7. To bug the bugger

It's time to unveil the secrets of the twenty gaps.

Harry Caul (Hackman) is a paranoid surveillance expert running his own company. Caul is obsessed with his own privacy; his apartment is almost bare behind its triple-locked door, he uses pay phones to make calls and claims to have no home telephone, and his office is enclosed in wire mesh in a corner of a much larger warehouse. Caul is utterly professional at work, but he finds personal contact difficult. He is exquisitely uncomfortable in dense crowds and withdrawn and taciturn in more intimate situations; he is also reticent and secretive with work colleagues. He is nondescript in appearance, except for his habit of wearing a translucent plastic raincoat virtually everywhere he goes, even when it is not raining. Despite his insistence that his professional code means that he is not responsible for worrying about the actual content of the conversations he records or the uses to which his clients put his surveillance activities, he is in fact wracked by guilt over a past wiretap job that left three persons dead; his sense of guilt is sharpened by his devout Catholicism. His one hobby is playing along with his favourite jazz records on a tenor saxophone in the privacy of his apartment. 

 

Caul has taken on the task of monitoring a couple's conversation as they walk through crowded Union Square in San Francisco. This challenging task is accomplished, but Caul feels increasingly agonized over his doubts about the actual meaning of the conversation and about what may happen to the couple once the client hears the tape. He plays the tape again and again through the movie, refining its accuracy (by catching one key — though crucially ambiguous — phrase hidden under the sound of a street musician: "He'd kill us if he got the chance") and constantly reinterpreting its meaning in the light of what he knows and what he guesses. 

Caul avoids handing in the tape to the aide of the man who commissioned the surveillance; he then finds himself under increasing pressure from the aide and is himself followed, tricked, and listened in on, the tape eventually stolen from him in a moment when his guard is down. Caul's appalled efforts to forestall tragedy ultimately fail — because, it turns out, the conversation doesn't mean what he thought it did, and the tragedy he anticipated isn't the one that eventually happens. In the final scene of the film, Caul discovers that his own apartment is bugged and gradually takes it to pieces in an unsuccessful effort to discover the bug, eventually destroying everything there (even, after a moment of hesitation, his plastic figurine of the Madonna) except for his beloved tenor saxophone: at the film's end he's left sitting amidst the wreck, blowing a solo.

6. Keep an eye on the bigger picture

No, the catchphrase is not mine: it is part of the script of Exit through the Gift Shop, one of those contemporary crazes on graffiti and the secrecy of the underground; but it serves my purpose this time, for the series of paradoxes is far from being over.

My eye has been caught in the intricate maze of a classic. And, while giving me food for thought, it set the scene for some detective work - on your behalf.

Google Images

Fill in the following gaps with one word from the table below. There are five words you do not need to use.

[Note: Any comment on the film, or on the message of this synopsis are welcome, but publishing a version of your gap-filling activity is counter-productive. The full text will be published in just a few days' time].

  The Conversation

                                          Fill in the following gaps with one word from the table below. There are five words you do not need to use.

Google Images

Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is a paranoid surveillance expert running his 1. ___________ company. Caul is obsessed with his own privacy; his apartment is almost bare behind its triple-locked door, he uses pay phones to make calls and claims to have 2. _________ home telephone, and his office is enclosed in wire mesh in a corner of a much larger warehouse. Caul is utterly professional at 3. _________, but he finds personal contact difficult. He is exquisitely uncomfortable in dense crowds and withdrawn and taciturn in 4. _________ intimate situations; he is also reticent and secretive with work colleagues. He is nondescript in appearance, 5. ________ for his habit of wearing a translucent plastic raincoat virtually everywhere he goes, even when it is not raining. 6. _________ his insistence that his professional code means that he is not 7. _________ for worrying about the actual content of the conversations he records or the uses to which his clients put his surveillance activities, he is in 8. _________ wracked by guilt over a past wiretap job that left three persons dead; his sense of guilt is sharpened by his devout Catholicism. His one hobby is playing along with his favourite jazz records on a tenor saxophone in the 9. _________ of his apartment.

Google Images

Caul has taken on the task of 10. _________ a couple's conversation as they walk through crowded Union Square in San Francisco. This challenging task is accomplished, but Caul feels increasingly agonized over his 11. _________ about the actual meaning of the conversation and about what may happen to the couple once the client hears the tape. He plays the tape again and again 12. _________ the movie, refining its accuracy (by catching one key — though crucially ambiguous — phrase 13. _________ under the sound of a street musician: "He'd kill us if he got the chance") and constantly reinterpreting its meaning in the light of 14. _________ he knows and what he guesses. Caul avoids handing in the tape to the aide of the man who commissioned the surveillance; he then finds himself 15. _________ increasing pressure from the aide and is himself followed, tricked, and listened in on, the tape eventually 16. _________ from him in a moment when his guard is down. Caul's appalled efforts to forestall tragedy ultimately fail — because, it turns 17. _________, the conversation doesn't mean what he thought it 18. _________, and the tragedy he anticipated isn't the one that eventually happens. In the final scene of the film, Caul discovers that his own apartment is 19. _________ and gradually takes it to pieces in an unsuccessful effort to discover the bug, eventually destroying everything there (even, 20. _________ a moment of hesitation, his plastic figurine of the Madonna) except for his beloved tenor saxophone: at the film's end he's left sitting amidst the wreck, blowing a solo.

Google Images

AFTER            DOUBTS        HIDDEN                 OWN                         STOLEN
APART            EVEN             MONITORING       PERSONAL             THROUGH
BUGGED        EXCEPT        MORE                       PRIVACY                 UNDER
DESPITE        FACT              NO                             RESPONSIBLE      WHAT
DID                  FEARS           OUT                          ROBBED                  WORK

Whether it's worth commenting upon, well, it's for you to decide.

5. To choose, or not to choose, to do something -

- That's the paradox!

The topic was already announced in the previous post.

Now it's time to read.

And listen.

And [try to] understand.

          FUTURES NATURE |Vol 436|7 July 2005

What’s expected of us

 A predictor

It’s a tough choice…

                                                                   Ted Chiang

"This is a warning. 

Please read carefully.

By now you’ve probably seen a Predictor; millions of them have been sold by the time you’re reading this. For those who haven’t seen one, it’s a small device, like a remote for opening your car door. Its only features are a button and a big green LED. The light flashes if you press the button. Specifically, the light flashes one second before you press the button.

Most people say that when they first try it, it feels like they’re playing a strange game, one where the goal is to press the button after seeing the flash, and it’s easy to play. But when you try to break the rules, you find that you can’t. If you try to press the button without having seen a flash, the flash immediately appears, and no matter how fast you move, you never push the button until a second has elapsed. If you wait for the flash, intending to keep from pressing the button afterwards, the flash never appears. No matter what you do, the light always precedes the button press. There’s no way to fool a Predictor.

The heart of each Predictor is a circuit with a negative time delay — it sends a signal back in time. The full implications of the technology will become apparent later, when negative delays of greater than a second are achieved, but that’s not what this warning is about. The immediate problem is that Predictors demonstrate that there’s no such thing as free will.

There have always been arguments showing that free will is an illusion, some based on hard physics, others based on pure logic. Most people agree these arguments are irrefutable, but no one ever really accepts the conclusion. The experience of having free will is too powerful for an argument to overrule. What it takes is a demonstration, and that’s what a Predictor provides.

Cat's Eye Nebula

Typically, a person plays with a Predictor compulsively for several days, showing it to friends, trying various schemes to outwit the device. The person may appear to lose interest in it, but no one can forget what it means — over the following weeks, the implications of an immutable future sink in.

Some people, realizing that their choices don’t matter, refuse to make any choices at all. Like a legion of Bartleby the Scriveners, they no longer engage in spontaneous action. Eventually, a third of those who play with a Predictor must be hospitalized because they won’t feed themselves. The end state is akinetic mutism, a kind of waking coma. They’ll track motion with their eyes, and change position occasionally, but nothing more. The ability to move remains, but the motivation is gone.

Before people started playing with Predictors, akinetic mutism was very rare, a result of damage to the anterior cingulate region of the brain. Now it spreads like a cognitive plague. People used to speculate about a thought that destroys the thinker, some unspeakable lovecraftian horror, or a Gödel sentence that crashes the human logical system. It turns out that the disabling thought is one that we’ve all encountered: the idea that free will doesn’t exist. It just wasn’t harmful until you believed it.

Doctors try arguing with the patients while they still respond to conversation. We had all been living happy, active lives before, they reason, and we hadn’t had free will then either. Why should anything change? “No action you took last month was any more freely chosen than one you take today,” a doctor might say. “You can still behave that way now.” The patients invariably respond, “But now I know.” And some of them never say anything again.

Some will argue that the fact the Predictor causes this change in behaviour means that we do have free will. An automaton cannot become discouraged, only a free-thinking entity can.

The fact that some individuals descend into akinetic mutism whereas others do not just highlights the importance of making a choice. Unfortunately, such reasoning is faulty: every form of behaviour is compatible with determinism. One dynamic system might fall into a basin of attraction and wind up at a fixed point, whereas another exhibits chaotic behaviour indefinitely, but both are completely deterministic.

I’m transmitting this warning to you from just over a year in your future: it’s the first lengthy message received when circuits with negative delays in the mega-second range are used to build communication devices. Other messages will follow, addressing other issues. My message to you is this: pretend that you have free will. It’s essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know that they don’t. The reality isn’t important: what’s important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.

René Magritte. The False Mirror

And yet I know that, because free will is an illusion, it’s all predetermined who will descend into akinetic mutism and who won’t. There’s nothing anyone can do about it — you can’t choose the effect the Predictor has on you. Some of you will succumb and some of you won’t, and my sending this warning won’t alter those proportions. 

So why did I do it?

Because I had no choice."

• Listen to the audio short story here:

       What's expected of us                                                                                                      

■ Ted Chiang is an occasional writer of science fiction. His work can be found in his collection Stories of Your Life and Others, published by Pan Macmillan.
© 2005 Nature Publishing Group

4. To dream the impossible dream

...or shall I say To pass the impassable ice ridges? 

This is the full text offered as an open cloze in Use of English:

'"In 1914, Ernest Shackleton, the famous polar explorer, headed towards Antarctica in the Endurance. He and his twenty-eight companions intended to cross Antarctica on foot.
 

"However, their ship became stuck in the ice, and, although it had been built for these conditions, was slowly crushed by the pressure of the ice. It was not possible for Shackleton and his men to travel over the frozen sea to the nearest land, four hundred kilometres away, because the ice was not flat and smooth. It was raised up into high ridges which / that were often impassable. Moreover, the ice was breaking / broken up into large pieces which moved according to the wind and current.
 

"During their six months on the ice, Shackleton's men survived by eating their dogs, and penguins and seals if / when they could catch them. Eventually, they reached Elephant Island, which was uninhabited. In a small boat they had taken from the ship, Shackleton and six of his men sailed for over eight hundred miles to another / an island where they knew there was a whaling-station, and therefore food, shelter and a radio. Their boat landed on the wrong side of the island and they had to climb a mountain range and march sixty kilometres to safety. Shackleton then arranged for a ship to collect his twenty-two companions on Elephant Island.
 

"It is because of his superb powers of organization and leadership that all his men survived this terrible experience.'"

Shackleton and the Endurance

Indeed, Shackleton's example of Man's  freedom to choose seems to belong to the Heroes of old; the Scientific Era (our existential bubble!) tells us that it may lead to paradox, for one can choose not to do anything. They call it the paradox of choice; and it will carry us closer to science fiction than we are willing to admit. 

3. En attendant Wikipedia

What a difference a day makes - twenty-four  little hours without the Free Internet! Millions of people worldwide searching for information to no avail, redirecting their attention to other sources, groping in the dark alleys branching from the information highway. Very strange.

We might as well bind our time a little and try to resolve the <Shackleton enigma>.

Mawson's expedition

The search for Antarctica was the last great adventure of global exploration. It's an epic tale spanning centuries of high adventure, from the "unknown southern land" of the ancients to the first recorded sightings of the continent in 1820. Antarctica was finally explored, and plundered, during an Age of Discovery by whalers and sealers who ventured into icy waters below the Antarctic Convergence. Then came a Heroic Era, when the great explorers such as Robert Scott, Ernest Shackleton, Douglas Mawson and Roald Amundsen ventured ever deeper into the vast whiteness of the interior, in search of the final "holy grail" of discovery, the South Pole.

With the coming of the Mechanical Era, aeroplanes replaced huskies as the vehicle of choice for conquering a continent. Finally came the advent of the Scientific Era, and the lessons of the 18-month-long International Geophysical Year (1957-1959), which shed the light of knowledge on Antarctica. The land's history reaches a pinnacle with the signing of the Antarctic Treaty, protecting the last continent for future generations and centuries. 

Amundsen's camp

The impetus for the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration came from a lecture given to the Royal Geographical Society in London in 1893 by Professor John Murray of the Challenger oceanographic expedition, who encouraged the scientists  "to resolve the outstanding geographical questions still posed in the South." We might as well infer that it was a good speech, provided that scientific societies were called upon to promote the cause of Antarctic exploration, and they did honour the call; what is more, it is by no means easy to find someone willing to readily donate money for such abstract causes as discovering the  poles of the Earth. It seems that Shackleton had considerable fund-raising skills, for he managed to convince quite a few magnates to donate at a time when WW I was about to start.

Why Shackleton instead of Scott, or Amundsen? Well, simply because the Shackleton-Rowett, or Quest Expedition, coinciding with the date of Shackleton’s death (5th Jan 1922), marked a turning point in scientists' and explorers' attitudes. They somehow gave up their goal, which was as abstract as a pole, and their ideal - national honour - shed its moral dimension (for in those times it mattered not only what was done but how it was done). 

Shackleton's Endurance

Be as it may, Shackleton and his men seemed to endure far greater adversities and twists of fate than the explorers taking part in the other expeditions. A lecturer in the periods between expeditions, Shackleton became well-known for his enthusiasm, which secured a place for his remembrance in later decades. On his death he was praised in the press, but thereafter largely forgotten, while the heroic reputation of his rival Scott was sustained for many decades. At the end of the 20th century Shackleton was "rediscovered", and rapidly became a cult figure, a role model for leadership as one who, in extreme circumstances, kept his team together - all due to an astonishing survival story. 

Such was his fame that the following newspaper advertisement is attributed to him, even if no traces have been found to attest to the veracity of its authorship:

"Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success." Sir Ernest Shackleton. 

Even if all this episodic knowledge took up only a tiny area of our short-term memory, it would be better served by a bit of story-telling. So how would you complete the following text?

In 1914, Ernest Shackleton, the famous polar explorer, headed towards Antarctica in the Endurance. He and his twenty-eight companions intended to cross Antarctica …………… (1) foot.

However, their ship became stuck in the ice, and, ................... (2) it had been built for these conditions, ………….. (3) slowly crushed by the pressure of the ice. It was not possible ………….. (4) Shackleton and his men to travel over the frozen sea to the …………….. (5) land, four hundred kilometres away, because the ice was not flat and smooth. It was raised up into high ridges …………… (6) were often impassable. Moreover, the ice was ....................... (7) up into large pieces which moved ……………… (8) to the wind and current.

Shackleton after losing Endurance

..................... (9) their six months on the ice, Shackleton's men survived ………………. (10) eating their dogs, and penguins and seals …………….. (11) they could catch them. Eventually, they ....................... (12) Elephant Island, which was uninhabited. In a small boat …………….. (13) had taken from the ship, Shackleton and six of his men sailed for over eight hundred miles to …………….. (14) island where they knew …………….. (15) was a whaling-station, and therefore food, shelter and a radio. Their boat landed on the wrong side of the island …………….. (16) they had to climb a mountain range and march sixty kilometres …………….. (17) safety. Shackleton then arranged …………….. (18) a ship to collect his twenty-two companions on Elephant Island.

It is because ................. (19) his superb powers of organisation and leadership that ……….....…..
(20) his men survived this terrible experience.

(Adapted from Test Yourself for First Certificate, by Susan Morris and Alan Stanton)

2. Fact or fiction?

Free sample form the on-line edition of Think in English Magazine. 

Hopefully, I'm not the only one to ask myself about how difficult it must have been to leave your family behind, to say good bye to friends, relatives and acquaintances, and travel the seven seas...Please, don't let me be misunderstood: this is no trivial matter, and - of course - I have no intention to trivialize such a feat. What I mean to imply is that the farther away one moves back into the past, the closer to legend and myth History seems to draw. For how else is Ernest Shackleton's life to be viewed against the backdrop of his lifetime? 

Take a few minutes to find some information about his expedition(s), and ask yourself some questions. Then join the forum and give your own answers to my, or your colleagues', questions:

1. What made Shackleton so arduous in his endeavour? Was it because he grew up in The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration? 
2. Was he the only one? 
3. But what, or who, gave impetus to exploration in the 19th Century?

Nimrod Expedition: Wild, Shackleton, 

Marshall and Adams

Mind you, I haven't asked why - because that much is clear: as far as human inquisitiveness is concerned, the sky's the limit! Wouldn't it be the perfect true story to help us understand Man's freedom of choice?