In computing, a checksum is like a canary in a mine. It’s a number used to confirm that a much larger group of numbers is consistent and has not been been changed in some way. A tiny little indicator which does nothing by itself, and only serves to confirm the whole.

My favourite example of a checksum in the real world is the Van Halen Brown M&M story. It seems that Van Halen’s tour contract was long and detailed. When you are going from city to city with a big rock band, complete with light show and complicated electrical requirements, you need everything done right the first time. After all, people have died from microphones which were incorrectly earthed. The band and their crew got sick and tired of finding that their requirements were not met, and having to double check everything. So, hidden deep in their contract, they inserted a demand that the band have a bowl of M&Ms backstage, from which all the brown ones had been removed.

This story ended up being misunderstood and conveying the impression that the band were difficult and demanding. In fact, it saved a lot of time for everyone. No M&Ms? Assume nothing has been done. Flip out. M&Ms there, but brown ones still present? Assume sloppy mistakes have been made. Check everything. M&Ms present, brown ones removed? Relax. I have no idea whether they ever ate the M&Ms. They didn’t matter. They were a symbol of the competence of the whole organisation.

I used to work at a magazine publishers, and when I had the authority, I used to come down hard on small formatting errors in magazine articles. People used to put this down to pettiness on my part, but I knew that the authority of an article was often fatally damaged by the tiny details. It seems silly, but if you put a space between the last letter of a sentence and the full stop, you are sending the readers a set of messages:

1. It says you don’t care very much about getting things right. You don’t check stuff and you don’t expect your readers to care or notice.

2. It puts a seed of doubt into the mind of the reader that you might have been equally sloppy about the main thrust of the article as you are with the punctuation. Since the article might be instructions on how to build an expensive engine, for example, that seed might be enough to put you off attempting making it. Be honest: if you had to choose a medication to save your life, wouldn’t you prefer it if the bottle did not show a glaring spelling mistake?

I am no grammar nazi. I tolerate all kinds of syntactic nonconformity in the interests of clarity, humour, originality, or tiredness. Sloppy spelling in emails from friends is actually kind of friendly, as it demonstrates that the sender had let his or her guard down, and is not standing on ceremony.

The checksum I find most troubling however, is when I catch a technology story in the mainstream media. When a journalist tries to tackle an area that I know something about, they get it wrong. Not just in subtle ways, ways that can be excused as part of an attempt to simplify a complex subject, but in big, scary ways. I remember when I heard a BBC journalist in the Nineties, trying to explain the browser wars, whilst earnestly confusing the function of an operating system and a browser. Repeatedly and insistently.

Every technology report that I know something about seems to contain at least one howler. I sometimes wonder if the BBC apply the same standards to all of the news – even the important stuff. What if all the reports coming out of Iraq were as inaccurate as this nonsense? Maybe they are, because I started noticing it whenever I had a tiny bit of inside information, or personal experience. They always got vital facts wrong.

Which, if my checksum theory is correct, ought to suggest that we can’t trust very much of what we read or hear.

I read an article yesterday (here) which purports to be a professional footballer (soccer player, for US readers) moaning about the poor standards of commentary produced by former professional footballers. Now, I am not a football fan, so bear with me. His main point seems to be that even though these former players know the enormous amount of strategic thought and regimentation that goes into the preparation for a game, they prefer to report it as if little of this goes on, as if each player is far more responsible for his choices than he really is.

What are the reasons for this? Have these former players forgotten their training? Are they too lazy to try and convey it? I doubt it. I thought the reason might be more complicated, but more interesting.

I think British sports fans like to see their players as individual geniuses, not chess pieces on a giant green chess board. In the same way, we seem to prefer to think of scientists having individual blinding moments of inspiration, rather than making gradual discoveries, eked out after years of intense study, collaboratively building on the work of others.

And, of course, the media being what it is, we are served up exactly what we want to see or read. The news industry shapes events to suit our prejudices.

As humans, we seem to have an instinct to make a story out of everything. We need a villain, a hero, a victim, and a crisis. We have little patterns – shortcuts – which help us understand our complicated world. These patterns go from tiny – have you ever heard anyone described as a ‘devout protestant’? – to vast. For example, I very often hear Africa described as if every one of the residents of that enormous and varied continent are permanently on the brink of starvation.

Good causes can compound the problem by using these patterns ‘for the right reasons’, to help them raise money. It helps for victims to be passive, grateful and virtuous – the embodiment of the Victorian ‘deserving poor’ – untouched by the frailties we see in all other human beings.

It is easy to blame the media for all this, of course, but perhaps the world is too complicated to understand any other way. Ultimately, we get the press we want and the government we deserve.

I want to quickly put an unpopular opinion on record. I have a strong suspicion that Murdoch’s decision to charge for access to The Times Online will not fail.

Clay Shirky, says the opposite here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jul/05/clay-shirky-internet-television-newspapers I have read a lot in the last few months which takes it for granted that the paywall experiment will fail. The blogosphere has decreed that Murdoch does not ‘get’ the internet.

I am not so sure. My reasons are as follows:

1. Murdoch is very rich. Clay Shirky is not. Clay Shirky claims to have done the maths, and found that the numbers do not add up. I hope I can be forgiven for trusting the maths of a billionaire, especially when counting money.

2. Murdoch has done this before, with great success. In 1993, Murdoch brought Sky TV to Britain. Satellite television was quickly established as a national joke. The quality was poor, the monthly costs were high, and the papers gleefully reported years of huge losses. Why would people start paying for something – television – they could get (without paying extra) from the BBC, widely considered one of the best broadcasting organisations in the world?

But Murdoch is patient, and has deep pockets.

Now, Sky TV is massively profitable, and, relying less on advertising revenue, has come out of the recession stronger than ever.

Also in Murdoch’s favour is the recent arrival of a very conservative Conservative government, many members of which are openly hostile to the BBC.

I hope I am wrong, and the Mr Shirky is right. But despite what everyone is saying, Murdoch is not stupid.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/10/audiobooks-listeners-travel

The above link leads to a Guardian piece by Mark Lawson, where he argues – sorry, let me rephrase that – he states that audiobooks infantilise the reader. Novels should be read in silence. Note the use of ‘should’, like a prissy TV chef insisting on the use of only the finest olive oil. Many commenters seem to think the piece is pompous elitist rubbish, and I agree. The pick of the comments – I felt – was this:

The cultural attitude which underlies this post demeans the experience of literature almost as much as a refusal to read at all. Art is not an obligation or a test – it is a bounty, it’s an enrichment of life. It’s not about proving who you are to other people. The middle class British attitude that the consumption of literature is a social status performance is destructive and philistine. It kills Art.
(alisonp)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/10/audiobooks-listeners-travel?commentid=a7084408-0c5b-4850-9106-596399fc57f8

It reminded me of earlier pieces in the Guardian which bemoaned the perceived decline of appreciation of classical music in the young (can’t we trust kids to find the music they want to listen to?), and another which spoke warmly of a project designed to get young people ‘off the streets’ (ghastly phrase) and teach them to play the cello. I wondered if such praise would be showered on a project which taught kids to play the guitar.

But this snobbery is just a symptom of the wider disease in national newspapers. Twenty years ago such pieces would not have provoked such fury in me.

Wikipedia has changed everything. This is an enormously useful site which is based on the idea that you cannot trust a word it says. This is the whole point, although some consider it to be its biggest flaw. The thing is – we should never trust anything we read or hear. I was brought up in a country where the teachers told me that black people were not designed by God to rule, and where the history textbooks – years later – were revealed to be a collection of self-serving lies. So I caught on pretty early that a lot of what important looking people say can be total nonsense. Remember that Socrates was the wisest man in Athens because he was the only one who knew he knew nothing.

What Wikipedia and other collaborative online projects teach us is that there is no one authority who decides on the truth. The best we can do is muddle towards a consensus. And newspaper columnists don’t seem to have noticed that they are wearing the Emperor’s new clothes – we no longer look to them to be the arbiters of taste or truth. We are beginning to have the self confidence to enjoy what we enjoy – and hopefully respect the fact that some people enjoy other things – without that making us in some way superior.