Luckily for me, this morning’s post included another letter from old friend Prince Karl Zeis of the royal house of Delthfia.

Dear Eric,

I write to share a wondrous find. It was discovered by my precocious fourteen year old niece. Her name is Karen Zipslicer and she has come to stay with me for a little while during her school holidays. Diligent young Karen has been helping me put the remnants of our royal archives back into some kind of order. As she did, she chanced something very unexpected in the back of an old atlas. The pages were loose; they had been torn from another book. We cannot tell if they represent a factual account or a whimsy of the author. Either way, we found them very entertaining, and thought you and your readers might enjoy the contents too. Please see the enclosed photocopies.

Yours &c.

Prince Karl Zeis of the Royal House of Delfthia

enc.

Within the envelope were a few photocopied pages as promised. The original had been neatly written by hand, and the pages were numbered from 272 to 275, implying they were taken from a longer work. The pages read as follows:

The Rules of the Tournament of Twiddlythinks, as Played in the City-State of Lundern

1. There are no rules to the tournament and game of twiddlythinks except for the fourteen rules stated here. These rules may never be amended or added to.

2. The winner of the tournament of twiddlythinks shall rule Lundern, according to its constitution, for a period of twelvemonth, commencing the April 1st that follows their victory.

3. All citizens and visitors to Lundern may enter the tournament at any time. When a contestant is defeated, they may not re-enter until the following year’s tournament.

4. No tournament match may take place outside of Lundern’s borders.

5. The game of twiddlythinks is played by two opponents. The winner of the tournament is the player who remains undefeated after having beaten all willing and eligible challengers at the game of twiddlythinks during the course of a tournament. In the event that there are two or more undefeated players at midnight of March 30th, the winner of the tournament is the player who has played most games; in the event of a tie, the winner of the tournament is the player whose name comes first in the alphabet.

6. At the start of the game, a piece is placed on each square of the board. Pieces are placed facing up or down at random.

7. Each piece is a counter with two sides. The top of the piece has a different colour to the bottom of the piece. Any colours may be used for either side.

8. The board shall be divided into squares. The board may be of any dimensions, so long as it is not so large as to extend beyond the borders of Lundern. There may be any number of squares on the board, in any arrangement, so long as they are each large enough to hold one piece and that there are at least two squares on the board.

9. All squares must be of the same colour, to maximize the difficulty in correctly executing a move.

10. Any player who makes an incorrect move immediately forfeits the game.

11. The following moves are all valid: turning a piece over and replacing it on the same square, moving a piece from one square to any other vacant square without turning it over, and removing a piece from the board.

12. Players take it in turns to make moves. The player with the greatest value of small change in his or her pockets shall make the first move.

13. After each move, the player shall say something to enlighten their opponent. Players may not communicate with each other at other times, nor may they use intermediaries as a way of circumventing this rule.

14. If all pieces are removed from the board without there being a winner, all pieces are replaced on the board and the game recommences as if from the beginning.

The Strategy and Tactics of the Tournament of Twiddlythinks

It must be noted that the game of twiddlythinks has no specific goal, no means of keeping score, and no clearly defined criteria to determine who is the winner. This is all according to the rules, which clearly state that there are no additional rules nor any possibility of change to the rules. As a consequence, each game continues until one or other player resigns. This means there are three possible strategies for winning a game of twiddlythinks:

Persistence: the winner is the player prepared to keep on playing for longer than their opponent.

Threats: the victor intimidates their opponent into conceding. A player may choose to make threats immediately after making a move.

Bribery: a player induces their opponent to resign. As with threats, these offers may be made immediately after making a move.

Commentaries on the constitution of Lundern note, with some pride, that twiddlythinks is not a game of simple merit. Players do not win through intellect, skill or via a better appreciation of the rules and the subtleties of how to make moves. On the contrary, the role of the tournament in deciding the ruler of Lundern is presupposed on the assumption that rulers should either be rich and generous, ruthless and powerful, or just so determined that they can demonstrably bend the will of others to their own.

The board, the pieces and their arrangement are all understood to be incidental to gameplay. Their role is formal. This is not without some utility; by facing each other over the board, passersby can verify the two players are engaged in competition until there is a definitive winner. Just as importantly, there is no order of play as is found with most other tournaments known to men. No two players are forced to play each other. Match-ups are by invitation, and may be declined. To win the tournament, all that matters is winning the most individual games during the course of a year. Clever selection of opponents is hence a vital aspect of winning the tournament. Successful tournament winners are also known to employ so-called ‘professional’ players to frustrate their rivals; these professionals lure the unwitting competitor into a match-up, and then ardently refuse to concede, thus denying their opponent the chance to play again and rack up more wins during the year. However, professional players tend to be short-lived. More often than not they become targets for the assassins engaged by the opponents whose hopes they seek to thwart.

Due to the extraordinary and unfamiliar nature of the rules, the histories of Lundern record that on only three occasions has the tournament been won by someone other than a citizen. Nevertheless, Lunderners take great pride in the fact that their tournament is open to all, meaning that in theory literally anybody could become ruler of Lundern. Allowing outsiders to compete is seen as a necessary way of maintaining the strength of Lundern’s governors; if Lundern’s leading citizens become corrupt or weak, then a strong outsider may take command via the exigency of what is effectively a bloodless coup. Despite the seeming openness of the process of picking Lundern’s ruler, few conquerors are willing to submit themselves to the annual tournament. They are much more likely to resort to warfare as a means to take over Lundern. The Lunderner’s faith in the tournament is underpinned by two observations. Firstly, the tournament has determined Lundern’s ruler for the last three hundred years without interruption. Secondly, during that time, Lundern has successfully repelled all would-be invaders.

Though the account of Twiddlythinks is fascinating, no explanation is given as to where Lundern is supposed to be. You have to imagine this fantastic account is the product of a fanciful imagination. After all, who would choose a ruler simply based on who has the greatest wealth, power, or lust for the job?

The limits of language might, on first consideration, seem a curious topic to write about. But then, like all topics, if not discussed in language, then it is not discussed at all. And by most measures, this language - the English language - is least likely to impose constraints on what can be said and written. According to the people who write the Oxford English Dictionary:

…it seems quite probable that English has more words than most comparable world languages.

The reason for this is historical. English was originally a Germanic language, related to Dutch and German, and it shares much of its grammar and basic vocabulary with those languages. However, after the Norman Conquest in 1066 it was hugely influenced by Norman French, which became the language of the ruling class for a considerable period, and by Latin, which was the language of scholarship and of the Church. Very large numbers of French and Latin words entered the language. Consequently, English has a much larger vocabulary than either the Germanic languages or the members of the Romance language family to which French belongs.

There are many English words; 200,000 if calculated conservatively, a million if we indulge the wilder estimates. Studies show that an educated native speaker might be familiar with 20,000 words at best, leaving them lots of opportunity to learn more. If that were not enough, the proficient may simply resort to inventing new words. Shakespeare is estimated to have added 1,700 words to the language, including ‘assassination’, ‘bump’ and ‘critical’. Yet for all its expansiveness, and its willingness to borrow from slang, science and other languages, English is not infinite. At some juncture we may always reach a limit and find there are things that cannot be said.

A shortage of words is the bane of the writer, of course. Whilst I have no pretension to include myself in that category, this post counts as halfthought 127, or well over 2 years’ regular writing if you kindly overlook the one week I missed (more by accident than laziness; the halfthought had been written but I blundered and failed to publish it). From that voluntary output, it might seem that I am tapping a plentiful flow. Not always so. There has been many a weekend where I have neared its end full of angst, because no fresh ideas have come to mind. Thankfully, life is rich even if the imagination is impoverished. A look around at the diversity of what occurs on this planet is guaranteed to reveal something worthy of comment before too long.

Whilst a lack of imagination may be the writer’s curse, even pure intellect has its limits. The philosopher Wittgenstein went to some pains to hint at the existence of an outer border to our expressive capacity in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. This was concluded in the final statement of the book:

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Having written everything that needed to be written about philosophy, and satisfactorily proven to himself that to write anything more would entail scribbling gibberish, Wittgenstein did the decent thing and stopped doing philosophy. He turned his attention to teaching and architecture instead. However, like a top sportsman that spoils a perfect career by coming out of retirement, Wittgenstein changed his mind. In later life he explained why there was a lot more to say about philosophy after all.

That Wittgenstein was able to change his mind says a lot about both the academic and societal freedoms he enjoyed thanks to his upbringing and lifestyle in Europe, and the freedom that language afforded him to explore his ideas. None of these freedoms should be taken for granted. Though most readers of Orwell’s 1984 focus on surveillance and torture as the most obvious evils it depicts, I find another of his inventions to be much more chilling. Newspeak would be a language that progressively reduced its vocabulary, and as it did so, increasingly limited the speaker’s ability to express or even think thoughts they should not. As a consequence, thoughtcrime would become an impossibility, as there would be no objectionable thoughts any more:

By 2050 - earlier, probably - all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron - they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like “freedom is slavery” when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

Thankfully, we have so far postponed the impositions of an Ingsoc-like tyranny for more than a couple of decades beyond the date Orwell envisaged. Whilst oppression is to be dreaded, sometimes it is in our own interests to keep schtum. What we say and write is a kind of advertisement for who we are, and may be made public even if not intended. Recently revealed recordings of Mel Gibson’s tirades against second wife Oksana Grigorieva are even more troubling than the antisemitic remarks he made when arrested for drink driving in 2006, placing him firmly at the head of a long Hollywood walk of shame. Mad Mel would have been better off heeding the advice of Abraham Lincoln:

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Whilst we recognize intellectual limits to language, it is more often that emotion causes us to reach an impasse where words simply will not do. Heightened emotion, whether the emotion is anger, fear or lust, draws our energies away from the verbal. The idea of a conversation during love-making might be presented as comical, especially if the topic is banal. Most sex talk involves a few usefully intense expletive utterances meant to signal encouragement, or, if things go awry, pain and a desire to reorient proceedings. However, two people with the right relationship might enjoy stimulating and erotic chat that goes beyond the monosyllabic.

For some circumstances, words can only seem paltry for their allotted task. At the other end of life’s cycle from love-making, language can seem desolate and paltry for the task of mourning a loved one. For all the craft of the eulogy, it is poignant that silent contemplation is our society’s most elegant means of showing our collective respect for the dead.

Speechlessness due to anger or fear is hard to overcome, as anyone who suffers from stage-fright can attest. There are few greater psychological agonies, for either the person who dislikes public speaking, or indeed for an audience that tries to listen to them. In contrast, anger may turn curtness into the epitome of apt expression. When the Germans surrounded Bastogne during the WW2 Battle of the Bulge, they sent a communique to US General Anthony McAuliffe, asking him to surrender. On hearing the request, McAuliffe uttered one word:

Nuts!

So pleased was he with the eloquence of this instinctive response, that he wrote it down and this was relayed back to the German command as his official answer. McAuliffe’s defiance was a morale raiser. In contrast, the American wordsmith Normal Mailer was a hellraiser who resorted to punching or even stabbing people in order to make his point. At one party he socked his literary rival Gore Vidal, knocking him to the floor. Vidal, though still down on the ground, got the upper hand when he quipped:

Words fail Norman Mailer yet again.

At least that goes to prove that whilst the pen may not always be mightier than the sword, wit is always sharper than a fist.

Times are hard. Really hard. I lost my chauffeur; apparently he can make more money back in his old job as Head of Obstetrics at Kraków General Infirmary. My housekeeper murmurs about never having time to work on her Uzbek translation of The Great Gatsby and my landscape gardener hints he will take a job conducting the Sofia Philharmonic unless I give him a pay rise. Nine of my ten favourite grant-making government quangos have closed. As a consequence, I was fearing that I might have to take a proper job when my academic bursary runs out in a few months. The Cultural Studies Department at Southampton Solent University is paying me to research why people find Lenny Henry funny. I do not imagine they will extend the bursary again; it has been ten years now, and I am still no closer to finding an answer. I needed money and there was nothing else for it. I had to call on the initiative and imagination of my favourite clone, MaV-Eric. So I climbed up the loft ladder and sought him out…

Eric: Hell-ooohhh? MaV-Eric, what are you up to?

MaV-Eric: I’m designing a portable refrigeration unit powered by solar cells.

Eric: That’s brilliant! For use in Africa, right? So doctors can keep their medicines cool.

MaV-Eric: I was thinking more of picnickers at Glyndebourne and places like that. [Grabs a working model to demonstrate.] Look - this unit is exactly the right shape and volume to take a 500ml tub of Häagen-Dazs. And this one is for a magnum…

Eric: …looks a bit big for a choc-ice on a stick…

MaV-Eric: … of champagne, you silly.

Eric: Well, that’s great. Do you have any orders?

MaV-Eric: No. I need some seed capital to make some more prototypes first.

Eric: Well don’t look at me. Actually, I came up here because I was hoping you’d start giving me some money for a change.

MaV-Eric: Oh, it’s like that, is it? First you bring me into this cruel world, then you lock me in the attic like some demented relative you’re ashamed of, then you throw me out to fend for myself.

Eric: I’m not throwing you out. I want you to come back and pay rent.

MaV-Eric: Alright. But I’ve spent my entire life stuck in this loft, isolated from the outside world, with no practical experience of how to do anything, no sense of priorities and spending my days making up peculiar fantasies that bear no relationship to truth or reality. What kind of business needs people like me?

Eric: Advertising.

MaV-Eric: Great! When do I start?

I was heartened by MaV-Eric’s enthusiasm, and immediately called my old school chum Brendan ‘Nosey’ Parker, who is the sleeping partner in a successful market research firm based in central London. Parker said he was glad to help, but first MaV-Eric would have to be interviewed by his very-wide-awake partner, a Ms. Claire Z. Perkins…

[MaV-Eric bursts into the pristine reception of Perkins and Parker, out of breath and looking dishevelled.]

MaV-Eric: I’m so sorry that I’m late. My train was delayed.

Receptionist: May I help you, sir? Do you have an appointment?

MaV-Eric: Erm, yes [straightens himself up] My name’s MaV-Eric. I’m here to see Mrs. Perkins.

Receptionist: [Flicks through her notes] Yes, you are late, aren’t you? Your interview was scheduled three hours ago. And it’s Ms. Perkins, not Mrs. Perkins.

MaV-Eric: Oh, I can explain. I was on a very long train.

Receptionist: That makes no sense. Why should the train be delayed by three hours just because it is long?

MaV-Eric: Because it was the wrong train. The train I wanted was much shorter.

Receptionist: [Sneering] And something tells me you’ve had a wasted journey. [She gestures at the comfy chairs in the reception area.] Take a seat.

MaV-Eric: Where?

Receptionist: I beg your pardon?

MaV-Eric: Where should I take it?

Receptionist: Nowhere. It was a figure of speech. Now, if you don’t mind, please stand in the corner, facing the wall, and try not to make any noise.

[MaV-Eric does exactly as he is told, standing silently in the corner.]

[Claire Perkins walks in, wearing a crisp white blouse, dark skirt and knee-length leather boots. She is carrying a large envelope.]

Perkins: Stacey, have this Fed Ex’d to Hong Kong [she hands the envelope to the receptionist and turns to leave...]

Receiptionist: Your 11.30 has finally arrived [points at MaV-Eric].

Perkins: [Walks over to MaV-Eric] We didn’t think you’d show. Come with me.

[Perkins briskly walks away, taking long, confident strides in her boots. MaV-Eric hurries to catch-up. They walk across an open plan office which is strangely empty, towards a glass-walled committee room at the far end. In the room, a dozen twenty- and thirty-somethings sit patiently and quietly, dressed in casual designer wear. Behind Perkins' back, MaV-Eric opens his mouth as if to speak...]

Perkins: [Lifts her hand alongside the side of her face, as if it signal stop. Without breaking stride or turning around she says...] No talk. Just sit at the back and be a good boy whilst we have this meeting. But pay attention because I’ll ask you questions later. I want to test your attention span.

[She arrives at the committee room door, and turns to grab the handle and face back towards MaV-Eric.]

Perkins: I can’t abide people who can’t concentrate. Understand?

[MaV-Eric nods. She holds the door open and he scurries through, looking for a chair at the back of the room. Perkins stands at the front of the room and takes charge.]

Perkins: Well, I suppose we’ve all been pretty complacent since we won the Tesco Value Highland Spring Water contract. Me included. But we can’t go on resting on our laurels. Have you seen this report? Let me read from it:

“Since the invention of the telephone, an alert or ‘ring‐back’ tone has been played to the calling party when calls are placed. This continues while the caller waits for the call to be answered. The typical sound of a ring‐back tone is a staccato or steady tone, letting the caller know that the call is being connected. During this time the caller is typically alert and silent waiting for the call to be answered. In fact, it is arguably one of the few times in our modern and hectic lives when we provide our undivided attention to one task. A ring‐back tone (“RBT”) is idle time with a captive audience (the inbound caller), and since the early 2000’s has been repurposed by many mobile operators for music and other kinds of audio entertainment content. Marketing and advertising messages can be distributed through RBT and the first several of these ‘Ad‐RBT’ services launched in 2008 in North America, Europe, and Asia. Ad‐RBT represents one of the most compelling and scalable new media platforms in recent history.”

[Perkins slams the report down on the end of the committee table.]

Perkins: So what do you all have to say about that?

Fattish black bloke wearing a khaki cardigan near the front: We’re very sorry.

Perkins: Good answer. So you should be. I pay you people to find new ways to ensure advertising is crammed into every waking moment of the lives of every living person, whether they like it or not. And for not one, but two years we’ve been sleepwalking whilst our competitors pipe adverts to people whilst they wait to book a table for dinner, when they call to make a dentist’s appointment, even whilst they wait to complain about the poor quality of their phone service. Millions of hours of captive advertising time, and we’ve not been exploiting it! We’re behind, people. We’re behind and I don’t want to be behind. [She points at her bottom.] I want to be ahead. [She points at her head]. Ideas should come from here [points at her head] and not from here [points at her bottom]. So give me ideas and give me them fast. I’m looking to you - my creative team - to generate some modest proposals. We need new ways to fill people’s lives with more advertising. [Clicks her fingers impatiently.] Come on!

Fattish bloke: Advertising messages cut into thin strips so it can be stuck and seen on the staircases of public buildings.

Perkins: Been done before.

Mousy woman: Billboards that rotate so that you get three messages instead of just one.

Perkins: Old hat.

Fattish bloke: Paint the underbellies of passenger jets.

Perkins: You need to look up once in a while. Another idea that’s been done already.

Tall nerd: Solar powered advertising on the side of street bins. We give them to the council for free but keep the rights to change the ads…

Perkins: [Angry] Don’t you watch Dragon’s Den?

[There is a long silence as the junior execs look around at each other and are unable to think of what to say.]

Perkins: You’re all pathetic. All bottom feeders. Or bottom talkers. One or the other [sighs]. Hey, you at the back [points at MaV-Eric]. Are you paying attention? Are you listening to the drivel these nincompoops are coming out with?

MaV-Eric: Yes, yes I am. May I make some suggestions?

Perkins: [Laughs] Why not? I don’t see how you could do any worse.

MaV-Eric: String in alphabetti spaghetti.

Perkins: Excuse me?

MaV-Eric: Put edible string in alphabetti spaghetti. String the letters together in a specific order. That way they can be used to spell out messages like “drink Coke” or “eat at Subway”.

Perkins: Hmmm… interesting.

MaV-Eric: Glow in the dark messages on clothes people wear at nightclubs. When they go out dancing, the UV light will reveal the advertising messages on the backs of their shirts and jackets.

Perkins: You might be on to something.

MaV-Eric: Adverts on ice lolly sticks. Instead of some terrible old joke, give a recommendation for some sweets or a toy that kids might like.

Perkins: Go on.

MaV-Eric: Sponsored hotel ceilings.

Perkins: Sorry?

MaV-Eric: So when you wake, the first thing you see is the advertising message on the ceiling.

Perkins: I like it.

MaV-Eric: Sponsored pillow cases.

Perkins: In case you sleep face down.

MaV-Eric: Exactly.

Perkins: What else?

MaV-Eric: The automated voices that tell you the name of the next stop on public transport - also have them say: “this message was brought to you by…” at the end.

Perkins: That might work.

MaV-Eric: Wine glasses in restaurants. When you finish your drink, you discover the advert written in the bottom of the glass. Something like: “why not order another bottle?” or “you’re drunk, better call this number for a cab to take you home”.

Perkins: That would work.

MaV-Eric: Sponsored Blackpool Rock. Instead of reading ‘Blackpool’ it reads ‘Eat at Nando’s’ instead. Anyone who buys the rock gets the price reimbursed when they order a meal from Nando’s.

Perkins: Niche, but I like it.

MaV-Eric: School uniforms. Just like football shirts, they should boast a sponsor.

Perkins: That’s a potentially huge market.

MaV-Eric: Genetically modified butterflies. Change the wing markings to carry logos, like the golden arches of McDonald’s or the Nike swoosh.

Perkins: I could imagine it might be a while before we’ve perfected that technique, but like you say, some big businesses might be interested in investing in that idea. Do go on.

MaV-Eric: Pizza toppings. Get a five percent discount from Domino’s if you let them arrange the pepperoni to spell out the name of a TV show you might want to watch whilst eating your pizza.

Perkins: I like the way that reverses the cross-marketing flow.

MaV-Eric: Condoms.

Perkins: Excuse me?

MaV-Eric: You only get to read the message when they’ve been unrolled, so to speak.

Perkins: You’d need to keep the message short, just in case.

MaV-Eric: Pre-trained budgerigars. They come cheaper from the pet shop because they’re already trained to repeat ten advertising slogans.

Perkins: Talking birds - an idea that definitely has some potential. Anything else?

MaV-Eric: Just one more idea: tattoos.

Perkins: Oh, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. People will tend to cover up and then you would never see the marketing message, unless you tattooed the message on somebody’s face, and some might find that off-putting…

MaV-Eric: No, you don’t understand. I meant tattooing the inside of people’s eyelids so they see the advert whenever they close their eyes.

Perkins: I think we can safely say that you’ve got the job.

That was how, thanks to MaV-Eric and his genius for advertising, my money worries were all solved. Though I must admit I find that the tattoos on my eyelids get quite itchy…

Time was that if you wanted a manual for manners, you simply turned to a guide from Debrett’s. With the rise of interweb and netiquette, life is no longer so simple, though Debrett’s still try to give advice on civility in the age of cybersurfing. Take this suggestion they make about email:

Emails will often be printed and filed, and therefore close attention must be paid to layout. Again, treating the construction of an email just as you would a ‘real’ letter is the most effective approach.

Okay. The subtext seems to be not to bother backing up your hard drive. Instead, just devote a wing of your mansion to a library of print-outs of all those one line emails containing links to YouTube videos of cats falling off TVs. But the real question is, when filing your printed emails, should the leather binder be green or red?

So, forget Debrett’s. They are stuck in a timewarp when people needed to know if they should hit their manservant with the back of their hand or with their walking cane. Where else can we turn? There is one obvious answer: the internet. Stop! They let anyone on the internet. And the internet hosts elitists that make the people who write Debrett’s books look like hippy-hugging commies, except the internet elitists think good protocol means knowing your TCP from your IP. Take a look at some of the advice someone at the Internet Engineering Task Force came up with on a wet Wednesday afternoon whilst their modem was busy downloading the latest data on matter-antimatter asymmetry from CERN:

In the past, the population of people using the Internet had “grown up” with the Internet, were technically minded, and understood the nature of the transport and the protocols. Today, the community of Internet users includes people who are new to the environment. These “Newbies” are unfamiliar with the culture and don’t need to know about transport and protocols.

Hmmm… so there was a point in time when there was nobody new on the internet, was there? That must have been one heck of a change freeze. “Please sir, I’d like to use the internet” “No son, you can’t. It’s full and there won’t be room for anyone new to use it until Spring 1993 at earliest.”

Perhaps the newbies could have told the old fogies of the internet one or two things about other kinds of protocol. For example there is the language convention that says a “newbie” is not a proper name and should not start with a capital letter, or the one that says written language should not contain contractions like “don’t”.

But it is an understatement to say the self-appointed sages of the IETF were poor at predicting the future of propriety. Here are some examples…

Respect the copyright on material that you reproduce. Almost every country has copyright laws.

And every country has millions of people who think those laws are a joke and break them every day.

Never send chain letters via electronic mail. Chain letters are forbidden on the Internet. Your network privileges will be revoked.

Another rule that was completely missed by its intended audience.

Remember that people with whom you communicate are located across the globe. If you send a message to which you want an immediate response, the person receiving it might be at home asleep when it arrives. Give them a chance to wake up, come to work, and login before assuming the mail didn’t arrive or that they don’t care.

And some of those people may not even be Americans and they may not even speak English, which rather dents the usefulness of this Californian clot’s list of internet conventions.

Verify all addresses before initiating long or personal discourse. It’s also a good practice to include the word “Long” in the subject header so the recipient knows the message will take time to read and respond to. Over 100 lines is considered “long”.

Another stipulation that did not catch on. And 100 lines is not considered long by me. For me, 100 lines is considered “brief”. That is because I have more to tell people than my thoughts on what is polite use of the internet. Except for right now, obviously.

It is extremely bad form to simply reply to a message by including all the previous message: edit out all the irrelevant material.

Hah. This could only be written by someone who never had to reply to one of my 10,000 line blockbusters.

Since the Internet spans the globe, remember that Information Services might reflect culture and life-style markedly different from your own community. Materials you find offensive may originate in a geography which finds them acceptable. Keep an open mind.

Like how I should keep an open mind when some American tries to dictate what is good manners on the internet.

If a user is using a nickname alias or pseudonym, respect that user’s desire for anonymity.

Tell that to the Chinese government - a good example of a culture unwilling to toe the American line.

Don’t point to other sites without asking first.

Darn! I pointed to this IETF guide before I read it.

Any time you engage in One-to-Many communications, all the rules for mail should also apply. After all, communicating with many people via one mail message or post is quite analogous to communicating with one person with the exception of possibly offending a great many more people than in one-to-one communication. Therefore, it’s quite important to know as much as you can about the audience of your message.

I should get to know the whole world. Nice idea. Difficult in practice.

Don’t badger other users for personal information such as sex, age, or location. After you have built an acquaintance with another user, these questions may be more appropriate, but many people hesitate to give this information to people with whom they are not familiar.

True, but not everyone…

Author’s Address

Sally Hambridge
Intel Corporation
2880 Northwestern Parkway
SC3-15
Santa Clara, CA 95052

Phone: 408-765-2931
Fax: 408-765-3679
EMail: sallyh@ludwig.sc.intel.com

Those were the days… nobody would send you spam because you could rely on everyone to follow the rule that said

Don’t send large amounts of unsolicited information to people.

But enough of pulling apart poor Sally’s guidelines for the Newbies of the ‘Net. Here are five top 21st Century etiquette questions not addressed by Debrett’s, Hambridge, or anyone else that I know of (except they probably have, but who put them in charge?)

1. How To Sign Off an Instant Message Chat With Someone Who Does Not Know When to Stop

You know the scenario. You have chatted away for thirty minutes but your RSI is flaring up and you really really need a pee. So you want to stop but the other person keeps on going…

X: Thanks for the chat, bye.

Y: We need to catch up about that thing. When is good for you?

X: Anytime. Laters.

Y: Cool. Wasn’t Derek impressive giving that presentation?

X: Sure. Got to go.

Y: Yup, see you later. Do you have a copy of Derek’s presentation you can send me?

X: Don’t think so. Sorry. Adios.

Y: It’s been so cool catching up. We should do drinks sometime soon.

X: Yeah, totally. Ciao.

Y: How about tomorrow night?

So by now you have wet your pants and there is no end in sight. What should you do? Is the answer:

(A) Just stop typing. You can always pretend your PC crashed if challenged about it.

(B) Write something shockingly offensive. With luck that will mean one less bozo to annoy you in future.

(C) Call your interlocutor. Chances are he or she is scared of talking on the telephone and they will hang up as soon as possible.

2. What to Do When Your Mobile Phone Battery Dies During a Call

Your loved one is fed up with you because you were once again working late. You are stuck at the platform trying to work out which train is least delayed so you can answer when you will be home for dinner… but before you do, the phone goes dead. That means your better half is bound to assume you just hung up and they will be in a really foul mood when you do eventually make it back. Do you…

(A) Keep pressing your mobile phone’s ‘on’ button in the hope you will have enough juice to text the word “sorry”.

(B) Rummage through your small change and hope there is a payphone within five miles of where you are.

(C) Decide to go down the pub. You might as well take advantage of the fact that the evening will not be interrupted by calls asking where you are.

3. The Blog Comment as Personal Message

Your blog is really popular and gets comments from all sorts of people you do not know. To keep the spam under control, you monitor all comments before they are published. A new comment comes in from someone new. It is not really a comment, but is more of a personal message where the person tells you about themselves and why you should get in touch. How do you respond?

(A) Approve the comment and then post your own comment slagging off anyone who is too stupid or lazy to use the email form in the ‘contact me’ page you went to all that trouble to make.

(B) Reject the comment and do not reply. Whoever it is, he or she must be an idiot.

(C) You have another fan!! Write them a personal email and give them your home phone number too.

4. Dealing With RSS Scoundrels

Your really popular blog is really really popular. It is so popular that some rascal is syndicating your RSS feed and milking your clever content for his own profit. How do you deal with him?

(A) Let him be. It means more people get to enjoy reading your inspiring words.

(B) Switch off the RSS feed. It is yours and nobody can use it without your permission.

(C) Write a script that floods your RSS feed with unfettered and incessant swearing. That will really burn the guy who tried to take advantage of your brilliant material. Sure, it might offend some regular readers, but then again, it will teach them a lesson for not visiting the site properly so they can hit all those click-through ads for matchmaking sites and spread betting.

5. Internet Forum Multi-Answers

You sign up for this great new discussion forum where everyone thinks like you and shares your passions. Then, as always, you realize the forum is full of imbeciles who think the opposite of you and have the world upside-down and back-to-front. You need to straighten them out by showing them the error of their ways. But there are so many different forum users who you need to educate. Should you…

(A) Write a string of posts that individually deal with each and every goof, gaffe and piece of garbage, thus instantly propelling yourself to being the forum’s top poster.

(B) Pick a fight with just the one real idiot so all the other idiots will see how wise you are and start to worship your wisdom.

(C) Post one enormous reply, citing every mistake made by everyone else… and not forgetting to put the word “Long” in the subject heading.

I have a friend, named Lucinda. She is 11,639 kilometres (7,232 miles) away from me. Fourteen years ago, we met in a place that is 4,925 km (3,060 miles) from where I now sit, and is 11,217 km (6,970 miles) from Lucinda’s current location. We met whilst both staying at the Eagle House, a guest house in Northern Thailand that serves as a base for trekking. Within a time so brief it now seems startling, we became friends, and are still friends to this day.

After a few days at the Eagle House, I made my way back to Britain. I was facing a deadline to grow up and become a chartered accountant. Life is funny like that, not that being a chartered accountant is the least bit funny. Lucinda later returned to Canada. As Lucinda was an early adopter of the joys of the internet, it was easy to keep in touch, and some years later I made the journey to visit her in British Columbia. Though only the second time we met in person, I had already grown accustomed to thinking of Lucinda as an old and dear friend. That was also the last time I saw Lucinda.

Time never relents. Lucinda has since married and become a mother, though time and distance have never stopped Lucinda featuring in my life. We exchange emails with lamentably infrequency, but on those few occasions when we do put fingers to keyboards, only the greatest of Victorian letter-writers ever sent correspondence of comparable length. In defiance of the trend that spells everything beginning with ‘e’, Lucinda does receive e-less mail from me once a year. In fact, I got the idea for a festive missive by shamelessly copying Lucinda’s, right down to the way she folded the paper. I must admit that the words I write each Christmas are not uniquely for her. They are shared with an audience almost as large as reads this website, not that the printers would consider my Christmas letter to be a bulk job. Neither of us uses the telephone often enough, but we know each other’s number. Her name also sits on the roll call of my Skype contacts, meaning Lucinda’s voice and image is a tantalizing instant away, if I press the right button and the winds of the internet blow favourably. Skype’s perpetual potential for immediacy is muted by hyper-polite restraint. The ease of throwing yourself into the midst of someone else’s life means that if everyone did it all the time, you would soon find yourself participating in multiple conference calls daily. Freud would have understood our admirable self-control. Our superegos have adapted to the information age. Yet they adapt too well - leading to the paradoxical result that Lucinda and I never Skype each other at all, and I would hardly dare to do so. I also share with Lucinda that uniquely modern second-generation, second-degree version of friendship that is only enabled by the so-called social network. Despite many reasons to do so, neither of us have deleted our Facebook accounts (yet). The phenomenon of Facebook friendship is motivated by intelligence gathering in a free market at least as much by the human need to interact. That is why they make it so easy - and end up making it superficial. But put aside the shenanigans and chagrin of modern commercialism. Whatever the format or gateway, however enabled or why, though we are far apart, Lucinda is my friend.

Are there mathematical and physical forces that help to explain this friendship from afar? Though spread over many miles and years, a friendship need not be based on proximity any more. Language flows at the speed of light; electrons fizz down wires. Though seemingly instantaneous, at 300,000 km/s, that leaves Lucinda’s voice no less than three hundredths of a second away from me, which is tolerable but less than truly instant. Add sundry milliseconds for intervening CPU’s, and the delay when talking might even be noticeable, if we speak too quickly.

It is possible to postulate other, hidden, numbers that prescribe modern friendship. Might it be that I can have a friend anywhere, but that there are only ever a fixed number of friendships in the world? That might mean my making a new friend in Prague causes somebody in Beijing to lose touch with their pal in Cancun. This would help explain the modern trend where we know people on the far side of the planet, but are ignorant of our neighbours. Maybe the mathematics is a little more subtle, and the sum total of friendship embraces quality as well as quantity. Suppose then that ten Facebook friends are worth one regular guest for dinner or a couple of drinking buddies. If that is so, an explosion of social networking might preface the collapse of deep and meaningful friendship, with everyone’s amity spread thin like marmite across a thick piece of toast. That might be to some people’s taste, but not to everyone’s.

Maybe the physics of friendship lies deeper still. Electrons and photons may be deployed to keep us in touch through the wonders of modern communications, but perhaps friendship involves a subtle quantum leap. Scientists believe that pairs of sub-atomic particles can become entangled, so that they remain connected no matter how far they are separated. Because of the connection, to look and learn about one entangled particle is to learn about the current state of the other, wherever it may be. Sub-atomic particles are more mysterious than an Alfred Hitchcock adaptation of Agatha Christie, but the entanglement guarantees that unraveling the secrets of one is to simultaneously resolve the state of its sibling. Einstein called this the “spukhafte Fernwirkung”, or spooky action at a distance. What if, on a humid Thai evening, there was a literal spark between Lucinda and me? Perchance an entangled electron took umbrage with the electrical resistance of skin, and was emboldened by the large volumes of Mekhong whisky drunk that night. The air itself, laden with moisture, was charged with the duty of aiding the electron’s journey. Said electron galvanized itself for a mighty jump, and so conducted itself between the two of us. The electron’s entangled brother was left behind, moribund in its host epidermis. If the spark did fly, then I would share an invisible bond with Lucinda, thinner than gossamer but stronger than steel, instantaneous and absolute, wherever we go.

Einstein derided the idea of the spooky connection; he thought all would be explained by factors that were as yet unknown. Whatever the truth, science has not yet determined the mechanics of friendship. Maybe the hidden variables will one day be calculated. The equations may involve dividing the billions of neurons in a brain with data from millions of users of the internet. For now, I am glad that the foundations of friendship remain ineffable, at least to my humble knowledge. Digging them up will not strengthen them. Belief in friendship’s solidity is what makes friendship so enduring, even when stretched half way round the world. These properties make friendship our most valuable resource.

Happy birthday to my friend, Lucinda.