If you look at my bookshelves (or have seen the reviews I write for Books we Like), you'll know that I'm quite partial to near future science fiction. I wouldn't go so far as to call them dystopian novels, although they're not often glowing depictions of the future (but that would probably make for a boring narrative). So it's not surprising that I'm writing about another story in this theme. Set twenty years in the future, The Last of Us describes an America where the human population has been ravaged by a fungal parasite that overwhelms the brain, driving all infected to attack and kill anyone they come across. Most of the uninfected people live in quarantine zones in the remnants of cities, where their lives are tightly controlled by the military. Outside of these zones, pockets of survivors attempt to develop their own communities whilst defending themselves from the infected and the dangers of a lawless society. The story follows Joel, a smuggler, as he unwillingly escorts teenage Ellie across the country in search of an organisation called the Fireflies.
So far so good, but there's one major difference with this story - it's actually a computer game, not a book. The Last of Us was created by the incomparable Naughty Dog studio who developed the brilliant Uncharted series; as such they're no strangers to games which focus on the narrative as much as the technology. But The Last of Us takes the depth of engagement to a whole new level. Uncharted is like watching an action movie starring your favourite hero - it's entertaining but you watch it at a distance. In contrast, The Last of Us is like reading a book that you can't put down - you are completely drawn into that world.
Some of that is the outstanding visuals. From cities where nature is slowly reclaiming its territory to makeshift hideouts where people have made a desperate last stand - the post-apocalypse has never looked so beautiful and yet so bleak. But mostly, it's through engaging with the characters. Both Joel and Ellie have painful histories which colour both their attitude to and interaction with each other. Neither are saints though, nor figures of pity, and it's this complexity that brings them to life. For all the computer gaming that I've done I can honestly say that I've never felt emotionally invested in what is fundamentally a bunch of pixels. And the ending, when it came, was heart-wrenchingly painful. It probably breaks all the rules in how to finish a game but is perfectly imperfect, and hence believable. So, if asked what my favourite story of 2013 is, I might have to admit that it's not a book at all. But what a game...
Monday, 23 December 2013
Friday, 6 December 2013
Revisiting value
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| Capturing memories in the rain at Orchard Roots |
My first post on the Know your Bristol project focused on memory and its value. So it's quite fitting that, nearly two years later, I'm returning to the same thoughts about what we consider to be of value. We had a big team gathering the other day and my colleague Nate spoke about the idea of ephemeral value and instrumental value. The digitised objects and photos, and the oral histories that we have gathered during Know your Bristol all have ephemeral value - that is they are valued because they are there and people can see them, share them, enjoy them. But many of them also have instrumental value as they are being used by people, amongst other things to help inform decisions. My colleague Pete explained how many planning applications that he sees in his role at Bristol City Council have incorporated elements of Know Your Place - not just the maps but the images and memories as well. So it's clear that these stories and images have a value, and a life, beyond our project here.
Monday, 23 September 2013
Research Encounter #14: Deborah Wilson
I’ve been spending a lot of time with Dr Deborah Wilson recently as she’s the Academic Director for this year’s Thinking Futures Festival (which is fabulous, naturally!). But one of her many hats is that of a Reader in Public Policy, where she works on the use of incentive mechanisms in improving schools’ educational outcomes.
What’s the point of school league tables? On the one hand, they are meant to be a source of information about school quality and so used to inform choice. The theory here is that people choose on the basis of how good a school is and that gives the schools an incentive to improve. But they’re also used to set targets, publicly rank schools and create reputation effects. So there are these top-down targets from government and the bottom-up accountability structure based on choice, with this same set of information in the middle. Deborah’s research looks at various implications of mechanisms on how schools perform, with a recent example considering the effect of the abolition of league tables in Wales following devolution. Performance in Welsh secondary schools fell relative to England by just under two GCSE grades per student per year after abolition, with the lowest average ability schools affected most negatively. The schools that were compared were mostly rural so the extent to which choice can be a driver for improvement in that environment is quite low. As such, Deborah concludes that it was the lack of the public name-and-shame potential that caused performance to go down.
What’s the point of school league tables? On the one hand, they are meant to be a source of information about school quality and so used to inform choice. The theory here is that people choose on the basis of how good a school is and that gives the schools an incentive to improve. But they’re also used to set targets, publicly rank schools and create reputation effects. So there are these top-down targets from government and the bottom-up accountability structure based on choice, with this same set of information in the middle. Deborah’s research looks at various implications of mechanisms on how schools perform, with a recent example considering the effect of the abolition of league tables in Wales following devolution. Performance in Welsh secondary schools fell relative to England by just under two GCSE grades per student per year after abolition, with the lowest average ability schools affected most negatively. The schools that were compared were mostly rural so the extent to which choice can be a driver for improvement in that environment is quite low. As such, Deborah concludes that it was the lack of the public name-and-shame potential that caused performance to go down.
Wednesday, 28 August 2013
Scratching the surface
A virus has infected the entire human race. Otherwise symptomless, it has one devastating effect: all women die in childbirth. People blame terrorists, nature or God. Society reels at the thought of its imminent demise while scientists race against the clock to find a solution.
This is the premise of The testament of Jessie Lamb, by Jane Rogers, and an excellent one at that. When I heard about this book I imagined a novel in the style of some of Margaret Atwood's works. And there are shades of this, especially when Jessie's father (a scientist) is describing the ever more desperate and ethically dubious techniques that are being employed. But one of the book's strengths turns out to be its greatest weakness: the author's ability to capture the personality of its 16 year old narrator. Jessie's viewpoint and her actions are coloured by her teenage self-absorption and sense of invulnerability and entitlement.
As such, we never hear about the wider impact that the virus is having on the world, on governments and services and society as a whole - Jessie's view is limited to her small world and the people she knows. There's no real mention of how the virus managed to infect the entire world so quickly, nor how it was created. Even the activist groups that Jessie and her peers get involved in seem more interested in young people's rights and animal testing than the current situation. Worrying about carbon dioxide emissions and trying to recreate a rural commune seem a bit pointless when the human race looks to be extinct in a generation. Jessie's decision to put herself forward for a risky medical experiment initially seems baffling. It's only when trying to imagine a teenage mindset that it becomes clear. Jessie's grand gesture is the hollow posturing of someone who wants to 'make a difference' without thinking of the real consequences. She's happy to sacrifice her life because she has no concept of what it is to live.
None of this makes the book a bad read; on the contrary, it's gripping and well written. But I can't help wondering what it would have been like if it had been written through the eyes of someone a little older, wiser and more aware of the world. Then, I think, it would have joined the ranks of the great near-future stories such as The Handmaid's Tale and Fahrenheit 451. As it is, the book merely scratches at the surface of a fabulous concept, leaving me with a sense of what might have been.
This is the premise of The testament of Jessie Lamb, by Jane Rogers, and an excellent one at that. When I heard about this book I imagined a novel in the style of some of Margaret Atwood's works. And there are shades of this, especially when Jessie's father (a scientist) is describing the ever more desperate and ethically dubious techniques that are being employed. But one of the book's strengths turns out to be its greatest weakness: the author's ability to capture the personality of its 16 year old narrator. Jessie's viewpoint and her actions are coloured by her teenage self-absorption and sense of invulnerability and entitlement.
As such, we never hear about the wider impact that the virus is having on the world, on governments and services and society as a whole - Jessie's view is limited to her small world and the people she knows. There's no real mention of how the virus managed to infect the entire world so quickly, nor how it was created. Even the activist groups that Jessie and her peers get involved in seem more interested in young people's rights and animal testing than the current situation. Worrying about carbon dioxide emissions and trying to recreate a rural commune seem a bit pointless when the human race looks to be extinct in a generation. Jessie's decision to put herself forward for a risky medical experiment initially seems baffling. It's only when trying to imagine a teenage mindset that it becomes clear. Jessie's grand gesture is the hollow posturing of someone who wants to 'make a difference' without thinking of the real consequences. She's happy to sacrifice her life because she has no concept of what it is to live.
None of this makes the book a bad read; on the contrary, it's gripping and well written. But I can't help wondering what it would have been like if it had been written through the eyes of someone a little older, wiser and more aware of the world. Then, I think, it would have joined the ranks of the great near-future stories such as The Handmaid's Tale and Fahrenheit 451. As it is, the book merely scratches at the surface of a fabulous concept, leaving me with a sense of what might have been.
Wednesday, 7 August 2013
Research Encounter #13: Sarah Gosling
Sarah Gosling has been part of our team for the last few months, working with us on the Seeds of Change project. But she’s also about to start the 3rd year of her PhD and, by the time this is posted, will be in Kenya digging up fossils of the earliest humans.
Inspiration for a PhD thesis can come from anywhere. For Sarah, it came from a project in the School of Chemistry which was looking at pigs and how you could determine what they were eating from their bones. By feeding the pigs particular diets and then examining the isotopes in their bones, they could see how the diet correlated to the composition of the bones. She realised that some of those diets mirrored the diets of people from around 11,000 years ago, at the time of the introduction of farming. In places like Denmark and Portugal, there is evidence of people living on the coast eating loads of fish and then suddenly not eating fish anymore and going into farming. Researchers tend to talk about the changes in society and population growth, and the impact on art and civilisation. But there would also have been changes in their bones due to the shifting diet. So Sarah has been looking at the internal structure of the pigs’ vertebral bone and observing the differences; since pigs develop in a very similar way to humans they can be used as a model. The next stage of her research will be to consider how this information changes the way we think about humans as they first went into farming.
Inspiration for a PhD thesis can come from anywhere. For Sarah, it came from a project in the School of Chemistry which was looking at pigs and how you could determine what they were eating from their bones. By feeding the pigs particular diets and then examining the isotopes in their bones, they could see how the diet correlated to the composition of the bones. She realised that some of those diets mirrored the diets of people from around 11,000 years ago, at the time of the introduction of farming. In places like Denmark and Portugal, there is evidence of people living on the coast eating loads of fish and then suddenly not eating fish anymore and going into farming. Researchers tend to talk about the changes in society and population growth, and the impact on art and civilisation. But there would also have been changes in their bones due to the shifting diet. So Sarah has been looking at the internal structure of the pigs’ vertebral bone and observing the differences; since pigs develop in a very similar way to humans they can be used as a model. The next stage of her research will be to consider how this information changes the way we think about humans as they first went into farming.
Monday, 29 July 2013
Research Encounter #12: John Downer
OK, I’m cheating on this one – I was catching up with Dr John Downer, from the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, before he went off to the States for 6 months. But drinking cider on a boat in the evening sun seemed like the perfect time to talk about research (or is that just me?).
Before we build complicated technologies, from nuclear power plants to banking computers, we have to prove that they’re not going to explode or break down in a catastrophic way. However, if we consider a thing with millions of moving parts, working for years on end where all sorts of incredibly unlikely things can happen in that time – proving that it won’t fail is philosophically impossible. But we have to know before we build it, rather than just testing it afterwards. Aircraft are an excellent example of this: it shouldn’t be possible to prove their safety because there are just too many ambiguities involved, but we have lots of aircraft and have accrued billions of hours of flight in total. And it turns out that aircraft about as reliable as we predict them to be, which creates a philosophical problem – given that we shouldn’t be able to prove how safe things are, how come it seems to work? So John is looking at how organisations assess the reliability of aircraft that haven’t been built yet, why that seems to work and the implications for other technologies.
Before we build complicated technologies, from nuclear power plants to banking computers, we have to prove that they’re not going to explode or break down in a catastrophic way. However, if we consider a thing with millions of moving parts, working for years on end where all sorts of incredibly unlikely things can happen in that time – proving that it won’t fail is philosophically impossible. But we have to know before we build it, rather than just testing it afterwards. Aircraft are an excellent example of this: it shouldn’t be possible to prove their safety because there are just too many ambiguities involved, but we have lots of aircraft and have accrued billions of hours of flight in total. And it turns out that aircraft about as reliable as we predict them to be, which creates a philosophical problem – given that we shouldn’t be able to prove how safe things are, how come it seems to work? So John is looking at how organisations assess the reliability of aircraft that haven’t been built yet, why that seems to work and the implications for other technologies.
Wednesday, 24 July 2013
Research Encounter #11: Peter Spooner
Peter Spooner, a 1st year PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences, is studying deep sea corals in the Southern Ocean. He came to talk to us about engaging with schools, both now and during the research cruise he’ll be taking later on this year (it’s a tough life doing a PhD!).
If you look at the bottom of the ocean, it might not seem very interesting; but it can actually tell you a great deal about the past, from ocean circulation to changes in climate. This is often done by studying sediment cores – tubes of sediment layers that can give you a snapshot of the ocean at the time. But in some places, such as the Drake Passage between the Antarctic Peninsula and South America (which Peter is studying), the strong currents sweep away the sediment so you have to look at deep sea corals instead. These corals exist all over the world at depths up to several thousand metres and their age can readily be determined using the radioactive isotopes of uranium and thorium. However, it’s a time-consuming process, with 50 samples taking up to seven weeks – not ideal if you have a collection of 20,000 corals, as the University does. So Peter has been developing a technique that enables him to do the same number of samples in just 3 days. Once he knows the ages of the corals he can start to investigate the temperature of this part of the ocean and how this relates to historical climate changes.
If you look at the bottom of the ocean, it might not seem very interesting; but it can actually tell you a great deal about the past, from ocean circulation to changes in climate. This is often done by studying sediment cores – tubes of sediment layers that can give you a snapshot of the ocean at the time. But in some places, such as the Drake Passage between the Antarctic Peninsula and South America (which Peter is studying), the strong currents sweep away the sediment so you have to look at deep sea corals instead. These corals exist all over the world at depths up to several thousand metres and their age can readily be determined using the radioactive isotopes of uranium and thorium. However, it’s a time-consuming process, with 50 samples taking up to seven weeks – not ideal if you have a collection of 20,000 corals, as the University does. So Peter has been developing a technique that enables him to do the same number of samples in just 3 days. Once he knows the ages of the corals he can start to investigate the temperature of this part of the ocean and how this relates to historical climate changes.
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