So, the Leveson Inquiry is rattling on with its various commentators as to the morals, ethics and legality (or lack thereof) of methods used by the UK media to investigate what may or may not be legitimate intrusions into the private lives of public figures.
I have covered a lot of the discussions as to what is a public figure, a private life, and a legitimate intrusion when I considered Super Injunctions here and I'm not going over them again, or the behaviour of the journalists. My discussion is over language.
Take 'hacking'. Essentially, what the journalists have done is not 'hacking' in the technical term. A hack is an invasive or destructive intervention into a system. You access the bits of the hardware, firmware or software that you are not supposed to get access to, and use that in order to access data or perform functions by circumventing security measures. That isn't what was done.
The journalists have used a perfectly legitimate passcode to access voicemails, using the standard voicemail retrieval system in exactly the way in which the system was designed. There is no illegal tampering with the software, there is no subjugation of the system or even stealing of passwords. All they did was try the default passcode for the system and were successful where the true owner of the account had not changed it.
Now, the mere fact that it is not a technical hack does not make it a legal interception. There are a number of pieces of legislation which stipulate that accessing information left on a voicemail which is not your account and which is not intended for you is illegal. As an analogy, take a cashcard with PIN. The fact that the account owner may have left a slip of paper with the PIN on it with the card does not suddenly entitle you to the money in the account - it is still a theft of somethine which does not belong to and was not intended for you; but what it does is absolve the bank of any liability for the account access because a legitimate card with legitimate PIN has been used. Now, a hack would involve a clone of the card; or intereference with the bank software or hardware that means that the proper PIN does not need to be used or could be changed to one of the criminal's desire.
But 'hack' has been adopted by the very devil what did it. Why? Well, it's an easy phrase. It's short, abrupt, it sounds as evil and nasty as the actual act, and is something simple that the public can relate to. And it's a fudge - it's not quite the right description; but it's pretty damned close enough and nothing else really comes any closer unless you're going to use a paragraph to discuss and explain it. And so, having been uncomfortably melded into a hole that wasn't really correct for it, it has now adopted its new persona.
And this is the flexibility, fluidity of language. Go back hundreds of years and you will see that we use language for far different meanings from those that they used to be used for. And we should never consider an 'original' use of any word, because it is so impossible to identify and single source of a word. The Oxford English Dictionary has a database where it records all uses of words, first appearances - but it does so crucially in a particular 'form'.
What we are seeing is the escalation of adaptability, fudgeness, and plain abuse of definition and intention. The internet has ensured that what once took decades to occur because of the time-lapse in publishing and distribution of texts can happen instantly, and isn't edited by someone who thinks they know better than the author. Just as flashmobs evolve from a genesis, a mere thought, to half a community turning out within hours; so language can adapt instantanously. And you see it very quickly with the 'kids on the street' for whom - at the time of writing - "sick" is falling out of fashion. But whereas to my parents sick was something of revulsion or disgust, these days "sick" has been adopted in a full about-turn to express impress, desire or enthusiasm; almost as a perverse desire of the new users to directly confuse other users, but more to adopt language as their own - it isn't about damaging or denegrating language, it is about taking ownership and using creativity over it.
One of the reasons that people hate 'kidspeak' and this 'abuse' of language, is the lack of control that they have had over it; and the rapidity with which it has occurred. If it is a slow, insipid adjustment people don't even realise that it is happening; they just come to accept that it has happened - but then I have discussed the human condition regarding change on many, many occasions. But the main thing is the lack of control. The people who complain are people who regard themselves as better educated, and therefore more able, responsible to act in a position to act as controller, editor-in-chief of the language than these unqualified whipper-snappers who have no knowledge of the history of the word. But is there a need for a knowledge of the history? If they like the word then surely the mere fact that they are experimenting and using words should be encouraged? And, in due course, as well as giving the language new meaning they will learn any history associated with the word - learning by insipid osmosis.
People may see reflections of the recent Waterstones decision to abandon its apostrophe; but really it is quite different - that is about an entity deciding what it wants to be called. What would be different is if other people decided what it was to be called, or known for, or used as. Yes, it may have made the decision to drop the apostrophe as it is trying to 'move with the times' and that its apostrophe was 'no longer practical in modern times' - well, it may think so, but that only extends as far as its own apostrophe. It doesn't spell a wide change in punctuation use, not the death of the apostrophe as we know it; all it is is a slight branding trend in pretty much the same way as the most recent branding trends have included the use of entirely lower-case letters, often in a sans serif, very simplified font with a minimalised palette.
I have a rather fascinating book on the subject called The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language by Mark Forsyth which I cannot wait to read to give me a history of the meanings of the language; if not necessarily the reasonings behind the adoption of such meanings.
I have covered a lot of the discussions as to what is a public figure, a private life, and a legitimate intrusion when I considered Super Injunctions here and I'm not going over them again, or the behaviour of the journalists. My discussion is over language.
Take 'hacking'. Essentially, what the journalists have done is not 'hacking' in the technical term. A hack is an invasive or destructive intervention into a system. You access the bits of the hardware, firmware or software that you are not supposed to get access to, and use that in order to access data or perform functions by circumventing security measures. That isn't what was done.
The journalists have used a perfectly legitimate passcode to access voicemails, using the standard voicemail retrieval system in exactly the way in which the system was designed. There is no illegal tampering with the software, there is no subjugation of the system or even stealing of passwords. All they did was try the default passcode for the system and were successful where the true owner of the account had not changed it.
Now, the mere fact that it is not a technical hack does not make it a legal interception. There are a number of pieces of legislation which stipulate that accessing information left on a voicemail which is not your account and which is not intended for you is illegal. As an analogy, take a cashcard with PIN. The fact that the account owner may have left a slip of paper with the PIN on it with the card does not suddenly entitle you to the money in the account - it is still a theft of somethine which does not belong to and was not intended for you; but what it does is absolve the bank of any liability for the account access because a legitimate card with legitimate PIN has been used. Now, a hack would involve a clone of the card; or intereference with the bank software or hardware that means that the proper PIN does not need to be used or could be changed to one of the criminal's desire.
But 'hack' has been adopted by the very devil what did it. Why? Well, it's an easy phrase. It's short, abrupt, it sounds as evil and nasty as the actual act, and is something simple that the public can relate to. And it's a fudge - it's not quite the right description; but it's pretty damned close enough and nothing else really comes any closer unless you're going to use a paragraph to discuss and explain it. And so, having been uncomfortably melded into a hole that wasn't really correct for it, it has now adopted its new persona.
And this is the flexibility, fluidity of language. Go back hundreds of years and you will see that we use language for far different meanings from those that they used to be used for. And we should never consider an 'original' use of any word, because it is so impossible to identify and single source of a word. The Oxford English Dictionary has a database where it records all uses of words, first appearances - but it does so crucially in a particular 'form'.
What we are seeing is the escalation of adaptability, fudgeness, and plain abuse of definition and intention. The internet has ensured that what once took decades to occur because of the time-lapse in publishing and distribution of texts can happen instantly, and isn't edited by someone who thinks they know better than the author. Just as flashmobs evolve from a genesis, a mere thought, to half a community turning out within hours; so language can adapt instantanously. And you see it very quickly with the 'kids on the street' for whom - at the time of writing - "sick" is falling out of fashion. But whereas to my parents sick was something of revulsion or disgust, these days "sick" has been adopted in a full about-turn to express impress, desire or enthusiasm; almost as a perverse desire of the new users to directly confuse other users, but more to adopt language as their own - it isn't about damaging or denegrating language, it is about taking ownership and using creativity over it.
One of the reasons that people hate 'kidspeak' and this 'abuse' of language, is the lack of control that they have had over it; and the rapidity with which it has occurred. If it is a slow, insipid adjustment people don't even realise that it is happening; they just come to accept that it has happened - but then I have discussed the human condition regarding change on many, many occasions. But the main thing is the lack of control. The people who complain are people who regard themselves as better educated, and therefore more able, responsible to act in a position to act as controller, editor-in-chief of the language than these unqualified whipper-snappers who have no knowledge of the history of the word. But is there a need for a knowledge of the history? If they like the word then surely the mere fact that they are experimenting and using words should be encouraged? And, in due course, as well as giving the language new meaning they will learn any history associated with the word - learning by insipid osmosis.
People may see reflections of the recent Waterstones decision to abandon its apostrophe; but really it is quite different - that is about an entity deciding what it wants to be called. What would be different is if other people decided what it was to be called, or known for, or used as. Yes, it may have made the decision to drop the apostrophe as it is trying to 'move with the times' and that its apostrophe was 'no longer practical in modern times' - well, it may think so, but that only extends as far as its own apostrophe. It doesn't spell a wide change in punctuation use, not the death of the apostrophe as we know it; all it is is a slight branding trend in pretty much the same way as the most recent branding trends have included the use of entirely lower-case letters, often in a sans serif, very simplified font with a minimalised palette.
I have a rather fascinating book on the subject called The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language by Mark Forsyth which I cannot wait to read to give me a history of the meanings of the language; if not necessarily the reasonings behind the adoption of such meanings.
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