london 10.20am 14.4C cloudybright monday 2017
last night i was watching electric dreams, on tv, a series of adaptations of philip k dick’s short stories. he was the author of the story that blade runner is based on as well as many other film adaptations. i was thinking it is a very depressing future he is writing about. he seems to like talking about artificial intelligence, as many of his stories involve robots of advance intelligence going wrong.
i have noticed i have become rather disturbed about the future from seeing all these doom laden films, which makes me realise they are not good for me. and this happens to me even though i am not a film fan, and hardly watch films. how much more must it affect someone whose hobby is watching films and is immersed in it.
but just this morning i got a feed from my wordpress reader, showing up this article. about future predictions and how they would destroy jobs by replacing them with robots. and he is saying it wont happen that easily… something i suspect myself but based on just my gut feeling, but he has used more logic to support his thesis. it makes me feel much better about the future.
one thing he said did strike me as am astute observation of these futuristic films…. he said in all those futuristic films , they only introduce one thing new… like for eg he said in bicentennial man, only the man- like robot , played by robin williams was new, everything else the actors did , was like it is happening today…for eg, reading a newspaper!! even now i dont read the newspaper for my news, i go online, and this is me, who is very slow when it comes to keeping up with the technology. so i can well imagine a future where no one reads the papers anymore.
the scene in the arnold swartzenegger film total recall, where he was shown watching a wall size tv screen and getting his news from there is more likely.
and the article goes on to say that is not what is going to happen in real life. long before we have such a man- like robot, we would have various stages of machines that will creep up on us, so that if we finally have robots indistinguishable from humans we would long ago have familiarised ourselves with them, and not consider them unusual and/ or fear them.
another article in the guardian, that same wordpress reader features it which shows how some of the inventors of all this digital inventions we are getting are wary of it enough to ban their kids from using it too much. the article is saying technology is taking over our minds, changing it. it seems to me future generations will have their minds changed and most probably changed to accept technology and machines helping them more and more in their lives, so that the idea of machines taking over their lives , and making it much easier , would be a common place and not a source of anxiety… and they would most probably laugh at us now being so afraid of robots taking over the world and killing people.
what i find more disturbing though is that gps has become such a pervading force all over our modern world, so much so that a lot of our modern conveniences rely on it. it is all made possible by satellites placed strategically in space to relay the data … and that i think is the danger. it would be easy for some phenomenon, perhaps a solar flare to put them out of action, and where will we be then? if all our modern life depands on gps to function?
added. i read a few days ago that prof thaler had won the nobel prize in economics. at that time, i did not think much of it, as i have no idea what he does. but this article says he is the founder of nudge economics. what makes us spend, or chose one thing over another…
alifesgayventure 
My lil red dot is embarking so quickly on becoming a smart nation. We have apps to pay for parking, hawker food and soon robots as care givers. If I don’t keep up..I am finished. GPS helps me so much in showing how to drive to any given location. Street directories are defunct. Moving too quickly is the IT world that I worry the credit card becomes obsolete soon! Not comfortable with E banking and E payments as hackers abound. Sigh!
cashless payments will be very widespread i think. that will overtake credit card transactions in my opinion. though i dont use it preferring cash… as for E banking, i have been with my internet bank for years and years and no trouble at all. it is first direct, it is the convenience that i like , i can do all my banking at home, online, no more queueing at the bank thank goodness. as long as u use your own home secure wifi, when u log on to the bank, it should be secure.
though i have used local wifi when i was in malaysia to do the banking and it is fine. i think as long as u use a password protected home wifi, ( that my nephews subscribe to) , and not a public one you should be ok.
wah, even the hawkers in singapore are taking apps payments? no handling of grubby coins and notes then by the same person who handles the food and the cash. … hygiene will be better. though no one had died from that so maybe the germs are not that dangerous. and it is just a false perception of hygiene that puts on a show of it to appease the more fussy customers.