If you’re reading this then you must have arrived here by mistake. This page is the human readable version of a 404 content missing page. If you persist and read on then I must warn you that there really is nothing worthwhile of note or of any interest to you dear reader. If you are persisting however, the following is an account of the trials and tribulations (does anyone know what a tribulation is?) of a local resident of Greenford, who is located in west London, the south east of England, the northern hemisphere of the globe which we fondly call the earth, about the third planet (yes, I think that’s right) along from our nearest (and most precious star) the sun (without which I probably wouldn’t be here and you probably wouldn’t be reading this) , on the spiral arm of the milky way, slowly moving away and apart from the other galaxies, since the beginning (literally) i.e. the big bang.

Ok enough of the geography, this blog is a somewhat meandering collection of work that seems to have piled up in my bedroom (and for those with extremely short memories, that’s located in a house in Greenford, west London, south east England etc etc.) and seems to be gathering dust (as I’m not particularly fond of dusting). In brief, although you may find that my interpretation of brief is somewhat loosely applied, what I present here dear reader/viewer (as there are also photos as you may have well observed if you had a keen eye (actually, if you didn’t have a eye (keen or not) you probably wouldn’t be reading this.) is the corpus (quite dead I assure you) of work that I have slowly produced to idle away my time. I’ve been taking photographs since a child/teenager so I’m quite proficient. Sadly due to illness, there was a long period where I didn’t pursue the craft. If you cut a tree and look at its cross section, you can see its growth rings. Some years the weather has been more conducive to growth and the ring is wider and in other years, the weather has been more adverse and and the ring is subsequently thinner. I think that life is like that. You grow more in some years than others. And when sometimes it’s particularly challenging, perhaps you retreat altogether.

A little about myself, actually, that’s a bit of a white lie, this blog is after all dedicated to me, therefore I shall be devoting the entire blog to talking about myself and it will be interminably long. Now would be a good time to go and make a cup of very strong coffee before you proceed any further.

In verbose (as opposite to in brief), I’m a medically trained, photographer, artist, computer musician, writer, inventor, user interface designer, undergraduate software engineer and centaur. I think that’s about it. Got it? Capiche? Comprende? Parle vous Anglais? The centaur bit probably needs a bit of explaining if you’re not up to speed with current events in human evolution. A centaur was a mythical creature who (it?) was half man and half goat. I am in the same vein, the first of a generation of human centaurs. I’m welded to my computer. The hypothesis is that a man (read s/he) with a computer will far excel and exceed the capabilities of a human or machine alone. The first is because humans simply cannot do what machines can in terms of processing instructions. The second is although machines are intelligent in that they are capable of solving complex and sophisticated problems, they still need a human to program and operate them. They also at present have no free will (and consciousness at present) and will sit idly unless prompted.

Examples of centaurs:

man and a desktop calculator

man and a car (a car is a machine after all)

any situation where men control machines to produce an outcome e.g. manufacturing

Any human endeavour where computers are used / relied upon we can think of that as a collaboration between man and machine. A modern washing machine has an embedded processor to control it. So rather than washing clothes by hand we use a machine, therefore there is this association between man and machine. Going to the other extreme, the latest fighter jets have sophisticated computers and software running to control them. Completely separate you might think but the underlying process is the same. Man associating with and using a machine to achieve an outcome.

With the the rise of artificial intelligence more tasks commonly done by humans alone are going to be done by humans and machines together or exclusively by machines. Artificial intelligence is a general term to describe intelligence that is artificial i.e. man made. Intelligence is defined as the ability to solve problems. So a calculator is intelligent as it can add 1+1 together. It is not however conscious and does not have any thoughts of its own. Artificial intelligence is the general term. The actual method i.e. the technique by which artificial intelligence is realized is by a process called machine learning. Here large amounts of data is fed to a computer running sophisticated algorithms and the computer is trained using that data set. For example in the development of facial recognition technology, large numbers of images of faces are fed into computer and the computer is trained to recognise them. Mining is becoming automated. The manufacturing process is becoming automated. The supply chain eg Amazon and Ocado (an online supermarket) is automated. Cars are becoming automated. The whole process from extraction of raw materials to manufacturing of products to distribution to the end user is / will become highly automated. Where does that leave the human? Well jobs in these areas will change to the role of overseeing the machines which do the time consuming and heavy lifting tasks. We will be lifted from doing routine, onerous tasks by robots. A washing machine is actually a robot. So is a normal car. It’s just that robots are becoming autonomous, being able to act of their own accord. I assume that for instance as staff are relieved of the duty of food preparation in a restaurant, they can be refocused to the service of the customer.

Perhaps new industries will emerge ie the manufacture and service of robots that become more pervasive / widespread within society. Perhaps we will become freed of onerous, repetitive jobs to pursue more rewarding creative endeavours. There is the possibility of mass unemployment and if that occurs, society will have to address it. The concept of a universal living allowance may need to be considered.

We have had an industrial revolution over the past hundred years. People have moved from working on the land to working in factories and cities have grown. Now industry is becoming autonomous. The human element will still be present to oversee but in much smaller numbers.