[tommytwotone]

Returning to TV, I think it’s interesting how little online life is actually depicted in drama. Even stories about Silicon Valley are mostly stories about people talking in rooms.

I think it's a weird paradox - that "tech" forms such a bedrock in our day-to-day lives, but the actual core material is pretty boring.

Even the recent C4 "The Undeclared War" - a compelling story, but it was based around developers, computer code and malware.

There's an "MI5 get hacked" plotline in one of these Spooks episodes from 20 years ago, and one of things that hasn't changed is any attempt to talk about the IT side / the mechanics of these things.

It's all just relegated to screens of flashing colours, weird "Matrix" style code snippets, and people randomly guessing passwords!

[TobyD]

Returning to TV, I think it’s interesting how little online life is actually depicted in drama. Even stories about Silicon Valley are mostly stories about people talking in rooms.

I think it's a weird paradox - that "tech" forms such a bedrock in our day-to-day lives, but the actual core material is pretty boring.

Even the recent C4 "The Undeclared War" - a compelling story, but it was based around developers, computer code and malware.

There's an "MI5 get hacked" plotline in one of these Spooks episodes from 20 years ago, and one of things that hasn't changed is any attempt to talk about the IT side / the mechanics of these things.

It's all just relegated to screens of flashing colours, weird "Matrix" style code snippets, and people randomly guessing passwords!

Indeed. Also see the 1980s (I think) movie War Games about a teenager managing to hack the nuclear arsenal

[webbo]

Early Doors is being re-run on BBC4 from tonight. If you’ve not seen it before, it’s a brilliant comedy.

£4:20 for a pint of Guinness and a pint of bitter. Fuck me it’s more than that for a pint of Guinness on its own in my local.

[Oldmanmatt]

I think Sean's got a point. The information revolution has massively affected the way we live our lives, but it's only just begun to affect the physical reality of the country. Obvious changes like internet shopping are just a slow burn on top of catalogues and the death of the high street. And it took the pandemic to really get people working from home en masse, which is only beginning to be reflected in property trends. I think it will though, and along with an explosion in electric cars/ bikes/ scooters will be the obvious things that date today's footage.

The ability to tap almost any knowledge, in the palm of my hand, virtually globally; has revolutionised my personal and professional life beyond recognition. It’s not simply a matter of the Phone, it’s what it connects to.
Even being able to video call the kids at night has changed my day to day, (working a few thousand miles from home), life, dramatically. The fact that I can hold a senior executive position here in Dubai, but only come in to the yard/office for two months and then work out of my home office in the UK for a month and so not up root my entire clan for my career? Unimaginable even 10 years ago. That I spent an hour today with my feet on the dashboard, in the marina, staring at the sea while I edited and approved AutoCad drawings whilst in conversation (WhatsApp video) with a Naval Architect the otherside of the city? That I was feeling “A Bit Sick” yesterday so buggered off home at lunchtime, yet still had a productive Zoom meeting between Dubai, Cayman Islands and a Surveyor in Athens? On my couch?
I held the same position, with the same company, from 2001 to 2008 and the role is incomparably better now. When I first worked overseas in the early 90’s, communication with home was a once a week, if you could find a phone box or writing letters that might or might not get home in a month, if they arrived at all.
No, the internet’s impact is massive. Possibly so pervasive it’s presence becomes background noise and you don’t realise how loud it actually is. Bet if you pulled the plug on it tomorrow, you’d find the silence deafening…

[spidermonkey09]

Early Doors is being re-run on BBC4 from tonight. If you’ve not seen it before, it’s a brilliant comedy.

£4:20 for a pint of Guinness and a pint of bitter. Fuck me it’s more than that for a pint of Guinness on its own in my local.

And that was one of the expensive rounds in the first few episodes!

I'm enjoying it but it hasn't quite lived up to the hype for me yet. Is it a bit of a cult classic cause its set in the north and very little tv was then or something?

[User deactivated.]

Interesting discussion.

My first instinct was to try and refute Sean's claims that phones and tech haven't had as big of an impact as I might have imagined, but after allowing myself to see his side of the argument, it's oddly quite comforting to consider that things aren't changing quite as radically as they might appear. Having younger kids and the sense that everything is accelerating, I sometimes consider the impact that technology might have on their lives, but maybe Sean is right and things aren't so different 

Matt, your position is fairly unique but I can appreciate how things must be very different for you. Since the pandemic, i've been working from home full time and it's been one of the best things that's happened to my day-to-day life.

[Oldmanmatt]

Interesting discussion.

My first instinct was to try and refute Sean's claims that phones and tech haven't had as big of an impact as I might have imagined, but after allowing myself to see his side of the argument, it's oddly quite comforting to consider that things aren't changing quite as radically as they might appear. Having younger kids and the sense that everything is accelerating, I sometimes consider the impact that technology might have on their lives, but maybe Sean is right and things aren't so different 

Matt, your position is fairly unique but I can appreciate how things must be very different for you. Since the pandemic, i've been working from home full time and it's been one of the best things that's happened to my day-to-day life.

Actually, that’s another point. Social media. Having four teenagers, I have had serious, multiple, incidents with all four; centring around social media use; with a particularly bad period over the last two months, curtesy of my 17 year old, vodka, a sixth form common room and numerous zoom meetings with “concerned” Heads of year and College (reaching it’s climax the week before her Mocks). Imagine trying to deal with that from Dubai 20 years ago? Not that the daft cow could have posted the evidence on Insta 20 years ago…
Anyway, possibly us old farts don’t appreciate quite how different their world is. I mean, we’re still posting on forums like this…

[User deactivated.]

The solution might have been novel, but idiotic* 17 year olds and vodka have probably been a familiar combination since the dawn of time!

* All 17 year olds are idiots (and should be), not just yours!

[Johnny Brown]

Matt, what I wrote was: The information revolution has massively affected the way we live our lives, but it's only just begun to affect the physical reality of the country.

So we're in total agreement, we even used the same adjective - massive.

I stand by the statement that the physical reality - by which I mean the mostly built infrastructure of the country you see around you, and the uses to which it is put - hasn't been obviously affected much. Yet. I think that was Sean's point too.

[seankenny]

Matt - I totally get your point but the question is: is this happening on the margin or is it now super widespread? And even if it is, my point is about the pace of change as compared to other eras. A set of innovations that allow some people to work remotely and that has taken nearly fifteen to come to fruition (I first did a day a week WFH back in 2007 but my boss was pretty forward thinking) is not as impactful as the changes that led to say women’s mass entry into the workforce and the huge cultural impact this had (hey this is a TV thread right?). And at the same time people were dealing with deindustrialisation, globalisation, hugely expanding consumer technologies, etc etc. The breadth of change was greater in previous eras than now, whereas today we’ve seen an expansion of one area but not so much in others. Matt might compare his situation to the early 90s but that is 30 years ago. Compare that time period to 1960 to 1990 or 1950 to 1920. Those were the real eras of massive change. In 1914 armies still used horses, in 1945 - just 31 years later - there were nukes…

[andy popp]

Some of the history in Sean's original post was kind of wrong (rise of suburbs, diffusion of domestic appliances  ) but the bigger point about overestimating the scale and speed of change, esp. technological change, in our own age is well made. This is a tendency common to pretty much all eras. The final decades of the C19th and the first decades of C20th saw the internal combustion engine (and subsequently the car), workable electric motors, the electrification of the home, the telephone, massive advances in applied chemistry and pharmaceuticals, leading to reams of new materials and new medical treatments, powered flight, and the first radio broadcast. Telegraphy was effectively a global system by 1870. Much of this - not least automobiles, flight, and artificial materials - remain central to our lives, and yet we barely notice them and (naturally) find it hard to imagine how revolutionary they felt at the time. 

Perhaps I'm talking about a five decade span, but it's worth remembering that the computer age is significantly longer than that now, and the internet is several decades old already. Particularly puzzling for economists is the sluggish productivity growth seen across advanced economies in recent decades, despite the revolutionary promises of ICT, automation, and now AI.

[Oldmanmatt]

Matt - I totally get your point but the question is: is this happening on the margin or is it now super widespread? And even if it is, my point is about the pace of change as compared to other eras. A set of innovations that allow some people to work remotely and that has taken nearly fifteen to come to fruition (I first did a day a week WFH back in 2007 but my boss was pretty forward thinking) is not as impactful as the changes that led to say women’s mass entry into the workforce and the huge cultural impact this had (hey this is a TV thread right?). And at the same time people were dealing with deindustrialisation, globalisation, hugely expanding consumer technologies, etc etc. The breadth of change was greater in previous eras than now, whereas today we’ve seen an expansion of one area but not so much in others. Matt might compare his situation to the early 90s but that is 30 years ago. Compare that time period to 1960 to 1990 or 1950 to 1920. Those were the real eras of massive change.

I don’t exactly disagree, nor doI fully agree. I very much take your point though. I would suggest that it is a UK/Western Europe view, though. The leap that has occurred in this region, socially, economically and technologically; from second arrival here (1999/2000, already greatly advanced from when I first came out in ‘92) and my latest stint, is truly mind boggling. That is equally true for most points to my East all the way to the Pacific ring. When female emancipation has occurred here, it’s largely as a result of that information explosion, for instance. The early stages of that explosion had drastic implications for many of the world most conservative regimes. In the West, we’ve almost forgotten the Arab Spring.
I’d posit that Western culture might have slowed it’s rate of change, having peaked early, but globally? You would think 50 years had passed in the 15 I was away.
I also think the events of and leading up to, 2016, retarded the pace of change in the UK, socially and economically and I think that colours your view.

Regarding the “uniqueness” of my position. True, for a given value of true.
However, ultimately I’m the son of bog standard Police Constable and a jobbing Landscape artist, from a very small village in Cornwall, who never went to Uni (except much later to do Post Grad Dips, remotely, on the internet, between 2000 and 2008).
Of the 28 apprentices that Passed out of the Royal Navy School of Engineering (still two units short of an HND)  together in the summer of 1992, three of us now live here in Dubai. One is the Deputy Superintendent for DP World/P&O shipping, one is the Director of Desalination and Fresh Water services for the NEOM project in Saudi (he works two weeks on (in Saudi), one off (in Dubai)). We’re joined every couple of months or so by another classmate, who is now the Global Director of Services for the Financial Times. None of us went to Uni. All of us come from very humble, working class, backgrounds. Something I do not believe would have been possible for my parents generation. I kinda suspect that trying to pinpoint the “most influential” single change, amongst the myriad of radical upheavals in the post war era, is a bit like a blind man with Parkinson’s disease, playing Jenga. Try and pull any one block out and claim it’s the one and the whole thing tumbles.*

*actually, to clarify my analogy, I meant it doesn’t matter which block you pull.

[seankenny]

Professional historian has entered the chat! Andy - I’m sure my grasp on the details is shaky, in my head the rise in consumer appliances was a post WW1 to the 70s thing but it’s clearly more complex than that. I’m not sure I ever mentioned suburbs tho! I was almost going to mention the telegraph as the technology that changed communication speeds by many orders of magnitude.

From an economist’s point of view (which I was trying to avoid stating explicitly, sorry guys) the impact of technology in the labour market starts in the late 70s - college graduates earnings increase - but in broader productivity stats we don’t see much of an impact. Naturally, there are many theories.

Matt - I’m completely aware of the huge changes across Asia in the last 25 years, and yes, they are massive. But fundamentally it is catch up and the adaptation of already existing ideas and technology in places that were really poor to start with.

As for your point about inter-generational advancement, that was absolutely a thing in the 50s-60s too, which is my parents’ generation. I’m not really pinpointing a single change, in fact the opposite - to point out the changes from IT is to ignore the relative degree of continuity that has occurred elsewhere. Computers make air travel cheaper and safer, but flying as a mass thing has been around since the late 60s.

[Oldmanmatt]

Professional historian has entered the chat! Andy - I’m sure my grasp on the details is shaky, in my head the rise in consumer appliances was a post WW1 to the 70s thing but it’s clearly more complex than that. I’m not sure I ever mentioned suburbs tho! I was almost going to mention the telegraph as the technology that changed communication speeds by many orders of magnitude.

From an economist’s point of view (which I was trying to avoid stating explicitly, sorry guys) the impact of technology in the labour market starts in the late 70s - college graduates earnings increase - but in broader productivity stats we don’t see much of an impact. Naturally, there are many theories.

Matt - I’m completely aware of the huge changes across Asia in the last 25 years, and yes, they are massive. But fundamentally it is catch up and the adaptation of already existing ideas and technology in places that were really poor to start with.

As for your point about inter-generational advancement, that was absolutely a thing in the 50s-60s too, which is my parents’ generation. I’m not really pinpointing a single change, in fact the opposite - to point out the changes from IT is to ignore the relative degree of continuity that has occurred elsewhere. Computers make air travel cheaper and safer, but flying as a mass thing has been around since the late 60s.

Ok then, let me bolster some of your argument, and slightly undermine my own, whilst simultaneously illustrating the fundamental interconectedness of all things and that technology is a massive driver of all this shit…
The racial and gender emancipation of the late 20th century, might be the “most” important single development in modern human history. Prior to that, the human race was only running on a fraction of it’s collective brain power.

But, Computers have made a huge difference…

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2118526-when-computers-were-human-the-black-women-behind-nasas-success/

[webbo]

Early Doors is being re-run on BBC4 from tonight. If you’ve not seen it before, it’s a brilliant comedy.

£4:20 for a pint of Guinness and a pint of bitter. Fuck me it’s more than that for a pint of Guinness on its own in my local.

And that was one of the expensive rounds in the first few episodes!

I'm enjoying it but it hasn't quite lived up to the hype for me yet. Is it a bit of a cult classic cause its set in the north and very little tv was then or something?

It was more that the characters were exaggerated of versions people you saw in the pub, at work and the like. But not usually all in the same place at the same time.

[Oldmanmatt]

Phones and information technology stand out to us because they are one of the few massive changes in consumer technology in the last two decades. Whereas in 1960 in the U.K. fridges are relatively rare, by 1980 practically everyone has one. The 747 arrives in the very early 1970s and transforms air travel. Supermarkets start to change the high street at around the same time. Consumer electronics make a massive leap forward. Car ownership rates in the 70s soar. And fashion changed really rapidly, far more so than today.

I get your point on racist and homophobic entertainment but do we consider the norm or the cutting edge? The cutting edge in the late 60s was decriminalising homosexuality, whereas I certainly remember that by the late 80s us right on and politically correct teenagers were well against homophobia - probably at least in part to a diet of alternative comedy- even though society as a whole had much more regressive attitudes in general. (I’m not trying to show off here, it’s not as if I actually knew any gay people!)

As I was driving home, something about this and (what I perceive to be your overall position) struck me and at the risk of building a huge straw man…

I couldn’t understand how you could argue that the “pace of change” had slowed, because I feel that the UK (in particular) has changed out of all recognition within the last decade or so. That it continues to change at an alarming rate. On a normal day, I’d say it was going to hell in a handcart. If I am feeling particularly vexatious, then it’s falling like a lead ballon, in a vacuum chamber on a planet with 2X earth standard gravity.

Perhaps it’s not the rate but the direction of change, which has changed (like the lack of change you get from a tenner when you buy a pint).

Is it, perhaps, that what you mean is “progress”, rather than “change”?

Because, if so, fucking too right mate.

[seankenny]

I’ve made the argument on the politics thread - or rather, linked to others’ arguments which I agree with - that we are in the middle of a very unusual period of stagnation. And in some cases, a retardation - particularly in incomes growth and clearly in the health service and other social services. So yes, there it’s very much a lack of progress. And yeah, it’s really dramatic and noticeable.

But in terms of the technological and material basis of our lives I really do mean just straightforward change. In 1965 my mum emigrated to Canada by boat. In 1969 she flew back to the U.K. to get married to my dad. I have never met anyone who has travelled to North America by boat after the mid 60s (cruises and sailing excepted as there the journey is the thing), despite sailing across the Atlantic being relatively normal for a very long time before. That’s just a massive straightforward change in behaviour and the 20th century was full of them. The 21st not so much, so far.

[SA Chris]

When we emigrated to South Africa in 1975 we went by boat, on the Windsor Castle part of the Union Castle line. Does that count?

[seankenny]

It’s a new data point! A bit surprising but it stopped in 1977; no one said the future had to arrive at the same time everywhere. Bet it was a cool trip.

[SA Chris]

I was 6, it was all a bit nuts. Seems quite surreal looking back, basking sharks, flying fish, quoits on the deck, going up Table Mountain in the same cable car you see in Endless Summer, the Coelacanth in the Museum in East London. But also first seeing a "whites only" sign and not really understanding what it was about. Then the 1976 Soweto Riots, and beginning to understand.

[duncan]

Fight the Power: How Hip-Hop Changed the World. A four-part history of Black American Hip-Hop.

Chuck D is the main narrator and one of the producers so there is a strong emphasises the social and political background to the music, it could equally have been sub-titled How the World Changed Hip Hop. In the first and last chapters, the background is the foreground, the middle two have more emphasis on the music. The first episode is the story of Black New York in the 1960s and 1970s, Rap is hardly mentioned until the last 5 minutes when The Message explodes from the speakers. What sounded revolutionary from my perspective at the time now seems inevitable given the where and when it was created. The other episodes continue this mix addressing the two-way street between the music and politics: the wars on drugs and crime, moral panic about 'gangster rap', embracing/being embraced by big businesses, Obama 'the first Hip-Hop president', and Black Lives Matter. It's US-centric, the worldwide spread of Hip-Hop is not even mentioned, and the talking heads are mostly of a certain vintage and seem more in tune with with 80s and 90s music. Should appeal to the ukb demographic!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0dj70yd/fight-the-power-how-hip-hop-changed-the-world-series-1-1-the-foundation

[TobyD]

Really enjoyed the first three episodes of Snowpiercer on Netflix. Looking forward to getting the rest watched over the Christmas period.

Did you persist with Snowpiercer? (The Netflix series, not the movie) I just started watching it, seems ok so far but not absolutely blown away by it. Does it improve/ deteriorate?
It seems to have the same obsession with inequality that you see in Parasite, Bong Joon Ho seems to do that a lot.

[galpinos]

Really enjoyed the first three episodes of Snowpiercer on Netflix. Looking forward to getting the rest watched over the Christmas period.

Did you persist with Snowpiercer? (The Netflix series, not the movie) I just started watching it, seems ok so far but not absolutely blown away by it. Does it improve/ deteriorate?
It seems to have the same obsession with inequality that you see in Parasite, Bong Joon Ho seems to do that a lot.

Persevered with Season 1, Season 2 gets worse. Gave up.

[TobyD]

Really enjoyed the first three episodes of Snowpiercer on Netflix. Looking forward to getting the rest watched over the Christmas period.

Did you persist with Snowpiercer? (The Netflix series, not the movie) I just started watching it, seems ok so far but not absolutely blown away by it. Does it improve/ deteriorate?
It seems to have the same obsession with inequality that you see in Parasite, Bong Joon Ho seems to do that a lot.

Persevered with Season 1, Season 2 gets worse. Gave up.

Thanks, I've watched a few episodes but it's not really grabbing me. I'll probably bin it and watch something else. It is a shame, it seems like it ought to be really good but it just isn't somehow.

[Steve R]

Sorry to extend the off topic (interesting) tangent but can anyone (Sean?) recommend any books or articles discussing these ideas of stagnation?  Interested to learn more as the consensus from within the bubble I read is more or less the opposite - humanity is on a progress curve which will see unimaginable positive change or collapse within this century.  My own pet theory for why we might see progress locally slowing in developed economies/countries is due to too many laws/over-regulation, risk aversion and total obsession with ensuring physical safety at any cost with the upshot that innovation in most areas is completely hamstrung and we just generally can't get anything done, especially anything 'real world'.  New paradigm required to break through the glass ceiling? The only places left with little regulation (likely under-regulated in fact!) are the ones which appear to have relative lightspeed progress.  eg. AI, tech, online and, to a lesser extent, some finance.  This 'theory' comes from a place of high ignorance and therefore low conviction!       

Back on topic....I really enjoyed Tokyo Vice.  Found the Gai-Jin characters slightly irritating a lot of the time but thought loads of the Japanese actors and characters were interesting, memorable and great to watch.  Also enjoyed the Japanese interiors.

Watched first episode of The Last of Us.  Seemed like solid entertaining garbage, will carry on with that.