I was somewhat irritated earlier this month by a threader here who blithely observed that “most of your problems with technology are self-inflicted”. It’s a common response to anyone long enough in the tooth and common sense who points out that a good 90% of all programmed technology is rubbish. However, if you ask electronics experts in the business (or any good software consultant) they will tell you that badly made and designed hardware plus mentally challenged software is something the hitech sector cannot discuss in any kind of rational manner. Denial as a description doesn’t even get close.
The simple truth is that a lot of it suffers from two core problems: first, it offers only a tangential advantage at best; and second, it fucks up on a regular basis. Today I thought I’d demonstrate this with reference to just one day moving around in what is supposed to be one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world.
I gave a blood and urine sample to a lab here last Monday morning. As I left, the charming receptionist gave me an ID code and the address of a national site where I’d be able to print off the results late on Wednesday afternoon. I said thank you and fed the code into the site on Thursday morning. It didn’t recognise the code. It didn’t even recognise the lab where I had the test done.
A little later we all (there are five of us at the minute) trooped into the Metro, using tickets dispensed by the machines that always have long queues because nobody understands the navigation therein. The “system” in the Metro these days is that, if you have no digital season ticket and buy a ticket ad hoc, at the other end you can just walk through the barriers “in order to keep people-traffic flowing”. It’s a good idea marred by two regular occurences. First, sometimes the barriers won’t let you walk through at the other end, as such; and second, the barriers delight in trapping people for no reason at regular intervals even if they have a ticket.
What I do a lot of the time is wait at the luggage channel, and when someone comes through, simply hold the door and walk on in the opposite direction. Most Parisians do this at some time or another, and everyone is aware of the problem.
Having all exited illegally (there is no help at hand for those unlucky enough to be imprisoned in the peage) we made for the Pompidou Centre to see a retrospective of Hockney. My girlfriend’s sister had very kindly bought tickets for all of us in advance on her phone app. The joy of this app is that it saves having to queue for a ticket once the bar code displayed by one’s device is laid upon the reception reader.
The tragedy was that first, the app wanted her to sign into its site, but the little wiggly thing just went round and round in a disappointingly anti-clockwise direction; and second, when after ten minutes we got to the code, it didn’t work. So we wound up taking twice as long to get in, by which time I had visible steam coming out of my ears. (Using an app to buy an SNCF ticket two weeks ago, the purchase refused to complete and so I abandoned it and walked to the SNCF shop instead: buying the ticket (with two changes) took me just over 50 seconds. Two days later I discovered my debit card had been blocked…because not completing the online purchase had been viewed as “probable attempted fraud”.)
The standard defence of the hitech industry is that their crap must work most of the time, because otherwise people wouldn’t be using it more and more with every month. It’s self-fulfilling nonsense: people adopt apps and online purchasing generally not because they like it that much, but because increasingly these days, no other option is on offer….and folks under forty do so because they’re either in awe of all things virtual, or have never experienced efficient personal service.
A big problem in all this is the supine consumer attitude that simply accepts sloppy presentation of time and labour-saving service. We have lost the ability to complain, and this plays into the hands of braindead neoliberals desperate to take every opportunity presented of firing human staff. I complain all the time, every day. It drives those with me mad, but I refuse to stop doing it: if everyone followed my lead, genuine structural unemployment would fall by substantial amounts, and infuriating websites designed to fob us off would cease to be.
Grrrr.
The fourth floor of the Pompidou is devoted to modern art from 1965 to the present day. It is woefully unrepresentative of genuinely interesting output, and thus confirms (for everyone with confidence in their observation and appreciation skills) just how many scam artists’ works have made it onto gallery walls and other display surfaces over the last half century.
“What is art?” represents one of those questions guaranteed to ensure that even the least pretentious supper party can turn into a battlefield of flying crockery long before coffee is served. For my own part, I have long argued that it is at least in part about an idea, and the technique, genius, application, observation and insight involved in producing it.
Almost all the Pompidou fourth floor exhibits fail every last tenet of that “definition” of art. If it failed one or even two, you could accuse my definition of being wrong. When a work fails all six, even if you feel the definition is far from perfect you would, I suspect, find it impossible to build a case for the representation in question being art.
To me, two canvases side by side painted a blueish off white do not a work of art make. Similarly, six red and white stripes, three green, blue and grey ‘T’ shapes, a mass-produced classroom chair, a nail in a board or twelve bricks with a block of wood on top. They are designs and/or structures offered up in a banal and unremarkable way; if they are art, then every time I dress up to go somewhere special, I am a work of art. Trust me, I’m not.
One person above all who would probably dismiss such tosh as “a loard of ol’ crap” is David Hockney, and believe me it was a relief to escape to the 80 year-old Yorshireman’s retrospective on the Sixth floor. I’ve been a fan of his work for forty-five years, but seeing the complete journey in one place was – while at one and the same time stunning and revisionist – almost an overdose for the brain.
I had for example never seen his early works before. Hockney’s struggle to find a definitive style during that period was evident in the strong resemblance to much of Francis Bacon’s Screaming Popes stage. Equally, some of his homoerotic California studies created twenty years later look tired today. But we are talking “some” in a vast cavalcade of media exploration here: having embraced Californian light and dazzling liquid reflection, Hockney went on to examine both Polaroid and digital technologies with a diligence that has produced a unique history of human ways and light images from one intuitive brain’s perspective.
His eclecticism is a big part of the artist’s appeal for me, but that’s just me. I admire purveyors of all art forms who present(ed) a constantly restless thirst for experiment. Ry Cooder, Joni Mitchell, Alan Bennett, Dirk Bogarde, David Bowie, Francis Bacon, Turner, Woody Allen, George Carlin and The Beatles all had this. If you have the time and money, I urge you to see a lifetime of Hockney’s mind in action.
Coming back to Paris after a gap of almost ten years, the most notable thing is the incredible level of property investment that’s pouring into the French capital. Not much of it is for offices (there’s a dearth of foreign capital in the eurozone as a whole) and from what I’ve seen it’s split three ways: renovating ‘sights’ and monuments, new hotels, and residential.
The first two obviously reflect the dependence of Paris on tourism. As the work proceeds, the most common sights in the city are trompe l’oeil facades to disguise the endless building works, and notices asking pedestrians to use the opposite pavements in order to avoid likely decapitation. The French use the verb emprunter (to borrow) when politely asking for pedestrian cooperation, as in “Please borrow the other pavement” which I find oddly endearing. I have fantasies about walking into a bank and asking if I can borrow a pavement: it’s like it might be a unit of currency in step with the capital’s propertised economy. (There’s no such word as propertised, by the way – I just made it up. It’s what people do these days, and the new words always end in ‘ise’. They help to rationalise insanity).
The third area undoubtedly reflects the attempt of the very rich to propertise their ill-gotten financialised gains from the globalised economy, once these gains have been realised by becoming momentarily monetised. It is important to turn electronic money into property, as there are few better media for alchemically transmuting this worthless virtual exchange than physical concrete and plaster.
None of the new hotels and apartments are what you’d call mass-market, or social housing. Antisocial maybe, but not good value in any achievable sense: the prices being asked on spec are, quite frankly, for a small minority, viz, the ubiquitous 3% – assuming three people in a hundred can be ubiquitous. Look, if 48% can be a majority even when it shrinks to 32%, then anything’s possible.
The privileged few continue to create asset bubbles in their search to be somewhere safe when the fudge hits the air-conditioning. But I wonder if anyone among the ruling ENACs is giving any thought at all to how Islamic African migrants with nothing beyond a sense of injustice are going to rub along with the über rich.
They headed for Berlin and got turned back to Greece. They made camp in Calais and got redirected to Paris. They get into Italy and get turned away at the Austrian border. Now that the media are wise to that one, they’re targeting Spain.
It really doesn’t matter any more who ‘they’ are: it can only end in tears, and everyone in possession of a left brain plus five primary senses knows it.
@ Rosstradamus. Indeed. And lest we forget the pubs of the area ( era?) The Rising Sun , The Fitzroy Tavern, The One Tun , The Cambridge , The Valiant Trooper ( sad victim of a gas leak heard all over the zone and suspected to be an IRA device initially) The Prince of Wakes Feathers ( daddy favourite of the ad agency crowd and probably JayDub also!) and my personal ” three pints of Guiness Lunchtime Problem Solver ” — The Marlborough Arms run by Landlord John , a docile Irish man.
Happy days….
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Amusing as ever, Mr Ward. On technology, I have always remembered a snippet from a lecturer in Marketing during my Business Post Grad studies to the effect that the optimal level of customer service is 5% dissatisfaction. I am sure you can have fun with that. The other thing was a series of lectures about the industrialisation of service, by which the trick is to get customers a) to do themselves as much of the work involved in a transaction as possible (eg., supermarket trolleys) and b) to conform to the behaviours prescribed by the software systems of the seller as though they are workers on a production line. Of course the production line of ‘stuff out’ and ‘money in’ is prone to break down due to human error on the part of the customer. This seems to be a wonderful inversion of the Japanese idea of empowering their own workers to halt their production line if part of it is not working to the correct quality standard.
You can probably dream up some solution now for the customer to be so empowered as to stop the entire production line of ‘stuff out’ and our ‘money in’. I wonder what form it might take. Of course the authorities will support the large corporates, in the name of efficiency. We can expect legislation to ensure that only properly trained ‘gammas’ and below are permitted to take part in consumer transactions, and that when found guilty of non-conformance, they will be subject to mandatory re-training.
This might require a special breeding program, but I daresay plans are already afoot somewhere. Alternatively – after all we do support free market competition – the developments in AI are most promising and we can look forward soon to 100% reliable robot purchasers. And slightly further ahead, with the help of nano-technology we can adapt the human brain to ensure software controlled perfect performance of customers on the production line of ‘stuff out’ and ‘money in’. Your personal ID will be detected on approach to the barrier – oops sorry, welcoming portal – and you will be switched automatically to the correct behaviour pattern for the portal you have chosen.
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IT SNAFUs are nothing new.
Many years ago a colleague worked as a graduate apprentice with one of the leading UK IT companies of the day (long since defunct)). Near their headquarters they had automated a newly erected municipal multi-storey car park. Their particular innovation was to count the number of vehicles inside. The problem was that if the mini-computer (as large as a small skip) thought that the park was empty it would not allow the outgoing barrier to operate. Matters came to a head when the mayor, and others, were “trapped” inside after a civic function.
One particular source of the miscounting was people riding bikes. They could ride in without operating the barrier and many seemed to rather enjoy their approach causing the outgoing barrier to operate and let them exit!
Of course today that giant mini would be the size (certainly the power) of a mobile phone. Today the engineers would spend a lot of effort tweaking the recognition software to filter out (some of) the non-vehicles!
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@Brod
Your litany of slightly off mainstream eateries is a welcome trip down memory lane…. (one hardly does The Ivy every night!) …. libidinous libation, celebrations of wins, commiseration over losses, raucous humour and exchanges of bottles of wine between friend and foe…. perhaps a hazy recollection, but true. We could all have been in John of Fitzrovia’s presence at some ! My point being….. we could actually talk to seniors in top corps, rather than the digital demons who are nowadays mere gatekeepers for unassailable CEOs. ( the boss of TalkTalk, Dido, got a ticket to Bilderburg after her TT alleged phone hack shambles disaster??) Sir Philthy of Greed still has not coughed up to pensioners……
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There are 5 defined depression biotypes.
Undermethylated Depression
Pyrrole Depression
Copper Overload
Low-Folate Depression
Toxic Depression
Your samples are sent to London for analysis by the way.
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@ Rosstradamus
Good title. Wonder if JayDub would be happy to have his gravestone read ” St John of Fitzrovia, erstwhile expense account patron of Bertorelli’s, Schmidt’s ( as was) , Trattoria dei Pescatori , The
” Vulgar” Volga Indian Restaurant , The Venus Kebab House , Andrea ‘s , The Akropolis , L ‘Etolie and many other eateries besides in his marketing heyday as he straddled (?) Cleveland Street like the colossus he once was”??
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Rye Cooter is cool I visit Paris as often as I can and because I live in Seattle I have an Amazon grocery store at the end of my street. I never use this service because they are sure to include kale in my order and then drain my petrol while I wait.
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I can see why you’re not ‘appy ;)
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“We have lost the ability to complain …” may I suggest, with all due deference to your undisputed mastery of these matters, that we haven’t lost the ability to complain at all – it’s just that we’re not allowed to anymore. Everywhere you go there are printed notices proclaiming that the abuse of staff will not be tolerated. This means that calling them, quite correctly, ill-informed, cretinous, pi55-poor excuses for human beings is no longer considered to be acceptable in the eyes of The State. They can therefore relax and deliver an abysmal service, confident in the knowledge that they are protected from even the most reasonable questioning of their appalling behaviour. Our only recourse is to research ever more inventive methods of abuse; from the Shakespearean, “spotted and inconstant man”, to the Memsahib’s, “a Ph.D. in Sociology? – how absorbing for you”. My inclination to grab the offending louse by the stack + swivel and slam their fool face into the desk repeatedly until a measure of courtesy has been achieved is, I am reliably informed, ever more difficult to defend in a court of law.
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Yup – I was right.
Your technological problems are self inflicted.
Face it John, you’re just getting OLD.
Just look at that grumpy photo :-((
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I saw the Hockney retrospective at the Tate in London. I say “saw” however it was more a case of just being in the presence of his works due to the insane number of other visitors into the gallery.
This meant that it was impossible to see a work of his without the head of someone being in the way. Sometimes there was a head and also a smartphone being held high attempting to digitally capture the great man’s work.
Despite being a huge fan of my fellow Yorkshireman and having been to the same RCA as him I have to confess to being rather relieved when I found the exit which is definitely not how it should have been.
Contrast that with the ethereal experience of visiting Salts Mill in Saltaire which is devoted to Hockney and a permanent exhibition of his latest work. Fortunately I live close to that and whenever I am in the area I never miss an opportunity to visit and get my Hockney fix.
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Hi John of Fitzrovia, glad to see you back! Your last 3 paragraphs are crucial. Please do not abandon us (moi!) who rely upon your sage comments. Rosstradamus.
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