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How Social Media Can Be A Cause Of Good In The World

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Inspired by the Conservative manifesto, Armando Iannucci decided to take the law into his own hands

We are the generation We've been waiting for. We are the kingmakers. We are invited to form the next government because We are at the heart of all our lives which, in turn, are central to what We are and who We stand for.

I'm getting sick of We. We comes out on two occasions.

Firstly, when a party's been roundly defeated for a long period of time.

Rather than admit that all their vote-losing policies were the product of reality-insulated politicos spending too much time in committee meetings and not enough time going to the shops or wondering why it takes at least eight visits from British Gas before a simple boiler can be fixed, defeated political parties relaunch themselves with the brainwave that if only politicians listened to what the decent, hard-working people of Britain had to say, then common political discourse would be irreversibly changed for the better.

So, throughout the Eighties Labour conducted many "listening" campaigns and, over the past 10 years, as their percentage share of the vote went down, Labour conducted a number of "Big Conversations", "rolling debates", "meet the people" events and other manifestations of Scum Engagement to show they'd really got the message.

The second outpouring of We comes when all the money runs out.

A Government or Opposition that knows there's no money to spend still has to look like it's got a whole raft of things to do if elected. Allowing the public to have more say in how things are run fulfils the need to look active while keeping things cheap.

It also has the welcome corollary of shunting responsibility on to the public so that when things do go tits up (as they do when you have no money to sort things out) you can turn to the public and say it was their fault.

This election is the first time in about 40 years when both sets of circumstances have coincided: the Tories have been out of office for 13 years, yet are trying to get back in when the country's destitute.

It's the Perfect Storm of We, so it's no surprise that David Cameron's unleashed the biggest wave of "From Now On You're In Charge" since Richard the Lionheart left for Damascus.

But this is ultra-We. It's not just a few pat phrases about consumer choice. Instead, it's a fully-thought-through philosophy about reducing the role of government and galvanising local communities into action.

Mr Cameron's rationale is that faster communication has made social networking a fact of life, so why not utilise this for everyone's benefit?

With that in mind, I tried some cyber-politics of my own this week.

I used Twitter to announce I wanted to set up my own police force.

I soon had a thousand volunteers, who christened it the Twitterforce.

We then took a vote on which part of the UK to police.

The wisdom of the crowd said "Wigan" so I charged my volunteers with the policing of Wigan's streets from midnight last Tuesday. In no time at all, I faced demands for a slogan to go with the force.

Suggestions flooded in, and I put the three best to the vote.

They were "Yes Wi-Gan!", "Things Are Going To Get Battered" and "A Fair Choice For Change".

Within seconds, voting websites were put up online, with bar-charts and graphs.

"Yes Wi-Gan!" triumphed, posters were designed and that evening were taken to the Wigan Athletic match.

Next, I faced demands from my swelling ranks of volunteers for some laws, so they knew what to arrest people for.

Again, everything was put to a network vote.

We, the People, spoke, and established that in Wigan you could be arrested for: whistling made-up tunes; carrying small dogs when they can clearly walk; starting talking when your turn is clearly over, and touching too much fruit or vegetables in the supermarket.

Soon copies of these laws were printed off and posted up round Wigan, and within seconds an arrest was made.

There were also strong demands for capital punishment for some of these offences, which is when I decided to shut the Twitterforce down on the grounds that this is how Hitler probably started. What Pol Pot would have done with a Facebook group only beggars belief.

So my experiment in We ended. I don't know what it taught me. Mr Cameron could claim it shows how much untapped energy there is in our communities.

My suspicion is it merely confirms how much actual energy we can put into mucking about while pretending to work.

@'The Independent'

Twitterforce's arrestable offences

1. Touching too much fruit or veg in the supermarket.
2. Carrying small dogs when they can clearly walk (a la Paris Hilton).
3. Whistling made up tunes.
4. Specifying "wet" when ordering coffee.
5. Clapping when a plane lands.
6. Wearing sunglasses in dull weather.
7. Starting talking when your turn is clearly over.
8. Walking the dog without a dog.
9. Ordering Babycham ironically.
10. Looking confused in the cheese aisles.

Yes Wi-gan

Dave Brown

From the notebook of Homer Dudley, inventor of the vocoder. December 12, 1932.

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Krautrock by Jon Savage

Devil's music ... Faust. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

It began out of nothing, was given a joke name, and became the pop influence du jour: krautrock, kosmische musik, elektronische musik, or whatever you wish to call German experimental rock from the 1970s. Cited and adapted by artists as diverse as Q-Tip, the Horrors (whose epic Sea Within a Sea convincingly updates that Neu! motorik), Foals, Deerhunter, even Kasabian and Oasis (but don't let the last put you off).

The list is so long as to be almost meaningless, but a new Soul Jazz compilation, Elektronische Musik, reinforces just how wild German music from that period was. It also raises the question of why kosmische musik, which has impacted on pop for the last 30 years (just think of Afrika Bambaataa, Brian Eno and David Bowie, to name but three), is still so popular today.

It began out of the revolutionary student movement of 1967 and 1968: one strand formed communes and became political activists, others began to attempt a new German music that was not schlager, the mainstream music of the day. Their quest was given added impetus by the fact that many of these war babies knew their history had been erased. They had nothing, but that meant freedom.

This was their year zero. Informed by Karlheinz Stockhausen, the Mothers of Invention, the Velvet Underground and Pink Floyd, among others, the late 1960s and early 70s saw the formation of many key groups: Can, Faust, Amon Düül II, Organisation (later Kraftwerk), Guru Guru and Tangerine Dream, many of whom were released on German labels such as Ohr and Brain.

There are several DVD bootlegs covering this early period, as well as YouTube clips and the actual albums. What they record is a balls-to-the-wall experimental approach that takes ideas, feelings and competence as far as they can go, and then further. There are no limits. This first-time delirium continues the psychedelic upsurge of 1966-67 but gives it a tougher edge: it was, as Julian Cope wrote, "soaringly idealistic and hard as nails".

It was Cope's Krautrocksampler, published in 1995, that first organised and codified a history of "the great kosmische musik". Cope focused on the first wave of groups, many of whom were popular in England thanks to the visionary Andrew Lauder, who released Can and Amon Düül II on United Artists. (Then there was the 49p issue of The Faust Tapes.)

Since this groundbreaking study, the floodgates have opened; but the Soul Jazz compilation opens out the genre even further. If you go into the affiliated Sounds of the Universe shop in Soho, you'll see a rack for experimental German music alongside all the reggae 7"s, funk/disco 12"s, dubstep, free jazz and cosmic disco CDs. Put together by Stuart Baker and Adrian Self, the Elektronische Musik compilation totally fits that free-booting eclecticism.

It begins with Can's A Spectacle, sampled by Q-Tip on Manwomanboogie (from his 2008 album The Renaissance). There are the usual suspects: Faust, Neu!, Cluster – the last represented by the track Heisse Lippen, from their best album, Zuckerzeit – but there is a greater reliance on funky beats/breaks, and you get long improv epics such as High Life by Ibliss. The second disc ends with the blissed-out drones of Deuter's Soham, a higher-key masterpiece.

The implication is that there is more here than you ever thought. German music from this period is a bit like the Tardis: you got through a narrow portal into a huge, dynamic space. Kosmische's fertility is only matched by its desire to create something totally new, and it is that which has proved inspirational to successive generations of musicians from right across the spectrum.

Its increased resonance in the 21st century comes from the fact that Anglo-American rock has a six-decade history and has been thoroughly cannibalised. Tired of sixth-gen Brit indie groups? Sick of Americana apologists? Then let kosmische be your guide. Starting from nothing but their imagination, the 70s German groups continue to offer a third way: a long, straight road out of this cultural impasse.

@'The Guardian'

90 Krautrock albums...
&
All You need to know!