Andrew Ferrier

Last Tuesday, I attended Bill Clinton‘s ‘Leadership for the Future’ seminar at the Royal Albert Hall. Although I don’t necessarily agree with his politics (he obviously sits somewhere around the centre-left and I’m some undecided variety of libertarian), I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see a former world leader speaking. The tickets (£60 – £300) weren’t cheap for the hour and a half’s presentation, and the occupancy of the hall seemed to suffer accordingly, but it was worth it. The Royal Albert Hall, which glittered more than I remembered it from my graduation, was a suitably impressive but slightly gaudy venue.

A large majority of the presentation was dedicated to a speech by Clinton, with the remainder being pre-vetted questions. My heart sank when I saw what appeared to be some Powerpoint slides ready and waiting as I entered the hall, but fortunately he didn’t use the projector. He appeared to being using some notes, which was a surprise, but they didn’t intrude too much into the presentation. He was a clear orator, and delivered plenty of soundbite-worthy phrases – his eloquence and fluency wasn’t quite up to the standard of a legend, however.

His speech focused around four main questions:

1. What is the fundamental nature of the 21st century?
2. How would you like to change the 21st century?
3. What steps are necessary to move from (1) to (2)?
4. Who’s supposed to do it?

Each of these questions had detailed answers, and it was here that I began to deviate from the president’s view. His basic premise was sound – the world is increasingly interdependent, and this has both good and bad effects. He focused a lot on security, however, and appears to believe in the current worldview of terrorism (large, complex networks with vast power), whereas I am doubtful (and of course am in the minority). As some compensation, though, it’s good to see him recommending the use of intelligence agencies as the primary weapon against this problem, as Bruce Schneier has recommended many times in the past. Clinton is obviously in favour of income redistribution, and made it sound impressively appealing to me, despite my moral objection. He’s obviously also a competent businessman – his discussion of the return on investment of war, and his wry observation about a country’s budget being controlled by what it spent last year (as is the case in most organisations) betrays his business knowledge. He spoke with admiration about a recent initiative to teach entrepreneurship in Scottish schools – I also believe this should be encouraged.

Clinton’s answer to the fourth question, ‘Who’s supposed to do it?’, was where we deviated most. It’s clear he thinks everyone has a duty to act through democracies, NGOs, and so on, to make the changes they believe are necessary for the world. Irrespective of whether you believe this is an effective method (I think its success is less than overwhelming), this has shades of Kennedy‘s famous quote: ‘Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country’, but with the USA replaced with the world. As Milton Friedman explains in his introduction to Capitalism and Freedom, this is hardly the rallying cry of someone pro-freedom. Although I don’t think it’s fair to accuse Clinton of being illberal, I drew the conclusion from this and other comments that he cares more about equality than freedom.

It was quite obvious that Clinton now feels that he is able to speak his mind, having left his presidency. He was asked at one point which world leaders he had met whom he admired, and his passion about three of them (Nelson Mandela, Yitzhak Rabin, and King Hussein) was plain to see. He does seem to be as honest a man as one could reasonably expect in such a position, and I admire him, even if I don’t agree with him.

I’ve just booked my ticket for Bill Clinton‘s leadership seminar next Tuesday. Although my politics don’t align that well with his, I’ve nevertheless long thought he’s an intelligent man, and look forward to hearing what he has to say. David Millward from the Telegraph has also written about this.

Media, and methods for consuming them, could be divided into three categories, according to the degree that they allow control over the rate of flow of information into your brain:

Allow No Control

• Theatre
• Cinema
• Live Radio
• Live TV

Allow Some Control (Pauseable, Restartable)

• Watching a film at home (VHS, DVD)
• Podcast
• Radio over Internet
• TV over Internet

Allow Flexible Control

• Reading – books, the web, etc.

The list is hardly comprehensive, I’ve just listed some of those with which I’m more familiar. There is of course some wiggle room. For example, some DVD players allow films to be slowed down/speeded up, although dramatically changing the speed ruins the experience. Also, of course, you can record TV programmes for later viewing.

However, the point of this exercise isn’t to dwell on the exact media themselves: the point I’m trying to make is, despite many years of technical progression, reading still allows for far more flexible control over the flow of information into the brain that any other type of media – it can be rewound, restarted, paused, sped up, slowed down, almost entirely at will.

Is this useful? Is the lack of control over media such as the theatre one of things that make it useful for certain types of productions? You certainly can’t avoid a shocking or gory scene by skipping past it in the theatre. Is reading still the only effective way to receive certain types of information? I would contend that the useful information density/second is probably higher with reading than any other form of media consumption, certainly for an above average reading speed and good quality prose. If so, why do we watch documentaries? Is it the sensory stimulation?

I’m sure some serious, yet readable, academic research has probably been done in this area, but my sketchy Google search didn’t turn up any.

My ADSL at home is currently broken. Unfortunately I’m with PlusNet, who don’t seem to care too much about their customers: I have had to run the gauntlet of poorly thought-out automated phone systems, long waits to speak to a human being, and support websites that don’t cut to the chase.

It’s an interesting illustration of how much I’ve come to rely on this communication mechanism, however. I’ve already had several instances over the past few days where I’ve tried to use my network connection on instinct – for example, looking up train times last night – before remembering it’s not there. I’m really not sure how healthy this is. Of course, a fast, always-on network connection is useful. But perhaps I shouldn’t rely on its presence as much as I do. What are your experiences of this? Do you feel uncomfortable when part of your connection to the modern world is broken?

Henrique’s recent comment reminded me of another interesting bunch of people I met at euroGel 2006: the incoming class of the Kaospilots, ‘The most unusual school in the world‘. They sound like an indie band, but Kaospilots is actually a private university, teaching business and related creative subjects. They are partly self-funding, and the concept seems novel – all teachers are external consultants. The most striking thing I found in the students I met was their drive – it’s obviously not a university course you drift onto. I think this university model is worth keeping an eye on.

Why do high-street media shops (Videos, DVDs, CDs, Books) still exist? These items were amongst the first to be available for online ordering on the internet, with Amazon and others offering them from around 1995. Yet HMV, Waterstones, and so on don’t show any outward signs of disappearing, or even reducing prices significantly, apart from the hit they allege that virtual media (i.e. MP3 downloading, legal or illegal) is having on their business.

I would estimate that I buy 90% of my media online, for two reasons: cost and a wide selection (half of the books I buy aren’t in my local bookshop). The only reason I ever buy offline is speed: for example, forgetting to buy birthday presents (ahem). Many other people I know do the same. I can but assume we’re not typical of the population at large. Maybe most people aren’t prepared to be patient, and are prepared to pay a premium for having something now. Is this true, to the scale necessary to sustain these businesses?

Anyone have any other theories?

Kleptocracy – where government steals from the public purse.

I came across this term the other day in a podcast from Econtalk in which Bruce Bueno de Mesquita discussed his most recent book, The Logic of Political Survival – a cynical look at how and why governments stay in power. It’s well worth a listen.

It seems that sometimes gradual changes can have a huge sociological impact. T-shirts have been around for some time now; they started becoming popular during WWI. As time and technology have progressed, t-shirts have become cheaper than the equivalent shirts. It’s now possible to buy t-shirts from a vast array of suppliers with logos, pictures, sayings, and other types of content (to borrow a Web word) pre-printed on them. Moreover, it’s become simple to order t-shirts with your own content printed on them for a reasonable price.

I’m sure this must have had an effect on society. As I wrote about a few weeks ago, I have a ‘Make Bono History’ t-shirt. As well as it being clothing, I, like many people, use it as a statement of my political beliefs, and it has started conversations (and arguments). Other t-shirts are funny, insightful, or just strange. One hundred years ago, clothing was (by and large) not adorned with statements about the wearer or their thoughts, apart from the subtle guesses that could be made from observing their satorial choices. These days, many items of clothing say something much more directly about the wearer – like a permanent advertising board – although, ironically, much of the actual advertising – slogans and brand names – is for the clothing brand itself, for which the wearer often pays a premium.

Whether there’s any more mileage in this trend of content on clothing remains to be seen.

So whilst in Barcelona, we did manage to go inside the Sagrada Família in the end (after taking a look from the outside).

It’s an even more amazing building inside than out. I felt like I’d stepped into the main engine room of a gas turbine on Mars (think Total Recall). It’s hard to believe that Gaudí was allowed to build something like this (do they have planning permission in Spain?), but thank goodness he was – and to be fair, his work is all over Barcelona, so presumably they must have liked it. It’s a shame to my mind that it’s a Christian building, as it could easily have been something else, unlike most churches, but clearly religion was the main driving force behind Gaudi’s work.

The other thing that becomes more obvious once inside, and having toured the museum, is that the building is still under construction. It’s quite strange that the money can be found for this, as one just can’t imagine that being the case in the UK, say, where most churches, cathedrals, etc. are permanently short of funds. I’m happy with that, as I’ve always felt the grandeur of these buildings is one of the things that induces religious feelings in people (see The God Pill in the Economist of July 15th for more information on another way this can happen). But the architecture of this edifice almost makes its existence as a church justifiable. Almost.

Photos to follow.

You frequently see fire doors illegally propped open outside buildings across the UK. But to see this at a fire station, as I did today at Winchester? Now that’s irony.