#Age of ultratron on itunes series#

Once the expenses scandal broke, an economic crisis story had to be really huge to get on TV. I know from experience how compartmentalised this is in the minds of media and political folk. The financial model that has dominated the UK economy broke down and then it was revealed that large numbers of MPs were using their parliamentary status to feather their nests on an unimagined scale. The fact that this happened alongside the tech revolution I've described above injected an aura of success into our major institutions that has now vanished. And it was not just any old bubble: the economy post 1992 was built on rising debt, rising house prices, rising real wages. What matters is that a new conversation is out there, and the first politician to look vaguely like they knew this got a (what may be short term) boost from this.Ģ) The two biggest things in mainstream ideology collapsed.įirst, the economic bubble burst. It is not the dweeby tweets of campaigners, or the sad slanging matches between beer-fuelled political hacks that matter. It is affecting the outcome of everything, from having an idea, buying a pair of jeans or going on a date. Those who wonder whether the social media will 'affect the outcome' of the election are asking the wrong question. The top sites on the web traffic monitor are mainly social networking or self-published content sites - which were almost nowhere in 2005. We are now 10 years into that revolution. In 2005 we were about five years into the Broadband revolution (I wrote my first blog for Newsnight on 16 June 2005). does that generation believe it is in any way represented by mainstream politics?Īnecdotally, apart from the anoraks who are involved in politics, I would say not.

#Age of ultratron on itunes series#

I've just walked through London's Soho: grown men sitting in the open air wearing giant Sennheiser headphones, sipping flat-white coffee, composing, what? Symphonies, club anthems, klezmer? In the DVD store Fopp (saved from administration during the financial meltdown) top titles include: The Thick of It Series 3 District 9 Pasolini's 120 Days of Sodom enjoying an ironic hip revival in the age of internet porn.Īnd here's the question: does that generation capable of laughing at the Thick Of It that never lived through the anti-apartheid era but has watched District 9 that has taken control of content creation and is happy to walk around wearing ironic t-shirts categorising their own sex lives etc. The technological revolution that we're in the middle of is changing social life and social attitudes. Why does this matter? Because politics is about telling, and believing, a story. The Libdem leader was Charles Kennedy and the Tory leader, lest we forget, Michael Howard.

London had not won the Olympics yet the 7/7 bombings and the 21/7 bombings lay in the future. Some televisions were HD ready but there was no HD. In 2005 there was no Facebook, Twitter, iPhone. It goes deeper than Cleggmania - and it does, if the trends observed carry through, presage a big change in the UK's electoral landscape.ġ) It's been a long time since 2005 and the conversation has changed. Here's what I think is happening in this election: what's moving the polls, the zeitgeist, causing tabloid editors to go into Pravda mode and seasoned commentators to shrug their shoulders with incomprehension.