Cuttings: April 2020

How the telephone failed its big test during 1918's Spanish flu pandemic – article by Harry McCracken on Fast Company, referenced by John Naughton in his Memex 1.1 blog. "For a time, it looked like the telephone might help people carry on their lives with minimal disruption. In Holton, Kansas, the local Red Cross distributed placards that local merchants could place in their windows, encouraging customers—especially those who might be ill—to call rather than enter the premises. (Even before the epidemic, telephone ordering was becoming a popular form of commerce—grocery stores, for instance, offered Instacart-like delivery services.)... [But] phone-company infrastructure depended upon the operators (mostly young women) who manually made each connection between the person placing a call and an intended recipient.... Telephone operators were just as vulnerable to the Spanish flu as anyone else; maybe even more so than some, since they sat at banks of switchboards in tight quarters, elbow to elbow with any infected coworkers. ... Instead of running ads touting the telephone’s usefulness in times of quarantine, AT&T’s Bell System companies and their rivals were reduced to beseeching customers to stay off the phone if at all possible."

The UK will change after coronavirus. But we have to fight to make it a change for the better – article by Owen Jones in The Guardian. "The voters who delivered Johnson his majority in 2019 in the so-called red wall areas – either by voting Tory or staying at home – are often socially conservative, but committed to economic interventionism. The Tories, therefore, have no electoral mandate for a renewed bout of austerity. Now with even middle-class people sucked into the welfare state is a renewed onslaught against social security really politically palatable?... Much of the left mistakenly believed that they would become the obvious beneficiaries of the 2008 financial crash, even though previous crises of capitalism – in the 1930s and 1970s – principally benefited the right. As free market economist Milton Friedman aptly put it: 'Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change.' But his caveat was important: 'When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.' When Lehman Brothers imploded, the left’s intellectual cupboard was bare.... Beveridge was right: these moments are times for revolutions, not for patching, and a looming danger is that the new populist right may understand this better than Labour or the US Democrats. It has taken the horror of a pandemic to expose deliberately ignored social ills. What comes next must cure them for good."

'Is my nan going to die?': how kids' TV is responding to the coronavirus - article by Jim Waterson in The Guardian. "The BBC’s long-running Newsround programme has seen its audience rise substantially for its three daily broadcasts on the CBBC channel and its dedicated website, with its reporters trying to find ways to provide optimistic takes on the news without sugarcoating the situation. 'So many kids now have anxiety issues,' said Ricky Boleto, a presenter on the programme. 'We’re letting kids know that we focus on what’s happening in their homes and gardens without making them feel they have to sort out the world’s problems … They’re sending questions such as "Is my grandmother going to die"? We’ve been trying to put them at ease.' He said children 'have a very good moral compass, probably better than most adults' and Newsround aims to cover stories without patronising audiences: 'The most important thing for us is to tell stories in a way that doesn’t presume knowledge, doesn’t patronise, and makes young people feel that this is their programme.'”

Appalled Graphic Designer Shows Girls’ Life Magazine What Their Cover Should Look Like – September 2016 post on Women You Should Know website, referenced in The Female Lead. " A couple of weeks ago we ran a piece about an image that was posted on social media and went viral. It was a side-by-side shot of [a] Girls’ Life magazine cover ... next to the cover of Boys’ Life magazine that served as a harsh reminder of the stereotyped messages that, even in the year 2016, are STILL marketing to girls. We weren’t the only ones ticked-off by the image. After seeing it posted on her Facebook feed, Katherine Young, a graphic designer, took matters into her own hands and decided to show Girls’ Life what their cover SHOULD look like."

What will the transition to a new normal look like? – article by Matthew Taylor on the RSA website, referenced by John Naughton in his Memex 1.1 blog. "[My assumption is] we will enter an extended period of transitional arrangements – between normal life and lockdown. The government will assert its need to tighten or loosen the rules depending on infection rates and the capacity of health systems. This transitional period may last for an extended period, perhaps a year or more. ... In an extended transition we need processes and principles to guide policy decisions and shape organisational and individual responsibilities. ...What might some of these principles and processes be? Here are five to start with. (1) The public should have direct input to decision making.... (2) No one should be either forced or incentivised to behave in ways that are dangerous to their health and the health of others....(3) Rules will need to be flexible, but transparency should be mandatory.... (4) The needs of the most vulnerable should take priority.... (5) Policy should be devolved where possible."

No campus lectures and shut student bars: UK universities' £1bn struggle to move online - article by David Batty and Rachel Hall in The Guardian. "UK universities need to spend hundreds of millions of pounds to deliver degrees online, with warnings that many are unprepared to deal with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on students’ education.Only around 20 universities are in a good position to provide a range of high-quality online courses by the start of the new academic year in September, according to Prof Sir Tim O’Shea, the former vice-chancellor of Edinburgh University.... His stark assessment came as Durham University stalled controversial plans to provide online-only degrees and significantly reduce face-to-face lecturing next year. The proposals, drawn up by senior managers and private provider Cambridge Education Group Digital, said lecturers would only need six hours of training, and could create online degree modules in six to 12 weeks.... O’Shea divided the UK universities into four categories: those with the capacity and will to develop high-quality online education, including the Open University, King’s College London, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Leeds and Coventry; those with the capacity but not the will, such as Oxford and Cambridge; those with the will but not the capacity, such as Durham; and those with neither the will nor the capacity, such as art schools and music conservatoires."

Show but don’t tell: why silent Zooms are golden for focusing the mind – article by Nosheen Iqbal in The Guardian. "On paper, the practice of logging on to a video-conferencing site to sit with strangers for an hour without communicating may hold limited appeal. In practice, silent Zooms have become a lifeline in lockdown for users trying to focus on writing, reading, meditation and more.... Anecdotally, concentration seems more difficult to harness in corona times; research shows that, during periods of stress, we see significant decline in our ability to hold information and focus. But having accountability partners is a proven way to boost success, be it in weight loss or curbing an alcohol addiction. The difference with silent Zooms is that the accountability partners are often strangers, and always silent."

'They were forgotten': the great female cartoonists who have been overlooked – article by Nadja Sayej in The Guardian. Women in Comics: Looking Forward and Back is a group exhibition at the Society of Illustrators featuring more than 50 female cartoonists, from the early 20th century trailblazers to plus-size superheroes, queer graphic novels, wartime romances and flapper-era cartoons, all of which go outside your typical superhero format.... The first part of the exhibition looks at roughly 80 artworks from the historic collection of California-based cartoonist and collector Trina Robbins. Her collection includes cartoons by women in the flapper era, the second world war and 1950s romance comics, among others. Robbins has single-handedly rediscovered an entire generation of artists, some of whom are only now being recognized.... Robbins started in the San Francisco underground comics scene in 1966. 'I didn’t know about the women who preceded me,' she said. In the early 1980s, she and fellow artist Catherine Yronwode collaborated on an idea: 'I decided we needed to produce a history of women cartoonists,' said Robbins. 'We made a book in 1985.'”

We Are Living in a Failed State – article by George Packer in The Atlantic, referenced in John Naughton's Memex 1.1 blog. "When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. ... The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective. The United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus—like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering. The administration squandered two irretrievable months to prepare. From the president came willful blindness, scapegoating, boasts, and lies. From his mouthpieces, conspiracy theories and miracle cures. A few senators and corporate executives acted quickly—not to prevent the coming disaster, but to profit from it. When a government doctor tried to warn the public of the danger, the White House took the mic and politicized the message. Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state."