DAY ONE:
The secret diary etc, etc…..
What’s another word for secret ? Confidential perhaps.
Before I discuss these two words allow me to share something I wrote in the dark ages, the dark ages when the sun shone and it didn’t so do by way of a dumbo stupid smart-phone !
This Will Never Catch On – I Wish It
Hadn’t:
A computer can be said to possess artificial intelligence if it can mimic human responses under specific conditions. Who said that ? Alan Turing of Bletchley Park.
It was of course the Bletchley Park Mob that gave the world its first computer. Legend says that at the end of the war Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the codebreakers computer be destroyed so it did not fall into the hand of enemies. His plan did not work, every second of every day the enemies of Microsoft, Facebook and all the rest make billions ripping us all off.
The Open University held a one-day course pulling together different parts of the community in the then New City Of Milton Keynes. I was the education representative. A friend of mine was there on behalf of the police. His name was Alan, we sat together around a square of tables upon each was placed a giant computer monitor. Do you remember when computers used green lettering on a black background ? Such were these state of the art computers we were about to attack.
The professor began speaking, I can remember his words so clearly. “You may have heard of something called The World Wide Web.”
Had we ? British scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 (No America you did not invent the internet !) gave us The World Wide Web. So, I am assuming this all happened sometime in 1990.
“Well,” the professor continued, “I am going to teach you all how to send letters using the world wide web, communications we are calling electronic mail.”
We were all told how to make this extremely difficult and scientifically complex electronic letter system work. We were then told to send an electronic letter to the person sitting next to us, I tried and failed to send an electronic letter to Policeman Alan. Policeman Alan tried and failed to send a message to me. Everyone in the room tried and failed to send an electronic letter to anyone and everyone.
“I don't see the point,” I explained, “if I want to speak to someone I telephone them.”
“But what if they are not by the phone to answer you ?”
“At work I have a secretary and at home I have an answer machine.”
“But with electronic mail,” the professor defended, “you can attach a document.”
We had not, none of us, managed to send a single message saying HI to someone sitting next to us let alone attach a three-volume novel.
“Have you never heard of a fax machine ?” I said sarcastically. Everyone in the room save for the professor agreed with me.
How old are you reading this ? How many of you know what a fax machine is ? (Or was !) If you are under thirty then you were born into a world before the internet and what became e-mail overtook our lives. Jimmy Carter was elected to the White House in 1993 and left office in 2001. I remember him saying that when he became president there was no such thing as a website, when he left nobody could live without them. I wonder if there is a fax machine somewhere in The Science Museum.
“Have you never heard of a fax machine ?” I said sarcastically. Everyone in the room save the professor agreed with me. “Trust me, I added, this will never catch on !”
Unfortunately it did catch on. Today all these years after the invention of the world-wide-web life would be impossible without it. Perhaps that impossibility of life would be better than what we endure today.
The Royal Mail gives us first class post and second class post, both excellent services. That nonsense the professor at the Open University could not get we one-day students to make work was third class mail, no make that thirty-third class mail ! As e-mails come into our lives it is so easy to click and delete them without opening and reading a single word. They have become too routine to be of any importance. True e-mail is convenient and quick but for IMPORTANT matters the traditional letter faithfully processed by Royal Mail will never be replaced. I guess it probably will but I hope never in my lifetime.
Secret – Confidential. Allow me here explain two breaches of such I have experience today.
Doing some shopping at a much respected local retailer there was a discount deal if I signed up for its loyalty card. In the dark ages pre-internet nobody would have known what one of these was and fortunately for society nobody would have wanted one if such existed.
Anyway…………….
The kind lady manning, or should that be womanning, the till began asking me for information ready to issue me with a loyalty card. She only asked me for a couple of details before the computer filled in everything else. All she then had to do was to check the breach of confidentiality was not incorrect.
As a silly old man aged almost seventy-five that experience was quite normal. If you are sixteen and three quarters or one, two, three, perhaps four decades on top of that number I can hear you saying that’s quite normal so where’s the problem ? When I was sixteen and three quarters, no internet of course, had a person’s private information been stolen and available for anyone who chose to access it that would have been a national scandal and headlined across all the press.
Now for my next moan.
The Internet – commonly called on-line. Back in 1967 on-line was where you hung your washing.
I vote in elections by post rather than physically attend a voting station. It is time for me to renew my vote and confirm my details. Using the details the system had I received a letter telling me to go on-line and do whatever I had to do. There was then an instruction: If you do not use the internet you can complete your renewal by e-mail. DOH ! Since when has the electronic mail system I rambled about earlier not been a part of the internet !
So I
am not a fan of the internet. That’s not strictly correct. I am not a fan of
the way people use the internet, hacking data and not being able to look far
beyond the end of their noses. Ah ! Most noses today are not far away from the
screen of a dumbo stupid smart-phone ! I
am pleased to say I do not own one.
www.maxrobinsonwriter.com
