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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Technology slows me down

[ 4 minute read ] 

Opinion

One of things I sometimes like to do is read the news. 'Ha ha ha. Read the news!' You can't 'read' the news; we never could. The 'news' has to be experienced in person, and even then we only get a single facet of it. 

       'Let's look at the back-story to this.'

Let's not.

Once upon a time a news story broke and the country heard about it with updates throughout the day. S'okay, because still other news got reported; like a tree got hit by lightning, which set light to a mansion where the impressive library burnt to the ground and killed the pastry chef who was stuck in the pantry with the housekeeper, but the heat from the blaze brought the daffodils out early, so not all bad then. Not any longer; there is no news other than a single story. Journalism, I feel has taken a different approach with the technology of the day leading the way. Now, in-depth coverage including satellite imagery and records of the past is the order of the day. I really couldn't care less; just tell us the new bits.

Most days, I look at a couple of websites with stories on them. However, the trend is for reporting the news with videos, which speeds the production of the news presentation up. Plainly, it takes longer to write coherently than it does to edit a video for a website upload, I suppose. Contrawise, it takes longer to watch a video than it does to read the transcript. My time has somehow been transferred to the news channel to make their lives easier, or might I suggest, to be used to help them be more efficient?

If reporters have more time to report then why don't we get a wider scope of news? I suggest the reason might be shaped in a similar way to manufacturing production runs. Long production runs are way more efficient than short production runs. Quite simply this is because it takes a lot of time to change settings on machines, and the cleaning of contaminants from one production run is paramount before another one can begin. Stopping reporting on one subject means closing avenues of information and initiating the opening of others, not least is the production of introductions for news pieces. The general public, I suggest, simply cannot get up to speed on a subject as fast as the news channel can provide information.

       'There have been arrests over the fire in a Polish industrial area.'

       'What fire?'

So, rather than 'waste' time with a series of introductory pieces for a wide scope of interesting news, it is preferable to just re-iterate the same waffling, especially since it all comes from the same sources. Waffling for a long time is cheap and opinions are free.

I sometimes check I have internet connectivity by clicking on a BBC news icon. The time at which it takes the BBC.co.uk site to appear indicates to me whether I have a connection or not and perhaps the speed of it. I mentioned to someone outside ALDI that I use the BBC site as a marker in this way.

       'That's not a news channel!', the man on his mobility scooter scoffed. I know, and his pitted nose that resembled roiling froth frozen in time told me more about him than I could trust the BBC had told me about the world in the past 24 hours. Let's face it, if you don't want people to turn up for a planned protest somewhere in a field, just send a BBC reporter to any muddy field holding an umbrella to tell us that conditions are dire and will get worse. The suggestion of personal discomfort instead of a mass rollicking romp and general meeting up with friends sometimes de-energises willpower.

Sky News (sky.com) have moved in a quite decisive way towards uploading video instead of written news stories. I can read faster than I can understand speech. It is not the spoken word that I don't get, it is the spoken word spoken at the same rate of how we read that I find difficult to comprehend. Contrary to my former belief, competent readers don't read a single word at a time; we chunk words together, about three or four at a time. This means that spoken words are linear because they are delivered individually in series. The written word, however, is delivered in a series of what might be considered to be conjunctive words, that is 'together'. This is a far faster mode of communication. Why then has technology, which we are all led to believe will 'speed things up' been used to slow things down?

I suggest technology is not about function anymore. The washing machine was invented decades ago; there isn't now anything to invent that is both functional and innovative; the dish-washer is a washing machine without a spinning drum, isn't it?

No, technology at our end of how it works is all about getting lazier and recreation. While it is quicker to upload to a website a news video which has been made in the normal course of reporting for the television, the public readily accepts this medium as normal, even preferable. Take your brain out of gear and let someone else read the transcript for you. We all like a story read to us, don't we? Technology then, I may go on to suggest, is about never growing up and never learning to be responsible for our own decisions.

       'That's right, just relax, let it wash over you. Nice and warm? Yes, that's right, almost pre-orgasmic isn't it?'

Me too! It is uncomfortable to read that and I ummed and ahhed at it.

I don't watch the sky.com videos on their site because there is no speed button. If I am inclined to watch them I need to go to YouTube because there is a speed button. It means I can hear the reporter at 1.5 and 2 times normal speaking rates. I have NO interest in the pictures or video behind them and I am irritated by the time they take to pause at commas and full stops as we should do in polite speech. Mind you, I don't want them to speak like some people from the USA who never observe punctuation.

I think public speaking as taught to public speakers from best men and bridesmaids at weddings to court officials and parliamentary discussion and on to speakers at dinners has been egregiously considered to be appropriate for visual journalists. Its the news; speed it up and cut the blooming evocative words and emotional weighting on spoken words; just 'tell' us and stop 'showing' it by living it for us. No wonder there are still newspapers that have no whining journalists' voice overlaying the information, which are still bought across the nation. Another illusion, I suspect; considered reporting of news is a far more effecctve sword than 'off the cuff' though, still scripted no doubt, video reporting in the field.

All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser.

I am not on YouTube or social media

[ 5 minute read ]

Signature Characteristics

Persecution and a Sword of Damocles

How quickly an hour passes. I keep a record of things on my laptop that have times and dates attached. My first entry today is for 04:48 o'clock, in the morning, am. I started writing this at 05:45, quarter to six o'clock in the morning. I read somewhere that schools across the UK had to replace the clocks with hands with digital clocks because the pupils couldn't otherwise read the time; hence my pointed jab about spelling out the time. For all I know not being able to understand what numbers mean when they are separated by a colon and written down might be a thing. Certainly, it never occurred to me that parents and nursery schools would not teach kids how to read the time from real clocks. Seems a bit like disfavouring them for entry into the real world to me.

I went to an online writing course for that hour where the conversation is mild and interesting. The conversation I read today was about monetising written work online. There were some questions asked about whether my posts on that site are based on true life. I realised then that despite posting pseudo-interviews of myself, in which I am brutally honest about myself; elsewhere, in the name of fiction, I make stuff up. That has made me reassess my integrity. 

Currently, I am overwhelmed by a recognition that I deleted evidence of someone else's bad behaviour in order to 'co-operate' with a dampening down of what some people consider to be only a mild spat. I had it all in hand by my own behaviour though. It sticks in my craw so bad. It is the word 'co-operate' that gets me. It stinks of a devious plan to cover up malpractice in which by my co-operation I am complicit. However, there is a 'Sword of Damocles' hanging over my head and whistle-blowing would make that sword very real.

I watched a film on a DVD a while ago; the Academy Award winning 'The Lives of Others', written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. It is in German but thanks to my excellent skills at reading subtitles I understood most of it.

I think 'The Lives of Others' is based on a true story of lives in the former Soviet East Germany. It was an eye-opener for me. These days, the same level of surveillance is routine across all digital platforms, including any blog posts. Certainly Google's A.I. has read the entire internet, which includes all the work by students who use the plagiarism checking 'TurnItIn'. I think Google made that claim a few days ago.

When will humans begin to become serious about hiding their identity and more importantly, their unique personal signature of themselves? Sometimes, I find short passages of writing on my laptop that I seem to have randomly written about a subject. Because my writing style is fairly well practiced and, in the main, follows all the normal grammatical rules of other writers, I often cannot distinguish whether I copied a quote or came up with something myself. I have no doubt though that A.I. software would be able to pick out my writing signature. It is an aspect of me. If I wanted to use a pseudonym for writing, should I also learn to write differently. If I want to write an anonymous letter of complaint should I change my grammar slightly? Make mistakes?

I suppose the question I am asking myself is, who would I be deceiving? Me or the world? Outside of writing fiction, which seems to be a 'fair game' place for lying, assuming a different identity to avoid censure and cancellation of my real self seems dishonest. It is manipulative; but co-operating with something we don't agree with, and not speaking of our angst is being disrespectful to ourselves. 

I heard on LBC, the UK national radio phone-in channel, a woman complaining that she didn't think it is appropriate for the UK taxpayer to pay for appointment letters to be sent by the NHS to people who struggle with modern technology. I try to restrain my thoughts on such ideas or contrary ideas. Her overarching point was that everybody has to use modern technology (emails, websites, and mobile phones), so get on with it. 'My grandfather is ninety-three and he has no problem', she claimed. It should be understood that I might find that inflammatory and simplistic. There is little doubt in my mind from her signature characteristics of shallow linear thinking that she forced him to comply to her needs to use technology to contact him, and completely sidelined his personal comfort. 'Go and visit him as a real person you selfish cow'. Just guessing really - he might trade on the stock exchange or be a YouTuber, and she might one day save someone's life.

In Soviet East Germany, everyone had to spy on everyone else and report them for suspicious or nefarious activity. In the UK, we might as a whole, argue that it is because West Germany had a different approach towards its citizens that people in East Germany sought to free themselves from what they considered to be institutionalised persecution. Indeed, many East Germans had false identities and changed their characteristics to suit. But many did not change their characteristics and their personal signature was apparent; the Stasi cross-linked and found matches and they got caught.

Stasi - Official state security service of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) (1950–1990); an abbreviation of Staatssicherheit. The intelligence service and secret police of East Germany.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Stasi

Of course, I am making parallels of modern technology and the 'Stasi' and being careless of how they mesh. But, I am allowing some free-thoughts to evolve and die as they will. At the end of which I hope to be richer, if only by the exercise.

'Thank you for your co-operation.' Was that written by A.I.? Did Robocop say that?