A nice surprise
Today’s top recommended story on Newsgator, one of my posts.
I was in the graduating class of 2000 with 99 other students representing more than one hundred countries. As an individual I already have three nationalities and four identities. I am British, Italian, Polish and a foreigner living near Geneva, Switzerland. As a result of this mixture I said, when I was in Tanzania in 1999 that I was European because that was the simplest way to describe my identity. When I first heard about the Brexit Referendum months ago I thought that this was so stupid that I thought it was not a serious project. It did become a serious thing, especially in a post-fact Britain.
Because these narratives typically involve a selective use of facts and lenient dealings with matters of truth, they have given rise to symptoms of a post-factual democracy. A democracy is in a post-factual state when truth and evidence are replaced by robust narratives, opportune political agendas, and impracticable political promises to maximize voter support. source
For months I saw that The Guardian and other newspapers were heavily critical of the European Union. You couldn’t read an article from their website without getting the feeling that Europe was a terrible place. This bias, this message encouraged me to switch to French language media to get a less biased, less anti-European narrative. The Guardian is relatively open compared to the British tabloid press. The British tabloid press lied and misled its readership. Twice The Sun lied about the Queen supporting Brexit. Twice it suffered no consequences.
It is well known that Murdoch is anti-European. Few men have done more to fuel anti-European frenzy than the Australian-American media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, owner of several newspapers and the UK’s most important private television news channel. In his book How Britain Will Leave Europe, former Minister for Europe Denis MacShane describes how former Prime Minister Tony Blair considered holding a referendum on adopting the euro, only to renounce the plan for fear that the “shadowy figure of Rupert Murdoch†would use his media empire to campaign against it. Source
When you control the media it is easy to push your agenda forward. Conspiracy theories are always about how our privacy is being invaded and about how our phone conversations, e-mails and other communications but few of them address the problems of indoctrination or brainwashing. They rarely look at the message that we are being given on a daily message. We have to ask “What is the root message that we are getting?” In the United Kingdom the root message was “Europe is bad”. Imagine if the BBC, The Guardian and other news sources had provided both sides.
The website notes that as an EU tier 1 area, “companies can benefit from the highest level of grant aid in the UKâ€. Earlier this year the sports car company TVR announced it would build a factory and create 150 jobs there. Will it still come? Will the Circuit of Wales, a multimillion-pound motor racing circuit a private company has been proposing to build on the town’s outskirts creating 6,000 jobs? Will the £1.8bn of EU cash promised to Wales for projects until 2020 still arrive? source
Imagine if the Fourth Estate in the United Kingdom had been used to provide people with clear examples of how the EU was investing in the UK. Imagine if instead of focusing on getting people to vote Leave the British media had provided a complete and unbiased view of the European Union. Wales voted against the EU and yet this article shows that they had a lot to gain by remaining within the EU. Between 2014–2020, Wales will benefit from around £1.8bn European Structural Funds investment. Source .Â
In his first public comments since last week’s historic referendum vote, the owner of newspapers including the Times, Sun and Wall Street Journal said leaving the EU was like a “prison break … we’re out  Source
There was a period when we could read about the imbalance in wealth and investment between Rural England and London. This imbalance was making people uncomfortable and one of the reasons for which the BBC decided to become decentralised was to address this concern. It is interesting that for a number of months the BREXIT campaign has focused all of that dissatisfaction at the EU rather than London. In a 2010 article by the BBC we find this sentence: But even fans of London admit it is too expensive, too dirty and too crowded. And its critics say that it sucks talent, money and opportunities out of the rest of the country. source. Brexit has not resolved this issue. Could this explain why around 7 percent of the British population have emigrated from Great Britain?
According this this article 4.9 million brits emigrated from the United Kingdom to live as migrants in other countries. This figure is from the UN population division. In theory I am British migrant as I live outside the United Kingdom. Brexiters (I will not play their game and call them brexiteers) made such a big song and dance about migrants coming to the UK and yet  British people are the single most mobile population in Europe. In Switzerland you can’t go a day without meeting Brits. Can you imagine the backlash if Europe decided to behave like England did?
I believe that people spent so much time worrying about privacy that they forgot to think about the prominent message in the media. They were groomed to see Europe in a negative light and voted accordingly. By choosing to provide people with the message that they wanted to hear the Leave campaign won. In a Post-fact Britain the checks and balances to hold brexiters to account failed. A campaign was won on lies and instability has resulted. The silver lining for other nations is that pro-european sentiment has risen. They have seen what a farce anti-European movements are.
To Maggie and Chris I dedicate this, my 600th blog post as you are now in Florida, engaged and planning the rest of your life together.
We have exchanged hundreds of messages over the past year and it’s been fun. Now the dynamics have progressed and in so doing why not mark the occasion 🙂
Have fun.
As a sub note I also dedicate it to my Cousin and his fiancée.
And to Seesmic Whit and Claire.
Twittervox is back on the air and there will be an episode at some point this afternoon, probably around 4pm GMT. During the most recent episode we were discussing Podcamp Boston 2 and one of the people that joined the conversation was Sara Steeler of Pygmae and NewBcamp. Her ideas are interesting because she wants to involve more people into using current technology on a daily basis rather than produce content for people to hear, read or watch.
What makes the NewBcamp interesting is that it’s about creating an event where non creatives can meet and learn about the possibilities of new technology. She describes it as NewBCamp… I am designing it especially for people new to technology, I welcome people to suggest topics they would like to hear presentations on, as well as presentations they feel qualified to give. It differs from podcamp and barcamp events because it’s goal is to get more people to take advantage of all the content that is being provided.
I want to get other people involved, people like the students in my classes, like my mom, like random people I know who have a thirst to know about how to do computer stuff.
One of the things that frustrated me as a university student is that radio students, of all people, did not understand the purpose of podcasting. They want to do radio and to be on the well known broadcasters. They do student radio but how many of them took advantage of creating podcast friendly content. How many of them would create content that could be put on an RSS feed and downloaded for convenient listening? For a short period they had podcasts but that stopped quite quickly.
It’s a shame because whilst I love the idea of listening to a friend’s content whilst on the move I hate the idea of having to be by the computer listening to a live stream, especially when it’s non time sensitive audio discussions. NewBcamp could help change that attitude, help develop awareness of what podcasts are and what you can do with them.
It’s also about awareness. What podcasts are out there and what audience would find them interesting. At the moment we find technology geeks, current affairs and more but what about other programs.
I’ve seen a few snowboarding podcasts, a few history podcasts, several environmental shows but the problem is that their audience lacks familiarity with the medium. There are a few universitites that have audio podcasts, there are a few radio stations that offer additional content.
Through projects such as NewBcamp I hope that a new audience will discover and enjoy the pleasure of listening to a new form of distributing content and that the will experiment with it. I’d like to see a diversification in the type of content offered whilst including a broadening of topics covered.
If you have some thoughts on the topic then don’t hesitate to come up with suggestions and participate in the conversation.
This has to be the year where I have met the most people online before meeting them in person, which is quite amusing. It’s also the year that warzabidul as a nickname became a person in the physical world to more than two or three people. It’s the year an online person become a nickname for a real person.
It’s the year where, at least for early adopters, Twitter and Seesmic both helped create opportunities for people to meet and get to know each other online before taking it back into the physical world. It’s the year I went to a Podcamp, some tweetups and some seesm’up. It’s the year many of us stopped hiding behind avatars and nicknames and moved towards creating a brand or identity, depending on whether your point of view is that of marketing or personal fun.
I’ve enjoyed learning about the “social media” and all the new possibilities. I look forward to 2008 when many more such networks and events will be organised. It’s been a fun year to be introduced to the “Social Media” and I’m happy to have met so many people.
Today I started reading “What the Internet Is Doing To Our Brains, The Shallows” and I feel that I am on the other side of the experience. I have been through the passion for new content, the passion to constantly write the new things that people write, and the need to be connected.
There was a time when to be connected, to be vigilitant, to be attentive, was rewarded by friendships, meetings in the real world, and at the very least conversations on social media.
These rewards were engaging, and that’s why our attention span was seconds or minutes rather than hours or days. That’s why we constantly refreshed and needed to be active.
Today we are on the other side. This is most clearly demonstrated by the need for current affairs websites to send us notifications. Look at the Apple Watch, look at the notifications pain on your phone. Look at your e-mail account. How many ignored notifications are present?
During the COVID-19 Pandemic I gave up on Facebook because the ROI became so low that it became rewarding not to use the site but that’s a digression.
When you don’t look for notifications you have time to achieve goals. You have the time to learn CSS, to learn one framework, and then another, and then another one after that. You have the time to study on Coursera and much more besides. You also have the opportunity to live in the moment, no matter how void it may be.
I am at just 3 percent read in this book but already I feel that it is a historical artefact reflecting how people felt about technology at one time, rather than how they feel about it now.
Today Google turns 22, and with that I think that Google is a force for good. In their IT support course on Coursera they push that they want to hire a diverse group of people. Google has and always will be about acquiring and sharing knowledge and this benefits society.
Remember how Tim Berners Lee wanted to make computers talk between each other across networks and operating systems? Google is the step after that. Once all the computers are sharing information you need to find a way to find and organise that data. That is what Google has brought to its users over its twenty-two-year existence. Facebook, not Google, makes us stupid.
Yet another episode of twittervox was recorded today at the new time of 1pm British summertime whilst outside the weather is more autumnal. Nik Butler of h and I discussed the new media landscape and how social networks in the real and virtual world were interacting together. Loudmouthman focussed his attention on social media networks and businesses whilst I took a look at the new Iphone release in the UK and how Documentally and I came to be the owners of an Itouch each.
Phil Campbell was also present but following a meeting with a client taking place simultaneously he was given observer status and gave us his own thoughts on the topic via feedback.