Spent the day drawing a new map of the digital landscape. Nothing else happened worth reporting.

No, not blog readers, aliens.

There’s a great line from Richard Neville in his book, Footprints of the Future, about the question being not being whether UFOs exist but rather why people keep seeing them. I was reminded of this recently when I read an article by Brian Appleyard entitled: “Is there anybody out there?”

According to the originator of the famous Drake equation*, Dr Frank Drake, the answer might be that it’s some kind of substitute for religion. Personally I prefer Appleyard’s analysis that it’s all to do with the dream of not being alone. A bit like Twitter or Facebook but on a more cosmic scale perhaps 🙂

* The Drake equation says (or, at least, originally said) that there are probably around 10,000 communicative civilizations living somewhere in the Milky Way alone. However, given that our entire galaxy is 100,000 light years across it could take a while for them to find us or for us to find them. By the way, to put 100,000 light years into perspective, the moon is 1.3 light seconds from Earth.

PS. New book done. Issue 25 of my What’s Next report up in about a week and another issue of brainmail up not far after that.

Accountability has created a myth of precision. This is the idea that there is always a right answer and that one can measure results precisely. This idea is fine in science but it is spreading into business and now our schools and beyond. It is an irrational exuberance about testing that forces people (and ideas) to behave in a manner than can be measured even when this will limit growth. The belief is then that when things go wrong this is because individuals do not follow procedure or that the right set of controls are not in place. When complex systems go wrong the solution is always at the next level of detail and control. But the reality, surely, is that we don’t really control anything at a human level. Moreover, attempts to control the uncontrollable sacrifice innovation, adaptability and ultimately resilience. If someone cheats on his or her expenses it is therefore the fault of the reporting system. In other words this myth of precision ignores human nature and refuses to accept that people work in different ways. Ultimately it drives out human judgement and initiative, which is surely the biggest risk of all.

Two things on my mind. One. What are the Nescafe ads all about? Are they responding to something or are they trying to start something? I have been talking about a return to real for some time. Is this an example?

Two. The Icelandic volcano.Who would have thought that a volcano in Iceland could shut down air traffic across much of the globe? Who had that in a scenario? So here’s a thought. What if microscopic dust from another volcano covered the world and then got into every computer and electronic device causing them to malfunction?

I was watching a documentary on William Gibson recently and there was a great bit where a friend of his sent him a fax (it was an old documentary) with a newspaper cutting saying that the daughter of Elvis (the King of Rock) was getting married to Michael Jackson (the King of Pop). Under the story the friend had written “reality!”. I think this was of the point Gibson stopped writing about the future. There was no difference any longer between fact and fiction, future and present.

Way I am telling you this? A couple of surreal experiences really. Today I got a telephone call from someone saying: “I hear you are an expert on the Mayan Calendar”. No. I am not. I know what it is. I know the significance of 2012 but that’s about it. But that wasn’t it. He wanted to know whether I wanted to talk to Parliament about it. I can only assume this was a joke.

The other event was a conversation on a plane the other day. Man in seat behind me to someone else behind me: “I’m thinking of leaving my family to spend more time at work.” What the #2!*&%$

As you can tell, the new book isn’t going well today….

PS – Statistic from the new book…
Half of British children aged between 5 and 9 now own a mobile phone. For 7 to 15 year-olds the figure is 75%. This is despite government advice that no child under-16 should be using one. The average age that children in the UK now acquire a mobile phone is 8 years.

The phrase “community of anxiety” was coined in 2004 by the writer Ian McEwan in Saturday, a novel about the events surrounding the Iraq war.
A similar idea is information pandemics. Both ideas describe the way that fear and anxiety are spreading throughout the world, fuelled primarily by the needs of 24-hour news channels and the interconnectivity of mobile devices.

We are, increasingly it seems, lurching from one supposed crisis to the next. It can start with a single tweet, spread to a blog and end up on Fox News. Furthermore, as the physicist, commentator and author Lawrence Krauss has remarked: “The increasingly blatant nature of the nonsense uttered with impunity in public discourse is chilling.” You might think that the Internet would create a world of open and democratic discussion without the barriers or filters erected by established media interests. But what appears to be occurring is a flood of disinformation in which no single source has the resources to discern the merits of individual stories.

The result is panic on a scale hitherto unseen and outbreaks are difficult to contain. What would once have remained a local story until it was fully analysed now moves so fast that we are unable to assess the real risks or think about the ultimate consequences.

For example, why was it that Bird Flu (as opposed to Swine Flu) was scarier when it was over ‘there’ (in Asia and Continental Europe) than when it actually arrived in Britain for the first time?  The answer is that fear has taken over from hope as the dominant cultural force of our times. This anxiety is fuelled by connectivity and we are constantly on the look out for new focal points for our fear. We therefore run from one imagined threat to another without taking the time to consider the actual level of risk posed.

Thus the exception is increasing becoming the rule.  If it’s not Bird Flu its Y2K, terrorism, deep vein thrombosis on long haul flights, rogue asteroids, paedophiles, binge drinking, climate change, teenage pregnancy:the list is almost endless. And don’t expect politicians or the media to help because both directly benefit from situations where they can claim some level of control or ‘expert knowledge’. A frightened populus is a complaint populus.

Fear and anxiety, spread by digital technology, are feeding a new culture of irrationality and we are becoming fatalistic and superstitious. And this, in turn, is fuelling our obsession with the past.

The present (and the future) are now seen as too scary, so people are retreating to eras that they believe offer safety, certainly and control. Hence the current boom in nostalgia. This is a shame because on almost every measure that matters life on our planet is becoming better, not worse, for the vast majority of people. Indeed, the only thing that might be coming to an end is a sense of perspective and a belief in the unstoppable ingenuity of the human race.