Let's make it interesting...

Writing a play is hard work, and putting it on is hard work squared. Writing an app is hard work, and and writing a good one is hard work squared, too. So who on earth would want to do all these things at the same time, let alone making each depend on the other?

That would be us. 

Clare and I and our brave team of app jammers prototyping like crazy at Abertay

To be clear - when I say us, as in playwright Clare Duffy and myself, I mean 'mostly her'. I'm just trying to keep up. Clare is that rare creature, a playwright who makes her living at the job, and as such she's not only very smart, very creative and very experienced with quill and parchment, she's also got the managerial and hierarchical skills needed to pull together people, money and resources to make things happen. I'll go into our cherished backers in a later post, but what's surprised me the most so far about the business of show is how extraordinarily similar the process is to a tech start-up. There are roadmaps, staged deliverables, strategies for what to do if this or that happens or doesn't happen, rounds of funding that build as early-stage research and prototyping shake the bugs out of concepts and implementation, and a big ol' major goal at the end of it - which isn't the end of it at all, if things really do work out. 

There are also alternating stripes of excitement and dread. If I were someone who fancied myself as a marketing bod flogging my own brand, I'd give talks at conferences about the cycle of inspiration, apprehension, comprehension and instigation, but anyone who's ever embarked on a chunk of life where you choose to commit to something or someone with responsibilities and consequences and no guarantees will have lived through this already. 

Now, try doing it with two big things at once - a play and an app. Jeepers. 

More than anything else, though, you've got to keep to the big idea, the Thing at the end of the tunnel you first glimpsed with wild surmise and which has refused to go away no matter how many rocks you throw at it.  And you've got to know why you're engaged in subterranean monster-hunting, because that irons out the manic cycles and keeps you honest.

So: why?

Clare and I both love telling stories about stuff that makes the world work, in particular the stuff that looks far too complicated and difficult for everyday people to understand yet deeply affects our personal, daily lives. Her last big project was Money The Game Show, which explained the 2008 financial crisis by way of drama and audience participation. It had glitz, glam, and ten thousand pound coins on stage being used as tokens in a variety of competitive sports, some involving buckets.  And Clare loves research, so everything that happened was an accurate reflection of how money really works, what money really is, and how it's used by big finance.  Running through it was the story of two hedge fund managers who were part of the collapse; their motivations, decisions and experiences - a classic play at the heart of the show. 

My stories have been about technology. I have always believed utterly that there's not a single aspect of tech that can't be explained, and explained well, in ways that anyone can understand - moreover, in ways that explain my own excitement for and deep love of this most exciting ongoing experiment in what humans are capable of creating for our own betterment. And, of course, what happens when it's abused, or mishandled, or fetishised. 

And so she and me have got together to do The Big Data Show, to tell the story about how all these gadgets and online services we use every day are also using us, and what that means, and why it matters. The app will involve the audience in some digital magic; the play at the heart of the show will tell the story of the people involved in the first hack in the UK to make headlines. That brought together all the themes of today's digital world - personal choices, actions and identity in an environment where all these things are data to be collected, controlled, analysed and used - but in a raw, almost aboriginal form. Everyone involved, from a hapless teenager to the House of Lords, was encountering everything for the first time. (At this point, I'm liable to go off on one about creation mythos and cultural scaffolding; you and i are both lucky that Clare is running the show.)

All that is to come. I'll talk more later about that hack, about how we're building play and app in parallel, and about what it feels like to be part of creating something really rather new out beyond that dreadful cliche, the comfort zone. 

(In my case, that's meant repeatedly getting up before dawn to get the train from Edinburgh to Dundee; those who know me will know how far outside the zone that is. But this being Scotland, even that has its benefits...)

OK, Fife, you can do mornings better than I can. Now can I get back to my nap?

Digital history, digital futures, digital magic..

Welcome.

This weblog will be covering the early days - and who knows what else - of The Big Data Show. It may not be called that by the time it's cooked, but don't worry about that.

What is The Big Data Show? It's a real live show with actors in theatres and everything, but it's not quite like any other you'll have seen before. It's about the first hack in the UK to end up in court, from way before the world of the Web and mobile phones. It's about the people who did it, why they did it, and what happened to them afterwards. It's about Prince Philip, Maggie Thatcher, the dawn of neo-liberalism and the dawn creeping through the curtains at 5am. There are armed policemen, judges and  Lords.

So that's exciting enough. But not exciting enough for us - us being Rupert Goodwins, technology journalist and one of them thar hackers, and Clare Duffy, playwright, director and guiding light. No, we want more. So there'll be an app to run on your mobile phones during the play and make you part of the story. There'll be digital magic. And there'll be a lot to say about what the first stirrings of the digital society - and its anti-social tendencies - can tell us about today, in this age of mass surveillance, monetisation of our identities, and the wild, wild ride into the future of Homo Digitalis (*)
.I could go on, but I'm not going to. Some things will have to be left as a surprise, and most things have yet to happen.  But there will be updates, because it's a lot of fun trying to create a play at the same time as an app, and lots of people are getting involved, and we've already bombarded a digital forensics guy with Maltesers propelled down a ramp made out of drinking straws. For Science! And Art! And Lols!

There will be more lols.

Anyway. The Big Data Show, or whatever it ends up being called, is due to hit the boards in 2018. We are going to be running a small preview of some of the ideas we're working on in late spring 2017, and if you're in Edinburgh during the Science Festival and fancy checking it out, then watch this space. We'll need your help.

Until later, distant reader

(*) Yes, I know digitalis is foxglove, and even if it were a proper Linnaean taxonomy it would be Homo digitalis, no cap D, but this is art in the service of a greater truth.)