
Now Then – the hidden systems that've frozen time and stop us changing the world - ddeck
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/NO-FUTURE
======
jgrahamc
Definitely not Adam Curtis' best work.

In particular, his connection between Boole (and Boolean Algebra) and
recommendation systems seems weak. The latter are for more probabilistic.

And just when you think the article is going somewhere it ends with a strange
detour into the Boole family which doesn't seem to have much to do with the
rest.

~~~
dragontamer
I have no idea where this blogpost is going. I think its more of a stream of
consciousness that shouldn't really be published...

Its good for writers to write down their thoughts in this poorly edited form,
but it isn't very useful to the readers.

~~~
jgrahamc
Well, I thought, at least, that he was doing to talk about the problem of the
'filter bubble'. Instead he zoomed off into the Boole family and the Voynich
Manuscript for no apparent reason.

~~~
vidarh
The Voynich manuscript "tie in" I see as just another interesting digression
while talking about Ethel's life.

But the Boole family bit ties in thematically in that it provides two people
who represents two contradictory possibilities for the future:

The stagnating world described in the first part of the article where nothing
changes because we're locked in place by technology, represented by Hinton's
view of time as an illusion, where it is just what part of a static four-
dimensional landscape we see that changes.

Or a future where things are allowed to change again, represented by Ethel,
whose novel inspired a generation of revolutionaries, and who herself
continued to believe in change to the end.

------
lifeisstillgood
Tl;dr recommendation systems, digital records, all combine to highlight
inconsistencies between our past behaviour and current behaviour, this forcing
us to never change for fear of being labelled a Hypocrite.

This is extrapolating out of technical realm and not passing through culture
before making a conclusion. Just as today's 30 year old will be far more
forgiving of an employee with photos online of their drunken 20's than pre-
Facebook 30 year olds, we will find our cultural norms changing as more and
more of us find privacy has vanished.

The issue is not can the technology be used in this way, but will those using
it that way be labelled "normal", "annoying moralists" or "unclean and
untouchable".

Technology always leads us to new crises - but we should manage them with an
eye on the value that can be wrought. Technology that monitors my heartbeat
and liver function I like. Technology that monitors my political views I want
to be wrapped in social and legal constraints.

~~~
arethuza
Wasn't the idea that prediction of the future constrains what can be done and
may ultimately lead to stagnation part of the original _Dune_ novels?

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I preferred the novels where a woman able to perceive alternative futures
simply chose the one where if she scratched her left ear and turned round
twice, her enemy had a heart attack a week later on a different planet. She
was literally the most powerful being alive.

~~~
arethuza
Actually, that reminds me (in different ways) of Neal Stephenson's _Anathem_
and Greg Egan's _Quarantine_.

------
jpswade
If you liked that, you'll love 'All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace'.

[http://wayback.archive.org/web/20120522154154/http://archive...](http://wayback.archive.org/web/20120522154154/http://archive.org/details/AdamCurtis-
AllWatchedOverByMachinesOfLovingGrace)

~~~
JonnieCache
IMO his best work is
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares)
is good too. All of it is pretty great, if you don't mind the slightly
agitprop-ish style.

EDIT: this definitely isnt his best work though.

~~~
gmac
Agreed that the Century of the Self is very much worth watching.

This parody is spot on, though:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg)

------
cs702
This piece makes little sense to me. There are no "hidden systems" that freeze
time or stop anyone from changing their mind. In fact, politicians routinely
contradict themselves in public! For hilarious evidence of this, just watch
John Stewart's Daily Show.[1]

PS. If you're ever accused of contradicting yourself, just respond with the
famous quote often attributed to John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change,
I change my mind. What do you do?"[2]

\--

[1] [http://thedailyshow.cc.com/](http://thedailyshow.cc.com/)

[2] [http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/22/keynes-change-
mind/](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/22/keynes-change-mind/)

~~~
bradleyjg
Another good quote along those lines is "A foolish consistency is the
hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and
divines." Ralph Waldo Emerson.
[http://www.bartleby.com/100/420.47.html](http://www.bartleby.com/100/420.47.html)

~~~
shaunxcode
my favorite in the same vein is from Walt Whitman:

    
    
        Do I contradict myself? 
        Very well then I contradict myself, 
        (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

------
creamyhorror
This meandering, arty-sounding essay was interesting despite not being very
rigorously argued. I'm only surprised the author didn't mention that Geoffrey
Hinton, a major figure in neural networks, is a descendant of Boole. Maybe he
wasn't aware of the connection.

------
pnathan
Lots of sound-bytes and flakyisms in that one.

It is, of course, true that large monied interests have an interest in
stability (I'd like to cue the arguments against having a Great War, _" It'll
be too expensive, no one would dare"_, circa 1913 or so).

It's also true that politicians have to be extremely careful of saying stupid
things, or things that can be taken out of context, or things that might
offend people they don't want to, because of the prevalence of technology and
the "Gotcha" approach certain classes of media prefer. Which too is also a
hindrance to change.

~~~
api
> (I'd like to cue the arguments against having a Great War, "It'll be too
> expensive, no one would dare", circa 1913 or so).

Funny... people now say the same thing about the potential of escalating
conflict between China and the U.S., among other things.

~~~
arethuza
Not to mention conflict with Russia over Ukraine (i.e. Europe needs Russia's
natural gas too much and Russians have too much capital tied up in Europe).

------
fennecfoxen
Interesting, but the inaccurate obsession with Boole needs to go. If anything
half the examples they cite as "Boolean" inference are more Bayesian. And what
does the Voynich manuscript have to do with a surveillance dystopia? That
ending is pretty weak.

~~~
sp332
The thread with Boole was picked up as a long tie-in to get to his daughter.

~~~
daveloyall
I agree, that's what he did there. But, why the manuscript?

------
INTPenis
That's funny but I associated the title with something completely different
than what I read in the article.

When the author starts talking about politics and systems frozen in time I
can't help but think about how the real frozen system is our political system.

We get new digital systems almost weekly, that help us do things like monitor
peoples activities and map their opinions, but these systems are all being
deployed within a political system that has largely remained unchanged for our
entire documented history.

The old satirical images of class hierarchies in the shape of pyramids come to
mind.

~~~
garethsprice
"We get new digital systems almost weekly, that help us do things like monitor
peoples activities and map their opinions, but these systems are all being
deployed within a political system that has largely remained unchanged for our
entire documented history."

In terms of documented history, democracy is still a young experiment - after
outright tribalism, monarchism was the dominant system until a wave of
revolutions between the 18th-20th centuries.

Democracy is changing rapidly (in historical terms) - the "digital trackers",
Citizens United, creation and repeal of the Voting Rights Act. These will all
have far-reaching implications.

A world with a "new political system almost weekly" would be mired in violent
localized revolution and tribalism, which is how humanity lived for far longer
than they've lived under representative democracy.

~~~
INTPenis
I never said democracy specifically. I meant in a broader sense the systems
where a minority have centralized power over a majority of largely unorganized
masses.

------
NAFV_P
> _In 1987 the growing paranoia finally burst out. The trigger was a BBC
> television series called The Secret Society made by an investigative
> journalist called Duncan Campbell.

In 6 half-hour films Campbell pulled what had been happening all together -
and drew a frightening picture that still haunts the imagination of the
liberal left._

Some Americans were already paranoid back in the mid 70's - Francis Ford
Coppola's "The Conversation", with that well known and often mis-parsed phrase
- "He'd kill us if he got the chance".

------
gadders
It's amazing that people take this seriously. It's random stream of
conciousness stuff.

~~~
danelectro
You mean IOW a blog?

------
chiph
The problem with collaborative filtering systems, whether based on personal
preferences or on past purchases, is that you end up in a recommendation
bubble. Seeing the same items recommended over and over again.

Over time the things I want to buy change. Perhaps because I had a major life
event - got married, had a child, turned 50 and had a mid-life crisis, etc.
The systems can't predict the timing of those because people don't do them on
a schedule.

~~~
Houshalter
It's an exploration vs exploitation trade-off. They are just predicting the
things you are most likely to buy and suggesting those. But you also want to
throw in things which you are less likely to look at, but if you do it gives
them more information to make better suggestions. And then as you mention,
account for the fact people are dynamic and change over time.

This isn't trivial but it can be done.

------
BrandonMarc
_On one hand it 's old politics - digging up the dirt on your opponent. But it
is also part of something new - and much bigger than just politics. Throughout
the western world new systems have risen up whose job is to constantly record
and monitor the present - and then compare that to the recorded past. The aim
is to discover patterns, coincidences and correlations, and from that find
ways of stopping change. Keeping things the same._

This is a false conclusion. The goal isn't to stop change. The goal is to
embarrass a political opponent. Or intimidate them. Or make them worry enough
that they'll be very careful not to say much (i.e. chilling effect). In
extreme cases, such a weapon may render a political impotent, or end their
career (or prevent their re-election, anyway).

So it really is just political crap, somewhat TMZ style. But to say the
purpose is to maintain the status quo just doesn't follow.

On the other hand, it may be a "sunlight" or transparency sort of thing ... if
a politician knows the public can / will see everything they say or do, this
could lead to positive results. It's all in who does what with the information
that gets recorded & archived.

------
kghose
Was this written by a computer?

------
reis
Recommendation systems should really have an element of randomness built
within them. It is true people will continue to like movies, music, books or
products similar to those they have liked before, however occasional
randomness would enable some diversification.

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adnam
As we're on this, it's worth watching The Loving Trap, a funny Adam Curtis
parody.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg)

------
suprgeek
The nugget buried at the end is very interesting - Boole (of Boolean Logic)
was related to Voynich who found what is perhaps one of the most cryptic
documents of all time.

------
helipad
"Now then" \- also a grammatically curious greeting in Yorkshire.

------
eternalban
to wit, "In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled
and Flash Installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're
reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content"

