IP: Articles on The Internet in the (UK) Guardian

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 18:46:42 +0100
To: farber () central cis upenn edu
From: Brian.Randell () newcastle ac uk (Brian Randell)


Dave:


Over a period of about a week, the Guardian newspaper here ran an
interesting series of articles intended to explain the Internet (really
WWW) to the general public. They invited a number of well-known people who
were quite new to the net  ('net virgins") in for a 3 hour trial session,
and commissioned each to write about their experiences. The results were
pretty variable - the best IMHO (certainly the funniest) was by Richard
Curtis, author of Blackadder (a very successful TV comedy series here), and
of Four Weddings and a Funeral. (I copy his text below).


The whole set of articles have now been made available online at:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/connect/index.html


As far as I know they have not bothered to put online the sensational
interview they had done with Thimbleby a week or so previously! Thus I feel
the Guardian has atoned somewhat for its sins.


Cheers


Brian


====


RICHARD CURTIS, creator of Blackadder, discovers a great way to waste time.


I WRITE about things I know a bit about. This explains the pathetically
unimaginative scope of my screenplays. The first was about someone who acted
as the straight man for an actor called Ron Anderson and lived in Camden Town
- I used to be straight man for an actor called Rowan Atkinson and lived in
Camden Town.


The second was about a person who only ever sees his friends at weddings,
lives with someone called Scarlett and decides not to marry the girl he
loves. I've been to 72 weddings, where I always see my friends, live with a
daughter called Scarlett and have decided not to marry the girl I love. We
live together in Notting Hill. Which is the working title of my third film -
Notting Hill. It's sad. The way things are going, I'll soon be starting a
fourth film about an incredibly unimaginative writer who has to write an
article for the Guardian about the Internet, about which he knows nothing.


So - I'm in trouble here. The idea was that I would come in to the Guardian
and in a few hours learn about the Internet. Yes, but that's like those
fabulous writers who spend a week in Zaire and then write a sprawling novel
about Zairean history with not a spelling mistake. I need more time. I've had
my three hours on the Internet - and still don't know a thing about it.


So - I've got a choice. I can either write about something I do know about,
like changing nappies or writing Blackadders - or I can wildly guess things
about the Internet and wait for a phone call from Douglas Adams telling me
I'm talking total nonsense.


So - perhaps I should just ring Douglas and get him to write the article.
Some hope. He's the busiest and tallest man in the UK. Back to me. Forgive me
if I try just to get away with five, just five, only five, observations about
the Internet that are, sadly, "unspeakably uninformed codswallop" (Douglas
Adams, speaking later today).


1. It's very, very dangerous in terms of time-wasting. The only fancy thing I
ever had on my computer was a game of solitaire. I started playing it a lot -
then I realised I was wasting too much time on it. So I only started playing
it as a reward when I wrote something funny. But that wasn't often enough -
and I started playing when I thought I'd thought of something funny. Which
was suicidal - I'd think of something that might be funny - play solitaire
and return to the script having forgotten what the potentially funny thing
was. So - within a week, I had to throw my solitaire away in order to
continue my career. I've seen other people with this sort of problem - I
remember once staying with a writer who was meant to be writing a comic
science-fiction screenplay for an American studio, but actually spent his
entire day playing Dungeons and Dragons ("an utter fabrication" - Douglas
Adam's lawyer, sometime early next week). And the Internet is solitaire times
what Bill Gates earns every day. I'm quite a disciplined person - and yet I
know already that if I was to get too fond of it, I would never finish a
piece of work again.


2. That said, the Internet is huge and endless and can only become more
fascinating - particularly with some of the brilliant minds now turning their
attention to it. ("Is that me?" "Yes, Douglas." "All, right, I'll call off
the lawyers.") It's going to get faster and faster - and be fuller and fuller
of information and imagination. It will be like having every library in the
world at your fingertips - like having all your dark desires. It will yield
kaleidoscopic gratification. If this article was on the Internet, and you'd
just read the sentence about "writing Blackadders" - you could click on
Blackadder and a mass of files would open before you. You could find out the
cast and plot of every episode. You could click again and find an entire new
space-based episode of Blackadder written by a mad American Trekkie. Then
click again and discover a rather annoying list of all the anachronisms in
the four series. And again to find pages and pages of alternative lyrics for
Blackadder theme tunes: "Blackadder, Blackadder, though Rowan's such a stud /
Blackadder, Blackadder, this song is utter crud" was my favourite. Now, if I
were you I wouldn't bother with all that - I'd click on a new country singer,
Iris Dement, and find out all about her two sublime albums - maybe even
download some of her songs - which will improve your life immeasurably. But
whatever you fancy, there'll be more.


3. In the area of film and the Internet, which was what I was looking at
during my three hours - I was guided through a compendium, which tells you
everything you might want to know about any film - cast, crew, their other
credits, reviews, plot summary, even cock-ups. (Someone had quite rightly
noticed that in The Tall Guy, my first film, Jeff Goldblum is actually
wearing his underpants in a shower scene.) Film buffs can also see their
favourite stars naked - if they have ever taken their clothes off in front of
a camera, it seems (a new meaning for "film buff"). You can see snippets of
your favourite films, hear music, print out stills - and increasingly you'll
be able to see trailers for new films. It's intriguing, the ultimate,
opinionated encyclopaedia - and it's interactive - you can vote on a scale of
one to ten for every movie you look up, and affect its rating.


4. But none of that equals in any way the experience of actually going to the
movies and seeing a good film - which I could have done in my three hours.


5. In short, the Internet is the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and more.
It will just get better. It will waste some people's lives - including mine -
but eventually, I suspect, art will be created there - and entertainment -
and sick things and fabulous things will happen as humans who can't see each
others' faces affect and change other people's lives. Oh, and . . .


6. The great thing about the Internet is that it will not abide by the rules.


Dept. of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 7RU, UK
EMAIL = Brian.Randell () newcastle ac uk   PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
FAX = +44 191 222 8232  URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/