Can you have brown skin and a beard?

Beards mean different things to different people, but even in the cultural melting pot of London, beards on brown skin have a very specific meaning.

For most of my life, fashion trends have passed me by. My look has never really been of-the-moment and that’s never bothered me. When beards became fashionable, all of a sudden a trend appeared that I fully bought into. I grew a mighty beard.

I loved my beard and treated it well; I had it regularly trimmed and shaped and moisturised it every day (yes, really). I was really into it. Others, sadly, were not.

First came the jokes from friends and acquaintances, “Don’t expect to get on a plane any time soon.” Or, “You look like the Taleban.” And even, “You look like a terrorist.” These comments were a little hurtful but, ultimately, I chalked them down to ‘banter’ from friends. To be fair, when I told people the jokes were a little too much, they apologised and stopped. I’m lucky, I have brilliant friends.

Then came more subtle reactions. On public transport people stared at me much more. As anyone knows, staring at anything other than your phone, the Metro or into the distance is pretty unusual on the Tube. Worse still, almost all the time, the seat next to me became the last to be taken. In shops, assistants who were chatty to the customers before and after me weren’t chatty with me. At parties and drinks, people I was introduced to were less friendly at first. Less friendly until they saw me drink or had a chat with me.

All of this adds up to very little. However, anyone who has grown up in a place where they’re in the minority will know that most prejudice isn’t overt. It’s simple things and low-level barriers. Barriers that are easy to overcome, but the onus is on you, the other, to overcome them.

Growing up in London, and being part of a minority ethnic group, I’ve spent my whole life overcoming these minor things. Proving to people that I’m ‘alright’, that I’m ‘one of them’. Growing a beard made the barriers a little higher, the isolation a little greater, the hurt a little more bruising.

So I had it shaved off.

Now, I’m lucky, I didn’t grow my beard for religious reasons. It was vanity. Shaving it off wasn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things. And now I’m back where I was. The barriers are a little lower again, but they’re still there.

I’m not a Muslim, but I’ve had a small insight into the challenges Muslims face. We ask them to integrate and be part of British society but we eye them with suspicion until they prove it explicitly. We do it to all minorities but for Muslims we’ve moved the bar up. It’s hard having brown skin and a beard in the UK, but the real problem is this: it’s becoming harder to be Muslim.

We’re constantly reminded of the huge volumes of data being collected by everything from our phones to the cars we drive. What’s often lacking, however, is any understanding of what the data means.

Without any irony, we’re inundated with statistics about the amount of data being created. As with much of the data, these statistics have no practical application.

Proponents seek to impress with size and hope the lack of substance will go unnoticed. The missing piece of the puzzle is context and understanding.

There are many people and companies who can help make sense of data sets through various means. There’s data science, data visualisation, infographics, dashboards and charts produced by insight teams, planners, data journalists, designers and research consultants.

The uniting element behind all of these activities and people is that they seek to unlock the complexity of the data they study and help others understand its meaning.

Data poets

Throughout history and across disparate cultures, one group of people have excelled at taking the complexity of the world around them, distilling it and communicating its essence in such a way that people make an emotional connection with it.

They move people. They do this through a variety of linguistic devices. They deploy rhymes and metaphors, they work with cadence, they play within stanzas and sonnets. They are poets.

The Charge of the Light Brigade by Lord Alfred Tennyson isn’t the only poem or record about the terrible waste of life in a war.

Yet it is the only one I remember with such emotion. I do so because the futility of the action and the bravery of those who took part was captured by Tennyson in a way that is deeply moving.

Were the Charge to be captured by today’s data specialists we would know much more about it, but we would not necessary feel the emotional connection to it that we do. It would be an exercise in analysis, not understanding.

World War I is known for its poetry. Despite the loss of life on an industrial scale, culturally we have an emotional connection to it. World War II, however, has an altogether different aura.

In both wars the sacrifice of those who perished and the scars of those who survived are great, but World War II is a media war, its popular memory captured by cinema.

I draw upon these battlefield examples because such loss of life is difficult to comprehend; the raw numbers of deaths and injuries do not bring to bear the full horror or valour of those involved.

Poetry by Numbers

It is for this reason that I’m launching this project to explore data poetry or, as I call it, poetry by numbers.

The project seeks to distil meaning from data by partnering poets and brands. Throughout 2015 it will commission poets to explore data. Follow our progress on this site where we’ll be publishing original poetry and commentary about how poetry and data combine.

A version of this post appeared here as a guest post on Stephen Waddington’s blog.

Learn more about Poetry by Numbers here.

Can we rely on tech firms to champion our rights?

Robert Hannigan, the director of GCHQ, has written a column for the FT. It’s exceptional in itself that a senior figure from the security services has stuck their head above the parapet, however, he’s not just stuck his head out, he’s fired a few shots at Silicon Valley too.

Privacy is one of the defining issues of our time. Barely a day goes without us being reminded about the volume of data about us that is being created and held by companies and governments.

So far, the momentum in the debate has been with the technology firms. They have sought to side with the public, placing themselves as defenders of privacy. Their messages tie-in nicely with the freewheeling, consumer-friendly connotations that we associate with anything that’s internet-related.

Hannigan takes a strong line. He says that, “However much they may dislike it, they [technology firms] have become the command-and-control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals.” He not only says he’s in favour of a debate around privacy but also clearly and firmly takes a position. He attempts to put some momentum behind the arguments of the security services.

This is not the only attempt by Britain’s security apparatus to engage people, Sir John Sawers, head of MI6, featured in a Lunch with the FT column a few weeks back. There is clearly a conscious effort being made to make the case for the security services’ to have access to the data held by technology firms.

It’s not surprising that companies and government agencies are publicly trying to get us to be on their side. However, as corporates and governments intensify their fight over access to data about us, there is a danger that the rights of individuals will get squeezed out.

Companies are placing themselves as the champions of privacy but there have been a number of instances where they have overstepped the mark in data collection and data use. Equally, governments are arguing that they need access to this data to keep us safe, but there are numerous examples of agencies abusing their powers.

There are a number of organisations and media outlets that champion the rights of individuals and the European Union is increasingly becoming a powerful mover in this space too. Yet, in the UK, as we see moves to opt out of pan-European human rights legislation, the concept of human rights seems to be falling out of favour.

Our right to privacy from both governments and companies risks being crushed as these two powerful interests escalate their fight over who gets to know what about us.