paul smith's Snaps & Bytes e-home
July 2000
Lovely Charlies.
Gay Search may have the funniest name of any gardening television personality, just beating Charlie Dimock, (who wouldn't pay good money to see that?) but it hasn't stopped her becoming the darling of the people who flock to garden centres every Sunday. Similarly, if you like cars, there is no escaping from Jeramy Clarkson. You get Patrick Moore for the heavens, Fred Dibnah for industrial heritage and Dave Attenborough for anything furry with teeth. So far so good, but where is the popular media's face of computers and consoles? No, you can't count Dominic Diamond, for all of the obvious reasons. Philippa Forrester may battle it out with Carol Vauderman to be our technical totty, but would I trust them to give me their view on the Playstation2's DVD decoding abilities? Nope. It's not because they're women, far from it. It's just because they don't carry the believable authority on the subject that, say, Jez Paxman does on politics. I.T. has become such a large mainstream issue, as shown by the prominence of stories in the press and on the telly about virus attacks, that an individual is now required to be the accepted source of wisdom. The big question is where do you apply?
Oh no, my double entendre is showing.
A customer of mine who must remain nameless (you like these ones, don't you?) recently split with his wife over a woman he met whilst surfing the 'net. I'm not 100% sure he ever actually [word removed on legal advise] the woman because I'm not privy to the full details, but the whole concept of on-line romance, leading to single-handed typing is a fascinating subject and not just because I'm a pervert. Is cyber-sex a form of adultery? I think we can agree it's some sort of a betrayal of trust, but without penetration (unwise due to the danger of electrocution) is it infidelity? How long is it going to be (no pun intended) before sex toy manufacturers make something you can plug into your serial port (ditto) to be even ruder on-line? People have been saying for years that IT has reached into every part of our lives, but is this one part too far? They even have a name for this technology; Dildonics. No. Really. I fear it may spell the end of the human race, for the following badly thought out reason: Sex without the risk of disease, unwanted pregnancy, or in my case, apologetic embarrassment, has its attractions. Which leads me smoothly onto:
It's the end of the world, as we know I.T.
Does anyone but me see a world, a thousand years from now, where the machines have taken over and Mankind is a fading memory in some database? When computers with true AI are finally created, and I don't believe we're going to have to wait 30 years, they will be set to work designing more computers with better AI… Humanity could fast become as obsolete at a VIC20. Congratulations. You work in the industry that may eventually make the human biological organism a larval stage to a civilization based on machine intelligence. I hope you're happy with yourself.
527 angry words. I hope this isn't too deep and/or too sexual for your discerning readership. Paul.