Hang a Door, Not Yourself

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Sometimes it's difficult to get started on this self-imposed daily task of mine; not that I am short of potential material: I'm surrounded by a world of pain, confusion, political ineptitude and greed. The news is a constant source of angst: one would imagine that the Weltschmerz would move one into a state of moral confusion precipitating a rictus stasis of total inaction, like a rabbit caught in the proverbial headlights, unable to move. Nah, feck it, as they say in Ireland: me no rabbit. Having said that, there is so much to complain about the nature of this so-called 'modern world' that it's difficult to know where to begin. Considering the current Prime Minister's obsession with AI as the Golden Dawn of the new future - it's not - it's instructive to know that the most basic of 'intelligent' automated interactions such as search filters still fail to come up to scratch, even on reputable and long-standing websites.

I am searching for a decent replacement for our current car; a task that should prove relatively easy, given the apparent plethora of tech affordances on offer. But even a major specialist site's search throws up the most egregious bollocks: I input that I want to search within a radius of no more than fifty miles of my home location, and I am presented with cars on sale in fecking Ealing, ferchrissakes: I live in North Wales. Please. It's not rocket science or brain surgery. It's not even basic bloody carpentry in tech terms; and yet it goes on. I'm afraid if the future is supposedly the implementation of artificial 'intelligence', and it's then delivered in such a half-assed and illiterate manner as most of our 'public-serving' tech is currently, then we really might as well put our heads between our knees and kiss our arses goodbye, folks.

I seem to remember a world in which, though the world itself was imperfect, stuff simply kind of worked OK in a grudgingly, mundane sort of way. But then I have been around a long time, so the perspective of experience should be taken into consideration. The question remains, however: "Who's the dinosaur here?". Sometimes, bleeding edge thinking is more retrogressive than it's proponents often imagine, and the prosaic, even stolid approach yields far more progressive outcomes than so-called 'blue-sky' thinking. Genius lies in the theft of and repurposing of existing ideas that no-one else knows what do do with. It's a thing, and the current crop of wet-behind-the-ears politicians should pay heed  to the lesson of Harold Wilson's 1960's  '...white-heat of technology...' non-revolution: another example of a middle-aged man beguiled by a futurism pedalled by ivory-tower young techies offering more than they could ever possibly deliver. Favour the carpenter is all I have to say: AI can't hang doors or repair chairs. Nuff said for today...

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