I’m planning a series of drinks parties to celebrate the 100th issue of brainmail in a few months time. Likely locations are London, Sydney and New York. Register your interest below using the comments section below – I don’t especially need your name, although this would be nice, just put which city you are based in to help me with the planning.
I should have posted this a few weeks ago. There was a widely accepted story at my secondary school that this person had carved their original name into a school desk. Some people claimed to have found it. I never did.
“People are so fucking dumb. Nobody reads anymore, nobody goes out and looks and explores the society and culture they were brought up in. People have attention spans of five seconds and as much depth as a glass of water.”
“Speak in extremes, it’ll save you time. ”
“There’s a terror in knowing what the world is about”
“I’m always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don’t even take what I am seriously.”
“If it works, it’s out of date.”
“I’m just an individual who doesn’t feel that I need to have somebody qualify my work in any particular way. I’m working for me.”
“Once you lose that sense of wonder at being alive, you’re pretty much on the way out…”
All David Bowie (except the headline).
Some quotes lifted from my forthcoming book Digital Vs. Human, including a great quote that didn’t quite make it.
Opening quotes
‘The real problem of humanity is the following: we have palaeolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall’ – Edward O. Wilson
‘Anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.’ – Douglas Adams
Chapter heading quotes
‘Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face’ – Mike Tyson
‘Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don’t need to be done’ – Andy Rooney
‘One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on’ – Alain de Botton
‘If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place’ – Eric Schmidt
‘The idea of the future being different from the present is so repugnant to our conventional modes of thought and behaviour that we, most of us, offer a great resistance to acting on it in practice’ – John Maynard Keynes
‘What if the cost of machines that think is people who don’t?’ – George Dyson
‘Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere’ – Attributed to Albert Einstein
‘What’s wrong with education cannot be fixed with Technology’ – Steve Jobs
‘The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine’ – Isaac Asimov
‘Technology is everything that doesn’t work yet’ – W. Daniel Hillis
‘Heralds don’t sing about men who lived in orthodoxy or played it safe, they sing about men who lived an uncertain future and took enough risks to make your head spin’ – Evan Meekins
‘It took humans four million years to evolve the hand axe, another two million years to somewhat improve it. And then, within a mere 20,000 years, a geological blink of the eye, they created art, agriculture, the wheel, computers and spaceships’ – George Zarkadakis
Quotes from the main text
‘There’s ‘no upside to being socialised by a robot’ – Sherry Turkle
(The internet is) ‘amazing in the same way a dishwasher is amazing’ – Evgeny Morozov
‘The error that evangelists make is to assume that the internet’s open, decentralised technology naturally translates into a less hierarchical or unequal society’ – Andrew Keen
‘I think all tech people are slightly autistic.’ Douglas Coupland
(The internet is shaping behaviour in) ‘what is broadly a more autistic direction’ – Tyler Cowen
‘Personal identity is increasingly defined by the approbation of a virtual audience.’ Susan Greenfield
‘Social networks erode previous social structures and reintroduce tribalism into our post-industrial societies’ – George Zarkadakis
‘What should the role of “extra” humans be if not everyone is still strictly needed?’ – Jaron Lanier
(Virtual reality) ‘is a way to escape the world into something more fantastic’ – Palmer Luckey
(Computer games) ‘provide an escape from purposelessness’. – Olivia Metcalf
(Young people are) ‘the miners’ canaries of society, acutely vulnerable to the peculiar hazards of our times’. – Richard Eckersley
‘Ours may be a time of material comfort and technological wonder, but it’s also a time of aimlessness and gloom.’ – Nicholas Carr
‘There is almost an injunction on today’s youth to lead fascinating lives. But if we fail, and most of us are doomed to, we’ll be considered losers.’ – Astrid Berges-Frisbey
(The internet) ‘encourages and even promotes insanity’- Larry Rosen
(Facebook and sites like it create) ‘ephemeral connections between imaginary identities’ – Susan Greenfield
‘It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value’, and ‘People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.’ – Alain de Botton
‘Social media ‘is an architecture of human isolation’ – Andrew Keen
‘The internet itself is in an incredibly elitist concentrator of wealth in the hands of the few while giving the appearance of voice and the appearance of democracy to people who are in fact being exploited by the technologies.’ – Jonathan Franzen
‘We’re already halfway towards a world where algorithms run nearly everything. As their power intensifies, wealth will concentrate towards them.’ – Christopher Steiner
‘The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.’ – Jeff Hammerbacher
‘Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.’ – Terry Prachett
‘The greatest heist in history wasn’t about taking money; it was about taking your information — and you agreed to all of it.’ – Terms and Conditions May Apply
‘At some point, automation reaches a critical mass. It begins to shape societies norms, assumptions, and ethics.’ – Nicholas Carr
‘The logic leading to fully autonomous systems seems inescapable’. Thomas Adams
‘A pilotless airliner is going to come. It’s just a question of when.’ – James Albaugh
‘I still believe that sitting down and reading a book is the best way to really learn something.’ – Eric Schmidt
‘Teaching is a human experience. Technology is a distraction when we need literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking.’ – Paul Thomas
(We) ‘are shifting from manufacturing massively replicated products … to producing personalised products and services distributed directly to customers’ – George Zarkadakis
‘It’s quite possible there are unique things about humans. But, in terms of intelligence, it doesn’t seem likely’ – Demis Hassabis
‘Bit by bit, our cells and tissues are becoming just another brand of hardware to be upgraded.’ John Rogers
‘Where technology pushes too far, society pushes back.’ – Bob Seidensticker
‘You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.’ – Picasso
‘By far the best way I know to engage the religious sensibility, the sense of awe, is to look up on a clear night.’ – Carl Sagan
(We are developing) ‘amnesia about everything except the immediate, the instant, the now’ – Andrew Keen
(By 2014) ‘Much effort will be put into the designing of vehicles with “Robot-brains” … Communications will become sight-sound … Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders.’ – Isaac Asimov
I have seen the future, and it’s still in the future’ – .Jack Rosenthal
Unused quotes
‘Something funny I have noticed, perhaps you have noticed it, too. You know what futurists and online-ists and cut-out-the-middle-man-ists and Davos-ists and deconstructionists of every stripe want for themselves? They want exactly what they tell you you no longer need, you pathetic, overweight, disembodied Kindle reader. They want white linen tablecloths on trestle tables in the middle of vineyards on soft blowy afternoons … they want a nineteenth century bookshop … they want five-star bricks and mortar and DO NOT DISTURB signs and views of the park’. – Richard Rodriguez
Interesting, perhaps, that Love Yourself by Justin Bieber has been number 1 in the UK music charts and has been 1 or 2 for the last 10 weeks. Does this tell us anything? (cue endless Bieber jokes I’m sure…).
From Harvard Business Review Daily Stat. Link to research above here.
I’ve been thinking about the science and fiction map again, and about a possible event looking at the connections between imagination and invention – and who exactly is influencing whom here?
Is it possible to write good science fiction without a good understanding of science and do the thoughts contained within academic institutions naturally permeate into the broader public consciousness, thereby creating a series of self-fulfilling prophesies? (if enough people think about something someone will write about it and then someone will eventually invent it). Perhaps a panel discussion one evening with a couple of academics and sci-fi writers?
Nice PBS (US) video on the subject here – 8 minutes.
Another nice link here.
Here, at last, is the cover for my new book Digital vs. Human. The debate we’ve been having is who has the upper hand – the humans or the machines? Actually that’s a little unfair as one of the key points I make is that the future must be Digital and Human, not Digital or human, but the debate is still a pertinent one. In an ideal world I would have had the robot hand top left, as this suggests that it’s the machines that are in control, which is nicely provocative. As it is it’s the human hand, or perhaps the hand of God, that seems to be in charge, although the human hand does look rather unsure of itself, which is also really good.
Spoiled for choice today. First, a study by Oxford University suggests that the average Facebook user has 155 friends (close to the ‘Dunbar number’ of 150, which anthropologists suggest is the maximum number of friends that humans can maintain relationships with). However, the study also says that the average user has mere 4 friends that are any use. ‘Any use’ is my phrase, but the study found that only 4 friends can be relied on to help in a real crisis.
Meanwhile, a study conducted on behalf of the British Heart Foundation says that 9 out of 10 ‘iPad toddlers’ are not physically active enough to be healthy. 84% of pre-school children in the UK do not even manage 1 hour of exercise per day. As Steven Ward, of UK Active comments: ‘The fact is that the current generation is hunched over screens from an early age and the iPhone has become the dummy of today’s society”.
Obviously I’m writing this hunched over a screen and tethered to an iPhone….
Here are the first testimonials for my new book Digital vs Human.We are in the process of editing these down so they can be used on the cover, which I’ll be sharing with you shortly.
“A highly readable, witty and wise book, richly informative, sharply critical but balanced, an excellent investigation of the achievements and predictions of digital technology.”
Theodore Zeldin, author of The Hidden Pleasures of Life
“The issues he addresses are pertinent, the questions he asks are incisive, and the ideas he assembles are tantalising.”
Dr Jules Goddard, Fellow, London Business School
“In a culture obsessed with the kind of skills and performance that could turn the next generation into second-rate automata, Watson readjusts the focus to what really counts: feelings and relationships of all kinds. He presents a truly persuasive case for his claim that: ‘It’s not the internet that should be at the heart of things, but the human heart”.
Professor Susan Greenfield, author of Mind Change
“A remarkable and important book, which examines our possible futures with great humanity and a clear eye. Everyone should read it.”
Lavie Tidhar, author of A Man Lies Dreaming
“Richard Watson doesn’t write like your average futurist. He’s interested in people, not machines, and so his analysis of the way our world is changing has a very human and accessible quality. Most futurists seek to sell you a vision of the future, but Richard’s there to help show you the way.”
Antony Funnell, presenter of ABC Radio National Future Tense
Over Christmas I unfortunately had to call the emergency services at a friend’s house. Suffice to say that I was somewhat anxious. The operator on the end of the telephone was wonderful. She had one of those slow silky voices that was not only calming, but which somehow demanded complete obedience.
So here’s the thing. A week or so later my mind started wandering off as it does and I began to wonder whether one day the emergency services might be tempted to replace human call centre operatives with synthetic voices (in other words fully automated digital systems). It wouldn’t be that difficult to do and the cost savings would be significant. In a moment of sci-fi imagining I even wondered whether it might be possible to select celebrity voices to converse with, much in the same way that you can select celebrity voices to add to your in-car GPS navigation system.
Weirder things have happened…
Back page text
It’s hard to believe, but the book goes on. Days away from printing now, but still trying to get the cover right and also re-writing the back cover text at the last minute. The key thing here is obviously to convey what the book is about for people that haven’t read it (and one supposes don’t have more than about ten seconds to do so before they move on to another book). The current words are below, with the first pass below that. The key point, for me at least, is not that the book is about digital systems, robotics or artificial intelligence, but the looming battle between human and digital minds. More specifically, it’s about what a small group of people is arguably imposing on the rest of the human race. This has shades of the 1% (or the 99%), but also the banking crisis. This is an observation that’s been picked up by one of my favourite columnists at the Financial Times, Gillian Tett. Prior to 2007/8 banking was run by a tiny group of people and nobody else really understood what they were doing. IT at the cutting edge is much the same. It’s a small group of experts and almost nobody else has a clue about what they are doing or what the longer-term consequences might be.
Current re-write.
From the author of the international bestseller Future Files comes the one book you need to prepare for tomorrow.
Life has never been better. By most measures our physical lives have improved greatly in recent years. So why do we feel that all is not well? As technologies developed by a tiny handful of designers and developers are changing our lives, we are beginning to question whose interests are being served. Are they here for our benefit? Or are we here for theirs? Richard Watson hereby extends an exuberant invitation to look more closely at the world we’re creating and think more deeply about who it is that we want to be.
Original text including my edit comments (in bold)
The blurb may require cuts to fit into the back cover design. Our current proposal is the following: Surely there is room at the front or more likely the back to run or repeat all the quotes?
From the author of the international bestseller Future Files comes the one book to help you prepare for tomorrow.
On most measures that matter, we’ve never had it so good. Physically, life for humankind has improved immeasurably over the last fifty years. Yet, spreading across the world, there is a crisis of confidence in progress. Jumps….
(Do we even need most of the above? How about simply starting with the below and creating room for more testimonials? For example…
From the author of the international bestseller Future Files comes the one book you need to read to prepare for the world of tomorrow. (Still jumps?) To a large degree, the history of the next fifty years will be about the relationship between people and technologies created by a tiny handful of designers and developers. These (their?) inventions will undoubtedly change our lives, but just what are they capable of, and — as they transform the media, the economy, healthcare, education, work, and the home — what kind of lives do we want to lead?
Richard Watson, the author of the international bestseller Future Files, hereby extends an exuberant invitation for us to think deeply about the world of today and envision what kind of world we wish to create in the future. (for tomorrow?).