Online Habits

Lately, I've been doing a bit of thinking about online presence. What do you go online for and why? Here are my top ten reasons for going online:

1. For information - (a) Local. 'Where's the nearest shop that will sell a sink plunger?' And (b)Things I know Nothing About. 'What's a nano-sim adapter?'
2. It's a place to put my thoughts and, more than that, force me to discipline them and begin to get them into some kind of initial order - the Blogpost.
3. For friendship - a place to keep in touch with some of my friends whom I don't see all the time. Lots of meetings arise from just knowing X is in the vicinity or Y is working on the same issue.
4. For encouragement - messages from friends, prayers, thoughts, aphorisms and jokes at times of celebration or crisis.
5. To read the Bible. Much easier to do it online than from a book. Cross referencing, finding a text, story or character, accessing commentaries while reading, all so much easier to do.
6. The tyranny of the email. This is a mixed blessing. So good to be able to set up a meeting or get a quick answer. But not so good when you have 75 quick answers to give before tea!
7. For recipes. I've only got 6 green peppers, some cheese, 1 sweet potato, some ice cream and a tin of anchovies. What can I cook?
8. iplayer and youtube. Being able to relax watching something I'm really interested in rather than the latest repeat of a detective story that happens to be on ITV3.
9. A place to store my photos and even make them look better than they really are.
10. A place to get news and perspectives from other cultures - India, USA, and West Africa especially interesting for me.

Is there a top ten for not going online? Well:

1. It's addictive. An hour can pass in 3 minutes.
2. Medical conditions! Never look them up unless you want the worst case scenario straight off.
3. The inaccuracy of some information - not always easy to spot if it's not your field. Same caution required as when reading the tabloid press. What is the source?
4. Making errors of judgement that go viral or get recorded for posterity. Never go online if very tired, angry or after more than 2 glasses of wine.
5. Using the internet as a substitute for getting out and meeting people. If you are doing this you may have a problem...and you certainly will have a problem if you carry on.
6. Talking about work. Don't do it! Employers may read Facebook and blogs or Google you.
7. To discuss people or give personal comments about people. A good guide here is, 'Would I like it if someone said that kind of thing about me?'
8. To share something I would mind if someone else took up and shared or adapted in ways I didn't expect. Eg. my own poem or someone else's carefully crafted words or image that I have not acknowledged.
9. To look for real empathy or deep insight. Computers don't do empathy and, ultimately, some form of AI is controlling what you access.
10. To say something you know you should say face to face. (Unless you are on another continent...but even then, beware!)

I was very interested in Nick Morgan's recent blogpost (15th May) on the Big Bible Project blog, in which he reflects on the question, 'where do we find online those things that do not constantly evolve but which call us back to our core essence as Christians?' He calls these things 'anti-memes' - like the Songs of the Old Testament that call the people back to God in times of struggle and rejoicing, he says, these are the things that do not evolve but still resound through time. 'The Christian anti-meme is not a website, a set of Christian resources or any 'place to be' online. We are the anti-memes......let's keep singing the song which calls people to God.' Very well worth a read.

bigbible.org.uk/2013/05/moses-is-commissioned-to-write-an-anti-meme-unshaunsheep/

Sources
The BigBible is a project sponsored by CODEC at Durham University promoting Christian Communication in the Digital Age. www.dur.ac.uk/codec/about 
Nick Morgan's own blog All We Like Sheep can be found at www.pastoralsympathy.blogspot.co.uk

Gift is the Key to Organ Donation

The Welsh Assembly has been discussing legislation to bring in presumed consent for organ donation. Instead of the current opt-in system, people will have to opt out and they will need to know that they have to do this. The Human Transplantation Bill introduces a radically new relationship between the State and the individual and between the 'donor' and the recipient and, should it succeed, it will mean that, in one part of the UK, the harvesting of organs for transplantation is carried out on the basis of principles that differ from those that apply in the rest of the UK. How many people are even aware of this, I wonder? And how will it work? Imagine the scenario - a young student at a Welsh university has a fatal accident a few days after arriving at university. What is the factor that decides whether they come under the Welsh system or the system operated in the rest of the UK? Do they in fact reside at their parents' address in England or at their university address in Wales? Under pressure of time, who deals with these issues and how?

I spent several years working as a nurse in transplant surgery - kidneys, liver and pancreases - and I know the desperation of patients who need transplants and for whom there is an agonising wait, sometimes of many years, for a well matched organ to become available. Many patients die before they get the chance of a transplant. Families are devastated. Anything we can do to increase the number of organs available for transplantation is urgently required.

But will the proposed new law in fact lead to an increase in the number of organs available? There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that presumed consent will actually lead to a decrease in availability of organs. The Bill has been amended so that organs will not be taken in the face of families' opposition. Doesn't this mean that families who have never fully discussed the issue will be likely to resist any attempt to harvest organs 'as of right'? Isn't it going to be far more productive to create a culture where people are encouraged to discuss the issue and then to make fully informed decisions about donation, ensuring that family members know their wishes? My fear is that presumed consent will lead to a situation where few people bother to think about the issues or discuss them with their families. In the event of a person's death it will then be almost universally the case that families hold back as they are not certain about their loved one's wishes.

There is, then, opposition to this Bill for the very practical reason that it will not increase the availability of organs and will turn out to be something of an 'own goal'.  Surely it would be much better to work on opportunities to educate people to think about the possibility of donation? This could be done by sending out information inviting people to join the register of donors whenever a new driving licence is applied for and whenever people change their doctor. GPs could routinely invite their patients to reconsider their position every five years and could offer opportunities for discussion and education. This would promote informed consent which is the only way effectively to increase the availability of organs. It would also take account of the subtleties of the question. Some organs require circulating blood at the point of removal whereas others do not; it has always seemed to me that there are different categories of donation and individuals should be free to consider whether they wish to opt into all or some.

But the major reason for opposing the bill is that it fundamentally changes the relationship of the State to the individual and replaces the concept of 'gift' with the concept of 'right'. To put it candidly, our bodies, in death, are not simply a source of spare parts that the State has the right to redistribute. If you think I'm overstating the case, read Kazuo Ishiguro's powerful novel Never Let Me Go (Faber and Faber 2005). It's the story of a school whose pupils are destined for life and 'completion' as 'donors'. Whatever side of the debate you are on, it brilliantly and chillingly introduces you to issues about the impact of such a position on both the individuals involved and society at large.  Kazuo's use of language gradually alerts the reader to the sinister fact they are being invited to inhabit a social order that is far from what it seems. Extreme as the book may seem, the underlying premise - that some people are required to supply organs rather than that they freely donate them - is the same whether we are talking about forced 'donation' or presumed (and therefore, by implication, sometimes uninformed) consent to donate.

I have seen the joy of donation - people who have decided to give kidneys to relatives, families who, through their heart-break, have known that their loved one has given life to others. Unless donation is just that, donation, it dehumanises us. When it is the true gift of life, it makes possible further acts of generosity and better enables the psychological freedom of the recipient. I very much fear for a society in which consent to utilise others' organs or body parts is presumed or seen as something normally to be expected.

Sources
You can watch the debate in the Welsh Assembly on 16th April 2013 at
www.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/wales-22159136
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro is published by Faber and Faber, 2005 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2005
Comment
A View from Rural Wales Blog glyn-davies.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/agreeing-with-archbishop-on-organ.html
Antoinette Sandbach's (AM, Con.) Blog www.antoinettesandbach.org.uk/news/why-I-voted-against-welsh-assembly's-proposed-human-transplantation-bill

Artificial Intelliegence - Where Next?

Where is artificial intelligence headed? Given that computers now think so much faster than humans and can process undreamed of quantities of information, isn't it inevitable that AI will increasingly shape what is possible or even thinkable? How will this affect our values and the choices that are open or barred to us?

networksandservers.blospot.com.uk/

Perhaps it's even more important to ask, will systems that are designed now contain 'digital DNA' that shapes future systems in ways that are 'unfriendly' to human values? And is there anything we can do about it? Past predictions about the future of digital technology have missed hugely significant developments such as the internet so what are we currently failing to realise about the future impact of AI? Ever since discovering that the treatment doctors are free to choose to administer to their patients is increasingly being determined by vast, long term statistical studies rather than by the clinical experience of a practitioner, I have been interested in the whole question of the relationship of AI to human experience in the ways we shape the future. It seems that we are undoubtedly building in certain sets of possibilities about the future while closing others off and that this is happening so fast that there is little or no debate - I might even go as far as to say consciousness - about what is happening.

So I was very interested to see that, in order to work on just such questions as these, the new Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University, Huw Price, is setting up a Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. In partnership with the Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, and the founder of Skype, Jaan Tallinn, he is planning to do significant academic work in these areas of a kind that is currently not being undertaken. Jaan Tallinn is quoted as having said that he thinks he is more likely to die as the result of an AI accident than from cancer or a heart attack and this should give us pause for thought. AI does pose a real and existential threat and we should perhaps be putting far more resources into researching the possible kinds of AI that could arise and planning for both the near and the far future.

If it is true that many people in the UK are under-educated about mathematics and science, I think it's far more true to say that most of us do not have much of a clue about the spectrum of AI and what it encompasses. There are now online courses such as the one run by Sebastian Thrun of Stanford University in conjunction with Peter Norvig, Research Director at Google, offering an introduction to the world of AI. There are as many different definitions of the task of studying AI as there are philosophers and teachers but a good starting point would be 'the science of making computer software that reasons about the world around it.' The New York Times reported in February 2011 that a computer named 'Watson', designed by David Ferrucci and team at IBM, had won a TV quiz called Jeopardy. 'Trivial it's not' said the headline. The game depends on subtle language plays and the ability to find answers in unlikely contexts - all the kind of thing that it is difficult for computers to do. Ferrucci's team have developed a technique called DeepQA which takes advantage of computer power to range across staggering stores of information and pick out and sift things that might be relevant. It replaces human subtlety with cues that help the system to understand questions and supply relevant data at great speed. Watson does not 'think like a person', though he may appear to. 'The goal is to build a computer that can be more effective in understanding and interacting in natural language, but not necessarily in the same way that a human does it,' says Ferrucci. How right the NY Times was; this is not trivial, it's potentially hugely powerful and we ought to pay more attention to where it is all leading.

Sources

Man vs Robot, Lucy Jolin in Cam 68, March issues Cambridge Alumni Magazine.
The Future of Computers - Artificial Intelligence, Blogpost on Networks and Servers, Rui Natario networkandservers.blogspot.com.uk/
www.stanford.edu/class/cs221/

Ageing Gracefully

They will still bear fruit in old age,

they will stay fresh and green.

Ps 92.14

One of the often-told stories in my family is of how my grandmother got on a train and travelled from Colwyn Bay to Liverpool at the height of the bombing during World War II. She rescued her elderly mother and brought her to live with the family in Old Colwyn, where my great-grandmother, 'Nain', ended her days in the bosom of her family. I think she was only with them for a few months before she died peacefully in her sleep. In the next generation, my grandfather enjoyed about ten years' retirement, had a stroke and was nursed in the local community hospital, with friends and neighbours popping in, for about 6 weeks until he died.

The pattern of the end of life is changing. It's much more common, now, for people to have long years of retirement. I was talking to a friend the other day who said he was just about to tip over into the situation where he had been retired for longer than he had worked. Often people get to the stage where they need increasing amounts of support and nursing over many years and there is, at some point, a decision to be made about whether this can go on happening at home. Many spend more years in a nursing home than my Nain spent months with her family in Old Colwyn.

Our social care system is based on out-dated assumptions about the shape of society. In the 1940's when the Welfare state was born, most people died in their 60's, 70's or early 80's after a relatively short retirement and so those who contributed to the State far out numbered those who relied on its provisions. This is increasingly not the case. Some studies show that between 2010 and 2030 there will be an estimated 50% growth in the population of over 65's and a doubling of the number of over 85's. (See Social Care Funding; A Bleak Outlook is Getting Bleaker published by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services on 6th May 2013.) This has been described as a 'demographic tsunami.' A study undertaken by Dan Blazer in 2005 shows that depression among the elderly is a dramatically growing phenomenon in the West - The Age of Melancholy; Major Depression and its Social Origins, Routledge 2005.

What good to us is long life if it is so difficult and barren of joys,

if it is so full of misery

that we can only welcome death as a deliverer?

Sigmund Freud

We appear to be walking unprepared into a wholly untenable situation and the answer does not seem to be to fling more money at the NHS. The NHS has long been focused on acute health care and is, I think, getting better at preventive health care. It has increasingly handed social care over to other providers and divorced medicine and nursing from basic care such as cleanliness, nutrition and emotional support. I can't see that changing anytime soon even with large injections of cash.

Don't we need a major re-think about what makes life whole and valuable and even possible for older people and their families? The answer probably does lie partly in more social care available in the home. It probably lies with the generation of strong community services such as day centres, education centres for older people, activity groups, places to eat and dedicated transport networks; much of this can be done by volunteers. But doesn't it also lie with giving far more of a voice to the elderly who have a lifetime of experience on which to draw and who, with support, can often find their own solutions to living with the limitations that old age brings? I know a group of five friends who eat their main meal together every weekday. This means each one has to cook only once a week and the local 'you shop, we drop' lorry does the carrying.

How welcome is old age,

the aged are beloved of God.

Midrash Rabbah

We need to think differently about the shape of the end of life. We tend to  assume that people have their family networks and that families will take on the care of their 'own' older people. This can be a source of pride - 'we looked after Gran well.' But this does not take seriously the geographically scattered and fragmented nature of society and it leaves those with no family to turn to for whatever reason singularly isolated and vulnerable.  It also fails to recognise that, much as many of us love our families, we need the understanding, friendship and support of our contemporaries to live well. And that is perhaps especially true as we begin to experience the bereavements that inevitably come in later life.

Suggestions might be

• Fund more work to link the elderly with each other and initiate and support self-help groupings.
• Re-educate for a culture that encourages people to seek out their friends as they age and see what they can do to give mutual support beyond just the immediate family.
• Use volunteer groups and faith communities to generate inter-generational interaction and discussion.
• Promotion of strong, positive elderly role models by the media and on the internet. 
• Provide retirement courses or interviews with GPs where people are encouraged to make plans for their old age and to have goals. (A bit like a birth plan - it seldom goes entirely smoothly, but it helps to have one!)
• A review of the safeguarding systems so that they allow us to vet who is looking after our elderly without excluding common sense sharing of knowledge and care across the professional and voluntary sectors and with family.

None of these things would be very expensive. But they require us to question some of the assumptions that underlie belief in the value of the nuclear family and some of the values embedded in our current approach to health-care. They require us to talk openly about the things we look forward to and the things we fear in old age.

In their book A Vision for the Ageing Church James M. Houston and Michael Parker tell the story of Mor, a Norwegian grandmother. 'Mor's daily disciplines were consistently loving and honouring of those around her. For example, each day, coffee was served at 4pm for anyone choosing to visit. Mor provided her total attention to the needs of the guests.' Having nursed the elderly when I was younger, done upwards of 1,000 funerals as priest, and tried to look after my own ageing relatives, the thing which I think most besets old age is isolation and aloneness. Or the fear of it. There is a real sense of being alone, even while living in the middle of people, if they, in fact, present as strangers or as non-empathetic in their various roles. The greatest need for most old people is someone they can really talk to regularly. In the Christian and Jewish scriptures, hearing what the old have to say is connected with the learning that, in turn, leads to long life and wisdom.

He who learns from the old

 is like one who eats ripe grapes and drinks old wine.

Abot 4.20

Sources
J.M. Houston and Michael Parker A Vision for the Ageing Church; IVP Academic, Illinois, 2011
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation Bog www.jrf.org.uk/blog We need A Plan to Care for An Ageing Society John Kennedy 8th May 2013
The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services website  Social Care Funding; A Bleak Outlook is Getting Bleaker 6th May 2013
Dan G. Blazer The Age of Melancholy; Major Depression and its Social Origins, Routledge, New York 2005

www.ageuk.org.uk

Bringing together Age Concern and Help the Aged.

Welcome!

I've recently been reading Peter Sedgwick's essay Theology and Society in David Ford's Modern Theologians. In discussing pluralism and the concept of society, he says this,

[William] Temple assumed that Christianity had a central role in society, but had to demonstrate its concern for social change. Contemporary ethicists may take the concept of reform as inherent to Christianity, but they have to ensure that the Christian faith has any credibility at all in modern British society and politics. In a pragmatic, pluralist, technologically driven world, that is a very considerable challenge.

In this blog, I hope to explore the connections - I wanted to call it 'Only Connect', but that blog title has already been taken - between social justice, community development and theology. My husband, who works in an industry that spends most of its time thinking about the future, once asked me why the church spends so much time thinking and talking about the past. This is a blog that sets out to call into play the imagination to help us think about the the future. If we explore concepts of community and justice and we relate them to aspects of the Christian tradition such as the imperative to live as brothers and sisters and the expectation that Christ will return and is therefore as concerned with the future as the past, we can expect to discover insight and energy for new shapes of social being.

The old saying, 'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children,' is attributed variously to Indian and Amish sources and to Ralph Waldo Emerson. It rings true in most cultures and is at the heart of what I am about. The way we think about society today and the decisions we make are our gifts or burdens to pass on and we should be as motivated by what we make possible as by what we have achieved.