Bertrand Russell
The new BBC catalogue, just like Google Earth, has made happen one of those things that the Web so clearly promised ten years ago. Characteristically, though, they hide away in the technical details their most farsighted piece of design (my emphasis):
The main exclusions are sport, feature films, other non-BBC copyright programmes (e.g. TV series imported from the USA), some regional programming and programmes which do not exist.
For by 2007, those Saturday night list programmes will have exhausted primary sources. Elementary satirists have already alerted us to look forward to 'Top 100 TV list programmes'. But what will happen if that program turns out to be very popular - in the top 100 in fact? Canny programme makers will no doubt save themselves time in the edit suite for the reruns by naming them 'Top 100 list programmes that don't list themselves' or TCLPTDLT as the TV people will say. But what happens when that programme too also rides high in the ratings (sounds bad I know but it's surely morally better than people watching reality TV, or rather reality TV apart from ones I like (The Apprentice)). Yes! It will be the top 100 list programme that doesn't list itself! It will have to be listed in the TCLPTDLT! Which means it will list itself! Which means it must be in the TCLPTDLT! Which means it cannot be in the TCLPTDLT! Which means it cannot exist! But since any object whose ontological existence implies its nonexistence is prevented from appearing in the database after just one iteration and we are saved from the sight of Aunty dissappearing up her own RDF triple!
(Apologies to Bertrand Russell, who often appears with Prince Philip and Nikita Kruschev)
Trouble is, a BBC that refuses to allow recursive self-representation is one that (according to Douglas Hofstatder's Strange Loops at least) passes up its chances of evolving into a conscious entity. And since the sole prospect for sanity in the 21st Century is Eddie Mair as motor arm of a self-aware BBC, what a loss to the nation, speaking unto nation, that would be.
