Hacked Hacks Pack!

A sort of follow up, which is only appropriate since this is only a sort of blog.

The News of the World is closing and going away for ever. Or at least until The Sun on Sunday (or perhaps just Sun-day) starts up.

Apparently, people as annoyed about their casual use of phone phreakery and hackery mounted a small campaign using social media to raise awareness of how much distrust there is in the News of the World. Advertisers pulled ads from the paper. And Rupert Murdoch is closing it down.

Is this good news?

Not as such.

Rupert Murdoch still wants to own Sky. He still wants to dismember the BBC and he still wants to do all this with the permission of the Conservative government, who owe him big time for the election victory Murdoch's UK papers and media outlets helped them achieve.

We have to remember it wasn't all Murdoch. Labour failed magnificently to be a political party that anyone could actually vote for, but nevertheless, Murdoch's price is all about making him the sole player in the UK's media.

This all gets a bit murky, because although I love the BBC and although I believe that Mr. Murdoch's ambitions are basically incompatible with civilisation, I am forced to admit that he's a very successful businessman and he's where he is for a reason.

Having given the Devil his due... I am glad to see the back of NotW, and I am hoping to see an investigation which uncovers exactly how much we can trust News International. I doubt we'll get that, but we can hope.

I was about to launch into a rant about business, education and art. Again. I still believe that business needs to **** off out of education and we, as a nation and as a civilisation, need to pay more attention to the arts in general.

It occurred to me today that I can't remember the names of any businessmen from a hundred years ago. I remember, dimly, the names of the men who we hold responsible for the industrial revolution, and I remember the names of scientists and artists. In fact, I can remember the names of artists all the way back to the ancient greeks.

I just can't name and businessmen.

I doubt that in a hundred years time we will remember who Lord Sugar is. I doubt that we will really remember who Murdoch is, especially since the name Hearst is now fading from popular memory - even though he's linked to Citizen Kane. I don't think any of the entrepreneurs and businessfolks are ever going to be remembered and it will not matter what they said or did.

We'll remember the artists, though. I have a feeling that names like Pratchett will carry on. I have a feeling that in a century people will still know who Truffaut or Spielberg or Scorsese were. There are bound to be artists like Damian Hurst who get remembered. I think our descendants will still know about Elvis and The Beatles, perhaps even Take That.

But the names of the businessmen are dust on the wind, perhaps because deep down we really don't care what they do.