Just as science and theory offer endless opportunities to invent and reinvent stories, so do our existing narratives, and the \u2018What if?\u2019 question pops up again, this time in Frank Cottrell Boyce\u2019s incredibly entertaining talk. <\/p>\n
Stories? He queries. Oh, stories, well they\u2019re all about the \u2018Wouldn\u2019t it be great if..? and then What if..? and, well, it\u2019s just \u2018stealing ideas!\u2019 Fabulous. Boyce\u2019s humour is infectious, children, lots of them, and grown-ups are in stiches for the most part of his talk, and it\u2019s not just Boyce\u2019s accomplished performance of The Unforgotten Coat<\/em>. How does he know? How does he know exactly how to pitch that scene of power play between the teacher and the student? (as a former teacher who\u2019s had her fair share of engaging in similar power plays, I\u2019m super impressed by Boyce\u2019s skilful interpretation and his comedic take on it). But humour aside, this children\u2019s story about Chingis and Nergui, two brothers from Mongolia carries a sobering message about the cruelty of the immigration system. But it\u2019s also about the beautiful, and often magical, transformative power of storytelling.<\/p>\n As somebody who works with The Reader Organisation (set up by Dr Jane Davis, MBE, a volunteer organisation devoted to improving well-being in communities, reducing social isolation, and building resilience in diverse communities through shared reading), Boyce understands all too well the magic of gifting stories and how that can change lives. \u2018The pattern of giving is very important in storytelling, writing, telling, each other stories, you\u2019re building a charge in the listener\u2019s heads. Boyce is talking primarily of his work as a children\u2019s author here, but the same is true for whatever the age of the listener. \u2018Pleasure gets conflated with fun, there\u2019s a profound form of attention that helps keep something in your brain,\u2019 he draws on a beautiful image, Einstein as a child on a bicycle, watching the sunbeams and dreaming, \u2018what would it be like to ride on a sunbeam,\u2019 and we all know where that took him. Boyce tells us another story, about a Romany Gypsy he met out in Switzerland, \u2018I read Heidi\u2019, she told him, and reading Heidi freed her. She wanted to give her children a better life, not the life she\u2019d led. \u2018Societies can be like prisons: class, race, masculinity, reading will free you\u2019, is Boyce\u2019s message.<\/p>\n Stories, for Boyce, are about connections. He returns to that idea of an all connecting pattern in the giving and receiving of stories, \u2018I was six years old when a Nun at my school told me Chaucer\u2019s The Pardoner\u2019s Tale<\/em>, and it sat in my head for years, before it became Millions<\/em>. It doesn\u2019t stop there though, The Pardoner\u2019s Tale<\/em> has been doing the rounds for hundreds of years: Shallow Grave<\/em>, A Simple Plan<\/em>, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre<\/em> \u2013 see, it\u2019s all connected.<\/p>\n In Arabic, there\u2019s a saying, do a good deed and throw it in the sea. This is what storytelling is about, throwing good deed out there. \u2018You\u2019re entering a transmission. Who knows what it will bring you back.\u2019<\/p>\n At the end, lots of little hands shoot up in the air for the \u2018Any questions?\u2019 section. The questions are excited variations on: \u2018Can you sign my book please?\u2019 \u2018Can you sign my light sabre?\u2019 Boyce is charming and accommodating and I think it\u2019s fair to say he\u2019s thrown out more than a few good deeds today, so here\u2019s to riding on future sunbeams.<\/p>\n Now, delightful as it all is, let\u2019s face it, when it comes to Science, Technology and creativity, it\u2019s not all sunbeams and rainbows, there\u2019s still that \u2018misery in art\u2019 hanging around (thank you Adam Marek). Enter the dark web and its numerous spin offs where creativity is finding an unlikely home, or so I hear tell. I caught up with Geoff White (Channel 4 News) after his engaging and informative talk on the mystery that is the dark web, ‘The Dark Web explained,’ (he brought along his pink gonads and live surfed the dark web). Such is the interest in his topic that not only is the tent crammed to bursting, but there are groups of people massed at each entrance. I too was curious about what else the dark web had to offer, other than posing, ostensibly, as a honey trap for the criminally inclined, and Geoff was kind enough to answer some questions.<\/p>\n In our brief chat, Geoff outlines what he sees as some of the benefits of having an online anonymity cloak. <\/p>\n GW: There\u2019s the obvious political aspect, you can use it to escape oppression, you can use it to visit certain websites you wouldn\u2019t normally be able to in certain countries and that, as far as I\u2019m aware of is the bulk of the use. The hidden websites where all the criminality happens, is actually the minority of the dark web use, as I understand it. However, the impact of that criminality, the brazenness of it, and the widespread aspect of the criminality, for me, still makes it worth paying attention to. If you say a hundred people in this room are great, but there are two serial killers present, you\u2019re going to pay attention to the serial killers, you can\u2019t use the bulk of it to completely negate the others. And I do think we have to ask questions about why you would have those hidden sites. So I get the good side, but I do think the bad side is worth paying attention to.<\/p>\n On the value of trying to shut down the dark web, Geoff points out the beginnings of YouTube as an example. <\/p>\n GW: It was full of illegal content when first set-up, but now it\u2019s \u2018come good\u2019, cleaned up its act, so to speak. The assumption on behalf of the people who support the dark web, and who don\u2019t support the criminality sites, but are not in favour of shutting the website down, is that something similar will happen here. Their point is yes, you\u2019ll start with criminal behaviour, you\u2019ll start with pirate Radio stations, and you\u2019ll end up with Radio One. People forget YouTube when it was launched was full of pirated content, it broke the law and then gradually, you know, it came good. So the assumption is that this will come good. What I\u2019m interested in though is the fact that we\u2019ve had this technology, for what, twenty years, or thereabouts. At what stage are we going to start seeing massive benefits to the hidden websites? People have done research on this and have shown that the vast majority of these websites are used for criminality. I kind of feel that we\u2019ve run the experiment long enough, that if it was going to come good, and there were good reasons, we\u2019d know about it, about them, by now. I don\u2019t really buy the social good, doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m not ready to be convinced, but the evidence doesn\u2019t seem to be there for the existence for these dark websites. But hey, maybe they will turn into those legitimate Radio stations, I don\u2019t see it.<\/p>\n So what is the future for these websites?<\/p>\n GW: I think using the internet in an anonymised way, using encrypted chat apps, that is going to happen. So we\u2019re already at the stage where most internet traffic is encrypted, people are using encrypted chat apps, so I think that\u2019s definitely going to keep happening. In terms of hidden websites, there are already other dark webs emerging, other dark web-style networks, so people might shift to those, but what\u2019s interesting is if there is a crackdown on the dark web, people will shift to point to point connection. Networks for criminality might just get smaller and tighter, people will start to send encrypted chat app messages instead.<\/p>\n One final question, in all his wandering around the Dark web, has he ever been tempted by anything. It elicits a laugh. <\/p>\n GW: Frankly no, I\u2019m not a massive drug user so none of that would tempt me. (He pauses to think for a moment) \u2018um, the most bizarre things you come across though are the things that are completely innocuous, but are being sold on the dark web, so there was a guitar tutorial book on how to play the guitar and I thought well that\u2019s weird because it was sandwiched between, (I\u2019ll just say here two fairly dodgy sounding sites, and Geoff continues) I thought, I\u2019d like to buy the guitar manual, but your advertising in the wrong place. No, I find it intriguing, but I\u2019ve never been tempted.<\/p>\n So what got you interested in the first place? Silk Road is the answer (and we\u2019re not talking of the ancient network of trade routes connecting the East to the West). The Silk Road Geoff is talking about was one the first online black market sites, operating as part of the dark web.<\/p>\n GW: There was a piece about it in Gawker<\/em> (2011) and lots of journalists thought this was interesting, we covered it and after that I was kind of hooked. Because the dark web as I\u2019ve said, you know, is small enough that you can get your arms around it, it\u2019s a few thousand sites. I have a nostalgia about when the internet was that small, and the dark web is so fascinating because you see the same sites going around, there\u2019s not that many of them, it\u2019s a small community. It feels actually friendly, and I know that\u2019s counterintuitive bearing in mind that it\u2019s peopled by a lot of criminals, but as I\u2019ve said \u2013 it\u2019s not just that.<\/p>\n Geoff ends on a word of caution, the dark web is not something to be taken lightly, you have little control over what you see, unless you know your way around. One minute you can be scoping around, the next you\u2019ve been bounced onto an illegal site. Whether you got there by accident, or on purpose, is irrelevant, you\u2019ve immediately committed an illegal act. <\/p>\n So what about these artists\/writers who apparently choose to use only the dark web to post their work? <\/p>\n GW: I can\u2019t say that I\u2019ve come across any, but I\u2019ll let you know if I do.<\/p>\n And we leave it there, for now.<\/p>\n Frank Cottrell Boyce and Geoff White; Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Orbit stage, July 8 2017. Just as science and theory offer endless opportunities to invent and reinvent stories, so do our existing narratives, and the \u2018What if?\u2019 question pops up again, this time in Frank Cottrell Boyce\u2019s incredibly entertaining talk. Stories? He queries. Oh, stories, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[16,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nUsma Malik<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"