Finding Jimmy Savile: the Shaw report haunts England’s Archives

English: Storage hallway at the National Archives I building. This was taken with permission at the Wikipedia 10 Washington D.C. event. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Finding Jimmy Savile: the Shaw report haunts England’s Archives

The name of the title is instantly familiar to readers in the United Kingdom.  Jimmy Savile has been in the news because he has been accused of molesting young girls.  The women, now in their 50s, have come forward with their claims that Savile had molested them. The public will not know the second name. However, Shaw is a name well known to archivists because he looked at the record keeping in Scottish Children’s homes.  For most people, the surface connection is the theme of exploited children.  The deeper connection, though, is the role of archives and its power to shape our collective memory. Like the Hillsborough report, the Savile case will likely lead to recommended changes in archival practices. Before we consider the future of archives, though, we need to consider the evidence.

 

Follow the evidence

Amateurs will speculate about Savile’s behaviour, but experts will be looking for the evidence. We can see this already with the BBC looking through its archives for any allegations of wrongdoing.  What is still, unmentioned, and unexplored are the County Record Offices.  They hold public records such as the records from the Children’s homes that Savile visited.  Because they act as a collective or institutional memory, archives contain a great amount of potential power.  They may contain the answers to the questions around the case.  If the archives contain any evidence, it will have been recorded at the time of the visits.  As such, the archives are not based on recollection or tainted by a possible ulterior motive. The archives can be our collective memory by their power to shape our understanding of events.  Evidence in the archives will shape our understanding of Jimmy Savile as much as the images of Jimmy Savile groping a 14yr old Coleen Nolan on the Top of the Pops, has shaped our view of him.

Genealogists and archivists are forensic detectives? 

The police and investigators will have to explore the County Record Offices that hold the archives for the various care homes.  The work will be required to turn the claims and allegations into charges.  Chasing down the archival leads is daunting but an achievable task. Each children’s home that Savile visited is a potential archive trail.  In that sense, archivists and genealogists can become forensic detectives.  Someone will have to explore the archives to compare the evidence from each home visited.  At the time of the alleged crimes, no one would have connected the homes. Who would have thought that someone would be targeting children’s homes in that way? The archives may allow us to connect the homes in ways unimagined and unavailable at the time. More importantly, though, the archives may hold deeper, darker, secrets.  If Savile was part of a sex ring, as some are claiming, and they visited the same homes, then there should be evidence in the archives.  Alongside Savile may be the records of other visitors.  The archives may contain visitor logs and the associated contemporaneous documents, such as diaries or case notes about visitors.  The archives can be a way to corroborate a hypothesis about possible sex rings or other illegal activity. If there were common visitors to those homes at those times, then there is stronger circumstantial evidence of other illegal activity.

The past as the present: Savile and Rochdale?

Jimmy Savile appeared to target looked after children because they would be the most vulnerable, least likely to speak up, and the least likely to be believed. Savile knew where to look for his victims. His alleged visits raise sobering questions about children’s homes. We see a similarity with the Rochdale case, where a group of men targeted vulnerable looked after young girls.  The men were targeting children’s homes to groom and exploit the girls. The men had an approach not that dissimilar to what Jimmy Savile used 40 years ago. The question that is hidden away in the archives, in a sense, is why could we not protect them then? We need to ask who was visiting children’s homes. Who had access to the children’s homes? What records have been kept about these looked after children and their visitors?

The promise and weakness of archives

Archives may be a powerful tool in shaping our collective memory, but they also betray a critical, institutional, weakness. On the surface, most people would see the archive search as an easy task.  You go to the archives, you find the children’s homes records, and you check to see if Jimmy Savile visited. However, we face a problem.  Here is where the name Shaw becomes important. Tom Shaw is the author of Historical Abuse Systemic Review: Residential Schools and Children’s Homes in Scotland 1950 to 1995.  In 2004, the Scottish Parliament commissioned the report. Although the topic was past institutional child abuse in Scotland, the 2007 report was focused on the regulatory framework that covered the residential schools and how they complied with the record keeping regulations.

What the Shaw review found is sobering when we consider it against the Savile case. The report found poor record keeping and weak regulatory oversight within the institutions.  The findings are disturbing and deeply saddening. Most of the looked after children in Scotland have been robbed of their childhood memories. As adults, seeking their childhood information, they have found the institutional memory had disappeared. What we take for granted, our family photographs, memories, and stories, the children in care never had.  For those who had suffered abuse, they had no way to make sense of their childhood, find closure, or seek restitution.  Scotland’s historically flawed archives show us a fundamental challenge in dealing with the Savile case. For the case to move forward, the police will need evidence to corroborate the allegations.  What we need are records that link Savile to the children’s homes outside of official visits at the time when the alleged victims were present. The archives could contain contemporaneous diaries or recorded information that describes the alleged abuse.

Are England’s historical archives better than Scotland’s?

Given the historically poor state of the Scottish archives around children’s records, will the English ones be better?  If the records exist and can be found, then a possible charge can be pieced together. However, the evidence search will be wider than County Record Offices. The BBC is involved. Initially, the BBC said that it had found nothing in its files on misconduct or allegations of misconduct. Yet, after the documentary aired, the BBC has begun a “deep analysis” of its archives to see if anything exists. Archives are now the crime scene.  The problem with our archives though is larger than the Savile case or records management in children’s homes.

As the alleged abuse occurred with looked after children from Children’s homes, their records will also be government records, they will be public records. Some of the records exist. For example, the National Archives show what is held for the Duncroft Approved School for Girls where one of Savile’s accusers lived. However, the holdings seem meagre. In some cases, the records may be closed to the public so only the Police may be able to investigate.  The children’s home records raises the fundamental issue. If Savile is an indicator of historical exploitation of looked after children, then the record keeping at English children’s homes and schools needs to be reviewed. England needs its own Shaw review. Moreover,  was Savile able to exploit looked after children because of a historic institutional disregard for children as explored in the Shaw report regarding the Scottish system.  As the lead of the Rochdale Council said about the Rochdale case, child safety could not be guaranteed, which suggests that institutional problems appear to exist, albeit in a different form. We need to review of the archives so they can be improved for history’s children and the next generation.

Our archives, our collective memory, their crimes

The Savile case and others show us how important archives are for our collective memory and the public good.  In these cases, Rochdale, Hillsborough, and the Mau Mau torture case, archives are central to holding institutions or people to account.  The Savile case, like the Rochdale case after it, shows us the historical institutional problems around looked after children.  As such, it shows us a historical problem like the Hillsborough and Kenyan case where there is a fight for history, our collective memory. They are government records, which express the public interest by being able to hold the state to account. The cases show that we need archives (our collective memory) for accountability. If we weaken or remove our collective memory, how can we hold the state or those in authority to account for their decisions?  Without accountability beyond the ballot box, which is what the archives allow, then our democratic rights are in jeopardy.

The deeper institutional issue, beyond the headlines, in the Hillsborough case and the Mau Mau Torture case, is how archives and records make sure historical accountability is possible. We may have transparency through Freedom of Information Act, but that will remain superficial if we forget our archives.  They hold the institutional or collective memory for a community as expressed in council decisions. In that way, the archives can show how the way current decisions reflect past decisions. If our archives are not sustained and expanded, we can lose an institutional conscience.  Without such a historical memory or conscience, our perspective is shaped by yesterday’s headlines instead of history’s judgement. Our opportunity for justice, as an individual and as a community, relies upon public records providing evidence.  By ignoring our past, our archives, in pursuit of headlines and current events, we cede our collective memory to the tabloid press. In effect, journalism becomes our history and democracy loses its historical roots. If we are to reinvigorate our democracy, we need to take control of our past. We need to know our past to understand how it shapes our present, and our future.  To do that, we need our archives. For it is in the archives that we can find the evidence to hold power to account, and to exercise our democratic right to information. As democratic citizens, we need to hold onto our archives.

Without archives, our collective memory will become captive to the powerful at the expense of the vulnerable.

 

What needs to be done?

1. We need an English version of the Shaw Review so that we can check the archives for the potential of historic institutional abuse as seen in Scotland.
2. The government needs to fund the archive services so that they can remain the country’s collective memory to guard democracy.
3. Archivists, genealogists, and historical researchers need to be considered as forensic detectives for solving historical crimes.
4. Visit your local archives to exercise your democratic right to information and support the country’s collective memory.

 

Related articles

• Jimmy Savile was a prolific sex offender, say police (thetimes.co.uk)
• Police record rape allegations against Jimmy Savile (thetimes.co.uk)
• The Metropolitan Police forced to investigate Sir Jimmy Savile as dozens more abuse allegations are made (telegraph.co.uk)

Leveson’s fatal flaw: the Queen

Queen of United Kingdom (as well as Canada, Australia, and other Commonwealth realms) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Looking back on the Leveson Inquiry, it is clear that the review was fatally flawed from the start.  Although the terms of reference focused on the press, media relationship, the underlying issue was the way power is distributed and used in the kingdom.  Even Leveson addressed the point when he started the inquiry by asking, “Who guards the guardians?”  By failing to include the Queen or a royal representative in the inquiry, the guardian of the regime was not involved.  The report, no matter how well it is written, will remain incomplete because it does not address issue of political power within the kingdom.

The scandal has revealed the corrupt relationship between the press, police and politicians. The public rely upon the Crown, and the Crown’s ministers to uphold justice and maintain the integrity of the political process. Unlike the United States, the people in the UK are not the guardians of the regime; they must rely upon parliament and the Monarch. The political establishment, on the Monarch’s behalf, guard the regime.  In this role, the press and politicians, mainly, with a small role for the police and the courts set and shape the public interest.  The crisis has undermined the political mandate and created a crisis within the regime’s legitimacy. As the various guardians, especially the press and the police, pursued institutional or personal interest over and above the public interest, it is important that we hear from the one institution above the corruption: the Queen.

Why is the Queen important?

First, she is the Monarch and she wields great, if indirect, power within the kingdom. One must remember that the police and the military (except for Royal Navy) swear oaths of allegiance to her. They do not swear the oath to parliament. When the police officers were implicated in the phone hacking scandal, by encouraging and abetting the press in their illicit behaviour, they betrayed their oath to the Crown.   When they betray their oath without consequences or punishment, we begin to question the status and purpose of those oaths. If they are not enforced or enforceable, what is their point?  Moreover, if they are not enforced, what does it say about the object of the allegiance and obedience?

If the guardians no longer find their oath binding, why then should the public obey the Queen? The question posed by Leveson, who guards the guardians, raises the central problem for the regime. Is it to remain a monarchy or is it to become a republic?  The Inquiry’s outcome, and associated events, seems to suggest that the Monarchy is now fatally weakened to the point where it can be attacked with impunity.

The Queen has been taught a lesson in power

Second, the Queen, as a royal person, was directly affected by the case because her family were monitored and stalked by the Murdoch media. Even after the Leveson Inquiry showed the moral corruption wrought by the Murdoch papers, in particular the News of the World, the paper continued to stalk her family. The first target was Prince Harry and then Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.  The press understood what it was doing and why it was doing it.  The surface reason was that this was in the public interest.  However, the argument is hollow and only provides a fig leaf for the deeper reason.  Most people will believe the deeper reason was the freedom of the press. Yet, the freedom of the press argument rings hollow as well because freedom of the press is for a purpose. The press is not free just to be free. Instead, its freedom is within a context. Therefore, when the press uses its freedom to destroy the regime, which grants its freedoms, its purpose is no longer freedom.  What we see in the end is the true reason behind the decision: power.  What the press, in particular Murdoch, demonstrated was that the press would demonstrate its freedom by making the Royal family a target and claim to do it in the public interest.

The Queen, the public interest, and justice: who rules?  

Third, the monarch promises to govern the people justly and uphold the law. In this role, she is maintaining the public good by ensuring that she will use her power to ensure law and justice in mercy to be executive in all her judgements.  As a good monarch, rather than a tyrant, she rules for her people. They are loyal and obedient because she rules justly. However, if justice is weakened or unavailable to the public within her kingdom, her role is weakened if not fatally flawed.  The Leveson Inquiry showed that Parliament was almost unable to resist the press’ invidious power. At times, it was uncertain whether Parliament could act to protect the public good and investigate the allegations and the crimes.  When the public can have no confidence in parliament, the press, or the police, they can only turn to the Crown. When the Crown is silent in these matters, how is the royal covenant fulfilled?  In that regard, the Leveson Inquiry remains flawed.

We may believe that the Monarch is exercising her private influence through the courtiers.  Or, we may believe she is respecting the political and constitutional settlement with Parliament.  However, if Parliament is unable to act, as demonstrated repeatedly through the Leveson Inquiry, then the focus has to turn to the Monarchy.  If the people cannot turn to the police, the press, or the politicians, the one remaining constitutional actor is the Monarch. Any report from the Leveson Inquiry will be missing an important actor.  We will have the dog that did not bark as the monarchy will be seen by its absence.

Will political reform move us beyond the Monarchy?

The report will have a dramatic and long reaching effect on the political landscape. Even if the report’s recommendations are not accepted, the Inquiry itself has reshaped the political landscape.  At the same time, the Hillsborough report has opened up a related front to reform the guardians.  The outcome of that report, if accepted, will have a dramatic and fundamental effect on policing and the police. What remains to be seen, though is whether the reform can be sustained.  Perhaps, it is emblematic of the Monarchy’s decline that it is no longer considered a crucial player within the political framework to be included.

We may believe that the public interest will be improved and the guardians will protect it. The question, that emerges is whether the public can stay obedient to the Monarchy if the guardians are wolves feasting on the public good?  If reforms do not restore the public interest and the guardians’ role within the system, then the system itself will need to be changed.  In the end, the Leveson Inquiry may have shown us more than the corrupt nexus between the press, police, and politicians.  What it may show us is the need for a constitutional reform. Even as the Leveson Inquiry shows the residual strength of Monarchical political establishment, the signs can be seen of the Monarchy’s political twilight with a new political era struggle to emerge.

 

Related articles

• Surely freedom loving Gove cannot defend press restrictions? (guardian.co.uk)
• Hugh Grant: Leveson’s report will spark a ‘war’ (independent.co.uk)
• Philosophers at the Leveson Inquiry (peasoup.typepad.com)

Political discourse in the age of always on recording devices: the death of statesmanship?

Congressman Poe and Governor Mitt Romney (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When Mitt Romney’s speech with the comment about the 47% was disclosed to the media, it changed the campaign.  The way the leak occurred revealed the perils of political speech in the age of always on recording devices.[1]  Political discourse will have to adapt to the technological constraints, but one thing is certain.  Until political discourse can adapt, statesmanship is dead. By that, I mean, the always on record devices destroy the way that a statesman weaves together, through word and deed, different groups to create the common good.  If the statesman cannot speak differently to different audience and mean the same thing by adjusting their speech, as required, to their audience they cannot succeed.

The statesman relies on persuasion to build the common good

The always on recording devices limit the statesman’s ability to make alliances using public, or private, persuasion to achieve his aims.  As Wendell Coats describes in his excellent book, statesmanship relies on persuasion. The statesman uses his knowledge of politics and persuasion to build alliances and support based on the issues and what motivates the audience. When the always on recording devices take away that flexibility, all persuasion, especially private, is seen as propaganda and political discourse is drained of meaning.  However, the problem is compounded by a related development where political rhetoric is confused with political philosophy.  We can see this with the “truther” movement.

The “truther” movement and political discourse

The technological constraints on statesmanship are only part of the problem. We need to be aware that the post-truth politics argument further erodes statesmanship and political discourse. The post truth argument is that politicians must always speak the truth where policy is completely linked to public opinion or public policy. David Roberts, often credited with coining the phrase, defines post-truth politics.

We live in post-truth politics: a political culture in which politics (public opinion and media narratives) have become almost entirely disconnected from policy (the substance of legislation). This obviously dims any hope of reasoned legislative compromise.

The idea which has mushroomed into the national journalist lexicon is only based on a speculative argument.  Roberts only asserts that politics has become disconnected from policy.  What still needs to be determined is whether politics and policy are separated and that we have entered a post truth era.  On the surface it fails to understand the role of ideas in politics and policies.  Policy is connected to politics because politics is the source of ideas in an iterative relationship in political debate.  The argument confuses party discipline with institutional intransigence by failing to consider the role of ideas needed to sustain the discipline.  However, let us return from dissecting its origins considering the way the post truth politics argument constrains and shapes political discourse.

The “post truth politics” idea allows “truthers” to speak with a tone of moral rectitude. Those using the phrase act as if they have the truth with which to hold to account politicians and party activists.  Post-truth politics is about politicians or party activists lying about their opponents or lying about their own policies. The “truthers” claim that politicians or party activists will state an obvious falsehood as the truth and expect everyone to accept that “truth”. They assert that politicians will never admit to being wrong even when contrary evidence is presented.

A lie told by an idiot is still a lie.

An example of the “truther” argument can be seen in James Fallow’s article about Norah O’Donnell challenge to Paul Ryan. Norah O’Donnell challenged Ryan’s statements about details of his spending proposals.  Even though the article starts with a spurious argument that a lie told by a scoundrel is less damaging to the scoundrel than the damage to an honest man if he lies, it makes an important point about informational asymmetry.

The informational asymmetry between politician (policy wonk) and journalist is often overlooked.  Fallows argues that Norah O’Donnell stood against the post- truth politics challenging Paul Ryan on his claims about budget decisions. Fallows says that in the post-truth era journalists face a triple challenge. First, the politician knows the details, so the journalist has to know as much if not more to challenge. Second, the journalist has to be sure enough of their facts to say the politician is wrong. Third, they have to be sure of their organisational support to do this on live TV.  On the surface, the exchange looks like a journalist holding a politician to account.  However, for Fallows and the “truther” movement, this is a battle for the truth.  In effect, Paul Ryan was lying and Norah O’Donnell was challenging the lie.  The problem, though, is that this is nothing new. It is as old as Plato’s Gorgias and as recent as LBJ and Vietnam.

The information asymmetry between politicians and journalists will always exist.  We saw this with LBJ and Vietnam War reporting,  Outsiders and journalists, in particular, could be deflected or dismissed because they did not have the same information as Johnson.  The President, has historically, had the best intelligence.  To balance the informational asymmetry, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) was developed to help Congress gain access to similar quality information.  However, the issue is deeper than informational asymmetry.  What the always on recording devices and the “truther” movement show is the tension between rhetoric and justice in a democratic state.

On the other hand, your taxes will go up.

The Fallows article and the “truther” movement conflate political rhetoric with political philosophy, which creates the impression that politicians are lying.  In a sense, they are right that politicians only present a partial view of the truth because political rhetoric is only a shadow image of justice. The problems, though, is that a politician is not a political philosopher.  To treat the politician or the statesman as a philosopher forgets the role of political rhetoric in a democracy. Even philosophers need to use rhetoric to defend themselves. The problem though is that the political and the philosopher do not talk to each other.  Strictly speaking, the two never talk. The politician would not listen and the philosopher would not speak to the politician. By misunderstanding the art of rhetoric and the politician’s use of political rhetoric, the “truther” movement has us believe that someone has lied or mislead us because of how they present their information. What this does is denigrate private judgement, what each audience can make of an issue, so there can only be public judgement. By extension, we are forced to accept there can only one way to judge the political good, the common good.

In terms of the politics, the issue can be expressed in the following way.  If you said, “I am going to raise taxes” and did not mention that you would use the taxes to create jobs, build roads, train teachers and protect the country, then you would not get elected.  At the same time, if you promised everything, but did not mention how it was funded, you would not get elected.  The public know that political promises will cost money.  However, if a politician omits the funding costs from his speech, that does not mean they have lied.  Instead, it means that they have presented evidence to persuade their audience.  In that regard, it is up to the audience to question the politician and hold them to account.  At the same time, the politicians are relying on the audience’s private judgement.  Here we see how the “truther” movement connects to the always on recording devices to understand its effect on political discourse.

Truth or politics? The two are separated by rhetoric

The challenge today from the always-on media cycle is that it limits the statesman flexibility.  If politician makes a mistake they may find it difficult to clarify or correct it, which is why we have quote approval news coverage.  The truther movement also constrains the statesman because if he tries to adjust his speech to his audience, he appears to have lied.  Statesmen need to be able to adjust to their speech to their audience because the country is more than one audience.  When constrained, the statesman can only deal with the different audiences as one audience, but they cannot all be spoken to in the same way. Speaking to the common good is different from speaking to an individual audience that makes up the common good.  There may be commonality between the audiences, but there is no ability to adjust and reconcile competing claims into a common good.

If the statesman had to speak to each audience as if he was speaking to all audiences, then he would stop being a statesman. He could not create alliances and balance competing demands. In that regard, he would run counter to what the Federalists intended by encouraging competing demands that would check and balance each other.  For the political system to work, the politicians need flexibility to build alliances between factions.  In that sense, by removing the statesman skill, we remove the art of politics.   Instead of a politics, where we balance competing claims, a politician would have to pursue the highest common denominator, such as national security, or the lowest common denominator, food on the table.  Neither makes for good politics because they do not allow a statesman to leverage the competing individual and group goods into a larger common good. The danger is that a politician will to start with the common good and splinter off parts and play groups against each other.  The common good would be sacrificed as the politician satisfies the largest or most vocal group. He would have a process that confuses the common good (justice) with political rhetoric in that the dominant group’s position is only partial view of the good.

The pursuit of politics as philosophy is a cure worse than the disease

When we claim that a “post-truth politics” exists we confuse philosophy and politics. In academia or in journalism we may believe we pursue or can discover a good, but in politics, the political good, as a truth has to be created. The political good is contested because it is being shaped by political exchange within the limits of the regime.  Political rhetoric allows us to reconcile contested understanding of the public good or the common good. If we pursue the political truth with a philosophical zeal, we face multiple dangers.  We can incite a dangerously immoderate utopianism.  Or, an immoderate politics, in which compromise is impossible. If we pursue truth as a political good, we assume a complete understanding of the truth, the good, or the issue.  The opposite, though, is the case. We have politics because we disagree over the good. We have a limited understanding of the good. If we had a complete understanding of the good, we would not need politics.

The always on recording devices limit the statesman’s flexibility and politics become inflexible.  If the politicians are held to account for persuasive speeches by a public standard, then any private judgements become subsumed by the public judgement.  The common good is not served.  Individuals cannot make their own private judgement, they must accept the public persuasion and public opinion dominates the political arena.   The press, as the guardians of public opinion, shape the public good.  In effect, politics is subsumed by journalism.  At the same time, the statesman cannot use their persuasion skills and knowledge of competing groups to expand the common good.  The always on recording devices do not allow the statesman to serve the common good.  In time, political discourse will be drained of meaning as the statesman or politicians try to adjust the public standard that will fit to any audience at any time.  The “truther” belief in a post-truth politics, compounds the problem.  The statesman cannot seek to use private persuasion, for fear it will be made public, nor can they use their knowledge of other subsidiary arts, because that will be accused of lying or engaging in the post truth politics.

When a statesman cannot build alliances or use public and private persuasion, then he cannot succeed.  The always on recording devices limit the politician’s ability to speak differently to different audiences. When a politician speaks differently to different audiences, he is not being duplicitous.  He is not lying. Instead, he is exercising the political art needed to weave together diverse parts of the electorate into a common good.  If we are to retain a decent politics, it is vital that we teach the public about the statesman’s art of persuasion.  The alternative is a democratic politics that becomes rigid in the pursuit of utopianism or decays into demagoguery.

 

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[1] The line is taken from the email newsletter Next Draft The Noodle Economy 18 September 2012

Related articles

• Annals of Post-Truth Politics: Good for Norah O’Donnell (theatlantic.com)
• Yes, James Fallows Is Really Fed Up with Ryan-Romney. Why Do You Ask? (delong.typepad.com)
• Norah O’Donnell Teaches TV Journos Another Lesson With Rob Portman Stuffage (mediaite.com)
• CBS’ Norah O’Donnell Grills Paul Ryan On Hypocritical Criticism Of Defense Cuts He Voted For (mediaite.com)
• Nick Saban, Lane Kiffin, and Post-Truth Football (atlanta.sbnation.com)
• Norah O’Donnell Decimates Mitt Romney Foreign Policy Argument With Great Journalism (mediaite.com)

Beyond Government Transparency 3.0: Augmented Democratic Decision Making

The following post is influenced by Dan Slee’s excellent post on Augmented Reality and the future of local government communications.

The blog argues that transparency data mapped to location and context can be used for augmented decision making.  What this means is that as more data is released, people will develop applications based on a decision algorithm will allow people to visualize multi-criteria decision making. However, the concept is more than using an algorithm or using a GIS system to help with making a decision. Instead, it is taking data linking it to location and context so these can be mapped into an augmented reality to support an algorithm decision making application.

Hedge funds have been using algorithms to augment their decision making for over a decade.  For even longer, companies have been mining their customer or client data with data mining systems to gain an advantage over rivals. What is new is how the algorithms and other data (especially big data and GIS data) are being used for decision making.  Companies need to be able to make multi-criteria decisions  and they often turn to decision modelling that allows them to assess the choices they confront so they can choose the “best” option based on the criteria and data they have available.

Location and Context computing is coming to a decision next to you

The decision models can take into account context and location in the decisions.  We can see location awareness decision making based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems.  In these systems the position and location of the object helps inform decision making.  We can see this on some of the automated loading terminals at ports where computer driven cranes and container vehicles do the offloading.  Context specific decision making relies on the change within the context to inform the decision maker about best options available.  An example of context awareness would be see in large scale medical emergencies where deploying medical emergency professionals needs to be deployed in response to situational changes.

In time, these decision technologies will filter into local government through the use of transparency data. The transparency agenda contains most of the information used for decisions within local government and if we extrapolate these, we can see the shape of the future.  In that sense, we are at an inflection point within the field. We are moving beyond the first dimension of linking data to place. The second dimension is to link the data to a context. The third dimension is to link to a relationship with the service user. The next generation of transparency then moves beyond these three dimensions to link it to augmented decision making.

The following example shows how decision making can use the transparency data.  It illustrates, in a basic way, the potential that is available in transparency data, when linked to location and context.

How will this work in practice? How do you Choosing a restaurant?

If you arrive in a strange city, or if you fancy going to a different restaurant than your usual location, you need to find a “good” restaurant.  At the moment, we have a lot of transparency information that is mapped to allow us to find a restaurant.  For example, we can see on Google maps the nearest restaurants.  We can see their latest food reviews.  All of this information can be found through our browser. However, this only tells us part of the story from one information perspective.

Transparency 1.0 Scores on the doors

In many ways, the information on Google maps represents transparency 1.0. From a local government perspective transparency agenda can be seen information such as Scores on the Doors. Scores on the Doors has been a successful transparency project.  The food hygiene rating, based on the local authority inspection, helps the public make an informed choice about where they are eating.

As Archon Fung et al. pointed out the Los Angeles County scores on the doors which was an effective and sustainable transparency project had many benefits.  First, it helps to improve decision making about food establishments. Second, it supported the regulatory framework by reducing the chances of food poisoning.  Third, it creates an incentive for restaurants to improve their food hygiene.  The same transparency in other areas should have a similar benefit.  Although Fung’s et al’s later research showed that transparency projects may not be sustainable unless they have the right  regulatory support, it is clear that transparency is important for improving the civil society.

Transparency 2.0 Show me the inspection reports.

The second dimension, which is occurring now, is that people begin to request more detail behind the scores on the doors.  Instead of wanting to know what the restaurant scored, they want to know why. In response, local government can publish a short summary of the reason a restaurant has scored less than top marks.  In that way, each person visiting can assess whether the restaurant has improved and they can then make a better informed decision

The first dimension of transparency is for the government to publish more information. The second dimension of transparency is to get more information from government.  Instead of being a passive consumer, the public makes demands for information. In this way, the public are actively shaping the transparency information being provided.  The third dimension of transparency goes beyond the first two dimensions to relate the data to a context or locate it within a relationship.

Transparency 3.0: What is the context or location relationship? Is it in a bad neighbourhood?

The third dimension of transparency, which exists to some degree already, is to place the restaurant into a context and to locate it in a relationship. On Google maps, you locate a restaurant, but you cannot relate that to anything else. For example, you cannot tell if the neighbourhood is “good” or “bad”.  In that sense, crime reports and Anti-social behaviour reports are not filtered into the search engines. In the scores on the doors, you can filter by the number of stars a restaurant has received, but you cannot see the context of the neighbourhood.  The third dimension of transparency would take the first two dimensions and locate them within a wider context. For example, you would be able to see service ratings (both formal (critics and reviewers) and informal (customers, complaints, and compliments)). You could also see location within context, its socio economic status, crime statistics or reports.

 Augmented Decision making: Beyond transparency.

The final stage is to use the three dimensions of transparency for decision making. The proximity issues or relationships between data sets could then be organised by a predetermined algorithm. For example, you could find out if the head chef has left he restaurant to improve your decision making.  Or you could put in your decision criteria and the algorithm could work out the best fit, based on your criteria, then map these against your location and see what is best fit for time and money. You could also follow the chef of your choice.

The next revolution in computing, based on context and location, will let us see a place both in its proximity (or relation) to other data such environmental information but also within a wider geo-spatial context.  We can see the data and the place differently.  When we map this data, beyond the physical location, against its relationship to other data, our decisions will be augmented.  There is still work to be done to achieve this goal, but it is within our grasp.

Related articles

• For the first time ever, scientists have made monkeys smarter using brain implants. Could you be next? [Futurism] (io9.com)
• Resistance to Making Decisions based upon Data (datascience101.wordpress.com)
• Creating a Data Driven Culture (bostinno.com)
• The untapped potential of augmented reality (digitaltrends.com)

Has the UK media’s abuse of the public interest stifled democracy?

Over the last few weeks, we have seen the Sun newspaper publish photographs of a naked Prince Harry. They justified publishing the photographs as being in the public interest.  Their defenders supported the decision by arguing that Prince Harry is a public figure.  His upkeep and security are paid for by the public purse.  As the third line to the throne, his status is important to the UK public.  Perhaps most importantly, he is seen as a celebrity best known for who is rather than what he does.  The argument is that he is a public figure and public figures should expect their privacy to be reduced when the public interest demands it. When the newspapers publish the photographs, they do this in the public interest. They are providing the public with information that they had a right to know and the newspaper had a duty to inform public debate.

What lies beneath the surface of the public interest?

On the surface, the argument is compelling.  The ordinary individual has an interest in how the public money is spent.  They have an interest and a right to know information that will inform public debate, which the newspaper provides.  However, there is a deeper issue with the way the media use the public interest to justify their work. The media’s use of the public interest can have a damaging effect on democracy.  The power of the public interest (what is done in the public’s name for the public’s good) can deter ordinary individuals from entering and remaining in the public domain.   The press can, and have, used the power that the public interest provides to devastate and destroy individuals.  If the power is not controlled, restrained or directed appropriately, then it can be used in ways that hurt the public interest.  In contrast to ordinary individual, public figures have become habituated to the loss of their privacy by the media’s attention and interest.  However, such scrutiny can deter ordinary individuals from speaking up, participating, and entering the public domain. An ordinary individual may not want to lose their privacy and become a potential target for the press using the public interest to investigate them as the price for participating it he public domain.  If ordinary individuals are deterred from participating in the public realm for fear of the consequences, then the public realm is only available to “public” individuals.  Because of the unregulated power of acting in public interest, the press only allow public individuals to access democracy while ordinary individuals remain spectators.

 

Does the press serve the public interest or a private interest?

In a democracy, a free press use the public interest power to help to guard the public. In this role, they support the public good.  For this to be work effectively, they have to maintain the trust the public give them to act in their interest.  The trust is based on the belief that the press will serve the rule of law, the public good, rather than the whims of an individual.  As the guardians of the regime, they are required to have a higher level of integrity. They are given the public’s trust because they claim to act in our interest to protect our liberty and our lives. If they do not serve the public good or the rule of law then the public interest power can be corrupted by the arbitrary whims of an individual.

How the public interest can be corrupted.

When those who act in the public interest lack integrity, they will abuse the power the public has delegate to them.  When this occurs, we should take an interest because it is done in our name. Guardians (even self-professed ones) should be required to justify their actions, which allow the public to regulate their behaviour. If we are to be a democracy, guardians like the press have to be held to account to explain how they serve the public interest rather than the public appetite. When their work harms the public interest, by abusing it for private interests, then they damage democracy.

The following items illustrate how the public interest can be used to justify acts by the press that can undermine the public trust.  They show what the unlimited power inherent in the public interest, what can the public interest not justify, and how they can damage people when used indiscriminately. The first escaped the headlines because it was a written submission to the Culture and Media and Sport Select Committee. The story, although upsetting, should be read because it shows how the press use the public interest to justify their work. When reading the testimony you have to remember that everything done by the press was justified as being in the public interest.  We can see how they punish a public figure can deter an ordinary individual from entering the public domain.  The second item is taken from witness testimony at the Leveson Inquiry.  The testimony shows how the public interest can be used to justify any activity by the press.  Moreover, it shows how an individual can be corrupted from acting with that unchecked power, when they lack integrity.  The reporter described his ethos, which he claimed to be the ethos of all press who act in the public interest. As he explains, anyone can be investigated because what he does is always in the public interest.  He makes this point explicitly on page 39 of his testimony. He was acting in the public interest so anything he did was automatically justified.  He could hack a phone, dig through someone’s bins and betray story subjects because the end, publishing the story, justified the means.  Such a view means that if an editor believes that someone should be investigated because it is in the public interest (there is no agreed criteria to define the public interest) they can be investigated.  The editor will pay people such as the reporter mentioned to go through anything and everything in their life because the public interest demands it. Three things usually keep this from happening.

Three things that keep the public interest from being used on you.

The first is the cost-benefit analysis associated with the cost of pursuing an ordinary citizen as against their value to marketing the newspaper. As the reporter explains on page 79, the newspaper demand value for money in the stories it pursues.  If you are not newsworthy, that is a topic that will sell newspapers; it will be unlikely that you will be in the press.

The second is threat of losing a court case on defamation. While the press can and have lost cases, the court will defer to the editor’s public interest judgement in the first instance.  At the same time, the press can rely on the Reynolds defence, which provides a qualified privilege for publication of defamatory statements.  The key criterion is that the statements are done in the public interest. In this case, it was about the alleged corruption of a public official. The public interest was not used to justify or defend salacious news that feeds the public appetite. The public interest is more than a concern for defamation as set out in the Chase principles.

Once you are in press and you wish to seek damages for distress caused by newspapers using the public interest to invade your privacy, you have to take the newspaper to court. The court will decide whether the public interest has been used appropriately.  Max Mosley took this step when he took a legal fight to the News International.  The legal costs are high.  Zac Goldsmith explained this and he is a relatively wealthy, powerful, and politically connected individual see page 13 of the PM (Radio 4) report on privacy.

The courts may not want to decide the public interest, but they are its final arbiter.  In particular, the court expresses concern that it would be seen to be regulating the press. In Flood v. Times,  (This upheld the Reynolds defence). The Court stressed on paragraph 194 that the first decision about the public interest is left to the editor to decide.   However, there is a third defence that the court believes exist.  As they explain in paragraph 195, the Court believed that “ordinary individuals” would not be targeted by a trial by press. However, like the public interest, the court did not define an “ordinary” individual.   We have to begin by what an ordinary individual is not. They are not public figures or in the public domain.  How the press use the power of the public interest to justify their work can give then a perverse incentive to make an ordinary individual into a public figure. To put in the language of the News of the World’s behaviour, if you upset the editor, you will not remain an ordinary individual.  To quote Rebekah Brooks, the former editor of the News of the World, MPs do not scare easily.

 

What is the limit to the public interest?  

When we consider the Prince photographs being in the public interest, we have to consider how far that public interest extends to ordinary individuals.  Where does that stop? If the courts see your only defence as being an “ordinary individual”, who will want to be an “extraordinary individual” or a public figure? Moreover, if you are an ordinary person then the press has an interest in making you “extraordinary”, if you enter the public domain.  In the way that the press use the public interest to justify their work, they control the public domain and they can determine who is a public figure. If an ordinary individual enters the public domain to participate in democracy, how do they resist the pressure to become a public individual?  Once they have been turned into a reluctant “public figure”, where will they turn to defend their privacy.  Must we surrender our privacy to participate in democracy?

How the press have used the public interest power has had a chilling effect on democracy. They are an undemocratic body patrolling the public domain.  An undemocratic power that can decide who is in the public domain and can be pursued with the power of the public interest will stunt democracy.  They make the price for speaking up and losing your claim to being an “ordinary” person too high for many to take part.  What needs to be answered in the post-Leveson era is whether it is healthy for public debate needed to sustain a democracy to have an undemocratic body acting as its arbiter.

 

Related articles

• Public Interest (newkilpatrickblog.typepad.com)
• Prince Harry pictures: publication was ‘demonstrably in public interest’ (guardian.co.uk)

Open data creates inefficient government and why this is good

Diagram of US Federal Government and American Union. Published: 1862, July 15. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The promise that open data will improve government efficiency is misplaced.  Every administration claims it will make government effective and efficient.  We had Clinton’s Reinventing Government and Bush’s reforms after 11 September.  Neither has delivered as it promised. In large part, they failed because they started from the idea that government can be managed like a business.  Today, open data is being used to make a similar process.  However, it is the answer to the wrong question.  We need to understand that open data is making democratic government inefficient and that is a good thing.

The mistaken view of reform

Open data’s promise appears, on the surface, to offer a way to reform government.  We are promised that open data will make the government more efficient. When these claims are made, we face several problems. How is efficiency understood or defined. What is the evidence that a government is efficient? Is it efficient in process, outcomes, or both? A scan of the literature shows very little research on efficient government. Instead, we have a large amount of research on government inefficiency.  We seem to understand intuitively what inefficient government is but we seem unable to explain what an efficient government is or does.  When efficiency is undefined or defined broadly, then any change can potentially be seen to create efficiency. What we need to do to move beyond the definitions is to consider that government may be designed to be inefficient.

Democratic government is designed to be inefficient.

What most people may not grasp is that American government is designed to be inefficient. By that, I mean the political process is designed so that power is exercised indirectly and with difficulty.  One could expand this argument to say that any democratic government is designed to be inefficient. The inefficiency comes in part because it responds to the public’s will.  In this area, the American government is a special case because the founders wanted the government to rely upon the people and the states in such a way that would limit its power to act unilaterally and decisively. In the American system, the founders created checks and balances to slow down the political process to avoid government reacting to popular passions. We can see this in the famous 10th federalist paper in which Madison describes the need for faction to check faction.

In most cases, the bureaucracy reflects the political process. However, it is too easy to say that bureaucracies are inefficient and cannot be changed.  Instead, we need to consider how open data’s ability to make the political process inefficient is also part of the way to make the bureaucracy efficient.   What open data may do is change the way the government works in a particular area, but it cannot change the nature of the government.  We can see why the government’s nature is inefficient for three broad reasons.

Government does the dirty work that no one else can do.

First, government has to cover all aspects from life to death and beyond. The basic idea is that the government has to do the work no one else wants to do.  For example, the wicked problems, like foreign policy, Medicaid, and disaster relief cannot be outsourced to someone else.  A private sector organisation could not have responded to the damage created by Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf oil spill disaster and the tornado season. The Federal and State governments were in a place to respond. Government has to deal issues from the mundane to the monumental and the ephemeral to the eternal.  When it does, it cannot please everyone. Democracy gives us a process to decide between are conflicting understanding of the political good or the common good. Therein we see the second reason for inefficiency by design.

The common good means we need to bring more people into the decision

Second, representative democracy is inefficient because it has sustained the common good. Political leaders have to weave disparate views into a common good.  In many ways, the concern about efficiency can be seen as a criticism of representative democracy.  Implicit in these arguments is an impatience with the need to show the common good.  Instead, we are told that the lawmakers are gridlocked and the gridlock is ruining the country. We are rarely told what a more efficient government would do and whether that would allow the public a greater role in the process.

One argument is that open data will change and alter our relationship with government, in much the same way that the advent of microcomputers did (or did not). Yet that change, real or imagined, does not replace the need for government. We still need government for what it does both operationally and strategically. Neither the strategic nor the operational can be made more efficient in their nature without changing the essential nature of government.  Particular programmes may be improved, but the nature of the democratic process, as well as its bureaucracy, cannot be changed open data.

An efficient government in the strict sense would be inhumane and counterproductive because it would be unnatural. Humans are not efficient and government is an expression of collective humanity. From a practical perspective, we want and need a government that is inefficient.  For example, governments will have to stockpile material and resources that may never be used.  They do this to have the surge capacity and the extra resources when they are called upon in an emergency. By that measure alone government cannot be efficient.  In turn, we see that the open data helps us to understand that role and get involved.

The more open data gets people involved the less efficient government.

Third, the democratic process becomes increasingly inefficient the more the public are involved.  What this means is that the open data movement gets more people involved, either directly or indirectly, with the government.  When the public are more involved, the politicians and the political process have to adapt.  For example, we can see open data applications that allow people to track the money from campaign donations, voting records, and political meetings.  With these tools, the public are now having the potential for greater awareness and greater indirect involvement. As a vocal constituency that can influence the political process the public, become a greater factor in the process.  The public’s attention may not change the underlying decision, but it does need politicians and the political process to react to them.  One can only imagine if Lyndon Johnson would have been president, let alone vice-president if the public were able to know how he was financed by the Brown and Root.  Even back in the 1930s, Johnson understood that oil interests could not finance him so he needed a different financial backer free from the oil interest image.  Today, open data would help us to see that relationship and act accordingly.

When we complain about an inefficient government, we may need to thank open data for making sure it happens.  In the American system, the founders created checks and balances to slow down the political process. They wanted to avoid government reacting to popular passions. As mentioned above, the 10^th Federalist Paper describes the need for faction to check faction. What open data allows is for this to occur quickly and effectively.

At the same time, open data lets us understand how the bureaucracy works.  Here is where it may yet help us improve government.   When open data translates into better waste collections, or improved planning process, we can say it has made government more effective.  What it will not do and cannot do is change the democratic relationship.  Unless we understand that open data creates inefficiency within the democratic process, we will be forcing it to answer to the wrong question.  Open data is making the political process work with greater transparency. We can see the political will (generally understood) translate into political action through the bureaucracy to an intended outcome.

We may yet see the politicians and the political process adapt to open data.  Until then, we should enjoy the inefficiency created by open data because it may signal that democracy is working even if government is not.

 

 

 

Related articles

• How to Rebuild the City as a Platform (shareable.net)
• Measuring Impact of Open Government Data – Open Data Research Meeting Report Available (geodatapolicy.wordpress.com)
• Is open data a good thing? (mathbabe.org)
• Digital Divide and the Unsustainable Open Data Deluge (freebalance.com)
• Inside the Open Data white paper: what does it all mean? (guardian.co.uk)
• Linked Open Government Data: Dispatch from the Second International Open Government Data Conference (semanticweb.com)

Penn State and the crisis of the American University.

The Penn State crisis reveals a deeper crisis than the Sandusky crimes where a sexual predator preyed on young boys.  The crisis is more than the cover up of the crimes described in the grand jury document and the Freeh report.  Although these are horrific in their own right, they are symptoms of a deeper crisis within the American university.  What they show the American face of the nihilism that has destroyed the university’s intellectual and moral unity where only the sports-industrial complex remains as the focus.  Instead of being a place to produce scholars, the university has become an “education factory” where research is produced on an academic assembly line.  The university is driven by the pursuit of profit like every other corporation.  The modern American university is a corporation that has sold its academic, intellectual and moral principles. Yet, the betrayal of academics to athletics reveals as well that the modern university is unsustainable.  The market logic where athletics is another profit stream undermines the university as an education factory producing research as its product line.

Athletics over academics: what price glory?

The surface problem is nihilism which corroded the university’s unity encouraged it to pursue athletics over academics.  The university no longer believes in its founding purpose. Newman’s idea of a university’s unity is no longer what holds a university together.  Corroded by academic nihilism, the university has no intellectual unity.  It is a place for research and not scholarship.  The business model now defines the university’s unity. The academic product (research) and athletics are competing and complementary revenue streams. Like all corporations, the dominant function is that which produces the most revenue. As a result, athletics, rather than academics, is its dominant function, responsibility, and aspiration.  How the NCAA and Penn State handled the Sandusky crisis show clearly how and why the university is now a corporation masquerading as an academic institution.

Reputation Management is not a search for truth

Penn State accepted the penalties as business decisions, not as academic decisions.  Like a corporation, Penn State is more interested in managing its reputation rather than discovering the truth of what went wrong by asking or pursuing the existential questions.  Penn State did not consider, explore, or debate why the programme exists or its role in the university. For Penn State, the answer has been given.  At no point did the university say “We are a university, a place for scholarship first, and a place for athletics and its business second.”  Instead Penn State (and the NCAA) did everything possible to retain, defend, and protect the football programme. Penn State’s leaders claimed it will instil a new culture. Their noble words are betrayed by their ignoble actions.  There will be no change.  They have signalled to everyone that the football programme and all that it entails is more important than the pursuit of truth.

 The university is a corporation not an academic institution

The issue is more than a football programme out of control. The issue more than college athletics is now a business. They are just two characteristics of the sports-industrial complex that is college athletics. The issue is that the university is no longer a university.  Instead, it is a corporation and not a place for scholarship. Penn State pursued (and pursues) football victories at any cost instead of pursuing truth and wisdom at any cost.  When the university officials protected the football programme, they were not acting to defend a higher philosophical truth. Instead, they sacrificed the university’s highest principles to protect their investment in a coach, his programme, and the corporation’s reputation.   When Heidegger betrayed the German university to National Socialism, he believed he was doing it to save the academy. He thought he was acting in the higher cause of philosophical truth. In America, nihilism has a different accent.  When American academics betrayed the university, they did it for the money.

The university as a research factory

We should not be surprised at these developments.  They represent the deeper nihilism that is devouring the American university.   As Heidegger warned, the university is no longer a place for scholarship. The scholar, who pursues truth, has disappeared only to be replaced with the researcher, who provides a research “product”.  The university is no longer a place for scholarship because it has no intellectual unity. Instead, it is a business to attract and keep researchers. The American university in particular has embraced the idea that research is another product like any other.  As Heidegger wrote in the Question on Technology “The Age of the World Picture” p.125,  without unity, the university is no longer produces scholars but researchers.

“Hence the decisive development of the modern character of science as ongoing activity also forms men of a different stamp. The scholar disappears. He is succeeded by the research man who is engaged in research projects. These, rather than the cultivating of erudition, lend to his work its atmosphere of incisiveness. The research man no longer needs a library at home. Moreover, he is constantly on the move. He negotiates at meetings and collects information at congresses. He contracts for commissions with publishers. The latter now determine along with him which books must be written (Appendix 3).

The research worker necessarily presses forward of himself into the sphere characteristic of the technologist in the essential sense. Only in this way is he capable of acting effectively, and only thus, after the manner of his age, is he real. Alongside him, the increasingly thin and empty Romanticism of scholarship and the university will still be able to persist for some time in a few places. However, the effective unity characteristic of the university, and hence the latter’s reality, does not lie in some intellectual power belonging to an original unification of the sciences and emanating from the university because nourished by it and preserved in it. The university is real as an orderly establishment that, in a form still unique because it is administratively self-contained, makes possible and visible the striving apart of the sciences into the particularization and peculiar unity that belong to ongoing activity.

As mentioned earlier, the university has disavowed a belief in an academic unity, which, in turn, means its sees scholarship reduced to research.  The university is only unified around a corporate business model where profits are pursued at the cost of philosophy. The corporate model and the nihilism mean that the modern university is nothing but a husk.  The Sandusky crisis, among others, shows the university has lost its moral authority.  The American university can no longer teach a moral truth because it no longer believes in one.  The university’s intellectual or philosophical unity, the foundation for its moral authority has been eroded by Heidegger’s nihilism.  As Bloom showed in The Closing of the American Mind, Heidegger has destroyed the university’s intellectual authority.  Penn State and the sports-industrial complex have shown us that the university’s unity based on its scholarship, a search for truth and wisdom in a community of scholars, is gone.

Academics may believe they can console themselves with the belief that the university uses athletics to finance their higher academic work.  What this shows is they do not understand the university.  Academic research is now a product like any other.  The academic’s existence, the arguments they use, perpetuate the business model of an “education factory” producing research and researchers.  The last, ironic, betrayal is that the sports industrial complex they abhor confirms the need for the university to be an “education factory”. The university now depends on the sports-industrial complex as a continuing revenue stream.  Even without the sports industrial complex, the pursuit of research, rather than knowledge, is what drives the university. The best universities, even those without football programmes, have stopped producing scholars. They have become a factory driven by research and the need to produce profits.  When scholars do emerge, it is in spite rather than because of the university.

 Social media erodes the university’s research factory

Heidegger who shares some responsibility for the university’s destruction described the university’s change from scholarship to research.  As the university is now a research factory, it faces pressure from social media to its business model.  The university attracts and retains researchers by what it offers as a corporation; its money, its location, and the community. Social media undermines the university as a corporation because it means that research no longer have to be bound to a university.  The researcher can go anywhere, work from anywhere, and find money anywhere.  Universities are no longer destinations.  They are transient entities, a shell corporation, filled by researchers attracted by promises of money, grants, and positions. Social media undermines the university’s physical unity and its corporate model unity. The intellectual community that used to define the university can be found in the virtual world. What is ironic is that social media corrodes the university’s business model by encouraging, requiring, the academic emulate the researcher instead of the scholar.

What is inside the university is what defines the country

Once we strip away athletics and research, what is left of a university? Today, it is a social network that produces an “education” product rather than a place to nurture and cultivate the mind.  So, the next time you fret about the BCS or “March Madness” pause and consider what your university does and what it has become.  Is it a place for learning or is it a corporation?  Then, consider what this means for America. Are you surprised at Enron, Lehman Brothers, or the financial crisis? The universities have left a moral void where the love of gain has eclipsed the love of knowledge.

 

Related articles

• Penn State: Does the university’s football culture need to change? (pennlive.com)

Have hypertext and hyperlink been over-hyped? The view from local government.

 

The Semantic Web Stack. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Since the dawn of the social media age, we have been treated to various claims that hypertext and hyperlinks will change the way we work, read, and write.  There were even claims that hyperlinks will subvert hierarchies.  Yet, have any of these claims come true?  Have hyperlinks and hypertext failed in their liberating and creative promise to become the next marketing gimmick that is to be ignored once the novelty fades?  The reality is that hyperlinks encapsulate the web’s power, promise, and potential pitfalls.

 

Do you use hyperlinks in your work? 

 

Leaving aside the more esoteric parts of the web, where technical experts write and work with other technical experts, are hyperlinks used?  Without a doubt, hyperlinks and hypertext will continue as devices that will advance scholarship, writing, and reading.  However, the issue is not their intrinsic worth. Instead, it is about their potential either to improve the web, writing, reading, or scholarship.  Has their potential been oversold?

 

The view from local government.

 

I recall in the early days of social media a technological evangelist telling me how he was using hyperlinks in local government reports. He said that this was how future local government reports would be written.  Yet, the promise has not emerged from what I have seen.  To be sure, hyperlinks are used in some reports and in some papers. In most cases, they are used like footnotes and not as gateways to extended learning or additional context.  In that role, they are useful.  However, have they changed the way government, central or local, work?

 

I am not aware of hyperlinks being used by many types of council.  They may have them in their reports, but they are used more as footnotes.  Or, they are used to link to external sites rather than create insight into the papers.  In other words, I do not see those “subverting” hierarchies. I do not see them being used extensively with internal papers within councils or local government. I may be wrong, but their use, or rather their lack of use, indicates the gap between the technological aspirations and the practical reality.  In other words, the cultural change about hyperlinks has not arrived in local government.  The challenge presented by hyperlinks is not so much that they subvert hierarchies it is that they are not compatible with them.  For the most part, government is conservative in its operation and its work. As a result, the tools its uses will be conservative.  Hyperlinks, especially at the cutting edge of development, present an approach that is radically different and perhaps incompatible.

 

Is this a bad thing that hyperlinks are not used?

 

The question raises the possibility that hyperlinks and hypertext may not be what is needed.  What we may be seeing is the tension between information overload, the links can take you away from the narrative and detract from the argument, or it can display more information than wanted, which crowds out the information needed.  However, this is not a fault of hypertext or hyperlinks.  Both of these issues can emerge without technology, but technology makes them more apparent and harder to resist.

 

If hyperlinks are changing, though, it may raise questions about whether their use can be adapted to government. Is there a place for hyperlinks in government?  The question cannot be answered until we understand what government needs from hyperlinks. In other words, hyperlinks may not be what the government needs because they serve two different purposes.  Government needs consistency, solidity, and continuity.  Hyperlinks and hypertexts offer something different through their fluidity, discontinuity, and dynamism.  Despite these theoretical or metaphysical differences, the underlying issue may be more practical.  No one really uses them.

 

Does anyone really click the links anymore?

 

The promise made by technological evangelists has not been realized because people have stopped clicking the links.  The danger of link bait , being led to an undesired site, has shown hyperlinks to be more a marketing tool than a window to knowledge.  Another serious problem is the broken link.  Even though software is improving so that broken links can be repaired quickly and spontaneously, there is nothing to be done if the original link destination is removed.  Therein, we see the final fragility of hyperlinks.  What use is a hyperlink, unlike a footnote, when the destination disappears?

 

What is the future for hyperlinks?

 

The hyperlink is the web’s DNA.  The link is central to how the web works. The link is changing.  We are on the cusp of a change in how hyperlinks work and how they are used.  If the change succeeds, the web will be transformed.  However, the transformative potential is still to be realized. We may find a semantic web merged with the social web one day, but will it be what we want or need?

 

I am not convinced that hyperlinks will transform local government in the way they continue to transform the web. What we may have to settle for is the indirect influence, as the context for local government changes, so will the practice of local government as it adapts to and adopts the hyperlink revolution.

 

 

 

I have intentionally used hyperlinks extensively within the document.  I am curious to see how many, if any, are clicked.  Will you partake of the hyperlink revolution?

 

 

 

 

Related articles

 

• Are Hyperlinks Hyper-Jinxed? (backspin.typepad.com)
• Add Hyperlink to Column returned in DataTable (stackoverflow.com)
• The Fast Unravelling Web: How Google Is Killing The Hyperlink (siliconvalleywatcher.com)

 

Does social media make us less than human? Human nature as a social object

I was fascinated by the idea of social object as used on this blog. The author developed the idea to include the concept of being in the world.  In this idea, our understanding is shaped by being as subject and object.  Yet, that duality is not enough as it is transcended by what Heidegger called dasein (being-there).  The concept suggests that our authentic experience is found by being-there in the social object.  What this suggests is that social media does not allow us to be there, but rather removes us from the experience.

If our humanity is found or defined in large part by being in the world, that is what makes us human, then that which removes us from this physical world could be seen to reduce our humanity.  When I say this, I am referring to the physical world and not our spiritual.  We are physical and spiritual beings to the extent we in our humanity we recognise divinity and degeneracy.  In short, we exist in a state between God and animals.  Yet, to the extent our spiritual life defines our humanity, our physical existence, that is being alive in the world, remains its foundation.  In other words, we have to be alive to be followers of Christ.  Let us return to the main point.

If we use social media are we removing ourselves from the world?  By that, does social media reduce our humanity because our humanity is reflected by the tools we use?  In using extended social media tools are we creating a barrier to others even though we may contact them more than ever. . Heidegger spoke of mediating our lives through social objects.  In many ways he was a prophet of the social media.  As he famously said, “Homelessness is becoming the fate of the world.”  Man is homeless in the world where social media allows them to be “at home” anywhere.  We no longer have a home if our home is within the social medium.

When we mediate ourselves through social objects to understand ourselves and others, it would seem we lose something of ourselves.  By that I mean, we appear on the cusp of being unable to understand each other or talk to each other without a media interface.  To use an extreme example Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore were tweeting to each other while in the same room.

If Heidegger is correct, in his view that we mediate our existence through social objects, does that simply return us to a pre-modern era? By that I mean, before we had Socratic philosophy, people had a different understanding of themselves and the objects around them. If we have new social objects that mediate our existence, in this case social media devices, does it further reduce our ability, to experience nature as a way to define our humanity? The question, I suppose is what is nature in a mediated world?  Can we understand nature without social objects? If we can no longer understand nature without socially mediated objects, do we lose touch with the framework for our humanity?

I suppose, I should put this directly to ask what is nature, or a natural object, if everything is (or can be) a social object? The question may seem simple because we think we know what nature is. Yet, if nature, especially human nature, is only known through social media, what is it?  I would suggest that we need to return to nature, our human nature, by trying to understand ourselves and our world through or common experience in the world.  Instead of trying to mediate our experience through social objects, we should try to regain our understanding of what it means to live in the world before we try to mediate it.

If we can, to paraphrase Socrates, find our way to the market perhaps we will find ourselves by talking with others about what is the best way to live.  Perhaps it is too late, given I am writing this blog, which is a social mediated experience, to return to the market. However, if we are to keep our humanity, we need to find a way to recover our ability to talk about the good, politics, and the best way to live.

 

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Something or Nothing? Fundamental questions that shape how we live

According to Aristotle, in the Metaphysics, we desire to know.  The desire to know expresses our humanity; it makes us human. By asking questions, we try to understand our world and ourselves.  Questions such as “Who am I” and “What am I to do?” define us as human beings.  Through these questions, we participate in the culture of the mind.

We do not need to be philosophers to be fully human nor do we need to have a philosophical system to live our life.  If we do not ask or answer those questions as individuals or as a society, we cannot understand ourselves or our world. We will want to know the best way to live. In turn, this leads us to ask: “What the best government that will let us live that life?” Yet, we rarely ask or answer these questions as individuals or as society. The questions and our answers enable us to participate fully in political society. Without them, we are in danger of becoming less than human.  In the West, we appear to have forgotten the fundamental question.

Martin Heidegger posed the question most famously in his book An Introduction to Metaphysics. He observed that for some, the question was already answered.

Anyone for whom the Bible is divine revelation and truth has the answer to the question “Why are there essents [something] rather than nothing?” even before it is asked: everything that is, except God himself has been created by Him. God himself, the increate creator, is. One who holds to such faith can in a way participate in the asking of the our question, but he cannot really question without ceasing to be a believer and taking all the consequences of such a step. He will only be able to act “as if”…. On the other hand a faith that does not perpetually expose itself to the possibility of unfaith is no faith but merely a convenience:  the believer simply makes up his mind to adhere to the traditional doctrine. This is neither faith nor questioning, but the indifference of those who can busy themselves with everything, sometimes even displaying a keen interest in faith as well as questioning.” P.6

 

Heidegger was looking beyond the difference between believers and atheists. He was exploring the need to find a ground other than faith upon which an answer could be developed.  Although his answers may not be of immediate interest or concern, the question (why is there something and not nothing) forces us to think. In trying to think, we begin to ask questions.  Why do we believe as we do?  Why do we accept the answers that are given?  Again, the answers or the path that Heidegger found, while important, is not our immediate concern.  Instead, our concern should be with why we have forgotten the question.  The question forces us to start to consider why we live as we do today.

The fundamental question shapes everything else we do. Yet, we take the question and its answer for granted, if we even consider it.  We may begin and end with our own self-knowledge that we exist.  Alternatively, we may even argue that we know that we are created by the universe because the universe was created by the Big Bang.  What is often overlooked, in that belief is the failure to understand, because we believe we know more than we do, is how these questions and our answers shape our lives.

The question and our answer means we have begun to participate in the life of the mind.  We begin to consider our own society differently.  We also begin to consider what the wider world society that unfolds around us is.  By asking and answering these fundamental questions we begin to test whether the way we live is the best way to live and whether there are better, or worse, ways to live.  In doing this, we participate in what makes us human.  We begin to understand, if only indirectly, our own human nature.  We may even begin to understand why we live as we do.

The questions an individual asks and the answer they find will shape society.  How are we to live together? For example, how are we to organise a society if there is nothing?  Can we organise a society without a set of beliefs, the something, that gives meaning out of the nothing? Once we accept that something, will we accept it as a non-arbitrary, standard that gives us the basis for understanding ourselves and everything else.  What does it mean to believe in something?  If we believe in something and not nothing what does it require us to do.

From the fundamental question, we derive a secondary, though no less important, practical questions emerge. For example, if there is nothing, then how are we to live our lives? If we are uncertain over something or nothing, then how do we decide? What provides an unchanging, non-arbitrary structure, the “as if”, if we believe there is nothing? What gives meaning to what we do if there is nothing?  Do we simply live as we do from a random, or arbitrary, choice? Moreover, can we separate meaning in what we do from the question of something or nothing? Whatever path we follow, it will determine our lives, by giving us the something, rather than the nothing, of our existence.

The emerging world society interconnected through social media forces us to return to these questions. We need to return to these questions to understand how we are to live in this new society.  Is a world culture possible if we have forgotten the question and our answers?  When we do reflect on the origins of our thought?  More importantly, when do we reflect on the answers that shape our lives? We know more about the universe’s origins and we know less about what it means to be human. If we are to retain our humanity, we need to begin to ask these questions.  We need to begin to think.  Either we can retain our humanity or we can become less than human. The choice, as always, is ours if we are ready to answer the question.

 

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