Holiday in Hampstead – Day One – A Mix of Mysticism and Computer Hacking
Monday August 3rd saw the start of Holiday in Hampstead 2020 “lite”, the non-fattening version. We are pleased to have reflections from two members of the audience on two very different, but fascinating talks.
Bill Risebero
William Blake: God and Beauty
Ayla Lepine’s splendid talk on William Blake addressed the artist/poet’s religious dimension. He was both visionary and practical, a combination of ‘Innocence and Experience’ which today appealed particularly to young people, making him a mainstream contemporary figure. Blake saw Jesus as the Human Form Divine, something mirrored in all people; it was by valuing ourselves that we come to know more about God. With a wide range of visuals and poetic extracts, Ayla charted Blake’s respect for the art of the past, his fascination with Adam and Eve, as joint stewards of creation, and his Abolitionist views, whereby all humankind is brought together under God. Blake insisted on the the primacy of the mystical over the rational, recognising the crucified Jesus transformed into the resurrected Christ.
Crime dot com
Geoff White followed with a lively account of his work as an investigative journalist. He introduced Crime dot com, his recent book on cyber-criminals, which has just been published. He identified three types: governments hacking for political reasons; organised gangs out for profits; and ‘hacktivists’, young people working alone just for the hell of it. He told the story (story-telling is his speciality) of the ‘Love Bug’, which had affected the world, and how he tracked down its perpetrator. Cyber-crime relies on technology, but even more on understanding people and how they can be persuaded.
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Andrew Lloyd Evans
William Blake
We started off with a bang courtesy of our dynamic duo Ayla Lepine and Geoff White. Ayla spoke eloquently on the subject of William Blake: God and Beauty. Using a series of paintings by Blake and others together with quotes from some of Blake’s poetry she illustrated Blake’s radically different theological approach. This included:
the idea of seeing the divine in everyone we meet
recurrent themes of Adam and Eve and the lamb – seeing God in nature
the inevitability of the fall and of salvation
turning from rationality and scientific discovery to release the mystic aspects of creation
he was against the slave trade, since discrimination and slavery would be abolished in the kingdom
Blake often used the format of previous artists’ painting particularly from the renaissance, for example turning images of the crucifixion into those of the resurrection.
From The Divine Image
For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.
The hunt for the hacker
Geoff spoke on the subject The hunt for the hacker who started it all, an investigative journalist’s extensive researches into cybercrime, using material from his soon to be released book Crimedotcom. He divided cybercriminals into three groups:
Government hackers
Organised cybercrime gangs
Activist groups, e.g. teenagers who hack twitter, who are especially dangerous because they seek publicity
Sometimes groups act together, for example the NHS ransomware attack. He told the intriguing story of the Love bug which hit the computer world just as it was breathing a sigh of relief after the millennium. Geoff traced the hacker responsible to the Philippines. Interestingly the success of this virus stemmed from appeals to human emotion by sending a love letter – more psychology than technology. However, this virus stole passwords and propagated worldwide by using personal address books. For the hacker there was no success in terms of career or money. There certainly seems to be a parallel between the spread of computer viruses and the viral spread in the current pandemic.
