Tag: technology

Renewables: the ‘balanced view’

July 1st, 2008 · · Society, Technology No comments - Tags: ,

In 2006 I blogged about wind turbines, suggesting three scenarios in which the micro variety might be promoted to householders. I was reminded of it when wind turbines returned to the front pages last week with the publication of the government’s £100bn plan to boost wind and other renewable power generation in the UK.

Wind turbines of all sizes have received very negative press coverage. The small ones are accused of using more carbon to produce than they can ever save, and worse (in the eyes of many journalists) being a waste of money. The large ones are accused of destroying areas of natural beauty. Even the BBC has been guilty – this article was first published in 2006 but has been receiving comments right up until March this year.

I find the willingness of the media to take such a negative approach very frustrating. I often see a degree of political motivation or schadenfreude in the stories. Sometimes it’s just poor journalism, taking the easier route of producing the negative story rather than making the positive argument.

As some of the more reasonable comments on the BBC blog point out, these are the early days for microgeneration and renewable power. Only now are these technologies beginning to receive serious investment. This investment will reap rewards in the future, but without people adopting, trialling, and feeding back about the technologies, they will never reach the necessary level of sophistication. Dismissing wind power as ‘a dead end’, because of some poor maths and one negative experience seems a little rash, especially for an august news organisation like the BBC.

Rather than knocking every attempt that the government, individuals, and private companies make to try to address the challenge of climate change, isn’t there an argument that the media should be lauding them? The influence of the media is incalculable, yet on this most crucial of topics they seem obsessed with their own ‘impartiality’. Even the least scrupulous newspapers are suddenly converted to the need for a ‘balanced view’.

I’m not arguing that editorial controls should be thrown out of the window – no-one benefits when that happens. But the debate about climate change is over, as is any question about the economic need to reduce our independence on oil. Just because there are lots of people arguing otherwise doesn’t mean that their views are equally valid. Millions of people believe the world was created a few thousand years ago, but I don’t expect any serious publication to give their views credence.

The media should be campaigning for people to begin to tackle climate change and reduce our dependence on oil. With the media rallying people to the cause, we could quickly overcome the narrow-mindedness, selfishness and nimbyism that is holding up progress towards renewable power. Like the commentator on the BBC blog trying to prevent his neighbour from erecting a wind turbine because ‘there needs to be a balance between energy saving and quality of life’. This is a man who clearly doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation; a man who has been convinced that the situation isn’t all that bad because the media lets him believe that. A man who believes that the aesthetic displeasure he would suffer from a wind turbine on his neighbour’s house outweighs the monstrous damage climate change will do to the rest of the planet.

I am no green angel. I drive a car. I have lots of gadgets. I have no solar cells or wind turbines. But like many people I am making an effort: improving loft insulation; choosing green energy providers; cutting out standby modes on my gadgets; recycling; switching to a more fuel-efficient car; choosing a house with good public transport links. I will do more as it becomes more feasible: I want my car, my computer, my house and most of all my power to be greener in ten years than it is now. I will invest time and money in making that happen but it will be easier and cheaper for all of us if the mass market is convinced of the need to tackle climate change. If individual solutions can be developed to the point that they become economically, ecologically, and practically appealing.

The government is trying to stimulate such a move, but at the moment the media is a barrier to its success. Until they join the campaign to tackle climate change, every nimby and naysayer will feel like they are in the right-thinking majority.

Half A World Away

November 29th, 2007 · · Society, Technology No comments - Tags:

Half the planet now has a mobile phone – ish. There are now 3.3bn mobile phone subscriptions worldwide according to Informa Telecoms and Media, but many people in richer countries have multiple subscriptions. In the poorest countries mobile penetration is often under 10%, and mobile phones become public amenities.

The contrast between rich countries and poor is stark,. But it is often the poorer regions that bring the most interesting uses of technology. Following the example of some enterprising individuals, some African operators are turning mobiles in to payphones, bringing telephony to rural regions for the first time. In Eastern Europe wireless infrastructure has been used to bypass the crumbling landline system to enable shopkeepers to take credit card payments and provide widespread access to broadband.

While we might all be dribbling over the latest mobile devices, a slightly modified version of the old adage holds true: ‘necessity is the mother of the [most valuable] innovation’.

Killer Kids: Do Games Make Children Violent?

November 14th, 2007 · · Society, Technology No comments - Tags: , , , ,

Popped in to the Beeb this morning for another little comment spot on violent computer games. This was all spurred by the launch of the FPS Vest, a new peripheral that looks like a flak jacket and replicates the feeling of being shot for players of first person shooter games. They wanted to know if this accessory was a step too far.

There’s no proven link between violence in games, films, books or music and violence in real life. There will always be a tiny minority of people who are already unstable and are affected by such things, but legislating for that minority would quickly limit the scope of any creative endeavour.

The accusation that violence in games desensitises people, and particularly children, is the most commonly wheeled out when the tabloids decide that ‘Something Must Be Done’. But however engaging games may become, particularly with the addition of accessories like the FPS vest, there are very few people who won’t recognise a massive difference between wielding a mouse and wielding a real weapon. The visceral reality of real-life violence is hard to replicate in any medium.

But despite this I do think that age controls on games – and their enforcement by parents – are important. For a start there is the simple preservation of innocence. People have plenty of time in life to experience some of the darker plots and themes explored in fiction of all forms. It becomes progressively less socially acceptable for people – particularly boys – to engage in the softer side of fiction and fantasy as they get older. In my opinion, the longer they can hold on to innocent dreams, the better.

There’s also the issue of learning rules and boundaries. Although I think children of even a very young age can differentiate between fantasy and reality (my wife’s godson loves Ben 10 but doesn’t expect to be able to transform in to a monster), there’s no need to taint their learning with violent games before the boundaries of acceptable behaviour have been established in their heads. An age limit at least increases the chance that they will have been taught right and wrong sufficiently well before exploring those boundaries in fantasy. (Any child psychologists reading, I’d appreciate your views.)

Finally there is the simple issue of sleeping at night. I am a grown bloke and I find games lake Doom 3 genuinely terrifying. OK I’m a softy who doesn’t watch horror movies, but the terror of giant demonic monsters leaping out of the shadows is enough to give anyone bad dreams. Replace the monster with more realistic violence in a modern day setting, and the impact is potentially greater.

The FPS Vest is going to be controversial whether sold in black or pink (yes, they do it in pink, ‘for girls’ I am assuming). And the idea of it may be a little unpalatable for some. But it really doesn’t change the age-old habit of playing war games, whether that be by kids in the playground with fingers for guns; or by adults with paintball guns running around in the woods.

(Thanks to Eamonn and Diane for having me on. Thanks particularly to Diane for the complement on my suit, from Long, Berry, and Wild, a fantastic local tailors who I can’t recommend highly enough. Less thanks go to Eamonn to baulking at my suggestion that I was in my late twenties. I am, still, just about…)