A Much Needed Paradigm Shift in Our Working Life

I finally got round to watching I Robot… I know I’m like so two thousand and late. I enjoyed the film and didn’t dwell on any obvious flaws like I often find myself doing with films nowadays, but one thing stuck with me. If robots start to take all the unskilled jobs, what will the unskilled workers do? Is it crazy to think that in 5 years robots will be emptying bins, delivering parcels, and cooking for us? I think it is unlikely. But what isn’t crazy is that computer software will be eliminating certain jobs. As software gets more powerful, easier to use, and accessible then the need for certain mid-level employment goes down. Why employ a translator when google translate or this can do a pretty good job? Why hire an accountant when you have user-friendly accountant software to do the sums for a fraction of the cost? Over two years ago, a robot made a scientific discovery by creating a hypothesis, testing it, and drawing valuable conclusions. Science has long been the pursuit of the educated - an education that isn’t cheap, especially if jobs are taken by machines willing to work 24 hours a day for no pay.

I think mass unemployment will be the defining problem of the 21^st century and I think technology will play a large role. More and more jobs are becoming unnecessary due to technology coming on heaps and bounds and replacing our feeble minds and bodies. One example is this website – I designed and made it myself. This was unthinkable 10 years ago unless I was a computer programmer. Now it just took a bit of reading, a bit of patience, and a small amount of money for the domain. I didn't pay a human directly for anything.

Surely this new technology is creating jobs as well, right? Well yes. But it is creating a fraction of the jobs it is eliminating. There is no point looking to the industrial revolution and blindly saying that technology creates as many jobs as it takes away. The industrial revolution led to machines doing the heavy lifting. This current technological revolution will lead to machines doing the heavy thinking. The will have the technical knowhow and precise ability to perform tasks that have long been only capable in highly trained humans. The jobs that will be created will be highly skilled that let’s face it, not everyone can manage. They take years of training and many years of experience before you can start earning. Will future jobs be for the highly trained and highly driven? The simple jobs are taken by machines and people in poverty, who can't afford to educate themselves for 5 years because they need to look after their family, will simply be left with nothing they can do.

If we don’t do something drastic to halt this decline in jobs then what will happen? Business output will stay the same even though businesses sack their employees, replacing them with tech, while reducing their cost. The business owners will be making more and more profits. This means, if the trend continues, that a smaller proportion of the population will be earning while more are left in unemployment. It is going to be a real social issue. People unemployed will feel worthless and bored while taking handouts from the government. The employed people will feel angry at the unemployed people for taking more of their hard-owned money by increased tax rates. It’s a wealth gap that will be growing larger over this century and tension will grow with it.

The solution?

One way to manage this issue of growing unemployment is to reduce working hours and ban overtime. This will delay the inevitable decline in employment brought on by technology and other factors, as well as spreading the wealth around (shocking idea I know!). Currently we are supposed to have a maximum working week of 48 hours in the EU. I know people working 90 hour weeks in London. According to figures from Labour Force Survey Summer Quarter 2011, in the UK alone, we are doing over 2 billion UNPAID hours of work a year. This equates to ONE MILLION full time jobs. I spoke of sharing the wealth around but what I really mean is a redistribution of work.

The average working week in the UK in 2011 was 42.7 hours, up from 41.4 hours in 2008 (these values do not include unpaid overtime btw). An increase of 1.3 hours in the last 3 economically uncertain years. I don’t blame workers for this. They are forced into working harder and doing unpaid overtime for fear of losing their job to one of the 2.6 million currently unemployed people. That unemployment number could be reduced by 38% if everyone refused to do unpaid overtime. The number could be lowered further if the maximum allowed working week was fewer than 48 hours a week.

This would mean that the current working population would have more free time and the unemployed would find work. But surely hiring more people to do the same amount of work would cost more money and take more work hours? Sure it would. But the reduced amount of people on government handouts would decrease so tax could be lowered. If the government gave tax breaks to companies that hired more people for less time, then they would not lose money. The current employed people wouldn’t lose money either by working fewer hours because they would also pay less tax. A tax policy that stated “if a company decreases its working week to fewer than 25 hours for every employee and hired at least 35% more staff then they will receive a tax credit. These employees would also receive tax relief for working shorter hours.” This sort of taxing could be used as a financial incentive to encourage companies to adopt a shorter working week until it became commonplace. I can’t see a flaw in my suggestion, can you?

Maybe I am oversimplifying people’s greed because of my own lack of financial ambition. But then maybe the people that will choose to work at these companies that encourage shorter working hours will share the same values as me. The belief that money isn’t everything and having more time with family and friends is a happier way to spend our lives. I would take a pay cut to work an engineering job for 25 hours a week, where I would still be given a similar amount of work but just had to be more efficient with my work time. This sort of employment could lead to a cultural shift where perhaps money isn’t the driving force in most people’s lives. I strongly believe that a shorter working week is what is needed for our society to grow, both economically and socially.

Also what about the people struggling to make ends meet while they work 40 hours plus a week? I think it is clear that a fairer waging structure lowering the disparity between top earners and low earners is needed. 1 in 5 people in the UK earn less than the Living Wage. Are these huge companies that pay their workers this pittance victimised by our government by a higher tax bill? No. They are likely to pay no tax or very little tax, as they have the accountants to worm their way out of it. I'm boycotting Starbucks for one. These huge companies ripping off their employees and our tax system are the real scroungers in this country, not people on welfare. If companies like Starbucks paid more then it wouldn't be financially viable to stay on benefits rather than working.

A reduction in living costs in the UK is also something that needs serious consideration. Unfortunately we are in an arms race of sorts with each other at the moment. People are working longer and harder but are paying more money for houses and rent. If we restricted working hours, we would need the government to force a drop in house prices and rent costs. I believe the second home being used as an investment has driven house and rent prices to unsustainable levels and it needs to be lowered by government laws. Unfortunately the law makers will probably have at least two houses so it isn't in their best interest to consider this. A lot of people would find this difficult, as their pension pot shrinks, but not as difficult as it will be in 30 years when the unemployed revolt because there simply isn’t enough work to go around. The riots in the UK in 2011 will look like a picnic compared with what could be coming.

Another idea to consider is that if technological increases are really causing unemployment then how about taxing the technology? For every job lost by a computer, the equivalent amount of government handout given to that newly unemployed person should be taken from that business by tax. This would be a novel way of sharing the wealth created by massive companies that only have a minimal human work force but thousands of machines. Perhaps it is too soon for such a drastic measure as this would surely slow innovation, but I don’t see this as an unworkable solution in the long term.

Why do we need a paradigm shift? We need a change to the basic assumptions of work, such as the 40 hour week. A change in people's perception of what a fair minimum wage is. We need to consider that accumulating possessions and buying new things because we can is not going to bring happiness, and shouldn't be the ultimate aim of our society. We have technology so let's use it and improve it to help us cut back on our work. When we went from a 60 hour working week to a 40 hour one, the industry experts thought it would be an end to progression and cause massive problems. It didn't. We adapted, we had more family time, and leisure industries grew. It's time we rejected the 40 hour week.

I have outlined what I believe may be the biggest economic issue of this century and how we can go about solving it. I honestly think I could write another 2000 words on the subject, however a lot of it has been said before, and until we listen to top economist’s advice (who suggest a 20 hour working week!) I feel I am wasting my time. This TED video talks about the loss of employment due to robots, albeit with a more positive spin. Thanks for reading.

Teleception

This is all about a mild health affliction I have been suffering from for the last few years and how I came about solving it with the help of TV. I had bad skin on my left hand that was red, reptile-like, and small blisters would swell up and become full of puss. I know, I’m a heart throb right!? I haven’t been using krokodil either.

The strange thing is that when I was travelling, the skin affliction completely healed up. It had been terrible in Korea and I had gone to a dermatologist and been diagnosed with Pompholyx, which sounds like a Bjork album not a type of eczema. But as soon as I left Korea, it healed up quickly and within a couple of weeks, it looked like I had never had this condition that had been troubling me for over 5 years.

I came back from travelling and within a couple of weeks, the rash had returned and I was itchy as hell again. I put it down to stress, even though I felt entirely relaxed. It was like there was a fire on my hand and the only way to put it out was to scratch the flames away. Unfortunately this just ripped the skin, which led to infection and more swelling. It was a scratch-22.

And then the moment happened. I was sitting on my bed looking at my hand, when an idea just popped in there. There were only two things that I had been using for many years that I did not take travelling: my electric toothbrush and my weight lifting gloves. At that moment, I became Hugh Laurie in House. All the pieces of the puzzle came together to solve the mystery affliction that had been troubling me for so long. It was blatantly obvious – I had been a fool to never realise it before. If Wilson had been there, I would have stormed out of the room without explanation. But he wasn’t there, and I wasn’t wearing any clothes, so I stayed in my bedroom.

It was a fungal infection (similar to Athlete’s Foot but on my hand) called Tinea Manuum, which had been cured when travelling by my superhuman-immune system. When I returned and started lifting weights again, the fungus in the gloves had re-infected my hand and it had worsened again.

The point of this story is my ‘House moment.’ It made me feel like a genius and I was happy to be experiencing it in this way. I wonder how I would have reacted if I had never seen House? Would I have made the link in my brain and solved the case? Who knows!? Maybe I would have used my Scooby Doo mystery solving skills and then gone for a joint afterwards. That’s right kids, Scooby Snacks were actually drugs...

In many ways how we react to the world shapes who we are as a person. If media can affect our reactions so fundamentally then surely we have to be very wary of what we and our children watch. If all I watched was “A Clockwork Orange” then I’m sure I’d be a (more) troubled individual. But is watching it once likely to exacerbate any underlining tendencies in your behaviour? We may never know but as individuals, I think we need to ensure we watch high quality entertainment that shapes us into the type of person we want to be, along with the more twisted things we enjoy.

How many times a day do you find yourself knowingly saying a quote from a TV show or film? I do it several times every day but then again, I have been called a quoter. Okay, how many times have you asked the question: What would Jack Bauer do in this situation? It’s one of the fundamental questions we ask ourselves. When Christians read the Bible, trying to learn important moral lessons from it, and ask themselves “What would Jesus do?” They use this book as a moral code to base their decision on. The rest of us use 24, Dexter, Breaking Bad and South Park.

When we watch these shows, we're not after the moral lesson, we are watching for entertainment sake. But maybe it does affect our moral values and we just don’t realise it. How many times have I done something purely on auto-pilot, with the instructions for my auto-pilot being programmed by the media I had consumed that week?

This is why I want to work in media. I want to shape people’s lives and hopefully educate, entertain, and inspire. I want someone to have an experience and directly relate their enjoyment to my show. If I can have a House moment, then someone else can have a K-Town moment.

Fifty Shades of Earl Grey

I awake with a cold shiver. The heating is off and my breath is visible above my duvet. I feel unsettled and unsure of what I need. My startled, just-awake brain starts booting up and I realise what I desire. I can hear it calling me from the kitchen cupboard like a siren enticing me to the rocks. I shuffle into my pyjamas under the duvet, with the snuggley sheet keeping my prickly, pimpled skin warm.

I move the duvet aside and I slowly make my way towards the kettle. It’s already full; before bedding down for the night I had sensed the urge was coming, and filled the pot in anticipation. I turn the heat up to max and the water starts bubbling. Unable to wait, I pour the half boiled water into my mug and the teabag floats gently to the surface. As it's life leaks into the fluid, Brownian motion takes over, and madness ensues.

Reds become darker and it slowly turns brown - you can tell it’s almost brewed. I give it one last squeeze against the walls of my cup to empty the reserves. I realise that no matter how hard I try, there is always room for one more squeeze. One more push of tea that I’ll eventually swallow. But not in here, not like this.

My hand shakes as I reach for the tall tumbler. I grip it with resolve and open the tap, filling it deliberately. I give a wry smile as I submit to my wild side. I let the moment overcome me and release the tea bag into the cool ocean. It relishes the opportunity and splashes uncontrollably, causing havoc. The now murky waters are a delight to behold.

I tentatively raise the cold tea to my mouth. I’ve done this before but never like this, never without preparing. Never on a school night. I let the aroma envelop me and I wash it around my mouth and soothe it into my stomach. I am lost. I am free. I feel everything and nothing at the same time and my voice has vanished. The silent ecstasy is empowering and unsympathetic. I feel no shame or remorse, just bliss, pure unadulterated joy. It destroys me...

By the time the sensation passes, the sun is up. Had I really been doing it all night? I relish the pleasure of a feeling lasting an instant, that takes an age to enjoy.

The sun rarely lies though and I have a lot to do with this day. I clear up the mess, tip away the unwanted contents of the mug - I'm sorry for using you for such a purpose! I’m somewhat embarrassed by my exploits. How have I sunken this low? Is there something wrong with me to delight in such a sin?

The problem is that the shame is never enough. It’s over before it’s properly manifested and I move on. I think about the pleasure of the encounter throughout the day, the memory seeping into my taste buds like sugary candyfloss stuck to my teeth. I lick my lips and a wave of joy is released, enticing me to my next taste.

It’s the driving force that spurs me on at work and gives me comfort when I don’t get that promotion. It’s the reason I speed when I’m driving home and shout abuse at time-wasters. It’s what completes all my beverage concerns of any given day. It’s the breakfast of champions.

Read part one!

Fitter, Happier, More Dancier

I saw Radiohead last Saturday in Manchester at the MEN. I have seen Radiohead live an awesome number of times (5) which makes them the band I have spent the most money on. Yay for them! They are my favourite band and every time I see them, I have the most amazing night. However it had been a couple of years since I last saw them so I was worried that my ever-expanding cynicism would interfere with my enjoyment of the evening.

I had experienced waves of excitement in the weeks building up to the gig, but this had been quickly replaced by my fun safety net: low expectations. I always go into big events with low expectations because the dream, the idea of the event, is often perfect and I don’t want the real thing to feel like a disappointment because of my overambitious mind. Ideas, dreams, hopes are great but sometimes over-expectation of events and what to expect from people or performers can lead to an empty feeling. I did not want that from this Radiohead show, so I went in with low hopes.

When I found my seat, up and behind the gods, I remember thinking that I was too far back. I was about 8 rows from being the furthest available seat away from the stage. I wanted to be standing at the front, in a dancing sweaty mess of people, bopping to the geniuses in front of me. Live music is a great shared experience that you can have with thousands of people around you. It is social bonding between you and your fellow man, woman, or in this case, Radiohead groupie. But being restricted from this standing pit of freedom, and being placed in the confinement of a chair, miles back, was going to be torture.

My immediate idea was to run down and jump the barrier to get into the standing arena when the lights went down and the music started. But then the lights dimmed, the support act Caribou entered and played three engrossing songs that got me moving a bit in my seat. The excitement was building and half an hour after Caribou finished, Radiohead entered the stage.

Even from my seat at the top of Zeus’ mountain, I felt the immense roar of excitement rushing through everyone’s bodies. Tonight was going to be an adrenaline pumped, serotonin fuelled, Radiohead shaped explosion of brilliance.

The first song sent shivers down my spine and the hair was standing up on the back of my neck. I was no longer confined in my chair, I was free. I danced chaotically and as wild as my out of rhythm Jewthiest body could muster. It was the purest, unadulterated, un-inebriated feeling a person could get. The MEN was mine and everyone else’s chapel for the evening.

Radiohead are to music what orgasms are to sex. They are the peak, the pinnacle, the climax. The layers unfold in my ears in sweet, original, and surprising ways. I am encapsulated by the sound. Thom’s singing voice is angelic with sinister lyrics and upbeat drums. This is pure joy. I am at peace with myself and the world when I listen. Really listen. I feel happiness, and I wish everyone had this relationship to music, and especially to Radiohead. Why are we embarrassed to talk about moments like this? It is normal to talk about how much fun you have on a boozed up night out but as soon as it’s from something so abstract as music, people get embarrassed. Well, not me. Not today...

Anyway, back to the gig. Their new “King of Limbs” songs and other internet releases were much better than the recorded versions. The songs came alive as Thom raved out to them. The beats were fast and the music had a much dancier feel to it than other times I’ve seen them. What a night!

A top top gig. I recorded a few songs and below is my favourite video - not a dancey song but I love it! You can also watch the entire Radiohead glasto set from 2003 here.

Urinating at Notting Hill Carnival

Here’s a story of one of the most eventful urinations of my whole life, which happened at Notting Hill carnival, a couple of months ago. I'd drunk a fair bit and was needing to find somewhere to relieve myself. Being a male, anywhere would have done; an alleyway, a bush in the park, an assortment of plastic cups. But none could be found.

The side streets had been boarded off by the police to keep the party all down the one main street, so I had to use the designated toilet areas. This meant a very long queue.

Now when my brain tells me "hey, you're gonna have to urinate soon." I've basically got about a 30 minute period until it's all over. So I queue up to this toilet that is down some stairs and into a building; there's just the one toilet and the queue is moving ever so slowly.

There are some speakers in the window playing some raggadub and the vibrating bass isn't helping my bladder one bit. I reach the bottom if the stairs and am now just 5 people away from my destination, when out of nowhere comes a group of 5 girls, who push in the queue and stop behind me.

The girl who had previously been behind me quite rightly and politely said "Excuse me are you in the queue?" by which she meant “what the devil are you doing?”
The leader of the girls said "yeah we are in da queue, we're gonna use the toilet, you thick or sumfin?"
"No, I'm not thick, but you should go to the back of the queue instead of pushing in."

At this point, out of the blue, the 5 girls just attack the girl behind me, grabbing her hair and slapping her. So me and this other chap try and break it up. But I'm not gonna lie, I was clearly the weakest person in this situation. During the scrapping a window got broken and the group of girls ran up the stairs and away. They left this poor girl behind with her bag upside down on the floor, some hair ripped out her head, and she had a broken nail. And not just any old nail it was a proper nice one that she'd clearly spent ages painting.

As I helped her with her stuff and gave her my one and only bacon shaped plaster for her bleeding finger, she seemed surprisingly calm about the whole thing. Until the woman who owned the building came storming out and told the girl that she had to leave because she had broken the window. The girl and I tried to explain that it was this group of girls who had since left but the woman wasn't having any of it and she demanded that the girl gave her some money to pay for the damaged window and then leave.

At this point other people began to back us up and the woman begrudgingly went back inside and let her stay in the queue.

This experience made me a sad man. Like, it's meant to be a carnival celebrating everything good about the Caribbean culture, and you can't even go for a wee without a group of kids attacking you. Disgrace to their race.

Poor girl didn't even seem angry or anything, she just seemed embarrassed.
How angry must those girls have been to just attack someone for no other reason than that she didn't want them to push in front of her?
I blame the parents.

Happy ending though - I got to use the toilet for free. They were charging a pound each but the whole commotion had left the people in charge distracted.

Fifty Shades of Tea

I had a very moving experience while doing a typically English thing - drinking tea. It all happened when I was a little bit inebriated and needed a nice refreshing cuppa. Please don’t judge me on what happened next – we all give in to temptation sometimes.

50 Shades of Tea

Romanteac, liberateang, and toteally addicteave, this is a story that will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you for ever.

I love making tea; the expectation and the excitement of what is to come. Nothing too much surprises me anymore but sometimes routine is as much fun as an adventure, far from the mundane that we are led to believe.

So here I am, standing in the kitchen, doing something typically English and oh-so familiar – boiling the kettle for a cuppa. And by cuppa, I mean English breakfast tea, served in a mug with a splash of milk.

The kettle is boiling and it’s all going swimmingly, until I notice it’s got slightly too much water in. I make the necessary calculations with ΔH_vap, UAΔT, etc but by the time I finish the sum and realise that I’m best off removing some of the water, thus allowing the kettle to boil faster, it’s already boiled and it is too late to change anything. It isn't all bad though as I have solved a Chem Eng puzzle in my head, keeping myself entertained while I wait, and now the boiling water is ready. Satisfied with my achievement, I pour the water gently onto the teabag and wait.

Moments earlier, I had poured a lovely glass of fresh, cool tap water, which is now sitting invitingly close to my cuppa. I firmly squeeze the tea bag, strengthening my brew, when a curious idea has the audacity to pop right into my head. It is such a blindingly obvious notion that I am unsure as to how I have never thought of this before, let alone performed it unconsciously from instinct. I spoon the teabag out of my hot tea and plop it into the glass of water.

As I do this, I hesitate; it’s a big decision. I pause, toil with the idea in my head, ask myself several questions. Why have I never done this before? Why has no-one ever told me I can do this? Is it some dirty secret that everyone keeps from each other? Is it dangerous?

My temperature is rising sharply with these dark thoughts but my mind keeps on racing. Should I be doing this? Who knows what will happen when I take a sip? Could I get hurt?

I start the adventure with what I am used to; the regular breakfast tea. I grab its big red spotty handle and am surprised by its warmth. As I grasp it firmly and draw it towards my mouth, the milky broth warms my hands, which runs up my arms, making me shiver at the pleasurable familiarity.

The first sip still surprises me. It’s nothing compared to the very first time and the excitement of the unknown, but I still take satisfaction from it. I gulp, I swallow, I gulp, I swallow. I gulp until my lips are red and sore. I swallow until my throat is soaking with fiery fluid. I gulp and swallow every last drip, and now I am ready for what is next.

I pick up the glistening glass, and with one look, I can tell it desires my lips. I go in quick, eager, like a teenage virgin, accidentally spilling some on my chest. I let the excitement take over me - I am experiencing, not thinking. It tastes sublime, everything I had hoped for, and I explode in an instant, quicker than expected.

My first experience...

This all happened a few days and I am a little embarrassed by my over-enthusiasm but I still look back on this experience with fondness. I am proud to have tried something so out-there, so unaccepted by common tea drinking folk. “A cool subtle charm, coupled with a refreshing quench” would be an appropriate tagline for this encounter. It was a contagious experience and I now wonder whether I will ever be able to stop myself from doing it again. I think everyone should try this and promote it, so please share this inspirational and downright dirtea idea.

A Twenty First Century Read

A lot of us like to spend most of our “reading life” on the internet nowadays. Thirty years ago, a person would spend the majority of their reading time with a newspaper, a religious text, or a book. Then along came the computer and things slowly began to shift towards hurting your eyes by reading from this large glaring grey box.

I remember when I was in secondary school in the late 90s and I started to use Encarta 95. I would be given some homework on Henry VIII and instead of the local library; I went to the computer in the spare room. My mum would mutter at me that I should go to a library because they have many books with lots of information. Even with the limited resource of Encarta and at such a young age, I still scoffed at the suggestion. Encarta 95 had the answers and it was so much easier, more accessible, and most importantly - it had a copy and paste option. Encarta may have had the answers for a 12 year old but at this time, it wasn’t particular useful for many adults. So they didn't use it. It was left in the capable hands of the kids who were becoming very comfortable with searching for information and manipulating it clearly using Word.

The teachers were quick to catch on to Encarta so you learnt from a young age to plagiarise well. An important lesson that proves very useful when progressing through school and onto higher education. Then along came the internet, or at least the internet that resembles somewhat the wealth of information that is on there today. Essays became about Google searches, plagiarising other people’s work in a coherent way that answered the relevant question, while adding your tiniest bit of insight into the solution. We became experts at skimming and summarising.

Not only did we use computers for work, it started to become our main source of information on all things. An endless volume of knowledge that rivals the world’s greatest library available at our fingertips for a tiny cost. We now have more information available to us, whenever we want it, than at any other point in the history of humankind. You want to learn something, it’s on the internet and if it isn’t, someone will put it up for you. Let that sink in for a moment… We have access to so much useful information, which we could use to change the world, right now in front of us. Yet we use this time to read about celebrity gossip and read articles by idealistic writers.

This mountain of knowledge was unthinkable for Tom Average 20 years ago, let alone 60 years ago. No wonder how overwhelming my parents find the internet.

And what’s even crazier is we don’t just use the internet for information. We use it for everything: shopping, news, marketing, music, TV, friends, dating, events – the list is literally endless. But I digress, I want to talk about how the rapid expansion of the internet in the last 10 years has revolutionised the way we consume text.

We are now bombarded with choice for where we get our written information. It’s no longer Encarta, a real encyclopaedia, a newspaper, or a library that we have to choose from. For something like a film review, we have dozens of ways of checking information. We have IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, and a host of others, as well as bloggers and the scores of news networks with media divisions. Who do we choose? Well we form certain favourites for things, such as YouTube for videos – unless it’s only hosted on another site like Vimeo. These alliances with websites are temporary but strong. YouTube is my first stop on the music video search and will be for a long time I think. This alliance may eventually break away if a rival service comes along – maybe something that incorporates YouTube and all of the other video sites in a convenient and easy way.

When it comes to reading text and by text I mean current news, and “old” information. “Old” information being ideas that have been around for a while and are not related to current events, such as philosophy or established science. Now when it comes to “old” information, I think we read the volume of information we find interesting and necessary to answer our original query. Unless we enjoy the writing style, we read the bare minimum to answer the question. I think this a big difference when compared to how we used to find information from books. We haven’t invested into the webpage so we have less motivation to finish reading all the available information. The investment we made before the internet could be financial by buying a book or even just investing our time into going to the library to search out this understanding. All we do now is click.

This instant and abridged version of events presented by websites breeds a short attention span. Just like using Encarta, we are taking exactly what we need and nothing more. Often we don’t continue to read in more depth because not only have we zero investment in the webpage, but there is this endless source of data available to me. Why read more on this subject when there are millions of other things I can learn about!? Thirty years ago, you might have finished reading the entire explanation in an encyclopaedia, or studied in more depth the theory of evolution, just because you had invested time into finding the source of knowledge.

The source is right there now, it’s called Google and it can get you about 13,920,000,000 results in 0.17 seconds with seven soft button pushes. You can then just read the synopsis, get the gist, and your imagination feels in the details. Or more commonly the details are never filled in, they are lost. I think a consequence of this attention deficit and abridged version of the story is that we lose out on our focus and concentration of that particular subject. We have found the answer in 0.17 seconds and read it in 10 seconds. This rapid way of answering questions has a consequence; it doesn’t have time to stay in our long term memory. It is forgotten before it is accurately analysed. It’s in one synapse and out the other. 

I wonder if this type of information intake has caused a generation of people who find it difficult to concentrate for long periods. I know I do. No wonder all these kids have attention deficit disorders. They have been born into the instant internet age. Another consequence of this is the instant gratification age we are now in as well. Do you remember when you couldn’t remember who was in a film? You’d recall the actor’s name days later and phone up your friend to tell them. There was great satisfaction in diving into the realms of your mind to retrieve that knowledge. Now it’s a simple search and the answer is there. An instant gratifying moment – very common to the 21^st century person.

My final concern over this new type of learning and reading is for the writers and articles themselves. As a writer you are forced to come up with a snappy summary in your first paragraph and an even snappier title. How many times have you clicked on a link because of a witty title? I do it all the time. And let’s not forget that clicks = cash. My favourite recent headline was a BBC article called Nazi Buddha 'came from outer space'. How can you not click that!? It could easily be a real life fourth Indiana Jones storyline… and there is no way that this article can be worse than that film. No way.

In order to entice us – the scavengers of news – the articles must have a clever title. That is something I have noticed from the response I get from my own writing in relation to a snappy title. This title obsession can devalue a story, especially one about a complicated issue, but worse it can mislead about the content.

The twitter-verse is a bizarre world of 140 characters and this means that snappy titles are all you have. So sometimes a jokey news article title can turn into a hot bed of confusion. A serious debate can break out because people have misunderstood a title and invented a fabrication. They have then spread this fabrication and before long, people are reading tweets as facts. Tweets are thoughts. And thoughts are not facts. An example of this misunderstanding is when a “joke” news website posts a ridiculous headline, which is obvious satire, but eventually is copied and passed on to someone who takes it at face value.

It happened to me with a fake satirical Sky Sports News account on twitter. Sky Sports are my go-to sports news internet alliance so I trust them. So an account using their brand has tricked me… No harm done because I found out, but what if I hadn’t. I would’ve looked like a fool in this instance. But how about when it comes to something more serious than John Terry being a white c***. I can get fooled and not realise it and then I have this idea in my head, which I may even share with others, and I don’t even know that it’s codswallop.

Do you remember that story about Samsung paying their fine from Apple in coins? It was bullshit but it got reported on a number of news networks, including the Guardian. It stemmed from a fake story that spread on twitter and made it on to our trusted news outlets. It’s still available to read on news websites over a month later. This Samsung coin story is a great example of a successful meme. I’m not talking meme, like breaded cats, I’m talking meme in terms of an idea that spreads. Therefore a successful meme is one that spreads far and high. A story about Apple and Samsung with the concept of paying a billion dollar fine in coins is a very infectious and sharable idea.

The internet is making us read and learn about things that make catchy titles. 24 hour news entertainment networks are capitalising on this and are dumbing down or more frequently humouring up titles for this exact reason. We are far removed from the time where we bought a book on a subject and read the thing in its entirety. We just want the gist, the story in a nutshell please.

Tl;dr: We are no longer investigative explorers of knowledge, we are short study learners looking for our quick fix. We have become slaves to slogans.

A Warm Welcome to UmBongoDreams

A new contributor to Sobweb Productions is born today... Welcome, UmBongoDreams! We have a (new) tradition of asking a couple of questions to our contributors when they join. Let's see what UmBongoDreams has to say:

What do you want to do before you die?
Not that I'm criticising your interview style but I've always preferred the question 'what do you want to do while you're still alive' rather than '..before you die'; it just has a better ring to it I think.

But I suppose all the normal answers such as travel the world, have a family, skydive ... but I guess in terms of what I hope to achieve in my life, I've always had an image of moving to North America and setting up a bar. Dream Big I know. I don't know what it is but I could never see myself in a '9 to 5' style career and I think owning my own bar would give me my much needed daily amount of social interaction as well as a reason to get up in the mornings and a not too stressful working life. I'm sure that owning a bar is a lot harder than it looks on It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia with not as much free time in the day to go on acid trips in morph suits as them but I can do basic accounts and I have a fondness for cleaning.

I've always found the city of New Orleans alluring. I saw a documentary once where Morgan Freeman talked about the birth of Blues and Jazz and ever since I've wanted to visit.

Canada has also had my attentions for a while, specifically British Columbia which as a province has an amazing blend of animated city night life and breath-taking mountain range scenery.

I can really see myself living somewhere like this and plan to do a trial run in my gap year, whenever that may be.

I don't have any definite plans in mind for my life, but when people ask that is my default answer. Travelling is the main item on my agenda though. The way I see it, we don't get to choose which country we are born into, I got lucky with the UK. And now I have the opportunity, should I wish to take it, to see as much of the world as I can; and I intend to.

Favourite quote?
Quotes are a strange thing for me. I see people use them on a day to day basis where they lazily use other people's words to express their own feelings. I think the more people use quotes rather than trying to re-word them into their own style, the more these quotes will become diluted and vague in their meaning. However I am one of these people who uses quotes a lot and one that I always find myself returning to is from Jim Morrison, a sort of hero of mine in many ways, who said;

"It's a funny thing, I noticed that when people are joking they're usually dead serious, and when they're dead serious it's usually pretty funny."

Thanks for the insight UmBongoDreams.

And now, for your enjoyment, here's a sneaky sample of the sort of thing he'll be posting.

I ordered some DIY Night Vision Goggles from eBay ...

... I'm a little disappointed to be honest.