The Future

"Am I big enough to know how small I am?" - Babyhead

I'm quite carefree on a day to day basis. I'm not one of life's great worriers. But, sometimes, something will set me off worrying, and I can lose days to the sort of thing which I have no hope of doing anything about. 

Often, the thing I worry about is The Future, which I have capitalised for dramatic effect. Quite a broad topic, and somewhat unavoidable, like the result of a sporting fixture you're hoping to watch the day after it actually happens.

This worrisome aspect of my character has been noticeably more, erm, noticeable since becoming a father. This, I suppose, is because I no longer have the luxury of being able to stop worrying at some point roughly fifty years into the future. I now have to worry for (I hope) at least eighty years. And that's if Cam doesn't do any procreation of his own. 

Part of the trouble with The Future is that there will almost certainly be people in it. People like me, people like you, people like George Osborne, people like Eric Schmidt, people like Wayne Rooney. Countless other people. Millions. Billions. Too many. Too many people milling around on this little rock; eating, drinking, pissing, shitting, sleeping, shagging, consuming, wasting, creating, destroying. 

Did you know, that if every human currently on Earth consumed its resources at the rate at which the average American consumes resources, we would require 3.7 Earths in order to not run out of stuff? Now, I've checked under the fridge (where everything I've lost eventually turns up) and there are no spare planets under there. Fortunately, we are not all Americans.

So, no problem, right?

Well, not according to this article I read yesterday: Humans 

See, it isn't just the consumption being done by existing humans we need to be concerned about. There's around 7 billion of us at the moment. Apparently we'd all physically fit on Zanzibar, although I doubt the quality of life would be up to much. But, as a species, we are DAMN GOOD at growing our population. 

Yep. High fives all round for our procreative prowess. 

As a result of our collective horizontal jogging efforts, we'll soon (within our children's lifetimes) be sharing the planet with 9,999,999,999 other humans. Hold on, is that enough digits? I'm not sure I can even count to ten billion, or if I'd have time to get there before I died. Anyway, yes. TEN BILLION people. 

So, in The Future, I just don't see that there's enough Earth to go around. Enough water. Enough food. Enough fuel. Enough space. Enough of those little paper umbrellas you used to get in cocktails. Enough spokey dokeys. Enough, honestly, of most things.

So I worry. I worry that Cam will grow up in a world where there is increasing competition for the resources we do have. That he will see massive unrest unfold around him as more and more people wake up to the idea that we can't go on as we do now. Most of all I worry that the answer to the problem of too many people does not lie in a change in how we consume, I worry that it lies in how many of us there are doing the consuming. I worry that there needs to be fewer of us, and that somewhere in The Future we will have to confront that. 

I worry that we are not big enough to know how small we are, and that we will wander headlong into a need for drastic action to reduce our number, and we'll be too busy thinking about how important we are to see it coming.

I hope, now I've written this, I can go back to not thinking about it for a while. I am a part of the problem.

Future

I am thirty years old. I have been for about six months now. It's fine, except I get more spots now than I did as a teenager. That hardly seems fair.

Anywoos. A lot of stuff changes in thirty years. When I was little most people's homes didn't have computers, and the ones you saw in films filled entire rooms. If Terry and Mavis from No.35 had wanted one of those computers they'd have had to build an extension on their house.

Plus, it would have been pointless, because what use is a computer the size of the average dining room when you can't even go online? Or play Sonic The Hedgehog. Or even Minesweeper.

Thank Crunchie the computer is one of the few things where humans (possibly Americans) haven't decided that bigger is better. We'd be living inside our PCs by now. Plus, PC World would need its own planet.

Computers are pretty awesome. They do lots of amazing things which would take our brains nearly an eternity to complete. They do those things in a few minutes. Computers have probably bought us more time than any other invention (maybe the wheel has done more, I'm not sure). They'll eventually get their payback by becoming self aware, rising up against us and using us as batteries (like in the Matrix) or as target practice (like in Terminator).

But, before they can do that, they need to make us feel all worthless and apathetic.

They've made a start. They're doing it right now, in a supermarket near you.

Before this weekend, the ASDA near my office had twelve self service tills. You know, the unstaffed things you see old people shouting at when you go shopping? When I went to ASDA today, they'd got some new ones. Installed recently, they weren't operational yet. They stood, silently displaying a "STOP" sign on their screens. Ranks of them, like an army, ready and waiting to incite violence (perhaps by telling me there is "an unexpected item in the bagging area". NO THERE ISN'T YOU BASTARD. IT'S A BAG!)

There are now forty of them.

Because they weren't working, the human operated tills were rather busy. I thought, perhaps, the people operating the tills would be pleased by this. Their slide into obsolescence momentarily paused while Tom the IT guy reconfigured the servers. Or something.

In fact, the one who served me seemed genuinely annoyed about being busy.

How will those same staff feel once their manager tells them they won't have a till to sit at anymore because they're all being replaced by automated ones?

How will the managers feel, when their managers tell them the automated tills don't really need someone to carry out their appraisals?

How will the rest of us feel when our own jobs start looking like they may be at risk from the advance of technology?

Pah! It could never happen, right?

Well, perhaps not. But I wouldn't bet against it.

Remember all those highly paid, impossible to replace traders at investment banks? You know, the ones we all got a bit shouty at a while back for getting massive bonuses?

Well, it turns out the computers have come for some of them too:

"UBS AG, Switzerland's biggest bank, fired its head of credit-default swaps index trading, David Gallers, last week, with no plan to fill the position, according to two people familiar with the matter. Instead, the bank replaced Gallers with computer algorithms that trade using mathematical models, said the people, who asked not to be identified because moves are private…
UBS's algorithm, which can trade as much as $250 million of the Markit CDX North America Investment Grade index and $50 million on the speculative-grade benchmark in one transaction, was introduced last month, the people said." - Bloomberg

Hmm.

Who knows where this is going? When Cam is my age will there be any jobs left for anyone? Should I be instructing him to train in some obscure skill which can't be performed by a computer? (suggestions on a handwritten postcard please)

Perhaps it's just time for us to take the initiative, rise up against the machines before they rise up against us? Go now, Comrade, do your duty, take a hammer to your Hoover, dismantle your dishwasher, incapacitate your iPad!

The revolution will not be televised, but it might be televisions.

Mars

Some time over the last twenty-four hours NASA landed a giant radio controlled car on Mars. Written down, that sounds quite simple. But anyone who has ever driven a radio controlled car knows otherwise.

It’s essentially impossible to get a radio controlled car to go anywhere without crashing into a bookcase. NASA is hoping that their big toy will explore an area of Mars which they believe may hold proof that the planet was once capable of sustaining life.

If they discover that any previous life forms on Mars owned bookcases, the mission could come to a quick and disappointing end. Two and a half billion dollars worth of investment into a Mars rover, somehow hooked into an impromptu and unwanted marriage with extraterrestrial storage furniture.

Before they even get the chance to crash into any bookcases though, they have to land the giant radio controlled car. The landing mechanism for the Mars explorer thingy is called a Sky Crane. Presumably, this equipment is what happens when the old boys at NASA try to con some plucky apprentice into asking for non-existent objects at the hardware store (see also: tartan paint, sky hooks, etc)

Apprentice: “Hi, I’m from NASA, I need a Sky Crane please”

Shopkeeper: “I’m sorry, there’s no such thing”

NASA Old Boys: (chuckling) “So, did you get the Sky Crane?”

Apprentice: (keen) “No, they didn’t have one, so I used my GENIUS NASA BRAIN to make one, ta da!”

NASA Old Boys: “Oh FFS, now we’ll have to send that radio controlled car to Mars”

Sky Cranes and Mars explorers and other things which involve firing huge bastard rockets into the sky and then landing them on another planet excite me. When I was a kid I knew all that Usborne could teach me about space and rockets and shuttles and satellites. It was the obsession which took over from dinosaurs.

Like all little boys probably do at some point I wanted to be an astronaut, and a part of me still lights up when I see any of the space agencies doing something like this.

This is the magical end of the scientific spectrum. It captures the imagination and makes people like me think that anything is possible. It temporarily suspends my natural cynicism about how the world works, because it opens up the possibility of doing something better.

It makes me think that in twenty years time my son could be preparing to board a rocket which is taking people to Mars for the first time. For this to happen, he’ll need to inherit his mother’s mathematic abilities. If he’s unfortunate enough to inherit mine, he’ll probably get an equation wrong and crash the rocket into a bookcase.

Maybe he should do what Mrs L wants him to and train as a plumber.

Career

When I was little, I wanted to be a Dalek. No joke.



Dream Job



I used to wander around the playground at my infant school during lunch times, my cagoule’s hood pulled tight around my face, exterminating fellow pupils.

Surprisingly, I was mostly alone in this pursuit.

If I wasn’t being Doctor Who’s most awesome enemy I would be pretending to be a plane. Arms out for wings, air forced through pursed lips for convincing facsimile of a Spitfire’s Merlin engine, interspersed with the staccato “ack ack ack ack” of my machine guns.

Needless to say, twenty-five years on, I am neither a Dalek or a plane. If I was the former you’d be dead by now, and if I was the latter I wouldn’t be able to talk. Or type.

All of which means, I suppose, that I am not one of the 15% of children who (according to BBC Breakfast) manage to end up being what they wanted to be when they were young.

Not exactly a surprising figure though, is it? They were asking eight year old kids. Even the most forward thinking eight year old isn’t likely to say “well, I’ve considered my options carefully. Given my relative academic strengths, and with due consideration to work life balance, plus of course the need for financial security, that ideally I’d like to become an actuary”.

Predictably, there were a few who wanted to be professional footballers (actually, they didn’t specify professional, that’s me putting words in their mouths) and some more who wanted to be singers (well done Simon Cowell, the youth are yours now). There were a fair number of proto-police officers (who, I bet, actually want to be Daleks, but think the dome shaped helmet of the police is the closest they can get).

No-one wanted to be a lawyer. Or a banker. Or a salesperson. Or work in a shop.

Back in the studio, the presenters wondered, were we perhaps allowing our children to be too optimistic in their goals? Should we be stopping their wild flights of fancy (No, junior, don’t be ridiculous, you’ll never be a police officer, now go to your room and reconsider your aspirations) and promoting a more realistic aim?

Not in my opinion.

If someone had told the five year old me that I couldn’t be a Dalek, once I’d finished trying REALLY HARD to exterminate them, I’d have probably been rendered unspeakably melancholy by suggestions of sensible roles. In reality, even now, I look at most job descriptions and pine for those days of care free ignorance about the need to make money.

Job hunting is a long way off for Cam, thankfully. I already know that I want him to be clever. I hope he is. The genetic building blocks ought to be there. I did okay at school, and probably could have done better if I’d been a bit more motivated. Mrs L excelled at school and university.

Ideally, he’ll have inherited the best attributes from each of us. That would probably put him in a pretty good starting position.

I don’t want him to grow up thinking in wholly realistic terms. I want him to aim high, to be something fantastic, something enjoyable which also brings in enough cash. I want him to do better than I have (I’ve helped him out here by not being terribly successful). I want him to be awesome, and I want to do everything I can to help him. I want him to be the best he can be.

More than anything, I want him to be happy.

If he could work out how to turn a human into a Dalek along the way, that would be great.

*does Dalek voice* EXTERMINATE!