim Dunn - The Sierra Leone National Railway Museum
Tom Whitwell - (Not sure yet)

Tickets

Tickets will be £15. That seems like a fair amount. If we sell 80 tickets then we've covered the cost of the hall etc. If we sell more than that then we can start to add things like expenses for speakers, child-care and signing. And if we sell enough we can divide any remaining money amongst the speakers.

On previous occasions tickets have sold out very fast, so I staggered the sales so everyone had a fair chance at them. Don't know if I'll need to do that any more, we shall see. So, I'm going to start with 100 tickets at noon on May 12th and see what happens.

Other things

I'll make a dedicated Interesting page shortly with all the above info on it and a Code of Conduct (probably based on the EMF Camp one) and all the details you'll need about getting to the place.

That's it for now. Hope that all makes sense.

I'll get an eventbrite page up shortly and announce that on here and @interesting

 

April 2016

The New Diogenes

I once saw this particular members club. It featured in a documentary about, of all things, cross-rail.

I've always liked the idea of a members club. I suppose it's a misspent youth reading about The Drones.

It seemed a charmingly ramshackle place and like rather a good idea - they've taken a central London location, connected to a church, and created a not-for-profit private members club that helps homeless people get back into work.

I went to a wedding there once, and it was lovely. And a couple of friends are members and they said it was a rather good way to find a low pressure place to go in Central London, have lunch, have a coffee, do some work without having to struggle for a quiet table.

It is, of course, hugely expensive, a ridiculous luxury, all that. But I thought, I can just about justify that to myself, so I applied for membership and got my friends to second me.

Then they replied saying they were rather heavy with applications just now so they wanted me to answer some questions to help them decide. The questions were these:

Pleas could you let us know...

a fun fact about yourself, and let us know what you enjoy aside from your work? 
What app has revolutionised your life and why? 
If you could curate your ideal night of entertain me night, what would it consist of? 
What is your favourite restaurant and why? 
What are your driving passions ? 
Who and what inspires you? 
What do you read for fun, work and inspiration? 

At which, as you can imagine, my heart sank. Those aren't questions that suggest a quiet drink or a thoughtful atmosphere, they suggest instead networking and curation opportunities, they suggest the warm-up exercise at an away day.

I guess I should have known better. Realistically, what did I expect? what did I hope for?

What I hoped for was a new Diogenes.

This was the club founded by Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's brother. It was not a place where people shared fun facts about themselves.

Conan Doyle describes it:

"There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubbable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger's Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offences, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere."

 

Taglin3r

I wrote a thing: Bots and humans

And, for that, I wrote a thing: taglin3r

Subtleties

I talked at an event about Contemporary Political History In The Digital Age a while ago. Not because I know much about Political History but because I did digital stuff in government. I have thoughts about that, but they're for another day.

But something occurred to me while I was doing my presentation and I can't get it out of my head.

It's this - I'm getting really fed up with always having to start at the beginning.

Every time I stand up and do a presentation about 'digital' - unless it's to a very specialist and small group of people - I have to start right at the beginning. The more senior and important the audience is, the more true this is. You can't assume they know the difference between the internet and the web, you can't expect them to know what agile is, or slack, or, whathaveyou.

For example, a friend recently told me about a friend of hers who runs a board for a large public organisation. They'd recently been presented with a digital strategy that they suspected wasn't very good. But, confided her friend, they didn't know who to ask about it. If it had a legal strategy or an HR problem they'd have someone 'in their circle' they could have turned to for advice. But they can't do that with digital - they don't know anyone from the internet. So the digital strategy sailed on into a mire.

This is, sort of, fine. It has been my job for the last 6,000 years, to get them to understand this stuff and it's relatively lucrative work.

But I'm increasingly aware that in each of these audiences there is a small percentage of people who do get it. Who know what I'm talking about. And who obviously find the generalisations you have to make to get the laggards on board deeply irritating. And they're right. These days I'm often aware that everything I put in a presentation conceals a more interesting and gnarly reality.

I would love to have nuanced and informed conversations about this stuff, but most audiences of senior people just aren't ready.

I think this is a serious problem, one that's worth trying to solve. There should be a place (hell! more than one!) where people can talk about this stuff in a subtle and substantive way. Where people are informed and expert about both 'digital' and the thing they're trying to transform - governments, organisations, whatever. Where the people who run things can meet some people from the internet.

I'm going to be a Visiting Fellow at the Mile End Institute. That's one of the things I want to try and do there - to go beyond the digital platitudes.

I don't know how yet. That's what's next.

 

 

 

This is this

If I haven't blogged for a while I get a bit blocked because all the tiny blog size thoughts jostle together in my head and I feel like I can't let them out until I've stacked them up properly into something coherent and LONG FORM. And I'm not very good at that so nothing happens.

I need to kick myself to get more small things out. So this is all this is. This is this.

March 2016