I had a phonecall today from Oxfam asking for me to donate to their East Africa Disaster Fund. In the past I've had a direct debit thing to Oxfam, but I cancelled it when I became seriously in debt.
Anyhoo, I think its terrible that the worst famine in living memory has hit East Africa, countries like Kenya, and if I could give money I would.
At the end of the call the nice lady who'd phoned on behalf of Oxfam let me know she actually worked for a marketing firm who were paid £40,000 to make these phone calls in the hope of getting £120,000 of donations over the next five years.
Now the thing about aid to Africa is an awkward thing, I've read successful Africans suggesting "trade, not aid" would be more helpful to the continent. Also, Kenya is one of the continent's success stories, after decades of misrule, they've had a bit of stability for the past fifteen years or so. Their GDP growth makes the UK's look like a third world country, and they're one of the relatively less corrupt African nations.
Anyhoo, the UK government gives Kenya tens of millions in aid each year, the Department for International Development kind of ambiguously says £64.2 million or £128 million per year. I'm wondering how come they're not a bit more resilient to famine? Haven't they spend any money on things like food stores and that sort of thing? What have they spent all the money on?
And furthermore, how can a country, any country, not be financially self-sufficient? How can Kenya be a money pit that needs £128 million from the UK alone every year?
Even the UK, is running up an ever increasing budget deficit, but £128 million of that is on behalf of Kenya.
Are both the UK and Kenya spending money on the wrong things?
Sure this current famine is a disaster, but Kenya gets that aid money whether there's a disaster or not.
Elsewhere on the internet, on Occupy London's manifesto thing and their other social media thing, there seems to be an undercurrent of the assumption that a government's role is to extract as much money as possible from the population, and if there is more money there unextracted, it should be prised from the rich, and then spent.
This makes me feel uncomfortable. The government are crap, all governments to greater and lesser degrees are crap, they're never as good at spending my money wisely than I am, and I think that applies to everyone. Individually we can spend our money more wisely than the government, based on what we individually judge is wise.
Then again, I'm a frothing at the mouth centre-left libertarian.
Showing posts with label Libertarian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Libertarian. Show all posts
Monday, 7 November 2011
Thursday, 29 September 2011
The future silver age of public libraries and their arch enemy Moore's Law
Earlier today a librarian activist who I follow on twitter was being dismissive of the phone box library phenomenon. I have a soft spot for them.
Several months ago, I don't recall whether it was before of after I started blogging regularly about new phone box libraries, but I was having some kind of online exchange with the librarian activist. She was lamenting the growing number of library closures, and I asked if ever there was a golden age of new libraries being built. I don't recall the answer, but the number of libraries in the UK has been in decline for decades.
I'm hopeful that its not going to decline for ever.
Right now, our elected officials and professionals employed for the purpose of providing libraries are failing, libraries are closing. The total number of libraries will bottom out and then begin to rise again. But at some point between now and the flying car and rocket pack future, there will be a new silver age of libraries being built and opened.
Trying to visualise what these libraries of the future is a difficult task, I don't know what they'll look like, it may be fleets of mobile library buses, or plastic dome-shaped prefab units, with moulded desks and shelves, staffed by a catbot terminal like Emma, or a ubiquitous chain of high street shop/libraries run commercially and owned by the state like the Tote betting shops.
But one thing I'm pretty sure of is that they won't be computery technology centres. I've got a theory:-
Moore's Law is the Enemy of the Public Library!!!
Let me remind you, Moore's Law is that one about computing power doubling every eighteen months/two years. For £100 of computer memory now, in two years you'll be able to buy twice as much, a £1000 computer this year is twice as powerful/fast as a £1000 computer from two years ago.
Its not just cutting edge computers, its independent of price point. Bastard Bob's budget computer's are affected too, a £200 net book from two years back is about half as good as a brand new one.
Look at mobile phones, Amazon Kindle, its the same unstoppable progression of technology. And its exponential.
The other week there was a quotation on the internet about how a three-term prime minister will leave office with a mobile phone 64 times more powerful than the one they came into office with. And "it isn't possible with current technology" is no longer an excuse for not doing something, you just have to wait for a few years.
In the Amazon fire launch the other day there was a slide about how the Amazon original homepage from 1994 was about 40Kb of memory, and now its about 800Kb. A ten year old computer would struggle to run modern HTML5 webpages, a twenty year old computer probably wouldn't load them at all.
At some point the diminishing power of old computers gets dangerous. For example in 1984, the BBC, Acorn computers and the European Comission created the BBC Domesday Project, a survey of Britain in computer form, stored on laser disk that ran on special software on BBC Acorn computers and a specially made laser disk player. They were installed in libraries and schools.
Within three years the laser disks were scratched and wouldn't work well, the guy who knew how to use it would have moved to another job. Twenty years later it took another BBC project to un-encrypt all the locked down data in archaic data formats.
Another example is Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6. Still widely in use, governments across the world have issued warning about security vulnerablities in it and urged everyone to upgrade or use alternative web browsers.
If someone's working on a thing on a computer in a library, and wants to carry the data home with them, what format should the computer be kitted with? Floppy disk, 5.25", 3.5", 3", Zip drive, burn to CD, DVD, memory card, usb drive, save to their own 'library hard disk folder', bluetooth it to a smartphone, google drive, or send it into the cloud? What do you do, accept the short-comings or spend whatever the start up cost was every five years to replace the portable storage media?
So in this future silver age of new public libraries being built, would investors in libraries build computery ones, knowing their cutting edge technology will need replacing every five to ten years?
I doubt it.
Whatever the initial investment is, they're going to have to constantly re-invest to keep the library great, and they can't ever stop.
Only fast buck fly-by-night charlatans would invest in things like that.
In the old village library of my youth, there was a wonderful book on origami, long out of print and forgotten by most library users. It was about thirty years old, but contained some of the most elegant and ingenious works of origami in it's pages. Libraries are great for old books.
Take classics such as War and Peace, Lord of the Rings, Pride and Prejudice. A decent hard back copy could last for decades. Sure the cover will need reattaching every few years and maybe book rebound if pages start falling out, but with a bit of care, the books will last for lifetimes.
Anyhoo, back to phone box libraries. I don't know if they are the future silver age of new libraries. What I do know is that whilst brick and mortar public libraries are being closes and centralised, the phone box libraries are springing up in tiny villages across England at an increasing rate.
Their take up has been propelled by BT's adopt a kiosk scheme, where local communities can buy a red K6 phone box for £1 and use it however they like.
They are a low cost, low maintenance, easily maintainable unit, and as the case of the Coed-y-Paen box confirms, strangely resilient to crime. Within a fortnight of all the books being looted by thieves, the community had restocked it and it was back in use. Their size is entirely appropriate for the tiny villages and hamlets which have employed them to date. They don't require specially bred midget librarians, in fact the villages seem to manage quite with them run by locals without the need for specially trained librarians at all.
Most likely such a model wouldn't work for larger towns and cities with greater densities of library users. But, like the Boris Bike scheme in London, a vast distributed book swap scheme with clusters of local units isn't too much of a stretch of the imagination.
Elsewhere I have documented twenty four of these phone boxes, finding new ones now at a rate of three a month. The phone box library sector is one part of the public library sector which is growing. BT have sold around 1,500 phone boxes since the scheme started two years ago, and I'm certain that far more than twenty four have been turned into libraries, its just a matter of finding them.
Several months ago, I don't recall whether it was before of after I started blogging regularly about new phone box libraries, but I was having some kind of online exchange with the librarian activist. She was lamenting the growing number of library closures, and I asked if ever there was a golden age of new libraries being built. I don't recall the answer, but the number of libraries in the UK has been in decline for decades.
I'm hopeful that its not going to decline for ever.
Right now, our elected officials and professionals employed for the purpose of providing libraries are failing, libraries are closing. The total number of libraries will bottom out and then begin to rise again. But at some point between now and the flying car and rocket pack future, there will be a new silver age of libraries being built and opened.
Trying to visualise what these libraries of the future is a difficult task, I don't know what they'll look like, it may be fleets of mobile library buses, or plastic dome-shaped prefab units, with moulded desks and shelves, staffed by a catbot terminal like Emma, or a ubiquitous chain of high street shop/libraries run commercially and owned by the state like the Tote betting shops.
But one thing I'm pretty sure of is that they won't be computery technology centres. I've got a theory:-
Moore's Law is the Enemy of the Public Library!!!
Let me remind you, Moore's Law is that one about computing power doubling every eighteen months/two years. For £100 of computer memory now, in two years you'll be able to buy twice as much, a £1000 computer this year is twice as powerful/fast as a £1000 computer from two years ago.
Its not just cutting edge computers, its independent of price point. Bastard Bob's budget computer's are affected too, a £200 net book from two years back is about half as good as a brand new one.
Look at mobile phones, Amazon Kindle, its the same unstoppable progression of technology. And its exponential.
The other week there was a quotation on the internet about how a three-term prime minister will leave office with a mobile phone 64 times more powerful than the one they came into office with. And "it isn't possible with current technology" is no longer an excuse for not doing something, you just have to wait for a few years.
In the Amazon fire launch the other day there was a slide about how the Amazon original homepage from 1994 was about 40Kb of memory, and now its about 800Kb. A ten year old computer would struggle to run modern HTML5 webpages, a twenty year old computer probably wouldn't load them at all.
At some point the diminishing power of old computers gets dangerous. For example in 1984, the BBC, Acorn computers and the European Comission created the BBC Domesday Project, a survey of Britain in computer form, stored on laser disk that ran on special software on BBC Acorn computers and a specially made laser disk player. They were installed in libraries and schools.
Within three years the laser disks were scratched and wouldn't work well, the guy who knew how to use it would have moved to another job. Twenty years later it took another BBC project to un-encrypt all the locked down data in archaic data formats.
Another example is Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6. Still widely in use, governments across the world have issued warning about security vulnerablities in it and urged everyone to upgrade or use alternative web browsers.
If someone's working on a thing on a computer in a library, and wants to carry the data home with them, what format should the computer be kitted with? Floppy disk, 5.25", 3.5", 3", Zip drive, burn to CD, DVD, memory card, usb drive, save to their own 'library hard disk folder', bluetooth it to a smartphone, google drive, or send it into the cloud? What do you do, accept the short-comings or spend whatever the start up cost was every five years to replace the portable storage media?
So in this future silver age of new public libraries being built, would investors in libraries build computery ones, knowing their cutting edge technology will need replacing every five to ten years?
I doubt it.
Whatever the initial investment is, they're going to have to constantly re-invest to keep the library great, and they can't ever stop.
Only fast buck fly-by-night charlatans would invest in things like that.
In the old village library of my youth, there was a wonderful book on origami, long out of print and forgotten by most library users. It was about thirty years old, but contained some of the most elegant and ingenious works of origami in it's pages. Libraries are great for old books.
Take classics such as War and Peace, Lord of the Rings, Pride and Prejudice. A decent hard back copy could last for decades. Sure the cover will need reattaching every few years and maybe book rebound if pages start falling out, but with a bit of care, the books will last for lifetimes.
Anyhoo, back to phone box libraries. I don't know if they are the future silver age of new libraries. What I do know is that whilst brick and mortar public libraries are being closes and centralised, the phone box libraries are springing up in tiny villages across England at an increasing rate.
Their take up has been propelled by BT's adopt a kiosk scheme, where local communities can buy a red K6 phone box for £1 and use it however they like.
They are a low cost, low maintenance, easily maintainable unit, and as the case of the Coed-y-Paen box confirms, strangely resilient to crime. Within a fortnight of all the books being looted by thieves, the community had restocked it and it was back in use. Their size is entirely appropriate for the tiny villages and hamlets which have employed them to date. They don't require specially bred midget librarians, in fact the villages seem to manage quite with them run by locals without the need for specially trained librarians at all.
Most likely such a model wouldn't work for larger towns and cities with greater densities of library users. But, like the Boris Bike scheme in London, a vast distributed book swap scheme with clusters of local units isn't too much of a stretch of the imagination.
Elsewhere I have documented twenty four of these phone boxes, finding new ones now at a rate of three a month. The phone box library sector is one part of the public library sector which is growing. BT have sold around 1,500 phone boxes since the scheme started two years ago, and I'm certain that far more than twenty four have been turned into libraries, its just a matter of finding them.
Wednesday, 13 July 2011
Bloggers, Google+ Circles, Socialism and Kropotkin
Last night I finished reading Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, a book I chose to read purely so I could throw late-nineteenth century communist-libertarianism into discussions and blog posts. Last night I also attended a London Bloggers meetup, fifty or so people gathered in a central London pub basement to network, discuss social media, google+ and almost win a new Dell laptop.
London meetup bloggers
I'm not that good at networking events, last night I racked up chatting to eleven people and nodding or otherwise acknowledging the existance of six other people.
Its probably the future, just like Facebook was once when we were all still on MySpace, and FriendsReunited and Friendster before that.
One rather neat thing Google+ has going for it right now is that I can access it at work, rather than it being blocked like other social networks are. Like back when BeBo was the only social network site that local council workers could access.
In a similar way, Google+ isn't blocked in Iran like Facebook is. There are a lot of Iranian folk on those lush prairies.
Keeping friends in tupperware
Google+ uses the concept of circles rather than a friendslists, and borrows the same sort of broadcasting/following thing as twitter. You start off with default empty circles which you can populate with 'friends' 'family' 'acquaintances' 'following', you can also have people in more than one circle. And then when you post status update like things you can decide which circles of people can see them. Then on the other side people only see they updates that you're put up if they've selected you to be in their circles. Also people can't see which of your circles you've put them in, only that they are in a circle.
Its still hard for me to get my head around, but essentially, you only broadcast things to people and groups you select, and they only receive it if they're listening.
When I first starting populating my circles it was using the default titles 'friends' 'family' 'acquaintances' 'following'. It just didn't feel satisfying, one size didn't fits all, so I tried sorting friends and acquaintances into different circles, 'music people' and 'internet people'. I tried having a circles for 'ex-girlfriends', 'potentials' and 'bargepole'.
That kind of worked, but looking at who was side by side in the each circle was just, unrealistic. Circles can be anything, so I tried again with more granularity 'London music people', 'Glasgow scenester of the noughties', 'London bloggers'. This felt better, cos it was a closer map of reality, circles were more like people who'd be stood together in the pub.
You could just recreate your facebook experience, with a bit of faffing about you can export your entire Facebook friendslist to Google+ and just have them all one default 'friends' circle.
Do you want you social network to accurately map reality, or some fiction putting round pegs in square holes?
Invoking Kropotkin
I didn't even realise it was a weakness of Facebook that you only had one friendslist, and although you could tinker with privacy settings for individual people, blocking those you don't like, it was still just one broadcast channel.
Same with Twitter I guess, its just one broadcast channel, all your followers get your updates.
But with Google+ circles its almost like every status update requires mutual consent, so you don't have random strangers (or the ghost of socialism) monitoring your every comment, unless you want that. So there's less risk of getting spammed every time you mention iPad or Kropotkin.
London meetup bloggers
I'm not that good at networking events, last night I racked up chatting to eleven people and nodding or otherwise acknowledging the existance of six other people.
- Aref Adib - blogs about London and photos of it
- Andy bargery - the marketing blagger
- Sophie Une Timide au Londres - blogs about being a French lady in London
- A Lady in London - blogs about being a Californian lady in London
- The Creative Penn - writing and self-publishing
- Blog till you drop - internet culture from London and beyond
- Cristiano Betta - technology and life
- Rax - raxraxrax Rax
- Miss Geeky - reviews of cool stuff
- Shimelle - hardcorn scrapbooking
- Godwyns - justice for gay africans
- Real monstrosities - weird and wonderful animals
- Amit Sodha - the ultimate guide to living consciously
- Movie Moron - Movie news and humour
- Card bored box - custom party pinatas
- Pradeep Kumar Singh - Empowering blogger users
Its probably the future, just like Facebook was once when we were all still on MySpace, and FriendsReunited and Friendster before that.
One rather neat thing Google+ has going for it right now is that I can access it at work, rather than it being blocked like other social networks are. Like back when BeBo was the only social network site that local council workers could access.
In a similar way, Google+ isn't blocked in Iran like Facebook is. There are a lot of Iranian folk on those lush prairies.
Keeping friends in tupperware
Google+ uses the concept of circles rather than a friendslists, and borrows the same sort of broadcasting/following thing as twitter. You start off with default empty circles which you can populate with 'friends' 'family' 'acquaintances' 'following', you can also have people in more than one circle. And then when you post status update like things you can decide which circles of people can see them. Then on the other side people only see they updates that you're put up if they've selected you to be in their circles. Also people can't see which of your circles you've put them in, only that they are in a circle.
Its still hard for me to get my head around, but essentially, you only broadcast things to people and groups you select, and they only receive it if they're listening.
When I first starting populating my circles it was using the default titles 'friends' 'family' 'acquaintances' 'following'. It just didn't feel satisfying, one size didn't fits all, so I tried sorting friends and acquaintances into different circles, 'music people' and 'internet people'. I tried having a circles for 'ex-girlfriends', 'potentials' and 'bargepole'.
That kind of worked, but looking at who was side by side in the each circle was just, unrealistic. Circles can be anything, so I tried again with more granularity 'London music people', 'Glasgow scenester of the noughties', 'London bloggers'. This felt better, cos it was a closer map of reality, circles were more like people who'd be stood together in the pub.
You could just recreate your facebook experience, with a bit of faffing about you can export your entire Facebook friendslist to Google+ and just have them all one default 'friends' circle.
Do you want you social network to accurately map reality, or some fiction putting round pegs in square holes?
Invoking Kropotkin
I didn't even realise it was a weakness of Facebook that you only had one friendslist, and although you could tinker with privacy settings for individual people, blocking those you don't like, it was still just one broadcast channel.
Same with Twitter I guess, its just one broadcast channel, all your followers get your updates.
But with Google+ circles its almost like every status update requires mutual consent, so you don't have random strangers (or the ghost of socialism) monitoring your every comment, unless you want that. So there's less risk of getting spammed every time you mention iPad or Kropotkin.
Thursday, 29 April 2010
A sickly nation, unable to provide for their children
Channel4 have a neat websitey thing called ChoPORNot, where viewers are give a series of choices between two cards representing things that could be cut to reduce the £152,000,000,000 deficit.Choices like Reduce disability benefit or not to renovate social housing.
A lot of the options are a bit, well, crap. Like axing GPs when actually giving thema pay cut might be less destructive (considering their pay tripled in the last ten years)
Anyhoo, a neat thing is that you can see the charts of which items most people have chosen to slash and which items most people have chosen not to cut, to 'cherish'. After 500 or so people have had a go on the website the list of things to cut is like this:
1. Military - Don't upgrade Trident. Stop subbing the subs...The overiding message seems to be that we hate the military, we hate bankers and the government.
2. Military - Withdraw from Iraq. Time to watch our own backs...
3. Religious and other community services - Stop supporting churches. What about their collections?
4. Economic affairs - Plan a bank raid. Reclaim bankers' money.
5. Broadcasting and Publishing services - Cancel all government advertising. Stop ads...
6. Military - Pull out of Afghanistan. Stop digging that hole...
7. Military - Cut navy spending. Waive the rules...
8. Education not definable by level - Learning and Life Skills Council? Who's heard of that?
9. Military - Clip the wings of the RAF
10. Executive and legislative organs, finacial affairs, external affairs - Cut back on government. No such thing as society...
Contrast this we the items most cherished:-
1. Primary and Preprimary education - Shut primary schools. Increased illiteracy? So waht?We love the NHS, schools and old people! Wooh.
2. Social Exclusion - Stop all home help visits. Leave unwell alone...
3. Medical Services - Axe, slash, chop or cut 50% of A&Es...
4. Medical Services - Close 20 hospitals. Keep 'em waiting...
5. Primary and Preprimary education - Sack 2000 teachers. More friends for each classmate!
6. Old Age - Shiver their timbers! Cut winter fuel payments.
7. Secondary Education - We don't need no education... Cut 2000 teachers.
8. Transport - Close branch railways. Everyone's got a car...
9. Old Age - Cut state pensions. No more golden oldies...
10. Secondary Education - Shut 40 secondary schools. Don't teach 'em a lesson...
Personally I'm divided, I thank we should pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq, but other than that the UK should have a strong and well-funded military. But on the other hand, the more right-wing libertarian in me reckons that the government should have little to do with education, health and social care, we she keep our taxes and invest in our own private health insurance, and we should fund our kid's education first hand from our own pockets.
Maybe its just Chop or Not's jaundiced view, that only the state can provide teachers and schools and hospitals and if not the state then these things would cease to exist. In real life, rather than closing 40 colleges or sacking 2,000 teachers, they'd just transfer to the private sector. The jobs would still be there, the potential for educating is still there, its just the state have abandoned that as one of their competencies.
Regardless, the state has demonstrated that it is unable to run its finances adequately enough to fund health, education and social care. It could almost be like the government is to the UK, what Greece is to the EU.
**UPDATE**
Just to clarify and ruminate, this one time at my last job in the soup room, I was asked how old I was, thirtyish, and if I had any kids "nope" and why not, at the time I didn't answer, but the answer would be that culturally I'm unwilling to have kids if I can't provide for them, that is I can't afford kids, I'm thousands of pounds in debt, and either on minimum wage or unemployed. To have kids I'd want to be able to pay for them, to pay for their toys and trinkets and to some degree pay for their education, since I can barely afford these things for myself, I refrain from spawning.
Its part of my self-sufficiency thing, like growing my own potatos or not drawing housing benefit.
Although somewhere out there its an enshrined right to have a family, to have kids, this isn't a free right, its a right that the state has to provide for, so I refrain from taking advantage of that right.
A little bit of me thinks that to have kids and expect the state to provide for them is as bad as living an unhealthy lifestyle and expecting the state to keep you alive. My health is, for the most part within my own hands, however the defence of the nation and upholding law and order, that's for the government.
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