This post was sparked by my previous entry. We’ll get to security eventually (gotta be thematic!), but by way of a soupçon of English cultural history and a few proverbs.
Ruth Wajnryb wrote a wonderful book, which I highly recommend if you’re interested in English as a language. It shares pride of place on my shelf with Melvyn Bragg’s “The Adventure of English“, ( I’d also recommend Bill Bryson’s “Mother Tongue” as a more relaxed view of the same topic).
While there’s plenty of concern over the decline in global language diversity, let me lament the simplification of one of the most ubiquitous – English. I think there are two main factors driving that simplification.
Firstly, English has become a truly international language. In order to teach such a complex language, it makes sense to strip out a lot of the cultural baggage – adages, colloquialisms and the like. Many English idioms draw on our polyglot past, our nautical heritage and, unfashionable though it may be, our old Empire. All are often alien and superfluous to someone to whom English is a second language learned as a lingua franca (oh the irony!) for business or technical domains.
Secondly, there’s the gradual loss of a common cultural context. Many of you won’t fully appreciate the dearth of broadcast media as my generation grew up:
- BBC 2 began broadcasting when I was four, giving us a whopping three channels to choose from.
- BBC radios 1 & 2 began when I was seven, doubling the number of non-commercial stations.
- Channel 4 came along when I was twenty two.
No consoles, no personal computers or phones – we really were under the lash of a broadcast oligopoly. It didn’t feel like suffering at the time.
It’s almost certain that my contemporaries would recognise “Boom! Boom! Mr Derek!” or “You are awful – but I like you!”, “The play what I wrote”, or “Not now, Arthur!” . Whether that’s a good thing, I leave you to judge 
. It certainly promoted cultural cohesion and homogeneity.
School syllabuses were also more restrictive; I’d wager most British fifty-somethings have read some permutation of “To Kill a Mockingbird”, “The Crucible” or “The Lord of the Flies”.
Now, I’m not certain how many broadcast channels I have available – it’s dozens if not hundreds. On that basis I’ll wager that you and I have no recent shared experiences outside of Hollywood blockbusters. I’m not going to over-egg this argument – it’s a diminution of shared experience, not a total lack.
Does it matter? Probably not, at least on one level. One of the aims of communication is to be clear – to communicate intent, feelings, arguments etc. – on that basis, simpler is better, right? While true, particularly for an international audience, there are a number of factors that make that simplification poignant. I’ll just pick one - for brevity.
We lose some of our ability to convey nuance, allusion, emotion. We’re a long way from Newspeak, but there are some real cultural drivers (self-affirmation, the cult of celebrity, fear of litigation, political correctness) pushing us in that direction.
In a business context, it may already be too late; we’ve long since lobotomised ourselves – corporate communications are relentlessly upbeat and positive to the point of shrillness, mixed with generous helpings of Doublespeak. It’s a rare company that does otherwise. When Sony assert that they take information security seriously, I feel justified in raising a skeptical eyebrow – actions, my dears, speak louder than words.
On that note – a toast to proverbs. Like Latin text, proverbs are information-rich. There’s little waste – they’ve been polished over centuries. They’re memorable, with rich associations – assuming you have the cultural context. I may be stretching the point, but they’re the design patterns of language. Less pompously, they’re my personal antidote to over-blown policy documents.
My personal maxim, drilled into us as quivering six year-olds in Miss Podmore’s (God bless you ma’am!) class is - “Do as you would be done by”. Seven words. It makes an excellent mission statement for customer-facing folk.
With that premise, I thought it would be fun to trawl through my list of proverbs (or are they adages?), looking for those relevant to security. Here’s my first pass – I’d be pleased to receive more – do drop me a mail with your thoughts. Now, let us strike while the iron is hot:
On the insider threat – “Opportunity makes the thief” or “In a thief’s mind the moon is always shining”
On the need to treat security in the round – “A chain is as strong as its weakest link”
On the dangers of analysis paralysis – “Better is the enemy of good enough”
On pro-activity – “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”
On agility – “A stitch in time saves nine”
On the cloud – “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”
On humility (essential for security folk) – “Doubt is the beginning, not the end, of wisdom”
On personal resilience – “Fall down seven times, stand up eight”
Security, its place in business – “Don’t put the cart before the horse”
Security business cases – “Don’t piss into the wind”
Proper incident handling – “Don’t shut the stable door after the horse has bolted” or “It’s no use crying over spilt milk”
On standards – “The exception proves the rule”
On human behaviour – “What cannot be cured must be endured”
On good design – “Don’t spoil the ship for a ha’porth of tar” or “For the want of a nail, the kingdom was lost”
On HB Gary Federal (and oh so many others) – “Cobbler’s children go barefoot”
Finally, as a truly brilliant summary of the frustrations of the security profession – “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t“
