IT won’t take too many prizes for originality but I’ve come up with a new reality TV programme called Information, Information, Information.
It’s a game-show in which a group of busy-body individuals try to work out the identity of a willing ‘celebrity’ by gathering as much information as they can from a series of vague clues. Because I am of a generous disposition, I would allow them to use whatever sources, or questioning they liked. And the sleuth who identifies the ‘victim’, wins.
Information has always represented power – such was the driving philosophy behind the Stasi culture in Eastern Europe. Secure warehouses full of details on every citizen. How did they collect all the stuff? What did they do with it? Not, I’ll wager, to draw up Christmas card lists. Well, all that’s over now, isn’t it! I’ll bet the average citizen – or Islander – is blissfully unaware of just how many contemporary representatives of officialdom have the right to gather information on them with – or without – their permission. And there’s so much of it there for the taking, whether by snooping, consultation, public inquiries, research, surveys.
You name it, it’s all up for grabs.
There’s no question that serious information-gathering is a worthwhile activity, but it’s interesting how simply amassing knowledge has become synonymous with ‘intelligence’. In my book, intelligence is much more about what you do with knowledge rather than purely collecting it. As ‘traditional’ manufacturing jobs have disappeared, we seem to have become hell-bent on devising raft on raft of displacement activity to satisfy a new thirst for research, study or inquiry. Everyday we’re being asked to fill in a response to this survey or that. You can’t buy the smallest item without being asked to complete some sort of questionnaire about how you’re going to use it…
“Would you mind if we sent you information on other products, and, while we’re about it, would you like to comment on the demeanour of the sales person who foisted it on you etc, etc.”
What happens to all this guff?!
Of course, you could say that there’s so much information floating around, that the bloated industry capturing it all and the results it produces have become so undiscriminating as to mean very little.
One day coffee, or chocolate, or red wine is good for you, the next they’re not, because some competing self-serving group has come out with conflicting ‘evidence’. Too often the media swallows all this surveying nonsense as ‘news’.
‘Researchers have discovered…’ – doesn’t your heart sink when you hear those words, usually on a Monday morning radio bulletin, when editorial rigour falls victim to cornflake-time desperation.
I thought I’d heard them all when, on last New Year’s Eve, up came: ‘A survey has shown that more than a million smokers in Britain will try – try, mind you – to quit in the New Year.’ What possible value is there in such speculative information – what’s more, who is paying to obtain it all?
In our own backyard, we’ve just witnessed an unprecedented rash of information gathering and sharing on this, that and everything, all in the name of imagining and democracy.
It’s informed some, allowed others to let off steam, fobbed off a few more, and satisfied those keen to tick the ‘consultation completed’ boxes. The sceptics have, of course, already given their predictable official ‘thumbs-down’ to the process, and will maintain that however much information is exchanged, the consultation process only appears to begin after all the important decisions are already set in stone.
Well that’s as maybe, but you could argue that there’s only so much imagining and consulting that can go on at the same time without blurring effective focus on any one topic. Far be it from me to suggest that this in itself could be a tactical masterplan, but bombarding folk with a superfluity of facts and figures is as effective a smokescreen as withholding vital details.
It’s a technique not unknown where accountability is sensitive. How often is setting up a public inquiry merely the antidote to actually taking effective action? By the time all the information is collated, the cause has either been remedied or forgotten.
Now there’s another side to the coin. The more information is teased out of us individuals, the more obsessed we become with seeking it out ourselves, even when it’s unrealistic to expect an outcome.
What could have been the point of the be-suited yuppie at the Airport a month or so ago aggressively demanding the precise arrival time of the London flight when the place was shrouded in thick fog? We’ve become programmed into expecting information on anything and everything whether relevant or not, simply as a palliative; witness the British Rail announcer informing weary travellers that the late arrival of the expected train is due to the late running of the previous one. Don’t laugh – been there, heard it.
The net result of an unfocused information culture is that quite often really vital nuggets just fall out of the bottom of the bag. Who, I wonder, was taking a nap when the road signs went up lacking sufficient local speed limit information to prevent a sad waste of judicial time and expense prosecuting loophole motorists?
So, back to my game. In Part One, we follow the contestants posing silly questions, sniffing out the clues, revelling in salacious tit-bits before guessing the victim’s identification – purposely not too difficult.
In Part Two, we’ll turn the tables, and reveal a sackfull of information a secret team has been researching about them. Then we’ll indulge in all the normal embarrassing humiliation essential to today’s mass entertainment media.
What fun!
Having ‘facts’ is not the same as answers
IT won’t take too many prizes for originality but I’ve come up with a new reality TV programme called Information, Information, Information.
It’s a game-show in which a group of busy-body individuals try to work out the identity of a willing ‘celebrity’ by gathering as much information as they can from a series of vague clues. Because I am of a generous disposition, I would allow them to use whatever sources, or questioning they liked. And the sleuth who identifies the ‘victim’, wins.
Information has always represented power – such was the driving philosophy behind the Stasi culture in Eastern Europe. Secure warehouses full of details on every citizen. How did they collect all the stuff? What did they do with it? Not, I’ll wager, to draw up Christmas card lists. Well, all that’s over now, isn’t it! I’ll bet the average citizen – or Islander – is blissfully unaware of just how many contemporary representatives of officialdom have the right to gather information on them with – or without – their permission. And there’s so much of it there for the taking, whether by snooping, consultation, public inquiries, research, surveys.
You name it, it’s all up for grabs.
There’s no question that serious information-gathering is a worthwhile activity, but it’s interesting how simply amassing knowledge has become synonymous with ‘intelligence’. In my book, intelligence is much more about what you do with knowledge rather than purely collecting it. As ‘traditional’ manufacturing jobs have disappeared, we seem to have become hell-bent on devising raft on raft of displacement activity to satisfy a new thirst for research, study or inquiry. Everyday we’re being asked to fill in a response to this survey or that. You can’t buy the smallest item without being asked to complete some sort of questionnaire about how you’re going to use it…
“Would you mind if we sent you information on other products, and, while we’re about it, would you like to comment on the demeanour of the sales person who foisted it on you etc, etc.”
What happens to all this guff?!
Of course, you could say that there’s so much information floating around, that the bloated industry capturing it all and the results it produces have become so undiscriminating as to mean very little.
One day coffee, or chocolate, or red wine is good for you, the next they’re not, because some competing self-serving group has come out with conflicting ‘evidence’. Too often the media swallows all this surveying nonsense as ‘news’.
‘Researchers have discovered…’ – doesn’t your heart sink when you hear those words, usually on a Monday morning radio bulletin, when editorial rigour falls victim to cornflake-time desperation.
I thought I’d heard them all when, on last New Year’s Eve, up came: ‘A survey has shown that more than a million smokers in Britain will try – try, mind you – to quit in the New Year.’ What possible value is there in such speculative information – what’s more, who is paying to obtain it all?
In our own backyard, we’ve just witnessed an unprecedented rash of information gathering and sharing on this, that and everything, all in the name of imagining and democracy.
It’s informed some, allowed others to let off steam, fobbed off a few more, and satisfied those keen to tick the ‘consultation completed’ boxes. The sceptics have, of course, already given their predictable official ‘thumbs-down’ to the process, and will maintain that however much information is exchanged, the consultation process only appears to begin after all the important decisions are already set in stone.
Well that’s as maybe, but you could argue that there’s only so much imagining and consulting that can go on at the same time without blurring effective focus on any one topic. Far be it from me to suggest that this in itself could be a tactical masterplan, but bombarding folk with a superfluity of facts and figures is as effective a smokescreen as withholding vital details.
It’s a technique not unknown where accountability is sensitive. How often is setting up a public inquiry merely the antidote to actually taking effective action? By the time all the information is collated, the cause has either been remedied or forgotten.
Now there’s another side to the coin. The more information is teased out of us individuals, the more obsessed we become with seeking it out ourselves, even when it’s unrealistic to expect an outcome.
What could have been the point of the be-suited yuppie at the Airport a month or so ago aggressively demanding the precise arrival time of the London flight when the place was shrouded in thick fog? We’ve become programmed into expecting information on anything and everything whether relevant or not, simply as a palliative; witness the British Rail announcer informing weary travellers that the late arrival of the expected train is due to the late running of the previous one. Don’t laugh – been there, heard it.
The net result of an unfocused information culture is that quite often really vital nuggets just fall out of the bottom of the bag. Who, I wonder, was taking a nap when the road signs went up lacking sufficient local speed limit information to prevent a sad waste of judicial time and expense prosecuting loophole motorists?
So, back to my game. In Part One, we follow the contestants posing silly questions, sniffing out the clues, revelling in salacious tit-bits before guessing the victim’s identification – purposely not too difficult.
In Part Two, we’ll turn the tables, and reveal a sackfull of information a secret team has been researching about them. Then we’ll indulge in all the normal embarrassing humiliation essential to today’s mass entertainment media.
What fun!
Article posted on 21st May, 2008 - 3.00pm