If you catch a mainline train out of St Pancras, after 10
minutes or so, and shortly before you cross the M25, you may notice an
industrial looking building on the left hand side. Travelling north just before
Christmas I spotted it and, infused no doubt with seasonal spirit, read its
name as “Turkey Lighting Solutions”. Which got me thinking. Do turkeys do much
reading? Why do they need lighting? Are they afraid of the dark? Does enhanced
lighting make it easier to cull them ready for a festive lunch? Or (alternative
train of thought), why should a company on the fringes of north London be
catering to the illuminative requirements of the good citizens of Istanbul or
Ankara?
I remained puzzled until January, when on a subsequent trip
I realised I had misread the sign. Actually it said “Turnkey Lighting
Solutions”. Ah ha, I love those sort
of names. My genre favourites include “Domestic Water Solutions” (wonder what
they dissolve it in?) and “Granite Solutions” (gravestones). Mm, a tough one
that - perhaps something involving hydrofluoric acid. Anyway, “Turnkey Lighting
Solutions”. So, I thought, at last, someone
has invented the light switch, or something close to it. They’ve solved that
age-old problem. Not so much a light bulb moment as a light switch moment. Ta da !
Just in time, it seems, for last week I was told the
cautionary tale of a lady going to visit a relative in another part of the
country. At the time she was due to arrive she knew the house would be empty,
but she had a key so she could let herself in. The problems – she feared -
would start when she came to switch on the lights. No switches, just a beeping
gadget sulking in the corner. “Dalek” (or whatever its stupid name was), she
would have to address it, abruptly having to overcome a sense of absurdity and
self-consciousness borne of a lifetime of being sensible, “switch on the light
!” She knew she would feel much happier with “Exterminate ! Exterminate !” but
apparently that is now deemed to be a politically incorrect command inflected with
an ageist subtext. You aren’t allowed to say it this week. Well then, no
switch. No flip of the finger. Just the gadget. No manual override. Here goes ….
If she gets the pronunciation right (luckily she’s not Scottish or a Brummie)
there will be light. If not, not. Oh, the suspense …
No override. This is where the theme suddenly lurches from
farce to deadly serious. Dim hallways are rarely fatal. If it takes you a
minute or two to work out how to switch on the lights you’re probably going to
survive the inconvenience. If you’re in an aircraft determined to nosedive into
the ground with 157 people on board just six minutes after take-off, you’re
probably not going to survive at all. I wouldn’t wish to pre-judge the results
of the enquiries into the Boeing 737 Max 8, or exploit a tragedy for comic
effect, but it rather looks as though an insuppressible piece of software
“trying to be clever” was the cause of the Ethiopian Airlines crash near Addis
Ababa last Sunday, and of the Lion Air crash in Indonesia last October.
The Germans have a wonderful word, Verschlimmbesserung, which means an improvement that makes things
worse. I don’t know if the Germans have another word meaning “what a
ridiculously long word - I wonder how you’re supposed to get your teeth round it?”,
but they aren’t stupid, and neither (allegedly) is Donald Trump, who tweeted a
remark about planes getting too complicated. Bang on, Donald (allegedly). It
isn’t just aircraft, though, it’s potentially most of our lives that are
getting stupidly and pointlessly complicated, with “improvements” that in a
very short time will make life not just worse, but almost impossibly tedious.
What were for most of civilised human existence trivially simple, instantaneous,
automatically performed actions will now take hours, genius-level IQs, training
courses, feasibility studies, and therapies for PTSD.
A simple flick of the forefinger and the light goes on or
off. Easy. No, sorry, not any more, the server has gone down - and anyway, a
spotty oik six thousand miles away is having a bit of a laugh on his pizza-encrusted
cliché, so you’ll have to sit in the dark. And don’t even think of trying to
make a cup of tea. It’s called progress, you see. Anyway, never mind, are you
sure you’ve signed up for the introductory sessions on how to switch on the
telly? No? Oh dear. You’ll probably be needing a dalek, then, to do it for you.
We’ll arrange a course for you so you can find out how to order one. Er, not quite
sure what we do as regards arranging courses …
We love progress, don’t we. Progress can be extremely
helpful. Indeed, there’s quite a strong argument that it should be. SatNav is
progress – it’s just that if you rely on it all the time you’ll never learn
your way around. Smartphones are progress, so long as you look where you’re
going. Google Translate is progress, but it will do little to encourage you to
master another language. Calculators are progress, so long as you don’t have to
rely on them to work out how much two items from Poundland are going to set you
back. Predictive testicle is progress too. So are spell chequers. Google itself
is progress, although if you seriously don’t know what you would do without it,
it has become self-harming, it has won and, basically, you’re stuffed.
The algorithms are in place, not to mention the innate
laziness, to reduce us all to drooling imbeciles within no time at all, if we
allow it to happen. Or hurl us to the ground. A once noble species destroyed by
algorithms. What a shame, Homo sapiens
had so much going for it.
Currently I’m reading Franklin Foer’s “World Without Mind” (Vintage, 2018; £9.99 from Waterstone’s).
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