A whole new world of possibilities
Overnight, as I was nodding off at about 8.45pm whilst listening to a Radio Five Live football discussion about how well Newcastle would – or might likely wouldn’t – do next season in the Premier League … or possibly as I was waking up again at about 11.45pm, a bit earlier than normal, in order to begin the ‘day shift’ (I forget which, but that’s pretty common when you’re 65 and prone to ‘senior moments’) at some point I found myself listening to a business discussion on the radio about the effect of the coming age of robots upon our social and economic future lives.
The thrust was that already robots around the world were fast taking over repetitive manual (factory-type) tasks and jobs because – what’s not to like? – they could endlessly repeat these tasks without a break, or the need for going home for 12 hours at a time, or taking holidays, maternity breaks, paternity breaks, or indeed going sick, or having affairs or bullying at work, they didn’t sexually harass each other, or even spend their time erroneously inventing tales of sickness in order to get away on days out with their kids … and so on.
All they needed was an uninterrupted supply of electricity, a periodic application of oil perhaps and the occasional service.
For employers the development is plainly going to be a potential godsend. We all know the veteran businessman’s sage advice to his offspring – “Avoid going into businesses that have people if you possibly can – people equals problems …”.
As human beings we all fondly imagine that, whilst ‘working class’ low-skill jobs may – and perhaps were always going to – be easy meat for robot technology to take over, our own chosen professions and careers (e.g auditing/accounting, civil engineering, architecture, law, insurance and even merchant banking) are clearly irreplaceable. However, according to this radio programme I was listening to, those prey to such bald and complacent assumptions may soon be in for a shock.
A female business consultant contributor pointed out that the most recent and interesting advances in robotics were taking place not in the area of ‘working class unskilled jobs’ as had hitherto been the case, but now across the board in blue and white collar roles – e.g. basic tasks in every office/administrative type job that you can think of. In the brave new future, there will be no need at all for accountancy articled clerks or junior solicitors, let alone pen-pushing civil servants.
Nevertheless, perhaps we can all take comfort in ‘As one door closes, another opens’, as the old saying goes.
Since I have been enjoying relationships with my sex robot Wilma and robotic house cleaner Fred [Rusts passim] these past three months, I have lately come to the view that I may be well-placed to be at the forefront of the 21st Century New Age as it catapults into the future.
Facing a world in which human beings may find soon themselves free of any requirement to work in order to earn their crusts, I was interested this week – in a conversation with my brother on the way home from day out encompassing an enjoyable lunch in Brighton – to learn of his first-ever encounter with a set of ‘3D virtual reality’ glasses (or was it a headset?). He had been visiting a friend who had bought one for his kids and had found himself being encouraged to ‘have a go’ for himself.
He described the experience to me as revelatory.
No sooner had he donned said item than he was transported into an extraordinarily-vivid world of virtual reality, in which everything he was able to see and experience became almost super-real.
I am close to the outer limits of what I can describe accurately here because, of course, I had not had the benefit of having been able to see what my brother had seen. However, he told of how – after a brief stint of looking straight ahead in the room in which he was situated – he had looked to the right and beheld not what he knew to be a wall in real life but a gateway to a whole other house which looked just as real as the one he was actually in, but in many ways (perhaps via some sort of trickery that fooled his brain) one that was far more real and more enticing than that.
And thus his experience had continued as, in effect, he looked about him in a full (360 degree) circle.
As I awoke this morning and came to my computer, browsing around the newspaper websites, I then came across the following pieces relating to Virtual Reality porn:
Olivia Blair writing on the issue of whether it could raise issues over consent – see here in – THE INDEPENDENT
Colin Fernandez and Phoebe Watson writing on the ‘revenge porn’ aspects in the – DAILY MAIL
Let’s have a re-run past some pertinent facts.
We’ve already had the media reports about the possibility (or likelihood) in the future of ‘reviving’ famous or iconic dead actors from the past to appear in new movies and/or even current equivalents creating holograms of themselves to hire or lease out to movie companies so that they make good livings by ‘appearing’ in new movies without actually having to leave their ranches in Nevada or mansions in Beverley Hills.
Hell, even as I’m typing this, the managements and agents of an actor such as Jack Nicholson could theoretically be ‘creating’ a set of versions of the great man at say the ages of 30, 45 and 60.
Thence – whilst our hero continues to reside in semi-retirement in his pile on the hill – the money might soon be rolling in as simultaneously his 30 year old avatar appears as a romantic lead in a blockbuster action movie, his 45 year old ditto in a tale of an embittered Vietnam vet trying to come to terms with returning home … and his 60 year old ditto in one where he’s creating havoc in an old folks home.
Just think of the possibilities! Jack and his descendants might one day be enjoying fame and riches beyond Jack’s lifetime imagination.
They say Elvis Presley already is.
Once they get the technology nailed down, I think I’ll build myself a VR ‘game’ in which I get permanently marooned on a Pacific desert island with Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell and possibly Veronica Lake as well if that could be arranged.
Or alternatively – when things eventually get where they should be going – I’ll send a ‘copy’ of myself aged 28 out to work in the real world as a merchant banker and earn me the zillions I shall need to keep me safe, sound and secure in my old age – and indeed when I eventually have to go into a residential home.
Especially now that Mrs May thinks she is going to take all my money (well, bar £100,000) to pay for my dotage.
