Where did the ‘WHOOOO-EEEE!’ come from?

Where did the ‘whooo-oo’ get it’s mojo and when did applause become overtaken by mass braying and the organized shrieking of many?

We have all been part of a restive crowd, just waiting for the speeches to finish so that the serious partying can begin. The speaker concludes, the crowd reacts with enthusiasm and a wild ‘Whoooo-heeeee-whoooo’ fills the room.

What used to be a generous round of applause has been replaced by a shrill whistle of acclaim, so obviously it was not always this way. When it did it become acceptable to shout and whoop and holler? When did official engagements and Prime Ministerial announcements become blessed by what sounds like a jet turbine running up to full power? When did insignificant things get the same treatment?

I could ask the Internet, because you can find out anything on the internet. But do I trust it? Or I could resort to memory, and I sure as hell know my memory is faulty. Or I could ask around, or even just plough ahead with what I can see resembles nothing so much as a curmudgeonly grumble.

I suspect I became aware of the ‘whooo-hooo’ in about 1998 or 1999. Thereabouts. At the time I was probably attending four or five official events per week and of those at least two a week were ‘launches’, that peculiar species of self-congratulatory event organized by a PR company to make an ordinary announcement seem like the most exciting thing since. Sliced bread. The last launch. Never. [I’m just listing possibilities here; these events are never interesting].

‘And the winner of the 2015 Award for Cradle Dancing Serbian Style is… ‘

Whooooo-heeeee!

‘So I’d like to officially declare the government’s new non-soggy ticketing solution now open…’

Whoooooo-for-oooooooooo!

You know the sort of crap I’m talking about. The launch of the East-West upside down North South Metro link, which only cost a gazillion dollars and will solve all our existing transport woes.

I blame the PR agents, whose job it is at such events to mingle in the crowd and then raise hullaballoo at the appropriate moment. Actually, I blame us all, for going along with such tripe for years until it became more than ritual. A thing: a birth, death or marriage wasn’t considered properly celebrated until the banshee sirens had sung their song.

I wish, like the screaming jets – oh, so that’s where they got their name from – the ‘whooo-eeee’ would disappear into the sunset and let us celebrate an announcement in the way we saw fit. Or not.

 

The Meaning of Life, and Extinction

Now that is a pretty big title, and I sure don’t have all the answers. Yet it is a pretty big topic to come to grips with and this essay is rather long, so bear with if you can.

In the 19^th Century the solemn and bewhiskered German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

Arthur Schopenhaur, big whiskers and big intellect

This is a prescription for science: a theory is advanced as hypothesis, and then reviewed and criticised. It is then examined, and tested, and the evidence assessed. Usually the original idea undergoes modification as the evidence is added to the picture and our understanding becomes a little clearer. Finally, as the facts come to light, we see a bigger picture, a well illustrated portrait in which all the disparate information which has been gathered – and debated – forms a picture which can reasonably be interpreted one way. The picture, as it were, has become clear.

Climate change. There; the two words are out of the bag, to be considered in light of Schopenhauer’s dictum.

‘You cannot make link such a broad claim to an idea as scientifically vague as climate change!’ shout the many who cannot grasp the nature of the argument. I believe I can, with just a few solid examples.

When I was growing up in Australia through the 1960s and 1970s it seemed acceptable to mock the hippies and the fringe dwellers of society, especially when they advanced weird notions about climate change, water conservation, alternative energy sources and building houses out of straw bales. Hippies were smelly long-haired, and had odd ideas. And yet, over the intervening fifty years they’ve been proven right time and again.

In 1961 James Lovelock published his groundbreaking treatise ‘On Gaia’, the first time since the ancient Greeks that someone had seriously suggested our world was a complex and dynamic ecosystem, an entity rather than merely a collection of parts. We are now some way toward understanding what he meant: we cannot overwhelm or destroy any one part of our planet without the effects being felt globally. As small rise in air temperature can affect seasonal variations, which in turn affects shallow ocean currents, which has its effect upon biotic communities (eg the Great Barrier Reef) and so on.

Planet earth, a Gaian perspective

One year later in 1962 the American scholar Rachel Carson published her treatise on pesticides and the poisoning of the environment through groundwater contamination, ‘Silent Spring’. The books impact upon farming practises and the widespread use of chemicals cannot be overstated. When we consider the current debates over the dangers of coal seam gas in the Hunter Valley, can we afford to not believe?

Silent Spring, 1962

It used to be understood that dinosaurs were sluggish and dim ancestors of our current reptiles, big and menacing, to be sure. A nod of the sweat-stained cowboy hat to Robert T Bakker, yet another of those long-haired smelly idealists, for his tireless quest for truth. These days, you’d be hard pressed to find a serious scientist who does not understand the dinosaurs were warm blooded and active, populating a world which they dominated for 140 million years, and a great deal more in control of their environment than was thought: they didn’t simply eat their way into extinction.

Extinction, there’s the word we were rushing towards all along. Five massive extinction events in earth’s history so far and the sixth is on the way. Actually, wind back on that idea, we are in the midst of it right now, we just cannot calculate the scope and scale. That’s correct, the sixth major extinction event in earth’s history is here and now.

The sheer enormity of the issue dwarfs the senses; and it seems certain that is the major reason for inactivity. Our leaders in whom we invest a degree of trust are bound by inertia, so a call for change is doomed. Politicians think of the next election, they think in terms of a 20c rise in the price of fuel, or the provision of roads, of foodstuffs etc. They do not – generally thinking – consider the future, their use-by date has long passed by the time their descendants have a chance to vote or to judge their performance.

As a sentient species we have an obligation to our world and the other species upon it. I realise this is an emotive and wishy-washy argument, so let’s look at it from a more pragmatic viewpoint. Every species we plunge into extinction might have held the key to our survival. Medical science spends millions of dollars every years seeking a cure for cancer; they test and synthesise chemicals from plants, the greatest concentration and diversity being in the equatorial rainforests (quinine, aspirin, vinblastine).

This we know. What should concern us it what we don’t know, and will never discover. An extinct species is a chance lost, a lost chance to discover a miracle cure or a food source which might alleviate suffering and starvation.

It’s a curious fact, but we do not know to within an order of magnitude how many species we share the planet with. It might be five million, it might be fifty million, we simply do not know. Therefore, to extend the point, we do not know what we are wiping out. Yet we are wiping them out. Even in recorded history and looking at the bigger vertebrates – thus more visible and – to us – more interesting species – we note the passing of the Moa, the Passenger Pigeon, the Dodo (hence of course the sobriquet ‘as dead as the Dodo’), the Thylacine, the Irish Elk, the Lesser Stick Nest Rat, the Bali Tiger, the Javan Tiger, the Caspian Tiger and many hundreds of others.

Now link this destruction to the issue of time: most of these extinctions have been in the last 1000 years. If we concede this massacre rate we might have pretty much cleaned the planet’s surface in 10,000 years, providing we’re here to see it. And the point is that 10,000 years is a mere blink of the eye, an absolute deluge of destruction in terms of life’s cycle. Remember that the earth is roughly 4.6 billion years old and the earliest life forms we know of date back to about 3.5 billion years. The numbers are inconceivable to us, but they are scientifically accurate. More to the point, we cannot know the full consequences of our actions, we can but guess.

So it’s more than feasible to suggest that within that blink of an eye we – the most intelligent species of them all – might have made our home uninhabitable. We will have quite literally shit in our own nest.

Will we be here to see it? Statistically speaking it’s highly unlikely; it is calculated that 99.9% of all species which ever existed have passed into extinction in that 3.5 billion year span. So, speaking as an interested observer, it’s just the nature of things and there’s nothing to fear, it’s just that as a species we seem to be doing everything in our power to hasten our end. But take heart, it’s not going to happen next year.

Cecil, the black maned lion

As I was preparing this essay I began following news of the horrifically compelling case of Cecil the lion, killed by a ‘game’ hunter from the US who paid $50,000 for his pleasure and got a lot more than he bargained for. Public opinion has passed sentence on the Minnesotan dentist, so let this observation try to add a little understanding. Cecil was lured from the Hwange National Park to where he could be legally ‘hunted’ (spotlighted and staged for execution) by professional hunters who cared more for the fee and return business than they cared for the lion or for the illegality of their act. Their ‘crime’ was in getting caught, in part by the GPS collar that the animal wore, and which they attempted to destroy.

Cecil the black-maned lion was worth far more alive than dead. As a much admired drawcard for the game reserve, his earning potential over the next 20 years would have far exceeded the dentist’s blood money. The argument that controlled (and paid for) big game hunting is a legitimate and reasonable husbanding of resources for the greater ecological good is laid bare as the lie it always was; in a welter of blood, a severed trophy head and a discarded body. The idea of responsible killing for profit and for the greater good overlooks the sheer stupidity and greed of the act which is completely antithetical to the concept of ‘responsible’.

It is estimated that there are less than 30,000 lions left across Africa; whole subspecies such as the Barbary Lion have been wiped out, and this most iconic of predators stands at the gate of extinction. It is conceivable that in the next 20 years the wild lion will be completely extirpated from Africa.

And for Homo sapiens sapiens? How can a species as successful at adaptation and as numerous as we become extinct? Simply by destroying all around us and changing the environment into an uninhabitable wasteland. Our seconds-to-midnight clock is already ticking.

Want to read a little more? Though it was published very nearly 20 years ago  ‘The Sixth Extinction’ by Richard Leakey & Roger Lewin (1996) is an excellent and powerfully reasoned book. Nor is it too long or too complex for the layperson.

Let’s find a positive

Right with you on that one, chief!!

As soon as I can find a positive good news story which doesn’t cite Caitlin Jenner as a role model for women I’ll be all over it.

It seems to me that the negative attracts the negative, and that which attracts the quickest and most frequent comments is that which can be readily criticised. It’s an endemic aspect of blogging, as I think I noted earlier. It is easy to take a contrary point of view, and there is nothing wrong with questioning everything, with developing a capable degree of cynicism. Since I concern myself primarily with media, politics, power and science, there is much to be critical of: climate change and the lack of real effort, renewable power initiatives and the lack of real development, the global economy and lack of real change, simple and clear media directives and the inability to tell a story simply and effectively, and so forth.

And yet, it stands to reason that there must be a balance. There must be good news stories which genuinely excite the admiration and stir the senses, and which do not involve weight loss pills or celebrities being paid to ‘achieve’.

Pluto. an official NASA photo taken at 476,000 miles from the planet’s surface.

It may well be that the pinnacle of achievement this year involves the incredible work and dedication over the past decade or so of the team at NASA who have managed to take an unmanned spacecraft billions of years into our solar system and visit the planet formerly known as Pluto. A little more research on my part is called for – I concede my knowledge of deep space and astronomy stops at the front door – but even when watching some of the news coverage I thought I detected a whiff of nerd-dom about the presentations. ‘Hey! Look at what these science geeks have gone and done!’

I hope not. I hope it was just me and their talents have been celebrated for such a stupendous achievement.

On aphorisms & sport

It’s unfortunate, I suppose, but most aphorisms need to be taken with a pinch of salt. The following cannot, as far as I know, be attributed to Hippocrates, but since he started the ball rolling he’s going to have to take some of the blame.

A watched pot never boils – well, yes they do, they just take longer.
You get the leaders you deserve – why is it I never seem to be voting for the right ‘team’ then, and how can I reconcile that with the fact they lie – blatantly misrepresent themselves – in order to be elected and then reveal their intentions?
Don’t blame the dog, blame the owner – it’s a fair point, but when the dog next door barks from 8.30am to 4.00pm continually because the family aren’t home I tend to hold them all accountable, the dog included.

Aphorisms probably aren’t worth the time taken to write them, yet we all use them as often as we resort to cliché to express a point of view we feel is in the majority. It’s a form of verbal simplicity designed to appeal to the common consensus by using a commonly used phrase. The easy lure of familiarity, in other words.

Ah, cliché. You pearl of wisdom amongst the swine.

Which is why I tend to be most suspicious of those who trot them out so easily –sports persons whose career leads them into media commentary. Having spent the years as an active player and identity, they’re well trained to exercise the acumen they possess in dealing with the dreaded post-match interview. In Australia it usually begins with a predictably dumb question and an even worse answer: “Yeah, nah” is often the opening gambit.

See the cartoon below, it’s difficult to add anything more succinct.

Thus we get to the notion that such an interviewee might make an expert commentator. I think the proof lives through example; on radio and on television we’ve suffered through years of barely inarticulate ‘former athletes’ attempting to articulate that which they could not whilst they were ‘stars’ or players. Equally vexing is the need to employ those who are barely intelligible. For years football lovers had to sit through the slurred phrases and mangled metaphors of ‘KG’, the king of the undisguised lisp. I’m not calling for BBC-like clarity here, merely the chance to hear and understand simple concepts well explained. Apparently that’s too much to ask.

Who decided sports stars made the best commentators? That they suddenly had something of worth to say, having spent their time in the professional ranks dealing in platitudes? How can a badly fitting suit or a logo embroidered blazer and a more conservative haircut add to erudition? And can a leopard change its spots?

The Wonderful Life of Hallucigenia

Say hello to Hallucigenia.

Hallucigenia was a weird little creature who lived and died in the Cambrian period, about 560 million years ago. The fossil Hallucigenia, first discovered over 100 years ago, did not have a head. Nor did subsequent finds. Now, Dr Martin Smith of Cambridge University has reunited Hallucigenia with its head, enabling a fuller reconstruction of what this amazing little creature might have looked like.

Hallucigenia. from Nature Magazine

On the face of it, this is one of those curious ‘popular science’ stories which may interest less than 1% of the BBC website’s visitors, and be read by less than 1% of those. Which explains (and I hope I’m not tarring the BBC with the same brush here) why publishers who are trying to save money through downsizing seem to take aim at their ‘specialist’ reporters first. I read, anecdotally, that science and religious affairs reporters are commonly first in the firing line. Strange bedfellows, indeed.

In this piece by science writer Rebecca Morelle, it appears a classic case of reporting the facts, and just the facts. But of course, the unearthing of Hallucigenia has been anything but an easy ride through the facts; from a fossil wrongly identified and described, to being placed upside down with spines viewed as leg appendages, and now being given its head.

What should be unmasked in this tale is the story of the fossils from the Burgess Shale. The Canadian Rockies quarry near the town of Burgess revealed a menagerie of weird and wonderful specimens… Opabinia, Marella, Yohoia, Aysheaia…

There is considerable debate as to how to classify these incredible creatures, but in his book ‘Wonderful Life’ the American paleontologist Steven Jay Gould supported the idea that they were so far from the ‘plan’ of modern organisms that many of them deserved to be considered discrete phyla. Gould’s theme, writ large, was of random selection, a mere whim of nature leading – some 550 million years (and at least four other mass extinctions) later – to the evolution of the human race. Gould knew a thing or two; he was so famous he made it on to ‘The Simpsons’.

for fame and fortune… Steven Jay Gould on The Simpsons

In simple terms, humans belong to the phylum chordata (we have a vertebrate). So too are birds, fish, camels, and weasels. Other phyla include the worms (Annelida) and the bivalve shells (Mollusca) and so on. Back in the Cambrian, before the mass extinction which wiped out 90% of the species of the time, Gould postulates, there was an even chance that our ancestors would not make it through the selection process.

Life’s lottery, as he termed it, could been drawn very, very differently indeed. And what sort of a world would we have then? A world without humans, is the simple answer.

I suspect I’ll pick up on a theme or two from this because science writers are important, dammit. Increasingly so.

Earlier this week it was reported we – the world – and every species on it, are on the slippery slopes of the sixth extinction event. Now. There’s more to say on this than the politician’s ‘hrrmph’.

On Bribery & People [Smugglers]

Did anyone else notice that Prime Minister Tony Abbott did eventually admit – by extension – that his government had paid bribes to Indonesian fishermen (that’s people smugglers, actually) to turn around?

Prime Minister Tony Abbott [official study]

When asked about payments he suggested the Labor Party had been caught in their own trap, claiming “they got caught doing it too”. Speaking to the NSW Liberal Party last week, he switched focus to Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s bad week while making the claims. Now that, to me, sounds like an admission, so what needs to be answered is, ‘What sort of an admission is it?’

A qualified ‘they did it before we did it’? An unqualified ‘We’ll do whatever it takes’ or an uneasy ‘All political parties are not to be trusted when it comes to matters of national security’? We may never know because the government refuses to discuss ‘operational matters’, a catch-all description which seems to be used to cover as many acts and issues as the very sensitive question of ‘National security’.

So that’s okay then. We can take the Prime Minister at his word because this government has never sought to mislead the Australian people before. We can take comfort from the fact that bribery is illegal, but because it was committed by an unidentified and unnamed official who acted under the cloak of indemnity, it’s okay. As with the US for its armed forces serving overseas, Australia has adopted an indemnity from prosecution act.

We can accept this, because we’re told by the same government who will not confirm any details (operational security), the same government who might be turning boats around in our name, and the same government who sends people to offshore detention.

In which case, it seems to me, the allegation is serious enough that it should be tested in the courts to see if the claim to indemnity stands up. Or aren’t lies and bribes considered important enough to this same government to whom sovereignty seems to mean so much?

An update is required; it seems the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ noticed… so have a look at this wonderful parody by Denis Carnahan.

On Bloggers

It seems pretty clear to me that I like some order in my life; I like to characterise and organise things to a certain degree. At the same time, I am aware many men take this to absurd lengths, becoming slaves to OCD in their attention to detail and to collecting.

Men, probably more than women, seek order; when it comes to their role as collectors, even more so. Often I see men whose collection (of guns, of chess sets, of car manufacturer badges, anything…) is described as ‘the largest’ or ‘the best’ or ‘the biggest’. Truly, we men seem to be hoarders. And hoarders, the evidence seems to suggest, need to acquire.

Bearing in mind the propensity to order these aspects of our lives (while happily dumping dirty clothes in any corner of the house), I offer the following unscientific ordering of bloggers as I see it. Roughly, I argue, they fall into three main categories:

The Spotter (includes the Collector) – who sees and shares with an online community his interest in a specific topic or collection. Whatever your interest, there will be a Spotter out there who has an example of that which you seek, and will have posted it.

The Helper – whose trove of knowledge on a specific topic is there to be queried and used, providing homage is paid. Homage is usually acknowledgement that The Helpers’ knowledge is greater than one’s own. The Spotter and The Helper are closely related, and a Spotter may also be a Helper but it is rarely the other way around.

The Ranter – a much more generalized concept in the blogosphere, and ever so much more common, such individuals seek a platform to espouse their views on anything which strikes them as odd, as worthy of comment, as an affront to their own value system. It’s such a simple and broad definition that almost anyone can play this online equivalent of forests and trees. If a man rants in the forest and there is no-one there to hear him, does he really make any noise? It may come as no surprise to learn this blog is a fine example of ‘The Ranter’.

all the attributes, where’s the absinthe?

 

When dinosaurs ruled the world

Is the title of this post merely an extension of the truth? The more things change the more they stay the same. In this particular case, the latest Steven Spielberg blockbuster ‘Jurassic World’ was released for the adoration of the movie-going public this last weekend, and it quickly assumed the mantle of the greatest of them all.

In its opening weekend, ‘Jurassic World’ took over half a billion dollars – or its equivalent in pesos – at the box office, thus establishing itself as the most popular (and biggest selling upon release) movie of all time. The claim implied by the title is instructive… ‘Jurassic Park’ has become ‘Jurassic World’, less you missed the obvious claim to world domination.

Of course, dinosaurs became extinct at the close of the Mesozoic epoch, about 67 million years ago, instantly setting into train a sequence of events that culminated in all the young boys of the world having something to worship… a collection of deities, really, which fulfill all the key requirements.

Dinosaurs are awesome.

Dinosaurs are big.

Dinosaurs are scary.

Dinosaurs are dead: therefore they’re no danger to anyone.

Except now, of course, as they’ve been brought back to life through the miracles of CGI and cinematography. And in ‘Jurassic World’ the dinosaurs have been brought back to life bigger, better and meaner than ever before. It’s been 20 years since the original in this franchise, and I confess to having mixed thoughts about director Colin Trevorrow and the team bringing us genetically engineered dinosaurs which never actually existed. Except that the entire movie is a genetic sleight of hand, of course, and we have some kind of augmented idea about the dinosaurs which are so far removed from our world and our experience that we can only guess at what they might have been like.

Thus, Mosasaurus, seen leaping for her dinner at the aquarium, seems, to me, to be a tad larger than is accurate. Not to mention that Mosasaurus existed in the late Cretaceous rather than the Jurassic, but who’s quibbling over 40 million years? Anyway, the Mosasaur is being fed a fish – which is to say a fully adult Great White Shark (Carcharodon carcharias) – of some fifteen feet in length. Visually speaking, I applaud the concept here; the biggest and baddest that we know being eaten in one gulp by an even bigger and badder predator. Vale Spielberg and the ‘Jaws’ franchise, I guess.

So it’s all big, as you’d expect, though the Velociraptors are the same size, thus allowing latest Hollywood guy Chris Pratt to enlist them as some kind of ‘raptor army when things get out of hand. As they always were going to do. And there’s an even bigger dinosaur kid on the block: the genetically modified/constructed Indominus rex, bigger than ole T-rex. But why? The truth about dinosaurs seems terrifying enough; they were warm blooded, large, and many were lethal, so we should be able to quake in our boots knowing we’ll never meet them.

The problem noted by ‘The Onion’ was that the dinosaurs had no dialogue, and that was a shortcoming since they were the stars of the show. Quipped Mark Kermode for his review in ‘The Guardian‘, “We’re gonna need a better script”! Ouch.

I love dinosaurs. Always have. I’m target audience.

I loved the original ‘Jurassic Park’; but this one might be one jump for the shark too far.

See for yourself if you are one of the few left on the planet who’ve not yet seen the movie – the official video trailer

Let’s Face It

I recently set my students a small task: I showed them a photo of the State Liberal Party leader in South Australia. Thus, Steven Marshall is the Leader of the Opposition.

I asked two classes of Communications & Media students if they knew who he was, and if so they were not to reveal his name until we had discussed the photo. Now remember, these are students who are undertaking study in media because they wish to become media professionals, or work in allied fields, such as communications, publicity, or promotions.

The image, as you can see, is fairly close cropped – to the shoulders – and as a photo it gives little hint as to identity. No other faces, no obvious backgrounding; contextually it is fairly blank.

The task I set was a simple one:

What can we know from looking at the photo?

What can we infer from looking at the photo?

Does it, for example, suggest to us the man is English? European? American? Australian? A sporting identity? An actor or media identity? Anything else?

As it happens, most students deduced he was Australian, most concluded he was not a sports person (otherwise they’d have recognized him), and most decided he was not a prominent person, such as an entertainer (same premise, I assume) although most then concluded he was most likely a politician. Pointers they ‘used’ to arrive at their conclusions involved skin condition and pallor, condition of teeth, hair style and cut… To be fair, I suspect they were also following a lead from previous tutorial sessions in knowing what ‘sort’ of an identity I might ask them to comment upon.

From there, nearly all students drew a blank. They got as far as ‘politician’ but were unable to decide whether he was a state or federal politician and from what part of the political spectrum. Guesses as to his name scored zero of nine attempts. In raw numbers across the two classes, three students correctly identified him as Steven Marshall, and one student knew there was ‘something familiar’ about him. That’s three in 30, or almost exactly ten per cent.

To say I was shocked by this response would be in error. It was exactly as I had suspected, and I can’t even explain what it is that made me so sure of the result. Perhaps it was the certainty of blandness; that there was nothing in state politics that was going to attract the attention long enough for any ‘recognition factor’ to kick in. It is well known that potential voters feel a greater disconnect from their elected members than at any time in some years. A disconnect and disenchantment… yet you have to know who it is you’re disenchanted with. In this instance, I was sure it went beyond that to a question of will.

Free will has spoken, and the current generation of ‘first timers’ and new voters care so little that they cannot summons the interest to be disinterested. Theirs is an entirely passive resistance, not borne of disdain, or dislike, or policy with which they disagree. Nor is it disinterest in politics: they see the federal arena as the policy battleground, and by and large their scorn for our Prime Minister, for example, is writ large.

Yet here we are in the crucible of state politics, where less than two years ago Steven Marshall won more than 50% of the popular vote (which would seem to be a democratic endorsement if nothing else) yet lost the election to gerrymandered seats. Steven Marshall has a problem, and very likely more than one, to address before the next state election. He has no traction and there is no sign of any traction being gained.

Despite my being sure I knew the outcome, it was a profoundly diminishing experience having it proved to me… the most revealing of all comments offered during the exercise was an exasperated rebuke that, “it’s not that he has an image problem, he has no image”.

Indeed.

Er-rant thoughts

Why a blog?

I suspect the only real answer is ‘Why not a blog?’. After all, everyone else is doing it, committing their idle thoughts to an online site which cares not at all what they write, why they write, how often or when, and whether what they write is of any worth.

That, looking to the oft-used metaphor of the monkeys and the typewriters, is about as simple as it gets… one more blogger… one more chance of something worth reading… one more blog… one more chance something I’ve ever written is worth spending two minutes reading.

Fifteen years ago when the internet was just gathering pace, the mantra was ‘content is king’. If you had good content on your website, the theory went, you were bound to attract an audience, a readership, a following… currently (June 2015) the internet has jumped the shark, and it really is only the beginning flare of the bell curve. Depending on whose figures you accept, Facebook grows by well over a million users a week, or Instagram users add over a billion new images every week, or the internet grows by over 4.5 million pages every month, or…

Well, you see the problem. No-one has time to read all that stuff, or look at all those amazing images of people showing you the food they ate in a restaurant last night, or where they went for holiday, or the funny vegetable shaped like a body part, or their friend Trudi’s dog, who is so funny it can suck the tip of its tail.

Content is no longer king. Content is the iceberg which may well sink the whole damn experience, seeing as how very much less than 90% of all content is revealed and very much more than that lurks below the waterline in our perfect world, waiting to stove in the sides and scupper the good ship upon which we float. Is that horrible thought – that we can submerge ourselves in ‘data’ – even a possibility?

Well, sure it is, if you believe ‘the experts’. It is the experts, trendologists, futurists and imagineers who now postulate that the world is under threat from data loss, an event so significant that it may – if it comes to pass – throw our civilisation back to pre-Internet days. Imagine, if you can, as they do, an enormous surge of electromagnetic energy unleashed upon the world telecommunications networks. The damage, we are assured, would be sufficient to fry all the capacitors and resistors and microchips around; sufficient to melt down the hard disk arrays and electronic storage devices the world over, and deep fry every mobile device and personal computer around. That, we are assured, would be A Bad Thing.

That it would be A Bad Thing I do believe, because increasingly we cannot function without the connectivity which our modern world demands. Cash is on the way out; everyone pays with a swipe of the credit card. Personal accounts and banking is increasingly done online, shopping is done online. Friends’ birthdays are celebrated online, and ostracism awaits those who do not play the game of Facebook Celebration. Moreover, universities and libraries no longer purchase books, except under special circumstances. Study is done online, entire collections are digitised and made available to virtual classes of virtual students as links and downloads.

So, the argument goes, we cannot imagine what might be lost from our repository of knowledge and human history if the internet was destroyed. I can. I imagine what might be lost from the store of medical knowledge and procedure. From the human genome sequencing project. From the digital world of artwork, of popular music, and of science and technology, and a thousand other areas of human achievement. And it scares me.

I will not mourn the incessant chattering of those who employ this amazing technology for the ego-stroking gain such as Facebook offers. I don’t care that Myspace went the way of the dodo (it did, didn’t it?), or that twats who tweet get themselves in trouble because they’ve not learned to think before they send.

As a media professional, I see it as even more vacuous. In universities the world over, tutors tell their students the way to succeed is to have a fulsome personal profile, or portfolio, yet are unable to tell those students how to find a real paying job in a shrivelled media market. ‘Make sure you are an active Twitter user’, and ‘Your Facebook account is the first thing a potential employer will look at’ they are told. Surely their skills and abilities, their powers of comprehension, and their mastery of complex news issues all rate more than a passing glance.

I am adding to the inconsequence of the blogosphere not just because I can, nor because I wish to, nor even because I must. It is simpler than that. As Descartes so effortlessly flubbed the emphasis when he applied the maxim; ‘I think therefore I am’.