Cuttings: July 2016

Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing: did tech change literary style? by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum - review by Brian Dillon in The Guardian. "In a photograph taken in his high-tech home office at 29 Merrick Square, London, in 1968, thriller writer Len Deighton is hard at work on his next novel, Bomber. An electric typewriter is perched atop a desk, a huge telex machine extrudes paper coils on to the florid carpet, and a video camera on a tripod is pointed at the author’s face. In the foreground is another, bulkier, typewriter connected by a fat cable to a cabinet or console. The author of Billion Dollar Brain had lately taken delivery of a magnetic tape selectric typewriter (MT/ST) (marketed in Britain as the IBM 72 IV). It was first posited at IBM’s main offices in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1957; the finished product weighed 200lb and cost $10,000. And with it Deighton was about to compose the first novel ever written on a word processor."

Deal or no deal? Brexit and the allure of self-expression - article by Molly Crockett in The Guardian Headquarters column. "In the wake of the Brexit referendum, many people across the globe have expressed bewilderment at what they see as Leave voters’ irrational decision-making. Headlines and commentaries abound accusing Leavers of voting against their self-interest.... If self-interest is defined in purely economic terms, there may be some truth in these accusations. But psychologists have long known that humans consider far more than their pocketbooks when making decisions. One of the clearest demonstrations of this comes from the ultimatum game. The game is simple: one player, the 'proposer', is given some money and proposes a way to split the pie with a second player, the 'responder'. The responder has a choice: she can accept the proposer’s offer, in which case both players are paid accordingly. Or, she can reject the offer, in which case neither player gets any money. Classical economic theories [predict that] since some money is always better than no money, responders should always accept any nonzero offer. However, in reality humans play the game very differently: responders overwhelmingly reject offers they perceive to be unfair, usually around less than 30% of the stake. ... The aversion to unfair treatment is so strong that people are willing to give up as much as a few months’ wages to reject unfair offers. When Werner Güth published the first ultimatum game studies in 1982, economists were shocked – just as Brexit commentators are now flabbergasted by the referendum results. Both failed to appreciate that people often disregard economic self-interest in order to express their emotions and their identities."

Pinpoint by Greg Milner: how is GPS changing our world? - review by Will Self in The Guardian. "Milner ventures a short way into the impact of the technology on our cognitive function, and even essays a few remarks on the philosophic conundrums it raises, but these issues are better dealt with in Nicholas Carr’s account of the risks of automation, The Glass Cage, whereas the bulk of this book is a fairly nerdy account of the backroom whiz-kids who figured out the nuts and bolts of the system."

What is the role of the left in times of political crisis? Reading George Eliot after Brexit - article by Kathryn Hughes in The Guardian. "Set in the months following the passing of the 1832 Reform Act, the novel asks uncomfortable questions about the wisdom of putting the nation’s fate in the hands of people who believe their interests lie far from your own. Put simply: can democracy be relied upon to get the answer right? And, if the answer is no, then what does that reveal about the deep chasm that divides one part of society from another? Eliot wouldn’t have known the phrase 'haves and have-nots' but she would have grasped what it meant, and she already knew why it mattered.... When I first read the novel I could never work out why the political movers and shakers pay so much attention to the labouring classes. The Great Reform Act of 1832 was carefully designed to give the vote to a handful of urban property holders rather than to the miners whom Eliot depicts hanging around the Sugar Loaf pub waiting for the election agent to woo them with free drink. It was only on a subsequent reading that the penny dropped. Felix Holt isn’t about 1832 at all. Like any historical novel, it’s actually about the present – in this case 1866.... Eliot, as so often turns out to be the case, is actually closer to the truth that we could have guessed. It turned out that doubling the electorate in 1867 required the political parties to spend far more time and money on securing votes than ever before. Rhetoric coarsened as the stakes rose, wild and impossible promises were made and there was more drunkenness at the ballot box than anyone could remember, even the great boozy days of 1832."