The Filter Bubble
This would have been an interesting book to read when it came out ten years ago. As it stands, reading it in 2022 is an underwhelming affair for just how off the mark many of its more alarming predictions were.
It reminds me in a lot of ways of a book called Silicon Snake Oil by Clifford Stoll. Now, I love this book. I think it’s funny and insightful and full of clever observations. But it’s also a book that, it turned out, was laughably off-track in terms of where it saw the world going. It talked about the use of computers in education and how corrosive they would be. And it talked about how people would reject the ‘snake oil’ pitch of computerisation because fundamentally technology is not something people want to engage with. It dismissed the likliehood of everything from online shopping to ebooks. It make strong claims about the inherent tactility of the real world. ‘Life is richer than anything you’ll see on a computer screen’.
To be fair, he wrote this in 1995.
The thing is – he was right about almost all of what he said that wasn’t directly predictive of the future. Computers in classrooms do have questionable value. It is better to read a paper book than an ebook. The thing is, he over-estimated how much people want what’s good over what is easy. And when you under-estimate the fundamental level of ‘Screw it, that’ll do’ that people accept well – all of the economic and social objections to technical omnipresence melt away. That’s why we’re all stuck in a world of mediocrity where ‘good enough’ is good enough.
The Filter Bubble reminds me of that – it’s got the fundamentals right but it never quite nailed the people side of the equation. As such it makes several admirably bold statements about the future that turned out not to connect. The level of disconnect isn’t on the scale of Silicon Snake Oil, but it’s there. It’s more like a kind of advanced glimpse into an alternate universe somewhat adjacent to ours. And the thing is – he sort of predicted a better version of the future than we actually got.
It’s hard to recommend the book these days though – for all its author is acknowledged as a modern Nostradamus, I think a lot of that is because the ‘back of the book’ blurb is a lot more prescient than the actual text.
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest
This is the last of what I think of as the ‘authentic’ Millennium books – the ones written by Stieg Larsson. And, pleasingly, it represents a genuine conclusion to the trilogy – the end-point is satisfyingly cathartic and it doesn’t raise any mysteries or narrative that needs to be resolved. I’m on the fence as to whether I’ll try the fourth book – on one hand, it’s a bit unfair to assume it won’t be as good. It might even be better. It wouldn’t be the first time a new author took control of someone else’s intellectual property and absolutely rocked it. Still though… Larsson brought the cycle to a (reasonably) happy ending. Who knows.
As to the book itself, it maintains the high quality of the previous two. I may not have found The Girl Who Played With Fire to be the best of the books, but I still rated it four out of five in my spreadsheet. Consistently then these are books that under the MLU rubric are ‘Great, at their worst’.
This one demonstrates an interesting change of tone and pace too – less driven by action and intrigue. More of its momentum comes from a kind of procedural claustrophobia. Salander is in trouble, with the police looking to balance a whole laundry list of crimes on her shoulders. Swedish Intelligence, desperate to find a way to keep the integrity of their state secrets, conspire with the prosecution to sow as much disinformation into proceedings as they can. The whole apparatus of the secret secret police is marshalled against her defenders. Meanwhile a hostile and fantasist press turns public opinion towards uniform hostility. The mental health professionals that made her youth such a nightmare come back, worming their way from the woodwork to ‘mercifully’ suggest extended restraint in a mental health facility would be the kindest outcome of the trial.
That’s all wonderfully executed.
I also really enjoyed the extended sections where Erika Berger, formerly of Millenium and then of the much more prominent Svenska Morgen-Posten, confronts the suspicion, misogyny, and corruption of her new posting. She’s subject to verbal harassment, sexual harassment, and blackmail as a consequence of several things… but certainly her position as a tough, no-nonsense broom to sweep the refuse out of the newsroom is one that doesn’t win her many fans. I suspect a lot of women in positions of power will relate to the way in which her authority is continually undermined.
It reminded me a bit of my second-to-last head of school at RGU. She parachuted into the department with the worst landing I’ve ever seen in my life. Her arrival was so disruptive, and so detrimental to the integrity of the department, that I picked up my old Union Revolvers, slipped on my Representative Badge, and signed up to be the departmental rep so at least someone was fighting against her destructive agenda. She and I were, as you might imagine, perpetually at each other’s throats. She was disheartened that my teaching evaluations were always glowing, and thus she didn’t have a professional reason to slap me down. I was forever exhausted by thwarting her efforts by wielding the university bureaucracy against her. The situation escalated to the point that she was on the verge of launching a disciplinary against me for performing my union duties, and I was on the verge of launching a grievance (and perhaps more) on the grounds of her violating my legal right to consult with union members.
And then… it all instantly de-escalated. She realised what she was doing was only causing problems and resistance, and she asked if we could work together to solve the problems in the department. And I couldn’t have been happier. We got on very well, in the end, and she was even one of my references for my current job. I spoke about our relationship at my interview… it was my response to the question ‘Can you tell us about a situation where you were in conflict with a colleague, and how you resolved it?’.
I tell you this story not to suggest she was Erika Berger, because in this case it was an agenda thing not a gender thing. The problem is that when she shifted gears and started to respond to the departmental concerns and issues – exactly at the point I was trying to get people to give her a second chance – the way people responded was almost exactly like what was outlined in the book. To be fair, it’s not like she had earned that second chance but almost every conflict from that point could be drawn back to people trying to go around her, and then a fight breaking out because she found out about it. And a lot of that was explicitly gendered in the way people talked about her regime.
I always consider it the role of a union rep to aim for as happy a department as possible – whether that comes from management getting their way, or staff getting theirs. It was thus disheartening, and extremely taxing on my mental health, to be forever responding to unreasonable criticism that I was sure wouldn’t have been directed in the same way to a male boss. It’s one of those times in my life that I have examined most closely through a mental microscope to assess whether my first response was driven by double standards in that regard. I don’t think so – I have records from the time and they’re always strongly evidence based – but it’s never something that can be discounted. I know a few colleagues considered me to be a turncoat for taking her side on a number of the issues that were going on, which I guess is one of the strongest bits of evidence that I wasn’t letting sexism or cronyism decide my allegiances.
So, in addition to the looming darkness that blots out Salander’s sky we get some close-to-the-bone explorations of women in a hostile workplace courtesy of Erika. I think it’s a mark of a good book that you can see echoes of your own life in the way it talks about the sociological systems within which we all function.
What makes the book especially good though is how these twin waves of oppressive and institutional menace are first investigated and then deconstructed by the actions of Blomqvist, Salander herself, Berger, and the coterie of supporters they have all gathered over the previous two books. The final sections, where the trial comes around, are wonderful – a chance for the reader to see all their own objections and concerns represented in a crisp, savage cross-examination. TV Tropes has a section called ‘crowning moments of awesome’, and the performance of Lizbeth’s lawyer in the courtroom is one long extended sequence that fits the trope. Berger’s performance in her new role as chief editor of a major daily also has a sense of ‘Yas queen’ to it. I really enjoyed both plots as they played out.
As might be expected from the series, it’s a very cynical take on the legal system and the modern workplace, and on what justice and reconciliation actually mean. The world of the Millenium series is one in which optimism cannot exist for long. That makes for some grim reading occasionally, but it also makes the occasional rays of hope all the brighter.
These are really good books.
Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms
There’s a thing that happens when I sit down with a ‘popular science’ book in my own various niches of expertise, and it’s I assume common. I assess it from the perspective of me – not the intended audience in most cases – and not from that of a general reader. They never measure up, because how could they?
But Hello World is weird because it does measure up. It is a very literate and approachable take on the implication of algorithms. You don’t need to know anything about the subject to understand the discussion. But it also does such a great job of contextualising and integrating the material into the real world that I actually did learn a few things from it. It threads so many interesting examples of application and misapplication throughout that I couldn’t help but be impressed, while occasionally thinking ‘Huh, I hadn’t heard of that – I need to look deeper’.
One thing I always find disappointing is that many of the books that occupy particular niches will all fish their examples from the same shallow pool. I spoke about one of Geoff Englestein’s books in an ancient newsletter and pointed out that it’s interesting if it’s the first time you’ve ever read any social psychology, but if you have it treads extremely well explored territory and discovers nothing new. But Hello World is clearly written by someone that knows the material well and deeply, and has spent special effort in saying something novel.
So this was a pleasant surprise and I recommend it wholeheartedly!
I Am Not A Wolf
I absolutely love the Not A Wolf twitter account. I don’t use Twitter any more really – only for announcements – but luckily most of the account is replicated over on Facebook too. It’s a reason by itself to keep a presence on one, maybe both, of the services. Well, a couple of years ago I backed a book project from the author on a crowdfunding service called ‘Unbound’. And then I forgot all about it. And then I got an email saying ‘Tell us your shipping address!’. Since I backed while I was in the UK it wouldn’t let me ship to Sweden. So basically I paid for a book I didn’t get. I mean, I will eventually, but it’s not in my hands right now.
Maybe this is a thing that was done for everyone or maybe the level at which I backed got me a free ebook version… but I got a free ebook version. And I was very surprised to find out that the book I backed, largely without checking to see what it was, was a modern Choose Your Own Adventure gamebook. It turns out – they’re not a lot of fun to go through on a Kindle!
Anyway, I sat down with it and worked my way through every possible permutation of every possible passage because it is genuinely laugh out loud hilarious. The entire premise of the account, and thus this book, is that the author is absolutely not a wolf trying to get by in human society. A wolf couldn’t be a graphic designer, after all. A wolf doesn’t do human things like drink coffee and get lost in existential dread. A wolf eats a sandwich and doesn’t make a lunch out of half-dozen raw chickens hastily eaten in the workplace toilets. It’s an exceptionally enjoyable premise it turns out, because the writer behind it has nailed the awkward line of comedy between ‘This is how life is’ and ‘This is how life appears to someone trying to understand it’.
The book is basically more of the same, but coherent in a way that gives it something approximating a plot. A bizarre plot, mind, where one wrong decision might result in you casting off your human persona and eating a room full of co-workers in a budget fast-food chicken restaurant. A world where your animal physiology means that even taking a sip of whisky might result in some unexpectedly long term effects. What’s almost guaranteed though is that every choice you make is going to be funny, at least if you like the kind of clever, understated comedy that thrives in the written word. Just for a little taster, here’s a paragraph I found particularly enjoyable. A co-worker has just made a typically misogynist claim about women, dating, and picking up the bill. You – someone that is not a wolf and on a much lower salary than your co-worker – reflect upon that.
‘But you may not be able to afford picking up an entire dinner and the idea that this could doom your very first date before it even starts makes you sad. You’d hope that someone would be on the date because they’re excited to get to know you, not because they need help paying for twenty-eight dollars’ worth of Italian food’
It’s not ‘ludicrous guffaw’ comedy, but I find that never truly works in book form. It’s a kind of witty, cerebral comedy that I found immensely effective. It has shades and echoes of the way Terry Pratchett wove comedy into his books – where the joke lands and runs away before it ever truly encounters anything as comparatively workaday as a punchline. Even if you don’t want to get the book, check out the social media accounts.
Inhibitor Phase
The only book I managed to finish this month was Inhibitor Phase by Alistair Reynolds, and it’s the latest in his Revelation Space series. It’s supposed to be stand-alone but honestly I couldn’t recommend it on that basis – I think you need to know a lot from the other books to get the most out of it. I think if you hadn’t read any – even with the early synopsis provided – you’d find the whole thing baffling. It’s a great book, I just think you would be ill-advised to start here with the series.
As far as the book itself goes, I think Reynolds has of late managed to address the main issue I had with his writing… namely it takes a while to really get going. The past few of his books I’ve picked up haven’t had that problem. They don’t explode into top speed like a book in The Expanse series, but they accelerate cleanly and reliably – I’m buckled in for the journey within 20 pages rather than 100. I’ve read a lot of Reynolds books, but always on trust. They bypass my policy of ‘If I’m not drawn in by fifty pages, the book isn’t worth the rest of my time’. And they do that because I know that they will earn my attention because there isn’t one that has failed yet. But now it’s not even an issue.
If you fancy giving his books a try, I would recommend either House of Suns (my entry point) or The Prefect (a kind of prequel to the Revelation Space books proper). And then just remember, at the back of your mind, ‘this slow start will be rewarded several times over’.
On a tangential note – I wish HBO or Amazon or something would commission the Prefect for their next big budget sci-fi series. It is nigh on a perfect concept – a band of self-governing space stations policed only for the extent to which they obey the democratic rights of their inhabitants. It is a wonderful concept for a police procedural – every episode a new station and a new batshit political system within which to function.
Maybe I’ve already made that point in a previous newsletter. Nonetheless, I dream of this show and know it likely will never be. It is the greatest TV show that nobody will ever make.
nvisible Women
This book is a proper banger. Taking a sustained swing at the gender data gap, Invisible Women makes a convincing case for a world that is designed primarily for men and where women regularly suffer as a result of men being the default sex for which everything is designed. I know, shocker right?
The book encompasses everything from the design of tech; the well established lack of women in medical testing; the way cars are more dangerous for women; and many more areas. There’s not a lot in here that is genuinely new for me, but it’s all wrapped up in an extremely compelling and well argued package. And when there is new info, it’s good info. For example, I even found myself being gently and reasonably educated with regards to invisible biases in academia – an area where I consider myself to be extremely informed. Admittedly most of it was from a US perspective, but even so I found there to be some insights that I could generalise to my own context.
It’s real good, y’all.
However, it does play a little bit fast and loose with the research it cites. For example, at one point the author starts talking about counter-studies in medical research in which studies conducted on women showed different, and sometimes opposite, results from the multiple studies that were conducted primarily on men. But the thing is – that’s interesting but it’s not conclusive. The standard level at which academic studies are considered publishable is based on the P-value, which is a statistical measure that determines how likely the results are to have been achieved through chance. A P-value of 0.05 is the usual threshold, and what that says is ‘There is a 5% chance that these results are just a quirk of numbers’.
Take a broader view there, and what a P-value like that does is say ‘Of every twenty studies performed, one is likely to be just a fluke’. That’s why replicability is such an important issue in science. So when the book makes use of individual counter studies to discount larger bodies of work, it gets my purist hackles up a little because it feels just a touch dishonest.
However!
It’s easy to handwave a single study away as ‘statistically insignificant’, or an ‘isolated example’. That’s part of the deeper problem that the book discusses – the lack of sex-disaggregated data in research. The book ‘solves’ the problem by showing that these potential isolated examples exist as part of a broad, observable trend across many different studies. It wouldn’t pass muster as an academic text but as a piece of evidence-based rhetoric I think it’s very convincing.
Important to the book too is that focus on sex-disaggregated data because much of modern progressive discourse seeks to remove sex implication from record keeping. As the book compellingly shows, that’s an approach that just results in hurting women because it means important insights about biological reality are lost. Realistically the book takes the very reasonable position that disaggregation is of value, and that the more ways in which we can slice and dice research results the more free insight we get out of them. And as much as it may be unfashionable to assert that biological sex has material impact on our world – it does, and wishing that basic fact away because it’s inconvenient harms many and helps no-one.
I love this book. I am going to start recommending it to everyone I meet in the same way I do Everyday Sexism. If you could get your anti-feminist acquaintances to read two books, I think it should be Everyday Sexism and Invisible Women. The case that they make is, I think, almost unanswerable.
James Acaster Classic Scrapes
James Acaster is, I think, the best comedian currently working the scene. His Netflix standups are great in that they weave a narrative into an industry that rarely has one. He’s progressed from anything as prosaic as callbacks into something cyclical and thematic. He’s great, is what I’m saying.
But his book – not so much.
I laughed a few times – it’s not a lost cause or anything. It’s a book of his misadventures in life, and some of them are genuinely funny. There’s a relatability to the chain of events that lead to, for example, taking a secret shit in a semi-stranger’s house. There’s an authenticity to his description of living a life infected with chronic awkwardness. It’s just the stories didn’t really land for me in the same way I know they would in his stand-up. There’s a pacing and rhythm to the way he does his shows that just doesn’t translate into the page. And it’s a shame, because structurally there’s nothing wrong with the book. It just feels like the wrong medium for these stories when they are told in these ways.
I don’t particularly encourage people to read Classic Scrapes, although I suspect you won’t resent the time if you spend it. It’s just – if you want the James Acaster experience the best way to get it is in motion.