If you're reading this, it strikes me that you have just burdened yourself with yet another peice of the technological jig-saw that is, sooner or later, going to swamp us into a complete standstill. I've seen an advert for a tv gizmo that allows you record up to a terabyte of tv programmes. A terabyte! Once we had clunky old VCRs that could, fantastically, record prorammes on long play, thus doubling the space on the tape. So we went out, socialised, made babies, got drunk, worked and all sorts of things. Then found we didn't have time to watch all those things we'd recorded.
Now we can record EVERYTHING! And.. if you delete it, apparently, you can get it back. Great. So you didn't have time to watch it in the first place, and you can get it back so as not to watch it all over again.
And this is just the base of the iceberg; we have social networking sites. OK, that's Facebook for everyone except the odd few. Twitter. E-mail. Skype. Text messaging, Instant news websites. There is more micro-information available to us about everyone we know than we ever, ever dreamed possible. or indeed, thought necessary. Hell, we even have blog sites we can pour our thoughts into, so if you're reading this...
So, with all this access to the thoughts of everyone we know, more than we can manage, what THE HELL possesses people to hack in to the phones of complete strangers and read their text messages? Surely they must be thinking 'enough already!'?
Rupert Murdoch now claims to be a little bit deaf and forgetful, and not really able to say he knew what was going on... Well, I'm not losing my hearing, and not particularly forgetful yet. But I am, at least in this one specific thing, just for this once, with him. Neither do I. It's all too much.
I think it's a good job I was neither important enough nor, thankfully, had I sufffered a tragedy of public interest, to have my phone hacked. (Though, who's to know? Certainly not the boss of News Demonical). If they did hack me though, what would they find? I like rugby and pass on and receive bits of news from the rugby world with my brother. Sometimes I'm late home from work and need to tell someone. Usually my wife. And I have some friends who have, let's be brutally frank, a very dodgy sense of humour. Not that interesting really.
So I'm torn between outrage at the diabolical liberties taken with our right to privacy, and a - probably misplaced - sense of sympathy with the hacking hacks who had to wade through the tedium and trivia of other people's lives. Like we don't have enough of it thrust at us anyway.
Oh, this was the News of the World. Stock in trade of course, the prurient prying.
Except those no trade for them anymore. Ha!
Friday 22 July 2011
Tuesday 5 July 2011
Graduating from Cambridge. Medieval Modernity.
In Medieval Britain, there was a time when to wear the wrong sort of clothing would mean arrest and punishment. This was due in part, to the plague of 1348, when the death of almost half the population led to the distribution of wealth being greater. This meant that those who survived found themselves better off than they had ever been, and the poorer classes began to imitate their social betters in what they wore, ate and how they lived. The Sumptuary Law passed by Edward III was an attempt to restore the social order; by governing exactly how individuals from each class could outwardly display their status.
This form of social control continued until well in to the 17th century. Now, with our relaxed social conformity and (until recently anyway) our greater standard of living, it is only really possible to tell the super-rich and the extremely poor from the rest of us. Who you are, and how you fare in life is much harder to read from outward signs. Unless, for example, you are graduating from the University of Cambridge. Here, tradition pervades thickly, like damp fog on a high hilltop. Navigating your way takes caution, and strict adherence to the official pathway.
The social order is maintained, and displayed: the gown you wear is an outward emblem of what you have become. A 'Mathmo', or perhaps a 'Natsci', each subject having it's own colour, and each level of degree having some other tell-tale sign to those in the know, perhaps the length of the gown, or the length of slit you are permitted. The graduation ceremony itself has elements that are 800 years old, with a parade through the town culminating in a reverential service at the Senate Hall. There is much pomp, with the studious carrying of maces donated by the Duke of Buckingham when Chancellor (1626-28), and earnest entry of the important figures, taking up their allotted places at the front of the hall, while the graduands are assembled in orderly fashion toward the back.
The whole has a feeling of high church or catholic mass. Indeed, the official name for the ceremony is Congregation. There is no doubting who is where in this macrocosmic world. The red gowns are the those at the top, and between them and white fake fur of the BAs are subtle degrees (yes, I know) of social order. As I watched my son, Gareth (Mathmo, Masters, blue flash in the gown) kneel before the Vice-Chancellor, I though, how very medieval. How very moving. Long may it continue.
This form of social control continued until well in to the 17th century. Now, with our relaxed social conformity and (until recently anyway) our greater standard of living, it is only really possible to tell the super-rich and the extremely poor from the rest of us. Who you are, and how you fare in life is much harder to read from outward signs. Unless, for example, you are graduating from the University of Cambridge. Here, tradition pervades thickly, like damp fog on a high hilltop. Navigating your way takes caution, and strict adherence to the official pathway.
The social order is maintained, and displayed: the gown you wear is an outward emblem of what you have become. A 'Mathmo', or perhaps a 'Natsci', each subject having it's own colour, and each level of degree having some other tell-tale sign to those in the know, perhaps the length of the gown, or the length of slit you are permitted. The graduation ceremony itself has elements that are 800 years old, with a parade through the town culminating in a reverential service at the Senate Hall. There is much pomp, with the studious carrying of maces donated by the Duke of Buckingham when Chancellor (1626-28), and earnest entry of the important figures, taking up their allotted places at the front of the hall, while the graduands are assembled in orderly fashion toward the back.
The whole has a feeling of high church or catholic mass. Indeed, the official name for the ceremony is Congregation. There is no doubting who is where in this macrocosmic world. The red gowns are the those at the top, and between them and white fake fur of the BAs are subtle degrees (yes, I know) of social order. As I watched my son, Gareth (Mathmo, Masters, blue flash in the gown) kneel before the Vice-Chancellor, I though, how very medieval. How very moving. Long may it continue.
Monday 4 July 2011
The Owl Killers
It is said that the past is a foreign country, and Karen Maitland's novel of the Dark Ages opens the door to a world that is both strange and oddly familiar. Like a trip to Europe. The village of Ulewic is peopled by characters who work, play, gossip, scheme and simply try to live - just like us. Their lives however, are shadowed by ignorance, superstition and religion, The parish priest is flawed, both intrinsically by his own failings, and extrinsically by the unenlightenment of the age, for example, damning a young dumb girl because her lack of screams when being tortured as a suspected witch, proved her devilment.
The women of the nearby Beguinage, whose religion is both humanitarian and bound by piety, aggrieve the priest, and he, desperate to regain favour with the Bishop of Norwich, becomes inadvisedly drawn to the anti-religion secret sect known as the Owl Men. Cleverly narrated by several lead characters, events are given a different complexion depending on the teller. The denoument is perhaps a little flat, with the tale shouting for a heroic intervention somewhere. But the writer knows her subject well enough to immerse us in a very dark time indeed, so that we feel we know the village, the people and the mindset. And for that, it is a very rewarding excursion to that foreign land.
The women of the nearby Beguinage, whose religion is both humanitarian and bound by piety, aggrieve the priest, and he, desperate to regain favour with the Bishop of Norwich, becomes inadvisedly drawn to the anti-religion secret sect known as the Owl Men. Cleverly narrated by several lead characters, events are given a different complexion depending on the teller. The denoument is perhaps a little flat, with the tale shouting for a heroic intervention somewhere. But the writer knows her subject well enough to immerse us in a very dark time indeed, so that we feel we know the village, the people and the mindset. And for that, it is a very rewarding excursion to that foreign land.
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