In 1978 the German electronic music band Kraftwerk wrote a stunning track entitled ‘The Man Machine’. They were real vanguards of electric music, to which we have all now become used to. Silicon has driven the world for a number of years, but I wonder if its all going a bit too far..?
For several years, I’ve been speaking about Horizons. Not only what you can see, but also what you can learn. I’ve been fortunate to see physical horizons hundreds of miles away, but for many, their horizon is now the length of an arm, as their hand contains a mobile phone. Their entire gaze and attention are stuck only a few feet from their eyes. Whilst mobile devices are incredibly useful (and we all use them), I believe there is a line to draw.
This is not a new problem. In the 19th century, philosopher David Henry Thoreau coined the phrase – “People are becoming the machines of their machines”. This was more attuned to the Industrial Revolution, but recently we have been exposed to a Digital Revolution. Almost everything we do requires a digital interface – Banking, Shopping and Driving to name but a few, but the way we gain information and communicate is now mainly digital. I wonder how many of us rely on WhatsApp groups for home, school, interest groups and expedition comms..? It works well, but there is a time and a place.
Many people read too fast, and skim headlines rather than take in information. We also only see what the web wishes us to see. You might say that we only saw what the media wanted to see years ago, but at least it (hopefully) came from reliable sources and trained correspondents. Now anyone can post anything, comment on anything, remain anonymous and become a ‘keyboard warrior’. This is at best unhelpful and at worst destructive.
As a young engineer, I worked in an office where writing a letter took a week. I would write it by hand, put it in a typist’s tray, wait for a typed copy, correct if required, send it back etc, until the letter was presented for me to sign. Now we create letters online in seconds and can’t even be bothered to sign them. Our grammar may be poor, or we copy and paste from set paragraphs, because we haven’t the time to read and reply. We constantly run for the lowest common denominator.
I was once taught by the wonderful Mr Adkin at Peoples College of Further Education in Nottingham (now part of Nottingham College). I was studying electrical engineering and would carry out complex calculations about voltage drops/current flows etc. Our lecturer Mr Adkin could work out the answers to the power of whatever, before we had time to punch the numbers into our calculators. Perhaps an extreme case of mental arthritic, but people can’t even do simple calculation with a pen and paper these days.
The idea of self-driving cars scares me. Not that I’m a technophobe, but I feel there is a line to draw. Let me explain…
If you design any type of self-driving transport, you must be prepared to take over, in case of a sensor failure etc. Imagine an hour in, when suddenly an alarm tells you to take control. I wonder how many people will be half awake, or taking any notice. Also, if you’re never trained to drive all the time, where will you hone your skills..? We are also moving into a society who will have never changed gear, whereas I like to feel the engine and make my own decisions.
When I returned to driving after surgery, I took a retest at an NHS centre, to ensure I was safe. People still ask me if I can drive after losing my fingers and toes, or do I at least use an automatic. When I tell them that I drive a LHD VW Camper and a Land Rover with four gearsticks, they seem shocked. The thing is you must DRIVE them. It’s not like a fairground dodgem. They have no sensors, no alarms, no computers, because you must listen to them, feel them and think. The sad fact is that all modern cars are automatic everything, whether you like it or not.
During my time in the Electricity Industry, a tractor pulled down a 132KV Tower Line, because the GPS didn’t see it. Its database and sensors missed a 150ft tall steel structure. If that wasn’t bad enough, the driver was paying no attention, even though they were in charge or responsible, because they were watching a movie on a digital device, instead of looking where they were going.
I spoke at TEDXDerby some years ago asking if ‘Modern Communication was Destroying Adventure’. More and more in the outdoors we see digital devices at work. They have a place, but do you have the skills needed to navigate, should they fail..? Do you have the relevant map and compass..? Can you get yourself out of trouble..? All questions which need to be asked before you leave your house.
AI will take over many tasks, and I fear people losing their ability to think for themselves. Increasingly they will let it run their lives (recently I was in a camera shop, where a lady had asked Chat GPT for advice, rather than a human), and its already running much of what we don’t see. It has a place, but we don’t want a terminator moment, when it becomes self-aware. What we need is balance. We need to keep the skills we need for life, and to keep our minds active, but also understand that the digital age is here to stay.
We are humans, and we need to keep our human skills, frailties and failures. How else to we learn..?
We should be expanding our horizons, rather than giving them away…