Technology and Society

A response to the Digital Britain Interim Report

In January 2009 the UK Department for Culture Media and Sport published the Digital Britain: The Interim Report, lead by former Ofcom chief executive Stephen Carter, which is a 'plan to secure Britain’s place at the forefront of the global digital economy'. The interim report contains more than 20 recommendations on: next generation networks, universal access to broadband, the creation of a second public service provider of scale, the modernisation of wireless radio spectrum holdings, a digital future for radio, a new deal for digital content rights, and enhancing the digital delivery of public services. The consultation period, facilitated by the Digital Britain discussion site, finished this week. The Write to Reply service also provides a way to comment on the Report paragraph by paragraph. From my experience, a number areas in the draft report need to be addressed:

1. More vision and imagination needed: Digital/network technologies are assumed to be general beneficial, which they can be, but there is no sense from the report that the profound characteristics of these tools are understood or that there is a vision (however flawed) of what a network society might be. (Though we should be wary of terms such as 'network society' and 'digital Britain': to talk today about 'electric Britain' shows how quaint and wrong-headed are such conceits) Electricity is mentioned as a parallel social-technology, but the imagination of the digital future presented in the report is stuck where thinking about electricity was in 1900.
2. There is no sense that we need to find new ways to discover needs and desires, and prototype them: The general view of the report is that 'if you build it they will come'. Perhaps. But we have built many things people didn't come to, include many networks. Our objective should be to better anticipate what people might want, even if the needs or desires are latent or unexpressed. This would be ambitious. And we should encourage experimentation and prototyping to facilitate creating better outcomes.
3. The technology, economic, social and business cases are set out to some extent, but not the people case. How are we going to facilitate the creation of products and services people might want? There is only one reference in the report to ease of use (in the context of developing user-friendly mass market services) and none of design. If we want to avoid the kinds of failures we have seen in big government IT projects we need to understand audiences better, and create better things for them.
4. The report proposes a 2Mb/s 'universal service commitment'. This is both too little and too much. Too little for obvious reasons related to high definition broadcasting, video conferencing, and the like. But too much in the sense that it fetishes bandwidth for its own sake. In the early noughties when BT was being attacked for low broadband speeds compared to other countries I asked "How much bandwidth do those hot communication technologies SMS and IM need? Almost none" (Boring broadbandwidth baloney, 2004, and see also my piece Thinktanks fill up on broadband published in Silicon.com in 2004). Since then we have seen huge uptake of social networking tools, which typically use tiny amounts of bandwidth, for instance for a status update or Tweet. The 'high bandwidth' element is all embedded in past experience in the relationship between the parties communicating. In this sense the Report shows a lack of imagination.
5. There is no imagination about new forms of content that are of the medium: what ever one thinks of it, Big Brother is of the medium, at least of telephony/SMS/broadcast. But pushing half hour sitcoms down fat pipes is not the future. At best it is a transitional activity. We need some serious imagination and innovation in this area.
6. Bad government services offline are bad government services online: Just putting something online doesn't make it any better, and the digital lustre soon fades. Digital networks aren't a panacea for bad government policy, and can't repair the damage that has been done to the relationship between citizen and state. In fact, trying to solve this problem with the wrong tools will tend to undermine in people's eyes their value even when they are used correctly.

Read on

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Event: Beyond the Crisis: Debating the role of innovation

At Innovation Forum Beyond the Crisis: Debating a more innovative future on Monday 2 March in London we will ask some profound questions: about the roots of the crisis, the need for ambition, the role of (and barriers to) innovation, the role of the network, and the potential of new areas of thinking. And we want your responses to these questions: responses that are big, bold, original and thought provoking. (And if you want to disagree with the analysis presented here, please go ahead!)

We would like you to publish a response to one or a number of the event themes online, as a blog post, an article, a letter to a newspaper, a video. To alert us to your response you can either:

• Post a link to it in a comment on this post
• Tag it ‘InnovationBeyondCrisis’ [See current tagged material on Technorati]
• (If your response is posted on a Weblog) Include a trackback to this post: see TrackBack URL for this entry, below

Keep your responses concise, clear and snappy. The authors of the best of the responses will be invited to give a 3-4 minute ‘stump' speech at the event, to stimulate discussion and debate. The event will to an open and frank discussion, with the ideas and debates visualised.

We have created an overview of the responses received to date in the Preparation section of the event page. Reviewing these will help you to prepare for the discussion. (These responses related to all the comments below.)

We look forward to debating these responses on Monday 2 March.

Tim Berners-Lee, challenges for humanity, and the 'new Levellers'

NESTA recently programmed a talk by Web pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee entitled The Future of the Web [Upcoming], with responses from Charlie Leadbeater and Channel 4 Chief Executive Andy Duncan.

A number of points came out of Berners-Lee's (short) introduction. He described how he was allowed to go away for a month or two to "design the Web". Discussing the Web Science Research Initiative (a joint initiative by MIT CSAIL and ECS and the University of Southampton) he noted that they are more interested in Web links than server links, and more interested in data links (semantics) than Web links. He also noted the importance of 'open linked data'. Of Web science he believes that we need to think about the people using the Web and how that changes the world. On innovation he observed that he considered it important to create the Web as an open platform. "Somebody out there will imagine things that we in this room can't imagine" he said. "You can't describe what we want them to produce." (How refreshing this was compared to the instrumentalist approach of the UK government, and the increasing short-termism of business. If Prime Minister Gordon Brown had taken questions after his cameo at NESTA's Innovation Edge conference in May I would have cited back to him Berners-Lee related points made earlier in the day in a conversation via video link.)

In his response Leadbeater referred to The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution by Christopher Hill, claiming that developments around the Web represented a new 'Levellers' movement, possibly leveling economic models. And he described the recent 2gether08 conference (which I also attended) as a meeting of 'new Levellers'. Hill is one of the historians I most respect, and I have since read The World Turned Upside Down. Apart from the fact that the 'English' Civil War was the product of huge societal and economic changes, there are a number of points that jump out of the book that should make one question the parallel. For instance, the prominent radical Gerrard Winstanley argued:

• for the benefits of communal cultivation with capital investment, and believed that the proper use of land could maintain ten times the population
• that punishment should be corrective not punitive
• for education for both sexes
• that liberty should be secured by a right of popular resistance
• for a classless society as a new heaven and a new earth

This was 350 years ago. Can we really detect this degree of radicalism, humanism and ambition among our 'new Levellers'?

The event programmer Roland Harwood, Head of NESTA Connect, expressed concern about restricting Berners-Lee's introduction. I think this was the right approach. Berners-Lee's thoughts are well known, and anyone who wanted to do some preparation would have not found anything particularly new or surprising in his talk. It is much more important to be able to interrogate such people. But we should be wary of worshipping them, or over-estimating their importance or wisdom. Berners-Lee was likely the most brilliant person in the room. But he also benefited from adapting an old idea – hypertext systems – at the right time and place and with the right affordances. He may not be sufficiently brilliant to understand why he (and his rarely acknowledged facilitators and collaborators Mike Sendall and Robert Cailliau) succeeded, or to do it again. From the audience Bill Thompson rightly asked what happened to the Semantic Web, which was announced at the 1994 WWW Conference. These are the kinds of enquiries we need to make with people such as Berners-Lee.

In my enquiry I noted that the Web is a success and partly because of this it is being expected to solve a lot of problems in areas in which we feel we have failed, for instance politics, economics, social inclusion, and societal fragmentation (as Leadbeater suggested). Is it appropriate to expect so much of the Web, I asked, and do we risk undermining what the Web can deliver by asking so too much of it. Berners-Lee's response was surprising, and showed he is more humanistic than most of our 'new Levellers'. He noted that the Web is about making connections between people and turned the question around to ask "Can we expect this much of humanity?" I am an optimist, he said. Humanity has taken great steps forward and some steps back, and we need to be vigilant: "the risk is not expecting too much of humanity but too little". [This response was also approvingly reported by Leadbeater in his reflections on the event.]

A valuable event overall. For me, we need to do more work to understand why the Web succeeded, and from these lessons facilitate more innovation, not just online but across society.

[Video of the event]

John Lloyd: confusing the medium with the message

John Lloyd's recent analysis in the Financial Times of the new found reliance on the media of British political parties is acute (In an online world, the party is over, Financial Times , 5 August). He describes UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown as someone who "having climbed the ladder of the Labour movement, had to kick it away" by allying liberal progressive politics to pro-market economics and to patriotism. He argues that:

The inevitable price of that triumph was to jettison the rhetoric and practices of what had been called “this great movement of ours”. Having done so, and with the whole community and its media deciding that he is the problem, the prime minister stands naked in the winds of political change. In common with almost every political leader in the western world, Mr Brown is judged first by the media, for it is they, not the parties, that have been elevated by the politicians themselves into the arbiters of performance. Performance means both the perceived effectiveness of policy and the ability to act the prime minister on television... The pillar on which they had relied in bad times, constructed both of the political party and mass movement, is hollowing out. So is all traditional political activism, even at the level of voting.

One might add that as well as the party and mass movement old Labour also relied on big ideas such as nationalisation and the welfare state. The abandonment of such big ideas lead the media to a focus on cynicism (over skepticism), mis-trust (over social power), personality (over ideas), performance (over vision), and stunts (over mass movements).

Lloyd rightly notes that politicians must have audiences. However, he confuses the rise of a new medium (the digital network) with the continuing absence of substantial messages with which these audiences might engage. David Miliband may out-blog Gordon Brown (though the FT's story on Downing Street TV indicates Brown may out-video him), but this will only reveal more quickly the shallowness of Miliband's ideas.

It is worth revisiting a pertinent piece Lloyd may have commissioned when he was editor of FT magazine, in which Trevor Butterworth noted that blogging "renders the word even more evanescent than journalism", concluding that "blogging is the closest literary culture has come to instant obsolescence" (Time for the last post, FT magazine, 17 February 2006). Miliband's tenure a Prime Minister may well fizzle out even more quickly than Brown's.

A version of this post was published as a letter in the Financial Times, August 8 2008, under the title Solzhenitsyn could have been speaking of the blog. Also published in my Facebook notes.

Californian missions

In the light of UK Trade & Investment's recent engagement with the digital media industry (involving Chinwag, which is holding a UKTI Bloggers Brunch this Monday), and UKTI's planned Web Mission 2008 to San Francisco later this month (reported in TechCrunch UK), I was reminded of related missions organised by the DTI Global Watch Service, which has now closed and had its 'assets' merged into the Knowledge Transfer Networks service.

In 2004 the Global Watch Service organised a West Coast trip to look into 'Innovation through People Centred Design', taking a number of researchers and designers, including Rachel Jones of Instrata and Dan Hill who was then at the BBC. See the summary document [currently not available due to server problems]. A report-back event entitled 'Innovation through People Centred Design: Lessons for the UK' was organised by the Design Council in December 2004. I also programmed an Experience Design event entitled 'The Future of User-Centred Technology Design' in January 2005 reflecting on the findings, with Rachel and Dan among the presenters. See Dan Hill's reflections, and a report on the event in Usability News. A related initiative was the Design Council/HEFCE fact finding visit to the US, building on the Cox Review of Creativity in Business. See the (rather good) Cox US Mission blog (report lost online) and the corresponding Cox European Mission blog.

A note of caution with respect to the UKTI Mission: the UK has at various times looked to Silicon Valley with admiration and envy -- as the labels Silicon Fen and Silicon Glen attest -- and this admiration is being revived. NESTA recently hosted the event How Innovation Happens In Silicon Valley, bringing together various Valley luminaries brought over for a UK tour, as well as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne MP, during which I questioned the appropriateness of the lessons people tend to draw by comparison. I noted the unique role of film industry and the US military in under-writing Silicon Valley R&D and industry. This began in the 1930s in the case of the film industry (one of H-P's first clients was Disney), and the Second World War in the case of the military (the Pacific War was armed and fought from California). I also noted the size of internal market for Silicon Valley companies, and the scale of their international ambitions. (For instance, H-P established trade relations with China in the 1970s.) More generally, the sense of ambition evident in post-War America, especially around the space race (which also fueled West Coast R&D and the early semi-conductor industry). Britain's prevailing pessimistic disposition towards progress certainly doesn't compare favourably.

Article: Design and social networking (DCM)

My piece on design and social networking for DCM (the UK Design Council magazine), reporting on and analysing developments, and presenting some forecasting, was published in Issue 3 (the blue 'air hostess' issue). I have now also posted it to my site. (The piece can also be found on pp38–41 of the issue.) The posted piece is as submitted and prior to cutting and editing. (I have also made available, with the permission of the publisher, an Acrobat facsimile of the published article.) The piece is extensively endnoted and I have also included the un-published sidebars.

The piece is entitled ‘Curtain twitchers, the CIA and the rise of Facebook’. I look at the background and history of social networking; the forces driving and shaping the phenomenon; its applications and affordances; how we might realise its potential; and limitations and dangers. Sidebars include Designing with social networking tools; Getting exemplary; Terminology; and Key technical developments. Overall, I believe it is one of the most substantial reflections on the phenomenon and potential of social networking aimed at the general interest reader.

Contributors to the piece include Tom Coates of Yahoo!’s Brickhouse division; Lee Bryant of Headshift; Will Davies of Goldsmiths College; Colin Donald of the digital media research practice Futurescape; Rishi Dastidar of Archibald Ingall Stretton; Paola Kathuria of consultants Limitless Innovations; and Andrew Calcutt of the School of Social Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies at the University of East London.

If you would like to comment on the piece, you can do so below or, of course, post a response to your own Weblog and trackback to this journal entry.

This issue of DCM includes a number of other interesting pieces: ‘‘The most important instrument of thought is the eye’’ on the use of visualisation (pp18–21); ‘Can designers inject some creativity into China’s karaoke economy?’ by Rhymer Rigby (pp22–29); ‘‘People don’t trust politicians or business. They need to feel sustainability is not a con or a game’’ by David Kester (pp32–37); ‘Why UK designers need an extreme makeover’ by Rachel Abrams (pp46–49); and a case study of Erik Spiekermann’s re-design of The Economist (pp70–71). The magazine is very well designed (by Farrow Design) and printed. Unfortunately it is not also published online, and has no letters page or associated online discussion. (No surprise there as it is published by Haymarket on behalf of the Design Council.)

'The science' doesn't mandate a particular policy

FT columnist John Kay's recent critique of the concept of scientific consensus (Science is the pursuit of the truth, not consensus, John Kay, Financial Times, October 9 2007) [shared bookmark] (in response to a Michael Schrage's article Science must be more political, Financial Times, September 25 2007) has prompted a number letters to the paper. Prof E. Brian Davies, of King's College London, is correct that one may need to act on science that is less than certain (Letters One cannot wait for total certainty, October 16) -- because science is never certain. People who look for certainty in science are as naive as those who believe that scientific insight maps directly to a particular policy action. Prof Davies notes that "the Royal Society advises the public and the government about what it considers is likely to happen if some course of action is, or is not, taken", and Royal Society Vice-President David Read argues that a scientist's role should be "analysing the best evidence available and presenting that to inform the policy debate" (Letters Scientists will inform - and will not retreat to their labs, October 15). But more naive thinking slips into disingenuous action when we are ordered to adopt a policy, such as reducing individual energy consumption, because it is mandated by 'the science'. The appropriate approach is, as Kay suggests, for scientists to focus on evidence, and to debate in good faith; for policy makers to pursue the "calm, civil, even-handed analysis" noted in Clive Crook's review of Bjorn Lomborg's new book (An inconvenient Danish pasting, Financial Times, October 15); and for everyone to steer clear of the misanthropy that informs so many climate change activists.

The error of counterposing media

Simon Jenkins is one of the most interesting mainstream commentators on his own industry, and recently addressed the enthusiasm for online publishing (Comment Three cheers for Gutenberg - and long live dead trees, Guardian, January 6, 2006), arguing that the personal computer isn't fulfilling its potential, online publishing is still immature, talk of the death of newspaper journalism is as ill-informed as it was with the coming of television news, and that newspapers "have shown that they can grasp each new technology" and adapt it accordingly.

Jenkins is right to note the ability of newspapers to adapt to the rise of new technology and "bend it to their will". And in reality, modern computers were in part adapted for the needs of newspaper publishers: for authoring, composing, editing and transmitting pages -- once quaintly referred to as 'desktop publishing'.

However, Jenkins is wrong to endorse the counterposition of new and old media. It is true that TV journalism didn't kill its print sibling, but it certainly pushed newspapers towards features and opinion (of which he is an exemplar). Neither will the Web kill print journalism, though it has already changing it significantly.

Far from being damned, print is a wonderful complement to online publishing, and to broadcast -- as the Guardian's 'Today on the Web' excerpts and Ricky Gervais podcast demonstrate. The challenge for publishers and broadcasters is to use each medium for what it does best, and to facilitate ease of movement between them. If there is a complaint to be made it is that, after ten years the Web being used for publishing, too little progress has been made in these respects.

Read on...

Under my keyboard the desk shakes. The bloggers are on the march, Simon Jenkins, The Times, March 11, 2005, and my comments on the article on Perfect.co.uk.

Publishers can't manage their digital assets

HarperCollins pro-active move to digitize its titles (HarperCollins Plans to Control Its Digital Books, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 12, 2005, page B1 [paid sub required]) and allow search engines to index but not archive them shows a grasp of online publishing models still lacking in most periodical and newspaper publishing houses). Chief executive Jane Friedman is reported as saying "We didn't like being seen as Luddites", but the Journal article goes on to report that HarperCollins sought quotes for scanning, digitising and tagging its titles.

Over the last quarter century the book publishing industry has moved to digital word processing, copy exchange, page make-up and printing, and could, in theory, produce an electronic facsimile of any title more easily than print it. That HarperCollins is planning to scan and digitise printed books, rather than use the digital files it has paid to create, is a terrible reflection on the poor and inefficient management that prevails in publishing.

As a published author I am aware that these poor practices extend all the way from commissioning through copy-editing, asset management and indexing to marketing and sales reporting. For all its modernising intentions, the publishing industry has a lot more than book archiving strategy to fix if it is to compete, or even collaborate, with its upstart challengers.

Read on... Publishing by Design: Time to Make Human Factors a Concern, Nico Macdonald, Online Journalism Review, 20 May 2004

Weblogging solutions looking for problems

In his paean to Webloggging (A click and a tick, and you're a blogger too, Guardian Technology, December 22, 2005) Victor Keegan rightly identifies the significance of ease of use in the success of these services – and one we trust publishers who invested millions in content management systems in the late 90s have taken to heart.

But Keegan appears to be in solution-looking-for-a-problem mode. 'Why do it?', he asks, and suggests these tools might be useful as research aids, for 'storing photos, useful Web links and text that I write from time to time'.

I can think of dozens of better software tools and Web-based services that could be brought to bear on this problem – and it is a real problem, largely ignored by the software industry and tech media alike. But just because something is easy to setup and use doesn't mean it is the best solution to a problem, even if any tool affords adaptation to new ends.

The tendency abroad to lazily re-define distinct activities, including many forms of publishing and online communication, within the framework of Weblogging leads to 'solutions' that aren't thought through and will tend to fail. Let's instead try to move the software industry to new models of information management, require ease of use and adaptability from its products, and push it (and ourselves) to be more ambitious.

Letter sent to Technology Guardian for publication

Read on... 'The future of Weblogging' Nico Macdonald, The Register, 18 April 2004