Sometimes it's hard to be a happy bunny

In the summer of 1976 I was a very happy bunny. It was one of the hottest summers on record and I was working as a young schoolmaster in Cheltenham. There was a sense of freedom in schools at that time and so very different from these data hungry days.

I’m not that much of a cricket fan but in the summer of 1976 I did play for our school staff team. Cheltenham is, as I am sure you know, on the edge of the Cotswolds. Ancient Cotswold villages with golden sandstone buildings became wonderful venues for our weekly cricket matches.

There is something quite magical about the sound of ‘leather on willow’ on a warm midsummer evening. My ability as a cricketer is sadly very limited and my style tended to be the boundary ball or out! I can still taste the air from that atmospheric Cotswold summer.

We too often talk about the good old days. They were good in so many ways but it would be a mistake to view the past through such a nostalgic lens. As dear old LP Hartley once said, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

That hot summer long ago we spent the school holiday in Paignton visiting family. Torbay simply sparkled under the bright summer sunshine. Sailing along the coast was therapeutic and the scorched South Devon fields rather looked like sand dunes under a tropical sky. Heady stuff!

It was a time when we had numerous holiday camps dotted around South Devon and accommodation was hard to find. Luckless families toured the towns looking for vacancy notices. Roads were gridlocked and overheated cars steamed hopelessly in the heat.

By midsummer it was almost impossible to find a space to sit on the beaches and crowded trains made Paignton’s Station Square look like Paddington at rush-hour.

Of course South Devon is still a very busy place during the summer school holidays. Last summer was unusually hot but the tourism mix seems very different. Some of the changes are quite subtle whilst others almost stun.

The landscape has of course changed. So many of the large holiday camps have become housing developments and the rustle of daily newspapers has been replaced by the tap of mobile phone keypads.

Thinking back to the summer of 1976 I find it a little more difficult today to capture that quintessentially English feel that filled the air. I’m not sure why that is and for that matter whether it is of consequence.

I’d like to think that life was less complicated then. As a young schoolmaster it certainly was. I only taught for six or so years and the main daily data gathering exercise was marking the register. Scripts were handwritten and marked with flowing red or green ink. For me the biggest stress was what to do during the very long summer holiday!

Oddly enough I think that it is the schools that evidence the comparatively carefree days of 1976 and the summer of 2019. Thinking about the incredible amount of daily data collected by teachers, the worry about job loss, behavioural issues, OFSTED and the impact upon school life, I immediately see the parallels in other walks of life. That is a worry.

Add to all that the fact that I am so much older then perhaps my desire for the warm summer evenings of 1976 is nothing more than galloping nostalgia. As I write I can hear in my mind the distant sound of leather on willow and that has helped me to keep the smile………….

Is social media addiction growing?

I’ve managed to escape. It’s taken me a while and hopefully the outcome will be long lasting. I say escape but that may be overstating the event a little. It all started quite innocently many years ago.

A friend of mine was teaching at an American university and sent me a letter suggesting that I look at internet communication. The concept looked at the time like something out of science fiction and yet here we are today.

I became addicted very quickly and loved the immediacy of cyberspace communication. When you think about the apparent simplicity of connecting across boarders electronically without restriction it really is quite something to marvel at.

 Over the years I gained an enormous amount of knowledge about internet communication and the whole social media landscape. So much so that a few years ago I found myself teaching strategic social media courses to students and local business people.

So what have I escaped from? A few days ago I deactivated my Facebook account! That may sound simple enough, but like any other addiction it is a big thing for those addicted to actually stop. Many of you may be regular Facebook users and might raise an eyebrow at such an apparently ridiculous move.

For those that might not know, Facebook is an online and social media company based in sunny California. It is the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard College friends. They are all very clever bunnies and created something that now has billions of users all over the world.

Facebook sprang into life back in 2004 and I quickly became addicted. I loved the connectivity, the sharing of news, views, video and stunning photographs. It allowed me to catch up with some lovely people and share events in real time without actually being there.

The problem for me was Bacon’s Law. Bacon’s Law is a movie themed game that selects a random actor and connects them with the multi-talented Kevin Bacon in six moves or less.

You can apply the same rule to almost anyone in the world. Do give it a try and laugh. It always amuses me.

Bacon’s Law in action really is Facebook. Find friends who know friends who know friends and so on. It is amusing of course but also rather sinister and a playground for potential stalkers.

Hugely complicated algorithms drive Facebook’s connectivity and therefore offer to those who control Facebook almost unlimited access to very personal data. I became very aware of things and people popping up unexpectedly and that worried me.

I suspect that feeling of unease was reinforced when the Facebook - Cambridge Analytical data scandal hit the headlines last year. Apparently Cambridge Analytical had harvested personal data from the profile pages of Facebook members and used it for political advertising.

It never ceases to amaze me how much personal stuff we quite happily and innocently post online. Clever people do harvest that and advanced data handling can change the way we think. Reinforcing political prejudice is an obvious example and evidenced hourly during the Brexit process.

Increasingly I had become aware of targeted adverts landing on my Facebook home page. Things that I had been searching for online suddenly popped up on my Facebook. Added to that were the newsfeeds that seemed a little too honed making me wonder quite what I was being fed.

Since leaving the world of Facebook I realise how many hours a day I was spending following the daily events of others! I am using that time to catch up on some fun reading, helping me keep the smile…..