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Now Then – the hidden systems that've frozen time and stop us changing the world
- fennecfoxen 12y agoInteresting, but the inaccurate obsession with Boole needs to go. If anything half the examples they cite as "Boolean" inference are more Bayesian. And what does the Voynich manuscript have to do with a surveillance dystopia? That ending is pretty weak.
- sp332 12y agoThe thread with Boole was picked up as a long tie-in to get to his daughter.
- daveloyall 12y agoI agree, that's what he did there. But, why the manuscript?
- creamyhorror 12y agoThis meandering, arty-sounding essay was interesting despite not being very rigorously argued. I'm only surprised the author didn't mention that Geoffrey Hinton, a major figure in neural networks, is a descendant of Boole. Maybe he wasn't aware of the connection.
- jpswade 12y agoIf you liked that, you'll love 'All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace'. http://wayback.archive.org/web/20120522154154/http://archive.org/details/AdamCurtis-AllWatchedOverByMachinesOfLovingGrace http://wayback.archive.org/web/20120522154154/http://archive...
- JonnieCache 12y agoIMO his best work is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares is good too. All of it is pretty great, if you don't mind the slightly agitprop-ish style. EDIT: this definitely isnt his best work though.
- gmac 12y agoAgreed that the Century of the Self is very much worth watching. This parody is spot on, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg
- kghose 12y agoWas this written by a computer?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- jgrahamc 12y agoDefinitely not Adam Curtis' best work. In particular, his connection between Boole (and Boolean Algebra) and recommendation systems seems weak. The latter are for more probabilistic. And just when you think the article is going somewhere it ends with a strange detour into the Boole family which doesn't seem to have much to do with the rest.
- aaronem 12y agoOh, I don't know. To say that the article ever seemed to be going anywhere is to give it more credit than is warranted. At best, I could make an argument for royalism out of it, but in fairness I can do that with almost anything.
- dragontamer 12y agoI have no idea where this blogpost is going. I think its more of a stream of consciousness that shouldn't really be published... Its good for writers to write down their thoughts in this poorly edited form, but it isn't very useful to the readers.
- jgrahamc 12y agoWell, I thought, at least, that he was doing to talk about the problem of the 'filter bubble'. Instead he zoomed off into the Boole family and the Voynich Manuscript for no apparent reason.
- vidarh 12y agoThe Voynich manuscript "tie in" I see as just another interesting digression while talking about Ethel's life. But the Boole family bit ties in thematically in that it provides two people who represents two contradictory possibilities for the future: The stagnating world described in the first part of the article where nothing changes because we're locked in place by technology, represented by Hinton's view of time as an illusion, where it is just what part of a static four-dimensional landscape we see that changes. Or a future where things are allowed to change again, represented by Ethel, whose novel inspired a generation of revolutionaries, and who herself continued to believe in change to the end.
- eternalban 12y agoto wit, "In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash Installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content"
- gadders 12y agoIt's amazing that people take this seriously. It's random stream of conciousness stuff.
- danelectro 12y agoYou mean IOW a blog?
- INTPenis 12y agoThat's funny but I associated the title with something completely different than what I read in the article. When the author starts talking about politics and systems frozen in time I can't help but think about how the real frozen system is our political system. We get new digital systems almost weekly, that help us do things like monitor peoples activities and map their opinions, but these systems are all being deployed within a political system that has largely remained unchanged for our entire documented history. The old satirical images of class hierarchies in the shape of pyramids come to mind.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- garethsprice 12y ago"We get new digital systems almost weekly, that help us do things like monitor peoples activities and map their opinions, but these systems are all being deployed within a political system that has largely remained unchanged for our entire documented history." In terms of documented history, democracy is still a young experiment - after outright tribalism, monarchism was the dominant system until a wave of revolutions between the 18th-20th centuries. Democracy is changing rapidly (in historical terms) - the "digital trackers", Citizens United, creation and repeal of the Voting Rights Act. These will all have far-reaching implications. A world with a "new political system almost weekly" would be mired in violent localized revolution and tribalism, which is how humanity lived for far longer than they've lived under representative democracy.
- INTPenis 12y agoI never said democracy specifically. I meant in a broader sense the systems where a minority have centralized power over a majority of largely unorganized masses.
- lifeisstillgood 12y agoTl;dr recommendation systems, digital records, all combine to highlight inconsistencies between our past behaviour and current behaviour, this forcing us to never change for fear of being labelled a Hypocrite. This is extrapolating out of technical realm and not passing through culture before making a conclusion. Just as today's 30 year old will be far more forgiving of an employee with photos online of their drunken 20's than pre-Facebook 30 year olds, we will find our cultural norms changing as more and more of us find privacy has vanished. The issue is not can the technology be used in this way, but will those using it that way be labelled "normal", "annoying moralists" or "unclean and untouchable". Technology always leads us to new crises - but we should manage them with an eye on the value that can be wrought. Technology that monitors my heartbeat and liver function I like. Technology that monitors my political views I want to be wrapped in social and legal constraints.
- arethuza 12y agoWasn't the idea that prediction of the future constrains what can be done and may ultimately lead to stagnation part of the original Dune novels?
- lifeisstillgood 12y agoI preferred the novels where a woman able to perceive alternative futures simply chose the one where if she scratched her left ear and turned round twice, her enemy had a heart attack a week later on a different planet. She was literally the most powerful being alive.
- arethuza 12y agoActually, that reminds me (in different ways) of Neal Stephenson's Anathem and Greg Egan's Quarantine.
- pnathan 12y agoLots of sound-bytes and flakyisms in that one. It is, of course, true that large monied interests have an interest in stability (I'd like to cue the arguments against having a Great War, "It'll be too expensive, no one would dare", circa 1913 or so). It's also true that politicians have to be extremely careful of saying stupid things, or things that can be taken out of context, or things that might offend people they don't want to, because of the prevalence of technology and the "Gotcha" approach certain classes of media prefer. Which too is also a hindrance to change.
- api 12y ago> (I'd like to cue the arguments against having a Great War, "It'll be too expensive, no one would dare", circa 1913 or so). Funny... people now say the same thing about the potential of escalating conflict between China and the U.S., among other things.
- arethuza 12y agoNot to mention conflict with Russia over Ukraine (i.e. Europe needs Russia's natural gas too much and Russians have too much capital tied up in Europe).
- chiph 12y agoThe problem with collaborative filtering systems, whether based on personal preferences or on past purchases, is that you end up in a recommendation bubble. Seeing the same items recommended over and over again. Over time the things I want to buy change. Perhaps because I had a major life event - got married, had a child, turned 50 and had a mid-life crisis, etc. The systems can't predict the timing of those because people don't do them on a schedule.
- Houshalter 12y agoIt's an exploration vs exploitation trade-off. They are just predicting the things you are most likely to buy and suggesting those. But you also want to throw in things which you are less likely to look at, but if you do it gives them more information to make better suggestions. And then as you mention, account for the fact people are dynamic and change over time. This isn't trivial but it can be done.
- helipad 12y ago"Now then" - also a grammatically curious greeting in Yorkshire.
- adnam 12y agoAs we're on this, it's worth watching The Loving Trap, a funny Adam Curtis parody. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg
- cs702 12y agoThis piece makes little sense to me. There are no "hidden systems" that freeze time or stop anyone from changing their mind. In fact, politicians routinely contradict themselves in public! For hilarious evidence of this, just watch John Stewart's Daily Show.[1] PS. If you're ever accused of contradicting yourself, just respond with the famous quote often attributed to John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"[2] -- [1] http://thedailyshow.cc.com/ http://thedailyshow.cc.com/ [2] http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/22/keynes-change-mind/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/22/keynes-change-mind/
- bradleyjg 12y agoAnother good quote along those lines is "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Ralph Waldo Emerson. http://www.bartleby.com/100/420.47.html http://www.bartleby.com/100/420.47.html
- shaunxcode 12y agomy favorite in the same vein is from Walt Whitman: Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
- reis 12y agoRecommendation systems should really have an element of randomness built within them. It is true people will continue to like movies, music, books or products similar to those they have liked before, however occasional randomness would enable some diversification.
- suprgeek 12y agoThe nugget buried at the end is very interesting - Boole (of Boolean Logic) was related to Voynich who found what is perhaps one of the most cryptic documents of all time.
- NAFV_P 12y ago> In 1987 the growing paranoia finally burst out. The trigger was a BBC television series called The Secret Society made by an investigative journalist called Duncan Campbell. In 6 half-hour films Campbell pulled what had been happening all together - and drew a frightening picture that still haunts the imagination of the liberal left. Some Americans were already paranoid back in the mid 70's - Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation", with that well known and often mis-parsed phrase - "He'd kill us if he got the chance".
- BrandonMarc 12y agoOn one hand it's old politics - digging up the dirt on your opponent. But it is also part of something new - and much bigger than just politics. Throughout the western world new systems have risen up whose job is to constantly record and monitor the present - and then compare that to the recorded past. The aim is to discover patterns, coincidences and correlations, and from that find ways of stopping change. Keeping things the same. This is a false conclusion. The goal isn't to stop change. The goal is to embarrass a political opponent. Or intimidate them. Or make them worry enough that they'll be very careful not to say much (i.e. chilling effect). In extreme cases, such a weapon may render a political impotent, or end their career (or prevent their re-election, anyway). So it really is just political crap, somewhat TMZ style. But to say the purpose is to maintain the status quo just doesn't follow. On the other hand, it may be a "sunlight" or transparency sort of thing ... if a politician knows the public can / will see everything they say or do, this could lead to positive results. It's all in who does what with the information that gets recorded & archived.