Tag Archives: ForWestminsterHubble

Don’t Call Yourself a Programmer

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As a twenty-six-year-old software engineer — I shan’t use the word “programmer”, for obvious reasons — who’s only ever really had one job, I probably ought to refrain from posting an opinion on this post:

Don’t Call Yourself a Programmer

But I will anyway. It’s true, every single word of it. I’m lucky enough to be in that 10% of jobs that isn’t producing “line of business” software, but that percentage doesn’t seem far off the mark. And all the rest applies — in my industry perhaps more than most, the points about networking and about managers hiring people they know ring true.

It’s a long read, but if you’re in the software industry or at University aiming for a job in software, do yourself a favour and read it. It’s well-written and probably the most concentrated page of good advice you will read this year.

We, the Web Kids

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Occasionally, I read a piece of writing that sums up my thoughts so well, so exactly, that I sit and try to blog something comparable and just fail.  Try as I might, I can’t outdo the original.  I’m not sure what Pastebin.com’s retention policy is, so just in case, here it is in full:

We, the Web Kids

by Piotr Czerski (translated by Marta Szrede)

There is probably no other word that would be as overused in the media discourse as ‘generation’. I once tried to count the ‘generations’ that have been proclaimed in the past ten years, since the well-known article about the so-called ‘Generation Nothing’; I believe there were as many as twelve. They all had one thing in common: they only existed on paper. Reality never provided us with a single tangible, meaningful, unforgettable impulse, the common experience of which would forever distinguish us from the previous generations. We had been looking for it, but instead the groundbreaking change came unnoticed, along with cable TV, mobile phones, and, most of all, Internet access. It is only today that we can fully comprehend how much has changed during the past fifteen years.

We, the Web kids; we, who have grown up with the Internet and on the Internet, are a generation who meet the criteria for the term in a somewhat subversive way. We did not experience an impulse from reality, but rather a metamorphosis of the reality itself. What unites us is not a common, limited cultural context, but the belief that the context is self-defined and an effect of free choice.

Writing this, I am aware that I am abusing the pronoun ‘we’, as our ‘we’ is fluctuating, discontinuous, blurred, according to old categories: temporary. When I say ‘we’, it means ‘many of us’ or ‘some of us’. When I say ‘we are’, it means ‘we often are’. I say ‘we’ only so as to be able to talk about us at all.

1.
We grew up with the Internet and on the Internet. This is what makes us different; this is what makes the crucial, although surprising from your point of view, difference: we do not ‘surf’ and the internet to us is not a ‘place’ or ‘virtual space’. The Internet to us is not something external to reality but a part of it: an invisible yet constantly present layer intertwined with the physical environment. We do not use the Internet, we live on the Internet and along it. If we were to tell our bildnungsroman to you, the analog, we could say there was a natural Internet aspect to every single experience that has shaped us. We made friends and enemies online, we prepared cribs for tests online, we planned parties and studying sessions online, we fell in love and broke up online. The Web to us is not a technology which we had to learn and which we managed to get a grip of. The Web is a process, happening continuously and continuously transforming before our eyes; with us and through us. Technologies appear and then dissolve in the peripheries, websites are built, they bloom and then pass away, but the Web continues, because we are the Web; we, communicating with one another in a way that comes naturally to us, more intense and more efficient than ever before in the history of mankind.

Brought up on the Web we think differently. The ability to find information is to us something as basic, as the ability to find a railway station or a post office in an unknown city is to you. When we want to know something – the first symptoms of chickenpox, the reasons behind the sinking of ‘Estonia’, or whether the water bill is not suspiciously high – we take measures with the certainty of a driver in a SatNav-equipped car. We know that we are going to find the information we need in a lot of places, we know how to get to those places, we know how to assess their credibility. We have learned to accept that instead of one answer we find many different ones, and out of these we can abstract the most likely version, disregarding the ones which do not seem credible. We select, we filter, we remember, and we are ready to swap the learned information for a new, better one, when it comes along.

To us, the Web is a sort of shared external memory. We do not have to remember unnecessary details: dates, sums, formulas, clauses, street names, detailed definitions. It is enough for us to have an abstract, the essence that is needed to process the information and relate it to others. Should we need the details, we can look them up within seconds. Similarly, we do not have to be experts in everything, because we know where to find people who specialise in what we ourselves do not know, and whom we can trust. People who will share their expertise with us not for profit, but because of our shared belief that information exists in motion, that it wants to be free, that we all benefit from the exchange of information. Every day: studying, working, solving everyday issues, pursuing interests. We know how to compete and we like to do it, but our competition, our desire to be different, is built on knowledge, on the ability to interpret and process information, and not on monopolising it.

2.
Participating in cultural life is not something out of ordinary to us: global culture is the fundamental building block of our identity, more important for defining ourselves than traditions, historical narratives, social status, ancestry, or even the language that we use. From the ocean of cultural events we pick the ones that suit us the most; we interact with them, we review them, we save our reviews on websites created for that purpose, which also give us suggestions of other albums, films or games that we might like. Some films, series or videos we watch together with colleagues or with friends from around the world; our appreciation of some is only shared by a small group of people that perhaps we will never meet face to face. This is why we feel that culture is becoming simultaneously global and individual. This is why we need free access to it.

This does not mean that we demand that all products of culture be available to us without charge, although when we create something, we usually just give it back for circulation. We understand that, despite the increasing accessibility of technologies which make the quality of movie or sound files so far reserved for professionals available to everyone, creativity requires effort and investment. We are prepared to pay, but the giant commission that distributors ask for seems to us to be obviously overestimated. Why should we pay for the distribution of information that can be easily and perfectly copied without any loss of the original quality? If we are only getting the information alone, we want the price to be proportional to it. We are willing to pay more, but then we expect to receive some added value: an interesting packaging, a gadget, a higher quality, the option of watching here and now, without waiting for the file to download. We are capable of showing appreciation and we do want to reward the artist (since money stopped being paper notes and became a string of numbers on the screen, paying has become a somewhat symbolic act of exchange that is supposed to benefit both parties), but the sales goals of corporations are of no interest to us whatsoever. It is not our fault that their business has ceased to make sense in its traditional form, and that instead of accepting the challenge and trying to reach us with something more than we can get for free they have decided to defend their obsolete ways.

One more thing: we do not want to pay for our memories. The films that remind us of our childhood, the music that accompanied us ten years ago: in the external memory network these are simply memories. Remembering them, exchanging them, and developing them is to us something as natural as the memory of ‘Casablanca’ is to you. We find online the films that we watched as children and we show them to our children, just as you told us the story about the Little Red Riding Hood or Goldilocks. Can you imagine that someone could accuse you of breaking the law in this way? We cannot, either.

3.
We are used to our bills being paid automatically, as long as our account balance allows for it; we know that starting a bank account or changing the mobile network is just the question of filling in a single form online and signing an agreement delivered by a courier; that even a trip to the other side of Europe with a short sightseeing of another city on the way can be organised in two hours. Consequently, being the users of the state, we are increasingly annoyed by its archaic interface. We do not understand why tax act takes several forms to complete, the main of which has more than a hundred questions. We do not understand why we are required to formally confirm moving out of one permanent address to move in to another, as if councils could not communicate with each other without our intervention (not to mention that the necessity to have a permanent address is itself absurd enough.)

There is not a trace in us of that humble acceptance displayed by our parents, who were convinced that administrative issues were of utmost importance and who considered interaction with the state as something to be celebrated. We do not feel that respect, rooted in the distance between the lonely citizen and the majestic heights where the ruling class reside, barely visible through the clouds. Our view of the social structure is different from yours: society is a network, not a hierarchy. We are used to being able to start a dialogue with anyone, be it a professor or a pop star, and we do not need any special qualifications related to social status. The success of the interaction depends solely on whether the content of our message will be regarded as important and worthy of reply. And if, thanks to cooperation, continuous dispute, defending our arguments against critique, we have a feeling that our opinions on many matters are simply better, why would we not expect a serious dialogue with the government?

We do not feel a religious respect for ‘institutions of democracy’ in their current form, we do not believe in their axiomatic role, as do those who see ‘institutions of democracy’ as a monument for and by themselves. We do not need monuments. We need a system that will live up to our expectations, a system that is transparent and proficient. And we have learned that change is possible: that every uncomfortable system can be replaced and is replaced by a new one, one that is more efficient, better suited to our needs, giving more opportunities.

What we value the most is freedom: freedom of speech, freedom of access to information and to culture. We feel that it is thanks to freedom that the Web is what it is, and that it is our duty to protect that freedom. We owe that to next generations, just as much as we owe to protect the environment.

Perhaps we have not yet given it a name, perhaps we are not yet fully aware of it, but I guess what we want is real, genuine democracy. Democracy that, perhaps, is more than is dreamt of in your journalism.

“My, dzieci sieci” (“We, the web kids”) by Piotr Czerski (translated by Marta Szrede) is licensed under a Creative Commons Uznanie autorstwa-Na tych samych warunkach 3.0 Unported License
Originally posted at: http://pastebin.com/0xXV8k7k
Contact the author: piotr[at]czerski.art.pl

Progressiveness and the Tribe

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As a former supporter of the Liberal Democrats, I found my support leaning toward Labour due to the Lib Dems’ ongoing disastrous coalition with the Conservative party.  But in truth, the Labour party are just a convenient political marker for some of my opinions on economic and social policy.  What I really care about, I suppose, is progress – changing things that are broken, trying new ideas until we discover something that makes the country work better.

But all three main parties now label themselves as “Progressive”. (I suppose “regressive” isn’t much of a vote-winner.)  The minor parties mostly have limited agendas that make it impossible to support them to the exclusion of all others.  Who, then, do I vote for? The truth is probably that none of the UK’s political parties are as progressive as I would like, but more than that — a politician being progressive on my behalf isn’t really what I want at all.

I want to design the future.

Then I want to engineer the future.

Then I want to sit back and think “bloody hell, we made that.”

That’s what gets me out of bed and halfway across the county five mornings a week, what keeps me sketching interfaces and gets me through design meetings, what keeps me coding and soldering and getting covered in grease and salt-spray.

I’m not pretending that I could engineer the future of this country by myself, or that I should have any more of a say than the other sixty million of us, but I’d like to at least have some input besides a simple vote.  As far as I’m aware, there exist only two ways of having this kind of input — sell your soul for a career in politics, or be ignored on e-petitions.

All of this leads me to the conclusion that having our voice heard and our experience utilised on our own terms is not something that a nation state can offer its citizens.  Our voices are heard and our experience utilised by our families and friends; at our places of work — tribes of a few hundred people at most — but not on a national scale

Is there some useful way for citizens to help engineer their future at the state level, or are we relegated to having that kind of influence only in our hundred-strong social tribes?  Are there any countries that are significantly better at this than ours, countries that progress with heavy citizen involvement?  Am I dreaming of an impossible society, and most importantly of all, should I go to bed and sleep it off instead of filling the internet with my ranting?

Whither the State Religion?

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This so-far unloved petition was shared with me on Facebook the other day, and while I can’t bring myself to sign it — I agree with most, but not the dis-establishment of the Church of England — it has got me wondering why we still have such a thing as a “state religion” in the United Kingdom.

Like I said, I have no objection to the Church of England existing (and likewise its Scots equivalent).  I know many members, and I know it does good work.  What I can’t see the sense of, however, is declaring it our country’s religion.  It is the most popular religion amongst the people of this country, and the religion of our head of state, but nothing more.

We do not just live in a “Church of England” country, or a Protestant one, or even a Christian one.  We live in a Christian country, and a Muslim country and a Jewish country, a Sikh and Hindu country, a Buddhist and Pagan country, an Atheist and an Agnostic country, a Pastafarian and Scientologist country (for better or worse).

There is an English language, which there are some reasonable arguments in favour of requiring those who live here to speak.  Of course no-one in their right mind would suggest that people who live here adopt the “English religion”, so why have such a concept in the first place?  It can only serve as a small but niggling reminder to the nation’s Muslims and Sikhs that they aren’t quite as “English” as others.

I find the number of state-funded church schools quite odd too — in my town, there are only two non-faith schools, neither of which we are in the catchment area of.  So I am paying money in the form of taxes for my son to be taught as fact something that is only an opinion, and one that I disagree with at that.

I understand the historical reasons behind the system, why the Church of England exists and why the concept of a state religion exists.  But is it not a little out-dated now?

I admit that this post comes across as flame-bait, but I genuinely cannot think of an advantage to having a state religion, and I honestly welcome any comments that offer a reason as to why the state religion is useful to our society.

Why I’m Voting “Yes” to AV

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A while ago, I blogged my indifference to the Alternative Vote system, and politics in general at that point, in a post entitled “Meh” to AV.  My main objection was that AV would increase the likelihood of the country being governed by bland centrist coalitions.  However, now hopefully somewhat more educated about the subject, I am now given to understand that AV would in fact reduce the likelihood of coalition governments — and given how well our current coalition is working out for all concerned, I suspect that a greater chance of outright majority governments may be a good thing for Britain.

Over and above this, the biggest advantage of AV in my opinion is that it removes the desire to vote tactically.  Thus far in my adult life I have resolutely voted Lib Dem in my constituency, where they trail the Conservatives with about 30% of the vote compared to 40% — not exactly close, but not far off.  As I find my inclinations swinging toward Labour (15%), the existing First Past the Post system means I now have a choice: support Labour by voting for them, or oppose the Tories by voting Lib Dem.  (Not that that’s working too well at the moment.)  The AV system gives me the ability to properly express my opinions: I’d like Labour first, the Lib Dems second, and the others not at all.

But in case none of that was convincing, I suggest you attempt the following procedure, which has thus far done me no harm in life:

  1. Figure out what a bunch of stuffy old-Etonian toffs and/or bigoted racist dicks want you to do
  2. Figure out what the opposite is
  3. Do that.

Whether it’s for fairer representation, for better allowing you to express your opinion, to Stick it to the Forehead Man, or just for the lulz — please join me in voting “Yes” to the Alternative Vote system on May 5th.

In Praise of Disjointed Communities

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Prime Minister David Cameron is set to make a speech on immigration today which, to the very vocal displeasure of Vince Cable and doubtless many Lib Dems, is designed to appeal to the core and right of the Conservative party. According to the BBC article:

Communities have been affected by incomers who are unable to speak English and unwilling to integrate, [Cameron] will argue.

“That has created a kind of discomfort and disjointedness in some neighbourhoods. This has been the experience for many people in our country – and I believe it is untruthful and unfair not to speak about it and address it.”

Granted, I’m probably far from the average member of the public in my opinions, and certainly I’m far from core Tory material. But I see that disjointedness as more of a good thing than a bad one.

Many years ago, I lived for a while in the village of Easton, on Portland. It was blessed with both a Chinese restaurant and a Chinese take-away, as far as I am aware the only two on the island. When I was there, the restaurant was staffed with Chinese people (or at least those of Chinese descent) — whether they lived on the island or not, I have no idea. But the take-away? Well, I guess they ran out of Chinese people. It was staffed entirely by Brits. 96.8% of the population are of white ethnicity.

I come from, and have since returned to, Bournemouth. Just 30 miles away, it has a population more than 10 times that of the whole of Portland. During most of the year it is home to thousands of university students; in the summer it opens its doors to thousands more foreign language students and a never-ending influx of tourists. I live in an area with a high Brazilian population. Oriental and Middle-Eastern shops are everywhere.

It’s part of the world in a way that Easton is not.

By and large, immigrants naturally pick up enough English to get by — instead of imposing requirements on their proficiency with the language, how about we try to learn each others’ languages?

Instead of imposing some requirement to “integrate” with society (presumably that means reading the Daily Mail, drinking tea and moaning about the weather), why not celebrate each others’ cultures?

More to the point, why not stop pretending that there’s a single homogenous British society for people to integrate with in the first place? My comment about the Daily Mail was only partly in humour. How do you define such a nebulous concept?

I don’t read the Daily Mail, and I rarely drink tea. My instinctive reaction to the phrase “Oh dear, it’s come over all cloudy again, hasn’t it? Typical.” is an impotent rage as I realise that no matter how much of a travesty of conversation it is, in the eyes of the law, it’s still not cause enough to legitimately punch someone in the face.

Like most Brits though, I do love French food, German beer, Italian coffee, chow mein, pizza and chicken tikka masala.

If I’m trying to make a point here, it’s this:

  • Everyone else’s culture is just as good as ours

  • Everyone else’s language is just as good as ours

  • And by the way, everyone else’s food is better than ours.

Let’s stop clinging to an idea of British culture that we can’t even define, and pretending our way of life is under attack from Poles or Pakistanis.  Let’s not be Easton.

There’s a whole world out there.  Let’s live in it.

When Science met Big Society

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Yesterday’s announcement that the Arts and Humanities Research Council will, on pain of losing funding, devote a “significant” amount of time to studying the notion of “Big Society” is frankly shocking. If it is indeed true, it smacks of incredible egotism on the part of the government.

The government’s money is the people’s money — if we’re not going to leave the job of deciding what to research to the actual researchers, why should the government’s whims be involved? If there were a referendum on it now, what proportion of the tax-paying public would label the Big Society as a steaming pile of shite that we shouldn’t be throwing any more money at?

Conversely, how many of the government’s other sweeping changes — the programme of cuts (Warning: least impartial summary ever) that we are now subject to, for example — have been the subject of such hopefully-independent research?

A future UKIP government promises to ban global warming research, and apart from the climate change deniers, I’m confident the public would not support that particular aspect of governmental meddling in research. So why are we putting up with this?

(And on a related note, does anyone else think it’s a little odd to commission research on a policy after committing to it?)

tl,dr: Hands off mah science, government.

The فراشة Effect

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Two months ago, a young Tunisian vegetable-seller killed himself in protest when officials in his home town of Sidi Bouzid prevented him from selling his wares on the street.

That was December. Now it is February. What became known as the Jasmine Revolution swept through Tunisia, exiling its President of 23 years and ushering hope for freedom and democracy. Egypt followed, ousting President Mubarak from his 30-year rule after a protest in Tahrir Square that saw more protesters’ children in impromptu day-care groups than molotov cocktails.

Unrest has swept the states of the Arab League. Protests have rocked Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, Syria and Yemen. Tensions are flaring once again in Iran. Bahrain ordered its soldiers to open fire on their people. And tonight Libya lies on the brink of revolution or civil war, the east of the country reportedly under civilian rule as army units defect, police stations burn and hundreds lie dead.

I wonder if Mohamed Bouazizi had any idea, back in December, that his death would be the catalyst for the greatest unrest the region has seen in decades?

And I wonder how many other situations, political or otherwise, are susceptible to the same butterfly effect. How many other butterflies are there out there whose simple, local actions will end up tearing countries apart?

The Pulse

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Another afternoon of high-volume Pendulum and high-caffeine brain, blazing through work on one screen while flicking my attention over two others. Two news pages and four Twitter lists are open, poised. They all refresh automatically, but each time my eyes focus on them I reach for the manual refresh button purely on instinct.

It’s a constant stream of news that’s in real terms utterly useless to me. I’ve never been to Egypt and I don’t know anyone there. I don’t know a lot about Mubarak’s regime or any of the alternatives. In a world without the internet, maybe I’d buy a paper tomorrow and read about it with mild interest. But the internet itself, and the real-time access it brings, can elevate any topic to the point of obsession.

Something big is going down in a country thousands of miles away, in a country where everyone’s phones are offline, internet access has been cut, and news agencies’ cameras have been conviscated. But still the news comes. Phone calls translated into tweets, live blogs pushed byte by byte over satellite modems, handheld camcorders standing in for the lost news cameras.

The immediacy of it, the raw transport of information from reality to text and video, the process itself kicks off a little spark of adrenaline, inducing a stress response, refresh, refresh, refresh until the source stops broadcasting, then find a new one. Never stop. Disconnection is death.

The white-hot pulse of news flashes upwards from Tahrir Square out to low-earth orbit, back to the surface, across millions of spiderweb miles of cable and straight into my forebrain.

The real world feels so slow sometimes. It can be minutes between tweets.

It’s a continent away and it doesn’t affect my life at all. But I don’t want to be a day late reading the news — I don’t want to be 30 seconds late.

Each day I carry around a plethora of devices that let me avoid that horrible lateness; allow me to find the pulse from wherever in the world it starts and catch it before it’s had a minute to grow cold. One day, we will be able to catch that pulse and ride it with a mere thought — and for me, that day can’t come soon enough.

Inbox Many

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There’s been a recent increase in productivity-related posts on Lifehacker, so inspired by that I thought I’d share how I “get things done”, and hopefully swap tips with others!

My approach is simple: I attempt “Inbox Zero”. And deliberately fail.

After several years of attempting to keep a clean inbox, having any messages at all sitting there really annoys me.  I use that to my advantage and end up doing the polar opposite of “Inbox Zero” — that is, I use my inbox as my to-do list.  Whenever I think of something I need to do, I write a short e-mail, usually just a subject line, and send it to whatever inbox is appropriate for the task (work or home).

It has the advantage of simplicity — while corporate firewalls could prevent me from using a todo.txt and a filofax could be left at home, there’s virtually no situation when I’m more than a few feet from a device that can do e-mail.

And the worry that “Inbox Zero” was designed to address — huge inboxes that get piled up with junk that never gets acted on — is avoided because having those e-mails in my inbox, even though I put them there, is annoying enough that I clear them as soon as possible.

I’ve taken to calling the technique “Inbox Many”.

So, great untamed hordes of the internet — I’m intrigued. How do you lot get things done?