#i use the anti mediation app thank you very much

[mehemingway]

Had a nightmare where someone asked me, "oh, you meditate? What app do you use?"

[crapfutures]

Careless whispers

In a previous post we mentioned the story of the infamous conflict between King Henry II and Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 12th century England. It’s a familiar story of two powerful and egotistical men clashing over issues of status and pride. After a series of altercations over clerical privilege, Henry finally loses his temper; what he actually said to the assembled courtiers has been lost to history, but the most likely version comes from the biographer-monk Edward Grim, who recorded it as follows:

What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?

Whatever Henry said, four of his knights (Richard le Breton, Reginald FitzUrse, Hugh de Morville, and William de Tracy) interpreted the utterance as a royal command. They rode to the Normandy coast, took ship for England, and confronted the Archbishop. What happened next was described by the aptly named Grim, who was on the scene and actually wounded in the attack:

The wicked knight, fearing lest Becket should be rescued by the people and escape alive, leapt upon him suddenly and wounded this lamb who was sacrificed to God, cutting off the top of the crown which the sacred unction of the chrism had dedicated to God.

More terrible blows followed, and eventually the Archbishop succumbed. Was the king’s statement interpreted correctly? We’ll never know. But we can perhaps read parallels to our own time in the complex motivations and agendas that informed the knights’ collective decision to commit murder.

Another story, more recent. This one takes place in Dallas, Texas, where a six-year-old girl asked her family’s Amazon Echo: ‘Alexa, can you play dollhouse with me and get me a dollhouse?’ Alexa promptly complied, ordering a $300 KidKraft Sparkle Mansion doll’s house from one of Amazon’s suppliers. She also ordered (for reasons known only to the internal logic of the system) nearly two kilograms of sugar cookies. The story doesn’t stop there: the following day, when a San Diego news programme reported the story, a number of Echos were roused by the wake word ‘Alexa’ coming from proximate television sets, and they in turn followed the command to also purchase dolls’ houses.

What inspired Alexa to order the biscuits? A flawed system or a very smart one?

In 560 BC, King Croesus of Lydia set a challenge to the world’s oracles to determine who provided the most accurate prophecies. His emissaries were sent to seven sites to ask the resident oracle what the king was doing at that precise moment. The winner was the Oracle of Delphi, who correctly reported that the king was making a lamb-and-tortoise stew.

Oracles were seen as conduits to the gods, speaking and giving advice on their behalf. Divination came in many other forms: augurers would follow the flight paths of birds (legend has it that the location of Rome was decided through this approach). Haruspices would read the entrails of sacrificed animals. Today, however, reading the future is much less exotic or gruesome, being mostly about data and statistics.

The next story starts back to front. A man walks into a Target outside Minneapolis and demands to see the manager. He’s got a handful of targeted coupons that had been sent to his teenage daughter, and he’s angry. ‘My daughter got this in the mail!’ he said. ‘She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?’ In fact the daughter actually is pregnant. Target knows it before the girl’s father, thanks to a hunch based on its analysis of online searches and product purchases - in this case a particular lotion often used by pregnant women in the second trimester.

One more story. In happier times for Facebook, the social media giant played a significant - if unevenly distributed and still debated - role in the Arab Spring by facilitating communication between protesters. The April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, for example, used Facebook to launch a successful call for protests in the aftermath of the Tunisian Revolution that preceded the spread of uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East in 2011-12. Events of the Arab Spring demonstrated that social networks provide a perfect mechanism through which to disseminate information broadly and quickly, as long as you have access to the internet.

So far this is a familiar and well-trodden tale; the more interesting story, however, happened when Arab states began to shut down internet access. Activists in Cairo found the solution in a different kind of social network - not screen-based, but via the city's taxi drivers. The activists realised that if they could direct conversations towards the planned anti-Mubarak gathering on 25 January 2011 in Tahrir Square, taxi drivers might spread the word and the protest would be a success. Initially, the activists tried to talk directly to drivers. 

But they soon discovered that due to the highly politicised nature of their subject, conversations would quickly turn into arguments rather than dissemination, and their objective would fail. The solution was found in exploiting the human tendency to gossip. Instead of engaging in direct conversation, the activists allowed the taxi drivers to overhear a mobile phone conversation where they would disclose the details of the protests. The taxi drivers eavesdropped, and believing they had overheard a gossip-worthy secret, they began to spread the message.

‘Technology is making gestures precise and brutal, and thereby human beings.’ - Adorno

In one of our very first posts, The Pleasures of Prediction, we described the daily experience at our local cafe - where the gestures of interaction were not always precise, sometimes brutal (depending on the mood of either ourselves or the people behind the counter), but mostly genial and surprisingly seamless. More recently, our colleague was telling us how his landlady keeps track of the number of bottles of alcohol he consumes each week by counting his recycling - a sort of small island version of a fitness tracker like the Fitbit. ‘She’s not judgemental’, he said. ‘Well … not really.’ Of course surveillance and tracking - mediating, amplifying, interpreting - have always been present in society; in the past they were just more social, or at least more analogue.

These examples raise some big questions, such as: Would you rather be monitored by a human being or a machine? If machine, why? Why don’t we trust humans? For that matter, why don’t we trust ourselves? How have we been shown to be untrustworthy and unable to control our own self-destructive or anti-social impulses? For the past two years we have been collecting stories that relate to the interpretation of information - tracing the shift from human beings to technological mediation as translator and interpreter; who is making important decisions, on whose behalf, and why.

There is certainly precision and brutality in Cambridge Analytica’s use of Facebook data for micro-targeting and psychological profiling. Likewise Amazon Echo, a data-based Trojan horse mediating our personal lives in increasingly precise but also brutal ways. There is a tendency to understand and evaluate technology according to old-fashioned notions of progress: faster, easier, more efficient and so on. But digitisation, the data that it creates, and the vast networks of dissemination also facilitate the augmenting of darker aspects of human behaviour, targeting our deepest vulnerabilities. How we examine the implications, embrace the ethics, and understand the complexity of these systems are some of the fundamental challenges we face.

Real Prediction Machines

Shortly before the Echo appeared on the market in 2014, Real Prediction Machines addressed many of the issues Amazon’s new device (and others like it) would raise. The speculative project was developed by James Auger in collaboration with designer Jimmy Loizeau, artist Alan Murray, and Edinburgh University data scientist Ram Ramamoorthy, who at the time was developing predictive modelling systems combined with machine learning to predict when professional athletes might sustain an injury through overtraining.

James, Jimmy and Alan began by asking Ram what kind of other things might be predictable through such techniques, such as ‘Will my child become a professional football player’, ‘Will Labour win the next general election’, and ‘Will I suffer a heart attack?’ The words inside the circles of the Bayesian network diagram represent potential variables. In relation to a heart attack they could correspond to something like diet or exercise, the data coming from a supermarket loyalty card, or the accelerometer in your smartphone. Or more finite information such as family history, for example data coming from a genetic testing service like 23andMe.

These variables combine to create a live and ongoing feed into the predictive algorithm. The heart attack example seemed a little too banal due to its obvious connection to wellbeing and the huge growth of data and tracking methods, so the group suggested another question to Ram: Will I have a domestic argument?

The Bayesian network shown above looks similar to the earlier one, but in this instance a microphone was added for live sound input (anticipating the omnipresent Echo). Using machine learning, the system would become better at predicting arguments through the statistical analysis of keywords, tone, and frequency - identifying particular subjects that a couple might commonly fight about.

The output was translated into an object - not an app but something more symbolic, sympathetic. They settled on an ambient device sitting in the background, providing information when you might need it. 

The device essentially has three states:

Clockwise means that the argument is moving into the future;

Anti-clockwise means that the argument is approaching, and the slower the rotation the more imminent it is;

When the rotating stops, the argument starts.

Projects like Real Prediction Machines work when it is not completely clear whether the idea is a ‘good’ one or not. Is it too invasive? Is it genuinely helpful? This is how we should think about all potential technologies, but we rarely do.

What happens next? How far away are we from Alexa ordering not biscuits, but a councillor? How much control will we have in the future, and how much do we want to have?

Images:

All diagrams by James Auger; photo of Real Prediction Machines by Sophie Mutevelian.

[wewomenbookclub]

Meditation: Why is thinking of nothing SO HARD (or 7 days with a total beginner)

When we mods started talking about the idea of starting a bookclub, one of the first discussions we had was around what we most wanted to achieve, and what we thought we’d struggle with. I (Rose) said that I wanted a way to turn down the noise in my head before the moments it makes me explode in a negative way. Julie instantly said “meditation”, which was bad news, because meditation was my answer for what I thought I’d struggle most with.

I’ve tried it before. Chanted “om” at the end of yoga, counted ceiling tiles from the giant silk cocoon of an anti-gravity pilates class (don’t ask), I’ve lit candles, downloaded apps, sat in the garden but it always seemed doom to fail because while my body became still, my mind would pick up the slack, galloping though random associations until I found myself mentally exhausted and drained.

So I stopped trying, and even when we started WE, I didn’t attempt that practice until a week ago, wanting to cling on to the small successes I’d found with gratitude, and not start a practice that I felt sure was not compatible with my mind. But meditation week arrived, and I wasn’t busy. For once work seemed to be under control, I had friends cheering me on and absolutely no good reason not to have a proper go at meditating. So I promised myself I’d do it for a week, wholeheartedly and with as little baggage as I could muster.

Here’s what happened.

What follows is not a guide or any sort of sortedness, it’s just a total meditation novice’s attempts to make it work. For anyone else who is struggling, for anyone else who can’t find their peace… this one is for you! Rx

Day One - Wednesday

My day: I downloaded two apps, Calm and Stop, Breathe & Think which had been recommended by friends while I made my morning coffee and promptly forgot about them. My day was busy, and if it weren’t for a push note from Calm (which I’d meant to turn off) at about 9pm I would definitely have forgotten my new resolution. 

My meditation: I started with two minutes, in PJs, tucked in a corner with no distractions, and used just the breathing exercise on Calm. The first time I attempted to meditate on WE, I hyperventilated, and I realised subsequently that controlling my breathing is a stressor for me thanks to years of intensive flute/breath training. So I needed to get past that. It took me the whole two minutes to find the rhythm of the breathing so I added a minute. 

The pros: I started! I felt a little lighter afterwards, though that could have been from being properly oxygenated for once. 

The struggle: Even focusing on a visual and a sound trigger to regulate my breathing, my mind wandered and I had to fight to overcome the panic response when I refocused on how to breathe.

Takeaway - As much as meditation is about finding peace, I’m increasingly realising that I’ve put up a crap ton of hurdles between me and peacefulness… so I’m going to have to factor that in when I weigh how “successful” my meditation has been. Just doing the time may be all I manage at first.

Day Two - Thursday

My day: Working from home gives me a chance to take a little more time and so on the advice of Mods Julie and Liz I tried a guided meditation. It was sunny so I took myself outside, away from work and things that need sorted, and set up under a tree.

My meditation: The Stop, Breathe & Think app assessor suggested I was tense and could stand to relax and reset. This sounded about right so I settled in for a 7 minute guided meditation. I did pretty well at the relaxing of the mind but had a major wobble when the visualisation became about my body. I became hyper aware of how I was sitting, and I struggled for the rest of the meditation to focus on the words and stop wriggling about to try and be more comfortable, upright and grounded.

The pros: The relaxation portion of the guided meditation helped me to focus and drew my thoughts away from breathing. I felt very calm in those first few moments, Outside is good for me.

The struggle: How do I sit? I literally googled this when I came back inside and obviously there’s no right answer, but I let once again the concept of how one “ought” to meditate affect my actual mediatation.

Takeaway - Guided meditations are something I should explore but I also need to find my own comfort zone so I can stop myself from thinking about the how aspects of mediation and focus on what it does for me.

Day 3 - Friday

My Day: Was pretty full on and so I took advantage of a forty minute commute on a train (including several minutes in tunnels with no signal), so I popped in my headphones and decided I’d see if I could meditate on the go!

My meditation: There was ambient noise, even with earbuds, so I whacked the Calm timer to five minutes, ramped up the bird song, closed my eyes and sat back to try and clear my mind. I focused on breathing, (but not breathing deeply), and when the timer went off after five minutes I was surprised how quickly the time had passed. 

The pros: I felt really peaceful! Somehow I’d managed to carve out a bubble of time for myself on a busy train and that left me with a massive feeling fo wellbeing.

The struggle: I can’t always be on a train!

Takeaway - I seriously considered not even trying, assuming that the busy atmosphere of a train would force my mind into overdrive, but I remembered Gillian’s kitchen meditation anecdote in WE and thought - lets give it a go. And I feel like in many ways I had a small breakthrough. Being in a restrictive environment (I could only sit one way, I couldn’t make it quieter, I couldn’t be using the time for anything else) gvae my mind permission to let go a little. I had many less options of “how” to meditate - all I could do was actually do it. 

Day 4 - Saturday

After my Friday breakthrough, I was kinda excited to do Saturday… but then life happened and though I had a wonderful day, I didn’t make the time to practice meditation. I didn’t even think of it. 

The takeaway - if at first you don’t succeed….

Day 5 - Sunday

My Day: Easter Sunday brings a family lunch with it and all the accompanying politics. By late afternoon I’m a ball of stress and feelings and so I have a nap and when I wake up and everyone has gone I creep outside with a cup of coffee and my gratitude journal.

My meditation: I couldn’t cope with the idea of listening to someone talk any more, so I set Calm to five minutes and turned their ambient noise off, I had plenty of birdsong of my own. I did five deep breaths, scribbled down my gratitude and then closed my eyes and tried to feel all the good in the day, appreciate the warm sun and the hot coffee and the fact I was alive and still had time to enjoy my evening. My mind wandered a fair amount but overall the five minute focus on good things and calm helped me reset and I went into my evening feeling much more settled.

The pros: A definite feeling of wellbeing and also a sense of achievement for turning my day around. I felt glad I had taken the time and more at peace with some of what had been discussed and was stressing me out beforehand.

The struggle: … I didn’t really have one!

Takeaway - As much as Friday was a good lesson in “you don’t need to meditate perfectly to find it helpful”, today was the first time I’d approached meditation from the perspective of it being a need. I’d recognised that mentally I was not in a positive place and I incorporated meditation into my steps to try and change that. It proved helpful, and that’s one serving of positive reinforcement I can set up against all the times I feel like I failed to feel the effect.

Day 6 - Monday

My day: I had the wonderful gift of a bank holiday, a freebie day off work and woke up determined to make the most of it. Buoyed up by the day before’s success I marched outside to the exact same spot by the pond that had felt so peaceful the day before. I sat in the same spot, breathed the same air, felt the sun… 

Meditation: And nothing. I’d upped the timer to seven minutes because I was feeling confident and had the luxury of time. I closed my eyes. I opened my eyes. I thought of being heavy. I thought of being light. I counted breaths. I checked the timer - ONLY TWO MINUTES? How was it possible to think so much in two minutes when you’re supposed to be thinking of nothing. This was about the time where I started berating myself for not using time well, and let’s just say it was all downhill from there.

The pros: I learned that a meditation breakthrough one day may not translate to the next.

The struggle: Having felt like maybe something had clicked, realising that this wasn’t going to be a linear thing, that what worked one day might not work the next was something I suspected, but now I had proof.

Takeaway - In a sense, having this happen on a calm day where there was no reason to get so upset at myself for not being able to let go the way I had the day before was helpful. I know that there is no such thing as an “easy fix” for self-care and growth, but I think some little voice at the back of my head had held out hope that if I suddenly “got” meditation, then I would be a calmer person and the rest of the journey would be easier… Goof to blow that myth apart I guess!

Day 7 - Tuesday

My day: Any back to work day is a bad day for me (separate issue) so I knew when I got in late and in the dark and got into my pajamas that I wasn’t up for more than the absolute basics of self care. I managed food, a shower and crawled into bed only to remember meditation… 

My meditation: I sat back up, opened, Stop, Breath & Think and told it I was tired, discouraged, drained, miserable and full of dread. It told me to go to sleep and started a short two minute guided “Go to sleep” meditation. I shut my eyes and listened. Half way through my cat climbed on me and stuck her foot in my eye. The end.

The pros: I took the time to try even though I didn’t want to so I felt disciplined. The guided programme was very simple and encouraged me to let go of some of my negative energy. I slept pretty well and m mind was a little lighter at the end.

The struggle: Taking the time to pause and take stock instead of just crawling into bed. I tend to throw myself head first into anything, god or bad, positive or destuctive, my instinct is never to pause. So pausing is hard. 

Takeaway - Though meditation is a peaceful process, I have to make an active choice to embrace it. Often that will be at odds with my natural desire to just shut down or explode. Meditation is hard.

In conclusion

For me, meditation is hard. 

Not the act itself, but finding ways to do something which feels incredibly unnatural to me. Taking time to do nothing, finding space for a pause in my schedule is something that is going to take a lot of getting used to. And that’s just the practical end of things.

The emotional and spiritual implications are much greater. Beyond finding the time and the will to sit down and engage with the practice, keeping a diary for a week proved to me that every single time will likely be different. Some days I’ll find that happy space, and other days I will be fighting every breath to stay calm, to shut out my cynicism. Maybe in the long term it will get easier (as I hopefully find a better way to be on this WE journey), but for now I have to accept that the act of trying, is as good as some days will get. 

But what has changed as a result of keeping this journal is my willingness to try. I’d secretly made a pact with, myself that if I didn’t make any progress in a week that I’d just say I was meditating and go to bed 5 mins earlier every day (terrible Rose deal with self #432). I’d pre-decided that maybe meditation just wasn’t for me, that my brain was too loud, my life too busy and that turned out not to be true. 

I don’t know what my meditation will look like this time next week, let alone in six months, but I do know from those couple of moments where a switch clicked and the bumps in my mind smoothed out, even just for just a few seconds, that it’s worth continuing to explore.  

So from one pessimistic, newbie meditator - if it’s just not happening for you, keep trying. Keep trying new things. Keep doing it “wrong”. Just keep doing it.

Rose