The Role of the BBC and the Chair in the Virtual Government Model
In A New Digital Governance Operating System

Control of the Media through Content is the driving force to galvanize communities and Societies. Positive content embracing changes/invention in experimenting in change, will exercise the mind to accept responsible experimentation as the vehicle of change. It is an exercise in mass Education and some may even charge it as being indoctrination. This latter sentiment is easily countered by simple referral to the Content. In fact, such criticisms as may be leveled against a pro-active policy of Society building through Media presentation of the desired result will have the very Transparent nature of the process, examining their criticisms.

And a criticism is merely a late voice of concern, after an action has been taken. However, every day we start a new day and our actions and thoughts can be changed at will, to take account of constantly changing circumstances. We do tend to think very rigidly, applying rules and regulations which may inhibit further discussion and progress.

Even at Government level, rules and regulations apply and yet we should all be striving to raise the bar as high as we can jump.

This document is a direct response to The Role, as outlined in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport publication,BBC CHAIR.

As a clarification to this submission, and in support of it, quotations from the joint Department of Trade and Industry and Department of Culture, Media and Sport, Communications White Paper, “A New Future for Communications”, are shown thus, as is one other referenced work.

It is more than just Television

What we can do, is to awaken and direct and nurture an Awareness in our Consciousnesses. It is a mental condition based in Utopian ideals. It is therefore available to all. It is a Mental Conditioning, par excellence. And it is for the BBC and its Government to decide as to whether they want to harness and release the power in such Conditioning.

I, personally, can think of no other responsible Media organization with more suitable credentials. But there will be others who will seek to step into a vacant/vacated pair of shoes because when you can control Lives through an “interactive” Media, it means that you can also steer it. But it will remain in your control ONLY as long as it delivers a better, positive result.

Negativity or inaction on an issue will invite a positive response from someone else to fill the vacuum and it will be their solution/offering that people will follow until it too is superceded or bettered upon.

As it is a Governance Model in Government that we are building, it is one which can be successfully exported and sympathetically modified to suit any emerging Democracies. Its adoption as the default choice of Governance in a nation has us all able to see a Transparency of Purpose in that Society’s goals and this can only be a good thing.
It is a lot more than just television.
This New Role for the BBC is compatible with the Role as outlined in the Communications White Paper and it can ably deliver all of its criteria.

The Role of Media is Change and Changing

And it is no longer a solely supporting role because its default use in information delivery can be semantically analyzed and adjusted to suit our needs. And our needs are those as should be delivered by Government.

1.1.15 The explosion of information has fuelled a democratic revolution of knowledge and active citizenship. If information is power, power can now be within the grasp of everyone. No government can now rely on the ignorance of its population to sustain it. We are richer as citizens thanks to the expansion of modern media. This Government wants to encourage this and give everyone access to all these riches as quickly as possible.

Democracy is to be fed through Media and, more specifically, through Content. And the BBC is charged with providing the Future for the World to follow. The task is no less than this. Does the BBC have the Belief and Commitment, within themselves, to be willing to do this? The above quotation and many other government publications, readily admit to changing conditions brought about by the Information and Communications, and the need to utilize them, to advantage. However, it is not a case of rearranging the deckchairs but a matter of preparing for orbit. …..a completely DIFFERENT set of parameters, objectives, technologies and Thinking. It is a world of Invention in which the Sciences and “scientists” are given a pre-eminent position, in a delivery of their ideas so that an open source policy of positive critical Peer review can refine and sympathetically synthesize their work into a Global choice. By this means, sharing our knowledge base rather than hiding it, as we do now in an effort to elicit, invariably, pecuniary advantage, we will be able to avoid costly, unnecessary and inherently flawed forays in Imagination. It will not dissuade or hinder Imagination, only assist it quicker on its journey… No government can now rely on the ignorance of its population to sustain it. We are richer as citizens thanks to the expansion of modern media. This Government wants to encourage this and give everyone access to all these riches as quickly as possible.

Change and Changes

Transparency is at the very heart of all that we do. To consider anything less is politically divisive and contrary to an inclusive common ideal. We can rightly question anyone who would think to conceal something from us because, in a range from good to bad, we might want to readily accept the good and definitively reject the bad…..but it should be a choice made by all of us, so that a choice which has been made by all of us and which we deem to further change, will not be attributable as a choice in blame to anyone.

In this Transparent environment, which is to be forthrightly defended rather than apologized for, recent speculations and possibilities, such as have been aired in drafts headed BBC Charter Review, as to its role, its performance and its editorial direction/bias, are thus negated, if not altogether dismissed.

To consider breaking the whole into regional, national units is NOT going to bring about a unifying, inclusive Society model. Mark Byford’s reference to stories being non-exclusive does not prohibit them from being original. It is the new Open nature of the BBC, the transparency of its direction in governance issues which will have the “export” side of Media and the “content” side of Media, revitalized and inventive of change and changes.

News Creation

There are interlinking agencies within common goals between the four major players in modern Societies….Trade and Industry [Economy], Media, Government and Intelligence. These four define and assist in the making of a Future. If we consider these elements to be in microcosm of our world, we can easily see that there is to be a hierarchy here, to avoid Confusion a.k.a. Chaos. A logical hierarchy would be one based upon abilities, goals and commitments, which are further based upon and reinforced through a positive development in an Excellence of moral integrity.

Moral integrity is a very subjective notion akin to a “beauty in the eye of the beholder” school of thought. Its subjectivity can be analyzed semantically, though, to arrive at an objective, impartial and wholly accurate appraisal of an action. The ultimate Controls to this insight and objectivity are in Love and many will tell you that there is a certain impregnability in such Controls. Such Control is not something which is either given or taken, it is something which one can assume. It is an assumption of due diligence in critical reflection and reasoned argument in support of a compassionate and inclusive reasoning.

The hierarchical structure is pyramidical…... A tiered, pointed edifice with its Control elements working on a top-down basis and it is the stability of such a structure which is its inherent strength. Its logical and eminently workable tiering is Intelligence, Media, Government and People. People being synonymous with Economy and/or Trade and Industry.

It is a scaleable model and can be efficiently and seamlessly used to accommodate inclusions into a wider and widening individual Global participation in World Government matters.

Such is the Future of Media and its enlightened players

It is more than just Television.

Intelligence sits at the top of the pyramid model. It is a search for Omniscience, rather than Omnipotence, which defines a better Intelligence. Knowledge is the key which unlocks the doors, and its sharing, rather than its suppression or coveting, is that which will allow our Societies to reach their full potentials. It is counter-productive to consider non-disclosure of any facts/actions, as such actions/facts must then be considered exclusive, and therefore not in the general interests of the Common Good. Intelligence and Media have no political axe to grind …or should have no political axe to grind. Intelligence is disseminated and propagated via Media to the people. It also advises the people of what actions are being taken, are to be taken and their role in the scheme of things. All of this happens to a certain extent, at present, and that is the beauty of this considered, structural change to Public Service deliveries, because the infrastructure is already in place to enable and assist in necessary change, once the Control parameters are accepted and put in place. It is the Control parameters in Governance issues that we are discussing and exercising here and such matters are not hewn in granite, but must remain ever flexible to allow for the growth and evolution of Human Intelligence into Awareness.

Awareness and Intelligence are coagulants and their combination introduces the possibilities in Virtuality into a Reality.

A country/nation is only as good as its society. A Society evolves slowly to accommodate through verification of acceptance, by the lowest common denominator, Change. And most societies are intrinsically national, both in culture and ethnicity. They have evolved at different rates for possibly no other valid reasons than geography, climate and relative population density. And whereas a past national history may indicate fundamental upheavals, which have been felt and accepted further afield within a nation, by virtue of its Communication, its Content Delivery, because of an ease through relative density association, this “inclusive” involvement/experimentation in changed circumstances, which we can call Tolerance, is clearly missing in some Societies. This must be so because we can readily identify an exclusion and persecution of whole sections of communities, while being very protectionist of others. Invariably, it is these minorities which persecute and/or have cloned persecution to allow for its continuance. Because national and pan-national Communication has NOT taken place and international Communication has been limited, and in some cases resisted, these nations have remained somewhat isolationist.

It may well be, that this inherent isolationism has been the root cause of the socio/political feuding/dichotomy that we can now witness between and within nations coping with multiracial and multicultural issues, amongst all the others home issues.

1.1.20 Many people brought up in a world in which there were only few broadcasting channels feel bewildered by the explosion of choice. The boundaries of industries are blurring: telecommunications companies want to become broadcasters, while broadcasters increasingly are moving into e-commerce, and Internet Service Providers are offering television channels.

If bewilderment is so relatively easily triggered, through the confusion of broadcasting choice, it follows that a consideration of that broadcasting choice may contain the necessary controls to alleviate that bewilderment into a tacit, inclusive acceptance of the broadcast content.

And if broadcasters move into Governance, will that assist Governments? A Joint Venture in, what is effectively, News Creation. This is the proposal.

We must consider the fact that some nations, may indeed, be more developed than others. And that their more inclusive development is a direct result of their own wishes/desires/necessities to explore and challenge themselves through what History has described as voyages of discovery……..in everything from epic war-like battles of Conscience in Belief to Global Circumnavigations, from campaigns in Empire to our reach for the stars. These have been very valuable, learning experiences shared with the nation, whose lessons may well have been passed down through the generations, via its genes pool.

And if it is not the genes pool, which contributes to that intangible, national identity, we must then consider that it is a purely mental application. Then nationality issues, with regard to a globalised environment as is envisaged in our shrinking world, become a mixture in a heritage of accepted and rejectable views with the only acceptable views being universally, beneficial ones. Travelled, pioneering nations can expect to be of a more tolerant and inclusive disposition but not towards practices that are recognized as being exclusive and discriminatory, this being, quite simply, because we cannot see the universal benefit of such exclusive and discriminatory actions. And in today’s present Global Society there may be none more divisive than that which we know of as Religion. It can be extremely intolerant of another person’s being and we can witness the battles of conscience which are engaging their leading minds. It is a fundamentality of New Thought that no one escapes from because as we seek to change our world for the better, it is false to think than anything will remain the same.

In fact, how can there be progress if things remain the same.

The Role of the BBC is more than just the voice of Britain. It is the British Role Model as its viewing should be perceived as being an open window on our society and its values. It should not be cowed in a PC submission, whereby legitimate concerns are thought inappropriate to openly discuss and assess, just because the very nature of the discussions are going to be about discrimination. Such calls as we hear, when we talk about race and religion and immigration, as to us being anti this or anti that, can be cynically used by those whom we feel are bringing exclusion and discrimination into our more inclusive and tolerant society.

We must not be backward in telling them….Thank You but No Thank you. Your views are abhorrent to us and we cannot accept them…..as we move forwards. Each nation has its own space, where it should feel at ease with itself and if behaviour is not acceptable or accepted in that particular space, it is not unreasonable for us to expect that everyone would feel better if they returned to the root home of their expressed views. It is there, where their views will be accepted as the norm. Pressure on this norm view to change, will come from within, as the more tolerant, inclusive societies and nations prosper. They are then able to share their wealth of experiences with those who are less than fortunate and who are willing to learn from their lessons. We seek not to impose our values upon others and they should not seek to impose their values upon us. And it is churlish, that contrary views born in different nations and cultures can be reconciled through thinking that the more tolerant, inclusive view be changed to reflect an acceptance of an exclusive and discriminatory view. This is clearly a retrograde step.

Remaining Steadfast

We can see that Immigration or Migration of people is a “chosen” pursuit and therefore it is perfectly reasonable that a strong national identity, which we should not be expected to compromise through our acceptance of others within our national borders, be seen as and accepted as a welcoming change for them as they seek to rebuild their lives from the ashes of their own national cultural failings, which has driven them away in the first place. There are interesting Similarities in Parallel between these difficulties in Society and those, as expressed below by the Government with regard to Media.

1.1.22 Some people worry that increased diversity may harm the quality of programming available and reduce standards of decency. The new communications media can transform crime as well as commerce, by helping criminals to operate globally. It is difficult to control the availability of material on the Internet - which may be located on a computer server in a country with little or no ability to enforce standards. And, with more and more broadcast channels available, many people are concerned about the amount of inappropriate or offensive material that may be seen by children at home.

As we consider such complex and globally applicable issues, it should be clear that our present working model is not working well and it is hard to defend that it is working at all. It is clear that a change is necessary. But it is not necessary for us to re-invent the wheel in such Social matters; we need only to address the Control framework. We have the tools for the job and we have the staff for the job and all that we await is the New Plan. A New Plan founded in Media.

1.1.25 To chart that course we need to be clear about two issues: the goals we seek as a society and the regulatory framework that helps us to achieve our goals.

It is a top down Application journey from Intelligence down to the People [Trade and Industry] via Media and Government. The goals that we seek as a society are necessarily flexible, as time and invention do not stand still and it is through the good use of time and invention that we can achieve them.

The Control Framework

It is a very Society-based Control model.

To step back and take a look at the big picture is to have us recognize that the placement of the four primary elements of modern societies…….Intelligence, Media, Government and Trade and industry [People] can be arranged in an hierarchical significance, in order to deliver the goals that we seek.

People [Trade and Industry, Economy], Government, Media and Intelligence appears to be what we have in our capitalist system. It is a Resources hungry environment predicated around the value placed upon money. And to have control of Resources, to generate value, or a perceived value, is what is used to control/direct/sustain a growth. However, economies can only grow if they have something to offer and invention is the engine of real growth. And the holy grail of invention is that which will stimulate invention to make a self-sustaining and self propagating loop to expand economies. As economies are directly linked to trade and industry, which are People products, a certain calm, enlightened responsibility will emerge…..a calm embodied in Equalism…..What you give is what you get, which is a selfless, utopian predication.

The system which we have in place today is controlled by having a regard to a responsibility to repay money. New ideas, new inventions are what drive the paying of money. If you have an economy which does not invent, or invents but does not share invention, they will run into deficit. If those nations also embark on voyages of invention which bring very little real proportional social value to a nation and we might like to consider the space race as one such adventure, this can also lead to a deficit as its considerable costs are not reimbursed through sale of invention. Nations which may be seen as on voyages of empire are also vulnerable to excessive and continuous expenditure with no beneficial returns. The absence of Goodwill condemns all such actions as a drain on their Resources. And when economies are consistently and inexorably growing in deficit, when invention is stifled and impaired through failing educational and social programs, it must be supposed that they are in crisis.

That is the situation as it is, today. We have a markets led Economy and Governments and it is Big Business which is serving the love of money, which dictates. It is not a democratic process model.

They might think that they control matters with their leverages based in a belief that the existing, wealth making, status quo industries and services can be indefinitely maintained and further serviced and recycled, but those existing sources are finite and therefore exhaustible. The growth of the so called service industries which don’t actually produce anything but simply rearrange things and then charge us for their rearranging things to justify their rearranging things. It is not sustainable. They pay no homage to Necessity, the mother of invention, the life blood of our system, they only abuse her.

The system, relying on Control through the love of money, is flawed in that the very thing which drives it, deprives it from others. It is a very arrogant and selfish dominatrix of a system, blinded by the wealth generated in past invention, to the need for constant invention. It is Intelligence which shapes our world and makes the Future and through Media we can show the world what they can see. Through what we call News, we can create a world of our own choosing.

In today’s climate of fear and hostility, and it is a global presence through media’s portrayal of it, we can witness a blind opposite parallel symmetry in those who say that the world is divided between believers and non-believers and those who say that you are either with us or you are on the side of the terrorists. Such black and white views have absolutely no place in a New World Order and it is a sad reflection that so many follow them, despite our world of colours. Actions taken in support of these views have only served to fuel the differences rather than to resolve/appease them which must surely indicate that such extremism, on any side, is going to have extreme opposition.

It is to mollify and bring towards the centre the VAST majority of disaffected and persecuted peoples, using the democracy model, where a voice/vote is heard and listened to, that is the Role of the BBC, post Hutton.

And the Role of the Chair is merely the guiding hand which provides the Intelligence to the People. It has Intelligence providing the BBC with information in new solutions and inventions to be shown to the People and to be provided for by them via the Government machine. In such a free and vital environment, the boundaries become blurred and solutions and inventions become Trade and Industry and People become Government and they work for Government and not Trade and Industry because it is Government which has provided for the Intelligence. It becomes a self-perpetuating loop.

In our time, we have continually reinvented the engines which drive societies and invariably these reinventions directly impact upon the societies to change them. It is atomic Science which may have impacted last to bring about fundamental changes, as the energy within the atom was thought to be harnessed. Today it is the humble computer that drives us, or allows us to explore the far horizons in our mind. It is an aid to our thought processes. We instruct it to perform a task through a series of switches. That is binary. A Yes/No, On/Off, 0/1 series of switches which enable. It is Code. And it has been developed by the inquiring computer mind to allow us to control the actions of machines.

The computer has become ubiquitous and is fashioned in many guises for us. But what it essentially does, is to Communicate and Media is a champion of Communication. As we have developed it and created ever more complex and sophisticated programs to instruct it what to do, we realize that it is a mirror image of our own thought processes and we are just transferring our thinking on how things will be made to work, into binary code. It is therefore a simple matter to conclude that controlled digital media content can also have a steerable effect. In terms of Society and the role that Media can play in Societies, the positively shown effects of an action/decision will always persuade and carry an argument over a negatively shown action/decision.

It is the showing of the Yes/No, On/Off, 0/1 sequencing, in arriving at that action/decision which dispels any suspicion or invalid rejection of it. Breaking down an opinion into a series of positive/negative question and answer routines, where we disregard anything that is perceived to be negative because it is shown to be exclusive through denial, and negative input being no input at all, and accepting everything else as a canvas to paint upon, this New Thinking will bring about a positive input into resolution of problems. We will invent and create because we do not accept negativity as being beneficial. It hinders our development in Thinking that there is nothing that we cannot do.

My own thinking is grounded in such a Communications environment and it is studied within the world of Quantum Communications. And to be able to show to others, that within us all is a richness of Life and living, which transcends the mere mundane through an acceptance of positive reinforcement of any thought and the rejection of negative input, is the start of another New Age, at a time when it is in dire need of an inclusive, sympathetic and compassionate direction. It is NOT an imposition of Wills, as in Empire, but a realization of Wills to enable Nation building again.

And all this will happen, when a nation sees the possibilities and advantages of having its Government and its Intelligence Services and its Media, as one cohesive entity in Invention of Society, rather than the three separate competitive entities that they now appear to be.

Intelligence decides, Media shows, and Government delivers. It is the harmonizing of the roles which will reduce unfounded and ill informed interference. And it is a shared transparent Education process which sees secrets as being the denial of general knowledge and therefore a divisive anomaly, to be avoided.

In this way, society will know what it is getting before it arrives, as Media has already shown them the benefits.

It is News Creation and we can make it good News for everyone. Why shouldn’t we? This Thinking is fuelled by our most primal of Thoughts/Need, which is Love. It is not something which you take; it is something that you GIVE. And it is impregnable. That is the Role of the Chair of the BBC…….It is Media….and it is a global Application with a potential limited only by Imagination.

The following statements of intent from the Communications White Paper, “A New Future for Communications”, suggest to me a Government committed to realizing a similar proposition in a Social Awareness and Responsibility through the Educative power in Media.

3.4.2 We will also maintain the current position that broadcasters can reach satellite viewers by being guaranteed fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory access to the proprietary conditional access systems used to deliver and charge for satellite services.

3.4.5 We will place particular emphasis on ensuring that all new licence-fee funded BBC services approved by the Secretary of State are available, free to the viewer, over all main platforms.

3.7.1 We will research and monitor the penetration figures for new, higher levels of service annually and assess whether inequalities are arising. If they are, we will consider action to address them, including the possible extension of universal service obligations.

3.7.1 If universal service obligations lead to significant net costs for the universal service providers, OFCOM will be able to create a universal service fund to share amongst all operators the costs of meeting the obligations. We have no immediate plans to introduce such a fund.

3.8 We aim to achieve universal access to the Internet by 2005

8.11 OFCOM will have a duty to keep markets or sectors under review and roll back regulation promptly where increasing competition renders it unnecessary. It will encourage co-regulation and self-regulation where these will best achieve the regulatory objectives.

These paragraphs are taken from a paper presented by Professor V.S. Ramachandran, at the Reith lectures 2003, entitled “Neuroscience, the New Philosophy.” They can easily apply to New Media Thinking and its applied and applicable Technologies.

“Our brains were essentially model-making machines. We need to construct useful, virtual reality simulations of the world that we can act on. Within the simulation, we need also to construct models of other people's minds because we're intensely social creatures, us primates. We need to do this so we can predict their behaviour. We are, after all, the Machiavellian primate. For example, you want to know was what he did a wilful action. In that case he might repeat it. Or was it involuntary in which case it's quite benign. Indeed evolution may have given us the skill even before self-awareness emerged in the brain. But then once this mechanism is in place, you can also apply it to the particular creature who happens to occupy this particular body, called Ramachandran.”

“At a very rudimentary level this is what happens each time a new-born baby mimics your behaviour. Stick your tongue out next time you see a new-born-baby and the baby will stick its tongue out, mimicking your behaviour, instantly dissolving the boundary, the arbitrary barrier between self and others. And we even know that this is carried out by a specific group of neurons in the brain, in your frontal lobes, called the mirror neurons. The bonus from this might be self-awareness.”

The buzz words of today are Weapons of Mass Destruction which would not exist if they had not been in the minds/thoughts of those who created them. Nurture and direct what we are thinking by allowing access to all thinking and those who think to communicate as a Weapon of mass Destruction will find more than a match for their negative thoughts and we will know them and they will have nowhere to hide. And any physicist or schoolchild will tell you that Mass is just a lot of Matter and it can be neither created nor destroyed, only changed.

If you want to run a Service for no tangible profit, the development of that Service will be infinitely profitable, leading to an Excellence in Service. And it can release us from the negative aspects of capitalism which demand a profit to be taken from a Venture. The “profit” in such a Service is the Excellence of Service.

It is an eminently suitable proposal for the new BBC.

This submission is but one Thought in a suite of Thoughts which can be shortly, further explored, in the developing website, www.ur2die4.com. It is Semantic Web Development …..Binary Thinking.

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