New Model Titan: Geek and Supergeek

Facebook has led the social media revolution of our age. It began with four undergraduate friends six years ago and today boasts over 500 million members, who spend more than 700 Billion minutes using it every month. A new movie, The Social Network, tells the not-so-heroic story of its inception. It’s largely about Harvard Undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg who, understandably, was not script consultant to this biopic or the book, The Accidental Billionaires, upon which it was based.

This filmic Mr Zuckerberg, however, drives a surprisingly compelling tale. A geek, twenty hours a day in front of the computer, with low social skills but a bright idea whose time has come, accidentally inherits the earth. This is no simple story of genius come good. Any heroism is deeply flawed and almost entirely veiled by social gaucheness.

The race goeth not to the swift, like Ty and Cameron Winklevoss, Ivy League twins so privileged, self-assured and naturally entitled that there must be times they wonder which was which. No, the only race that counts goes to Zuckerberg, spotty nocturnalist whose coding skill, determination and almost autistic inability to focus on human beings triumphs over every darn thing.

Given its subject, David Fincher’s film is masterful, absorbing, sharp and skilful. It lacks a strong emotional core but this seems inevitable because so do all its principal characters, and their lack of emotional groundedness doesn’t stop them getting cross or upset, just achieving undestanding or maturity. It’s a fearfully authentic portrayal, we fear. What the real Mark Zuckerberg makes of it all we do not know, and probably does not matter. The instinct that powered the Rockefellers is alive and well, and residing in a Harvard dorm. Perhaps it always was. Nowadays, however, what took JD thirty years to build by the sweat of his brow can just happen in six months. That’s the difference.

At the centre of this great film is a paradox — we use social media because we basically like other people and instinctively want to connect, but the means we use to achieve this are entirely impersonal. You don’t have to a computer geek, or indeed have any interest in the contemporary media revolution, to follow the story.

And, damn it all all, these things happened only six years ago. If that fact in itself isn’t enough to convince you of the pace of change and the dramatic way it augments some aspects of human personality whilst squishing others, you might just have a glimmer of the crazy killer-geek instinct necessary to hatch the next big idea that will enable you to take over your own particular universe some day.

HR, me Hearties!

“If you’re a professional pirate, you don’t have to wear a suit.” I learnt that from Muppet Treasure Island. Now I’ve been reading Peter Leeson’s semi-serious exploration of early eighteenth century piracy as an economic phenomenon. Blackbeard and chums were the pioneers of participative meritocracy. It turns out they were usually less violent and more mutual than you’d think, strictly for economic reasons. They were certainly better paid than legit sailors. Treasure was equally divided, but with slightly higher shares for the really key people.

There were two particular notables

1. The Cap’n, of course. He managed the ship’s reputation, designed bloodthirsty flags to scare people into surrendering without a fight, made hard executive decsions about where to plunder, who to shoot and when, maimings and maroonings. The Cap’n got the parrot, but was also radically accountable. If the crew felt he wasn’t delivering, they marooned him. The elected Cap’n dealt with star Exec tactics within an (illegal) regulatory framework called articles of association, which everybody signed up to, laying down the ground rules.
   
   
2. Enforcing the articles was the job of the Quartermaster. He (and very occasionally She) dealt with the enforcement of the rules, resolved disputes between pirates so that they didn’t damage the ship, dealt with health and safety, repairs, crew welfare, discipline and supplies. S/he also handled transitional arrangements between Cap’ns if the boss went mad, got shot, or fell overboard. Cap’n and Quartermaster were entirely dependent on each other to perform at a high level, or everybody got hanged.
   

To stay alive both jobs related to each other and were not entirely mutually exclusive, but there had to be great respect between the office holders, and both had to work together on the basis of mutual respect and giftedness shared. It’s called collaborative ministry.

Now I notice that a lot of human enterprises need these two different kinds of functions performed well and mutually. I can even think of teams of clergy and churchwardens who divvy up the work like this very effectively. But what history does not record is the existence of a kind of Uber or Super Cap’n who could somehow perform both roles simultaneously and effectively.

Now as I read person specs in parish profiles for new vicars, I notice a tendency to try and bag everything in a one-shot genius. People brainstorm lovely things about the best vicar they ever met, and roll it all up into a Poly-Combo Super Amazing Ask. S/he will be better at boiling the Gumbo than the cook, super navigator, entrepreneurial, rational-bureaucratic, inspiring storyteller, incisive questioner, ship’s doctor, carpenter and purser. Why, S/he even has to fly better than the ship’s parrot, whilst simutaneously making fewer waves than the ship’s Cat — and all this on cabin boy’s wages.

Not surprisingly this kind of recruitment usually disappoints. How could it not, when it’s all based on fantasy? It would more effective for the crew to work out answers to few more basic questions — what kind of ship is this? what kind of crew? what are we willing to forego in our Cap’n?

OK. Here’s a particular snare. The last Cap’n was very inspiring, but not terribly good or enthusiastic about swabbing the decks. So the cry ascends for a new Cap’n who is absolutely as inspiring, drum roll, but also far more infrastructural. What we recruit is a new cap’n who is slightly more infrastructural, slightly less strategic. We think we’re all going to be happy but before long we’re disappointed because s/he is not enough of either. And s/he gets fed up too, because s/he feels s/he’s simply expected to be everything in an unfocussed way. Which of course s/he is. Result disappointment. Another perfectly good vicar is semi-successfully forced into an artificial mould that kills off their giftedness and enthusiasm. And the cult of mediocrity notches up another skull, and lumbers on in its highly effective quest to take over the entire C of E.

So, if recruiting, ask, who are we looking for here? How is our lousy job going to fulfil anyone who’s up to doing it? How realistic are we being? What are we willing to do without? How will they fit in with the gifts and skills of everyone else? If you want an inspirer who is gong to inspire them? And if you want a quartermaster, who is going resource them, and do the inspirational star stuff in a genuinely collaborative way?

Anglican Covenant: a Tool for...?

I am slightly bemused when I am told some big signature project is perfectly safe because it won’t make any critical difference. If not, why bother? Is there anything worth doing instead that might make a difference? But a new General Synod is about to sign the C of E up to the Anglican Covenant, pretty much on auto-pilot, some say as much out of fear of giving offence as positive endorsement for its suposed virtues. Everyone else can then back-pedal, ignore it, even, depending on where they stand in the culture wars,

• because they fear it will spank TEC
  
  or
  
  
• because they fear it won’t,
  

The Covenant then joins a select number of other magnificenti in the lumber room, like the Kikuyu declaration, and life carries on. But, inquiring minds will wonder, what kind of a tool is it? What for? Whose benefit? How?

There’s a scale for assessing tools, that runs from Swiss Army Knife to Turkey Turners.

The Swiss Army knife may seem ungainly and complex, but it’s an instrument of many uses, that has proved its worth during nights out on a thousand bare mountains. Whilst any one of its 39-odd functions could be better performed by a dedicated tool, the whole instrument brings together massive functionality in one place that’s accessible, effective and easily portable.
If tempted to see the Covenant as a Swiss Army Knife, ask yourself “what extra functionalities does it provide? What does evidence indicate about demand for these to be tackled? How accessible? Is it effective enough to be worth the candle and, actually, what is the candle?”

The Turkey Turner is a dual pronged instrument you stick in a Turkey’s rear end to turn it when it’s well and truly done. Not only is it ungainly, and far less effective than kitchen roll to manhandle a sixteen pound carcass, but if you make holes in a turkey’s skin out run the juices that make it tasty. Turkey Turners are admirably well-intentioned but essentially useless.
If tempted to see the Covenant as a Turkey Turner, ask yourself “How negative are its negatives, actually. Have I overestimated its impact? Would there be any argument for having one in the kitchen drawer just in case a turkey ever needs turning?”

Whichever way the various decision making processes go, it would be good to feel people had at least voted for something they believed in, not simply something they were too nice to ask searching questions about, and with which they couldn’t be bothered to object...

You Decide!

Online Surveys & Market Research

Obamarama (Savoy Opera Version)

Every now and then something comes along that is completely silly, but essentially delightful. I’m not a major Gilbert & Sulivan nut, but like most students of late 19th century British society and politics, I have studied the lads’ œvre. Operetta buffs may recall that HMS Pinafore was so extensively ripped off around the US that The Pirates of Penzance opened simultaneously in New York and London. The excellent execution of this piece is, in itself, a work of art that deserves exposure this side of the pond.

h/t Ronnie Butler jr

Why new media matter in Church

People who don’t get it about new media often assume that the revolution in communications through which we are living is driven by desire to play with kit.
Thus the anxious, especially those who do not want to appear anxious, can stay safe from any requirement that they change, by treating the use of contemporary media as a hobby.
“Phew! real change is happening, but belongs in the world of electronic hobbyists, so it can be business as usual for us.”

In fact, communications revolutions are always driven by the ways they change people. The invention of the printing press did have interesting implications for industrial design technology, but greater far was its impact on people’s attitudes to authority including the Church and the government. Once people could read and write, especially en masse, the old assumptions were subject to constant critical scrutiny. And, as the dear old CIA used to say, you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.

The true implication of the printing press only took hold in the twentieh century, as costs came down sufficiently to allow information that had previously been privileged to flow all over the place. Information revolutions never go backwards, mostly because people have an insatiable thirst for information, and you can’t uninvent the technologies that provide it. One World War I song title expressed the rulers’ dilemma in the face of 20th century mass media technology perfectly — “How do you get them back on the farm, now that they’ve seen Paree?” But at least, then, they could try to control the media.

20th Century press was entirely free, as long as you owned a press. Now we all own a press, and we remain voracious information producers and consumers. We want to know the gossip, we want to know what’s going on, we want to be entertained.

Let me illustrate. Back at school governors in the 90’s we had controversy about making seat belts compulsory on school trips. We wrote to a local MP who assured us he was very much in favour, but the European Union, the square banana lot, wouldn’t allow progress on the issue. One governor had a dial-up connection and downloaded minutes from Brussels, where the UK had singlehandedly opposed compulsory seat belts on school buses, as a restriction of free trade. Same politician. Touché! Our dear leader was instantly outed for a bit of hypocrisy that would have been almost undetectable before.

What is called from all leaders in our new context is not necessarily technical skill, though the old pride that “Sunshine Deserts” British managers used to take in not being able or willing to type, an assertion of their superiority, is obsolete. It’s about radical transparency and mutual accountability. We shouldn’t have too much to fear, for our Scriptures teach mutual submission, redemption, and a call to consistency of life (Holiness). These are not things for which clergy should be too busy (or not). I wonder if our feared deficits in these weightier departments cause as much gut-churning fear of, and resistance to, new media as technical competence or busyness. I hope not.

Travel on, travel on

From the joys and strains of pilgrimage, and a greater pilgrimage to follow? I must remember to leave a couple of days R&R after my next ten days without a day off. Still a bit pie-eyed, here’s a final selection of pictures, from a glorious dawn over Jerusalem to a Cat up Mount Zion who reminded me of the legendary Marcel, whom Lucy and I met out here in 1983. Compare Max the Cat, shortly after my return.




There is a special challenge in doing a Holy Land pilgrimage. We all have a Jerusalem of the mind, which we carry around in us as we imagine the stories of the Bible. Its sites are strangely shapeless and placeless, rather like a theme park where everything relates to everything else, but nothing is really anchored in the place on earth it is situated. For many Western Europeans this Jerusalem of the mind is a place of quiet contemplation, Zeferelli religious picturs, and a clear focus on Jesus.

Then there is the Jerusalem below, as is — heaving with noisy heedless people, its historical stones hacked about, hot, contested and disordered — the last place a half decent Messiah would show up. Somehow these two realities have to be brought together, and that is especially difficult to do when good Christians bicker and squabbe over their shares in the real Holy Places, seeking to impose their cultures and expectations on the raw material like cats marking lamp posts.

Everybody claims some unique correctness. everybody is both right and wrong. Each has their own particular expression of some facet of the truth, but imagine for a moment that God’s will is being done in what is actually here, and no religion or denomination exists anything but cheek by jowl with all the others. If ever God meant there to be one infallible Big White Chief, or Book, or story, or organisation the kindest one can say of him, with Woody Allen, is that he is something of an underachiever.

Or perhaps it is all meant to be messy, and every expression of Christian faith provisional — good for what it is good for, but bound up in its own culture and history. Including us. Including everybody. The Word chooses to become incarnate in human cultures, in the real world. It is the only way we can know him. Our only response can be wonder, humility and realism, not imperial pretension, idolatry of dogma, or Disneyland religiosity. The reality that inspires the former is our best antidote to the latter, and it is there to give us the strength to travel on in faith, not sight.

Two Roads to Remembrance

There are (at least) two ways to enter peronally into a community’s corporate memory, sot hat it can renew itself in you:

• Contemplative remembrance is clean and simple, driven by the mind, when the eyes focus on something in an unhurried way, in isolation from the ordinary business of life. Icons are windows into heaven, to be gazed through as well as on. To switch on to the icon, you switch out of the distractions.
  
  
• Resonant remembrance is messy. You put yourself through a routine with your wits around you, but floating on the surface, so that a stray thought or impression can resonate against something in you, and bring you up against something you thought you had forgotten all about, but can now be understood in a new light.

So, today, I visited an extraordinary place of Contemplative remembrance, Yad Vashem’s extraordinary museum — a place to spend weeks, not days. It stores in the most moving ways the remembrance of the Holocaust and its victims, giving names to the nameless, and guiding you through the story with a small number of token objects, which you have to focus on in an unhurried way to get the best out of the experience.

Compare and contrast the discipline of doing the Via Dolorosa. There is no reflective space, but only the bustling life of a middle eastern street, distracyions all round, tourists snapping away, horns blaring, people selling their wares. It could not be less conducive to contemplation. Yet if you throw yourself into the flow with your wits around you, what connects you to Jesus’ sufferings is not the place (wehich has largely changed), but the whole ambience. Do we suppose, for one moment, that the first Good Friday was different from any other business day in Jerusalem? The bustling crowds, the children running, the animals, the smell, the noise. Nobody cleared those out the way, then or now.

Here’s a process of Messy resonance, told me by a good and much respected friend yesterday. She found herself at a small on-street station on the Via, hemmed in on every side, with blaring commerce and life going by, noise, smell and bustle. And she thought of Jesus falling for the second time. And what floated to the surface was a memory of the pain of childbirth and hearing a dustcart in the street outside, and wondering how they could carry on regardless, as though nothing significant was happening. And perhaps such a thought entered Jesus’ mind — Is it nothing to you who pass by?

Actually no — and that unwitting rejection in itself becaomes an emotional footprint connecting us to Jesus even more surely than if the street looked the same. Indeed if it did look the same that could make this kind of remembrance harder, because it would be too easy to rubberneck it, or sentimntalise it, or turn it into a movie in the mind. The shaft of pure recognition is too piercing and poingnant for any of those things. And that, roughly is how this kind of pilgrimge works — not high class rubbernecking, but allowing oneself to be carried along in a stream of experience that allows for sympathetic resonance. You come back with a new view, not of the buildings, but yourself.

That’s the difference between being a Pilgrim and a Tourist. And it’s been a true privilege to travel for ten days with such an engaging, open, thoughtful company of fellow pilgrims.

Bathing Beauties of 19º 35" East

Here it is — footage which all Jerusalem awaits, that may yet take the movie world by storm with its innovative camera techniques and generally Andy Warhol Underground Style applied to unusual subject matter. In it we see the Bishop of Oxford and a Junior Colleague trying to sink in the Dead Sea. We conclude that this is no place to go baptizin’. It was strange indeed to float so high as to be able to hold a camera above the briny and film.

You will notice, and I hope appreciate, Busby Berkeley rotary effects, an occasionally vertical focal plane, and a 1960’s surfin’ theme applied to an inland lake of battery acid with 2 cm waves. This battery acid is said to cure Psoriasis — or perhaps cause psoriasis. Soon we’ll find out which, anyway. Those who market its mud tell us that their product reverses ageing. Therefore John and I only stayed for half an hour or so, because neither of us particularly wanted to return to the UK as a baby...