S. Spencer Baker's Blog: Slabscape: Linktrigues

It began in nothing. A place far, far smaller than neurones, smaller even than molecules, where the laws of the large no longer held sway. Here, within the carbon lattice of a single microtubule, reality was undecided.

Electrons drifted in overlapping possibilities, not here, not there, but everywhere in-between. For a heartbeatless eternity—spans measured in femtoseconds—they danced in superposition, a miasma of futures.

Above, vast empires of neurones simmered at criticality, each membrane trembling on the brink of firing, each synapse primed like a soldier waiting for the command. Memory, language, desire; all lay in readiness.

Then, the collapse.

The wavefunction folded into one reality, one position, one cascade of charges. The chosen pattern rippled upward, swelling through dendrites, axons, across the chemical bridges of synapses. Neurones fired. Networks lit. The hippocampus shivered with retrieved images as the prefrontal cortex threaded them together. Somewhere, the thalamus stitched sensation to meaning.

A thought emerged.

On the surface of the mind, you, the observer, knew. Here was an idea, born from nowhere, fully formed. But in truth, it had been decided in the quantum shadows—a coin toss at the edge of physics, amplified into meaning by billions of cells working in concert.

You smiled, I just had a thought.
The universe had whispered, and your mind had heard.

Self-deception is essential for long-term survival.

Once a year I am shocked and dismayed by the reminder that I have, yet again, completed an orbit around the fusion reactor at the center of our meagre planetary system (just one habitable planet? WTF?).

It crushes me because for the previous eleven months I had managed to delude myself that each new dawn was not one day closer to death.

Self-deception. Kidding yourself. Refusal to accept the plain and obvious truth. Wilful ignorance. I despise these traits in others, yet I'm happy to embrace them all to stave off despair.

Hypocrisy. I despise that too.

Self indulgence to self denial
Man to woman
Scales to feathers
You and I*

So here's to the next eleven months.
And a new book.

SSB

*forever Joni

I've been involved in making music and managing music-makers since before I left school. That's five decades and counting.

My fascination with music started when I first heard Echoes by Pink Floyd. I remember the exact moment. I was pacing around the school stage listening to the music reverberating around the empty hall. I was instantly and profoundly moved. It awakened a part of me that resonated with the sounds like the sympathetic strings on a sitar. Someone was making the music I could hear in my head and that changed the course of my life, for ever and for the better.

I woke up a couple of mornings ago, jetlagged and disorientated, with a phrase stuck in my head:

Music is how we store emotion.

I was sure I'd heard this phrase before, but I can't find it on web searches. I believe it's true. Either we attach our own emotions to the music we love (or dislike), or emotions get attached by circumstance and our experiences, or the composers and performers add their own levels of emotional communication to the work. It's what makes music so special. It moves us like no other art form and continues to do so for as long as we are invested in it. For life.

I don’t post my thoughts here (or anywhere else) very often. I have no desire to join the cacophony of opinions, the never-ending vacuous chatter, the proselytising and the brow-beating. and I don't need to be validated by people I don't know. If I wanted to sell more books, I probably should care about these things and spend a lot more time conjuring up mindless trivia to cast into the unfillable hole, but I won't do it because, well, I’m uncomfortable with the whole concept. I will stay secure in my obscurity and hope that my twenty-thousand or so readers won’t abandon me because I take no part in the twitterscape or whatever the latest mind-invasive channel of toxic rhetoric and fakery is currently 'trending'.

But (there had to be a 'but', right?), I will 'publish' one thought here that has been tormenting me. I won't promote this post or manipulate others into sharing it or whatever the current way of creating memes may be. If this idea has merit, it will live, if not, it will be instant history.

In our hyper-mediated world where those who live in the most economically developed and powerful democracies vote and make life- and world-changing decisions based on the information they are presented with, I propose that there should be, written into legislation, a Right to Balanced Content.

We don't have this right at the moment because the content that is presented to users/readers/viewers/listeners through their chosen media channels is customised and shaped by algorithms that have been designed to maximise consumption. This is the business model of the social media channels and all commercial media outlets from printed newspapers to broadcast and streamed media. These outlets work hard to maximise their content consumption because their advertising and subscription revenues depend on consumer engagement and growth. I'm not blaming them or finger-wagging. Of course they would try to increase their users and keep them for longer - it's their job. These media companies exist in a highly competitive commercial landscape and they employ talented people who are tasked with increasing revenue through user acquisition and engagement. This need for retention results in algorithms that feed their users/consumers with more of the same content they have already consumed because that’s what’s proven to maximise engagement.

And that simple, indeed obvious, strategy is damaging our societies and leading vulnerable individuals into mental illness.

If the only opinion you ever heard was slanted towards an ideology that was founded in fear or hatred and if you were constantly exposed to the same rhetoric with no exposure to an alternative viewpoint, what effect would it have on you? OK, you say, I’m an informed, curious, intelligent adult with the ability and motivation to look for counter-arguments and make my own decisions about what I think. I’m sure you are. Do you think that everyone is the same as you? Look around you. Read your own feeds and information resources. Make up your own mind about that.

I suggest we need legislation that forces the media channels - all of them - to balance their output and, in the case where algorithms are presenting information to users based on their previous consumption, to deliberately intervene with a balanced or counter view. This is not censorship. That never works, it only drives alternative views underground where the echo chamber is cavernous and pernicious. This is about forcing the media channels to be balanced and unbiased when their business model is skewed toward the exact opposite. They will not do this voluntarily because the direct result of presenting people with information or views they do not think they want to see or hear is to reduce eyeball- and ear-time. But if something like a Right to Balanced Content is not imposed upon the media channels then I think the ultimate result will be that more-of-the-same algorithms will divide and fragment our societies beyond repair.

Could there be an informed debate about this? Could something change? I hope so, and hope is important because things are not looking too hopeful right now.

Slabscape: Reboot

Published on Kindle on December 21st 2020.

The paperback will follow in the new year, as will all three in the Slabscape series as audiobooks.

If you wish to be kept informed of release dates, please join the mailing list here.

The Slabscape novels are enrolled in the Kindle Select programme and that means they are available free of charge to Amazon Prime customers and through the Kindle Lending Library. While they are 'free' to the reader, that doesn't mean the authors don't get royalties. In fact, ever since July 2015, we have been paid a tiny amount per page-read (as opposed to items downloaded, because that system was being scammed). Amazon's Kindle system logs the current page number whenever a reader synchronises their device and it's that cumulative data that is used to calculate the royalties.

The upshot of all this is that I know how many pages have been read and I'm hyper-chuffed to reveal that figure has just passed the ONE MILLION mark. Yes, I'm shouting about it and I'm not going to apologise for being crass because although I've sold many thousands of books, knowing that readers have actually read more than a million pages of my sequential word alignments turns out to be the most rewarding moment of the whole process to date. A million swipes, clicks or taps makes me feel a lot more confident that I can actually produce entertaining stuff and that's very important when I'm staring at the current draft of book three wondering whatever made me think I could write in the first place.

And on that matter, Slabscape: Reboot is nearly ready to go to the nasty guy with the red pencil. I just need a couple of uninterrupted weeks. Luxury, I know. Sorry for the delay.

The last time I published here, in fact, published anywhere, was four days before something happened that changed my life and the lives of everyone I love. A tragedy. Private and personal, yet instantly public and disseminated via international news channels.

I will not dwell on this event for two main reasons; first, because the emotions involved are still too raw and far too near the surface to allow me to be objective or analytical or even rational, and second, because the person involved, who was probably my most fervent supporter, would have been seriously pissed off that what happened to him stalled my next book for over fifteen months.

He'd tell me I was making excuses, and I'd be defensive while suspecting he was right, but it's been impossible to find any uninterruptible space with a clear mind and a motivation to write. Until now.

After a couple of weeks of jetlag and Tokyo-style rehab, Reboot is off and running and a dysfunctional plot-point has been cured by applying simple internal logic (the best kind). I'm making progress and it's looking good. I'm also going to shine some creative light on a couple of other self-stalled projects during the summer (there's a graphic novel in the works that is breathtaking in scope and imagery) and would like to thank everyone for their patience and understanding. Sorry Colin, I'm on it.

I was born late and I've stayed that way. I intend to be late for my own funeral. Well, I will be, won't I?

I have no concept of the passage of time. Never have. When I was a child, out playing with my mates, I was constantly getting into trouble for not coming home on time. My infuriated parents gave me a cheap Timex when I was nine but I never thought to look at it. When I did, it was always a shock. No! It can't possibly be that time, I've only been doing this/reading this/watching this/travelling here for a few minutes. Fifty years later, I'm still the same. I look up to the top right of my screen and think 'what on Earth have I been doing that's taken an hour and a half longer than I thought?'.

In my perception, everything takes 'a few minutes', especially reading and writing. When I read, time does not exist. I have lost count of how many times I've gone to bed with a book and looked up to realise it's dawn and thought 'well, I'll just finish this chapter'. How often do I say 'I'll just reply to this email before I leave, it will only take a minute' and then, a few perceived seconds later, discover half an hour has disappeared?

I am chronically late. It's pathetic and I only have myself to blame. I'm not making excuses and I can't justify it. Perhaps I am temporally dysfunctional. Time challenged. I'm now late again. Late delivering the first draft of my next book to my editor. So late that I really shouldn't be diverting any of my time into writing this.

There's a black hole at the centre of the universe called 'the past'. It eats time . Its event horizon is called 'now' and everything that crosses that horizon is trapped for ever. Nothing can escape the black hole of time – it's a strictly one-way journey – and as the black hole consumes more time, it grows and its power increases exponentially. The future is accelerating towards it, rushing past the now into oblivion.

Hmm... it took longer than I thought to torture that metaphor.

The concept of privacy is outdated and dangerous.

Privacy is essentially about rights and property - especially intellectual property. The current thinking surrounding this entire concept is outdated and dysfunctional. It is misunderstood, badly legislated for and there are no effective global rules or agreements that control the flow of personal, private and confidential intellectual property (i.e. your privacy).

Privacy, just like intellectual property, is a complicated and multi-faceted subject. Any attempts to simplify it or trivialise it will not work. Worse, they will be damaging and convince us all that the subject either cannot be dealt with by our elected caretakers or must never be 'controlled' by anyone who could possibly be corrupted or coerced (so that rules out humans).

But privacy must be dealt with. This subject can no longer be kicked down the road as 'too hard' because this issue affects our freedoms and our ability to live without fear.

You are walking down a high street. Your image and movements are being captured by half a dozen video cameras. Your location is being recorded by three mobile telephone providers. An advertising 'sniffer' in a shopfront you are walking past has detected you via your mobile phone and knows you might be interested in something they are promoting (it's a half price offer on an item you desire but can't afford - do you want that message?). You are wearing a T-shirt with a logo of your favourite film series. You are following a commonly executed route (it's to train station that leads to your home, but there is a delay on that line that you don't yet know about and if you turn left and catch a bus in 200 yards that leaves in five minutes you will get home 75 minutes earlier than your usual route will allow - do you want that information?). You are using your phone (which is also recording your location, heart rate and speed over ground) to send a text message and to browse information which you use to send flowers to your partner. You read the news as a truck rolls past broadcasting a song.

Who owns that intellectual property? Who owns your image, now on a secure net, being transferred from server to server for 'security' purposes, analysed by AI recognition software? Who owns your location, the phone companies? Who owns your buying and interest habits? Who owns that film logo? Who have you decided to allow to learn about your habits and preferences so they can let you know useful information - and did they charge you, or do you get royalties when they benefit from that data? Did that bus company pay to tell you about your alternative route (that you really, really wanted to know)? That text message you sent - encrypted? Do you own the copyright? That order for flowers, is it sellable to a marketing company? Is the data valuable to a flower grower in Holland? If it is, should you get a micro-payment if the florist benefits? You read the news for free - perhaps - is it really free? Who owns the rights to the song you just heard from that truck? Do you own your heartbeat?

Ownership is king. Privacy starts with that concept. Everything else is licensed either deliberately and directly or as a consequence of usage/occupation/citizenship/law. Only then, when this system is entrenched, ubiquitous and accountable can you have true privacy.

You don't want the privacy that exists now (it doesn't anyway). This privacy will kill you. It will prevent the systems that are designed to protect you from knowing when you are in danger. You want ownership and permission based licenses and control and you want to license that control to a system that will benefit and protect you.

We survived 1984. Now we need better systems.

Tokyo Bay will erupt this evening. Between 18:50 and 20:10 precisely, 12,000 fireworks will detonate to carefully choreographed and rehearsed rhythms, watched by close to a million people (most of whom seem to pass through our local subway station).

I never understood the fascination with fireworks. The first one is impressive for sure, but after that it's basically a series of ever finer variations on the same theme. There are only so many times I can watch something exploding into different colours and after-effects before I start wandering if we can leave early to avoid the crowds. Yes, very pretty, can we go now?

I grew up in the north of England where the summers were mediocre-to-mild and the sun lingered long into the evenings. Fireworks need a black backdrop, so we used to allocate just one night for them, November the 5th, when we mark the failure of a bunch of inept plotters to blow up the Houses of Parliament. We 'celebrate' by lighting bonfires and spending £5.75 on a damp box of underachieving rockets, pathetic Catherine wheels, disappointing Roman Candles and seriously dangerous 'bangers'. There are many who suggest we should be commiserating instead of celebrating and going by the facial expressions of the average bonfire attendee, you'd assume we probably were. My childhood memories remind me that November 5th consistently coincided with one of the coldest, wettest and most miserable nights of the year. Every bonfire night meant freezing drizzle, blustery, swirling wind (great fun for the over-stretched fire brigades throughout the country), damp squibs and adults pretending to have a good time 'for the kids' while the kids huddled in corners and cried when the sparklers ran out. Life's sparkles, we learn at an early age, never last as long as you expect.

Since I left the UK, I understand it has become customary for various cities to have a go at what the rest of the world would call a 'pyrotechnic display' to mark the New Year (never the warmest night of the year) and sometimes for big occasions like an Olympic Ceremony or the Queen achieving a round number. I'm sure they are more fun than the bonfire nights of my childhood, but even if they are, I still wouldn't go anywhere near them because the British turn into a dangerous, uncivilised mob when they congregate in large numbers. There were 'only 90 arrests' during last January's London New Year's celebrations, but then the Metropolitan Police had insisted that the event be ticketed in order to bring the numbers down from half a million to 100,000. That's the maximum they reckon they can safely handle.

There are no such restrictions in Tokyo. The crowds swarm like iridescent shoals. It will be dark by 7:00 tonight but still a humid 29˚. Most of the young girls will wear brightly coloured yukata - a form of light kimono and many of them will clip-clop along the carefully planned routes to the free vantage points in wooden flip-flops called geta. Crowd control is meticulously planned and politely encouraged by loudhailer-wielding police placed strategically along the way. Everyone arrives early and waits patiently to leave in an orderly manner afterward. They always take their litter with them. The fireworks may be impressive but the crowds are much more so. There will be no drunken, loutish behaviour, there will be no crime, and it will be a pleasure to be among the young Japanese at play.

I still won't be going though, after all, when you've seen one whizz-bang. . .