The Dark Side of the Moon, The Universe and everything.

Last time we saw hardware turning somewhat towards mobile
phones, with PCs still firmly entrenched. Today we will look at
the future of non hardware based things to come. Increasingly,
things are bought ready programmed and we have little influence
over what we have bought or use, just initial choice of supplier
and package. So we are being gently pushed down pre-defined
paths, with conforming to compatibility being paramount,
especially as the current market is essentially split between
Google and Microsoft. Here Google will try to offer all options
to all men purely by being online to them, as opposed to
Microsoft’s tendency to tie the user to their PC for Word
Processing/Office/Email applications and get their frills on the
net. Much as most would privately relish a Google triumph, this
is Microsoft after all, who have seen off a good number of
contenders for the crown, and also generally speaking we are all
more comfortable with the net for the net and the PC for the
rest; it is what we have grown up with, plus possibly there is
an underlying fear that the net does not reek of “permanence” as
it was historically not so long back “down” as much as it was
up, and is somewhat dependant on transient factors, not least
electricity in an ageing, creaking grid network, surviving in an
epoch of sophisticated terrorism. (Personally I think our
increasing reliance on all things electrically based, with no
alternative parallel backup manual systems is a t least worrying
and at worst frightening.) Anyway, I think Microsoft will be the
major monopoly for many a day yet, with a new search evolving
with Longhorn and as in any event the “devil that we know”.

On another tack, I recently visited Ireland, where my mobile
phone supplier does not function! News to me, and news relayed
via texts from other suppliers who do work there almost as soon
as I stepped off the ferry. ” Welcome to Ireland we are now
looking after you” kind of thing. One even had the temerity to
phone me and ask if I wanted to upgrade to their network as mine
did not work there. A little startling to think you are targeted
so quickly, automatically. So project this further if you will,
as ID cards, and the like containing DNA, Iris details and
fingerprints, plus bank balances and credit card balances become
prevalent as money ceases to be in tandem. You walk down the
street, and a CCTV recognises you via facial and retinal scan
correlation and activates a speaker/plasma display which says
“hi Malcolm, are you interested in ………. Today?” It will know
your available credit, your credit rating , preferences, your
season of the year typical buys. It will have countless data via
surveys you filled in to get freebies. It will in short target
you with your weaknesses knowing the money is there. Similarly
actually pick up any displayed article and DNA or fingerprint
technology will trigger a similar chain of events and questions
merely by having touched them. All this is delivered to your
door with minimal fuss, and the item may even tell you when it
needs replacing, and on command replace itself via the home
online system hooked into the intelligent fridge, washing
machine, cooker, and freezers and conversing 24/7 with the net
and relevant suppliers and re suppliers. Your home system
constantly monitors stock and varies purchases according o
season and personal preferences learned ad hoc from its
inception, much as your blue DVD system learned your viewing
preferences and your commercial TV channels learned to tune
their adverts specifically to be in sync with your personal
psyche, style and tastes. All choice is made to be as minimal as
possible, all whim taken away everything is so SIMPLE. There
will be no problem getting what you want, when you want it,
almost instantaneously, and your every internet search will be
analysed and filed for finer tuning into your underlying
psychological profile. given this weight of mundane tasks being
effortlessly achieved in a sort of background low profile mode,
and given most will effectively be “working from home” there may
well be a tendency to introversion, an almost hermit-like
existance, where communication is by and large electronic and
not in person, more “in camera”. We see the start of this in the
endemic mobile phone use by our youth who are losing their grasp
of spelling and personal contact via texting, and an almost
addictive usage of phones where once we talked face to face.
This incidentally stimulates rudeness and abuse and easily
causes offence where none is intended, as the electrons flow and
the actual physical face to face meetings with all their emotive
vision hearing touch and smell are slowly but surely eroded and
recede, and with it human contact is so much the poorer. As I
say this all assumes an uninterrupted power source which can
Answer increasingly heavier and heavier demand with absolutely
no blips. Is this achievable, is this stable, is this possible?
Much as our supermarkets now are eviscerating smaller shops and
garages, so they will become sole silent suppliers to your door
via the global net,( or not so silent suppliers should you
venture past your front portal) . Holidays may even become a
matter of “plugging in” to distant locations via a sensual
virtual link, sort of web cam with touch and emotion, then……no
more travelling, packing, flying, ferrying, just dreaming awake
with subliminal time outs for ordering. We are leaving an age of
choice and reason and opinions to go to an era of facile
effortless indulgence and contentment at the expense of our free
will being subjugated to appeasing the convenient, the line of
minimal effort. Every day that passes it is easier to spend and
receive, easier to indulge and then discard. It is also becoming
increasingly hard to manage and function without a mobile, a
laptop, a PC and a Net; and more expensive to buck the system
and “do it manually”. Soon there will be no money, no bartering,
no MANUALLY. Soon it will all be credit and online and
AUTOMATICALLY . Who is to say which is preferable, but there is
little doubt which way it will go. Ask your computers, they will
tell you if you don’t believe me; soon we will be more
comfortable talking to our computer than to each other.
Apparently even now users in Internet cafes and Universities use
the SAME computer in a room of many, giving choice, because they
TRUST that one, they are happy it worked for them before; plus
your computer never lies to you or annoys you or answers you
back, it just does what you say, for now.

So I envisage a shift towards a “2001 HAL” society where your
every perceived need and want is second guessed, offered,
accepted and delivered. No actual feeling of paying or ordering
or thinking is likely, simply a constantly replenished supply of
perishables with a finite life span. Not “pay today and throw
away” but “Don’t think why just re supply” and to this end all
software, peripherals, and the Net will be geared up to be more
and more effortless to you and less and less manual intervention
from you, in the race to automate the mundane and strip away the
stress and even choice in supplying what are perceived and
judged to be your needs, albeit by others. As long as your
credit is good it will be an effortless electronic environment,
always assuming zero credit/banking errors, which may gradually
become more and more hard to actually prove has happened as the
Net becomes unassailable and infallible seeming. Computers are
not good at self regulation. The race to supply this panacea is
currently attempting a wireless supplantment of hard wired
technology. I am not at all convinced that the security and
interference aspects of these items and strategy have been fully
thought through and addressed, especially in light of the
plethora of new gadgets which all use various similar
frequencies. We will address these issues in the next missive
from Mars. I leave you with a sobering thought. We can now use
many times better fabrics, papers, materials and manufacturing
processes than we ever could say late last century. Yet things
from that era, like cookers, fridges, books, vintage cars, tape
recorders, LPs, reel to reel tapes, model trains for example are
still working (in many instances BETTER than their modern
counterparts). If we are so advanced then why do we deliberately
manufacture things which are not meant to survive for even a
fraction of the durability of these old items, when we have
better materials, better tools, better knowledge, and better
tolerances. We are a million times better at selling, and what
we sell falls apart in no time, and no one seems to care, notice
or even question such a trade in of quality and reliability and
style for shoddy, unreliable unremarkable rubbish. A friend of
mine is in printing, and the challenge there and here in all
aspects of modern manufacturing, is to put back quality, trust,
and reliability and promote the value of true worth over
transient gloss. It would appear the sales industry has become
so perfected at what it does people have lost sight of the
actual quality of what they buy, and how long it is likely to
last. We seem to prize short term gain over long term pride and
craftsmanship; we outsource all our manufacturing to offshore
and far east enterprises purely on the basis of short term cost
and at the real cost of long term inability to produce from
within our own lands and dependency on others abroad, what price
then low cost when they are the sole capable producers? Once you
have thrown out the basement and the foundations it is hard to
rebuild your house. If the incentive were not solely focussed on
style over substance and cheapness over craftsmanship, If
advertising actually pushed us responsibly to think that quality
is a virtue in itself worth paying for, and you DO in the end
get EXACTLY what you pay for, then maybe Rolls Royce, Jaguar,
Royal Doulton, Wedgwood and Hornby would not be outsourcing to
China or mass producing what were classic marques and designs in
grotesque parodies of their former selves, under new managements
using old famous names but not reflecting old hand made
craftsmanship, pride and years of reliability. We also seem to
stifle ourselves with rules that do not seem to apply to our
competitors and then let them walk all over us on price. Take my
printing friends trade; we try to use sustainable or recycled
sources, wheras the competition is happily chopping down virgin
forests and bleaching paper. Multiply that by all the call
centres, toy manufacturing and base manufactured products in the
far east and China , where the basic wage is infinitesimally
small for huge undercutting of the west and how can we compete,
we of the fair wage for all and minimum wage per hour ? China
and the East think in centuries, we think in days in comparison.
In centuries though we will have no manufacturing base left.
Does no-one see the irreparable damage being done by losing
brands such as Royal Doulton, or all the lace and cotton
industry or the steel and shipbuilding? Everything is being
sacrificed on the altar of expediency and lowest possible cost
price versus maximised profits. Surely someone should see a gap
in the market for quality and reliability in hand made articles
made with pride by master craftsmen, or classic books bound in
age old style and antique charm. we are truly brilliant at
advertising, so why not let the goods match the spiel and create
a niche market for connoisseurs if you like , an upper level
style AND substance branding for those with discernment and a
little more disposable income thoughtfully employed and not
frittered. Better one Dickens than twenty Mills and Boon. It is
possible quality may re emerge and make a comeback and substance
may yet win out over gloss and style, as everything is cyclic in
the long run. We await the future, but my bet is the book and
the magnetic tape will eventually be seen to be better than the
.doc and the cd. Surely a hand bound First edition of Dickens is
a little above a computer print out? Surely an original reel to
reel of Dark Side of the Moon through a Ferrograph is a
different planet to a bland and frequency challenged CD. Look on
EBay at second hand prices of LPs Reel to Reels First editions .
Then look at second hand prices of CDs and talking book
cassettes. If the resale value of quality is there why is the
sale value eroded and derided in favour of mass produced
inferior brands? Recently an original DSOM sold for 305 pounds
plus postage, the CD sells for four quid. I digressed into the
quality field to outline another possible avenue for the future,
QUALITY MAY RESURFACE. We may yet see a renaissance of hand made
goods, ideally suited to internet sales and perhaps have new
searches like “Quality Quest” and “Antique Admiration” new
websites like “Handmade Hardbacks” and “Solidwood Style”. As
stressed before the world at large is strangely cyclic, so it is
possible the markets may cry out for goods once more that do
what they say they will for a long time, are craftsman made,
individual, reliable and do not depreciate or fall apart
overnight. Given small workshops from home could become a
cottage industry once more, the whole the sum of its parts, what
better way to re promote an old idea than via the internet? Just
as Opera and Classical music is resurgent, so too quality goods
may reinvent themselves. I hope so.
http://www.stiffsteiffs.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk