Archiving The Internet

This post is mostly a shout-out to Dark0ne over on Nexus for some rescue work he is doing, but underlying that is a serious concern about social history.

As regular readers will be aware I am currently working through sermon notes, amongst other things, for a preaching series taking a fresh look at St. Paul's New Testament letter to the Galatian churches. Our understanding of 1st-Century writings, especially the New Testament, has been transformed by discoveries over the past half-century or so of ancient documents showing what life was like in those times. The Dead Sea Scrolls are a well-known example, of course, but there have been many more documents found, less well-known but still giving important insights.

Meanwhile archivists are struggling to read records saved - 'permanently' - to various forms of tape and optical disk archive just a few decades ago.

An important part of late-twentieth and, especially, early twenty-first century social interraction on the Internet has been various forms of modding communities. Modding is where users of computer games create their own additional material: sometimes just fixes for problems that the original game creators considered too minor (or hard) to fix; sometimes minor changes to the appearance of in-game entities; occasionally even significant amounts of extra content, such as new areas or new quests. A lot of this modding was done (is still done, if it comes to that) for free, as a way of sharing enjoyment and as a way of gaining appreciation and reputation. Around these game changes grew discussion groups for commenting on them, seeking guidance about how to solve technical problems, and just general chit-chat.

From a social history point of view this sort of thing is invaluable as a record of how the Internet, including its various forms of 'social media', developed. But's it's also important material for economists and others as there is often no money involved, yet modders spend ludicrous amounts of time and effort creating their work, which they then share openly. I've shared a couple of short quest/story mods myself, for Dragon Age - the work involved for even small mods was stunning; I can't even begin to imagine what some of the largest mods would have taken. Inevitably there will be other reasons in future for wanting a record of such things that we can't even imagine at present.

So I consider it wonderful that Nexus, and Dark0ne in particular, are transferring mods, including their attached information, from the once-massive but now closed modding site FileFront across to the Nexus network itself.

"Back in the middle of 2015, FileFront.com quietly shut the doors to its various gaming hub sites (which were much like Nexus sites for game mods back in their hayday in the early to mid 2000s). Over the past few years File Front was extremely out-dated, slow or outright broken in many areas, lacking some TLC that it needed despite still having an active contingent of core users who still frequented their forums. ... 

As a result, we’ve been working to save as many files from the File Front sites as possible and finding the best method to port them into our Nexus system. As File Front sites were largely like Nexus sites are now in terms of structure, we felt that focusing on the File Front files side of things would be in everyone’s best interest. The focus wasn’t just on not losing the files, but on saving the category structure, screenshots, file descriptions and author information that is actually what made the original File Front sites usable and easier to navigate for the games they supported. ... 

We don’t expect these sites to be popular or demanding on our servers, but I couldn’t sit and idly watch tens of thousands of mods for games I grew up with be lost to the internet forever."

Nice one, Dark0ne!

Why War?

We are heading toward the centenary of the beginning of the First World War, a particular lowlight in a century marked by war and massacre.

Looking back at the violence of the 20th century, it strikes me how much of it was characterised by a toxic mix of nationalism and ideology, and how little it had to do with religion.

The First World War was fairly unambiguously nationalist and imperialist in origin, whilst the second seems to have been triggered by a more complex brew. On the one hand there was German national feeling, battered after WW1 and bearing grudges over the post-war loss of Germanic territories; on the other there was fear of communism, fear and hatred for 'the other' - particularly, but not exclusively, 'The Jew' - then there was a striving for discipline and order, represented by a powerful fascist ideology, and a bizarre mix of Aryan and Wagnerian mythologies.

Meanwhile, in the Far East, causes seem to have been more simply about nationalism and access to resources (traditionally the other main driver of imperialism).

In between these 'world wars' you had the Bolshevik takeover in Russia, with its ideological civil war followed by mass famine as their policy of Prodrazvyorstka destroyed the battered agricultural system; then under Stalin the famines and purges continued as ideology and tyranny ran their course.

After the Second World War, the Cold War marked the continuation of ideological and imperial conflict, much of it through proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam. Meanwhile the Maoist revolution in China followed the path of Russia's revolution through civil war, mass famine and extensive purges.

I am only aware of two major outbreaks of violence during the century where religion was one of the main causes, both in the late '40s: the Partition of India in 1947 and the founding of Israel in 1948. Both of these events had violent repercussions which continue to this day, and both had a strong religious element. Both also had a strong ethnic and nationalist element: religion and nationalism can be just as toxic a compound as ideology and nationalism, it seems.

There is a list of 20th-century battles on Wikipedia, which gives an idea of the continuous level of conflict during that troubled century.

Granted that my knowledge of 20th-century history is not exhaustive, I do still find it strange that the 'new atheists' - the likes of Richard Dawkins - continue to link war with religion. With a couple of exceptions, here was a whole century of essentially non-religious violence, much of it explicitly atheist.

Why war? Because people are prejudiced; often they are ignorant and demonise 'others'; they are all too ready to follow leaders who tell them they are right and others are wrong; and because, by and large, people prefer to function as part of a local ethnic/racial community, rather than as part of worldwide humanity.

Most religions attempt to work to a bigger picture, which could be immensely helpful in enabling people to live together in peace. Sadly, all religions are composed of fallible, flawed people, as are all ideological groupings. We could just wait for God to fix it, or we could try to work with God and spread peace and justice in our own small ways, wherever we are, and whoever we are with. It's our choice.

Postscript: There is an interesting post on a similar theme over on the BeThinking blog.

12 Years A Slave

Quite a moving story, but I'm not sure what the point of the film really is.

12 Years A Slave tells the story of Solomon Northup, a free black man from New York State, who, in 1841,  is kidnapped and sold as a slave in the Southern USA. He's beaten and abused then, after 12 years, he is set free again (given the title, I don't think that counts as a spoiler). There is a lot of whipping, dwelt on in a manner reminiscent of Mel Gibson's Passion, and a certain amount of abusive sex. Quite why it only has a 15 certificate is a bit of a mystery.

The movie is based on a true story: one that happened in the 1840's, which was a very important story to tell back then. Even after 1865, when slavery was legally abolished in the USA, the story would still have been important in showing why abolition was necessary. But why at the beginning of the 21st century? Does anyone seriously still think that slavery was a good and reasonable institution? If they did, would they watch this film?

I am part of a housegroup which will be looking at this film over the next few weeks, so maybe I'll have better ideas after that. In the meantime, a few thoughts:-

The first point is that it makes a powerful and dramatic story. Not much happens, but it still paints a vivid and painful picture. A picture of long ago, but a truthful picture nonetheless.

The second is that, like the Holocaust and the First World War, slavery in the USA remains a painful but vital part of a people's history, which should not be forgotten. The original book was a very important historical document which dovetailed well with other accounts of slavery at the time, written from the perspective of an educated man who was 'on the inside'.

Thirdly, although legalised slavery has been abolished in the West (Pakistan and other countries still practise forms of indentured labour, which is essentially the same), illegal slavery still continues. The slavers may not comfort themselves with dubiously interpreted religious texts any more, but they are still active. Also, the underlying racism and dehumanising of 'the other' are far from over. In the USA racism around their black president is explicit; here in the UK it tends to hide behind other masks.

I guess the biggest take-home message of the film is that a human being is a human being, made in the image of God, never 'property', never disposable, always to be respected, always to be treated according to the Golden Rule: how would you want someone to behave if the situation were the other way around.

A Short History Of (My) Blogging

Two posts in the last six months - not really the way to build a blog.

I was looking back recently at some of my earliest blog posts from Christmas 2005. Back then the plan was to post weekly, at least, and to link topics of general interest across to questions of faith. Easy for Christmas, of course, but there were also posts about films and music - I even had a post (written by someone else) about a Coronation Street storyline. Back then I was website editor for a church website, and the hope was that such a blog - running in parallel with the church magazine - would attract visitors and interest from a wider range of people than simply those searching for "baptist church in Caversham". Which it did.

Unfortunately, what it didn't attract was posts from other church members - the one linked above was the only one I got. Also, we lost the church magazine: mostly because the new pastor - although, IMO, definitely a good guy - tended to preach very legalistically and obsess about sex, which drove away our magazine editor. So when said pastor - who was also very pro-Israeli - tried to censor the blog for not being sufficiently pro-Israel (the offending article is here), I decided I was getting nowhere and resigned as website editor, so the blog became standalone. You can see my thoughts at the time in the series of three posts from here.

So "Webitorial Ramblings" became "BlackPhi's Website Ramblings", and the posts carried on - still more than weekly, and still based around news, culture, and Caversham life, plus a bit of what was going on in church. A month or two later, a great guy named Jonathan Jones kindly invited me over to Blog City, which (back then) was a blogging community - with interaction and feedback, and real live comments! So I started blogging there in parallel, see here for my first Blog-City post, complete with kindly words from JJ.

Both blogs seemed to have their own readership, and transferring posts between them helped with proof-reading, so I ran them in parallel for more than two years - I can't easily count the number of posts in that time, but I'm sure it was comfortably over weekly. One of the final few posts on my standalone blog was one I found amusing about the dangers of DHMO - a widely used industrial chemical which is reported to cause over 400 deaths a year in the UK alone. Late in 2008 we moved house, and I retired the PC I had been using as a web server, so I decided it was time to retire the standalone blog also.

Blog City continued; during 2009 posts thinned out a bit but remained not too far off the weekly post average (although much more erratic in distribution, eg 7 posts in Sept 2009, 2 in October). Looking back there seem to be a lot of music-themed posts in this period, eg here and here. Posts picked up during 2010, although the feel of them seems heavier to me now, having just reread the earlier 2005/6 ones. Maybe I was just older and wearier, or maybe there wasn't so much to say. Certainly Caversham Baptist Church was becoming more of a drag and a drain, which can't have helped. There were great people there, but as a church it was (IMHO of course) losing the plot.

Then Blog City closed down. We had plenty of notice, but it was still really sad - like an established neighbourhood being demolished. I started up a new blog here on BlogSpot, but it really isn't the same: if there is a BlogSpot community I still haven't managed to tap into it. The first post got several comments, but only from BC friends, otherwise it seems to be only techie posts that get much response here, most notably one on Trusteer Rapport problems.

Posts dropped to fortnightly on average in 2011, slightly better in 2012, then less than monthly in 2013. Post lengths have crept up, and content seems to me to be getting more religious. At the end of 2012 I left Caversham Baptist Church - a painful decision but necessary, I felt. Maybe post frequency has dropped off because I'm not so angry? Or, more likely, because the final few years at CBC left me feeling very jaded and disillusioned - it's one thing to hear about churches which turn away from God, quite another to be in the middle of that. It's especially bewildering to see that the individuals involved remain Godly, whilst the 'church' community loses its direction, and stops following Jesus.

So here I am in 2014, with another post which is too long. I think it's time for another rethink, before I give up on the blog. Maybe it's time to reverse direction: the old theory was to start from the news, culture, Caversham life and seek Jesus there; maybe it is time to try working from the inside out, to start from religion and see if I can find some way to relate that to the real world. It'll certainly be a challenge!