Classical innovation and old-fashioned digital

8:51, Friday morning, 2 August 2013, the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, and Evan Davis interviews Emma Stenning, executive director of Bristol Old Vic, and Max Hole, chairman of Universal Group International. The question is what innovations are needed to make classical music more popular.

The proms at the Bristol Old Vic have introduced a screen allowing the audience to see the conductor in the same way as the orchestra does. That seems eminently sensible, but not innovative – Evan Davis and Max Hole agreed that rock concerts have had big screens "forever".

They have also introduced a standing pit for the promenaders. Again, eminently sensible, and ticket sales have gone up by 20% as a result, but not innovative – Emma Stenning made the point that this was actually a return to the way the theatre was in 1766. (When America had only just ceased to be a British colony ...)

In between these sensible points there was a bit of talk about digital innovation, new technology, digital opportunity and the promenade concerts being made more accessible by exploiting the analogy of a concert with computer games and digital environments in which avatars respond to the music (3'22" to 3'47").

Admittedly someone was driving to a funeral while this piece was broadcast, and was feeling mighty sour, but the digital innovation drivel sounded tired, old-fashioned, tawdry, gratuitous and past its sell-by date. The horse is dead and it's a waste of time to keep flogging it.

How boring an old fart have you got to be to still find computer games exciting?

"Digital" doesn't mean "open" or "welcoming" or "warm" or "informal" or "accessible" or "engaging" or "popular". It doesn't even mean "modern" any more.

Classical innovation and old-fashioned digital

8:51, Friday morning, 2 August 2013, the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, and Evan Davis interviews Emma Stenning, executive director of Bristol Old Vic, and Max Hole, chairman of Universal Group International. The question is what innovations are needed to make classical music more popular.

The proms at the Bristol Old Vic have introduced a screen allowing the audience to see the conductor in the same way as the orchestra does. That seems eminently sensible, but not innovative – Evan Davis and Max Hole agreed that rock concerts have had big screens "forever".

They have also introduced a standing pit for the promenaders. Again, eminently sensible, and ticket sales have gone up by 20% as a result, but not innovative – Emma Stenning made the point that this was actually a return to the way the theatre was in 1766. (When America had only just ceased to be a British colony ...)

In between these sensible points there was a bit of talk about digital innovation, new technology, digital opportunity and the promenade concerts being made more accessible by exploiting the analogy of a concert with computer games and digital environments in which avatars respond to the music (3'22" to 3'47").

Admittedly someone was driving to a funeral while this piece was broadcast, and was feeling mighty sour, but the digital innovation drivel sounded tired, old-fashioned, tawdry, gratuitous and past its sell-by date. The horse is dead and it's a waste of time to keep flogging it.

How boring an old fart have you got to be to still find computer games exciting?

"Digital" doesn't mean "open" or "welcoming" or "warm" or "informal" or "accessible" or "engaging" or "popular". It doesn't even mean "modern" any more.

GDS's grip on public expenditure

It's always a pleasure to read the Government Digital Service's diary, This week at GDS. And never more so than when it's written by Mike Beaven as it was yesterday:

... Carl Meweezen and his team over in ERG (Efficiency and Reform Group), who look at all things spending in government and look at where we’re saving money. Mark O’Neill and Gill (Elderfield) worked with their team over there, to help them build a thing called the ‘Government Interrogation Spending Tool’, or ‘GIST’, as it’s known. That went live and there’s been some really good feedback from Stephen Kelly, Carl and his team, and the Minister (Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude), saying, “Thanks for creating something that’s very easy to use and intelligent.” So well done to those guys.

The "thing called ... 'GIST'" is an infographic of public spending. We have seen GDS's penchant for arresting graphics before. That was aspirational, at the time. Now it's reality:

It's not just Stephen Kelly and Francis Maude who have provided "some really good feedback" about this infographic.

Here, for example, is Pete Swabey, writing on the Information Age website:

UK government's new spending data site is "an embarrassing mess" GIST website "is a joke", says data visualistation expert Stephen Few, and fails to allow users to make basic comparisons ... It is "either an attempt to obscure the data under the guise of transparency or the work of people who have no knowledge of data visualisation", he told Information Age. "The charts in every case are either inappropriate for the data or appropriate but ineptly designed."

Few. What a scorcher.

ElReg have provided some really good feedback, too:

Ha ha, Osborne, these Gov 2.0 web wranglers have wiped out UK debt "A digital revolution, masterminded by a team of dress-down civil servants, could save the taxpayer billions," The Times newspaper gushed on Tuesday. And behold: it already has. The UK has apparently paid off its national debt years ahead of Chancellor George Osborne's predictions. Alas, it's no miracle, but an infographics cock-up by the dress-down civil servants at the Government Digital Service ...

The "cock-up"  referred to is the unfortunate omission from GDS's infographic of the UK's £50 billion p.a. of debt interest, a point which ElReg picked up from Guido Fawkes's, No Interest in New Government Spending Website – you get the gist.

Readers who submitted comments to ElReg also expressed mystification at the annual Department of Health expenditure quoted in GDS's easy to use and intelligent infographic as £5.1 billion. They were expecting a figure closer to £120 billion.

The "digital revolution, masterminded by a team of dress-down civil servants" quotation comes from Rachel Sylvester's column in the Times on Wednesday, Geeks in jeans are the Treasury’s new heroes, the latest episode in GDS's PR blitz.

Much more positive feedback like Information Age's, ElReg's and Guido Fawkes's and GDS are going to run out of biddable publicists, even at the BBC and the Guardian. And the Times.

Readers may remember POST, the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. We last encountered them misbriefing MPs on the subject of on-line identity management.

Now POST have produced a paper on Invasive Alien Plant Species:

Invasive alien plant species (IAPs) exhibit greater abundance, density, or competitive dominance than species native to habitats ... Early detection and eradication is more cost effective and less risky than later interventions, which may have unintended consequences, such as increases in another, previously suppressed invasive alien species.

Are POST trying to tell us something about the effect of the advent of GDS on the habitat in Whitehall?

GDS's grip on public expenditure

It's always a pleasure to read the Government Digital Service's diary, This week at GDS. And never more so than when it's written by Mike Beaven as it was yesterday:

... Carl Meweezen and his team over in ERG (Efficiency and Reform Group), who look at all things spending in government and look at where we’re saving money. Mark O’Neill and Gill (Elderfield) worked with their team over there, to help them build a thing called the ‘Government Interrogation Spending Tool’, or ‘GIST’, as it’s known. That went live and there’s been some really good feedback from Stephen Kelly, Carl and his team, and the Minister (Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude), saying, “Thanks for creating something that’s very easy to use and intelligent.” So well done to those guys.

The "thing called ... 'GIST'" is an infographic of public spending. We have seen GDS's penchant for arresting graphics before. That was aspirational, at the time. Now it's reality:

It's not just Stephen Kelly and Francis Maude who have provided "some really good feedback" about this infographic.

You'd have to be naïve not to

The third and final episode of Steve Hewlett's report on Privacy Under Pressure was broadcast on Monday 29 July 2013.

The programme took the form of a debate and at one point the participants turned to the Edward Snowden revelations. The US National Security Agency (NSA) and GCHQ here in the UK monitor our phone calls, emails and web browsing on a monumental scale. That makes a nonsense of privacy.

Surveillance is justified, said Lord Carlile, by the state's duty to protect us against terrorists. In other words, in the fight between privacy and surveillance, surveillance must win. That can't be right, said the great Simon Jenkins, not without qualification.

The advocates of freedom admit that we're not free to shout "fire" in a crowded theatre. The advocates of counter-terrorism should similarly admit that there are limits.

Among others, there are financial limits. How many billions, Simon Jenkins wanted to know, should we pay for the NSA and GCHQ's work? Lord Carlile had no answer.

We're back with the arguments advanced by Fraser Nelson and Charles Moore. Of course spies spy. That's their job. Of course we're all under surveillance. You'd have to be naïve to think otherwise. It's for our own good. No-one sensible should be surprised by the Guardian's scoop, it's not a scoop, we've always known all about the interception of communications.

Let's follow the Nelson-Moore-Carlile (NMC) proposition when it next goes out for a walk. See where it leads.

And let's concentrate on money.

In yesterday's Guardian, in addition to learning about X-Keyscore, we also learned about the NSA paying GCHQ tens of millions of pounds. That's handy money. This surveillance lark is expensive and someone's got to pay for it. You'd have to be really naïve not to have worked that one out.

We're following NMC, he bumps into his NSA opposite number and there's an argument. Tempers rise, voices are raised and we can just make out the NSA saying "that's it, you were paid to deliver, you didn't deliver, no more money".

Oh dear. GCHQ's budget is being cut by the UK Exchequer and now the US are turning off the taps (faucets), too. But the state still has a duty to counter terrorism according to NMC. How to fund it?

As luck would have it, in the ordinary course of their work, which is entirely legal according to William Hague (Foreign Secretary) and Sir Malcolm Rifkind (chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee), GCHQ trip over a lot of useful information.

They knew about Berkshire Hathaway taking over Heinz, for example, months before the news was made public. Should GCHQ do their duty, take advantage of that knowledge and invest, say, £100 million in the target company? That would have yielded a £20 million profit: "Shares in Heinz soared nearly 20% in New York to hit the $72.50 price being offered". If not, why not?

That's one place where NMC leads. And you'd have to be naïve not to realise that.

You'd have to be naïve not to

The third and final episode of Steve Hewlett's report on Privacy Under Pressure was broadcast on Monday 29 July 2013.

The programme took the form of a debate and at one point the participants turned to the Edward Snowden revelations. The US National Security Agency (NSA) and GCHQ here in the UK monitor our phone calls, emails and web browsing on a monumental scale. That makes a nonsense of privacy.

Surveillance is justified, said Lord Carlile, by the state's duty to protect us against terrorists. In other words, in the fight between privacy and surveillance, surveillance must win. That can't be right, said the great Simon Jenkins, not without qualification.

The advocates of freedom admit that we're not free to shout "fire" in a crowded theatre. The advocates of counter-terrorism should similarly admit that there are limits.

Among others, there are financial limits. How many billions, Simon Jenkins wanted to know, should we pay for the NSA and GCHQ's work? Lord Carlile had no answer.

John Naughton, welcome to the club

(Hat tip: Philip Virgo)

John Naughton is professor of the public understanding of technology at the Open University. Writing in yesterday's Observer, 28 July 2013, he says:

... no US-based internet company can be trusted to protect our privacy or data. The fact is that Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are all integral components of the US cyber-surveillance system. Nothing, but nothing, that is stored in their "cloud" services can be guaranteed to be safe from surveillance or from illicit downloading by employees of the consultancies employed by the NSA. That means that if you're thinking of outsourcing your troublesome IT operations to, say, Google or Microsoft, then think again. ... when your chief information officer proposes to use the Amazon or Google cloud as a data-store for your company's confidential documents, tell him where to file the proposal. In the shredder.

Where have you heard that before?

John Naughton, welcome to the club

(Hat tip: Philip Virgo)

John Naughton is professor of the public understanding of technology at the Open University. Writing in yesterday's Observer, 28 July 2013, he says:

... no US-based internet company can be trusted to protect our privacy or data. The fact is that Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are all integral components of the US cyber-surveillance system. Nothing, but nothing, that is stored in their "cloud" services can be guaranteed to be safe from surveillance or from illicit downloading by employees of the consultancies employed by the NSA. That means that if you're thinking of outsourcing your troublesome IT operations to, say, Google or Microsoft, then think again. ... when your chief information officer proposes to use the Amazon or Google cloud as a data-store for your company's confidential documents, tell him where to file the proposal. In the shredder.

Instrumenting the kettle

Exclusive: sometimes there is a difference between fiction and reality.

Steve Hewlett is presenting a report at the moment on BBC Radio 4, Privacy Under Pressure. Three episodes, Episode 2 was on Monday 22 July 2013, final episode next Monday, don't miss it, 9 a.m.

Everyone remembers Minority Report, the Tom Cruise film where the murder rate has dropped to zero because the "Precrime" unit intervenes before anyone commits a felony.

What is the use of the internet of things? That's what Steve Hewlett.wanted to know. And there was our very own Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt to tell him.

You remember Sir Nigel. He's head of the Open Data Institute. And midata. He's the one who thinks that the economy will grow if we give all our public and personal data to innovative app-designers. Him and Stephan Shakespeare. Although neither of them can usually think what these apps might do to be useful and profitable.

And you remember the internet of things.That's when you connect every device in the world to the internet and then monitor them.

Worked a treat for the US Chamber of Commerce. They thought they were controlling the central heating in one of their flats remotely. In fact, the thermostat was busy sending stolen data to the Chinese: "months later, the chamber discovered that Internet-connected devices — a thermostat in one of its corporate apartments and a printer in its offices — were still communicating with computers in China".

All this remote monitoring is a bit intrusive, isn't it, said Steve Hewlett but Sir Nigel reckons not. He says that by "instrumenting" the fridge you'll be able to tell remotely that an old person is eating properly. "Elder care", he calls it. And if you see the kettle being turned on, you'll know that the old person is having a cup of tea.

Sir Nigel has obviously never met an elderly relative of DMossEsq's who, in his dotage, every time you served him dinner, carefully picked it up and put it in the dishwasher – to a remote "elder carer", no doubt that would mean he was doing the washing up.

A lot of people on Steve Hewlett's programme keep saying that the benefits of surveillance are undeniable, it would improve the quality of life, it's very positive. There's one old-fashioned lady who says that permanent surveillance will lead to permanent self-censorship, but what does she know?

Is it worth giving up our privacy just so that we know without taking the trouble to go round in person that some old wrinkly has opened the fridge?

Sir Nigel tackled this question head on. Here he is, delivering the coup de grâce to any demented naysayers. Just imagine, he says, a new world where you look out of the window and see the blue flashing lights, and then someone flies through the door and says "we're here to prevent you from having a heart attack".

That's Sir Nigel's charming picture of the new world he's trying to create. Or intelligently design. "Precare", anyone?

Sir Nigel has obviously never met Steven Grisales. And he's not going to meet him, because Steven Grisales is dead. He was murdered by a 15 year-old who was out on parole probation and evaded surveillance by the simple act of removing his electronic tag.

The story is told by Dominic Lawson in the Sunday Times, Clarke plays a deadly game of tagging, 17 June 2012: "Last Wednesday Liz Calderbank, the chief inspector of probation, released a report on electronically monitored curfews, which deserves that overused term 'devastating' — it revealed that 59% of tagged offenders are known to have breached the terms of their curfew".

Perhaps in next Monday's episode Steve Hewlett will settle the question whether the benefits of giving up our privacy really are indubitable. Will the future look like Sir Nigel's idyllic dream? Or will it be more like the squalid nightmare which is surveillance today in the UK, as revealed by Liz Calderbank?

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Updated 4.8.14

iKettle: The Wi-Fi kettle review

Hat tip


Updated 24.10.16

"Global internet outages continue as second wave of hacker attacks cripples web servers" – that's what it said in the Daily Telegraph newspaper last week, with more than usual first-hand experience: "Hundreds of popular websites were taken offline for hours on Friday after a critical internet point was hit by multiple cyber attacks ... Hackers brought sites including Twitter, eBay and The Telegraph offline for millions of users after targeting Dyn, a New Hampshire-based company that is responsible for routing internet traffic".

ElReg provided some technical detail. It seems that a lot of dumb devices attached to the internet of things (IoT) were used to launch an onslaught on this company Dyn. Devices including the WiFi kettle above, possibly. Apparently it's terribly easy to do and the caper may have been undertaken by bored children.

Messrs Shadbolt and Shakespeare (please see above) may have their enthusiasm for the IoT undimmed by this episode. You may think differently, though. If bored children knock out the Government Digital Service's GOV.UK Verify (RIP) next time, and if you foolishly rely on that underwhelming identity assurance scheme, then you will cease to exist.


Updated 21.1.17

RIP: Steve Hewlett: Radio 4 presenter dies at the age of 58

Instrumenting the kettle

Exclusive: sometimes there is a difference between fiction and reality.

Steve Hewlett is presenting a report at the moment on BBC Radio 4, Privacy Under Pressure. Three episodes, Episode 2 was on Monday 22 July 2013, final episode next Monday, don't miss it, 9 a.m.

Everyone remembers Minority Report, the Tom Cruise film where the murder rate has dropped to zero because the "Precrime" unit intervenes before anyone commits a felony.

What is the use of the internet of things? That's what Steve Hewlett.wanted to know. And there was our very own Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt to tell him.

You remember Sir Nigel. He's head of the Open Data Institute. And midata. He's the one who thinks that the economy will grow if we give all our public and personal data to innovative app-designers. Him and Stephan Shakespeare. Although neither of them can usually think what these apps might do to be useful and profitable.

And you remember the internet of things.That's when you connect every device in the world to the internet and then monitor them.

Worked a treat for the US Chamber of Commerce. They thought they were controlling the central heating in one of their flats remotely. In fact, the thermostat was busy sending stolen data to the Chinese: "months later, the chamber discovered that Internet-connected devices — a thermostat in one of its corporate apartments and a printer in its offices — were still communicating with computers in China".