MK Today - Wednesday 15th February 2023

All robots are stupid but some are more evil than others !

George Orwell, please forgive my adapting that line from your work Animal Farm.

Milton Keynes you have got a lot to answer for ! I am sure our City will want to assign blame to just one area – BLETCHLEY. Bletchley, you have got one heck of a lot to answer for. YOU gave the world robots !

Robots when I was a kid were fun friends from science fiction. Who remembers Fireball XL5 and its robot Robert ?  Can you remember his catch phrase ? On our way home… I wasn’t exactly a kid, I was eleven years old when this first screened but I loved this fun programme.

Where did you watch Star Wars ? Released in 1977 I watched the adventures of R2D2 and C3PO at the Electra in Newport Pagnell. 1977, that was six years before the invention of the internet.

Britain gave the world the Internet. Britain gave the world the computer, Bletchley gave the world the computer. America may like to think it invented the thinking machine but it was right here in Milton Keynes, in Bletchley Park that the brain for a robot was invented. Perhaps, given robots in 2023 we should deny all responsibility and let the Americans applaud their own lie.

Do you shop at Morrisons by any chance ? Morrisons robotic self check out. All robots are stupid but Morrissons are more stupid than most. Payment excepted ! DOH YOU THICK MORONIC ROBOT – excepted means thrown aside and not included ! You

mean Payment accepted !

When the end of World War Two came to an end and Alan Turing and his mates were able to put their hammers on the shelf, no more codes to break Winston Churchill ordered the Bletchley Park computers should be destroyed so enemies could not steal the knowledge. Winston, any chance you could come back and order the destruction of Microsoft ? Board up its windows and allow it to return to the job it does best manufacturing used recycled toilet paper.

Milton Keynes Development Corporation built a city of trees with the foundation stone that no building shall be taller that the surrounding trees. Cowboy planners in Milton Keynes Council

trashed that, I am sure if I started a robotic on-line petition thousand would sign demanding Central Milton Keynes should be demolished and turned into a new forest.

But even more hideous that the likes of the Hub and Xscape are the forest of phone masts obliterating our City. But start a petition against these and I doubt I would get a single person to sign !

Anywhere you go today count the number of people using a smart phone linked to these masts. Actually it would be easier to count those who are NOT using them. Dumbo smart phones are infinitely more addictive than any Class A drug !

Smart phones are compensatory aids. If you are hard of hearing you can wear a hearing aid.

If you eyesight is less than 20/20 you can nip along to Specsavers. If you break your leg and have it plastered the hospital will give you a crutch to compensate and help you walk. If you are thick and stupid with a brain lacking intelligence you can use a smart phone to compensate.

Smart phones are the handcuffs of the brain. They are robots in reverse. They take over the brain turning users into semi-intelligent robots.

What are these semi-intelligent users doing: Ordering on Amazon The Adventures of Billy

Wobblestick by William Shakespeare ? Listening to the coronation music of Edward the Confessor ?  Checking the precise height of the Empire State Building ? Making sure there is not going ti be a hurricane in the south-west corner of North Korea ? All while researching the precise date of King Henry VIII’s male menopause !

All robots (humans) are stupid but some (smart phones) are more evil than others !

Milton Keynes is proud (Why ?) of its Starship robots delivering Mars Bars and the odd packet of crisps. I wonder what a Dalek would say if it encountered one such mobile stupid robot !

EXTERMINATE perhaps.

I am going to step outside my generation for a moment (I was born in 1950). Back to my father’s generation (He was born in 1926) and to my son’s generation (He was born in 1980)

In the early 1970’s my father outsourced accounting from his work to a computer bank. When the print outs were returned he observed that in addition to the worker payslips he wanted pages and pages of additional information was supplied, information he did not need but having paid for the computer bank he felt obliged to use all of the information the robot had churned out.

What car do you drive ? My son drives a Tesla. Visiting over Christmas when he and his family were ready to leave he tapped an app on his stupid smart phone, told the car outside to start its engine and warm up the heating before they all got in and drove home.

Who drove home ? Was it my son or some stupid robot in control of the car. Generation, I wouldn’t even be a passenger in a Twittering Elton Musk Robot. I wonder if when it speaks it quotes the Fireball XL5 robot – ON OUR WAY HOME.

All this robotic nonsense, apps, smart phones, and so on all descend from Bletchley Park !

In my book MILTON KEYNES THE CITY OF LEGEND I speak of my attending a day tutorial at our Open University. There were representatives from different areas of our New City, I was representing education. The professor stood up and said: You may have heard of a new invention called the world wide web. I am going to teach you today to send letters using this new invention, I am going to teach you to send electronic mail.

We were charged to send an electronic letter to the person sitting next to us. Not a single delegate could make it work. I said: This will never catch on. All other delegates agreed.

Do you remember the film You’ve Got Mail. So dated it never appears on retro TV.

e-mail, ever time you send an e-mail you run the risk of it being clicked and deleted without ever being read. For every e-mail you send instead of a letter you are helping to put Postman Pat out of a job.

Alan Turing and Bletchley Park just look at what you did !

When you finished your day’s work did you use an app from your enigma hammer to pay for a pint at The Three Trees ?

I’ll now use a computer to post this on the World Wide Web and send electronic mail to tell everyone its there !