First Line of Defence?

Dave Winer may be a very smart guy, who effectively invented blogging, RSS, and podcasts, but he’s lost his mind in this post:

We are now all complete newbies when it comes to understanding how networks can be used to spread misinformation. We might look back in a few years and realize that our first line of defense was Facebook, Inc. Maybe tearing them down is like the press tearing down HRC in 2016. I don’t trust their judgement on this stuff, do you?

– Dave Winer, Untitled Scripting News post

The first sentence is fair enough, but the second? Facebook is the first line of attack, rather, on our democratic freedoms. See Cambridge Analytica stories, passim. Or if not the first, then the most powerful tool in the armoury of the anti-democratic forces that plague us.

The ’them’ he refers to is, I think, journalists. Or ‘journalism,’ as a collective entity:

I judge journalism in the aggregate.

In other words, I say “journalism” did this or that.

– Dave Winer, Journalism in the aggregate

One of the main things he does these days is to rail against journalism.

Dissertation Submitted

Just an hour ago I submitted my dissertation for my creative writing MA.

This means my course is effectively over. The novel is far from complete, though: I have what I think will be about a quarter of it. So we press on. But for now, I’m taking to the hammock.

An American Story by Christopher Priest (Books 2021, 18)

It was strangely timely that I decided to start reading this a few days before the 9/11 anniversary, since it concerns a man’s obsession with what happened on 9/11. The narrator is a journalist who lost his partner in the attacks. Except her name doesn’t appear on any passenger manifest, and there are multiple mysteries around the whole event.

As there are in real life. But this story takes place in a slightly altered reality. Scotland already has its independence, and England – or at least the little we see of London – has become increasingly dystopian, plagued by militarised police and surveillance.

The action switches back and forth in location between the Isle of Bute (where Priest also lives) and various parts of the USA (and sometimes those places are oddly coterminous). And also jumps around in time, from the present of the story – roughly 2017-8, when it was written and published – to before and during the 11th of September 2001, to various points between the two. It even dips a few years into the future.

It touches on ideas and discussions that are considered the domain of conspiracy theories, but largely avoids going down those rabbit holes. As one review I read said, ‘Conspiracy theories purport answers, often paranoid and outlandish; An American Story is about questions.’

It’s well worth a read, though there a couple of threads that he starts and leaves hanging, that I think would have been interesting to follow.

I usually forget to link to the books I write about. Here we are.

My phone just reminded me that my dissertation is due right now. Which wouldn’t have been a very useful reminder if I had been planning to submit today, but had somehow – incredibly! – forgotten.

Luckily I’ve got a two-week extension. I plan to actually submit in the next two or three days, though.

Book me a front-row seat:

… because the new The Matrix movie looks incredible.

(I know the front row isn’t the best place to sit.)

Just found a typo in my diss: ‘Jeff the sandman,’ instead of soundman. Should probably be two words, ‘sound man,’ but anyway, an unexpected @NeilHimself-esque touch.

One Week Away

My dissertation is due in just under a week. I’m seeking an extension, because I’ve been a bit poorly and have lost a lot of work time over the last week, but I still hope to get it in on time.

But that will mean my course will be over. Which is a little bit saddening. I’ve enjoyed being a student again, even though this academic year’s particular situation has meant that the experience has been distinctly unlike a classic student one. Even, I’m sure, for Birkbeck, ‘London’s evening university.’

I have, for example, met none of my classmates in person. I’ve met exactly one member of staff, and that in the park in Gordon Square. I’ve never been in the department’s building. I’ve been into any Birkbeck building – the library – I think three times, maybe four.

Online classes have been fine, though. I wonder if creative writing, in its common workshopping format, works especially well over Teams or Zoom. Everyone takes turns to comment on the piece that’s being discussed, and there’s much less scope for interruptions, compared to in person. Of course the downside of that is that there’s less scope for conversation, for organic discussion. So we probably lost out in some ways, too.

Less, though, than students on other courses, and especially first year undergraduates. Like my daughter, who has done a year of uni and met practically no one on her course. It’s a strange state of affairs, to be sure.

But we move on. This novel extract isn’t going to dissert itself.

Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge (Books 2021, 17)

The absence of an apostrophe in the title has disturbed me slightly since I heard of this book. I think I concluded that it was meant as a verbal statement: rainbows do end, after all. The fact that the last chapter is entitled, ‘The Missing Apostrophe’ comforts me.

The other Vinge books that I’ve read (which would appear from that to only be one, but that is misleading) are galaxy-spanning space operas. This, in contrast, is very compact in scale, being set almost entirely in San Diego, and on the net. It’s a near-future thriller about medical and technological advances and how things might be for someone who was nearly dead from Alzheimer’s and then was brought back.

It’s pretty good, but 2025, the year in which it is set, feels pretty close now. I guess it didn’t in 2006.

Today is Irony Day: Wetherspoon’s short on some beers as Brexit affects deliveries.

They blame ’lack of lorry drivers and strike action.’ Hadn’t heard about a strike; does it exist? And more importantly, what on Earth could have caused a lack of drivers???

I sent my CV to a recruiter today, for the first time in a long time. Dissertation due in less than a fortnight, so I have to start thinking about what’s next.

In an ideal world I’d be able to make a living from writing. This was a programming-type recruiter, though.