Nurturing the polymaths…

My Power of Language post last week, Precision Tools, referred to the recent James MacTaggart Lecture given in Edinburgh by Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google. The lecture is, I understand, a keynote of the television industry’s year and Schmidt is the first non-TV professional to deliver it. His most uncomfortable message, though, came not from Schmidt the outsider to TV, but from Schmidt the foreigner to the UK.

“Over the past century,” he said, “the UK has stopped nurturing its polymaths.”

Ouch.

First a definition or two. The OED defines polymath as “A person of great or varied learning; a person acquainted with many fields of study; an accomplished scholar” and polymathy as “Great or varied learning; acquaintance with many branches of knowledge”.

Next a word of explanation. I’m writing this post to contribute to an online discussion amongst RSA Fellows, in response to the question “What can the RSA do about it?”; but I’m interested in any and all answers to the wider question, “What can we do about it?”.

Precision tools | The Power of Language

I have a new hero.

His name is Lindsay Johns. He is a writer and broadcaster and a mentor to young people in Peckham, and I first encountered him on Radio 4 two weeks ago.

Why is he a hero? Because, in his own words (in the Evening Standard of 16 August), in his mentoring work with young people in Peckham he has “zero tolerance towards inchoate street slang”.

It is quite a stand to be taking in today’s culturally tolerant society. It is a long-overdue rebuke to the well-meaning but destructive philosophy that the rest of society should be embracing street patois, complete with all its incoherence and intellectual limitations (implied and actual). It is a direct challenge to those who believe that the evolution of language is something to be observed and recorded, rather than influenced or even resisted.

It is a quiet but authoritative reproach to those who think that accuracy in language doesn’t matter – to the self-publisher who releases an e-book riddled with typos, sloppy grammar, punctuation errors and muddled homophones; to the politician whose diction is a contrived series of glo’l stops and dropped aitches; even (God help us) to the occasional English teacher who has decided that it is cool or “relevant” to allow text-speak in essays.

And Mr Johns gets results. Amazing results. Read more…

Fiction improves our social understanding

Last Thursday morning, Radio 4′s Today programme hosted an interview with Professor Keith Oatley, a cognitive psychologist and author of the book Such Stuff as Dreams.

His thesis is that reading fiction is good for you.

Well, I, inveterate bookworm of this parish, could have told you that – though I couldn’t have offered any hard evidence. I’m sure there are members of book clubs all over the world who would say the same thing. The Greeks thought it was the case, but again, without proof.

Professor Oatley, on the other hand, has come up with something more empirical. His study established a direct link between the amount of fiction a person reads, and their degree of empathy with and understanding of others (as measured by accepted psychological tests). The link was so strong that it seems to have surprised even him.

It’s worth listening to the interview (it’s on the BBC iPlayer, so will probably disappear in a few days’ time – though as of 24th July it’s still available). He compares fiction to a flight simulator – it is a way of encountering a wider range of situations and people, of living a richer and more interesting life than one might have the opportunity to experience directly. And it has a positive, demonstrable effect on the way people cope with the world.

Aside from its obvious intrinsic interest, there are three things that struck me about this idea.

Bringing words to life – a call for ideas

I’ve become a big fan of RSA Animate – a series of 10-minute videos combining hand-drawn animation, written words and a narrative voiceover.  It is a novel and engaging way of conveying a message – often a complex one – to a non-specialist audience.

I love the ability of the Animate concept to catch and keep the interest of the viewer. I love the impression it gives of freshness and spontaneity. I love its low-tech, non-threatening look and feel. It seems…  well, human in its tone and its scale. It seems to be something that anyone could do, given a couple of marker pens, a whiteboard, a video camera and some basic artistic ability. And, of course, a compelling story to tell.

I am not alone in thinking this.  Here’s a truly fantastic example of a California high-school student, Madison Kerst, creating her own Animate to discuss issues of gender equality in US sports.

I shall come clean.  I, Bennetts The Luddite, am completely sold on this idea (along with the notion of an app for Eliot’s The Waste Land, which is the first and only thing ever to make me regret that I do not possess an iPad).  I am wholly convinced of the value the technology can add for someone with a message to get across.

Animate has its

Internships, celebrity culture and the new publishing model

An interesting post last week by Alison Masters on RSA Projects considers whether internships are part of the problem or part of the solution.

I left a comment drawing a comparison between the internship debate and the destructive influence of celebrity publishing deals on the publishing industry. (Let me apologise here and now to Alison and to RSA Projects for hijacking what is undoubtedly an important debate.  But it got me thinking, you see…)

As I understand it, the internship debate accuses businesses of offering unpaid work to those whose parents (a) have the contacts to get them a placement and (b) can afford to pay their living costs while they get some work experience.  These interns get their placements over the heads of those who may be far more capable and talented, but can’t afford to work unpaid and can’t get a foot in the door in any case.  Have I understood that right?

There is, then, a strong parallel with the mainstream publishing industry (and the media in general) and its relationship with celebrities.  

The language of wit, not of hate

So This Is Depravity and Other Observations by Russell Baker

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It was in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election that I first, all unwitting, encountered the phenomenon of American political commentary in all its ugly reality. My image of the American political commentator was based largely on The West Wing and on Alistair Cooke, that doyen of reasoned and courteous intelligence. There was no clear presidential winner; so, fed up with the ignorance of the British media on the subject, I started to visit American websites for enlightenment. A media industry that had picked Jed Bartlet as their fictional President would be bound to have something profound and insightful to say on the situation… right?

Of communities and things in common

I’ve read two posts in the last few days which have got me thinking about the c-word.

The first was by the always thought-provoking Tessy Britton on collaboration versus conflict in the shaping of community outcomes.  She talks about her own early experience in community activism, and raises the perennial question about who really represents a local community – the Council or the local interest groups.

I for one feel the need to balance and season my own experience in local government with the insight of people like Tessy, who have brought some rigour and discipline to the question of how we make decisions in society.  Tessy’s post offers a great deal of food for thought, including some very scary things about radical activism (the Alinsky conflict-based model; she’s just this morning posted her alternative to Alinsky); it deserves to be read extremely carefully by – well, by anyone with an interest in what is happening outside their own front door.  In fact, stop reading this now, click the link, read her original post, read today’s post, and then come back here.

Right, done that?

Information sharing in the Big Society

In one of my past lives I ran an information and mapping business – Land Management Information Service (LaMIS) – which took a new approach to public information.  I think my experience may have some application to the idea of the Big Society.

The idea was this.  Government (and its agencies and local authorities) hold massive quantities of spatial data – data which has

• a significant value to them in discharging their functions;
• a certain amount of value to the wider public (in the interests of openness and accountability);
• a commercial value to some business sectors;
• and a specific, quite different, non-monetary value to the people who own, manage and make their living from the land to which the data relates.

I set up LaMIS for the last of these groups in particular.  We offered a simple mapping software product, including aerial photography, OS mapping, environmental data and measurement and recording tools.  (These were the days just before Google Earth, and many of my farming customers still only had dialup broadband access.)

Intellectual property, enterprise and public good

Intellectual property, enterprise and public good

A discussion paper by Ben Bennetts FRSA, Managing Director, LaMIS, written between October 2005 and September 2007. This paper represents my personal views and not those of my employers, past or present.

LaMIS ceased trading in November 2007, but I have been asked to reproduce this paper as a contribution to ongoing debate in a number of areas.  A separate post, of current date, explores some of these ideas further.

This paper was originally written as a response to the launch of the RSA Adelphi Charter in October 2005, in the context of the issues faced by the Land Management Information Service (LaMIS). It also covers some wider issues beyond those which directly affect the business – and some which have been raised at other recent RSA events which go beyond the intellectual property debate. The paper is a work in progress and I will be using it to take several different discussions forward in various arenas.