Saturday, May 30, 2020

The Machine Stops: Will Gompertz reviews EM Forster's work ★★★★★

Will GompertzArts editor@WillGompertzBBCon Twitter

My wife was listening to a radio programme the other day and heard a man talking about artificial intelligence. He mentioned a science fiction novella by EM Forster called The Machine Stops, published in 1909. He said it was remarkably prescient. The missus hadn't heard of it, and nor had I. Frankly, we didn't have Forster down as a sci-fi guy, more Merchant Ivory films starring Helena Bonham Carter and elegant Edwardian dresses.

We ordered a copy (you can read it for free online).

OMG! as Forster would not have said.

The Machine Stops is not simply prescient; it is a jaw-droppingly, gob-smackingly, breath-takingly accurate literary description of lockdown life in 2020.

If it had been written today it would be excellent, that it was written over a century ago is astonishing.

Image captionThe Machine Stops was republished in 2013, more than a century after it first came out, reflecting its enduring quality

The short story is set in what must have seemed a futuristic world to Forster but won't to you. People live alone in identikit homes (globalisation) where they choose to isolate (his word), send messages by pneumatic post (a proto email or WhatsApp), and chat online via a video interface uncannily similar to Zoom or Skype.

"The clumsy system of public gatherings had long since been abandoned", along with touching strangers ("the custom had become obsolete"), now considered verboten in this new civilisation in which humans live in underground cells with an Alexa-like computer catering to their every whim.

If it already sounds spookily close for comfort, you won't be reassured to know that members of this detached society know thousands of people via machine-controlled social networks that encourage users to receive and impart second-hand ideas.

"In certain directions human intercourse had advanced enormously" writes the visionary author drily, before adding later:

"But humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean progress of the machine."

Image captionEM Forster started writing fiction at King's College Cambridge, where he first studied the Classics, and then History (1897-1901)

It's not lost on me that you are reading this on the internet on a man-made device over which we just about still believe we have mastery. Not for long according to Forster's story, nor, I suspect, some of the boffins behind AI today.

We are in Frankenstein's monster territory, another literary warning we probably shouldn't ignore.

Forster has no similar scary physical manifestation of science going wrong in The Machine Stops (the title says it all), but that brings it even closer to home. The tale's two protagonists, Vashti and her son Kuno, are normal people, just like you or me. She lives in the southern hemisphere, he lives in the north.

Kuno wants his mother to visit. She isn't keen.

"But I can see you!" she exclaimed. "What more do you want?"

"I want to see you not through the Machine," said Kuno. "I want to speak to you not through the wearisome Machine."

"Oh, hush!" said his mother, vaguely shocked. "You mustn't say anything against the Machine."

Yvonne Mitchell played the role of the mother Vashti in this 1966 television adaptation of The Machine Stops, as part of a science fiction series called Out Of The Unknown — Image captionYvonne Mitchell played the role of the mother Vashti in this 1966 television adaptation of The Machine Stops, as part of a science fiction series called Out of the Unknown

Michael Gothard played the part of the son, Kuno — Image captionMichael Gothard acted as her son, Kuno, in the same television adaptation

She prefers social distancing and giving her online lecture on Music During the Australian Period to an unseen armchair audience who lap-up abstract historical information that has absolutely no relevance to their actual subterranean lives beyond being an illusory distraction from their hollowed-out existence (not dissimilar to lectures under lockdown, maybe).

I won't say any more about what happens - it is a very short story that can be read in under an hour - other than to mention it is basically a machine-age take on Plato's The Allegory of the Cave.

Image captionIn Plato's Cave are two groups of philosophers who are separated by a wall, but animated in discussion

The Machine (or internet for us) is the airless, sunless, solitary cave in which we exist, the information it imparts the shadows on the wall.

EM Forster published the story between A Room with a View (1908) and Howard's End (1910), two novels in which he explores similar philosophical themes around inner and outer worlds, truth and pretence.

The Machine Stops first appeared in the Oxford and Cambridge Review in the same year as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published his furious Futurist Manifesto in Le Figaro newspaper.

The Italian poet was arguing for the very opposite to Forster's prophetic parable.

Marinetti embraced the machine, arguing that a speeding car was far more beautiful than an ancient Greek sculpture. The past was a dead weight that needed destroying to make way for the future.

Image captionThe Oscar-winning film A Room with a View, starring Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Helena Bonham Carter was adapted from EM Forster's novel, which, like The Machine Stops, explored concepts of reality and pretence

Although Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto was also published in 1909, he celebrated machinery -- unlike Forster — Image captionAlthough Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto was also published in 1909, he celebrated machinery as a force for good -- unlike Forster

He would have liked Vashti, who, when travelling by airship to see Kuno, pulled down her blind over Greece because that was no place to find ideas - an ironic joke by Forster given the idea for his story came from Plato's Athens.

That's about it for jokes in a novella where there really is no such thing as community, or direct experience, and it is impossible to get away from the constant hum of the machine without asking the Central Committee for an Egression-permit to go outside. At which point you strap on a respirator and take your chances in the real world.

As the man on the radio said, it's prescient. And very, very good.

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More On Cops And Less On Housing: Here’s How Minneapolis Spends Its Money

"While Black people in Minneapolis have been reduced to bottom caste status, white communities have thrived.”

Lam Thuy Vo BuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on May 29, 2020,

Kerem Yucel / Getty ImagesA police officer aims a projectile weapon at protesters in Minneapolis.

The death of George Floyd has put the Minneapolis police force in the global spotlight and led to an officer being charged with his murder. There are deep underlying tensions in the way the city polices its residents; Minneapolis spends a much larger share of its budget on policing than many other large US cities do, with services like health and community development taking a backseat to salaries for law enforcement.

The city spent more than one-third of its discretionary budget on policing in 2017, according to a study published by Popular Democracy. That’s a larger share than all but 2 of the 10 cities studied in the report. For every dollar Minneapolis spent on police that year, it spent just three cents on youth training and development, the authors found.
Here’s how much each of the 10 cities devoted to police from their general funds — the part of a city’s overall budget that leaders can spend at their discretion.

Those priorities are still in place today. For 2020, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey announced a budget that would allocate $193 million to the city’s police department. This is 60% more than the $120 million devoted to the city’s Community Planning & Economic Development Department, which is responsible for things like affordable housing and job training for residents making low incomes.

Here’s where police spending sat within the overall 2020 Minneapolis budget, which includes both its general fund and mandatory spending.

In return for all that spending, Minneapolis residents get a police department that paid out $9.3 million to settle police misconduct lawsuits in a recent three-year stretch — millions more than was spent during a similar period in Baltimore, a city roughly 40% larger. In 2014, the ACLU reprimanded the department for over-policing black people, reporting that they were 11 and a half times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people were. And the city has historically failed to remove and discipline bad police officers. Derek Chauvin, the officer who was charged with murder today, previously had 17 complaints filed against him, 16 of which resulted in no disciplinary action.

Residents have been very vocal about spending on the police force taking priority over other programs, and that conflict was particularly acute in negotiations for this year’s budget. City leaders were successfully pressured to more than double the number of police hires, with the increased spending to be paid for with a property tax hike. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported the hike will be “felt most acutely in less wealthy pockets of the city, where property taxes are expected to rise more than 20% next year.”

More money was also allocated to violence prevention programs, but residents expressed fury at the boost in police spending. “If policing was going to help our problem, it would have happened by now,” Mysnikol Miller told the Star Tribune. “We have had plenty of police for plenty of years, and it’s not improving anything.”

Local activists interrupted a press conference where Frey discussed the boost in police spending, MinnPost reported. “Creating more cadets brings more police officers on the streets, more harm into our communities, less investment in community-led violence prevention,” said Sheila Nezhad of Reclaim the Block.

Other activists point out that combating crime requires investment into the community itself. A recent study of census data ranked the Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Bloomington metropolitan area as the fourth-worst place in the country for black people to live. The median income of black residents was just 43.4% of that of white residents (nationally, that number is about 61%), and homeownership among black people was 25.4% versus 75.3% for white residents (on a national level, that's 44% versus 73%).

“Policing is a byproduct of larger, more insidious, but often less visible systems. [...] We know that when we see aggressive policing practices — behind it are the most brutal forms of economic and social inequality," wrote Yeshimabeit Milner, the executive director of Data for Black Lives, a coalition of researchers and activists.

“While Black people in Minneapolis have been reduced to bottom caste status, white communities have thrived.”

Lam Thuy Vo is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

The Protests Against George Floyd's Death Make Some People Uncomfortable. That's The Point.

As responses to the protests over George Floyd’s death come in, it’s clear that only some people are allowed to agitate in public without any consequences.

Scaachi KoulBuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on May 29, 2020, at 6:19 p.m. ET

Consider the following questions a kind of Myers-Briggs personality test for how you feel about protests. What bothers you more: images of armed white protesters storming the Michigan State Capitol and screaming at police in late April, demanding the state reopen so they can exercise their rights to possibly contract the coronavirus, or images of demonstrators setting buildings on fire in Minneapolis while protesting the death of a black man named George Floyd, who died while in police custody?

The Michigan protesters were armed with assault rifles and bulletproof vests; no national guard was dispatched there. Meanwhile, the Minneapolis protesters were demanding criminal charges for Derek Chauvin, the police officer who crushed Floyd’s neck with his knee for eight minutes as Floyd gasped for air, the same officer who had 17 complaints against him throughout his career, all closed without disciplinary measures, except one. (Chauvin was finally arrested and charged with murder this morning.)

This is a unique time for protest in America. Black Americans are still demanding that their government and police forces do something about police brutality against black people and the general spate of violence against unarmed black people. (Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed by a retired police officer and his son in Georgia in January, and the perpetrators have only now been arrested and charged with murder after video leaked.) But black Americans are also grappling with a pandemic that’s disproportionately affecting them. And yet, despite this outsize risk, many black people still took to the streets across the country to protest the killings of Floyd and Breonna Taylor, a black EMT worker who was shot by police in her own home in Kentucky.

The police killings and the coronavirus’s impact are galling enough, but it’s only made worse by the dialogue around the protests and riots happening now. “If you loot riot and destroy you lose all moral credibility, in my eyes, to protest injustice,” tweeted conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Wednesday. “Our country allows for peaceful protests, but there is no reason for violence,” first lady Melania Trump tweeted today.

On Twitter, Tracy Clayton offered up a long list of why white people riot, including their sports team winning, their sports team losing, wanting dolls, hating disco, and being mad that black people wanted to go to school. Meanwhile the president tweeted early this morning that looters should be shot, invoking a phrase first used by Walter Headley, a Miami police chief from the late ’60s who used violent tactics against black protesters in Miami at the time. (Trump has since tweeted some version of a correction.) There’s a fallacy already being presented, as if people are looting instead of attempting peaceful protests. But what’s happening in Minneapolis, Louisville, Los Angeles, Denver, New York, and other parts of the country is actually a last resort.

The priorities in American life are wildly disordered. First comes white health and safety. Then comes white property and goods. Then white economy. Then white comfort. The safety of black and brown bodies, the right to not be killed by the police when you’re not a threat, the right to not be pepper-sprayed or teargassed while a respiratory disease is already ripping through your community at an alarming rate, is miles behind white comfort.

What did the president call the armed Michigan protesters? “Very good people.” What did he call the Minnesotan protesters, demanding justice for Floyd? “THUGS.”

If you’re exhausted, it’s because you’re paying attention. This isn’t the first or the last time we’ll debate what the right way for black and brown people to protest is. It’s already been made clear that peaceful protests draw an incredible amount of ire too — in 2016, 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick knelt during the national anthem to protest deaths like Floyd’s. At an Indianapolis Colts game in 2017, Vice President Mike Pence stormed out of the game soon after arriving because some of the players kneeled during the national anthem; in this case, this peaceful protest was still too much for the government to tolerate. Protesting peacefully — without disturbing property and buildings or hurting anyone — has still become a major touchstone of the American culture wars anyway. Years later, Kaepernick is still effectively shut out from the NFL.

If kneeling is too disruptive for white comfort, then how can any black person make clear their fury at a broken system and a country that still doesn’t care about their lives? If a black reporter gets arrested on camera when he’s clearly just there doing his job, what hope is there for anyone else who doesn’t have the privilege of CNN backing them when the police arrest them?

If kneeling is too disruptive for white comfort, then how can any black person make clear their fury at a broken system and a country that still doesn’t care about their lives?

No one is advocating that burning down an AutoZone be the first resort of protesters asking for racial justice. Fires and looting are rarely the first resort for anyone. But for all the hand-wringing over destruction at a Target store, there wasn’t nearly as much about Target, a company worth billions, not providing its outsourced employees with appropriate PPE. In fact, their employees were part of a mass “sickout” protest organized for May 1, demanding the company do more to protect their essential workers. And there’s been little accounting for the actual small businesses in the area affected by the rioting, which have likely also been severely affected by COVID shutdowns. Meanwhile, the owners of the restaurant Gandhi Mahal in South Minneapolis posted on Facebook in support of the protests despite their business catching on fire. “Let my building burn,” they wrote. “Justice needs to be served, put those officers in jail.”

So what have we learned? Not much that we didn’t know before. We already knew that white people getting arrested at a protest will look like a woman being handled respectfully by police sans riot gear, while black demonstrators are faced with police officers wearing riot gear and gas masks, and brandishing weapons.

And it’s no mistake that white people protesting with guns over the right to reopen have been received differently by the federal government and conservative talking heads — people who are routinely unable to recognize the privilege they have when dealing with police — than when black people protest for the right to live. The comfort of white people has always come before the safety and survival of black people. As New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones explained in a Twitter thread, “The fact of history is non-violent protest has not been successful for blk Americans.” Martin Luther King Jr. himself once said: “A riot is the language of the unheard.” These protests are not coming out of a vacuum. Rather, it’s more of the same: a history of black humanity being put last, always. ●

Scaachi Koul is a senior culture writer for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

Contact Scaachi Koul at scaachi.koul@buzzfeed.com.

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There Are Protests Happening Around The Country For A Second Night In Response To The Killings Of George Floyd And Breonna Taylor

Thousands took to the streets in cities like Minneapolis, New York, and Atlanta, with violence and vandalism erupting within hours.
Last updated on May 29, 2020, at 11:31 p.m. ET

Stephen Maturn / Getty Image
A group of people gathers at a protest outside the Hennepin County Public Safety Facility on May 29 in Minneapolis.

Mass protests erupted across the nation for a second night on Friday, with thousands taking to the streets to protest police brutality in response to the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

Floyd, 46, died on Monday, after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pinned him to the ground in a neck chokehold until he died. On Friday, Chauvin was arrested and charged with murder.

In Louisville, Kentucky, demonstrators gathered to protest the death of Taylor, a 26-year-old black woman who was fatally shot in her home by police officers on March 13.

For days, heated protests have taken place in Minneapolis, but they have since expanded nationwide — even amid a lethal pandemic. The protests reflect the nation's outrage that, at the very least, even years after the start of the Black Lives Matter movement, after social media gave rise to widely-recorded police brutality, after repeated calls to reform how law enforcement treat people of different socioeconomic backgrounds, unarmed and innocent black people are still being killed by the people who are supposed to protect society.

“I’m tired,” Salamah Patrick, 27, told BuzzFeed at a protest in Brooklyn. “I’m tired of cops killing us and nothing being done.”

“Mass shootings have gone down" during the pandemic," she said, "but police brutality hasn’t.”

By early in the evening the most heated protests were in New York City. Thousands of people began in Manhattan, then marched across the Brooklyn Bridge to join a Black Lives Matter protest outside Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

"Take your anger out on those who hold the power, wherever it may reside," New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio said at a press conference earlier in the day as he called for peaceful demonstrations. Later in the evening, after hundreds of NYPD officers were deployed and they repeatedly clashed with protesters, he went to Brooklyn to speak to the police commissioner.

Jon Campbell @j0ncampbell

A lot just popped off at the protest for George Floyd at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Pepper spray, batons, and several arrests.11:38 PM - 29 May 2020
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As the night wore, police started arresting protesters who did not disperse or follow orders, using city buses to hold them — even as some drivers refused to transport them.

Amber Jamieson @ambiej

More arrests, police piling them into city buses. A female protester was just wheeled away on a guerney by paramedics, unclear what happened to her.01:00 AM - 30 May 2020
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Outside the Barclays Center arena, protesters chanted, “Say his name, George Floyd” and “I can’t breathe.”

Protesters took aim at the 88th Precinct in Brooklyn, as the NYPD sent reinforcements. A few blocks away, a police van was set ablaze.

Myles N. Miller @MylesMill

Fully involved here.02:02 AM - 30 May 2020
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Assemblywoman Diana Richardson told WNYC she was pepper sprayed by the NYPD, while other videos showed officers calling another protester a "stupid fucking bitch" and shoving her to the ground.

In Minneapolis, protesters defied the attempted curfew and police, at least early on, took a hands-off approach. Many walked through downtown and on expressways.

Danny Spewak @DannySpewak

Demonstrations have moved to the highway. Here’s a look at I-35W South just outside of downtown Minneapolis: @kare1102:18 AM - 30 May 2020
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Gov. Tim Walz had set an 8 p.m. curfew earlier in the day, saying "unlawful and dangerous actions of others, under the cover of darkness, has caused irreversible pain and damage to our community."

But roughly two hours past the curfew, police officers and the National Guard had yet to move in as protesters marched on the streets and freeway ramps.

John Minchillo / AP
People attempt to extinguish cars on fire on May 29, 2020, in Minneapolis.

In Louisville, hundreds had gathered outside City Hall demanding justice for Taylor's death in what was initially a peaceful demonstration. But as the night wore on, there were clashes with police trying to disperse the crowds. Police in riot gear reportedly set off gas and fired pepper balls, prompting demonstrators to flee.

Will Clark @WClark840WHAS

Tear gas and flash bangs at 5th and Jefferson. @KYNewsNet @840WHAS @TalkRadio1080 #Louisville02:07 AM - 30 May 2020
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At one point, police appeared to fire projectiles at a reporter for local news station Wave 3, Kaitlin Rust. The confrontation unfolded during a live news segment, with Rust yelling "I'm getting shot, I'm getting..." A few moments later she the tells the news anchors they appeared to be pepper bullets aimed "directly at us."

Timothy Burke @bubbaprog

Police literally opening fire on the free press.02:09 AM - 30 May 2020
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A Louisville Metro Police spokesperson told the station officers do not use rubber bullets, and that they were likely pepper balls.

Another confrontation between police and journalists occurred earlier Friday when a black CNN reporter and two members of his team were arrested live on air in Minneapolis. Walz later apologized to CNN president Jeff Zucker, saying he "accepts full responsibility" and later had the team released.

In Atlanta, protesters focused on the CNN building, breaking glass as they hurled items from the street. Police also threatened to arrest protesters if they didn't leave the street as they threw bottles and other items at officers.

Fernando Alfonso III @fernalfonso

Glass getting broken outside the main entrance to CNN's Atlanta headquarters; protesters cheer11:32 PM - 29 May 2020
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The violence and vandalism prompted a strong rebuke from the city's mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, who told protesters were "disgracing our city.”

“You are disgracing the life of George Floyd and every other person who has been killed in this country," she said. "We are better than this. We are better than this as a city."

CNN Tonight @CNNTonight

"If you care about this city then go home." Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms was visibly angry at a news conference during the Atlanta protests on Friday https://t.co/RyApQwICJx02:33 AM - 30 May 2020
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Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced late Friday night that at the request of Bottoms, he was issuing a state of emergency for Fulton County to activate as many as 500 National Guard troops to assist local law enforcement.

Noah Berger / AP

Demonstrators march in Oakland, on May 29, 2020.

Clashes with police also erupted in Oakland, California, after protesters were told to disperse. Flash bangs and tear gas were eventually deployed, prompting demonstrators to flee.

Caroline O'Donovan @ceodonovan

Huge crowd of people just ran from what is definitely tear gas in downtown oakland after half a dozen flash bangs went off in a crowd04:35 AM - 30 May 2020
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Vandalism also broke out, with some protesters smashing out windows of businesses. A Walgreens was also briefly set ablaze as looters pillaged the store.

Earlier in the evening when protesters were peacefully marching through city streets, Raje Lee told BuzzFeed News she had just heard that Floyd and the ex-officer who put him in a knee chokehold had previously worked together providing security at a local bar for years.

"Saying it was accidental is total bullshit," she said. "You sat there with your knee on someone's trachea and you didn't think they're gonna die?"

Caroline O'Donovan @ceodonovan

In Oakland, just asked this man, Gerraci, how he decided to come out tn: “How could you not want to support something like this? We have the ‘rona in here but we out here dying. We dying both ways, and we can do something about one more than the other one.”03:37 AM - 30 May 2020
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Later in the evening, flash bangs were set off, prompting some demonstrators to leave the area.

In Houston, violence broke out between pockets of protesters who got into heated arguments.

Jay R. Jordan @JayRJordan

Violence erupts during a Black Lives Matter protest over #GeorgeFloyd's death as BLM Houston founder @AshtonPWoods appears to punch a man yelling at him. Now, protestors are attempting to rush I-45 near downtown #Houston https://t.co/Da51yUbigQ09:36 PM - 29 May 2020
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Violence also broke out in San Jose, California, as demonstrators blocked Highway 101, with one protester bashing a driver's window while crossing.

Kristofer Noceda @krisnoceda

Some protesters seen smashing vehicle windows. The protest over George Floyd's death has shut down a portion SB Hwy. 101 in San Jose. https://t.co/GssAT2zqJ611:01 PM - 29 May 2020
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And in Los Angeles, dozens of protesters were arrested after police ordered the downtown area locked down and they refused dispersal orders.

Jae C. Hong / AP

Police officers arrest a man during a protest in Los Angeles.

One LAPD officer was reportedly hurt during clashes with protesters, who smashed windows and vandalized several police vehicles. At one point, demonstrators temporarily blocked traffic on a portion of the 110 Freeway.

As in other cities where large demonstrations took place, businesses were also looted and vandalized.

Police eventually surrounded protesters who remained late Friday for mass arrests in front of City Hall.

Ruben Vives @LATvives

Police asking people to sit down so they can be peacefully arrested. “Don’t resist”. This is in front of city hall. #DowntownLA05:14 AM - 30 May 2020
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We're Keeping A Running List Of Hoaxes And Misleading Posts About The Minneapolis Protests

Jane Lytvynenko · May 29, 2020

Amber Jamieson reported from New York City, and Caroline O'Donovan reported from Oakland.

Amber Jamieson is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

Caroline O'Donovan is a senior technology reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in San Francisco.

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Saturday, May 30, 2020

The Machine Stops: Will Gompertz reviews EM Forster's work ★★★★★

The Protests Against George Floyd's Death Make Some People Uncomfortable. That's The Point.

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