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khalilhumam · 3 years

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The Best of 2020: What We Read While the World Burned Around Us (Research Edition)

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The Best of 2020: What We Read While the World Burned Around Us (Research Edition)

Even Dr. Pangloss would struggle to put a positive spin on 2020, a historic dumpster fire of a year in which a global pandemic, the deaths of a whole string of superheroes (Chadwick Boseman, Diana Rigg, Diego Maradona, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg start the list), and [*deep breath*] Beirut ammonium nitrate explosions, the costliest cyclone ever (Amphan), the Tehran plane crash, and California and Australia burning down. Kobe’s gone too. And Gerard Houillier. It’s been tough, and that’s without the ever-constant “I think you’re on mute” Zoom meetings. But Candide’s alternative to Pangloss’s mindless optimism (after an even worse turn of events, if you can imagine that) serves as an inspiration: we must cultivate our garden. In that spirit, we’ve picked our favourite papers and articles about development of the year, picking pieces that help us understand the problems we’re working on better and how best to fix them.

Not the same storm, nor the same boats.

It’s inevitable that our first picks relate to COVID-19. Sifting through the avalanche of research in response to the coronavirus pandemic drove better minds than ours to distraction. Avinash Dixit estimated that the famous R rate for the pace of reproduction of COVID-19 research was as high as 34, though we had one advantage in fighting this pandemic of overconfident prognostication: there were no asymptomatic carriers of armchair epidemiology. Looking back at this wave of content, a few pieces stand out. Our colleague Justin Sandefur and his co-authors—in CGD’s most-read paper of the year—took on the task of estimating the infection-fatality rate from Covid across countries and came to the conclusion that sub-Saharan Africa faced substantially lower death rates from the disease—and the data (tentatively) suggest it may have been even lower than anyone predicted. Our current lived experience of coronavirus ranges from total normality in Taiwan to everyday dysfunction in the US and tears over tiers in the UK, but in February many thought every country in the world would and should lock down completely to suppress the virus. Another of our favourite pieces of the year - Mushfiq Mobarak and Zachary Barnett-Howell writing in Foreign Policy made the case that the policy response in poor countries needed to be completely different to that in rich countries - the costs of lockdown were much greater, and the benefits fewer. Policy making during COVID-19 was incredibly hard—but pieces like this helped, as did this early note from Stefan Dercon suggesting where effort could be directed without regret, despite the uncertainty governments faced.

The sudden death of the Doing Business Index

We don’t gloat at CGD (that’s one of our few institutional positions). Yet news that the Doing Business Index was being suspended after allegations of data manipulation presumably raised a few eyebrows in this parish. The Index has long been a punching bag for researchers keen to understand how laws, implementation, and economic activity interact—partly because its construction varies over time, and partly because it doesn’t seem to shed much light on how business is actually done. Though few tears were shed outside the Bank over its demise, the Index will likely be resurrected. Whether it will ever recover credibility is much less likely, especially after what appears to an incredibly damning internal review, apparently confirming that data were manipulated under management pressures—requiring critically urgent reform. Part of the process of getting better is abandoning what doesn’t work. Expect this one to keep running.

Rebranding the bureaucrat

Dan Honig has been waging a battle on twitter to rebrand the bureaucrat, suggesting that . bureaucratic culture can drive better performance, and that it can be ‘created’ with relatively simple interventions. Two great new papers showcase this: in Ghana, Azulai et. al. implement a large scale training intervention aimed at cultural change in the civil service and find it improved division-level performance where the trainees were placed. And Muhammad Yasir Khan’s study in Pakistan shows that emphasising the mission-driven aspect of health work improves not only performance of health workers (and does so on more dimensions of their work than a simple incentive), it also improves downstream health outcomes in the community. These are some of the most optimistic and hopeful findings of the year—all praise the bureaucrats. If large-scale change is going to happen, it will generally not be down to the efforts of a small but brilliant NGO, but because the full machinery of government bureaucracy is capable of action and can improve its performance.

A history of economics in 20 and ½ pages (and the future in 3)

One of the best long reads of the year was the three-way discussion between Amartya Sen, Angus Deaton and Tim Besley in the Annual Review of Economics, dominated by Amartya’s stories of his life as an economist and the people he interacted with. His story is almost a history of economic thought—arguing with Joan Robinson, talking about the environment with Arthur Pigou, being encouraged to folly by Nicholas Kaldor and reminding us of near-forgotten names like Piero Sraffa and Maurice Dobbs. This choice sticks out a little here because it doesn’t highlight a single finding or approach, but rather reminds us of much of the good the discipline has already produced—something economists, a species with a shorter memory than most, tend to forget. In a similar vein was this superb profile by John McDermott of Leonard Wantchekon: not about a specific paper or finding, but something that should give us hope about the capacity of economics to make the world better. Leonard has had an extraordinary life—from political prisoner to political economist - and his work to create an African School of Economics can only be a good thing for the generation of home-grown solutions and ideas, and for asking the right questions.

The world is still divided, but perhaps we’re redeemable

Back in May the world was rocked by the brutal killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by police in Minnesota. A wave of protests over the way police treat Black people spread from Minneapolis to Manchester to Monrovia, highlighting racism and inequality in society. Floyd’s death was one of many hundreds of police-involved killings that happen each year in the United States alone, and this paper by Desmond Ang shows how proximity to police violence has devastating and long-term effects for teenagers. He found persistent decreases in GPA, increased incidence of emotional disturbance and lower rates of high school completion and college enrollment, with the effects driven entirely by black and Hispanic students in response to police killings of other minorities. Ang notes that police killings are hyper-local and nearly 80 percent went unmentioned in local newspapers. But it’s not just the media that’s uninterested in violence against Black people. The story of economist Lisa Cook’s struggle to publish her paper on how violence against African-Americans depressed entrepreneurship among that community reveals deep troubles within the economics profession that we have barely started to address. But, perhaps we should not give up on humans yet. We also read some papers this year that provide more encouraging signs about people’s ability to become more tolerant. Salma Mousa, following her superb paper in 2019 on the effect of Mo Salah on Islamophobia in Liverpool, assigned Iraqi Christians to play football either on teams with other Iraqi Christians, or on mixed teams with Muslim players. Their behaviour changed, but only in the context of the football league - players on mixed teams were more likely to nominate Muslim peers for awards, for example. These behavioural changes didn’t extend to other settings, however. But in every cricket fan’s favourite paper, Matt Lowe finds that contact can reduce prejudice beyond the sports field. He assigned men from various castes in Uttar Pradesh, India, to cricket teams and measured whether contact reduced caste divisions. It did - cross caste friendships increased by 45 percent, driven almost entirely by collaborative contact (same team) rather than adversarial (opposing team) contact. In a world where divisions sometimes seem as deep as ever, these papers offer a ray of hope. Perhaps more effort to integrate schools, workplaces, and communities could reduce discrimination in society. And, just like the rollout of vaccinations ends 2020 on a hopeful note, we will stop there. Thanks to Aisha Ali, Lee Crawfurd, and Dan Honig for contributions.

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adelineadkin · 4 years

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Examining the Future of Policing in Edmonton: Reflections on Reform & Accountability – Part II

By: Asad Kiyani

PDF Version: Examining the Future of Policing in Edmonton: Reflections on Reform & Accountability – Part II

This is Part Two of a series detailing my comments made to Edmonton City Council in the context of a motion to thoroughly examine policing (available here). In Part One, I focused on the need for collection of data about policing, pointing out that this information can be of use not only to citizens who are wary of police, but to police forces looking to build positive relationships with local communities and to improve their service, as well as to City Council as it tries to understand how its massive investment of hundreds of millions of dollars into policing is spent.

In this post, I offer some brief thoughts on independent oversight of police. This review is not intended to be comprehensive. I then consider why Edmonton needs to think about police reform even though George Floyd was killed by American police in Minnesota, and some reflections on questions I was asked by members of Council after my presentation about the broader themes of policing, poverty, and community relationships.

Independent Oversight of Police

In addition to data collection, another key element of policing going forward is changing the way in which police misconduct is treated. In Ontario, a recently completed review of police oversight mechanisms offers valuable insights. In short, the theme is greater strengthening and independence of police oversight bodies. According to Justice Michael Tulloch of the Ontario Court of Appeal, this means, in part:

constituting police oversight mechanisms as independent bodies, and under legislation separate from that which establishes the police;

less reliance on former police investigators in criminal investigations of police officers;

no reliance on police forces to conduct investigations of their own members;

granting oversight agencies the ability to investigate all offences apparently committed by police;

placing an obligation on police officers to cooperate with these investigative bodies;

levying sanctions on police officers who fail to cooperate;

independent decision-making about the laying of criminal and disciplinary charges (i.e. decisions not by the police force itself);

the appointment of independent prosecutors and independent adjudicators in police discipline cases (criminal cases will be dealt with by the criminal justice system); and

ensuring oversight of these mechanisms by an Ombudsperson.

All of these recommendations are of relevance to policing in Edmonton and indeed Alberta. As an example, concerns can be raised about the role of police chiefs in acting as screening mechanisms for many forms of complaints against police officers, and their ability to act as the chairs of hearings into complaints they have already assessed (see Part 6 of the Police Act, RSA 2000, c P-17). From the point of view of the officers implicated, this can raise due process concerns and workplace power imbalances. From the point of view of the public, this raises concerns about apparent bias, favoritism or special treatment.

The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) is charged with investigating the more serious allegations raised against police officers in Alberta. While it is formally independent of police forces, its powers are derived from the Police Act rather than independent legislation that governs it specifically. Under the Act, ASIRT can investigate further incidents it uncovers during the course of an investigation, but the Police Act permits the Minister to appoint other investigators who lack that authority. Moreover, ASIRT relies heavily on current police officers seconded from their forces to act as investigators. This again raises questions of public perception on impartiality. It is important to note that even police officers recognize this risk (at 411), and may not want to investigate other officers partly to reduce public skepticism.

Empowering police oversight bodies is one aspect of enhancing accountability. Transparency in police oversight of the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) can also be improved. ASIRT, for example, should release the full investigative report into an incident at the conclusion of an investigation. As well, ASIRT should collect demographic data about complainants/victims of police misconduct. While the Executive Director stated she sees no value in collecting such information, my previous post outlines the clear benefits. In the oversight context, this information can also help identify if certain demographics are not turning to police oversight mechanisms, allowing those bodies to reassess their outreach, effectiveness, and public perception of their work and accessibility. Perhaps most obviously, it can help identify trends in whether police are not just overpolicing certain communities, but disproportionately inflicting serious harm or killing them. To deny the relevance of this information, particularly in the current climate, is frankly unfathomable.

Modifying ASIRT and its governing legislation is of course outside the mandate of Edmonton City Council, but to the extent ASIRT oversees EPS officers, City Council should offer its advice to the Minister of Justice on ASIRT reform.

Finally, it should be noted that much of the debate is currently about legal control of policing and the appropriate legal mechanisms for ensuring proper police conduct. As Kent Roach notes, the emphasis on legal control can be seen as a substitute for effective democratic control of policing by different levels of government – including municipalities and police commissions. The risks include heightening the adversarial relationship between police, oversight bodies and the public, and, as noted in the review into the extensive allegations of police misconduct during the 2012 G-20 Summit in Toronto, conceding police oversight and governance to the police force itself. It is thus essential that the city and police commission assume their democratic obligations and exercise their legitimate governance powers over EPS.

Many more recommendations can be found in Justice Tulloch’s report, as well as reviews of police oversight agencies in Ontario by the then-provincial Ombudsman André Marin: Oversight Unseen: Investigation into the Special Investigations Unit’s operational effectiveness and credibility (September 2008), and Oversight Undermined: Investigation into the Ministry of the Attorney General’s implementation of recommendations concerning reform of the Special Investigations Unit (December 2011). All of these reports point to the need for greater independence, transparency, and disciplinary power, or ‘teeth’, for police oversight mechanisms.

The Edmonton Context

Some will say that those advocating for police reform are wrongly conflating American police violence with Canadian and Edmonton-based policing. While we should be wary of simplistically transposing from one context to another, the reality is that public mistrust of policing in Canada and Edmonton predates the killing of George Floyd. That killing has catalyzed a movement that, to my understanding, has long been active in Edmonton, just as it has in most major Canadian cities. I note in particular that the Black Lives Matter group in Edmonton began collecting and publishing data about police checks several years ago.

Three anecdotes illustrate continuing concerns about police use of force and bias in Edmonton.

In June 2019, Kyle Parkhurst, a Caucasian man with addiction issues, was arrested by members of the EPS. According to a news report:

[W]itness cellphone videos posted on social media showed an officer repeatedly kicking a prone Parkhurst, slamming him head first into a brick wall, then shoving him against a cruiser while he was handcuffed.

But security video — never before made public — shows an officer struck Parkhurst in the head with either a handgun or a Taser, and another officer delivered an elbow smash to the handcuffed prisoner’s head.

…

Both [Mount Royal University criminologist Kelly] Sundberg and [criminal defence lawyer Amanda] Hart-Dowhun independently noticed an officer, who appeared to be a sergeant, turn and walk away from the scene of the arrest as officers began to strike Parkhurst.

In August 2019, a homeless Indigenous man named Elliot McLeod was arrested by EPS members. A news report describes the video of his arrest as follows: “In the video from August 2019, Elliot McLeod is lying still, face down, and it appears his arms are being held behind his back by an officer who is kneeling beside him. A second officer approaches and suddenly drops, driving his knee into the man’s upper back.”

In July 2018, Jean-Claude Rukundo’s wife was in a traffic accident and asked him to come. While on the phone with their insurance company, Rukundo was arrested by EPS. An EPS officer knelt on Rukundo’s neck for 40 seconds, and Rukundo was charged with resisting arrest and obstructing justice. A news report noted the following: “I couldn’t even breathe”, Rukundo told CBC News on Wednesday. “That day, I feared for my life. I was worried for my kids. I’m the only one bringing in the money for them.” Charges against Rukundo – who is Black – were dropped in February 2019.

These incidents, over time, against men of differing backgrounds, show why there is generalized concern about policing in Edmonton, as well as specifically from communities of colour. The Rukundo situation in particular draws uncomfortable parallels to today’s newspaper headlines: a Black man, engaged in a perfectly innocent activity, found himself with two officers on him and one man’s knee pressed into his neck for an extended period of time. That should give every Edmontonian pause, and point to the need for each of the specific recommendations made above, and the overall need to enhance accountability for policing in Edmonton.

Addendum: Responses to Questions

After all presenters had given their initial remarks, members of City Council posed questions. As noted above, this Addendum was not the basis for my presentation to Council. These questions were largely about the broader context of policing and the defunding debate.

The Bias of Professional Alternatives to Police

One of the first points I made was to clarify that to the extent the motion for defunding is based on the principle of the reallocation of resources from policing to investment in a variety of other social programs, Council should recognize the potential for bias that manifests in other aspects of public life.

Many in favour of defunding and/or abolition of the police point to Alex Vitale’s book The End of Policing as essential reading (available for free download now). Part of his argument is that police are tasked with doing too many things that police ought not to be doing. Comments given at City Council’s police meeting suggest that police officers and City Council members agree on that basic point. I agree with police officers on this point, and when they note that systemic racism is a societal problem (although perhaps police forces should be more open to recognizing it within the police service itself). One of Vitale’s recommendations is that a good deal of policing work should instead be done by different state agencies and professionals.

This sounds like a reasonable proposition: if you send people armed with guns and trained to identify and respond to threats to a mental health emergency, the likelihood of escalation to violence seems to increase. Yet as noted here (in a critical review co-authored by Meenakshi Mannoe and my former student Vyas Saran and endorsed by Vitale), bias has the potential to (and frequently does) manifest in a variety of state agencies. We should think carefully about racial and other disparities that manifest when child welfare agents decide whether to remove children from their families; when school officials mete out discipline, stream students into different academic programs, or assess students’ aptitude; and when medical or mental health professionals encounter their patients. Oversight of these interactions is also necessary; unarmed professionals can be dangerous as well.

The Criminalization of Poverty

I was asked about the core functions of policing, including whether part of the problem is that poverty has essentially been criminalized in Canada. The starting point is that poverty has always been racialized in Canada. We see the presence of police in generating and then policing this nexus of racialization and criminalization. Tasks of police have included the historical and contemporary ‘pacification’ of Indigenous resistance (see here, here, here and here); prosecuting Indigenous persons for trespass or vagrancy when they violated the off-reserve pass system for Indigenous peoples (see here at page 35); and the issuance of slave passes. All of this entrenched criminalization of these communities has supported (and does support) their impoverishment. Broader societal discrimination has helped inscribe poverty onto racialized communities, which has present-day ramifications for who is policed. As well, as noted above, street check databases may be accessed when employers request police checks of potential employees. Names of individuals can be flagged even if no charges were laid or convictions entered, making it harder to obtain and keep employment. To the extent that police are further tasked with enforcing crimes of poverty or laws that disproportionately impact the poor (such as tickets issued for bylaw offences), then it can be said that policing includes enforcing the criminalization of poverty.

Rebuilding Trust and Acting with Humility

If the current moment calls for questions about what constitutes the core functions of policing, it would seem to be useful to ask the communities directly affected. I was asked specifically how police could rebuild trust in various communities. As I said to Council, it is not for me to speak for these communities. Rather, Council should approach those communities to find out what they need. Increasing accountability in the ways outlined above may be ways of repairing broken relationships.

On reflection, my further thoughts are that there were members of the public who presented to Council at the same time that I did, who were also members of communities of colour, and who worked with others communities (such as sexual assault complainants) who had been given reason to mistrust police. Their strong and principled explanations of why Council should defund and/or abolish EPS were evidence of the degree of mistrust that exists. These advocates, who were there in the meeting, presumably have much more to say on if and how trust can be rebuilt, and I urge Council to ask them directly. I regret not making this request in the public hearing.

If Council wants to maintain some form of policing, then it would be wise to approach those communities in the way that members of those communities are often taught to interact with police: with humility. This humility is conditioned by the knowledge of the stakes of the encounter. Many members of communities of colour recognize police encounters as existential threats and thus know the risks of overconfidence when interacting with police. Nothing can be taken for granted, including that police will respond with equanimity if you assert your right to leave or not answer questions when randomly stopped by police.

Council and EPS ought to similarly recognize that public support for the continuation of policing is not guaranteed. Humility ought to therefore be a guiding principle in attempting to repair trust and build public confidence. Humility in this context means three things. First, an openness to engage in dialogue, and in particular a dialogue that will often lead to criticism and sometimes condemnation of the police. Second, a willingness to prioritize the concerns of community members in determining community needs and in reshaping interactions with those communities. Third, an understanding that the wrongs inflicted upon these communities have made serious and lasting impacts, and that it may not be possible to repair that damage in the short-term (and perhaps long-term).

In other words, Council and EPS must be open to the possibility of having their interactions with particular communities fundamentally reshaped, and be willing to participate in that fundamental reshaping. If the approach is one of insisting on continuing or restoring “normalcy”, both Council and EPS must understand that for many members of communities of colour, “normalcy” means continual surveillance, regular harassment, and threats or acts of violence. That notion of normal is untenable to many, and it will likely lead to a continued insistence on significant, meaningful, community-led changes.

This post may be cited as: Asad Kiyani, “Examining the Future of Policing in Edmonton: Reflections on Reform & Accountability – Part II” (June 19, 2020), online: ABlawg, http://ablawg.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Blog_AK_EdmontonPolicePart2.pdf

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cryptodictation · 4 years

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An analog uchronia: this would have been the coronavirus crisis without the Internet | Technology

The killer application, the definitive application that would turn our lives completely digital has been a virus. And not a computer virus, but a biological one. During this quarantine, the Spanish spent an average of 79 hours out of the 168 that the week has connected in one way or another to the Internet, according to a study by Nielsen and Dynadata. Almost half of our time. Network traffic has grown 80% since the start of the crisis. The use of WhatsApp has grown to six times. Platforms like Netflix, HBO or the newcomer Disney fill their income accounts and our movies and series with our time at home with euros. Becoming addicts, the possibility that we could go offline terrifies us. The operators reassure us: the collapse is impossible. But what if it never existed? Now that David Simon's television adaptation of Philip Roth's fabulous novel The conspiracy against America ucronía (fiction based on alternative versions of history) has become fashionable, let's consider an analog. What would this crisis be like if it had come before the Internet entered our lives? What would this pandemic have been like in 1995?

We traveled less. Viruses too

Globalization already existed in 1995, but it was different. Thomas Friedman says that we are now living globalization 3.0. The first wave was led by countries. The second, companies. This third, the people. Empires or multinationals are no longer the protagonists of this process. We are. The Internet largely succeeded in defeating space, killing distances. Anyone can have friends they've never hugged on another continent or meet their better half on the other side of the ocean without having kissed her.

According to the World Organization for Migration, in 2019 there were 271 million migrants in the world. The virtual country that would make up all the people who inhabit a different one from the one that saw them born would be the fourth most populous on the planet. More relevant are the tourism figures. According to the World Tourism Organization, in 2019 1.5 billion international visitor arrivals were registered in the world. In 1995, before Expedia was created, the first online travel agency, 527 million.

The Internet has democratized travel. Come fly with me Sinatra sang. Flying was a special experience until the arrival of airlines in the twilight of the century low cost. According to a study by the University of Oxford, flying abroad in the 21st century is 70% cheaper than in the 20th. You traveled less times and to fewer places. According to OAG data, in 1990 there were 7,000 direct air connections in the world. In 2010 they exceeded 15,000. Tourists want to be travelers and begin to leave the traditional routes in a diaspora that reaches everywhere. Thousands of people discover destinations on blogs, networks and Instagram accounts such as Paula Solís. For her “the networks have brought destinations closer. Traveling today is less expensive and complicated. People run away from packages looking for places with fewer tourists. ” A paradox, tourists fleeing from tourism.

Without wanting to, these travelers for professional reasons or in search of the “authentic” are transmission mechanisms as were the Spanish conquerors in the epidemics that decimated the indigenous population of America. In 1995 much less was traveled than today, to fewer places and in a much shorter season. So it is possible to think that if a pandemic had devastated the world then its global spread would have been slower. The expansion from one country to another would not have been hours or days, but weeks or months as in the 1918 Spanish flu, which was accelerated by the movement of troops in the First World War.

The COVID-19 crisis will have a major impact on the mobility of people and tourism. For Solís, “international travel will take time to recover. We will be afraid, nobody wants to quarantine outside their home. ” Furthermore, “some airlines will fail, supply will decrease, prices will rise and international tourism will no longer be so affordable for everyone.” Traveling after the coronavirus will be more like how we traveled in 1995. It will be more expensive, more complicated, and less destinations with numerous countries forcing quarantines of their visitors. In the summer of 1996 an advertising spot popularized the “Where's Curro?” Maybe for a while Curro will stay in Spain.

The phone kept communicating

This confinement has supposed the explosion of the videoconference. It is used to drink canes remotely with friends – the sales of beer, potatoes and olives do not stop rising -, to have meetings with the family and even to form some with virtual weddings. Pedro Sánchez and his ministers used it in their press conferences without journalists and they are on the way to becoming a television genre in itself used in each live set to connect with one of the hundreds of experts in pandemics that have suddenly appeared on the programming morning. Zoom, the fashion app to carry them out, is, according to Statista, the most downloaded in the quarantine, although that success has caused multiple problems. Friends no longer argue over the bar where they can drink vermouth, but rather over the platform where they can see their faces out of focus and poorly lit.

In 1995 we would have had to settle for the voice. If in this crisis the traditional calls have doubled growing even more than the data, then, when they were the only channel to care and be cared for in the middle of the isolation, they would have exploded. Not being able to see the receiver's face would have been the least of the problems. At the end of 1995 only 2% of Spaniards had a mobile phone. Telefónica, the only operator to provide service, closed the year with 928,955 users. Although in 1993 Moviline phones had begun to be marketed, with prices close to 100,000 pesetas (600 euros) and since 1976 in Madrid and Barcelona huge and heavy devices could be used for the car, it was not until 1995 when in Spain it began to offer, as a luxury item, GSM digital mobile telephony.

The fixed monthly fee was 4,000 pesetas, about 24 euros, and the price of the call ranged between 45 and 18 pesetas per minute, depending on the time slot. All mobile numbers started with 909 and SMS was free because no one thought they could interest someone. So the telephony was overwhelmingly fixed. And at home, although it was usual to have several receivers, there was only one line, so parents and children shared a single communication channel. The “cut now” was one of the most repeated phrases and it is difficult to explain to the one who has not lived through the experience of the adolescent who does not call his girlfriend, but the home phone of his parents. A confinement with a single telephone in each home, always communicating, would have been a matter of dispute. Perhaps cabins should have been decreed as an essential service to avoid family schisms.

Teleworking was impossible … and allegal

Although the first Spanish web server, that of the Jaume I University that took advantage of the CERN directory, appeared in 1993, in 1995 practically no home had an Internet connection. In September of that year, Telefónica would launch Infovía, a slow connection. The flat rate would not arrive until almost the year 2000. In 1995 teleworking would have been impossible, although his oldest ancestor could have been launched: work from home. In 1665, when Cambridge University was forced to temporarily close due to the spread of the bubonic plague, physicist Isaac Newton developed the key idea of his law of universal gravitation from his home.

The concept of teleworking is also not new. In 1973, in the midst of the oil crisis in the United States, physicist and engineer Jack Nilles began to think of ways to optimize non-renewable resources such as fossil fuels. His idea was to “take the job to the worker” and not the other way around. He tried to implement it in the insurer where he worked by connecting the keyboards and screens of his colleagues to remote stations. But the idea was technically unfeasible then and it was still in Spain in 1995.

Pablo Teijeira, director for companies of VmWare, a multinational specialized in virtualizing the workplace, assures that “although technology already allows it and 71% of large companies include it in their human resources policies, in 2018 only 3, According to the INE, 2% of employed persons teleworked in Spain, far from 25% in Sweden or 43% in the USA ”. Despite this, many companies have managed to implement contingency plans in record time that have allowed their employees to continue working from home. “Those who were prepared immediately took the step. Many even recommended it days before the state of alarm, “explains Teijeira.” For those who were not, we have given access to critical applications from anywhere to more than 20,000 users in less than five business days. “

25 years ago, technology was not the only limitation to transfer productive activity to homes. The first proposal for a law to regulate teleworking in Spain was presented in 2010. It was rejected and until 2012 it was not included in article 13 of the Workers' Statute. “Without teleworking, the impact would have been devastating,” says Teijeira. Many companies would have been forced to close, the destruction of employment would have been enormous and workers in essential sectors would have had to continue going to their workplaces, making confinement measures less effective.

The online classes that these days are followed by millions of students at home would also be impossible. Perhaps the Government would have had to organize a large-scale training course for all of them through public radio or through some kind of paper bulletins sold at newsstands.

New technologies have not only helped launch telework and maintain teaching activity. In 1995, perhaps the Internet would not have saved the economy or the school year, but it would have saved the lives of many of the people who are now receiving home help and remote diagnosis.

Fewer leisure options and less fear of boredom

In 1995, as today, the main entertainment for a confinement was television. But the meaning of that word today is very different. Following the famous phrase of Paul L. Klein, in 1995 people did not watch programs, they watched television. According to Klein's own theory of the “least objectionable program,” this should not delight a few, but dislike almost no one. That generalist television was tremendously removed from the ultra-segmentation and personalization that digital platforms allow today: from group and simultaneous consumption we have passed to the individual and asynchronous.

In a hypothetical confinement in 1995, leisure would have been based on “let's see what they throw”, according to the professor at the Rey Juan Carlos University, José María Álvarez Monzoncillo, who wrote in 2004 The future of home entertainment. Monzoncillo believes that this future, which is now past, changed radically in three aspects: we went from scarcity to abundance, from family to personal consumption and from homogeneity to segmentation.

The private channels had been released in our country in 1990 with what the television offer was four free channels and Canal +, the only payment option, still broadcast in analogue and therefore in a linear way and without any ability to choose. To these were added the autonomic ones in some communities, the international channels that provided the satellite dishes that had survived the fashion of the 80s and the video tapes. Perhaps a crisis like this in '95 would have served to see those home recordings from camcorders, the last cry in the early '90s, documentary memory of those who were children at that time.

But no matter how large the family home video library was, and considering that the video club would hardly have made an essential service (perhaps the poster had changed to rewinding and disinfecting before delivering), the menu on the audiovisual menu was infinitely less extensive. Children's channels did not yet exist and children's programming was reduced to very specific time frames. The only possibility to see cinema away from mainstream was the video or wait for Monday at 22.30 in This movie theater is so big, released in 1995, the first contact that many had with the classic cinema that is consumed today in Filmin.

The shortage of supply led instead to the concentration of the audience. Family doctor, which premiered that year averaged 8.5 million viewers and its final chapter, two years later exceeded 10.5. The paper house, which is an indisputable success today in our country, has just over 2 million and not simultaneously. For Professor Monzoncillo, today we are more addicted to content: ”We want everything now. There is a new cycle of anxiety, frustration, and tedium. In a cyberfetish environment, boredom is considered a failure and having fun is an obligation. ”

Since not everything is television, in 95 music would have been a fundamental companion to isolation. Hi-fi equipment had come home since the late 1980s, and the CD had banished the cassette tapes to gas stations. In 1995 there was no Spotify but it was the year of Tricky and Pj Harvey's debut from Common People Pulp and Wonderworld from Oasis. Now we have a trap.

Glues for the paper newspaper

The information that we would have had about the pandemic would also have been radically different in 1995. So the only daily content accessible online was the BOE and the Valencian cultural magazine Els Temps with an electronic version on the Servicom network since 1994. EL PAÍS did not have an Internet presence until May 1996, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of its launch. A curious phenomenon and today almost forgotten is that of electronic publications on CD. The pioneering experience had been the Expo 92 newspaper, available on CD-ROM and electronic kiosks installed at the Seville fair connected by fiber optics. Some media had joined this trend, but in 1995 the press was almost exclusively on paper. EL PAÍS sold more than a million copies every Sunday and in a situation like the present one it would have triggered the circulation, probably with more than one daily edition.

Radio consumption, which has increased significantly during this pandemic and is also, according to a study by the Havas Group, the most trusted medium to inform us of the coronavirus, would have been equally significant in 1995. We would not listen to podcasts or radio streamming or apps but we would do it in the late middle wave, but Iñaki Gabilondo or Encarna Sánchez would join us in our running of the bulls as Angels Barceló and Carlos Alsina do today. Television was still, in the words of Román Gubern, “a pulpit disguised as a window.” Generalist and flow, with enormous power in public opinion and in the creation of social consensus, it would also have played a key role in information.

There would also be fake news although we would call them only fake news. In fact, the Spanish flu of 18 October owes its name to the information manipulation that prevented the information on the pandemic from being published in the countries that were fighting in the Great War. The Spanish media, with the neutrality of their country in the war, were the first in the world to write about the virus and thus gave the epidemic its name forever.

The fundamental difference with the current situation would be in the propagation of those hoaxes. Without the Internet or social networks it would be more difficult for them to go viral. The health authorities would have easier to control the disinformation and without the tension that has taken over Twitter, the public debate would surely be calmer. In Professor Álvarez Monzoncillo's opinion, “informatively, television, radio and the press would have been the controlled reference. Now the news is flowing in other ways. In fact, during this confinement the political conflict, and the public agenda itself, have been marked by users and digital networks, which is promoting polarization. ” It is one more example of what Moisés Naím calls “the end of power.”

Science would slow down

In 1995, as today, it would be science that would get us out of this crisis. But research back then was very different without the technologies that have become popular later. As explained by the Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Complutense University of Madrid and former Secretary of State for Innovation, Science and University, Ángeles Heras, “The Internet is an invention of scientists.”

In the 80s, first in some North American Universities and later at CERN in Europe, they were deploying networks to interconnect their research centers. The impact was enormous, both in science itself and in the way of thinking and reading bibliography to propose projects, design experiments, analyze results, publish articles and disseminate knowledge. The scientific method remains the same, but before the Internet we needed much more time to obtain the same results.

Heras tells his own story as an example. His doctoral thesis was the first to be written in a word processor at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Córdoba in 1983. The bibliography was requested from CINDOC (CSIC), the results were analyzed in ballpoint pen and the articles were written in a specific machine. He still remembers the first article that he sent from the University of Córdoba in 1989 by email and not by certified mail, as was customary until then.

“We have gained a lot in immediacy and facilities. The network has allowed collaboration and knowledge sharing. In the early 90s “, explains the professor,” we had a single computer with email for the entire Faculty of Sciences. In the Congresses of each area, it was a matter of meeting scientists who knew each other from the articles and mainly by letter. I started collaborating with the UCM and the CSIC from Córdoba in 1986. I visited the Instituto Rocasolano del CSIC, because it had and still has one of the best Physics and Chemistry libraries. I arrived in Madrid with many references to articles that I photocopied and took me on paper to my Faculty of Córdoba. From so many trips and many scientific conversations, in 1990 I ended up moving to UCM. “

Letters, conferences, photocopies, and trips of a hundred kilometers to consult a library made the research much slower. Today, Heras explains, “more ideas are shared and there is a very natural collaboration between scientists from any country in the world. The human genome program would have been impossible without the Internet, which will also be key to finding a coronavirus vaccine. “

In 1995, scientists would work tirelessly to find treatments and vaccines, but without being able to share this information globally, the process would have been much longer. However, we cannot demand miracles either. The Internet can speed up the research and discovery phases, but the preclinical and clinical phases have their times. Perhaps this crisis will help us to trust more in science and less in the siren songs of technology. This pandemic has killed the Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. We were told that technology would allow us to dominate nature. Covid-19 has shown that they lied.

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Go Ahead, Take This Opportunity To Say You Always Hated A Creep's Art

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Go Ahead, Take This Opportunity To Say You Always Hated A Creep's Art

Have you always believed that Quentin Tarantino makes dreadful movies? Have you always wondered how a director could be so celebrated for work that luridly depicts the abuse and degradation of women and black people, and that offers little more than exploitative ’70s pastiche?

Maybe your belief that Tarantino sucked spoke in a small, niggling voice, something you pushed down because you felt embarrassed that you couldn’t appreciate the auteur’s work. Or maybe it was louder. Maybe you even got into arguments with your film school classmates or your boyfriend about it.

Either way, this past week has likely brought a sense of grim vindication.

First, in an interview with The New York Times’s Maureen Dowd, Uma Thurman revealed details about Tarantino’s direction of “Kill Bill,” including his role in pressuring her to perform a car stunt that went awry and left her severely injured, as well as scenes in which he personally choked and spat on her in place of her acting partners.

With the spotlight now on Tarantino, news outlets are digging up other disturbing moments from his career. Thurman wasn’t the only actor he’d choked during filming ― he’d also choked Diane Kruger for a scene in “Inglourious Basterds.” Perhaps most damning, audio surfaced from a Howard Stern interview in 2003 in which Tarantino not only defended director Roman Polanski against his notorious rape charge, but insisted that his 13-year-old victim “wanted to have it.”

Though Tarantino defended his on-set behavior in a lengthy interview with Deadline’s Mike Fleming Jr., and both Thurman and Kruger went on to praise his direction on Instagram, the public reckoning with his oeuvre had already begun; plenty of naysayers jumped on the opportunity to admit that they’d always hated his movies.

Like Louis C.K. and Woody Allen before him, Tarantino had become, almost instantly, the new cool entertainment dude to have always hated.

I’ve never understood the allure of Tarantino or his films. I’ve never seen Kill Bill (1 or 2), DJango, or the rest of them, except Pulp Fiction. Once. After reading that NYT article about Uma Thurman, I know I made the right call. He is unmitigated trash.

— April (@ReignOfApril) February 3, 2018

I’m glad that my once unpopular opinion that Tarantino films are rubbish because it’s like watching the worst thoughts of the annoying lad you don’t fancy but he bothers you anyway playing out in hypercolour, is finally getting it’s moment.

— Jess Phillips (@jessphillips) February 4, 2018

You know, I thought by this point there would be at least one of these Hollywood dudes where I’d be like, “that’s a shame, I want to like his work.”

But….all of them are of mediocre talent

— Kelly Ellis (@justkelly_ok) February 6, 2018

But is this … bad? Should we resist the urge to distance ourselves from the fandom surrounding a detestable creator, to declare to the masses, “I always hated that creep”?

This week, that declaration was met with the usual pushback, as critics accused Tarantino cynics of turning a serious conversation about misogyny and assault into a conversation about superior film taste:

Revelations that Tarantino is a piece of shit (not new) doesn’t suddenly require you to tell the world how much you have always hated his films (which suck incidentally).

— Richard Whittall (@RWhittall) February 3, 2018

Ah, we’re in the “I always knew he was shifty…” phase of Tarantino discourse, then.

It tends to overlap with the “I was always an outlier in the court of public opinion and now I’ve been vindicated!” phase.https://t.co/V7Xxt62pyo

— Darren Mooney (@Darren_Mooney) February 6, 2018

All the people that never liked Tarantino films are feeling somehow vindicated and that’s fucking awful. You’re profiting off the sadness and hurt of another human being to feel morally superior to the rest because you feel that your critical opinion feels somehow accurate??

— Jaime Grijalba (@jaimegrijalba) February 6, 2018

The initial urge does seem self-serving, a way to retroactively claim credit for knowing better than everyone else. The #MeToo moment should not be viewed primarily as a plum opportunity to hipsterize disliking Louis C.K., to smugly claim, “I hated him before it was cool.”

Nor should we reflexively vilify people who loved the work of people like Louis C.K. and Tarantino. We all have problematic faves; the hardest and most vital part of changing a toxic culture is holding those faves to the same standards as artists we dislike.

But you know what? Go ahead and take this moment to tell the world you always hated a creepy dude’s art. Feel extremely free to unload on all the troubling hints in his work that he thinks of women as objects. Why shouldn’t you? We should have that conversation, too.

The #MeToo movement emerged as an urgent reckoning around sexual abuse and harassment in the workplace, but it’s churned up discussions of issues beyond that ― not only sexual abuse outside the workplace, but also a broader culture of misogyny. Those discussions have revolved around the art of abusive and chauvinistic men, and how their visions have defined our culture, often in ways that harmed women. They’ve also included talk of how white critics have long taken up the air in the room; how they’ve been empowered to curate an artistic canon by and about them, while people of color, women and other marginalized groups have not.

We’re now grappling with how admiration of these problematic men became de rigueur, and how frustrating this enforced consensus was for the many people who felt exploited or forgotten by the canon.

For years, when I’d balk at watching Tarantino films because the content made me uneasy, I was told I was being too sensitive. Between this and Uma Thurman’s devastating stories, it’s all coming together. https://t.co/X0G0kv9F4K

— marisa kabas (@MarisaKabas) February 6, 2018

Since I was around 12, the dudes in my life constantly told me I was being too sensitive when I questioned the misogyny and racism in Tarantino’s work. I was often told I “didn’t get it.” Well… I think maybe… YOU guys didn’t get it, actually? #quentintarantino https://t.co/K4dXjvEJxM

— Brigit Young (@BrigitYoung) February 6, 2018

This is not to say that only white dudes (or all white dudes) are fans of unsavory artists like Tarantino or Louis C.K. Plenty of men have been happy to note that they never liked Tarantino anyway, and plenty of women loved “Louie” and “Manhattan” and “Pulp Fiction” and have been struggling, in the aftermath of unsavory allegations, to resolve their admiration of the art with the personal crimes of the artists. (Personally, I never had the stomach for Tarantino films ― blood makes me queasy ― but I grew up on Allen’s daffy early films and liked a decent amount of Louis C.K.’s comedy.)

Still, it’s impossible to disregard the fact that an almost entirely white and male set of tastemakers (not to mention creators and investors) elevated certain male artists to the level of demigods, so above criticism that one’s dislike signaled one’s own inferior taste rather than the artists’ failings. Most critics with major platforms have long been white men; the lack of diversity in the ranks has not only stunted the breadth of conversation, but fostered the false sense that white men’s concerns are the most pressing, their opinions the most objective, and their viewpoints the most conducive to great art. Even when women or people of color dissented, their voices did little or nothing to alter the perceived consensus.

Take Allen: Pauline Kael and Joan Didion, both prominent female critics, savaged his opus “Manhattan,” which revolves around a 42-year-old man who is romancing a 17-year-old student, for, respectively, “pass[ing] off a predilection for teen-agers as a quest for true values” and telegraphing that “adolescence can now extend to middle age.”

Then-Columbia professor John Romano quickly rebutted Didion in a letter to the editor, describing her review as a result of “pique”; the letter twice describes Didion as “complaining.” Meanwhile, critic Roger Ebert had a startling take on the artistry surrounding Allen’s character’s sexual predation, writing, “It wouldn’t do, you see, for the love scenes between Woody and Mariel [Hemingway] to feel awkward or to hint at cradle-snatching or an unhealthy interest on Woody’s part in innocent young girls. But they don’t feel that way.”

As the years passed, “Manhattan,” beloved by male critics who were unbothered by or eager to explain away the movie’s troubling sexual undertones, became cemented in film canon. If Kael and Didion couldn’t get us to openly acknowledge the flaws in Allen’s work, who could? At least now it seems right to go back and examine the catastrophic failures of some critics to tease out these threads. Many critics, including the New York Times’ A.O. Scott, are now openly reckoning with the insufficiency of their past criticism of Allen’s work, and they’re right to do so.

It’s also fair to point out that some people wanted to have this conversation before the #MeToo moment, but that a patriarchal hegemony of taste served as a bulwark against it. The cultural change didn’t just begin in October. For example, when Tarantino released “The Hateful Eight” in 2016, critics explicitly called out his dicey use of extreme violence toward women in the film, questioning whether it was artistically essential or even justifiable.

#MeToo was possible in part because women in Hollywood, and elsewhere, have spent years advocating for more respect and representation.

This is exactly my problem with Tarantino. He glorifies violence against women and people of color, makes an industry out of movies centered on violence towards minority groups, and gets called a “genius” for it. That’s the kind of regressive junk we need to cut out. https://t.co/RDKt9rhBu9

— Heidi N Moore (@moorehn) February 4, 2018

The central connecting thread between all of the aforementioned morally ambiguous or nihilistic art and so much more in that vein: it was all primarily by and for white men and wistfully imagined worlds where white men were never held to account for anything.

— David Klion (@DavidKlion) February 6, 2018

But despite these rising questions, the classic films ― “Pulp Fiction,” “Kill Bill” ― seemed untouchable, and disliking them remained taboo. If you’ve ever told a date, a classmate, a mentor or a friend that you can’t watch Tarantino because you find his work to be exploitative of women, only to be informed that you simply don’t understand his art, the indisputable revelation this month that he’s a bona fide creep is, in a small but real way, liberating. It’s something solid to cling to, at last, evidence that you’re not overreacting or too obtuse to appreciate the aesthetic perfection of his tobacco-spit trajectories. Distaste for his work, often cast as a mental flaw or tragic unhipness, has become, in an instant, a mark of discernment.

In a tit-for-tat sense, it does seem just that artists like Louis C.K. and Tarantino ― whose reputations were long bolstered by the plaudits of critics and the reflexive hipster posturing of fans ― have now slid to the wrong end of the “my taste is better than yours” hierarchy. That’s not the point of this moment, nor should the goal of this reassessment be to simply unseat one set of white male icons, to turn the same smugly superior judgment on their fans that their detractors have experienced. It’s only human, though, to feel vindicated.

And yet, vindication isn’t the only feeling at play. There’s something about this sudden shift that’s wildly infuriating as well. Oh, NOW you’re listening? I thought recently when a writer I’d criticized as sexist ― only to have my critique neatly brushed aside by male colleagues and friends ― faced career consequences after being accused of personal misbehavior toward women. Why couldn’t you take me seriously when I broke down all the none-too-subtle misogyny in his writing?

Saying “I always hated his work” might be a cheap hipster pose, but it also might be bitterness born of long-suppressed, impotent anger. If you’ve grown used to being shamed or condescended to for caring about an ugly thread that everyone else seemed to be overlooking, the sudden shift is gratifying, but also exhausting. All the years of churn and self-doubt suddenly feel like a cruel, unnecessary burden forced on you by the people who insisted you were wrong.

So go ahead; vent your spleen. Give yourself the tiny shred of comfort that comes from claiming your long-simmering, now-validated disdain. Take the opportunity to try, once again, to have a real debate about the artistic merit of works like “Kill Bill” and “Manhattan.” It’s a first step to envisioning a world that isn’t just rid of monsters, but that actually offers everyone an equal place in constructing our culture.

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