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This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020
Showing posts with label benedict cumberbatch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label benedict cumberbatch. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 6, 2019

The Uncivil War

Books and paintings have been of constant interest for this blog – even music and poems have made an appearance. But I can’t remember a film ever figuring in these columns. It’s not surprising that the first film to make it into the blog is one ……..about Brexit.

Brexit;the uncivil war stars Benedict Cumberbatch (of The Imitation Game fame) and focuses not on the politicians (who figured in such documentaries as Inside Europe: 10 Years of Turmoil – whose three episodes can be seen here) – but on the machinations of the two organisations which ran the respective “in-out” campaigns. Romanian TV showed the film last night - and I was able to download it during the night thanks to zamunda 
And what we see is a vivid example of “outsiders” versus “insiders” – with Cumberbatch playing a not dissimilar role from that in his portrayal in The Imitation Game of the brilliant (if autistic) mathematician Alan Turing who cracked the Enigma code in the second world war. A lot of people were involved in the Enigma process but Turing is the hero of the film – if subsequently one who is disgraced and commits suicide. 
A lot of people were also involved in the UK referendum but the film similarly focuses on the individual brought in in 2015 to head up the Vote Leave campaign - Dominic Cummings (who had been a controversial political adviser to Michael Gove from 2007-2014). As the film makes clear, it was he who made the decision to focus the message on a few points - mainly "cost" and "taking back control" to the exclusion even of immigration as an issue - although this did not stop Farage from concentrating on that......

But the heart of the film deals with the sort of targeting of voters which has only recently become possible in ways few of us understand – although we know it’s something to do with these algorithms
Just a few months before the referendum , Cummings gave a typically truculent performance before the Treasury Select Committee to defend the figures his campaign had publicised as the cost of British membership of the European union.
This appearance coincided with the Cambridge Analytica scandal and, later in 2018, Cummings was invited but refused to appear before the Culture Select Committee to discuss, as the investigation’s ToR put it,
the spread of false, misleading, and persuasive content, and the ways in which malign players, whether automated or human, or both together, distort what is true in order to create influence, to intimidate, to make money, or to influence political elections

Disinformation and Fake News – interim report was the result of the Select Committee’s interesting deliberations….….raising the sort of questions we are beginning to ask about how the commercial world is using social media and algorithms - and trying to give preliminary answers in terms citizens can understand. They are the same issues which Shoshana Zuboff’s brilliant new book Surveillance Capitalism deals with.
The Select Committee’s Final Report was issued just three weeks ago – although the only reason I know is because I bothered to check the Select Committee’s website. OK it’s 100 pages but – like all such reports – it’s written in exceptionally clear language. 
If we have any concern for democracy, this is a subject we need to understand

Cummings may have graduated originally in History (a First from Oxford University) but, to judge from his blog, it appears to be mathematics and grand systems theory which seems to have gripped him more recently. Indeed, in 2013, the Guardian newspaper actually went so far as to give us access to a 237-page “essay” he had made available on his website and to summarise it here.
Shades of Alan Turing indeed!

The Brexit film is actually based on 2 books one of which – “Unleashing Demons” – was written (initially as a diary) by the character played by Rory Bremner but who was, in real life, David Cameron’s Communications Director Craig Oliver. I found a copy this week (for 1 euro) in the great second-hand bookshop in University Square and would have to say that it falls into the category of “quickly forgettable books you pick up at airports” – basically who said and did what when to whom….

The second book - All-out War – the full story of Brexit - which I read last year is a veritable “War and Peace” – at least in its size (700 pages). One of the consequences of its size, however, is that I cannot remember a single thing about the content!

Other resources
Two reviews of the Brexit film are here – and here,
The most thoughtful is this one from a fascinating blog about anthropology and empire written by a Canadian and called Zero Anthropolgy.
One of the key players in the Brexit drama (one of the 2 businessmen who like the politicians are caricatured in the film) has written a good article trying to redress his role here

Brexit – the movie (2016) a propaganda documentary which was viewed by almost 2 million people in the 6 week period before the referendum
Brexit – a very British coup (2016) was a balanced BBC documentary taking us to Referendum Day  

Brexitannia (2017) is a far more thoughtful film of an almost sociological depth based on about 200 in-depth interviews the length and breadth of the country and including commentaries. It’s reviewed here by Zero Anthropology
"Inside Europe - 10 years of turmoil" (2019) the BBC documentary referred to in the opening

A selection from the Cummings blog -