Two fat ladies

After a long and detailed investigation, involving agents spending months under cover, the authorities finally moved in this morning. In a swift action they wiped out a nefarious gambling ring. One of the criminals was caught red handed with his greedy fingers in the biscuit tin.

     Local residents can yet again rest easy. The threat level to law-abiding citizens can be brought down from critical to normal. Time to breathe a sigh of relief.

     In a week where the news has been dominated by the ins and outs of whistleblowing and whether or not various countries in the west have become totalitarian states, the news broke this morning that police in Portugal have arrested an entire pub for gambling. Or, to be more precise, playing bingo.

     Imagine the scene. The call of “Two fat ladies!” rang out. A man shouted “Bingo!” and just as he was getting up to pick up the box of biscuits that were to be the reward for his long-time illegal behaviour... He was grabbed by the strong arm of the law and hauled off to prison.

      Great, you think, crime should not pay.

      Does it matter if it’s a laughing matter, as it were?

      Let me humbly suggest that it probably does. Today’s two leading news stories seem so disparate, and yet they were given equal weight (at least for a moment). On the one hand the Bingo ring and on the other hand the whistleblower that uncovered several governments’ immoral snooping into electronic messages and social media posts. Surely, the second story is a few orders of magnitude more important? Although, having said that, it is perhaps equally ironic. After all, do you not think it is (just a little bit) funny that the authorities accuse this whistleblower of spying when all he did was reveal the fact that they were doing just that?

       The fact that government agencies are keen to listen in to everyone’s skype calls etcetera should not come as a great surprise. They are after all trying to “keep us all safe” so surely it makes sense that they need to track what are are up to? Did you not see the signs? Did you never wonder if that guy who wanted to be your friend on facebook... The one you could not remember from school... Could possible be a part of the secret service? Well, you should have!

      Do I have a problem with this underhanded Big Brother action? Of course, I do! As should everyone else. It is illegal and reprehensible. I may not be surprised, but that does not mean I have to like it.

      Am I worried about a knock on the door in the early morning hours, and the interrogation at the secret headquarters that will surely follow? Surely I must have broken a gazillion obscure laws in my life? I may even have played Bingo!

      Still, I am not too bothered. Seems a bit vain to think that even the most dedicated snoops would care too much about my personal (hypothecated, I assure you...) crimes. Also, being somewhat familiar with the challenges of working with big data... and the combined email traffic of the western world amounts to an absolutely enormous amount of data... I suspect that electronic eavesdropping on the entire population would be an essentially wasted effort. Targeted on particular suspicious individuals (whoever you think the “bad guys” are, I guess), it may be effective, but trying to pick out the worst of a bad bunch when you have a pool of many millions. Well, good luck!

       Basically, I would imagine this tired, overworked, mid-career official slaving away in a grey cubicle equipped with a couple of flat computer screens. Trying to scan message after message. Checking out the latest facebook status updates. Listening... Listening... Being bored out of his wits. Thinking that he has 20 years to go until retirement. Worrying that, by then, there won’t be a pension system anyway. 20 more years of listening… He may be dreaming about his holiday and perhaps wondering what happened to the glamorous James Bond existence he was promised when he joined the service.

       How efficient do you think this man is likely to be? I have a feeling most of us can get away with murder.

Gatekeeping

This last week I read a newspaper article saying that 20% of all e-books sold in the UK in 2012 were by indie authors. For those of you that don’t know, this means authors that are not signed by publishers so put out their books under their own steam. The article went on to provide a couple of colourful quotes from the industry, basically lamenting the changing publishing landscape. The suggestion seemed to be that indies are both corrupt and illiterate (great combination!), and that the traditional gatekeepers are needed to protect unsuspecting readers from the horrors of self-published dross.

            I have to confess from the outset that I am a bit partial here (having published two small books myself, an interesting and gratifying experience), but I still thought it would be interesting to consider the arguments.

            Let’s start with the corruption case. The argument seemed to be that indies resort to pretty much anything to flog their flawed goods, including paying for friendship on social media. This is not something I would fancy doing myself, but how unreasonable is it? You won’t sell anything unless people hear of the product, and if you are unlikely to be invited to talk about your writings on breakfast TV then what are you supposed to do? Exposure is everything. Besides, is it not the case that traditional publishers spend a fair bit of money advertising their products?

            Move on to the gatekeeping issue, which I find much more entertaining; It may well be true that, some years ago, the major publishing houses provided real quality. In some cases their main focus may even have been literature, rather than profit. Is this still the case? I’m afraid I doubt this very much. Current publishing seems obsessed with getting on whatever the most recent bandwagon may be. In the last couple of years we have gone from magic and wizardry (thanks Harry!) to vampires and most recently 50 shades of everything apart from the apostles. Is this idea of “more of the same, please, that’s what people want” really compatible with the notion of gatekeeping?

            Whatever you think about that question... The nail in the coffin of quality control must surely be the endless list of books supposedly written by celebrities. You can almost see the scene in the publisher’s office. “Ah, but you’re famous... Why don’t you write a book? We’ll get you a ghostwriter, you don’t have to do anything.”

            I rest my case.

            Now let’s consider the growing indie scene, where authors remain responsible for the entire process, from idea to typing to editing, spell checking, cover design and publicity. Daunting list, and you can’t be surprised if there are very few individuals that can excel in all the required skills. It makes sense that self-published books are of variable quality. With the hurdle to publishing being so incredibly low at the moment (mainly because Amazon wanted to market their Kindle and were intent on world domination, as well) that anyone can put out pretty much anything there will inevitably be huge amounts of very poor quality stuff out there. Do readers need publishers to protect them from this undergrowth of the e-book universe? I think not. People aren’t stupid (no comments, please!). In most cases you only need to read the book blurb to decide if the product is even remotely worth considering.

            We are moving into an era where the readers are the gatekeepers. That’s just as it should be. Most people will remain faithful to the bestseller list, and struggle through the stilted grammar of the latest Dan Brown or the like. Others will shop around. Just like in the world of music, they may find exciting things on the indie scene. In this new era budding authors have an opportunity to go it alone and take full control of their work. In exceptional cases they may become successful this way, but this will only happen if they take the job seriously and work very hard.

            One thing I think is absolutely certain. We have come far from the days of “vanity publishing”. There are indie books out there that are just as good as anything from the big publishers. This is really exciting and it makes it much more fun to look for the next great read.

Reality shows

It is interesting to see (actually not interesting, rather annoying) how the fashion for TV reality shows is spilling over into every-day life. Maybe you don’t agree, but I have had my fill of people desperate to have their talents voted on by more or less competent judges. I don’t really need this in my everyday existence, although… perhaps it would be fun to give family and/or work colleagues score cards to hold up at appropriate times when I have either excelled or failed miserably.

            Anyway, having sometimes joked about what it will be like when this fad hits science, I was absolutely astonished when this actually happened a couple of weeks ago. You may have seen the story already, but let me recap nevertheless.

Apparently, a person that left academia a long time ago (appropriately for the story with a name very close to Einstein…) has been toiling away on his solution to the big problem of life, the Universe and everything. We obviously all know already that the answer must be 42, but now… after 20 years this individual seems to have found the question. More specifically, and less flippantly, he claims to have come up with a geometric theory that joins the standard model of particle physics to gravity.  Or something like that, who knows? The reason no one really knows is that the detailed work has not been written up yet.

This would not be a problem, if it weren’t for the fact that a rather astonishing publicity machine appears to have tripped into action. A bold write-up in a British newspaper suggested that the work is the best contribution to our understanding of things since…  indeed… Einstein completed his decade-long toil on his theory of gravity almost a century ago. A talk was given at a leading University, although it was immediately suggested that the only local experts that could judge the claims were conveniently not invited. Ah well…

What I find most intriguing with this story is the apparent disregard shown for the scientific process. Basically, the scientific principle (at least as I understand it) says that any work should testable by experiment (in some speculative areas we may have ventured a bit far for this, but…). Add to this the expectation that your work must be presented to the community before you have what one might call bragging rights. This is the idea of peer review (not at all perfect, but it is the best we have at the moment), where colleagues take a closer look at your work and then decide if it is any good or not.

You may argue that peer review brings personal bias into the game (absolutely true) and that some experts may not be prepared to take anything too “far out” seriously (also true). Still, this is the way things are done (or at least, have been until now).

While we are waiting for the actual paper that will tell us how geometry saves everything and resolves a hundred years worth of questions… let us consider where we appear to be going. We seem to be heading at full tilt towards judging the quality of science by the media attention gained and the personalities involved. Should we be comfortable with this? Really? Do we want our to see best scientists flaunting shiny smiles and sharing their cleverness on TV chat shows, or do we want them locked away in the lab solving problems? Once popularity determines research funding then this is where we will end up. I’m not sure I like the idea. I get enough of my colleagues at work, thank you very much, I don’t need to see them on TV as well.