Potholes in my lawn

When I get to the end of my life, one of the only concrete achievements I will be able to point to is the fact that I was once in a band that released an album. We even got a single of the week in the NME the week of my 21st birthday, which was back when the NME was still cool. I know, right! Occasionally, when I'm worried people see nothing but the middle aged professional systems geek me, I wheel out these facts to prove that I was once marginally cool. If my guests are particularly (un)lucky I'll wheel out the album at a dinner party, or at least queue it up on Spotify (I don't actually own a physical copy).
It was on just such an occasion that I went searching for our album on Spotify and came up blank. It wasn't there. It had disappeared. I looked in a playlist where it had been (not that I listen to it all the time mind you) and found that it wasn't there. Some time later I found an option in Spotify that shows or hides 'unplayable' tracks and when I changed this setting, the album reappeared although only as a set of greyed-out tracks that were no longer playable. As the days went past, I noticed a whole bunch of tracks by other (more significant) artists were also greyed out. For whatever reason some music had simply been removed from Spotify. I had no way of knowing if that is because of licensing issues, artist refusal, administrative incompetence or some other reason entirely; all I knew was it was no longer available. I only knew this because I went looking and changed the default settings on my account, had I not been such a vain tosser I might never have noticed that music disappears off my playlist all the time. In effect Spotify has final say over what music I listen to. Obviously with music, there is a simple solution to this: buy CDs or at least mp3s that are not then at the mercy of the whims or licensing negotiations of an Internet music provider. With other things it is not so easy. In the 19 years that it has been in existence, we have become very reliant on Google; we trust it to tell us everything that is out there, but how can we be sure that what google tells us is everything is everything. The truth is that we can't.
One of my favourite albums growing up was De La Soul's '3ft High and Rising'. I know every word of that album because I practically wore out a tape copy I'd borrowed off a neighbour when I was 13. I have a vinyl copy, but I never listen to it because my record player has been unplugged for 3 years (and also because I am extremely precious about it). This means that I never listen to that album, because it does not exist in the digital world. I have looked: it is not on Spotify, Apple Music or any other digital service that I am aware of. I'm reliably informed that this is because it doesn't have clearance for the myriad famous samples that appear on the album, samples that if you love that album are an instant hook into the original the first time you hear it: a pre-vetting of some great music, expanding the horizons of young hip hop fans the world over. Unfortunately the shortsighted commercial imperative of absolute copyright enforcement overrides any consideration of longer term financial gain through association and '3ft High and Rising' remains unavailable in any digital form. This means to all intents and purposes it no longer exists; as how much of our reality is defined by its online identity? The kids could go looking for it in record shops, but they're unlikely to do so in any numbers as there is no awareness of it. Some might see the vinyl revival as a sign that the kids are turning away form the digital world, but mainly they are buying novelty vinyl versions of digital tracks, or popular classics on reissue. Vinyl records look retro cool above all else; an instagram fad for a generation of image collectors.
 In the pre-digital world there was always a popular version of the cultural truth that was occasionally contradictory to, and occasionally complimented by subcultures. Now there is no 'subculture' that can exist without the validation of the popular cultural truth, as this is defined. Really there is no subculture, because all culture is validated and defined by the framework of the digital hegemony. Furthermore, cultural history is filtered through that same framework: there are many albums from my youth that I cannot find online and so do not really exist in cultural fact any more. Whilst some people will fight for the right to be forgotten online, there will be vast chunks of late 20th and very early 21st century culture that will be forgotten simply because they never existed online in the first place. Im sure it was always the case that chunks of cultural history just disappeared, but at least in the past they would have been forgotten due to any number of random factors, not just the binary dead hand of digital commerce.
 This week Google and Microsoft announced that they will put illegal file sharing sites further down the rankings of their search results. We should note this, because this is how your reality is now defined: extreme right wing organisations can make up anything and remain right at the top of search engine rankings, but if someone wants to share music without paying for it, that's too morally repugnant for us to be exposed to. I am not a defender of music piracy in particular, but its singling out for banishment from search engines certainly speaks to the priorities of the companies who govern what form of truth we are exposed to. Unfortunately, we don't know what else we are being 'protected' from. We don't know what reality they have decided for us.

Pelican

I'm forever amazed by people who stand at pelican crossings waiting for the lights to change, but not pressing the button. They appear genuinely ignorant to the fact that the lights will not change if they do not press the button. Eventually, many just cross the road in exasperation,  tired of waiting for lights that appear to be never going to change. I find this astounding because it hints at a lack of understanding of the world that I couldn't bear to live with. I realised the other day that I know the phases of all my local traffic lights. I imagine that this is not unusual, but maybe it is. Possibly many more people know the phases of their local traffic lights without realising it, but I'm not sure how many people actively consider this knowledge to be something that contributes to their sense of place or identification with their local area. It is entirely possible that I am what would these days be described as 'a little bit on the spectrum', that this would account for some of how I familiarise myself with an area being about a high level familiarity with the basic mechanics of that area. I'm not saying I stand at road junctions and learn the phases of the traffic lights, I too am barely consciously aware of the process of gaining this knowledge. I just realised it for the first time the other day. I guess the difference comes at the point when one is assessing an unfamiliar road junction, which one does based on an accumulated knowledge of all similar or comparable road junctions. However, if we assume this approach is common to all, there are a startling number of people who have not yet established that where a set of pedestrian lights are not at a road junction, they will not change to favour the pedestrian until the button is pushed. There are a startling number of people who don't press the button when it's there, just in case. There are a startling number of people who have no active or intuitive understanding of even the most basic technology in their environment. I personally find this worrying.
 As we increasingly rely on technology to make decisions for us, the idea that we may not have even a cursory understanding of how those decisions are made is deeply troubling. I'm not saying that I am fully aware of the intricate workings of the Google algorithms, but I understand the broad principles behind them and I think about the rules that they operate by. Not all the time, not when I'm looking for a single piece of information that I am in little doubt will have a single answer (or am aware of the context that will confirm that piece of information for me). But when I am looking for more subjective information, I will know to filter the results, which I will do based on my own bias rather than any knowledge of how to account for algorithmic bias. Quite often I'll filter based on a single news agency, sometimes before I even search, so I'm not necessarily even exposing myself to all the options before limiting them. This is possibly because I am a old enough to approach information on the World Wide Web with with the pre-web view of single source news from a trusted source. Of course this allows for an understanding of the bias at work; I often find the opinions in the Guardian infuriating, but at least I understand the context in which they are generated; if I were to read a piece in the Times about the BBC I would understand the context that it is only ever viewed as a limit to potential revenue for News International. I know that the facts presented will be as accurate as they can be, accounting for the omissions of each bias, because a newspaper trades on its reputation as a purveyor of truth and so must be wary of straying too far from it. Google and Facebook actively avoid any claims to be a source of truth, yet that is how we think of them and they certainly don't discourage that view. As consumers of news, information or facts we need to be aware of the source; the 'delivery platforms' - the new intermediaries of news - can obfuscate source whilst fooling us into ascribing the trust that we would normally reserve for a news agency to the information that they deliver unvalidated, unverified and seemingly unfiltered. Of course we should also be aware that this last is not true: in an attempt to tailor our experience, to make the data we receive 'more relevant' (mainly in order to determine what advertising we will respond to best) the delivery platforms do filter our data, heavily. They give us the information they think we want, regardless of its source or veracity. This distinction is important: the delivery platforms tell us what they think we want to know, whereas a traditional news agency will tell us what they think we ought to know. When approaching information from each of these sources we don't need to know anything more about the process involved in delivering that information as long as we are aware of the principle that underpins it.
We don't need to know the details of the wiring of our local traffic lights, but it helps to know when to push the button.

Protest

Living in London and working in Surrey (mainly), I have the dubious honour of getting stuffed by both the train and tube strikes. As a hangover from my 'radical' youth, I default to unfettered support for anyone sticking it to The Man, even when they are making my life measurably more shit in the process. However, after several months of this fun and games, I am still not entirely sure what it is all about. I mean I understand the fundamental beef is about doing away with certain roles: manned ticket offices in the case of the tube and guards on trains opening and closing doors in the case of the trains. I think in both cases, the unions see these changes as the start of the process of getting rid of the staff associated with those jobs entirely. They're probably right: the companies involved will swear blind that they want to keep all the jobs, but if they make the job so meaningless that no one wants to do it, they will probably be able to get rid of the staff without firing most of them. This is a variation of the approach to privatising public services, where you starve it of cash, then complain that it's failing before selling it off to a company who can miraculously make a profit out of it with increased investment. However in this context the company are already making a profit, they just want to make more of a profit by getting rid of costly people. Helpfully, in the case of Southern Rail, they don't even need to risk their profits, as the government underwrites the franchise and pays all their fines. Fundamentally, the rail companies' mates in the government are using taxpayer money to break the unions on the this 'test case' so that when it happens on other franchises that they don't bankroll, the precedent has already been set and the unions have no support. Next time a Tory tells you they're all about competition and free markets, maybe explain this little bit of government intervention to prop up monopolies at the expense of the taxpayer.
However, whilst the process is unquestionably wrong and indefensible (unless you think that the purpose of government is to siphon taxpayers money straight to shareholders), I am less sure about the rectitude or otherwise of the outcome. In this instance probably only a little uncertain: having more human beings on trains and in stations is clearly preferable, as people are helpful in a range of situations. Also removing people from the service will not result in a cost saving to the consumer, as nothing ever does: train fares seem to be the one product that have an automatic increase built in, so cost savings are simply passed on to the shareholders as profits, along with a whole bunch of your taxes. So as a commuter, there is clearly no benefit to me in the changes that the unions are resisting.  Of course the train operators will argue that the changes are merely a result of progress, of new technology etc. That may be so, but it doesn't necessarily equate to something better. It is not like there is a clear environmental impact of sacking railway workers. It's not like there being job losses in North Sea oil because the energy companies had finally decided to take renewables seriously. It would be hard to argue against that, although doubtless some unions would. The problem for the left is that increasingly  workers' rights to remain in their jobs might well conflict with other concerns that impact humanity.
The labour movement was built on the assumption that, whilst the power structures that ruled heavy industry were wrong, the existence of that industry itself was unquestionable. Now that there is so much more to question about the industrial process and its impact on our world, a movement that defends employment at all costs no longer rules the moral high-ground. The automation of increasing numbers of jobs raises questions about labour as a concept, let alone as a movement. The left must think about how it protects workers' rights when traditional concepts of work are being deconstructed. Our value as data points in the information system will gradually overtake our value as more physical cogs in the machine. As companies look to exploit our data instead of our labour, we need to consider how we take back ownership of that means of production. At the moment there is no union defending those rights.