Rough notes - November 20
This is where the programme starts. All suggestions for this week's programme very welcome. What follows is a mix of our ideas and those already pushed our way. Please treat this as your own space - it helps us shape what we do on air. A draft running order will follow. Comments can be posted below or email ipm [at] bbc.co.uk. Thanks
In the mix so far:
Marc: A couple of suggested stories from the blog to chase. First, an easy one. Dan Bennett ( comment 1 ) wants to hear from the President of Iran - in particular talking about his blog. Nice. Then C Brady ( comment 12 ) wants to know if it's possible to calculate the carbon footprint for the motor sport industry? We'll have a go.
Also, why are British politicians so bad at using the web? Conservative blogger DizzyThinks isn't convinced this is the best use of the Foreign Secretary's time. It's not just the Foreign Office, or Webcameron - the Lib Dems have got their own YouTube channel where you can - view their latest activities. Online hustings - but does any of it move you to engage or the at least react? If not, why not?
Chris: I briefly mentioned Last of Iraqi's blog on last week's show. I've now spoken to him, so watch this space. To a rather different casualty of war and something called Miss Landmine. Is this an appropriate subject for a beauty pageant? Sick or a serious attempt to raise awareness and challenge a stereotype?
George: Word reaches us that Matt Drudge is in town. I'd like to hear from him - would you? Also, what's Egypt got against people who blog? And on the subject of people worried about their work online - talks resume this weekend aimed at trying to resolve the Hollywood writers strike. We've been speaking to the writers behind The Daily Show.
Jenny: Is it against the law to get drunk? As December nears it seems an apt question and one that's being taken up by the MP for Birmingham Yardley, John Hemming. We've picked this up from The Stirrer - anyway if you live in the area you've all be invited out by your local MP for a pub crawl.
And who do you trust with your private data? Let's assume HM Revenue & Customs is not top of your list, how about the NHS? Doctors are poised to boycott the government's scheme to put patient records into a national database. I'm guessing the child benefit record debacle is bound to add grist to the mill of those (see here and here) concerned about this new scheme. As either a patient or doctor are you happy that such important information is being held centrally? Let me know what you think.
So there you go for starters. If you've thoughts about these or other stories you'd like us to cover, email ipm or leave a comment.
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Comments
Any chance of getting an interview with Ahmadinejad about writing and reading his blog?!
Ahmadinejad's blog
Just saw this:
Funeral of Adam Stuart
1990-2007 'You Will Live In Our Hearts Forever"
..as a facebook event on the London Network. Seems like a very modern thing - that strange public/private divide surpassed in another way that you weren't expecting. Something totally personal and tragic seeping out into the jolly, shallow world of social networking. Or just a handy way of telling lots of people about an event. Still, it caught me off guard.
Given the cogent critique of exactly the iPM principles given in this interview http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/20/adam_curtis_interview/ I think you should definitely be talking to Adam Curtis.
If the deeply irritating Orlowski can get a decent interview out of the guy I would think that you guys could open up a very interesting discussion here.
On this Child Benefit debacle, two queries:
1) Why the hell were the NAO asking for this info on disc for in the first place? Surely they must known that this could causes a potential security risk?
In this day and why can't they be given a special access to the CHB system to carry out any necessary checks, one presumes that's what they wanted them for.
2) Was it retrospective information? My son went to uni from this September, so can we assume we were not included?
PS What make of disc allows you to store 12M records, as I'd like one to back up my i-tunes :)
I've been listening to the fuss about the latest data leak. It's undoubtedly an important error, and one that will cause worry to a lot of people.
It made me think back to my days in the public sector and the total fear we all lived in of making a mistake. Our fear of the media, exacerbated by the introduction of the FOI Act, created a culture of blame, where what things would look like to some (unknown) external observer were held to be more important than direct communication over an issue.
A bizarre 'doublespeak' existed in the area where I worked (and I think it was far from unique), where every email was written in the knowledge that it might be read by some interested external observer, who may care more about a headline or political point than the reality of getting the job done. The pressure to be seen to be 'purer than pure' (and I worked at a junior level) was all -consuming and emotionally draining. It also meant that even a simple job was burdened with hours of associated paperwork...all at the public cost.
I'm really interested in views say 30.40 years ago (and further back)...when did this idea creep in that making a mistake demanded a resignation...that only superheroes are fit to govern and that the overworked, underesourced public sector worker must be beyond all reproach? It seems new to me...but maybe not?
When did the 'calls for his / her resignation' culture start? And when did we become enthralled to the idea that a single individual can possibly be deemed to be responsible in any meaningful sense for the activities of the, say, 500 people reporting indirectly to him / her?
All this is unhealthy...like demanding a divorce because your husband left the lid off the toothpaste...it's simplisitc, adversarial and fails to take into account the complex structures of modern organisations, private and public. Why is there no media discussion of this 'junior worker' who made the mistake? Is it just because the story is sexier if we somehow contrive to hold to account a public figure who cannot possibly have vetted the postal preferences of an entire department?
What is the media's role in this, both in terms of desperately trying to whip up every story to 'crisis level' and also in encouraging an adversarial approach to human error?
Yes a mistake was made. Yes it was monumentally stupid. But is the media's response to it helpful or honest, even? Am I just being naive?
Ben ( 3 ) good spot and you are right we should be speaking to him. But having had a bout of email ping pong Adam thinks he's said enough. Here's his reponse to our invitation to take part in the programme:
"Thanks Rupert - but I think I've probably said too much already and I should just shut up. Thanks for the invitation - but I think before the "tv elite" gets fed up with me having a go at them I should get on with making another load of self-indulgent meta-tosh for them. Otherwise they'll probably send me for "re-education" - so I'll decline this time. Adam."
Some of what Curtis says is true: that blogs can act both as a bully pulpit (s/he who shouts loudest), and as an echo chamber (witness the large number of political blogs in the States that merely act to reinforce those of similar viewpoint and denigrate those of the opposite).
However, I must take issue that "they are parasitic upon already existing sources of information - they do little research of their own."
I point Mr Curtis to three examples:
1) Language Log. A group blog run by several linguistics academics, which often touches on the way language is reported and used in the press and often demolishes a lot of those urban myths (such as "women say three times as many words as men"), using original research (based for example on corpora of recorded telephone conversations).
2) Groklaw. A blog which started off focussed on the SCO v IBM lawsuit concerning Linux but which has diversified into all kinds of things in the overlap between Law and Computers, from a Free/Open Source perspective. They have done sterling work in "open source legal research", turning up mounds of information (including getting the settlement terms of an important earlier case unsealed) and showing SCO's case as effectively baseless long before the court's rulings said the same. Recently they interviewed the BBC's own Ashley Highfield.
3) Badscience.net. The blog of Dr Ben Goldacre, who writes the column of that name in the Guardian. His blog publishes all his articles, complete with all the links and references that the newspaper omits, and hosts lively discussion on them.
I am with Anna Dickie @ 4 in wanting to know, what is the cutoff point for the data on these missing disks? Do they include everyone who ever had Child Benefit paid to them, or are names and details actually deleted when a child stops being given money, and if so how long does it take beforethe deletion gets actually done?
I also want to know whether *anyone* knows!
The subject of missing data has been so commented on in the ordinary blog that I think it might be worth trying to find out more about it from listeners -- if anyone can get through the 502s there...
Why are we constantly being subjected to local English stories being promoted as national ones on news programmes. Today the World at One had a lengthy piece on the lack of success by the England football team. Throughout was the assumption that listeners were all English with the use of 'our team', 'we' and so on. Why was there no such feature for the other home teams, Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland? Why was it on the World at One, anyway, it's hardly interesting to most people? Is is right that BBC personnel can use national radio to promote their own parochial interests? How many people employed by the BBC know what it should stand for instead of thinking that British is pronounced 'English'.
Although it is just under 7 years to the start of the First World War I, I would like to see Radio 4 gradually build up to this momentous part of our history remembering the historical events prior to August 1914.
I suggest evey week/two week a History comment on what was happening "on this day/week/month prior to Aug. 1914; right upto the actual start when the Kaiser and others were all enjoying an ecceptionally sunny Summer holiday in 1914, but within a month we in Europe were killing each other in our thousands - by the Somme battle, from 1 st July 1916, we managed to do this in our hundreds of thousands, 250,000 during this so called Battle; (from 1st July to November 1916 the Royal Flying Corp[RFC] lost 100% of its flying personnel).
Present history has is comparisons - does Iran actually have a "Bomb" - is the West's ecconomy about to go into meltdown, thus opening the door to any aggressors. Prior to 1914 there was a technical weapons build-up, Dreadnaughts etc., an actual race that culminated in the "Great War", the war to end all wars. Each expanding country i.e. France, Russia, Germany and the UK were looking for chinks in the armour of the others, making friendly agreements, as it suited each to do so.
The brief reminder of these events would be of historical interest and also a sort of "duty" i.e. lets not slip into this situation again - not in the 21st Century for Pet's sake - Buck Rodgers will not be around to save the day, we should by now know better.
Here is an 'oddly enough' story . . .
I have received during the past week or so a series of calls on my landline phone, purporting to be from my bank/building society. Each announces itself as an automated call, slots my name (badly mispronounced) into appropriate spaces, tells me this is very important and exhorts me not to hang up. It then asks me to key in my date of birth so that it can be sure of my identity before proceeding further.
On the grounds that it hasn't yet given me sufficient proof of its own identity, I hang up at this point.
The day the 'missing 25 million sets of data' story broke, I emailed my bank/building society to tell it that I'd been receiving these calls, that I was very concerned because it had sworn it'd never ask for any personal details over the phone or by email and - if the calls really were from them - why were they asking for information they'd said they'd never ask for?
And if the calls weren't from them, how had someone managed to make a connection between my name, my phone number (which is ex-directory) and the fact that I had an account with them?
I'm not one for conspiracy theories as a rule, but am aware that my bank/building society (that begins with Na and ends with ide) had a bit of a security scare a while ago, and that I am in receipt of Child Benefit.
And - here's the 'oddly enough' bit - since I sent that email I haven't had any more of these calls.
If I've missed out on my chance to win £657,098,000 on some foreign lottery I shall be deeply sorry. Obviously.
If my bank was trying to tell me something I might realistically have wanted to know, why were they doing it along lines they said they wouldn't?
And if it was somebody weird, scary and possibly criminal, how on earth did they know who and where i am and who I am banking/building societying with?
All these questions are rhetorical of course. But a bit worrying.
xx
LadyP
PS I tried to post this comment on Thursdays's Glass Box. I just want it to get through to SOMEbody!!
With the demise of good childrens science programmes on TV more and more scientists are turning to the internet to try to enthuse children whose heads have been turned by media studies and celebrity. Making science sexy and fun may seem difficult in an age of overtesting at school but it is still possible. Jonathan Saunderson, ex-science show producer, has set up a website that combines the science demonstration with media studies. The films on his website ate simple but strangely stunning. Try it out www.planet-scicast.com
I am a science communicator. Doing similar stuff around schools and museums and sites like this help me to keep children and parents enthused.
Another aspect of raising kids' enthusiasm for science is by allowing them to approach science and technology in the same way that adults working in these fields do... by solving problems through a process of collaboration. Most progress in science and technology is not made by individuals experiencing eureka moments but by the efforts of teams focusing on a particular project. Unfortunately, this isn't the approach adopted through the mainstream curriculum.
The charity iEARN UK (www.iearnuk.com) has worked on this basis for years, introducing kids and teachers to collaborative activities on the Internet, through projects that can involve kids from countries around the world. Their 'learning circles' approach is a simple and effective way of getting students to address a wide range of issues, including those with a science and technology bias. It unlocks students' enthusiasm, creativy and innovation and introduces them to ways of working that are increasingly prevalent in the 'real world'. They also have an established programme of teacher training and CPD.
Yet iEARN's profile in the UK is tiny and they receive no core funding. At a time when significant sums of money are spent on educational innovation - it seems strange to ignore an established, proven initiative which not only delivers educational engagement but also helps kids to learn the skills of online team working that are essential for most business and research teams today.