Euan Semple's Blog, page 99

The truth

In a recent article Emily Bell wrote:

"Tweaking an algorithm to favour “family and friends” is the engineering equivalent of “people have had enough of experts”, in that it acknowledges that how people feel is a better driver of activity than what people think."

Bollocks.

The only reason I read anything Emily writes is because my network links to her. Yes some of that network are my friends but they link to her because they have seen value in her "expertise". They have thought about what they are linking to and why.

She writes for a newspaper whose output is so politically slanted that I have learned not to trust it, along with all the others, and TV news has become light entertainment info-porn. I trust my network of friends more.

Three points:

This only works if I am careful who my friends are and avoid ending up in a self reinforcing echo chamber.

I totally concede the increasing influence of the ideology of algorithms on our lives and Facebook should be no more blindly trusted than the owners and editorial boards of newspapers.

If more of us become skilled at using our volume control on mob rule we might arrive at something closer to the truth that Emily clearly cares about than we do currently.

She arrives at a similar conclusion:

"If we tolerate a political system which abandons facts and a media ecosystem which does not filter for truth, then this places a heavy burden on “users” to actively gather and interrogate information from all sides - to understand how they might be affected by the consequences of actions, and to know the origin of information and the integrity of the channels through which it reaches them. For this we are definitely better together."

Things is, can we be bothered and can we handle the truth?

Playing God

Dave Snowden and I have had many exchanges over the years about the need to balance individual responsibility with collective change. How does any group change happen without individuals behaving differently? How much structure is optimal? When does a focus on individual change tip into what he calls New Age Fluffy Bunnydom? When does tweaking the system towards predetermined outcomes tip into playing god? A spectrum from Anarchy at one end to Facism at the other?

His recent blog post attacking the sacred cows of OD raises all of these issues for me. He is spot on about the inadequacy of our current approaches to change, and as ever I agree with what he us saying more than I disagree.

But...

As usual I am still left feeling uneasy about who gets to play God and what their qualifications are. If they get good at manipulating the system towards predicted outcomes, but those outcomes turn out to be wrong, destructive rather than productive, is getting to the wrong place more effectively a good thing? Is our current inefficient and often ineffective way of approaching change less damaging than some mad scientist pressing all the buttons? Does replacing that mad scientist with a committee make things better or worse? Does all this apply to nation states and our current governance shambles?

Hmm...

Fighting reality

We like certainty. We want to know what is happening next. We think that if we do enough thinking we can control our futures. But this is an illusion. Surely this week in British politics has proved that any certainty about what is going to happen next is folly?

We also like to think that we can control the actions of others. If we are persuasive enough, if we rant enough, if we do enough Facebook posts, if we bully enough, we can make them bend to our will.

All of this is resisting what is, and that is a battle we will never win. We waste enormous amounts of energy fighting what is and wishing it was otherwise. Our wishing projects into a future we can't control. It distorts our relations with those around us, and with ourselves.

Does giving up this resistance to what is leave us adrift, apathetic, and buffeted by fate?

Or does it allow us to be more aware of our current realities? More able conserve our energy and to respond authentically one thought at a time, one conversation at a time, one small action at a time?

A great unraveling.

Our house was built in 1935. I lie in bed this morning thinking of its first, proud, owner, watching clouds gathering over Europe and wondering what it meant for his family's future.

It may be that we are seeing the beginnings of a great unraveling. In many ways it is overdue. There is much needs sorting out at a fundamental level in society and how we as individuals take our place in the world.

I hope we are up to the task and meet our challenges by peaceful means.

One thought, one conversation, one tiny miracle at a time

I keep wanting to do something. To react. To hit back at those who "have done this to us". My father's very different perspective on the Brexit vote is bringing out the child in me. I want to cry, or scream, or throw my toys out of the pram.

But of all the articles I have read over the past couple of days the one by Umair Haque that I shared yesterday comes closest to my own feelings. The problems we have to fix aren't "out there". They never have been. Fixing "them" is never the solution. It's a displacement activity. It keeps us busy and shields us from the truth. Our truth.

"This is big karma. We have stepped on each other for too long, and now we ask: who broke us?

We did. We broke our very own hearts, spirits, minds. And now we are broken people, who cannot even see the most obvious thing of all.

You don’t have to do anything. There’s nothing to do. Just see it. Really be aware for the first time of all this. And then you will be able to live in a truer way.

You feel powerless to change anything. I see an age so blind it can’t see the simplest truth of all. Just change yourself. Then the world will change one tiny miracle at a time."

Vive La Difference

So I'm walking through our local market hearing people speaking Polish and Greek and found myself thinking "I don't care what language people speak, or where they are from, so long as they are nice."

I then overhear an old English gent ask the lady serving at the wonderful Indian food stall if they had anything without onion or garlic. Bless!

And then I noticed the fish stall in the photo Above with its "English and Continental".

Funny old, mixed up, world and long may it remain so!

Critical Thinking

In my most recent post on Facebook I shared this provocative photo of a supposed potential contact with whom I apparently share a "mutual friend".

Many years ago I was presenting at a conference alongside Jimmy Wales, instigator of Wikipedia. He was asked if he was worried about schools and universities banning Wikipedia as they were at the time. His response was "Surely, instead of banning Wikipedia, we should be teaching kids critical thinking and how to check the veracity of sources of information."

Someone was daft enough to accept a friend request from Olga. If they are sufficiently careless to do that what other dodgy bits of information are they accepting uncritically?

As we head to tomorrow's referendum this isn't a trivial question.

Which side of the bed?

One of the pleasures of my job is getting to work with different people all the time, people from a range of backgrounds and with varying priorities. Some are highly paid, some are not. Some are successful, some are not. Some are happy some are not.

What strikes me often is how their happiness is independent of their circumstances. I once met someone who was incredibly wealthy but utterly miserable. I often meet people who suffer significant financial challenges but nonetheless have a sunny disposition.

I am more and more convinced that we get to choose. We get to decide which side of the bed we get out of. Shame we don't often remember that.

We all have a volume control on mob rule

This is the title of a chapter in my book. It seems sadly relevant in these turbulent times. We each have a responsibility online to decide what we share and what we ignore, which views we reinforce and what we push back against. Which flames we fan and which we attempt to put out.

To quote Wayne Dyer "When given the choice of being right or being kind - be kind."

Tolerating intolerance

Robert Scoble made a comment today about dreaming "Of a tomorrow where political correctness is seen as a nicer way to live than spouting off any damn thing that comes to your mind (especially if those things include hate or intolerance)."

The thing I am most intolerant of is intolerance. I recoil from right wing conservatives' inclination to project their own dysfunctional nastiness onto others. However when it comes down to micro decisions about who we friend, or more challengingly unfriend, on Facebook this gets hard.

I don't want to end up in an echo chamber of people who agree with me. Having my views challenged and changed is part of why I love social media.

But nor do I want to be associated with people who I see as spreading attitudes that I think are hurtful to individuals or damaging to the fabric of society.

Where, and how, do we draw the line?