cultural equity/ power to the periphery

today is the solstice (horsemouth is struggling with the heat and booking bus tickets)

‘given the failure of algorithmic curation to differentiate between truth and lies...’

so posited a newspaper article. it was loosely pegged on the handmaiden’s tale, really about the remaining power of the press (it was the sun wot won it), and perhaps typical of people’s tendency to talk about what they know (lloyd george knew my father).

there’s a great trial scene in blake’s 7 (possibly in the first episode) where the defence and prosecution arguments are loaded into a computer - and it produces a verdict. this taps into a very 70ies distrust of machines and the state (one we seem to have forgotten).

but actual processes to establish truth involve people.

there is a political process to establish truth going on in the streets and in the media and the political institutions (essentially an allocation of blame for past events and an allocation of resources to future ones), and various judicial processes, a fire brigade investigation, a police investigation, an inquiry, an inquest (aiming at the same thing). the tendencies are to view anything produced in the second process either as irrefutable truth, an appeal to impartial authority, or as mere delay and prevarication, a distraction from the political resolution of the problem.

where it will all end up who knows.

this monday in history - the brexit negotiations began, byron, polidori, mary and percy shelley gathered at the villa deodati at start telling each other ghost stories, alan lomax (cultural equity/ power to the periphery) died, and alice coltrane recorded battle at armageddon (possibly her maddest track - certainly the only one with a title straight out of public enemy) and the ankh of amon-ra.