broadstuff

This is what I was trying to write earlier today, as the difference between the slow growth of the Real Life Pandemic and the virulent growth of the Media Pandemic continued to diverge. Tried a bunch of ways to write it, but eventually thought "sod it, just put your thoughts down".

I was interested in 3 things:

- Anyone who has read anything on the Meedia will know that they are structurally incapable of handling a story like this rationally, the temptation to ham it up for headlines is too great.

- However, given the recent admonishment that the only way the Mainstream Media would be able to charge more than the Blogosphere would be by adding more value, would they do so?

- Conversely, given the Blogosphere's various claims of superiority, could they demonstrate it in covering this. The omens were not good, given the vapidity of the Twitter coverage to date.

The day started with BBC Radio 4, and four different reports.

- The Mexican team looking at the 'flu virus said that of the 150 odd deaths to date, only 7 were directly attributable to this strain of the 'Flu.

- An American had died shock! horrror!. Only on closer questioning was it clear that the unfortunate little soul was 23 months old, was Mexican, and had very recently come over the border.

- The WHO has raised the threat level from 4 to 5 - what this means is that "pandemic is imminent, and countries must go on a war footing"

- An "expert" on 'flu claimed that "as many as 40%" of the UK population could get it and that deaths "could be in the millions". The presenter pointed out that the 1918 flu hit 30% at its most virulent, and of those 10% died, and "surely we were better prepared now".

And BBC Radio 4 is probably the only bit of the Meedja (that I've monitored anyway) that has been in any way rational about this. On the train into London, the headlines all screamed about our impending doom in technicolour terror. Some of the chaps in the Media blamed "the authorities" for spreading FUD, blithely ignoring their own role. (In fact the government's chief health officer has been one of the most rational commentators)

Nowhere - Nowhere! Did I see anything talking about the facts that:

- All Flu's kill - globally, about 1,000 people a day (seasonal adjust) die of flu annually anyway. Small children, ill and elderly are most vulnerable.
- Poor people die at rates an order of magnitude above well off people

In other words, for Mexico, with 110m people is in line for about 13 deaths from Flu A DAY! 7 Dead of a new strain of Flu in A MONTH is statistically well within normal - in fact, over the 14 days this has been going on we'd expect to see c 175 deaths in Mexico from Flu.

(I was not monitoring exhaustively, and I'm sure there were some cooler heads, but lets juts say that moderate reporting was not top-of-page in the Meedja circus)

So much for olde media, lets see, thought I, whether the New Meedja was going to do a better job .

Fat Chance!

Scanning the blogosphere was no better, there again the seductive tale of doom and destruction was too much, and off they all rushed. I read Ben Goldacre's piece with mounting dread as even he, Bad Science Exposeur du jour, wouldn't be drawn on whether the more extreme prognostications were - well, extreme.

But there were green shoots - In the Blogosphere I did find people setting down real facts, and I found that there were people lampooning the po-faced seriouseness of the whole Pandemic Panjandrum on Twitter - the #aporkalypse stream for example, bringing us up to date fun-poking at the excesses of the Epigdemic, and the unreality of impending Armagammon.

(Update - and of course, where there's muck there's brass)

But overall, as to responsible reporting from the Large Organs of the Olde or New Media - a pox on both their houses!

* I did change the original title, "The Swinal Snoutdown" I saw from @therealMarteen and it was too good to miss)

We have now organised the London Digital Britain Unconference. Following message from Kathryn Corrick:

Thanks to the very generous assistance of the ICA, the London Digital Britain Unconference will be happening next Wednesday evening, details as follows:

Time: 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM
Date: Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Where: ICA (enter through rear door)
12 Carlton House Terrace
Westminster, Greater London SW1Y 5AH
FREE

For further details and to book please go here.

The aim of the unconferences is to develop a coherent response to the Interim Digital Britain Report.

For further details about what this is all about see this previous post by Bill Thompson.

Please also bear in mind something I noted in my initial post:

One request I'd make - the other organisers are too polite to say it, but I will - one of the things that the Digital Britain team has made clear is that they will want feedback that is "positive, concise, based in reality and sent in as soon as possible". That "based in reality" bit (that mainly means economics) puts a responsibility on us all to ensure all of us as attendees are briefed and educated on the subject before attending the unconference - ie come prepared, no numpties please, as that will dilute the hard work of others.

Sadly I can't make it, am at another conference in Nice, but will think of y'all as I sip my pastis in the Mediterranean sun

The Meedja is constructing an Aporkalyptic scenario, predicting Global Hamageddon as Swine Flu metamorphoses into a virus more deadly than the planet has ever seen before, all of course in the interest of public information (and not to sell more meedja, nonono )

But we have noticed that the Swine Flu meme is virulently evolving into different strains far more rapidly on Twitter (and now on Facebook apparently), here are a small sample of those just in the last 24 hours:

Strine flue - Caught it in Australia

Spline flu is spreading quickly through university mathematics departments worldwide"
[I wonder how many variants there are, counting them could tie you up in knots ]

Shwine flu - Sean Connery with swine flu

Slime flu - use your imagination...........

Shrine flu - an affliction picked up in places of great spiritual significance

Sine flu - your temperature goes up and down and up and down

Stein flu - caught from drinking out of damp beer glasses

Sublime flu - possibly the best flu in the world. [Stein flu from Carlsberg....]

Supine Flu - not to be taken lying down

More scary, we are seeing consonantal shift in the meme's structure:

Prime Flu - only infects numbers of people in amounts divisible by 1 or the infected number itself.

Zwei flu - the second bout of flu you caught this year

Twine Flu: you've had a string of illnesses - but beware of......

Tine Flu - if you get it you are forked.

Brine flu - suffered by cross-channel swimmers

Pine flu - Flu caught in Nordic forests.

Rhyme Flu: symptoms include niggling irritation at ongoing and repeated Twitter memes.

Tyne flu. Prevalent around Newcastle.

Time Flu - likes arrows

Wine flu - caught in France

More scary still are those that have evolved to different vowels:

Sinew flu - caught by anagramists (and crossword fans?)

Quorn Flu - an acceptable vegetarian alternative

And then there are non flu variants too:

Swine flume - a water adventure park for piglets.

Swine flue = pig stuck up chimney.

Swine Flew - the bastard who got you up the duff flees the country

Swine floozy: putting lipstick on a pig. [Sarah be thy name...]

Update - News has just reached us that variants of Swine Flu have broken out in Germany - these are:

- Schwein flu

- Rhine flu (don't drink the water)

- Mein flu (what I got)

- Dein flu (what you've got)

- Klein flu (more of a schniffle, really)

For transmitting this viral outbreak you can blame @Jemimakiss, @Suw, @CTD, @CharlesArthur, @justin_williams, @GarethDEdwards, @adebradley, @joecassels, @Riff_Raff, @LucasBlack, @Ruskin147, @linker3000, @shanerichmond, @willmcinness, @christhall, @GPhire, @linker3000, @megpickard and of course modest input from Moi

If you get it, here is what to do

If you get it, are cured, and then get it again - well, thats Parmageddon.....

Hot on the heels of the UK government climbing down on its desire to have a national database tracking every citizen's digital foootsteps, comes a potential explanation - they've been colluding with datamining company Phorm all along, Sez the Beeb:

In an e-mail dated 22 January 2008, a Home Office official wrote again to Phorm and said: "I should be grateful if you would review the attached document, and let me know what you think."

Some e-mails were sent from the Office of Security and Counter Terrorism at the Home Office.

In January 2008 the Home Office thanks Phorm for comments and changes to its draft paper, which show the company making deletions and changes to the document.

The Home Office official wrote to Phorm: "If we agree this, and this becomes our position do you think your clients and their prospective partners will be comforted."

Baroness Sue Miller, Liberal Democrat spokeswoman on Home Affairs, told BBC News: "My jaw dropped when I saw the Freedom of Information exchanges.

"This is untrue and misrepresents the way in which the British legal system works"
- Phorm chief executive Kent Ertugrul on accusations of collusion

"The fact the Home Office asks the very company they are worried is actually falling outside the laws whether the draft interpretation of the law is correct is completely bizarre. [said the Baroness]"

Not if you see it as a collusion in where both the Government and the ISPs seem to want to go. Is this an attempt to builds a Digital Stasiland, to add our electronic footprint to being the Most Video'd Nation on earth? ("Stasiland" is a rather good book about how pervasive - one person in every 70 - the East German state's secret police, the Stasi, were.)

Of course, it didn't help in the end though.....

Update - Phorm has come out swinging at its critics, in a website called 'StopPhoulPlay', and it makes a number of personal attacks on various privacy campaigners. Interesting tactic in PR war over this stuff....... we are settling into our ringside seat with eager anticipation.

As reported on Useit.com.

Web headlines, which must be:

- short (because people don't read much online);
- rich in information scent, clearly summarizing the target article;
- front-loaded with the most important keywords (because users often scan only the beginning of list items);
- understandable out of context (because headlines often appear without articles, as in search engine results); and
- predictable, so users know whether they'll like the full article before they click (because people don't return to sites that promise more than they deliver).

On a recent visit, the BBC list of headlines for "other top stories" read as follows:

- Italy buries first quake victims
- Romania blamed over Moldova riots
- Ten arrested in UK anti-terrorism raids
- Villagers hurt in West Bank clash
- Mass Thai protest over leadership
- Iran accuses journalist of spying

Around the world in 38 words.

The average headline consumed a mere 5 words and 34 characters. The amount of meaning they squeezed into this brief space is incredible: every word works hard for its living. I'm rarely that concise.

Thesis is that BBC talent plus experience at CeeFax has driven this efficiency. I've read similar elsewhere for structuring Blog Headlines fo Googlejuice.

But I think we've lost something with all this - I delight in headlines that twist words, or pun, or make allusions rather than those blunt, searchable ones above. "Book Lack in Ongar" springs to mind. I suppose the real skill is making machine readable headlines that still show a bit of flair or wit.

Judging by the talk on Twitter this weekend, you would think that Mexican Swine Flu is going to break out instantaneously, globally and be more deadly than 1918.

An excellent example in real time of how humans are totally crap at assessing risk, putting far more emphasis on Big! Scary! Now!. The media love these sort of things as people react to Scary Stuff by giving it massive attention. The blogosphere, being even less mediated by the media, has had its own pandemic of Swine Flu Fever (see the above graph from TechCrunch).

Lest we forget, c 100 people have died so far in Mexico - a country with a population of 110m people (ie 0.00009%). Over the last few days of this, and a few tens have had it in the Western world, pop c 1bn (ie where its measured) and have not in fact died, as the N1 strain is old and many people have antibodies established.

Conclusion is not therefore "Panic! There is a Pandemic!" but "What is it about Mexico that is killing people with this strain".

But thats not going to sell newspapers and drive blog traffic......

Anyway, over at Broadstuff Towers we have rushed out urgent research on how to avoid the pandemic on Twitter:

(i) Do not associate with people who transmit the Pandemic meme - wash your hands of them and unsub until they are seen to be uninfected

(ii) If you find you are infected by the Twitter Pandemic meme, disconnect immediately from the net, take 2 doctors and call us in the morning.

(iii) If you feel sweaty, and have flu like symptoms, there is a 90% chance you have a cold, a 9% chance you have Man-Flu, a 0.9% chance the heating is turned up too high, a 0.09% chance its all in the mind and 0.009% chance of too much spice in your Tandoori

(iv) Disconnect from this post immediately

By the way, in the same period, over a thousand people will have died of car accidents in these countries (about 1,000 people die daily in car accidents globally ). I can promise you that the Twitter and Blogosphere interest in this is minimal.

Dave Winer wrote an article today on why there will be many Twitters, the gist of the argument is that:

4. I think it's pretty obvious that Twitter is on a trajectory to become one of the major media networks, a Turner, Fox, NBC, Time-Warner, Viacom, Disney. When it's apparent to more of the heads of these companies, they're going to start wondering why their stars are on Twitter and not on their own network.

5. The thought has probably also popped into the heads of the people at Twitter. They will try to make deals with some or all the media companies. They have a lot of power, and should be able to cut good deals. But as the negotiations go forward, it will become apparent to the execs that these guys are competitors. They will consider Make vs Buy. If they're smart, they'll do their deals with Twitter at the same time doing deals to get their own network going.

6. Luckily for the other media companies, users are portable. I'll explain. Say Ashton Kutcher (someone who I had never heard of until he showed up at a tech industry conference last year) decides to cut a deal with a major studio to head a new twitter-like network. Could happen. They'll get their network built, quietly, then start leaking it with teases on billboards of course, but also (you guessed it) on Twitter. When Oprah sees him do his network, she'll want one. And so will Larry King and Shaq, and all the celebs who have yet to make a splash on Twitter. Brad Pitt and Ed Norton will call theirs The Fight Club. George Clooney's will be Oceans Million. Prince will hang out in Paisley Park. And you think Apple won't have one? It might have a 140-char limit, but it won't just be text. ;->

There's a lot of money to be made in these networks and it costs so little to start one. An average Hollywood film costs two or three times as much as all the money Twitter, Inc. has raised so far. Spiderman 3 cost $258 million. That's just one movie. And over time the cost will come way down. That's why I suggested that FriendFeed get a clone ready, now -- so they can do deals with the media companies when they're ready. Which might happen any week now, if it hasn't already happened.

I think he is right to an extent, in that there will be multiple Twitters, but wrong in that there will be many.

Firstly, I'd hypothesize that Twitter is not "media" per se - its closest in architecture to a unified comms (UC) system, that Telcos have had as a holy grail for years. Thus it is a Telco type system, not broadcast, and the public Telcos tend to have very few players in a space after early shakeout (the UK in mobile being a total exception with 6 (un)viable operators, most countries have 3 (or even 2) in declining order of size).

Secondly, Telcos typically have boundaries, either via network reach or licences which allow many (usually national) multi-operator ecosystems to arise. The internet does not, language is probably the first natural limit and then text characters - so the "big get bigger" faster on the 'Net. Twitter is already global.

Thirdly, I'd argue Twitter itself is massively scalable because of the one to one pub/sub architecture. The old Usenet broke down into smaller groups because it was pub/sub at the group (many to one), not individual level. But on Twitter, if you have no interest in say celebrities you just don't follow them. Also this makes it harder to spam which tended to kill earlier many-one architectures.

Fourthly, Twitter;s open API means it is evolving in a "Darwinian" mode for its users as various 3rd parties build on the tools various users want. In fact the reason earlier Telco UC systems (and Pownce, Jaiku and Friendffed) have failed to take off is that they tried to prescribe too much of the user experience - making them complex at first entry, and not work the way users wanted.

Fifthly, Dave is right that its not expensive to start a Twitterclone (we have run up an identi.ca system on an Amazon instance, costs a few hundred pounds in hosting and effort) - but its expensive to run as it scales, especially if you have to fund customer acquisition from competing services. The Slebs are going to migrate to the services with the biggest user base, the people who follow slebs (aka the mainstream) will......follow the slebs. That leaves the other services fighting for the early adopters and some % of the mass market and various niches.

So, if I was to bet, I'd bet on 2-3 major "Twitter" type plays in each language group (where strong national barrriers don't apply) and a number of much smaller niche usage services.

This is not to say that over time no newer services emerges which take over from Twitter, I think thats very likely as this whole area is still in very early stage - just that there is not space for a lot of them at any one time.

The Design Council had an interesting session on Thursday night, Dr Alex King of the Horizon Scanning Centre was looking at the 30 year ahead scenarios for the UK. They use 4 potential scenarios (see above diagram) run along 2 axes of social orientation:

- From Open, Global society to Closed, Nationalist society
- From Highly Individualist to Highly Collectivist society

The Four scenarios thus are:

- Perpetual Motion: Open, High Individual
- Shaken Open: Open, High Collectivist
- Self Service: Closed, Hi Individual
- Protective Collective: Closed, High Collectivist

The UK is in the cross hairs of the diagram and can move in these 4 ways

Perpetual Motion

In this scenario recovery is more rapid owing to high mobility, but it’s a society with low security, high inequality and high social and familial fragmentation. High innovation and tech usage, but unequal deployment of technology. US Model in extremis, Aka the Rational Economist’s dream

Shaken Open

Takes longer to emerge from recession, but is a more equitable society with higher government involvement. Higher unemployment but jobs are more secure. High use of technology but more regulation and lower innovation (European Model)

Self Service

Similar initially to Perpetual Motion, but more protective over local jobs and has reduced inequality. Requires high level of national self sufficiency, especially basics such as energy, food and . Highly innovative, but less technically advanced that Perpetual Motion. (Tory Eurosceptic Wet Dream)

Protective Collective

Like “Shaken Open” but moves to a more nationalistic identity, very protectionist. Lowest level of innovation and technology usage, high state intervention in activities. High equality and security. (Communism 2.0)

What Dr King and his colleagues do is take these scenarios and run public policies through them to see what are highly resilient, ie operate across the maximum number of scenarios. I asked whether thay had:

(i) worked out relative probabilities of these occurring in the UK
(ii) worked out a Nash Equilibrium (ie the state most likely to occur in game theory)

He said no, but later comments on work they've done to date made me suspect they have looked at these issues, and that it is either a bit sensitive or not yet finalised (or both )

Another thing one could do with these scenarios is run the Collapsonomics hypothesis against them.

“Collapsonomics” is a term recently coined to describe the sort of modelling a number of entities at the Tuttle Club (ourselves included) and others (eg Umair Haque) are doing on likely impacts and ways out of The Crunch. (See weblink just set up here) In general terms, the concepts are:

(i) This is going to be worse (deeper, longer) than most conventional Economists think it is (or more likely are prepared to admit publicly, for various reasons).
(ii) “More of the Same” is not the answer, we need to wind up at a new endgame or we hit Peak Water, Peak Crops, Peak Fish, Peak Bee etc
(iii) Use of modern technology will be a key part of the solution

Collapsonomics is coalescing around running scenarios around 5%, 10%, 15% and potentially 20% reductions in national GDP (the UK is at 4.5% reduction officially, probably higher, right now) and looking at the resulting impacts (For what its worth our own work involved what could one do in a scenario where there was a 10% reduction in the amount the UK government had to spend. Of the roughly £600bn they spend annually, a 10% reduction would take out the entire Defence and Local Government budget)

The key point is number (i) above however – the “worse” situation is far more probable than a lot of the “official” stuff – from Govt and Meedja etc – are prepared to admit, but its evident in some of their other actions. In other words it’s the “Elephant in the Room” that is no one mentions (except obliquely, such as here).

The reason the Government cannot admit it is that it has a very large impact and would necessitate hard choices they don’t want to take this side of an election – ie its treated as a “Black Swan” but is actually far more likely than that to occur – what Lloyd Davis coined as a “Black Elephant” event.

Hence this post on “Black Elephant” strategic planning – passing the Collapsonomics thesis through the Government models.

Lets take the 10% reduction in public spending case for example. That’s c £60bn – once upon a time a huge number, now noise of course given our commitment to the banks is 10x that so it may be worse, but….

Anyway, doing things like scrapping new defence spending, or cutting back on local councils, or even not paying MP’s has minimal effect. There are two huge budgets:

- Social Services, in all its ramifications
- Health, ditto.

The interesting thing then is to say assume 10% reduction in Health and Welfare and then run it through the 4 models and see what the possible outcome is:

- The Perpetual Motion model would suggest dismantling state supported services (NHS etc, reduced welfare) and outsourcing/offshoring that what can be done more cheaply elsewhere.

- The Shaken Open model would suggest that at the very least solutions may be worked through at an EU level, maybe a “best of breed” used or shifting resources where they can be well used .

- The “Self Service” model would imply in-country privatisation rather than offshoring, and probably a “Perpetual Motion Lite” approach.

- The Protective Collection Model would probably just degrade existing services without attempting any reforms - and is in my hypothesis of the UK default.

What becomes clear is that none of these outcomes are particularly appealing – thus the Collapsonomc view is that a different approach needs to be used, using new technologies and approaches to “tunnel through the cost base”. The issue if one does not is that it is only possible at best to arrive at local optimal solutions which are not likely to yield stable outcomes.

For example, we know that using networked technologies in government could yield major benefits, but there are major barriers. Ditto, changing the energy usage profile of the country or how and where healthcare is administered would have major impacts

- Reducing energy consumption reduces need for foreign energy and thus realpolitical necessities such as “Petrol Duty” in Iraq as well as reducing pressure on grid costs, nuclear and coal stations and new investment.
- Reducing health cost at from fixing health at “point of illness” and moving it to preventative care, and designing policies that nudge people towards more healthy decisions.

These are just high level thoughts, and there is much that has been – and could still be – done, but “Black Elephant” strategic planning tells us it this is more critical than anyone is officially admitting today, and the risk of not doing it risks muddling our way into some fairly unpleasant places..

At least its clear how it works at Facebook, re Julia Allison who had:

.....a sudden rise in the number of people who list themselves as fans of "Julia Allison" on Facebook. Allison has confessed to what happened: After Allison had a meeting with Randi Zuckerberg, the sister of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg who is now actively promoting the site's celebrity pages, Facebook listed Allison's page on a list of suggested pages for new users.

When we say "sudden rise", we mean from a thousand or so for a Valley Micro-sleb to 18,500 in a few days. This was of course based on a sound business rationale:

At the SXSW Interactive conference in 2007, Allison had posed next to Mark Zuckerberg at a party. Lest a photo of Allison and Mark start circulating, Randi dived into the shot, sticking out her tongue. When Allison and Randi met later, Randi apologized for judging Allison, and they became fast friends. Allison went to Randi's bachelorette party, they appeared in music videos together and threw a joint, bicoastal birthday party.

So now we know. And there we were thinking it was all clearly based on merit, like Twitter still must be. Surely?

Hat tip Milo Yiannapoulos for the main story, which goes on to point out that as well as this, Julia transferred c 2,500 people who had asked to be friends to being fans - and you can't do this yourself, folks. It needs friends in Facebook...like, oh, RandiZ.

Once upon a time a friend was someone you liked and trusted, but in Facebookland its just another word for someone to sell to. Who said it was just bankers that were ethically challenged

A number of what I'd consider the UK's "free-form digerati" were left feeling somewhat unsatisfied after the feedback of the Digital Britain Summit session last week (see here and here for our response ), so we've used this new-fangled social media thing to talk about it - the upshot is that we're organising (in the loosest possible sense of the word) a series of Digital Britain Unconferences. Twitter address is @dbcu09

The idea is that:

Anyone can attend or hold an event and associate it with Digital Britain Unconferences, you’ll just need to summarise your discussions and hold it by 13th May 2009! Yes, time is very tight.

For more details see:
Find an event
Hold an event

More soon!

One request I'd make - the other organisers are too polite to say it, but I will - one of the things that the Digital Britain team has made clear is that they will want feedback that is "positive, concise, based in reality and sent in as soon as possible". That "based in reality" bit (that mainly means economics) puts a responsibility on us all to ensure all of us as attendees are briefed and educated on the subject before attending the unconference - ie come prepared, no numpties please, as that will dilute the hard work of others.