A kaleidoscopic picture

I must confess that, on occasions, I have resorted to the largest picture library not on earth, Google images, to illustrate this blog. To make my offense worse, I have then sometimes attached rather facetious captions to them. In this way I may be contributing to the peculiar muddling of knowledge and history effected by the web.

When one searches Google images one sometimes finds some rather unexpected results. Not only is one provided with the expected western  Christian images of the heavenly father, along with Thor in his chariot, Osiris and others, but also portraits of Charles Darwin, George W Bush, Bob Dylan, Osama Bin Laden, Richard Dawkins and Barack Obama. It may be unlikely that anyone is lead into a false belief that the second coming has already taken place, although some of the above mentioned, including Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins do have an uncanny resemblance to our stereotypical views of the deity.

Richard Dawkins

Thor in his chariot

Osiris and friends

Yet, in more recondite areas, misattribution amongst the ignorant (such as myself) is highly likely and must certainly have taken on the false authority of publication.

Atomisation 1

When we nowadays talk, as we so frequently do, about 'communication', we often are referring to techniques to facilitate primarily verbal communication between physically distant individuals: the (nearly obsolete) letter, the telephone, the email, 'social media' - even blogging, though now we are getting more into the territory of publication rather than inter-personal communication.

It must have been very different in the days of settled societies, when personal mobility was heavily circumscribed. People of course talked to each other, but personal social interaction was not necessarily verbal. It consisted to a considerable extent in simple physical presence in the course of quotidian lives, in the interchange of goods and services. That was not necessarily stimulating, but the unexamined assumption that stimulation is always beneficial is a product of our own times.

It is significant that we do now talk about communication so much - its success or failure, its techniques; despite its unprecedented quantity in our time, it is always thought there is not enough of it, that the solution to all problems lies in 'more' or 'more effective' communicaton. There is far less consideration of what we might be communicating or of whether it is desirable that we should seek to develop new realms within ourselves for communication. With it of course goes the whole modern fixation with the virtues of 'self-expression'. In modern times the unexpressed life is the life not worth living.

L'affaire RM

"I'm not throwing innocent people under the bus" I might get my phone hacked.

Appropriately for the empire of a man whose empire sought to cow and suborn politicians, so much about the creaking News Corporation echoes the highest levels of political dynamics. It is a nice irony that 7 per cent of a company that depends for its generation of cash on the manipulation of popular sentiment is owned by the Sovereign Wealth Fund of the Saudi government, better known for its sympathy with money than its sympathy with people. Another bit is owned by our Church Commissioners (for the time being).

It is instructive to see how rapidly corrupt bedfellows in the murkier chambers of power can fall out. Politicians are now tumbling over themselves to snatch their underclothes back on, and even the Metropolitan Police seems (heavy emphasis needed there) to be rediscovering its public duty. Is there a lesson here for international bank executives?

And in the US ‘experts’ are covering the situation with their usual perspicacity. It's all about ensuring a smooth take-over of control by James. "It is a problem for succession. That is the key issue in the US, not the ins and outs of who hacked whom over in England," said Jack Lule, a journalism professor at Lehigh University. Presumably his equivalent banking professor was saying “The key issue is who gets to be the next CEO of Goldman Sachs, not who lent what to unemployed rednecks to buy their collapsing shacks.”

The famed ‘establishment hating’ intimate of prime ministers, as he flits from here to there in helicopter, private jet, yacht or chauffeur driven car, is as out of touch with mundanity as fin de régime Tony Blair (who, it is revealed through a Freedom of Information request, telephoned him on 11th, 13th and 19th March 2003 before troops went into Iraq on the 20th; Mrs T could draw a discreeter veil and, apparently, not mention the patriarch even once in her memoirs). The great man is reported as saying, "I'm not throwing innocent people under the bus." Does he recall that image of the London bus with its roof blown off or even know that his journalists hacked survivors’ phones?

Twitter ye not

To prevent Twitter posters from defying English 'privacy' legal injunctions (see Super good faith yesterday):

"... experts claim that lawyers at Schillings, who represent the professional footballer at the centre of the row, would need to file their case in California to have any success  and this would require them to publicly reveal the name of their client."

Who said the law was an ass? Not in California. But surely litigants are: what clearer confirmation could there be that the Twitterers have correctly identified the footballer than to threaten to suppress them by law?

"Twitter has been seeking to find a European base in London. It is not known if the recent row has made the company change its plans."

See also...

Super good faith

Legal injunctions prohibiting the publication of information about the supposedly private lives of famous people enjoying seven figure remuneration, such as bankers and football stars, have recently been defied by postings on Twitter and the internet.

(American banks tend to call it not 'remuneration' but 'compensation', and it normally comes in 'packages' - compensation for what private loss, one wonders - in this country bank compensation more normally means payments to depositors in failed banks.)

To return to the defiance of injunctions: ‘Lord Judge said he believed that ways would be found to curtail the "misuse of modern technology", in the same way that those involved with online child pornography were pursued by the police. "Are you really going to say that someone who has a true claim for protection perfectly well made has to be at the mercy of modern technology?" he asked.’

Our culture secretary, the celebrated Jeremy Hunt, accused Twitter of 'making an ass of the law'. It was of course Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist who famously yoked together the law and an ass, when he had Mr Bumble observe that if 'the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction' then 'if the law supposes that ... the law is a ass'. Well, Mr Hunt is only our government minster responsible for culture, but had he been a little more familiar with his Dickens he might have concluded that the law is not being made an ass now, but is already an ass for supposing that Twitter will act under his or its direction.

Abhorrent though the activities of paedophiles are, there is something deeply disturbing about the almost unrestricted panoply of official investigation, restrictions, and surveillance, and public demonization being applied to the internet pedlars of inconvenient or even false information. Lord Judge’s sentiment may be laudable, but his proposal presages a new apparatus of official control whose application will outrun the avowed intentions of those who introduce it, and will include no protection for the unprivileged from 'the proud man's contumely ... the law's delay, the insolence of office'.

‘The report also says that media reports of comments made in parliament which set out to contravene injunctions may be in contempt of court. Reports of statements in the Commons and Lords are only protected by parliamentary privilege if they are published "in good faith and without malice".’