Thought for the Day Folgen

100 years ago this year, on a grey January day in 1926, the very first public demonstration of a new piece of technology was given in Soho, London by John Logie Baird. Called by its inventor a televisor, it would soon become a ubiquitous presence in flats and houses across the world known as a television. It’s been reported this week that after 100 years of the device showing content designed for it, the television is now the preferred medium for people of all ages to watch algorithm-driven content on Youtube. ….. one of the biggest creators of content in the world It’s no longer the case that we, the viewers, watch only what production companies make for us. We film ourselves on our phones, upload them ourselves and watch ourselves. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has just recognised the importance of short form video as a cultural development by exhibiting the very first video uploaded onto the platform. Entitled ‘Me at the Zoo’, it’s a 19 second clip that has been viewed 380 million times since it was first posted in April 2005. The fact that we are watching, even on our traditional televisions whatever we want when we want is part of a development that has been happening for some time. It’s a development that reveals to us what we value, what we will pay for, what we will put effort into. It appears to tell us that what we want more than anything - is to maximise our ability to choose. It is one of the axioms of our contemporary culture that individual choice is not only desirable but essential for a fulfilling happy life. And that’s of course true. At the opposite extreme, a person who is not able to exercise any choice is enslaved, something that is both immoral and illegal. Freedom to choose how we live, what we eat, what we do, is a fundamental aspect of human nature not least according to Christian teaching, which insists that human beings have had free will, from the Garden of Eden onwards, made as we are in the image of God. But Christian spiritual practice will also teach us to stay alert to the illusions and deceptions that accompany the elevation of choice above all else. And what we now know is that as we’re scrolling, we’re not so much acting as a free human being, but more as an impressionable consumer, subject to the power of the algorithm. Fundamental questions are raised by an ethic that pursues choice above everything else, especially when it sits in the corner of our living space. The new tipping point we’ve reached faces us afresh with the questions we face when we choose: in whose interest, to whose benefit and, ultimately together, to what end.

24 FEB 26

Good Morning, Coming down from Yorkshire to London I usually walk through Marchmont Street. I often stop and look up at a Blue Plaque over a shop that was once a hairdressers. It’s where Kenneth Williams spent the first part of his life. I worked with him in the late 1970’s when I was a young producer with a missionary society. We were looking at new ways of getting the Christian faith to resonate with young people. I’d heard somewhere that the Ayatollah Khomeini, then exiled in Paris, was flooding Iran with messages on audio cassettes to topple the Shah. It may seem quite a leap but it prompted me to wonder if we too could use cassettes to reach out to the next generation. So we hired four famous comedians to retell the life and parables of Jesus . Soon we were in the studio with Derek Nimmo, Dora Bryan, Thora Hird and - Kenneth Williams recording a sparkling script by Jenny Robertson. Yesterday marked the Centenary of Kenneth Williams’ birth – one of Radio 4’s famous voices who knew the power of comedy to shock, to scandalise and to deflate the pompous. But he was also a sensitive man who prayed at the end of each day out of the depths of his own tortured soul. He excelled in recording these cassettes and captured the way Jesus himself used stories to cut the powerful down to size, especially religious ones. One of Jesus’ amusing stories was told against the hypocrisy of the judgmental - of two men, one with a plank shooting out of his eye trying to pick a spec out of the other’s – a comic sketch worthy of Basil Fawlty berating a hapless hotel guest! The paradox of humour is that comedy can pack a serious punch which is why the powerful, especially dictators hate being made fun of. Nor can they tolerate the freedom the media give to voice such protest. 50 years on, Iran’s latest Ayatollah, while recognising the role media played in bringing them to power , now appears to be tightly controlling the internet, in what is widely seen as an attempt to stem the flow of information about a government crackdown on protesters. Memories of Kenneth Williams today make me nostalgic for a more spacious world where the freedom to speak out and even to make fun of each other were the signs of safer times. Kenneth Williams – rest in peace and in the memory of our laughter.