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A technological journey

By Brian Kingston

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IT’S Monday, 18 March 2019, yes, yes, Judith and Julie late again! I am not anywhere exotic, but onboard the Wellingborough to London train for my bi-annual lunch at the House of Lords with the Churchill Club. This is organised by the South Northants Conservatives, chaired by my good friend Suresh Patel, who would welcome new members. If you are interested give me a call and I will put you in touch. I am accompanied by Clint Forster of T & K Precision Engineering in Round Spinney Industrial Estate, a very old friend, I mean, I have known him a long time, not that he is old at all!

Advertising and name dropping done, I digress. As we clackety clack down this very old track it has occurred to me that in the 18th and 19th century these lines were the fastest form of communication known to mankind. Even when some bright spark invented the telegraph they installed the new idea along the already established railway network at first, roads were for horses back then. How we have progressed.

If I get my history chronologically correct, next came the telephone with speech over distance, then radio with voice over the airwaves, then television, the first piece of progress that conveyed ideas without the need for us humans to talk. Next joy, mobile telephones, initially for business users but then for the masses, which got us talking to each other again.

Somewhere in between came the World Wide Web, and we all have access to a plethora of information about anything we can think of. Answers to more questions than there are answers and the transmission of actual news as it happens, at times transmitted by the perpetrators as they carry out atrocities of unbelievable horror. I have seen some this very weekend which I found unbelievable and impossible to watch!

All this is stopping us talking, we send messages with unlimited data, now at our disposal, and forget that not every single person looks at their mobile device every other minute. A telephone call to talk to a friend or loved one costs no more than an email or text these days, so why not try it? You can always confirm any arrangements afterwards in one form of writing or another.

I do wonder where all of this instant communication is taking us? Perhaps AI (Artificial Intelligence) can take out the bad stuff that should, in my opinion, not be available at all.

Let’s convey good news instead. Ah! We have arrived, time to get a taxicab and travel to our luncheon, with good wine, good friends, and, I guess conversation about the EU and how are leaders are coping with them, or not as the case may be.

Next month – more advances in the world of technology.

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