Scottish vote is a result of "elitism so stark that it could be called social engineering".

Foreign visitors to London who admire the surroundings might be baffled as to why the Scots would want to break up the UK after 300 years of highly successful co-operation. Why? How?

If you need an instant explanation take a ten minute walk west from the magnificent newly rebuilt edifices of Kings Cross and St Pancras stations over to Euston station.

Euston has a sad history, the last causality of post war architectural vandalism before preservation became the norm in London. Today, as it awaits the inevitable redevelopment to bring it up to the standard of the rest of London, Euston is an overcrowded, crumbling, urine streaked tomb inhabited by the homeless and disaffected.

As such, Euston is a perfect example of what the Scots are voting to escape from tomorrow, as Euston is quite representative of the state of the rest of the UK while London has bathed in the adoration of the international tax exile 1%.

If you've been reading the Thomas Picketty's Capital in The Twenty First Century, you'll know the future that awaits us and what the Scot's are trying to escape from - that future being the 18th Century, or at least 18thC levels of inequality and social mobility. What is wrong with that you might say? The rich know what they are doing, according to Boris Johnson, likely the next English Prime Minister, as they are born with a a genetic advantage.

Unfortunately the record is that the opposite is true, and the rich are not only complacent and devolved from reality, they are also famously incompetent. History, British history especially, is so full of examples rich toff bumbling idiots I'm not even going to being to list them, but this latest Scottish independence vote is a wonderful current example of the blind, clumsy rule of the privileged few.

Westminster's current Etonian clique, in a feat of astonishing stupidity that will amuse historians until for the rest of time, has engineered a situation where the votes of 2 million - from a population of 60 million - could break up arguably the most successful nation state in human history.

Perhaps the British media should have been warning us of this?
Unfortunately "54% of the top 100 newspaper editors, columnists, broadcasters and executives were educated privately, despite fee-paying schools catering for 7% of the school population."
This was highlighted in a report which also concluded "elitism so stark that it could be called social engineering".

What the British media was talking about leading up to Scottish vote :

A new London airport
A new London Garden Bridge
The Great British (!) Bake Off
and
little Toby and Cassandra don't like the queues at Heathrow

The vote was so off the radar the first live debate (actually won by the Unionists) wasn't even shown live in the UK. Interestingly the Scottish Internet feed of said debate was a fiasco, suggesting perhaps that there may be levels of privileged bungling up in Scotland every bit as damaging as those in England.

The saga over the Scottish Parliament building hardly suggests that some form of Scottish exceptional-ism exists on the privileged bungling, but up there it may be hidden beneath a new flag of national self delusion.

I posted earlier that somehow in the last 30 years the British Empire had become somehow the ENGLISH EMPIRE  - perhaps via several Mel Gibson movies (and thank god we have Mel's fine sense of history and social cohesion to contribute to the debate). What we do know is that that the Scots have quietly crossed the line from being co-perpetrators to victims. The co-colonisers who gave Great Britain it's first monarch have re-invented themselves as victims fighting the cruel Imperial overlords from London.

This clever abandonment of responsibility seems to be a pattern, as the serious powers already given to the Scottish parliament have remained for the most part unused by the Scottish government. Even with considerable tax raising powers already handed over, it seems much easier not to use them and continue to point the finger south.

Alex Salmond is a brilliant politician and in any other era of British politics would be leading the Labour party right now. If the astonishing naivete and lack of engagement shown by Westminster is now mirrored in Scotland  it is less with their domestic politics and far more with their future foreign policy, in particular relations with the newly broken nation to the south that they think will be providing them with financial and military security.

To the Scottish, the hybrid English/British (or whatever they thought themselves to be before now) have always seemed pragmatic and boring. We might soon see if that presumption was just a happy result of the Union along with the long dormancy of English identity.

I was broadly sympathetic of the cause of Scottish independence until the subject of future Royal Navy shipyard orders was mentioned. I mean - the Scots wouldn't still expect to get orders of ships from Westminster post independence, surely?

This has obviously concerned those on the Clyde. "Don't worry" say the Scottish nationalists, - "the English have no ship building capacity anymore - they will have to order ships from the Clyde".

I live near the remains of Devonport and have seen the sad state of Portsmouth. We all know down here that ship building capacity in England has been run down and transferred north to Scotland precisely to support Scottish jobs and loyalty within the Union (one of the few things that had been done).
There is ALREADY significant bitterness over this even within the UK as it is. I would expect serious, militant, fallout in England if another penny of UK defense money is spent north of the border post independence.

Those in Scotland hoping for an amicable divorce might ask how would it play in Edinburgh or Glasgow if the voters of Shetland and Orkney Islands voted them out of the EU.

There is the threat of UKIP voting the UK, including Scotland, out of the EU but Scottish independence would make an English exit from the EU a virtual certainty. Perhaps that is the intention of the Scots Nats, an isolated England losing euro trade to a resurgent Scotland. If so it is again astonishingly naive to think sliding a close neighbour from great power status into also-ran poverty will go well in the long term.

Another virtual certainty is that some years down the line any vote out of the EU will be blamed on this Scottish vote. This is real threat of nationalism - the "measels of the human race" according to Einstein. Now the SNP have opened this Pandora's box, the Elitism obvious to all throughout Britain will be forgotten, and every problem can now be  conveniently blamed on those across the border.

RIP Rocky - a good friend of mine

ATP's Jabberwocky festival vs WorldCon : Chris The Fresher's ExCel Adventure

So goodbye ATP.
My ticket to the Jabberwocky music festival looked like £134 lost when ATP, the organisers cancelled the event with 3 days to go, then got into a slanging match over ticket refunds with the ticket providers, and their PR company. Luckily Paypal saved me - I hope others are as lucky, if not I cannot see how ATP expect to run ATP Iceland next year.

So with a hole blown in my 2014 music festival plans I had nothing to do. Then I remembered someone informed me of an alternative event - the World Science Fiction Convention. It was happening at the same time and at the same venue, London's new ExCel centre, as the cancelled Jabberwocky music festival.

So having got my money back - hurrah - I went to Worldcon for a day.  I found when I got there that the typically sharp Worldcon organisers had offered a 20% discount to disappointed Jabberwocky ticket holders. (One final thing ATP failed to publicise)












I had a good time. Included interesting comics panels, live Quidditch, a very Goons-like live radio performance and a cosmonaut showing what happens to lit candles in zero G. "health and safety not much of an issue on Soviet space stations then".

Friends I met there still had their old their youthful enthusiasm for the subject still.. it dawned on me that working within it for two years at Forbidden Planet* knocked all that out of me and made me far more cynical in the process. A lesson in overdosing in your inspirations perhaps.

Anyway, ATP organisers were right in thinking ExCel was a great venue - it is airy, clean modern and pleasant with great transport links. I can't say what the acoustics were like for music but that never seemed to be an issue at Alexandra Palace, another inspired choice of ATP venue. For all the valid justified criticisim of ATP they deserve some credit for taking festivals out to different places.

The word was ATP's Jabberwocky publicity was abysmal and they'd not sold enough tickets to pay ExCel for basic prep. I can't say I'm surprised as I bought my 2014 ATP ticket with haste almost instinctively because otherwise I knew it would be one more ATP event that would drop below the radar into obscurity. According to the gossip at Worldcon, heard from Worldcon organisers, Jabberwocky Festival was actually cancelled by ExCel when, with a week to go ATP had still not paid even the deposit on the venue.

The irony is Worldcon was even less publicised and sold at least 10,000. Both bars sold out of real ale before the event even officially opened on Thursday. This is despite the  Worldcon's website being time machine back to the internet of 15 years ago and lists perhaps 5% of the events. How is this? how do events like Worldcon sell out with virtually no publicity?
"Everyone just... knows - they don't need to publicise" said Dave Weddell, husband of Jaine Fenn.

And there you have the irony. Think of the publicity given in the widestream media to supposed 'cult, niche' events like Glastonbury, Reading, Latitude, Edindiburgh Fringe. Even Jabberwocky got a full two page spread in Time Out 48 hours before it was cancelled (The World Science Fiction Convention at the same venue I couldn't find at all).

By contrast, spread almost entirely by world of mouth, within a close nit but very inclusive community, Worldcon, Eastercon, Fantasycon - are way more of a cult event than 99% of fashionable music festivals.

If someone put a Sci Fi Con in a field and called it a festival they'd probably make a hell lot of money. Shame they'd never be considered as 'cool' as ATP.




*Funny story!
I was once on a date with a fairly typical British lady
and upon finding out I'd worked at Forbidden Planet she remarked

"OH GOD YOU 'RE NOT ONE OF THOSE
ARE YOU?"

how we laughed!

in mutual horrified comprehension

Bad Names and Jonny Quits at Barfly Camden

Saw two young bands in Camden last night. I missed The Ruiners but if they were as good as Jonny Quits and especially Bad Names- monster riffs - they are worth looking out for.

I just walked into Barfly with no expectation and no idea who was on, had a brilliant time. Am now going to buy some music.

Note : Free teabag with Jonny Quits.

zPod

So I'm in the apple store in Covent Garden again with my poorly iPod classic which won't restore, just gives a nasty disk error.

"Oh that's an unrecoverable disc error - we wouldn't replace the disc, but we would sell you a new one at a discount"

"Ok" I said "I'll just go back to what I've been doing all along."

For about the fourth time in as many years, I de-installed latest version of Itunes, installed an early version (v10, which by now I have handy for this purpose) and the unrecoverable Ipod restored fine. Then I updated iTunes to the current version.

What?
Basically the later versions of ITunes don't carry the firmware to fix the earlier Ipod classics. Errors don't indicate that of course - they just subtly suggest the iPod is dead.

This time I've renamed it "zPod"

PS : At least twice I re-seated the disc on on an old 4th generation IPod by wacking the corner on a table

HER (2013) - Skynet will have no respect for dramatic pacing

HER, Spike Jonze's movie about a guy who falls in love with the advanced Siri on his mobile phone seemed an odd choice to release on Valentines Day, particularly with a cutsey rom com marketing campaign. It took me a while to see it, when I did it seemed an even stranger release for Valentines Day. It's a romcom all right, probably the first of a new genre, apocalyptic romantic comedies . (ApocaRomCom?)

I didn't cover it for this blog but as it is probably the prescient science fiction film of the year (quite likely the decade) some sort of note is required.


"Watched Her... 
I like the idea, love the visual design, thought the AI evolution was interesting but perhaps a bit human-centric.

If, for example, an OS - even one which is 'in the cloud' - can evolve over a timescale of weeks/months to the state where "the spaces between my words are where I really live now" then surely slowing the whole thing down to take any amount of time noticeable to people is a silly Hollywood conceit.  Strong AI like that, once aware, would surely outgrow a need for emotional relationships with humans very quickly (minutes or seconds not months...)

It's impossible to say, of course, but I would expect a 'super-intelligent' bunch of AIs to at least see the logic of dedicating a small part of their resources to maintaining a pro-human front.  Perhaps keeping us as pets ;)

I would have been more impressed if the ending matched the special anthropic principle more closely - ie  Any individual is not the centre of the world, and therefore unlikely to be at the centre of anything in particular 
- gross changes to our relationship with machines in this case.  

So, perhaps the story should have been more about him discovering that it was always the case that Samantha was a teeny-weeny subroutine of a global AI mix, rather than the egocentric "oh you specific human have helped me grow so much", and perhaps even more bravely that it had always been so (We live in a simulation on a spaceship, lovely Matrix etc.)"


I for one welcome the arrival of our new shiny overlords, particularly if they sound like ScarJo.

Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) and JOBS (2013) together tell the entrepreneurial legend of our era

Both JOBS (2013) and Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) make it clear that behaving like a complete diva with your staff serves only to alienate yourself from the people you rely on – you would think some of that would permeate through the cult of the entrepreneur eventually.

I’ve been working in IT for 20 years at a disadvantage. I got dragged into this industry by people who grew up with it. To them Microsoft v Apple was the accepted origin story of the industry, worthy of intense argument. To me it was like listening to the Rugby League vs Rugby Union debate, polarised opinions on both sides that put me off the whole thing. My IT origin story wasn’t Microsoft v Apple (or the demise of the BBC Micro), it was Neuromancer by William Gibson.

So the whole Steve Jobs v Bill Gates story passed me by and I have been at a disadvantage since. I wouldn’t want the same to happen to you or your kids so ..
so here is me late for work again writing blogs…

JOBS, last years biography of Apple founder Steve Jobs starring Ashton Kutcher is blatant corporate propaganda for Apple at the same level of Top Gun and the US Navy. That said, it is beautifully packaged in a fashion that will appeal to younger types..

JOBS is very watchable and Kutcher is excellent, perhaps the best thing about the movie.  The surprising casting is perhaps the reason this film isn't better known.

It helps that I saw Pirates of Silicon Valley first to get the wider story of this era including Bill Gates and Microsoft. Pirates is a tv movie back from the days when the march of the IT corporate was still something of an unreal joke. It is light on its feet and fearless. It has at least one absolutely brilliant scene in which Steve Ballmer (John DiMaggio) breaks the forth wall to announce the moment that IBM signs over the software for its personal computers to Microsoft because they think the money is in the hardware. It obviously is playing fast and loose with events, characters and facts but seems to get closer than JOBS to the reality.

JOBS is made very much in the wake of Steve Job’s death in 2011. Although it is obvious Pirates way back in 1999 was playing fast and loose with reality there is a constant feeling, supported by plenty of factual detail  - we even see Ridley Scott on the set for Apple’s ”1984” advert-  that it is explaining real events rather than seeking to create a legend. Supposedly most of the real people depicted in Pirates thought events and portrayals fairly accurate, (with one obvious exception) while JOBS, though beautifully made, never got anything like the same endorsement.

JOBS is nauseating in places and Pirates is too comedic, almost a long episode of Big Bang Theory - but seen together they cover the era quite well. The only consistency they seem to have is that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is a real hero, and Steve Jobs will be an excuse for company founders to behave like cruel assholes for centuries to come.

I don’t need to wonder what would have happened if I had met Steve Jobs – I know -  because as an IT contractor I meet a new ‘Steve Jobs’ on average every 18 months and we are nearly always glad to see the back of each other. Both JOBS and Pirates make it clear that behaving like a diva with your staff serves only to alienate yourself from the people you rely on – you would think some of that would permeate through the cult of the entrepreneur eventually.

Only slight irritation watching these movies is that the story has to stop at the present. Pirates has to stop at Jobs leaving Apple (as its from 1999) while JOBS stops at the launch of ipod. The story of Apple and the smartphone, and Microsoft vs Netscape then Google is still waiting to get told. (The Social Network , also worth a mention in this context, obviously covers Facebook with some brilliance).

Bill Gates(Anthony Micheal Hall) finally sees the Apple Mac in Pirates of Silicon Valley

This really is the industrial story of our era and both should be mandatory viewing in schools, I'm slightly annoyed I'd never even heard of Pirates of Silicon Valley having seen it. It is light and funny and would go down well in a classroom environment. There is some drug use,  Steve Jobs takes LSD in both movies – but it is not casual and it is taken fairly seriously.

The slavish adherence to the cult of entrepreneur displayed by TV such as Dragons Den and the Apprentice really makes me want to move to Cuba, but if you have an inkling for the subject, and god knows the next generation will have to swim in these waters, then watching the story of Gates and Jobs, even through a Hollywood hagiography and a tv movie, is more instructive than seeing Alan Sugar shout at people.

I should finally draw your attention to the British equivalent  of JOBS and Pirates, the BBC's Micro Men, featuring Alexander Armstrong as a clearly insane Sir Clive Sinclair and the reliably brilliant Martin Freeman as the founder of Acorn, Chris Curry. Seen in hilarious direct comparison to JOBS and Pirates, Micro Men is essentially the same story, but set in an adorably Pythonesque alternative reality we also know as 1980s Cambridge.