READ MY WORK

Ideas Above Our Station
new collection of shorts, one of which was written by me,
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292

Nine Stop Trip
even newer collection of shorts, all of which were written by me,
http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=65

I've discovered something strange: 72 hours is the exact length of time it takes for me to completely readjust to not being at work.

A weekend isn't quite long enough, for the first two days I'm just in a daze. Three days however is sufficient for me to forget all about work and fall back into my dole scum routine.

Coming to the end of my week off now, the prospect of returning to the office is looming over the horizon but I don't feel too bad. I've got quite a lot done so can't say that I've wasted my time I'd just rather spend the rest of my life sitting here writing than sitting there working.

Speaking of which I've also encountered something else a bit weird. I've been meaning to write a short story for a lit mag and have just finished it. Took me a couple of days, which isn't unusual, but the deadline is still over a week away, which is.

Normally I write shorts quickly because I've left them until the last minute. I was quite excited about this one however and, to be honest, a bit bored so I got on with it and now it's done, save for a bit of editing.

A major source of boredom has been the fact that pretty much everything I see on TV at the moment seems utterly shashpaps. In fact I've probably watched less TV this week than I would during a normal working week.

Maybe it's because I'm not so ground down by the day job that I demand a more satisfying standard of entertainment.

Who knows, the fact is, as no doubt everyone has said at one time or another, there are more and more channels and yet less and less worth watching.

It must surely be true that we, in the decadent west, are exposed to and have greater access to more information than any human beings throughout history.

From an evolutionary point of view this may present a problem. As with most technological advances, this change has come about too quickly for us to adapt as a species.

We have never had to process such volumes of information before. Is it any wonder then that so many people choose to withdraw into apathy?

A few examples of this phenomenon of info overload have become apparent to me lately, provoking this post:

Firstly there's the G2 cover story from ages ago that I've quite managed to forget. This related the results of a study suggesting that more western toddlers recognise McDonalds than know their own name.

The point is that when overloaded with info you just can't take it all in so, at some level, you select what you perceive to be the most important bits.

When you consider how much time parents are able to spend communicating with their children and compare that to how much time companies communicate with those kids through advertising it becomes clear who has a greater influence.

Secondly was the story of the reported discovery of the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. There were so many things that pissed me off about this story that I'm not even sure where to begin.

How about the fact that several media outlets kept referring to the tomb as potentially being that of Jesus Christ? The point being that if that is his tomb then he's wasn't the Christ was he? He was an ordinary bloke who died and stayed dead.

As I say, there were lots of things that annoyed me about this one but by far the worst was the omission of the single most important piece of information by every media outlet I encountered.

The key to the whole story is surely whether or not the Jesus they've found was the Jesus. Now there was more than one body in this tomb, the others reportedly being those of Mary mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene wife of Jesus and Judah son of Jesus.

There was some mention that a statistician had been employed to calculate the likelihood of the tomb belonging to a different bunch of people with the same names.

His findings were reported as stating that it was almost certain that this was the Jesus and his crew. I had to go online however to find out what he actually said.

This guy stated that the odds were 600-1 that it was someone else. The point here is that this stat means nothing without telling us how many people were living in the area at the time.

If there were just a few hundred families knocking about then then it looks like they may well have found the J man himself. If there were millions of people there however suddenly it doesn't look so good.

This number was the single most important piece of information in this story and yet it was just about the only thing we WEREN'T told amid mountains of crap.

So much information and yet not a bit of it useful for anything more than idle conversation at the water cooler.

The third and final example of quantity over quality came to me when watching BBC2's The Conspiracy Files regarding the death of Dr David Kelly.

A fairly interesting series, this programme doesn't stick its neck on the line. You get half an hour of conspiracy theories, then half an hour of debunking and then a final shrug of 'who knows?'.

Anyway the point that stuck out in relevance to this issue was the effective outing of Dr Kelly by the media. For whatever reasons the media couldn't actually come out and announce his name, (I'm unclear as to whether they didn't know or weren't allowed.)

What they did do however, was enter into their usual competition as to who could provide the most information about the mysterious man.

In their rabid fervour to supply the greatest number of facts they basically gave so many clues that anyone in the know would know exactly who the 'leak' had come from.

Of course the media, the mighty fourth estate, has a responsibility to inform the public and thereby keep the executive, the legislator and the judiciary in check.

That being the case however, how much of that information about Dr Kelly did we actually NEED to know? Was the public interest served by divulging all those little details?

I can already hear people crying censorship and state control of the media etc but that's really not the point.

A good example of one of the few instances in which we get this right is when one of our servicemen dies overseas.

As part the electorate responsible for sending them into harms way it is essential that we are informed of such losses.

We do need to know about this as soon as possible, we do not, however, need to know his name, at least not until after his family have been informed.

The point is that it's not actually in anyone's best interests for us all to know everything. As demonstrated by the examples above the problems with this are as follows:

we simply can't handle being told everything,

sheer volume of info distracts from the what is actually relevant and important,

the desire to communicate such volumes of info blinds people to the very purpose of that communication,

It's funny but this often happens. I'm writing what I think is an original post only to find myself on familiar ground.

I've said it before and I'll no doubt say it again. This does not have to come down to a polarised choice between all info and no info.

What's required is effort on the part of the media and the public:

The media need to grow a pair and start reporting what needs to be reported rather than just competing with one another over numbers.

The public need to start developing skills of discernment to recognise the value, or lack thereof, of the information put before them.

This is also the only way for the public to recognise when vital info is not being released and subsequently be able to demand it.

There is, as always, another thorn on this rose however. The explosive expansion of the western media, 24 hour rolling news channels etc, has been sold to us in the name of choice.

The ideal seems to be that eventually you'll over ever watch things you want to see, be told things you want to hear. The media will be personalised to your individual needs.

Unfortunately however there are, and always will be, things that people need to know but don't want to hear.

Encouraging people to withdraw into bubbles within which they hold dominion can have no positive consequences for anyone except those coining it in at the other end of the wire.

It's tough I know, standing up to the perpetual torrent of shit, but it has to be done. The Egyptians knew that whoever writes history controls the present and subsequently the future.

It's up to us to decide where control of our society's information, and hence it's future, lies. Your hands or theirs, it's up to you.