ARIA, the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA)(@ARIA_research), is soon to formally launch in the UK (New Scientist). It is a ‘new independent research body to fund high-risk, high-reward scientific research… led by prominent, world-leading scientists who will be given the freedom to identify and fund transformational science and technology at speed’ (GOV.UK), and ‘will help to cement the UK’s position as a global science superpower [and] build back better through innovation’.

ARIA is a new independent research body to fund high-risk, high-reward scientific research — GOV.UK

ARIA was the brainchild of the late-of-Downing-Street Dominic Cummings, in part inspired by the US Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) — now DARPA — and the work of its early leadership in JCR Licklider and Bob Taylor, as well as Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, now PARC and the work there of computer scientist Alan Kay and others. Cummings argues that ‘Science must be core priority of UK + of No10… And science funding must become much more diverse with much less friction’ (@Dominic2306). Having been involved over many decades with the UK Technology Strategy Board, Innovate UK and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), as well as with the university side of research, innovation and commercialisation, these are sentiments with which I very much agree.

https://twitter.com/Dominic2306/status/1549289273005842437

The recently appointed leadership of ARIA, Ilan Gur and Matt Clifford, wrote in The Economist (August 11th, 2022) about how ARIA had been inspired by (D)ARPA’s ‘empowerment of brilliant people’ and ‘tolerance for taking high risks, minimal bureaucracy, and a flat structure’ which, again, are laudable and reflect arguments I have made over the last decade or more.

I am applying for one of the non-executive directorship roles at ARIA and hope that I can leverage my knowledge and experience in Media, Digital and ICT, and of UK and European entrepreneurship and startup culture. And my experience in the academy of engaging with government around research and innovation. Also the bigger perspective I helped to bring to the UK innovation debate with BIG POTATOES: The London Manifesto for Innovation (2010), co-authored with Dr Norman Lewis, Alan Patrick, Martyn Perks, Mitch Sava, and Professor James Woudhuysen.

ARIA was inspired by (D)ARPA’s ‘empowerment of brilliant people’ and ‘tolerance for taking high risks, minimal bureaucracy, and a flat structure’ — Ilan Gur and Matt Clifford, The Economist

Whether I am successful or not, I will give ARIA my support and hope it can start to deliver on its vision, not least as the UK badly needs to transform its sclerotic performance in government-led innovation in order to increase productivity, quality of life, and wealth creation. Of course, R&D and innovation cannot be instrumental, and ARIA also needs to address the instrumentality of much government-funded R&D. To this end my colleague Paul Reeves is leading a response to ARIA’s call to propose a ‘Shape Our Vision’ roundtable and, hopefully, these roundtables will help focus UK thinking on what our real priorities, approaches, funding models, and attitudes to leadership should be.

More generally, we really need a review of the success of UK innovation strategy over the last two decades. And anyone concerned about Innovation, R&D and Industrial Strategy should be planning to meet with whoever is the new Secretary of State — to be announced in the next few days, likely Jacob Rees-Mogg (@thetimes) — to share our perspectives. Do respond here if anyone would like to be involved in such an initiative.

I have Tweeted about quite a few of the #RETHINK broadcasts, many of which have been excellent.

The BBC issued a call for public submissions for the series, hosted by Chris Mason, who hosts Any Questions on BBC Radio 4, and I responded accordingly. Though I was lined up to contribute to the broadcast, they ran out of time.

We have found that during the pandemic that the arguments around it weren’t well-established, and there was little data to inform the debate. Yet it was an issue that profoundly affected all of us, and understanding it was critical for most.

I feel our culture of debate today is particularly unhealthy and unproductive — even counter-productive and a bulwark hindering social progress. For reasons I have written about — in the context of the 201 Charlie Hebdo murders — people take their views very personally and I noted there that today:

beliefs are often so closely held that any questioning of them tends to create an almost existential crisis in the person being questioned’. I noted that it used to be the case that in the post-War era ‘political ideas were contested in an open, informed and good natured — if fiery — manner

Today, the nature of debate seems very different. People dismiss an idea on the basis it is from someone they don’t like (Jacob Rees-Mogg, Diane Abbot); from a kind of person they don’t like (white male, lesbian woman); or from a party or political point-of-view to which they are hostile (Labour, right-wing). They may frame it as unacceptable (neo-Nazi, Marxist) or imply guilt by association. On occasion, they will cite an idea of the proposer they consider discredited in an attempt to discredit their current idea. Another tactic is the ad hominem attack, the least worst of which is to accuse the proposer of hypocrisy. Or they caricature or wilfully misunderstand the idea or turn it into a straw man and then knock it down.

Sometimes they will argue without taking into account previous debates and how the argument has moved on and become more nuanced. Other times they counter-argue in a clearly illogical or deliberately vexatious manner. They will do anything but engage with the idea in question!

These approaches are in bad faith and dishonest. An idea should be engaged with in its own terms and we should in good faith try to understand it, assess the evidence on which it rests, critique its logic, and put it in the context of broader debates. We should try to be open-minded, come to it fresh, and be prepared to be convinced by the argument. And we should be able to hold two opposed ideas in our minds at the same time (as F. Scott Fitzgerald argued), and be able to assess the merits and demerits of any argument. [source]

As John Stuart Mill argued in his 1859 On Liberty [1]:

Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument

But this can only happen if argument is conducted in this manner.

Of course, not every idea is worth engaging with. Some are not original, others are evidently crass, or not well thought-through. And some who propose ideas are deliberately vexatious. But we should give an idea of the benefit of the doubt and dismiss it only with great caution.

If we aren’t able to debate in good faith, discourse in civil society will stagnate and positions will become entrenched, bearing less and less relationship to reality, and losing the power to lead meaningful change. Citizens know when politicians and others are debating in bad faith, and while they may not always be able to explain why, this will tend to turn them off politics, undermine any belief they have that their views will be taken seriously and, ultimately, drive them from civil society.

Debating in bad faith is also deleterious to the debater. It justifies lazy thinking, avoiding research, and not engaging with the evolution of ideas. It stunts rather than stretching the mind. Debating in good faith provides a role model for the demos, encourages them (us) to ‘raise their game’ and to strive to be taken seriously as citizens and political actors. And it’s been the basis for all social progress in the modern era.

Footnotes

1. Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty and Other Essays (p. 16). Neeland Media LLC. Kindle Edition. (Penguin Classics, 1859)

It feels like we are at the point in the War on Terror soon after the Weapons of Mass Destruction-justified invasion of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The point at which the relentless ratcheting up of the threat; the incidental and strong-armed coalitions of interests; the half-truths and the lies; the risk irrationality and the fear-mongering; the sexed-up documents and partial evidence; the bad faith politics, the cross-party connivance and whipped votes; the relentless politician’s statements, press conferences and propaganda; the uncritical mainstream media sense of purpose and boosterism; and the obsessive and extreme focus on one issue, collapsed like a house of cards.

And everyone who had been a hawk, or a fearful dove, became sheepish. Over the ensuing years the evidence came to be seen for the plagiarism it was, and the truths were revealed by objective parties; the intrigues and connivances unravelled; the protagonists’ self-interest trumped their common front and they ditched each other; the unforeseen consequences became obvious and played out; the previous bad acts and events, and lack of thinking and planning, started to be revealed; and the cost in human suffering became evident.

Those who had been the biggest boosters — the Armchair Artillery, the Geopolitical Guerrillas, the Long-armed Liberators— no longer held their heads up and were, for a while at least, shunned in public life. Some continued to defend the faith but were always defensive and deflated.

Until, years later, we couldn’t imagine how we had let ourselves become so monomaniacal, so easily duped and led, so blinkered, so untethered from our political instincts, so unable to resist the political and social pressure.

There were some good outcomes. Our hubris in thinking military intervention was a solution looking for a problem had been burst. We realised societies have to be built up by their citizens and can’t be imposed from outside (though we forgot this with Libya). But we didn’t really take on board the learnings in our political culture, and that is to be regretted.

[Also published on Facebook]

[Source]

This is the letter I wrote to my MP in advance of the vote, which outlines my broad views on how we are dealing with the pandemic; the use and abuse of ‘the science’; and why Freedom is important, not least in public health.

Rt Hon [your MP’s name] MP
House of Commons,
London
SW1A 0AA

Dear [your MP’s last name]

I am pleased to see that you are against the proposal for Vaccine Passports (Covid status certification) in the ‘Plan B’ public health statutory instruments, which will be voted on in the Commons today.

I am against Vaccine Passports, and the general reintroduction of Lockdown-type measures and Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs), as their efficacy is unproven, even after 21 months. Moreover, they have, and have had, significant detrimental effects on the businesses, the economy and employment; on non-Covid health and healthcare; on child development and education; and on social and family life; and they undermine social solidarity and trust.

On Vaccine Passports, neither at the Downing Street press conference nor subsequently has it been explained why requiring Covid status certification at events, etc, will markedly reduce infections when the vaccines don’t significantly prevent transmission. Thus one tends to assume they are not being introduced for public health but for public control.

Moreover, there has never been a cost-benefit analysis of the interventions to tackle Covid — or the cost of delivering them — and the costs and impacts of those policies and possible externalities. (If we are going to apply the precautionary principle to Covid, and now to the Omicron variant, we should also apply it to the possible effects of Lockdown and NPIs — though it is not clear how a government can practically make policy based on the precautionary principle.)

I am also against Vaccine Passports not only as I believe they are unnecessary, but because it is wrong to unduly restrict our Freedoms and take away our Liberties. Not least as a free and trusting citizenry is more likely to find and adopt good solutions to the pandemic and its effects, and to put its trust in guidance given them by their government.

In the longer-term Vaccine Passports and possible mandatory vaccination is going to increase distrust by and alienation of many citizens, particularly those already disconnected from politics and government, which includes many in minority ethnic and recent immigrant communities. I also believe it is immoral to effectively require people to have an injection in order to be able to fully participate in society, as control over our bodies is at the very core of our existence as free individuals. To open the door to mandatory vaccination and the state being able to determine what can be done to our bodies is to enter a dystopian future, one which has some of the characteristics of serfdom and slavery.

Yours sincerely, etc.

Nico Macdonald on Twitter: "We seem to live in a culture in which many organisations (and some people) think others should do work for them for nothing, on the basis of some possible, unstated future benefit. (I'm not just thinking internships.) And maybe many people can work sans remuneration. But not me. / Twitter"

We seem to live in a culture in which many organisations (and some people) think others should do work for them for nothing, on the basis of some possible, unstated future benefit. (I'm not just thinking internships.) And maybe many people can work sans remuneration. But not me.

Over the last decade, perhaps longer, I have been increasingly aware of how many organisations essentially ask people (including me) to do work for free. In my case this might include writing, speaking or lecturing, contributing to a project or doing research, or delivering an event. Or they may just expect such work to be done at some ridiculously low cost which may be barely worth invoicing.

Of course, I do ask people to do work for no fee, perhaps speaking at an event, introducing a book, writing a contribution to a publication, or speaking to my students. In many scenarios I am not getting paid myself — for better or worse! And where I am, I do my best to make clear what the value will be for the person participating, not imply there will be unlikely future benefit may be forthcoming. I also treat such people seriously and brief them properly; do my best to promote their contribution; and follow up with thanks, introductions, and documentation. But where I can, I will get clients to budget to pay fees for speakers and lecturers — even if they would work for no fee — as I did with the BBC and our Media Futures events, and do with my teaching.

What is going on?

To the extent this is a ‘thing’, why is it? I have observed a few trends:

1. This may be a function in part of how digital communication technologies have made it easy it is to make such requests, receive contributions, and engage people.
2. I sense it is also a function of a diminished connection between work and income, which mirrors our society’s broader disconnection of wealth from industry. (This has likely been exacerbated by the huge fruits of the Magic Money Tree state has distributed in furlough and other payments to locked down workers and businesses.)
3. There is a sense abroad that everything is in some way subsidised by something else: charities are funded by donations; not-for-profits are funded by grants; government agencies are funded by the Treasury (well, us, really); and social enterprises are funded by, er, goodwill. Nothing is paid for at the point of consumption, a bit like the National Health Service.
4. There appears to have been a huge increase in voluntarism, with people volunteering their time and skills informally and to organisations — from local clean-ups to National Trust to Covid testing centres — in part I suspect as a way of creating meaning they don’t get from increasingly bureaucratised work and, more prosaically, as a way of socialising and meeting people.
5. I sense there are many people who either have some independent funding — not just those young people doing internships supported by Dad and/or Mum — or who have significant ‘free’ unremunerated time — due to under-earning? — or, and this would be the best case, do this work on top of full-time employment.
6. It also seems to be a function of a kind of purposelessness in organisations whose priorities are increasingly divorced from their ostensible purpose and whose deliverables are no longer societally measured. As such, they go through the motions of doing useful work which leads them to wastefully engage others.

On this trend, I am reminded of the Soviet-era joke, “They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work”, except these employees do get paid, often very well, but think that us civilians don’t need to be catered for. I am also reminded of Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber, about which I must write about some time. There is also a dimension of the conflict between the (modern concept of) the Professional Managerial Class (PMC) and independents, or between the Clerisy versus the Middle-class (in the US sense) and the Serfs, pace The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class by Joel Kotkin.

What is the consequence?

Those may be trends and reasons explaining this ‘thing’. Either way, people clearly do agree to work for free.

One of my Dad’s (Gerard Macdonald) observations about the people who request free work was that they tend to put the least effort into making the most of one’s contribution — because they, or their organisation, have not invested in it — which makes it the most frustrating and least rewarding.

Apart from being a non-viable way of earning a living, there are wider repercussions to the market essentially being removed from work and employment. Where there is no mechanism for ascribing value to asking someone to do work, then quality suffers. And the creation of poor quality things short-changes the rest of us.

For instance, in the world of events and podcasts, it now costs almost nothing to host and engage people in an event. Back when I first started hosting events in the early ’90s, it would cost hundreds, 1,000s, or 10s of 1,000s of pounds to host an a talk or a conference. Thus we have a proliferation of events that are typically poorly programmed, poorly prepared for, poorly documented, and which, ultimately, are wasteful of our time.

Much better would be to do less, with more quality, for which people would get paid more — and certainly more than nothing.

Video and Audio

[To come]

Related

This relates to my 2017 Facebook post On self-employment and getting paid on the challenge for independents getting paid by large organisations.

[Posted on Facebook] [Source]

Originally published at http://www.spy.co.uk on May 6, 2021.

Today is World Press Freedom Day (#WorldPressFreedomDay), which media organisations are rightly highlighting and celebrating. Via the BBC Media Centre, BBC Director-General Tim Davie stated:

“In the midst of the Covid pandemic, it is clearer than ever why people need access to trusted, impartial news. Trusted information is an essential public good, but many journalists around the world — including those from the BBC — are facing intimidation, harassment and hostility. Some even face threats to their lives and liberty. This growing assault on truth represents a profound threat to the health of societies and democracies worldwide. We stand in solidarity with journalists and other media organisations who continue to fight for truth and media freedom” — Tim Davie, BBC Director-General (World Press Freedom Day — Media Centre)

However, BBC News doesn’t seem to think that ‘trusted and impartial news’ about the Covid pandemic should extend to opposition to Covid politics, not least as it failed to cover the anti-Lockdown #LondonProtest on Saturday 24 April involving 10s of 10,000s marching through central London. And this despite having reported on just nine Extinction Rebellion ‘chisellers’ destroying the windows of the Canary Wharf HSBC building and Arsenal fans’ 1,000-strong only protest against the club’s owners.

You can check for yourself: search Twitter for Tweets from @BBCLondonNews including the word ‘protest’:
https://twitter.com/search?f=live&q=London%20protest%20(from%3ABBCLondonNews)

You will find many Tweets on the #KilltheBill protests. But the only one about the London anti-Lockdown protests are of violence, arrests, or other negative stories, for instance about demonstrators clashing with police.

Others noticed this, including Daily Mail columnist Dan Wootton (Tweet) and ‘civilian’ @CandiceAde (Tweet).

As Wootton notes, it was not just BBC News which appeared to be engaged in a ‘media blackout’ but all the mainstream broadcasters, as well as BBC Radio, with the honourable exception of Sky News (YouTube) and the Associated Press (YouTube), which isn’t strictly a broadcaster.

More generally, many much smaller protests and vigils have been covered in BBC broadcast channels, including those related to the death of George Floyd, and the murder of Sarah Everard.

In an age in which protests are designed to get coverage — based on their visual distinctiveness, drama, and novelty — we should be aware that this gives undue influence to very small groups who may not represent a wider constituency, and we should not ignore more conventional protests in which an actual wider constituency takes parts.

Of course, outside lockdowns, demonstrations usually happen on a regular basis and may not be so newsworthy. But the fact that everyone on this demonstration was committed to it despite their breaking the law should make it even more newsworthy.

On World Press Freedom Day, in stating that ‘many journalists around the world — including those from the BBC — are facing intimidation, harassment and hostility’ the BBC Director-General was no doubt referring to those dictatorial and censorious regimes our fellow world citizens have to live under, from China to Iran, Russia to North Korea. He may also be referring to interference by foreign powers in the British democratic process (and only today BBC News was reporting attempts by Iran to influence the Scottish elections in favour of independence).

But the BBC and other UK broadcasters should look at themselves first and ‘cast out the beam out of thine own eye’ before they seek to ‘cast out the mote’ from others’. In the meantime, the case for new broadcasters such as @GBNews is being made for many, while others will turn away from the news, or retreat to the world of conspiracies.

[Post on Facebook][Source]

Where are the digital plumbers? Who are the network electricians? What is a car mechanic for a computer? Why aren’t more people being trained as ICT appliance installers and engineers for the home?

After a year of lockdown, they can only be a minority of households that don’t have broadband — and many have until recently un-dreamt of ‘fibre to the home’ — with Wi-Fi and multiple digital devices connected to it, laptops and ‘thin notebooks’, smartphones and tablets, connected TVs and streaming devices, and voice-activated devices and ‘smart’ appliances.

You know a domestic technology is mature when it is ubiquitous, taken for granted, largely ignored — and barely understood. This is the case with plumbing and central heating, and gas and electricity in the home. When we need these services installed, configured, or fixed, we know who to go to, and how to work with the technicians and engineers; we know roughly what it will cost, and (more or less) what the outcome will be.

Take electricity. In the 1870s, when the North-Eastern engineering and arms magnate Lord Armstrong wanted to electrically light his Northumberland pile, Cragside, he had to generate the electricity too — as it happens, using hydro power — and not only used Joseph Swan’s newly invented incandescent bulbs, but Swan installed them. That’s would be like having Vint Cerf install your router.

Joseph Swan installing Lord Armstrong’s electric lighting would be like having Vint Cerf install your router

Today electricity is supplied from a reliable national grid. Since World War 2, it has been standard for houses in the UK to be designed with an electric ringmain, high voltage for appliances, a fuse box, meters, plugs and light switches — everything to make electricity useful in the home. Electric light and power are built into the very fabric of our domestic lives. Along with transformers, batteries (regular and rechargeable) and, now, USB and wireless charging, the number of functional electrical and electronic devices in any home which are electrically-powered or -actuated will number in the hundreds.

We have effectively mastered electricity in the home. But not digital technologies and ICT.

Who do you go to when you want a Cat 6 Ethernet network installed, or a Wi-Fi mesh network? Who do you call when it’s not working well, or you want it optimised, so your voice and picture don’t break up on the important Teams or Zoom call? Or when you need to install a smart lighting system? Or when you are concerned about security? Your might contact your Internet Service Provider (ISP) — a market dominated by Virgin Media, Sky Broadband, BT and TalkTalk — but more in desperation than positive expectation.

And that is just on the hardware and technical side!

Your might contact your ISP but more in desperation than positive expectation

The potential of ICT and digital tools is many times great than that of electricity in the home — though they are, of course, all electronic. How do we get trained to use these unprecedented technologies of communication, productivity, entertainment and monitoring? Of course, we live by the myth of user-centred design which is ‘intuitive’ and learnable. Those breakthroughs at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) handed down by the Dealers of Lightning. Whether that was ever the case, in the diaspora of that philosophy much has been lost and loads of design have not kept up with increasing complexity.

People are being trained in these roles, from BTEC diplomas in applied science to HNDs in Computing and ICT as well as university degree-level Computer Science courses. But it appears most of these skilled graduates end up in businesses and industry rather than serving the domestic market.

You might try Currys PC World’s Geek Squad or Apple Genius Bar and Workshops but at best will get generic support or basic setup. Some will learn ICT skills through work training, and by badgering their IT support staff. Others may actually read the help material for the software or service; others may research online browsing articles, videos and help files; some may take a training course, with Lynda.com or some such; and most will probably ask a family member (not least a teenager), friends or colleagues for help.

For ICT skills, most will probably ask a family member (not least a teenager)

At a higher level, there are organisations such as Doteveryone (@doteveryone) which have addressed the challenge of not just digital skills but digital understanding, summed up in its Digital Understanding reports, but last year it closed its doors.

If the UK is to be a society and economy taking significant advantage of ICT and digital technologies, it will need to take more seriously the challenge or improving citizens’ capability, confidence and creativity in using digital technologies.

Originally published at http://www.spy.co.uk on April 19, 2021.

One of the most egregious characteristics of debate in [[Modern British politics]], is treating people whose views are opposed to yours as if they are somehow morally depraved and irresponsible.

This used to be a trope of Right-wing and conservative attitudes to Left-wingers, socialists and communists. Today, it is reversed and it is former Lefties and liberals who, instead of engaging in good faith with arguments, impute bad faith or some immoral motive to someone presenting an argument they don’t like. (I use the term ‘don’t like’ deliberately, as most times their reaction is not intellectual but visceral.)

The most common forms this takes is to accuse their opponents of being self-interested, right-wing (a pejorative term today), racist, xenophobic or, more esoterically, a ‘white supremacist’ or a ‘TERF’.

But let’s take a step back to the 1980s.

As a campaigning young socialist (at 15 I was a card-carrying ‘Labour Party Young Socialist’), unilateralist (remember that?), anti-Apartheid and ‘Right to Work’ campaigner, I remember being regularly patronised by conservatives for being at best idealistic and at worst an irresponsible, immoral and unpatriotic.

As Winston Churchill didn’t say but was widely believed:

“If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain”.

My tormentors were from the lower streams of this school.

Back to today, the Teens, and the other side of the ‘culture wars’ (in 1999 I reviewed a conference of that name for Eye magazine), the boot is on the other foot. But it is still a boot, not an eye, which takes in ideas and facilitates consideration and understanding.

Being judged for one’s views to be morally inferior or irresponsible by people, including people one knows — on EU membership and the Referendum; on Islamist violence; or on how individuals and the government should respond to a pandemic — is vexatious, in bad faith, and tends to close down public discourse. (And it doesn’t tend to win others to the side of those who pursue this model of ‘debate’.)

I wrote about this and other negative characteristics of online debate on Facebook in a [Proposal for a #Rethink on how we debate ideas]. For me, this is one of the fundamental challenges of our era. But I don’t expect I will be spared the boot.

[Originally posted on Facebook]

Related pieces

On freedom of speech and the culture of offence | by Nico Macdonald | Oct, 2020 | Medium

On the moralising of politics was originally published in The Political Macroscope on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On Friday in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in the Île-de-France region in north-central France, a teacher was brutally executed by an individual. There is credible speculation that his murderer was was motivated by the teacher — Samuel Paty — having shown a class of teenage pupils caricatures, including of the Prophet Mohammed, from the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo during a moral and civic education class discussion about freedom of speech.

As a lecturer, teaching at mainly British students at universities in London, and non-UK students studying abroad, the murder of a teacher is even more shocking. Unlike Patry, I am not explicitly involved in civic education, but social, ethical and political issues are a dimension of most non-STEM subjects, including mine. My UK students come mainly from the less advantaged strata of London’s demos; faculties, admin and support staff are as, if not more, diverse.

Universities evolved from the drive to seek out truths and honestly communicate the universe of knowledge. In the UK in the last half-century, they have been transformed, from being the province of the elite to engaging half the population with new knowledge. And Paty was engaged in inculcating a love of knowledge in the next generation of university students and citizens.

Not that there could be any justification for such an act, but Paty was showing these caricatures in a discussion about the challenges for the media and society in engaging with images some consider offensive. He may well have been using these images to present the various arguments for and against showing them: those of free speech advocates; liberals who caution against offending others; media proprietors and editors who argue they don’t want to risk the safety of themselves their staff; and Islamists (and some Muslims) who say they find the images offensive.

Conflans-Sainte-Honorine mayor Laurent Brosse was reported on BBC News saying Paty had ‘wanted to open the minds of his pupils’. French President Emmanuel Macron said he had been murdered because he “taught freedom of expression”.

If we respect and trust ourselves and we want to see societal progress, there can be no compromise on freedom of speech and — even more importantly — the freedom to hear what others have to say. We must be able to decide for ourselves. Today, every political leader in the UK should be shouting this from the rooftops.

If someone’s presentation or advocacy of an idea offends you, ask yourself if your own argument and narrative are themselves fragile; ask if you believe you can win others to your ideas or ideology; ask yourself if your belief is held in bad faith; and consider if you may be narcissistic.

In a Facebook post, I wrote about these ideas after the equally brutal attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in 2015, and proposed six maxims we might follow, to respond to the phenomenon that horror presented. I reflected on there being no “right not to be offended”, and the way in which today beliefs “are often so closely held that any questioning of them tends to create an almost existential crisis in the person being questioned”. In my Facebook post ‘On changing your mind’, I quote from an interview with The Sun earlier this year given by satirist and political commentator Andrew Doyle, who characterised these phenomena as ‘identity quakes’ and noted:

‘If your whole identity is wrapped up in a politicised worldview and you realise part of it isn’t correct, part of you dies. It is quite traumatic, but we have to embrace that possibility’.

In the post, I also discussed the limits to free speech we have already accepted. Since, we’ve accepted further tightening, broadly around offence, and specifically around discussion of race, culture and racism. Most recently, conservative interviewer, Darren Grimes, has been investigated by the police in the context of comments made on his show by historian David Starkey.

The idea of offence seems to be grounded in bad faith, as it isn’t subject to rational interrogation and, worse still, it is often wielded by people claiming offence on behalf of others. Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show this weekend, comedian and writer Dawn French discussed the political constraints on modern comedy culture and argued that comedy needs to ‘offend a tiny bit to work out what’s funny’. Considering how we respond to offence in comedy and, implicitly, more broadly, she said:

‘Say what you want to say, be free to say anything, and then everyone can be free to have a go at you, to challenge, you or to tune out from you. For any comedian that is the biggest punishment. If no one wants to listen to you any more, then I think you’ve got the message’

The inability of some, particularly former liberals, to criticise behaviour by people from particular religious or cultural groupings — and to claim offence on their behalf — may seem like a modern expression of anti-racism and an attempt not to ‘fuel the racists’ fire’. But the reality is that their attitude infantilises the people in their groupings. It imagines they are not capable of achieving the moral standards of our society, in the same way that Europeans regarded ‘the native’ during periods of their colonisations. It is ‘othering’. You cannot defeat racism by racialising society.

One of the hashtags related to the murder is #JeSuisProf and this nihilistic event is an issue to consider profoundly for anyone involved in education — as I am — or whose children are in the education system. And this isn’t just an issue in France, as our common European culture, political philosophies and history unite our nations in the eyes of the Islamist zealots. A similar attack, thankfully not fatal, but very serious, took place in Bow, East London, in 2011. Four men conducted a premeditated assault on Gary Smith, a teacher of Religious Education at a girls’ school at which most pupils are from Muslim families, whose teaching they considered to be ‘mocking Islam’.

What do we do in universities, where our job is to open students’ minds and help them develop the skill of independent thinking? At my children’s secondary school — which until a decade ago was also a girls’ school with a substantial cohort of pupils from Muslim families — how should teachers react?

Will they stand alone while the local education authority, politicians, the media, and others with influence and a voice, are mute and cowering? Or will they — and we — bravely stand up for our principles, our values, and our fellow citizens and say ‘There is no right not to be offended’?

[Earlier draft published to Friends on Facebook]

On freedom of speech and the culture of offence was originally published in The Political Macroscope on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I will note I have great respect for Microsoft and have many colleagues who work for it, more on the Research side.

Create a macOS tool which connects contacts, tasks, calendars, notes and email (or messages more generally) in a seamless way, as Palm Desktop did (though not for email or messages).

Work out how to help users understand the connection between local documents and their shared ‘cloud’ versions, so we know how to work with others on documents. Google Docs started online and everyone knows the master document is in the ‘cloud’; offline editing was a later feature. Microsoft has the problem users see documents as being local, or at least on a local server, thus it has to work harder to educate users. And this involves in part better using design to communicate what’s possible and how to use the product/service.

LinkedIn has a poor user experience and has barely improved in years. Try responding post hoc to a connection request with a message: one has two go through at least two more screens in a non-intuitive way! And what was the justification for removing the option to download vCards for contacts?

In Yammer one sees the effect of this when one clicks through from a daily email summary and various logins are performed. One doesn’t even end up at the right screen to view the original message and has to go back to re-activate the original link. And try copying a bookmark for the message!