Another overnight blank
Here’s a true story. My regular night-time schedule consists of going to bed about 9.00pm, partly because I’m an early to bed and early to rise sort of guy. It’s also partly because I normally sleep for between four and five hours and get up again somewhere between midnight and 2.00am to ‘work’ until about 6.00am and then either go back to bed to get some more shut-eye or – if I cannot achieve that – potter about until 7.00am when the newspaper shop across the road opens and I can buy my daily newspapers.
This morning, however, having woken shortly before 1.00am, I could only spend 90 minutes reviewing the ‘serious’ newspaper websites because my broadband internet connection went down. After three re-boots of both my internet connection and my computer and no restoration of service, I faced the somewhat bleak option of either returning to bed and trying to get back to sleep, a somewhat unlikely goal because in the meantime I have drunk my normal two-thirds of a pint of expresso black coffee and thereby rendered myself not only wide awake but ‘buzzing’, or finding something else to do for a couple of hours until either (1) my internet connection can be bothered to return of its own accord as and when it feels like it, or (2) I become tired enough to … er … go back to bed and successfully get back to sleep.
Which is why I’m where I am now – at the computer, typing this draft blog in a Word document because there’s bugger-all else to do.
During my overnight 90 minutes of early morning research, as it happens trawling around the website of The Independent and then briefly (until the moment of the internet connection being lost) The Guardian, I must have read a dozen news stories, covering such items as Mrs May’s speech to the Scottish Conservative Party; the latest Trump doings; some US oil company’s admission that they are likely to face legal actions from conservation and climate change organisations for basically wrecking the planet; the news that Jose Mourinho has told injury-prone and disaffected defender Luke Shaw, whom he has added to the Man United squad to play Bournemouth, that one day he is going to be one of the great Man United players; a report upon the launch of the latest new version of the Sony Xperia smartphone; and a piece in The Independent by military commentator Patrick Cockburn suggesting that once ISIS has been beaten in the siege of Mosul it won’t be the end of the jihadist group because it will either splinter into factions that will probably begin fighting each other and/or switch to bombing Western targets from within.
Of that ‘mixed bag of opportunities’, for reasons I cannot quite identify but almost certainly include desperation on my part, I have alighted upon two topics of widely different nature and decided to draft something connecting them both to the small wider issue of where the hell the planet – and indeed humankind – is heading. [And yes, the proposition seems crazy but when you’re in the position I am currently, you cannot worry about mere bagatelles like that].
So here we go.
It seemed to me, as I went outside on my balcony about thirty minutes ago, that the human condition is a weird one precisely because one of its endearing fundamentals is our adventurous spirit and boundless desire to explore the extraordinary planet on which we live and the ever-expanding universe in which – comparatively – our vehicle is but the tiniest speck of dust.
That’s on the one hand.
On the other, at any moment in history (take today for example) the vast bulk of human beings on Earth, just like every other species, simply goes about its daily business trying to find enough to eat, or earn enough to buy similar, chat to its friends, get a roof over its head, attempt not to get into any conflict or argument, find time to relax somewhere in all this and maybe, just maybe, reflect upon the beauty of its surroundings and perhaps ponder upon what it might like to do tomorrow.
There’s something contradictory in the two.
Whenever I read some stunning new scientific discovery – last week, for example, NASA scientists announced that about 780,000 light years away they’ve found a sun with some seven planets orbiting it that have physical and chemical properties that just could sustain life not a million times different to ours – I suffer simultaneous reactions of “Wow, that’s amazing!” and “In all honesty, how many millions (or billions) or pounds has the US government spent – indeed wasted – finding out something which, whilst quite possibly of trivia interest to some, without doubt is of absolute zilch use to anyone, especially when about 75% of the world’s population is starving, there’s huge inequality and (if the climate change and ‘we’re wrecking the planet’ brigade are correct) we’re currently hell-bent upon an inevitable path to species, and quite possibly, planetary destruction?”
And then I remind myself that – if humans had harboured such thoughts 10,000 years ago, we’d probably be nowhere near the human society that we’ve reached today.
People I know routinely fly off to Mauritius on two weeks holidays without batting an eyelid, but if Magellan, Columbus, the Vikings and sundry others hadn’t at some point got off their behinds and decided to sail off into the unknown and spend years or even decades of their (at the time) average person’s lifespan of say 30 to 45 years for no other reason than to find out what the hell was there, no modern human would be going off on a far-off holiday (whether a ten-day package to Italy or some exotic upmarket exploration of Tibet) at all.
It’s the same with the latest Sony Xperia smartphone – which I only bothered to read about overnight because I happen to own an earlier version of this model myself.
I read overnight that the new sooper-dooper offering of the type (probably costing £300-£400 were I to choose to buy one) looks sensational with its mirror-clear screen and supposedly ‘must have’ break-through extraordinarily-detailed HD slo-mo camera.
But then I got to thinking.
Despite paying the full contractual whack on my (now out-of-date) Sony Xperia, at my stage of life and understanding of (or interest in) new technology, I actually use it only for phoning, texting and occasionally taking photographs, which is probably no more than 10% of the in-built capabilities it possesses.
Why on earth would I need a new version with a mirror-like screen and the ability to take the most advanced and exciting HD movies ever, especially when I’ve yet to record a single piece of moving footage on any smartphone I’ve ever owned?
That’s the message and thought behind my post today.
When humans are apparently destroying the planet at a record rate, we’re running out space to occupy and indeed the wherewithal to feed the world’s vast population, what the hell are we doing spending trillions of pounds in researching and developing ever-smarter phones, different means of transport (electric cars for example) and AI robots that will do all our simple manual, and indeed one day, much higher-end work than that?
Come to think of it, when you contemplate the fact that all human beings really need to cover themselves with in living a normal life in all weathers and situations is some form of regulation boiler-suit, why do we have (or even allow) a multi-billion pound fashion industry with its absurdities such as waif thin-like emaciated models poncing down cat-walks sporting ridiculously awful and impractical clothes, essentially solely in the cause of supporting a global lah-dee-dah army of arsty-fartsy hangers-on and loonies who are so far up themselves that it hurts to even look at them?
Why do we allow Ferraris, Porsches and Laborghinis – and all other luxury cars – to exist? They’re another total waste of money in the great scheme of things. You can drive around perfectly well in what amounts to a simple box on wheels if you want. All that money could be far better spent on GM crop research or indeed solving the UK’s housing crisis.
I know the answer that defenders of all these things would deploy:
Why do we do any of these things?
Because we can, that’s why.
And throughout history that notion – in other words, ‘Because we can’ or ‘Because it’s there’ and/or indeed ‘Because someone, somewhere, has had the creativity, audacity or ambition to think or dream of it’) has driven the overwhelming bulk of human developments.
Especially when just sitting on your backside, as I’ve been forced to do for the past hour or so, achieves practically nothing at all.
And that is particularly frustrating when the reason I’ve had to do it is because one of the great, wonderful, ‘adventurous’ scientific developments in human history has temporarily broken down.
