Category Archives: Dreams

AI Re-Imagined

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Android has just announced its latest new tech innovation combining AI and Extended Reality. The idea behind this latest mashup is to enable us to don a pair of fashionable looking glasses that when powered up can understand what we want to do (our intentions) and the world around us so that we might be able ‘get things done in entirely new ways’. That fired up my imagination. What might those be? To suggest the best way to run errands so that we can get them done without hassle? To  propose a new way to walk through a familiar woodland to see a flower in blossom we might never have noticed? To recommend a new coffee shop nearby where there is a lovely space to sit? 

The article continues by suggesting reimagining how to use the new AI to do existing digital tasks. The example given is one we have been able to do for many years – that is exploring the world by using Google Maps but in new immersive ways, soaring above cities and landmarks. I remember being wowed the first time I explored my street and other places using a desktop VR app and then with a VR headset whizzing over London at breakneck speed. How might this be reimagined?  I guess we could experience being even more immersed so that we can fly as if we were like an eagle flying high over mountains. The question this raises is how far can the technology go to making the real and the virtual experience indistinguishable? The mind boggles. 

One of the stumbling blocks with trying to make extended reality ever more lifelike is how best to interact with it and the world. Gesturing, pinching and pointing at thin air have been used with varying degrees of success. It seems these might get easier for us to learn and more natural to use when we want to bring up some relevant information that will overlay where we are. For example, it could show various details about a pair of running shoes we are looking at in response to a slight curl of a finger. However, it still needs to read our fingers, from what is a twitch to what is a gesture.  Perhaps in the future it will be able to read our mind so well we wont need to use our digits anymore. 

This kind of all-seeing AI could learn to know what, when and where to mention things we are interested in but never knew we needed or wanted to know, as we go about our everyday lives. It could even remind us at opportune times of what we need to do – an ever ready assistant. What if we could do different things with the tech rather than simply getting everyday things done more effectively or efficiently?

Being the beginning of a new year, many tech writers are envisioning how AI will reshape society for better or for worse. The new buzz term is ‘Agentic AI’ – where the AI shifts from thinking to doing and, in so doing, enables our tasks and work to be done more efficiently, effectively and faster. John Naughton, who writes for the Guardian, for example, says that 2025 will be the year of AI agents that will leverage LLMs to work out what our human intentions are and then break these down into steps that they can help us perform at home or work. So, instead of asking Alexa or ChatGPT to answer our queries, a new fangled agent AI will be proactive, learning, adapting and predicting what we need. 

These re-imaginings of our everyday and working lives are all well and good and will no doubt go a long way to transform society. But what if we were to dream about how we might use the latest AI and wearable tech to do new and different things? For example, imagine if we started creating new kinds of supertools that could help us with complex and protracted decision-making while dealing with uncertainty. The AI would work with us, not for us, empowering and supercharging how we think. It could also be designed to help us feel more confident about which avenues to pursue in life. Imagine, too, if it could help us make better decisions when under stress, for example, providing a chatbot-type ‘mirror’ that could be looked at periodically to reflect on how our moods are impacting our choices. We might become more self aware leading us to overcome our blind sightedness and our biases. The potential benefits for society are huge if we could only tap into this potential.

My 2025 vision is for new combinations of AI and ER tech to emerge that can engage with humans and each other in more diverse ways, pointing out new directions, and synthesizing different perspectives, leading to new insights and breakthroughs. Just imagine if we could develop AI that has some imagination itself, helping us to imagine what John Lennon imagined over 50 years ago:

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Livin’ life in peace

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Happy New Year!

Choice Words

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The 2024 Olympic Games have taken Paris by storm. They are mesmerizing. Such a diversity of human athletics performing all manner of extraordinary feats, whether it be swimming like sharks, diving like dolphins, running like cheetahs, or jumping like kangaroos. I watched the triathlon which is an endurance multisport race consisting of swimming in the murky Seine, and then cycling through and running up and down the muggy streets of Paris. The stamina and grit of those who take part is superhuman. There isn’t an animal that matches their prowess.

Which is why when something mind-boggling happens it is truly remarkable. For a long time, during this year’s race, the favoured Brit in the men’s competition, Alex Yee, was way behind his rival, the New Zealander, Hayden Wilde. But then out of nowhere, he stepped up a gear and proceeded to race passed Hayden, with just 400 metres to go. He kept going reminding me of Forrest Gump, his momentum keeping him ahead. He then won the gold medal by a considerable distance. His rival could do nothing at that point but look on; having expended all his energy before, thinking he had it in the bag. How was this possible? How is someone able to turbo charge, like a sports car, after 2 hours of gruelling racing?

It appears on the last lap that he heard his coach poignantly say: “Anything can happen, mate.” These choice words jolted Yee into action. Usually the crowd will rally together in the hope of motivating runners with cries of “Not far now,” “You can do it”, “come on, keep going” and the like. Coaches might use arm gestures or hand signals. But this philosophical turn of phrase, which appeared seemingly out of the blue, resonated in Yee’s brain and body in a way that stock phrases might not have. It did not nudge him but empowered him to believe he could go the extra mile.

What is it about the power of language that it can motivate us to change our behaviour and even do something out of the ordinary? Peter Johnston in his book on education, called Choice Words, provides examples of words and phrases that are key to the effective orchestration of the classroom. He points out how what teachers say can have a big impact on how children learn, think and behave later on in life. Importantly, a teacher that can get a child to figure things out for themselves is the best strategy. This involves encouraging discussion by asking open-ended questions rather than simply telling children what they can and cannot do. As Jean Piaget famously once wrote, “When you teach a child something you take away forever his chance of discovering it for himself.”

Yee’s coach was masterful when he spoke those four words – they were not intended to encourage him to keep going – as he was clearly way behind his rival – but to make him stop for a second, think the unimaginable, and in so doing, turn things around. They were chosen not in anger but in brilliance.


Peter Johnston (2024) Choice Words. 2nd edition. Routledge.

Beyond Human

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An interview with Geoff Hinton in the New York Times this week made me stop and think about where AI is heading next. The last few months have been a bit of a roller coaster since the public was given access to the various generative text and image tools, such as chatGPT, Bard, Dalle-2 and Midjourney which has resulted in millions of people trying them out. Quite remarkably, it has unleashed unprecedented levels of joy, amazement and incredulity from all walks of life at what they can do when prompted by us, humans. It has also been matched by many people worrying about how the AI tools will replace millions of jobs while turning our children into cheats, by using them to do their homework. Not since Google search and Facebook came to the fore has there been so much excited talk across the globe about what a new tech can do for society.

I have always been a glass half full person and start by looking at the benefits and opportunities of a new technology. Instead of seeing them ending up making children lazy, I see them helping them learn how to write and code. I see them empowering many others in their work – for example, enabling clinicians to see more patients by summarising and automatically composing reports from their consultations with their patients. Across the board, it is taking the drudgery out of many of our mundane knowledge-based tasks. It can also spark our imaginations to do more and differently. Writing new kinds of plays, books, scripts and so on.

But then something Geoff said in the middle of his interview made me see the future of AI from the dark side, for a change. The first worry that got me thinking was when he talked about there being ever more powerful tools that can be used by evil, malevolent and greedy people for their own ends. The so-called bad actors of the world (although personally I don’t like that term as it used to refer to people who are not very good at acting on stage but now been generalised to mean malicious rather than incompetent people). Scam porn, fake news, fake videos, fake voices, fake claims, etc. could become mainstream, being used in all sorts of unpleasant ways to extort us. Moreover, it is already starting to get messy; being more difficult to know what is real and what is fabricated. While we have all gotten used to getting email scams and more recently deepfakes we may find it more annoying, confusing and scary when they become commonplace – where videos, images and stories are made about us which are untrue but which become increasingly difficult to disprove. Our sense of reality will be turned upside down and inside out if we are not careful.

The second and perhaps more worrying concern is not knowing what the new AI tools might be used for or do, God forbid, on their own volition as they become ever more ‘intelligent’.  What happens when say, chatbots, start to learn from each other? Geoff poignantly pointed out:

“…  it’s as if you had 10,000 people and whenever one person learnt something, everybody automatically knew it. And that’s how these chatbots can know so much more than any one person.”

Yikes! It could unleash a new generation of killer robots that could easily get in the wrong human hands causing unprecedented destruction. And other unthinkable things.

I reminded myself that this has always been the case with manmade (sic) weapons  – whether it is chemical warfare, machine guns, nuclear arms, and so on. We still see terrible acts and atrocities being committed all the time. But will the new generative AI escalate man’s propensity to destroy life with the latest technological means available and make it easier and more shocking to do so?

The sensible course of action is for societies across the globe to put stops and deterrents in place. The politicians and the officials are indeed starting to discuss what to do. But is it possible or realistic for governments to make sure safeguards, regulations and policies can be developed and implemented in order to prevent or reduce AI from being used for bad? Will the exponential advances in AI mean that the goalposts keep moving making it is difficult to keep up?

Returning to my more comfortable glass half full lens, I think about how the unprecedented speed and uptake of the latest AI technological advances could enable us to make more rapid and more profound scientific and medical discoveries, such as finding cures and ways of preventing awful illnesses, such as dementia, Parkinson’s and cancer.  Could we also use them to help society detect and even prevent all manner of crimes before they happen, including terrorism, people trafficking and money laundering? And wouldn’t it be wonderful if it was possible for AI to solve the problems it creates?

The bottom line is one of balance. Is it possible that the new AI kids on the block can be put to more good use than to bad use – now the genie is out of the bottle?

 

The two inserted images were created by DALL·E

Remote Sport

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Football has started again in Germany played in front of empty stadiums. It must be so weird for the teams to play without the roar of the crowd cheering them on. Normally, the chanting, banter and singing can lift and energise players to new levels. Now with the social distancing rules in place, when they score a goal there are no physical celebrations or embracing of other players. Instead, a punch in mid-air or a tap on the elbow. Not quite the same sense of euphoria or release.  The lack of atmosphere means there is no home advantage. Many players  approach the game more like a practice one. Show-boating and waving at the crowds also gone. It is no longer the beautiful game.

Same is true for other spectator sports and the Arts, from horse racing to concert-players. No audience physically present and no atmosphere to speak of. How can the performers find other ways to reach out to their fans and the fans connect back with them? Some venues have been thinking about how to bring real people back in their own car bubbles. A number of drive-in outdoor events are being experimented with. The Danish football side FC Midtylland, for example, plan to set up two massive screens in their large car park – that has 1000s of spaces – so that fans can rock up into a socially distanced space and tune into the commentary through their car radio. Instead of drive-in cinema it is drive-in footie. Maybe it will raise the noise level, as they hoot their horns when a goal is scored, but will it create the desired atmosphere for fans and players, alike? The football club have thought about this, too, and will show live footage of the fans parked up cheering in their cars from the car park inside the venue so at least the players can ‘see’ and ‘hear’ the crowd – albeit in their cars.

It might work – certainly better than the cardboard cut-out solution that some stadiums are using with canned cheering and crowd noises being emitted from loud speakers. I wonder how the graphic designer chose which people to use and how to place them at this match – to be representative of the fan base but also a chance for loyal season ticket holders to send in their choice of image to adorn their designated seat. Other plans are afoot for socially distanced drive-in raves and concerts. The mind boggles at the thought of 1000s of cars bouncing up and down as the owners ‘body’ dance while sat in their car seats.

All of these attempts to create some kind of connection, however, are a far cry from the real thing. Maybe, they will become the new normal for a while and morph into something that is still socially distanced but more socially connected. For example, they could evolve into a form of tailgating parties that are so central to US football culture – where fans rock up hours before the game to drink beer and cook on barbecues in car parks and open spaces near the stadiums. However, switching to drive-ins requires turning our cars into entertainment hubs – which obviously SUVs, 4x4s and pick-up trucks are best suited for. Trouble is society is trying to wean people off these gas guzzlers and get them to switch to compact electric cars. Seems counter-productive to saving the planet. There is also the problem that most cities don’t have the parking lots or spaces to support large-scale drive-ins. And then there is the added problem of managing toilet facilities but maybe someone will invent a portable toilet that disinfects itself after each use.

The strangest of drive-ins that have appeared are ‘drive-thru’ churches that pop up and where an outdoor mass is literally held in the carpark. It looks a sorry sight – no communal sharing of the bread and wine. Just the lone preacher necking the wine down himself while talking to a bunch of dark-windowed SUVs. That might be taking the biscuit somewhat.

Another way of connecting fans with players is to keep it digital. Streaming video games have been around for a while, where millions of spectators around the world watch top ‘streamers’ perform. They are provided with all sorts of extras that enables the fans to discover more about the player – not least their emotions and fluctuating heart rate and skin conductance at different stages of the game. This additional layer of data has been found to enhance the spectator experience and improve the connection between the streamer and spectators. But then we would return to being couch potatoes. Personally, I can’t wait to be part of a physical audience again, be it at a football ground, an outdoor venue or a theatre.

          Thanks to Daria Lisotsova on unsplash.com

Remote Nurturing

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Many of my friends have taken to gardening during lockdown, making raised beds and planting whatever seeds they can get their hands on. Just like the craze for baking and bread-making, there is now one for growing your own food. The other day, my neighbour, Julie, proudly listed the latest seeds she has pricked and planted in our new communal street garden, including peas, potatoes, runner beans, borlotti beans, spinach, garlic, carrots and beetroot. We can all take it in turns to go and help nurture them, weeding, watering or adding more plants, although one neighbour is definitely the head gardener.

It got me thinking how could we could capitalize on these enterprising green finger efforts to make them even more of a shared event, where potentially hundreds or thousands of people could take part to grow one mega veggie patch or a series of connected gardens. Wouldn’t it be amazing if those who don’t have a garden could feel as connected to the earth as those who have actual gardens? As I wondered about this possibility, I was reminded of a project from many years ago when the internet was just getting off the ground called Telegarden. Anyone could log on to the site where you could watch a circular garden with a robot arm. You could also sign up to control the robot who would plant flowers and then water them. It was created by artists Ken Goldberg and Joseph Santarromana from California. It was kept alive for 9 years and during that time 10,000’s people connected. It was a fusion of tech and nature. The idea that a physical garden could be operated by users online was considered by the artists as being “the most absurd”. Now, in lockdown it does not seem quite as absurd.

How about we try to recreate a more up-to-date version of Telegarden (call it Lockdown Garden) in empty school yards, university campuses, national parks, meadows, or even on the land that people own but don’t have a use for. School children, grandparents, single people, young and old people, bored people, well anyone really, could log on, pay a small fee and select from a catalogue of fruit and veg seeds to grow. Drones and automated robots could work in tandem nurturing the garden, weeding and picking the veggies, that could then be donated to people in need. Our favourite TV gardening presenters, like Carol Klein and Monty Don in the UK, could judge the best kept Lockdown gardens and the most crazy, beautiful, bountiful and so on. And of course there could be disasters filmed by the drones that could keep the viewers and growers hooked, like the robots overwatering, marrows growing to be the size of a small car, and robots refusing to cooperate. Perhaps I am getting a bit carried away here but it would be a fun challenge for all those makers and engineering students who are now at a loose end.

Remote Places

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Last week, everyone was experimenting with backdrops for their Teams, Zoom or GoTo meetings – I have seen the Northern Lights, New York, beach resorts, outer space, and various exotic places. Quite a contrast from the mundane, domestic kitchens and make-shift home workplaces we have become accustomed to peering into. One of my PhD students, chose Hawaii for his backdrop (see above), and at one point during the meeting it looked like he was surfing as he moved his head back and forth against the palm-tree foregrounded sunset beach. The illusion is created because the backdrop does funny things with your own image when you move your head – your hair starts to look like it is moving with the wind.

It made a light-hearted change to the start and end of our meetings, talking about the funny effects. The reason my student chose the Waikiki beach backdrop was that a group of us were meant to be flying to our annual CHI conference – which was to be held in Hawaii. Normally, 3000-4000 rock up, from all corners of the globe, for a week each year at this time (last year it was held in rainy Glasgow) to network, learn and talk about our current research for a diversity of areas concerned with the design and use of tech. But like many other large events involving travel it was cancelled due to Coronavirus. For many of my students this was a huge disappointment as it was to be their first time going – but they put on brave faces. Next week, instead of using backdrops, we plan to get dressed up in Hawaii Hula clothing and leis. Well maybe. Anything to lighten the mood.

Many of us are getting the lockdown blues now, feeling restless and bored. As the weeks of lockdown drag on the need to look forward becomes ever more pressing. Some people are rebooking their cancelled holidays for next year, giving them at least something to plan for. The papers are full of ads now for big ticket holidays and cruises – costing £1000s for a holiday of a lifetime. The images of ancient sites, rain forests, glistening beaches and city skylines are very alluring but seem all the more remote. One can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to enter a busy airport, let alone cram onto a plane with hundreds of other passengers for countless hours. How are we going to keep our distance if we are sat in a window seat and need to go to the toilet?

Many of my us are craving the embodied contact that comes with physically being with others. While we persevere with our remote meetings each day, trying to make the most of the impoverished bandwidth and the strangeness of seeing someone but not being with them, we are all getting tired of it. We are at that stage now wondering what our country will provide by way of a lockdown exit strategy. Some countries are further ahead and have already started taking baby steps. Singapore, China, Korea, Germany, Finland, Australia and the Czech Republic have begun to reopen schools, shops, gyms and other businesses.  In the UK, however, we continue to wait. Boris returning to number 10 soon will buy him more time – as our daily morbidity level continues to remain relatively high.

But whether and what it might mean to return to the ‘old’ normal is anyone’s guess – it could take months, possibly years. I looked at some photos today of Spanish children being allowed outside for the first time in two months – whizzing around on their bikes, roller skating with their arms flailing or simply just running around. The sense of joy and freedom on their faces was palpable. It gave me hope that it might not take that long.

Meanwhile, our governments continue to thrash it out with their scientific advisors. All sorts of factors have to be weighed up against each other, including wellbeing, unemployment, numbers of daily cases, relative change in daily deaths, availability of hospital places, medical staff available, who to safeguard, the likelihood of unrest, rebellion or uprising, and so on. The fear of relaxing too quickly and too soon is that it could result in a second spike, just as bad or if not worse than the first, meaning we would all have to go back to lockdown again. Keeping people cooped up for too much longer, however, is likely to have devastating and long-lasting effects; not least, a huge increase in mental health issues, economic disaster for many businesses, and many unknowns.

For those of us who see the glass half full, we continue to dream of returning to familiar but now remote places soon: re-imagining what it is like to experience the real thing rather than the digital substitute. To drink a proper cocktail rather than meet at cocktail ‘o’ clock, to go to a live concert rather than a livestreamed one, to go to a real football match and throng with the crowds rather than watch classic games on the TV, or simply to be able to walk into a coffee shop, enjoy waiting in line (not at a distance), having a banter with the other customers, and then take from the hands of the barista, a perfectly made frothy coffee with an emoji heart on the top.

Driverless Cars

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We hear all the time now about how driverless cars will revolutionize the automobile industry. Billions of dollars, yen and euros are being poured into research labs throughout the world to make this happen. The race is on – who will lay the golden egg? Google has spun out its own company, Waymo, calling itself, “a self-driving tech company with a mission to make it safe and easy for people and things to move around”; Apple’s CTO has described their venture as “the mother of all AI projects”, while relative newcomers to the field, Uber, fancy their chances, too.

The rhetoric behind why such a game changer in car control is inevitable is hard to argue against. It usually starts with how many people are killed in car accidents. From the road crash statistics website, we see that “Nearly 1.3 million people die in road crashes each year, on average 3,287 deaths a day. An additional 20-50 million are injured or disabled. More than half of all road traffic deaths occur among young adults ages 15-44.” That makes it the biggest killer amongst young people. The bottom line is that self-driving cars will make our roads safer by reducing human error. The computer controlled cars will be able to be programmed to be reliable, safe and efficient. Unlike, human drivers, they won’t be susceptible to poor judgement caused by road rage, fatigue, failing eyesight, texting, distraction caused by talking on the phone, etc. Furthermore, driverless cars will enable people who can’t drive, for whatever reasons, to be mobile. Instead of hailing a taxi or waiting for a bus they will be able to call up a driverless car from their garage or a special pod and instruct it to go where they want to. Who would not want such a future?

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA. One of the first Google self-driving cars being  displayed at the Google headquarters in 2012 in California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

However, there is a long way to go before anyone gets anywhere near the finishing line. It is a ginormous undertaking to work out how to transform society so that the billions of cars we currently use today are replaced by driverless ones. It is not like developing a single piece of tech, such as a smartphone, or even a big piece of tech, such as a process control plant. The amount of computation required to run a driverless car city is likely to involve trillions of lines of code in conjunction with the necessary radar, LIDAR sensors, and other hardware/software (current cars use millions of lines of code to work). The driverless car city will also need to sort out how to deal with all the legal, social, logistical, ethical and environmental aspects: who is responsible for updating the software, how the cars are taxed, who is responsible for paying out compensation, who pays for the upkeep of the new whole system, whether children can be driven alone in a car and so on.

I have been trying to imagine what it would be like to be in Tokyo, Beijing, Paris, London or even Brighton with a new road system that supports self-driving cars. I find it hard to compute. For starters, people are not stupid and they like a bit of mischief. Once they clock that jumping in front of a driverless automated car will result in it stopping in its tracks – all manner of ‘knock down ginger’ car games will come into being. The autonomous car system will quickly come to a standstill especially when a group of teenagers start the craze of flash mob car standstills. Sure, the authorities will eventually make this kind of behaviour illegal but people will still find ways of getting in the way of the driverless cars.

And what about bikes weaving in and out and whizzing past the driverless cars? That will give their laser beams a right wobble. Next, the authorities will have to force bike riders and pedestrians to wear sensor and laser tech themselves, too – so a system of systems will have to decide who has priority, whether to stop a car or hoot at a person to stop.

Governments will then have the smart idea of keeping cars, bikes and people segregated – just like they did when building the relatively new city of Milton Keynes. In this modern metropolis, the cars drive above ground on a grid and roundabout system while the cyclists and pedestrians cycle on red paths (called ‘redways’) along a network of canals and through a cobweb of underpasses. The result is a city of isolated burbs that don’t connect (and apparently has one of the lowest cycling levels in the UK). As Ben Evans tweeted the other day, just like “horseless carriages – remove the horse and everything else changes”. There is none of the rub of what a city should really be – amongst which the smells, blasts, sirens, laughter, screams and revving of waiting cars are central.

Vehicle autonomy may save more lives than our current cars but at the expense of requiring segregation of the people from their urban centres and separate driverless car networks. Is that what we really want? Perhaps the less lofty goal of augmenting existing vehicles with all manner of driving aids that can help drivers be more alert and help reduce their errors by taking control at opportune times is the best way forward?

Futuristic Videos

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It has become increasingly popular for companies to make a YouTube video that depicts their world of future living. Some are intended to show what is possible now and others what it will be like in a few years hence. Most depict a world where technology is there to serve us making our lives more efficient, less effortful, more informative, and even calming. One future living video I came across the other day, while doing some research for am upcoming lecture, was by Hoover – the well known vacuum cleaning company. It was released a few weeks ago, to promote their vision of the future home, where people can stay in touch with all their white goods via an application that is ostensibly the Internet of Things – wherever they are. The marketing guys have even metamorphosed the concept into a Wizard that does it all for them with the strapline “Tech that Talks”.

The scenarios played out of modern life are so out of touch with the messiness and richness of the real world it made me laugh. The kitchen has been decked out with smart sensors that proudly send out a constant string of notifications to the owners’ smartphones and tablets keeping them informed of how much energy is being used, when the cooking is done, when the dishwasher has been switched on, and so on. A young couple are shown living in perfect harmony; the wife sitting on a bar stool flicking through her tablet, waiting for the stove to tell her to take a saucepan off the hob when the stove has decided it is ready. The husband, meanwhile, is out cycling by himself in the park when he gets a notification on his phone, that is strapped to his arm. He stops, takes his phone out of the arm strap and reads a message from the cooker telling him the fan in the cooker hood has been activated – presumably because of the steam arising from the cooking. He smiles to himself – presumably because he infers dinner will be ready on the table when he gets back.

Honestly, do these tech companies seriously think young couples dream of a life where they are constantly bombarded by notifications on their phones letting them know every time the fridge, the oven, the dishwasher, the cat flap and so on have done something they feel worthy of broadcasting? It is enough to turn anyone into an obsessive-compulsive disorder addict. Never mind the sterotyping of the different roles.

Some of the videos have an injection of humour in them that at least makes you know they are not taking themselves totally seriously. One I liked from a couple of years ago was a concept video of how a pair of running shoes could talk to its wearer, encouraging them to be more active. They got a lot of mileage from considering how to get people to run for the pleasure of it – rather than reaching some target that most of the self obsessed step counting apps that are around now make us all aim for.

There are also a number of videos that show how future technology can transform the health of the nation. The one below was created for me and a friend while we were on a ride at Disneyland. It is short, sweet, funny and suggestive of how we can continue to enjoy life without being scared of taking risks because technology will be there to the rescue – to heal our broken bones in a matter of hours.

One of my favourite videos of future living captures the absurdity and stupidity of a future where monitoring and notifying are at its heart. It portrays a man in his 70s finding the smart home all rather tedious and tiresome – that his children and grand children have set up for him to reassure themselves (sic) that he is living healthily and safely by himself at home. He then works out how to outsmart the smart technology while keeping his family thinking he is doing all the things they want him to do. There is hope yet for humanity after all.

Super Technology

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logo_rememberthemilk My smartphone beeps. This time, a message from my fridge alerting me to buy milk on the way home. This rather tired example of smart technology is still being rolled out whenever anyone talks about the benefits that future technology holds for us. Why can’t it order the milk and get it delivered without needing to involve me? Surely, that would be the smart thing to do. A bottle of milk would be sitting there on the doorstep for when I arrived home. But, equally, I could have nipped out to the corner shop when finding the milk had run out. Just like many of us happily do now. Once there, we might have a chat with the shopkeeper and find out about the local gossip or their opinion about the heatwave or their joy at England beating the Aussies in the latest Test match. And even try the new apple and ginger fruit juice he has just got in.

cornershopMuch of everyday life is made up of these unexpected encounters. We bump into people we know all the time: at work, down the street, at the cinema, in the supermarket and even miles away on holiday. Inconsequential in themselves but which is the social glue that holds society together.

Opportunities for unexpected human contact are slowly being eroded for every transaction that becomes automated – unless you use apps like Tinder specifically to meet a random person you fancy the look of. Taking humans out of the loop is of course nirvana for business, helping them to cut down on operating costs while making services more efficient – and at the same time encouraging people to buy more.

It can also take the headache out of having to queue – and how we hate having to wait for others in front of us especially if they are slow. Last week, when driving to Cambridge, I whizzed across the Dartford Crossing without having to stop at a toll booth and chuck a few quid into an over-sized bucket and then wait magically for the barrier to rise. The new Dart Charge system that has been installed swiftly reads your car registration number and checks to see that you have paid online within 24 hours of crossing. That is super technology.

Dartford_Crossing_400x400dartsystem-large

Trouble is it takes five minutes to fill in the form and register online to use the Dart service. They want to know all sorts of things about you, your car and not forgetting the all important bank details. The same has happened now when parking at Brighton station. There are no barriers or uniformed officials sitting in glass windowed booths. There is still one small wooden hut but it was locked with not a person in sight. All rather eerie. You can pay in advance or up to 24 hours afterwards. After that they slap on a penalty. I paid as soon as I got home fearful I would completely forget once ensconced in domestic life.

It took me another five minutes to key in my details online. The same pattern happens when buying tickets for train journeys. I nearly missed my train last week when trying to buy a ticket to Lincoln on the Virgin site. There was some mix up with being a new user versus a registered one. And it did not tell me until I had filled in all the details including the prized seat facing forward at a table with electric socket. They just vanished from the screen after the error was detected. I had to get a new password as I could not remember what it was. It would have been easier if I had bought it at the station and much less frustrating!

The underside of the relentless push towards ever more automation is that we humans have to do the ‘paper’ work to make it work – tapping all those personal details into our computers or smartphones for every new transaction, making up new passwords and forgetting them. For each new cloud-based system that comes along and replaces the old fashioned way of doing things – like paying with cash and having a human be in charge of the transaction – requires us to sign up before or after and give bank details.

And then there all of those services that we have signed up for using direct debit because it was easier and because sometimes they give a miniscule reduction – be it the TV licence, car tax, gas, water, leccie, Virgin/Sky Media, Netflix, O2 and so on. While taking away the pain of having to fill out yet another form online (once it has been set up) it means we forget how much money each month they are taking from us. When they increase their monthly subscription or charge we simply shrug. I don’t know how many direct debits and standing orders I have now. Some just disappear from my radar. When email notifications pop up from these companies I often don’t bother opening them. I don’t want to really know I have spent an extra £50 this month on data while roaming abroad.

Shockingly, I don’t know how much I earn anymore. Instead of enjoying the monthly ritual of opening a pay slip that would come in a brown envelope – especially when there was a rise due, many of us now have to go online to find out. That means remembering the URL or typing into the search engine when in the work’s intranet and tapping in our user ID and password (finding the one the computer used to have stored is no longer valid) to get to the same information. I simply forget – since there is no monthly email reminder I’ve been paid. And it is not as pleasurable looking at the data in a spreadsheet format – which invariably it is formatted in.

The weather is miserable out there today. So I booked online to get tickets to go to the cinema tonight. It only took a couple of minutes, even after having to scroll down a long menu of countries to enter that I live in the UK. Why do they need to know that? Then up popped a ‘Verified by Visa’ form for me to fill in. I hate those things and can never remember what the 2nd, 4th or 8th or other 3 random sequence of letter/digits they ask for from my password for that credit card. So another couple of minutes filling this bit in and stressing that it was correct.

Hey presto – up popped the message:
“ORDER COMPLETED SUCCESSFULLY”
but then as I read on:

“Collect your tickets from the cinema counter or kiosk – Don’t forget your Reference Number!”

Usually it provides a RFID code that you print off as your ticket so you don’t have to queue. What was the point of doing all that key tapping in again and paying an extra online booking fee (nice one!) if I still needed to line up?

An email arrived a few minutes later with the codes on them. Just as well.

I just read in the news that the number of fines issued by the new automated payment system at the Dartford Crossing in its first 6 months exceeded the number of speeding tickets issued in England and Wales for an entire year! 867,897 motorists were fined £70 each compared to the 713,000 speeding tickets issued throughout the whole of England and Wales. That is a whopping £60,752,790! But it gets worse. Some drivers have reported that they are being charged on days when they have not used the crossing. Apparently, the automated letter recognition software sometimes mixes Cs and Gs and other similar looking letters. That is not smart technology. I dread to think how much has been made by Transport for London (TfL) since the Congestion charge was introduced in London over ten years ago. In 2009, alone, nearly 1.5 million congestion charge penalty charge notices at £120 each were made. TfL managed to collect £77m of what was owed to them. That is daylight robbery.

Ten Pieces

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Ten Pieces is a BBC initiative to inspire a generation of primary school children to listen to, explore, and get creative with classical music. It is the brainchild of Katy Jones, an executive producer at the BBC, who for the last two years worked tirelessly and with amazing energy, planning and masterminding the whole thing. The ten pieces represent some of the best and well known, a taster that can be listened to in one sitting or separately. They include classics such as Holst’s Mars from the Planets, Beethoven’s Symphony Number 5, and more modern pieces, including John Adams Short Ride in a Fast Machine. A film of the 10 Pieces was made and shown on British TV, where the pieces were introduced, performed and choreographed in electrifying and captivating ways.

It is not surprising that Ten Pieces has spread like wildfire in its first few months since being announced. At the beginning of the year, more than 120,000 children watched the film at their local cinemas throughout the country, triggering them to interpret and explore what they had seen and heard in their own creative ways. Since, it has cascaded through a multitude of different avenues, manifesting itself in many forms. Many more children together with their teachers, national orchestras, musicians, conductors and TV presenters have come together and re-presented and interpreted them in art, performance and other forms of expression. The official website is brimming with reports, blogs, tweets, videos and images of musical happenings, being added to each day. Only last week it was announced that two of the Proms planned for this summer will include concerts that will celebrate the first year of Ten Pieces at the Royal Albert Hall.

proms I have had the enormous pleasure of listening to Katy telling me over the years about her latest venture, project and ingenious way of engaging ever more children and adults. Sometimes, it was hard not to want to pick up a trombone, trumpet or flute to make music and join in the fun.

But tragically and unexpectedly Katy died last Friday completely out of the blue, aged only 51. Many heartfelt tributes from all corners are starting to stream in via social media, from those who have just found out about the terrible news. She touched many with her infectious smile and contagious ‘you can do’ it spirit. I hope her wonderful energy and special magic will live on and continue to fulfill her dream; inspiring all manner of generations from across the world to not ever think again that classical music is boring but to want to ‘get creative’ with it.

Jones

Photo from the Manchester Evening News

Bushy Tailed

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Today I found myself jumping and jigging around with a large furry tail strapped around my waist. I had been invited to a preview of a new theatre production called Dusk devised and directed by David Harradine and Samantha Butler, artistic directors of Fevered Sleep. It will go on public release in mid- November at the Young Vic. While the production is meant for very young children, aged between 4-7 years, adults and helpers are invited, but they have to join in, too, even being daubed with special green paint on their face.
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A colleague, Sarah, and myself, were visiting with a view to developing interactive technologies that the children could subsequently express their feelings and reflections about the piece. Getting children as young as four to reflect on their phenomenological experience is quite a challenge – but one we were inspired to think more deeply about in light of having taken part.

Dusk is set in a theatre where groups of children come into a darkened space and are met by a friendly host, who is wearing a tail. He makes fun of them not having a tail – thereby making them all want a tail. Piles of big bushy tails magically then fall from the sky and the children scramble to put them on. Tailed-up, they then follow him through an Alice-in-Wonderland like red door into a magical forest, where there are bright lights, stars, moons and trees. Not knowing what to expect or when to sit down or jump around with their tails they are like butter in his hands. The suspense is palpable and what is in store proves to be a real treat. The children are completely immersed in the experience – for well over an hour. Even the fidgety ones stop in their tracks and join in with all the others.
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Central to the piece is a 40 minute film that traverses the physical and the digital, time and place. A lost hybrid creature with horns and a tail wakes up to find he is all alone in the forest. He tries to find the other creatures he was playing with, before he fell asleep, and comes across the same door the children, at the theatre, have just entered. He walks though it and is confronted by an unknown world, where he experiences all sorts of emotions, from fear to joy. At various points he cries out in a haunting way, with the hope that someone will answer. Each time the children echo his cry sometimes spontaneously and other times egged on by the host. It was both mournful and joyful to listen to them bearing their soul, with heads high and mouths wide open – sounding like a pack of wolves.
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The narrative is about growing up, where the hybrid creature crosses mountains, seas, forests and terrains on a long and often lonely journey. He eats flowers to survive and takes comfort from seeing an owl, a deer, a snail and a beetle. Through his journey he comes across men destroying a forest using menacing logging equipment and then when he finally enters a city he sees a tree caged in by wrought iron – intended to protect it. Paradoxes like these of being unprotected but needing to be protected and being protected but needing not to be protected are one of many that are traversed through the piece. There is a lot going on – a rich layered tapestry of meanings. What would a four year old make of it all? Judging from their faces – a lot.

At various points of the journey it looks like the creature is about to make it home but in classic Shakespearian style some other obstacle or challenge gets in the way. During these moments, the children instinctively turn their heads to the physical door at the back of the theatre forest that they entered through – waiting in suspense for him to appear in person and then when he doesn’t, swivel their heads back to watching him virtually on the screen in front of them. Each time it occurred, it was for me a wonderful moment and so clever – the kids traversing the physical and digital and back again in seamless and seamful ways.

They seem to know when he will finally come home. Rather than jump out of the screen – like in the movies – he eventually and somewhat hesitantly comes through the physical door. He then wanders through the undergrowth where the children are sprawled and seated, kicking their tails and touching their faces, to make sure they are real. He then whoops them up into a crying frenzy and then spontaneously they are up on their feet, following him in his special tail-jigging dance. And all the adult audience members and helpers who had donned tails (called ‘big its’ by the host) find themselves joining in, spellbound and smiling – and that is how I ended up jigging on the spot with a whooshing large furry tail behind me.

The piece is both a film and theatre and sometimes neither. From the programme blurb, it says it is “an invitation to see the world with our eyes and ears wide open, smiling awestruck. To slow down and to look.” Judging from the absorbed reactions of the little ones it seems the directors succeeded in doing more than that. It was a far cry from any Disney film, TV show or cartoon that they feed off during their daily screen time. Instead of a sea of faces fixated ‘heads down’ mindlessly staring at a screen, we witnessed a group of ‘heads up children, enraptured, alive and embodied – being both an audience and being a part, being there and not being there. That is mindful interaction and a joy for all to see.

Swallowed Up

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the-oculus-rift-virtual-reality-headset-will-blow-your-mindThere has been a lot of online chatter about Facebook’s two recent big buyouts of minnow companies; a whopping $19 billion for WhatsApp and a further $2 billion for Oculus Rift. The first has millions of users and the second is the latest must have gadget for gaming that hasn’t even hit the streets yet – virtual reality goggles. And it was only last year Facebook spent $1 billion on buying Instagram.

One can’t help smiling for the bought out folk; many of whom will have or will become millionaires, thanks to Mark Zuckerberg’s latest spree. It would not surprise me if every geeky school kid’s dream now is to be part of a promising start-up that Facebook then acquires for billions. A bit like when every aspiring artist in the 90s hoped that Charles Saatchi would drop by their end of year art college show and buy up all of their work for lots of money.

In total, Facebook have now hoovered up at least 46 companies. According to Wikipedia most of these are ‘talent acquisitions’ that are then shut-down. Mark once said, “We have not once bought a company for the company. We buy companies to get excellent people… One of the ways to do this is to focus on acquiring great companies with great founders.”

But there must be more that Facebook intends to do with its recently procured ‘billions bounty’ than swallow up bright sparks. Getting the very best people doesn’t cost that much. After all, we can attract some of the best PhD students and professors at UCL for a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of that. They are onto something bigger and more daring. Mark is moving into the world of UX, “we feel we’re in a position where we can start focusing on what platforms will come next to enable even more useful, entertaining and personal experiences.” He is gearing up for the next big thing – post social media. Instead of looking down at a mobile 2D screen we will be interacting with our friends in the here and now through 3D goggles. It will be an intense immersion that gamers all dream of. Moreover, it will be able to overlay the virtual and physical environments to appear seamless, where digital avatars and objects will populate a world of real people and objects. If we suspend our disbelief we will find it difficult to know what is actual and what is digital.

While many companies and academic researchers have been working on the ultimate Virtual Reality dream for a while, it seems Oculus Rift were moving full steam ahead of the game. A colleague at UCL, Will Steptoe, has been experimenting with overlaying webcams on the Oculus goggles to enable virtual and video spaces to fuse into one, in order to create a truly immersive augmented reality experience. In doing so, he hopes to blur the lines between what is real and what is virtual. It looks pretty cool and not surprising he is in big demand.

But could an immersive Facebook truly enhance our experience of how we interact and communicate with people remotely? How many of us would don a pair of VR goggles, 10 or more times a day (the average number of times someone looks at Facebook on their mobile each day is 14) in order to teleport to a friend’s party, go for a walk in the park, or just hang out, without ever leaving their living room?

While there have been numerous attempts over the last 30 years to create such virtual social spaces, notably Second Life, the Oculus Rift may just have that specialness that will make it happen – provided it can overcome the perennial problems of lag and motion sickness. But it could still be too soon for most of us to contemplate.

fig_02_02 Remember the hype for 3D TV a few years back. Lots of people excitedly bought them but then stopped watching them quite soon afterwards. According to a recent survey 8 out of 10 regret having bought one. Eyestrain, headaches and discomfort are common complaints. Having to share the limited set of glasses that came in the box with everyone in the family plus friends has proven to be one step too far. Many other problems, too, have been discussed by Ted Kritsonis. One wonders if Facebook might have bitten off more than it can chew. But at least they will have secured another sizeable chunk of hot talent.

In my view, nothing beats seeing amazing fish and coral in the real sea, wearing only a good old fashioned snorkelling mask. Yet.
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Tiger Thrill

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TriumphI’ve always been terrified of motorbikes, ever since one of my college friend’s got knocked off her Honda 50cc, when she was just 16 years old, and tumbled over the bonnet of the car that hit her. She survived suffering only mild concussion and bruises but another colleague’s wife died in her 20s, when she was knocked off – as a pillion – from his bike. So, it was with much fear that I agreed to go on the back of a bike – a bright orange powerful Triumph Tiger – to visit a winery in the Mornington Peninsula. The build up and banter amongst the Melbourne crowd who had set me up for this made me even more terrified.

Kitted up in all the gear and having listened to the basics of being a pillion, I stepped onto the bike behind my friend and confident driver, Steve. I trusted him 100% to drive safely and for good reason. You are at their mercy. There needs to be good body talk and understanding as you can’t chat or see eye to eye once on the move. Tapping on the shoulders means stop – like pulling the safety cord. I was determined not to have to do that.
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After saying farewell to the others, who were driving there in the car, we whisked off up the driveway and immediately came to a roundabout. My arms and body were shot and taut with adrenalin. First test within seconds: was I leaning enough, should I look to the left or right or bury my head in Steve’s back. So many mini-fears raced through my mind. And it seemed like my inner thoughts were shouting at me – being amplified under my helmet. The next 10 minutes were sheer terror – when I dared not look at anything except Steve’s silver helmet in front of me – which I kept hitting with mine as we braked.
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And then slowly, I started noticing the scenery, the amazing modern houses along the coastline, the beaches, the other drivers, the curves and inclines in the road. It was fun to be peeping at the world as it whizzed by. I started enjoying leaning round the bends and the umph from accelerating and zipping in and out of the traffic. I felt so vulnerable and yet so free at the same time. And so enclosed (with all the protective gear on) and yet every now and again could smell fresh grass in the fields or raw petrol coming from the car exhausts – that I had not experienced before, with such intensity. It was all so precarious and yet so enthralling. Knowing one had protective gear on that could help save us from brain damage or ripped skin was reassuring. But also knowing a margin of error by another driver could be curtains for both of us was unnerving. The tension, contemplated at speed, added to the thrill. I got it – for what it means to be a biker.

Another dream fellow has been researching thrilling interactions as part of his work on new forms of entertainment. He has conjured up, in collaboration with a number of artists, ever more amazing experiences, including a new form of interactive thrill ride that is controlled by a person’s breathing. His take is to deliberately use discomfort as a way of enhancing the excitement. It seems the more frightening, scary, dangerous and uncomfortable, the better.

A thrill begins with the much feared anticipation, followed by an extreme physical sensation, and then the euphoria of relief at having survived the experience. That sums up my experience to a tee. But why do we keep seeking novel thrills? It doesn’t seem natural to put our lives at ever more risk by deliberately scaring ourselves shitless. One theory is that such feelings of thrill fill the void that has come about through civilisation. We crave powerful emotions that somehow have got lost through becoming a modern society. No longer able to hunt or face a roaring tiger we seek out new thrills, like bungee jumping, white water rafting, or riding a motorbike Tiger.

The terror we go through, before, during and after combine together to heighten the actual experience and subsequent memory of it. I may forget what we had for the delightful lunch at the winery afterwards but I will never forget my Tiger Triumph bike ride.

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Tragically, Steve died last night (18/4/13) suddenly and unexpectedly in his sleep.
Just one week after this. Life can be so cruel.
My thoughts are with his wife, Anna, and their son Alec.
The remembrance page.
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steve

Facing Fear

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eureka-skydeck88We are creatures of habit. We slip readily into routines, from the paths we take to how we make tea. For many, it is because it is comforting and reassuring giving us our sense of self and identity. For some, it is because of their aversion of risk and reluctance to try out new things in case of undesired outcomes. We tend to stick to what we know, preferring to remain in our comfort zones.

At the same time, many of us would like to be happier, more creative and live more fulfilling lives. But wisdom and words suggest that entails us taking risks and doing something different. We’re told part of the trick is to set grand challenges and life goals that we can then aim for. Self-help books and websites push the language of the journeys we need to take to attain them and the steps along the way. There are lots of lifestyle apps, too, that promise to help you live your dreams and be happy. One I just stumbled across is aptly called, Everest, claiming it can help you “break goals into small steps, build step streaks, learn from others, and beautifully capture your journey from dreaming to doing.”
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Seeing one’s dreams and aspirations in ‘step streaks’ is like ticking checkboxes or crossing off lists. There is a degree of satisfaction in doing this. But, as I have discovered on my travels, there is another side to living our dreams – not the small steps up the mountain but the big ones down it. That includes facing our fears.

When I was in Cape Town, I finally overcame a lifetime fear of putting my head under water. Ever since I was a young child, I’ve associated it with terrifying feelings of suffocating and drowning. It comes as no surprise that my idea of hell is scuba diving. I remember the mushroom swimming floats we were taught to do at school. I could never quite grasp my legs and let go in the way my schoolmates did so effortlessly. The same with sitting on the side of the pool when learning to dive. I was hopeless, not even managing a belly flop. After school compulsory lessons, I simply avoided putting my head under, opting instead for the tortoise head swim.

So how did I get over it? The family I was staying with had a swimming pool and each day, 8 year old J, would jump in the pool and swim like a porpoise, encouraging and cajouling me, “Hey Yvonne, come on, put your head under water.” He showed me how to do it. And each day I did it for a little while, even when it gave me ‘stinky’ eyes due to too much background chlorine. Somehow putting my trust in someone much younger seemed to do the trick. Then during my last week, a group of us (adults and children) went to a stunning beach for a final swim and snorkel. I bravely put on my goggles and made a few efforts to hold my breath and look underneath at the seaweed. It was quite choppy because of the wind so I kept popping my head out when no-one was looking. I followed them up onto the rocks, and suddenly I found myself on a precipice that felt like it was 4 meters high. The rest had all jumped in, with the exception of J., who was behind me. I looked down at the swirling seaweed beneath me and the taste of metal tin fear entered my mouth. J. could sense my terror and softly said “Come on Yvonne. Jump.” – I hovered, quivered and mumbled for what seemed like an eternity.

Then I jumped (that is not me but it is the rock!).

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I felt a tremendous rush all around me, my body accelerating downwards, sucked into a vortex, and a swishing loud noise in my ears. An enormous fear of drowning enveloped me. I did not know when or how I could stop my body being propelled at top neck speed downwards. I had to wait for my body to stop and reverse back up. In that moment of eternal speed I understood my fear. As I plunged deeper and deeper I wondered if I could hold my breath for much longer. And then I missed the moment of turn. When, finally, my head whooshed out of the sea there was a mighty roar – not from within but from my friends cheering me on.

For days afterwards I marveled at what I had done. Overcoming and understanding the reason for a lifetime fear – however, trivial to others – is like climbing Everest. What next?

eurekaMy next is to overcome a fear of heights. Many of us suffer from some form of vertigo. It goes against our natural instincts to go near an edge we could fall off and yet others love it – base flyers, bungee jumpers and sky divers crave that adrenalin rush. You wont get me doing any of those extreme sports – not just yet. However, on arriving in Melbourne yesterday, as the next stage of the dream fellowship, I discovered my apartment is on the 61st floor of a modern high-rise block, called Eureka Tower. It has a balcony with stunning views. The concierge who showed me how everything worked in the apartment opened the door to the balcony but would not step out himself. I gingerly did but came straight back in. Since, I’ve made about 20 attempts now to go back out there and hold on. Today I even held onto the glass at the edge of the wall and looked down a crack that goes all the way down. Somehow, it does not seem that bad.

What next?

There is a skydeck much higher up the tower on the 88th floor, with a glass box hanging over the edge. You walk out on your socks and look down beneath your feet at the world below. For many, it is yet another thrill but for the concierge and myself it will take a lot of nerve to ‘step streak’ that one. I have two months to do it in.
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Dog Decisions

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R and I went to Brighton and Hove’s Greyhound Stadium last night to experience the entertainment and excitement of watching greyhound dogs charge around the racecourse at top neck speed. I’ve not been for a long time but remember vividly the adrenalin rush of winning a few pounds on a 50 pence bet.

The first thing I noticed that was different was the technology. The woman at the turnstile explained that we needed to tap in our car number plate on the touch screen just inside as the shared car park with the Co-op store only allows for 2 hours parking. After that you get a parking ticket. But if you use their system you are exempt. Slick body-sized, walk-up kiosks awaited us. The punters all knew what to do and tapped their numbers in. I pondered over how the system worked; did the tapped in number plates stream onto the parking attendants’ mobile devices and did they scan all the number plates in the car park to match them up? It turns out it is all automated. The company who created the system uses Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) to monitor a car’s movements in the car park that then enables them to enforce parking fines to vehicle owners who exceed the two hours limit and who have not tapped in their number plates. They also provide detailed statistics of who visits each week. Big data, big brother? Slightly worrying, I thought.

But the biggest dilemma for us was the multitude of decisions we had to make, from where to sit, what to bet on and how to bet. To begin, we did not know whether to go upstairs or downstairs, sit near the bar or in the café, stay inside or stand outside. How do you decide what is a good spot to be in if you have not been before or for a long time? Should we watch it from above or at the side, digitally on a TV screen or for real? We scouted around and finally sat down at an empty table near the bar and close to a bank of Tote betting desks.

The next decision was who to bet on. We opened the scorecard booklets they had provided us with. R was anxious to know how it all worked. I bluffed my way to begin with and then fessed up to not really knowing what it was all about. We discovered there are many dimensions to measure a dog up against. R wanted to understand the logic, science and probabilities. I wanted to know what colour the dogs’ coats were, the name of the owners, and whether their names had a good sound to them.

We tried to read the small print on the Formlines. There are six lines of form; first is the length of the race (ours were all the standard 515 metres), then six lines showing how each dog has done over the last 6 races – how many runs, sectional time, position at bends, finishing position, distance won or beaten by, name of winning or beaten greyhound and venue, the name of the winners, the race winner’s time, comments on how they ran, race winner’s time, weight in kilos, going adjustment, trainer, grade of race, finishing time, whether a favourite or a trial and starting price. What a lot of facts to consider and then try to understand how they all interacted with each other. There was no way we could fathom out the influence of all of these on who was most likely to win – and yet millions do study the form week in week out before placing their bets.

Then you need to understand all the different kinds of bets you can place. To help us, on the second page is a guide to betting on the tote, showing 9 different ways, from a straight win to an ‘all ways trio’ (choose 3 numbers to finish 1st, 2nd or 3rd in any order). The easiest was placing a bet to win but the others sounded more enticing. Could you predict which of the 6 dogs would come in 1st, 2nd and 3rd, based on systematically running through all those stats and working it out? There were 10 races scheduled throughout the evening, the first at 19.30, the second at 19.46 and so on at regular intervals. So much to do.

R concocted his own mathematical formula that needed some computation. So I dug out my iPhone for him to use the calculator on. I was not sure what he was doing but it involved averaging one of the columns of numbers by another. I, in the meantime, tried to work out which kind of bet we should go for. In the end, I chose the most risky one with the chance of highest returns – the ‘straight trio’. Sounded like a nice name for a cocktail. R went for the safer ‘all ways trio.’ We then went over to the tote counter and gave the numbers of the traps the dogs we wanted to win and placed our bets.

We took off with our £1 bet tickets and went outside to the racetrack. It was quite empty so we got some great seats just near the finishing line and began soaking up the atmosphere. In front of us was a group of lads dressed up like the Blues Brothers, with the exception of one chap who was to be the groom, dressed in a wig, frilly ripped flowery dress and a L plate on his back. It was fun to watch them jostling. Next to them, stood a gaggle of young girls, towering and tottering on ridiculously high-healed stilettos. One confident blond who stood out from the rest was wearing a sausage-tight, white ‘t-skirt’ with spray-tanned long legs and arms sprouting out. I could not stop looking at her self-conscious body hovering in the evening light. She really was made up. I’d have placed my bet on her winning her race.

The first set of dogs then appeared with their owners and were paraded in front of us. I liked the one in the orange coat best and thought perhaps we should be betting on our gut instinct of what the dogs looked like rather than on their form. Some were nervous, frisky, curious, jumpy, others sleepy, timid and quiet; a few even stopped to have a poo – much to the amusement of the crowd.

R’s first heuristic did not work and my high-risk strategy also failed – but it was exhilarating to watch your nominated dogs and cheer their trap numbers. “Come on 5, come on 3, yes, yes…” Then we fell silent as we saw our numbered coats slip behind the rest.

After loosing again in the next two races we changed our strategy. Instead, we looked at the consistency of the dogs’ finishing times for the last six races. We also chose the single safe bet ‘to win’ rather than the first three dog permutation. I also prioritized my choice on the sound of the dog’s names. Our new tactic worked for race 4! A greyhound that looked a nice shade of grey and wore a white coat, called Pablos Antics came flying in (we chose the name because R is half Spanish).

The next race I had that willed feeling one can have when being superstitious. I just knew my dog would win. I chose one called Tidy Trouble. 5 of its last 6 finishing times were on the 30 seconds mark (making it consistent). I liked the name because I used to live in Tidy Street in Brighton and I liked the sound of it when conjoined with Trouble. Instead of going to the Tote windows I went to the men who stand by chalkboards next to the track and placed a fiver on him. The man who took my money looked me in the eye and said ‘here comes trouble’.

R chose Greycotte Grace – a name that did not do much for me but the stats did it for him. As the dogs were paraded in front of us we watched our respective dogs and commented on their demeanor. Mine was small, grey and sleepy. R’s was large, mottled and jumpy; more interested in sniffing the other dogs and people. Not a good omen for either of us. Still when the fluffy hare came racing around for the dogs to chase we could not help but get excited, cheering our dogs on to win. Mine was first out of the trap and kept its place right to the end. R’s never left 5th spot. But just as the dogs hurtled to the finishing line, number 5 caught up. It was a photo finish and we waited nervously for the crackling tannoy system to call out the number. When I heard ‘trap 1’, I leapt up for joy. Tidy Trouble had done it. I also had not realized that not only was Tidy Trouble an outsider but the odds were very favourable at 5/1. No-one else had given him a chance since he’d finished either last or second from last in his last six races. And to cap it, at the bottom of the page, the form guide had pointedly summed up the poor dog’s demise, “made to retrial after a heavy defeat, been in decline for a while now.” Luckily, I never saw that before I had made my decision.

The feeling of winning gives you a rush. I raced down to the front where the man said to me again ‘here comes trouble’ and handed me thirty quid. I grinned inanely.

Making a choice on gut feelings and one or two heuristics seems a good strategy. This idea has also become increasingly popular in contemporary psychological theorizing on decision-making. For example, Gerd Gigerenzer’s recent book ‘Gut Feelings’ talks about how relying on one or two fast and frugal rules of thumb rather than exhaustively weighing up all possible reasons is often a far more effective way of making a decision. The fewer dimensions one considers the less one is overwhelmed when making a choice. Finding or seeing the salient information that satisfies one or two core heuristics (in my case consistency of running time and the sound of the dog’s name) can be faster, more satisfying and less cognitively demanding, provided one takes the outcome – winning or losing – with a pinch of salt.

We left the greyhound stadium on a high and got home just in time to watch Team GB at the Olympic Stadium win a few more gold medals – the heroes of the night were Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis and Greg Rutherford. Tom Fordyce, the chief sports writer, for the Guardian captured the specialness, “there was a point in the Olympic Stadium on Saturday evening, at about 9.20pm, when you wanted to put the world on pause and just revel in it all for a moment before the next wonderful thing caught you round the chops.”

And just as well we left after my wonderful moment because my winning formula would have failed me in the next race – Vigorous Cheryl (a good Canadian friend of mine is called Cheryl) would have been my bet but she came in 5th. Gambling is so much about intuition, luck and superstition.

Changing Lives

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Some people love coming home after a vacation, enjoying the creature comforts of being in their own home and seeing the faces of their pets and loved ones. Others pretend they are still out there; wearing the briefest of beachwear and exposing burnt tans on semi-naked bodies, strutting along the miles of corridors at Heathrow airport, having flown from sunny far-flung places in January, not wanting to face the greyness of Huddersfield, Watford or the like.

I’ve just come back from 3 months of dreaming in Cape Town and it feels like I imagine it is for an astronaut, hurtling through outer space back to earth after orbiting earth for a weightless period of time. I had such a brilliant time out there on many counts, that returning home was indeed very difficult. Unlike a 2-week holiday, a 3-month sabbatical gets you used to a new way of life that almost becomes a settled routine, where new friends become part of your social life, and you feel part of the place, enjoying the delights of being a local, while each day discovering something else new. It is an aching wrench to say goodbye to the spectrum of a new life that one has invested in and enjoyed in the making. The transition back to one’s old way of living is hard; one even, somewhat perversely, tries to make changes to match the new changed self. For me, that includes an absence of engaging with the media; I did not miss watching TV, listening to the radio or reading the newspapers. They were such an integral part of the old me – can I persist with reading books, playing guitar, and other stuff I began doing instead? But, somehow, I found myself buying the Sunday Observer today without realizing…slowly, surely and inevitably…

One desperately clings onto the vivid memories that have filled one’s 24/7 senses; constantly reminding oneself that it is only 2,3,4 days, then a week, since I was sitting drinking coffee overlooking Table mountain. After a week, the time units begin to be replaced by the demands of the old-new life. A couple of weeks then go by, the tan fades, and it feels like one has never been away at all. Even the indulgence of recycling through all the digital photos and the fingering of all the physical stuff brought back in the extra suitcase pales in significance. Nothing can bring the life back but one can’t help being nostalgic. It is the same when one leaves university, after having ‘the time of your life’, or retires from a place of work, where the room sounds hollow after everyone has gone back to their desk and you are left with a big over-sized ‘miss you’ card, covered in witty anodyne anecdotes about you.

As kids we used to dread going round to my parent’s friends houses who had just come back from a trip – because after tea, the great old-fashioned, physical projector slide show would commence. We would be subjected to hours of pretty pre-Instagram places we had never been to while our host warbled on forever, embellishing each new image with great gusto. For them, such a trip down memory lane brought it all back. And occasionally we got caught up in it, but the joy was very much in the telling. Now, we speed through ready-made, digital slideshows with accompanying music and Kenny Burns effects. But people get bored even more quickly than then so I don’t show my collection of photos anymore; instead I tend to just whip out my iPhone and scroll through 4 or 5 selected images, checking to see how glazed their look is, before putting it away.

A lot of research has been done in the last few years to enhance, extend and facilitate the sharing of photos and memories amongst friends, families and those with memory impairments; there are now a range of ingenious devices, created by my fellow colleagues, that make the joy of remembering closer to the original joy.

But technology augmentation cannot dampen the painful transition one has to go through to realize how much one has changed from having had a complete change of scene. The cliché ‘there is no gain without pain” seems apt. One sees and enjoys the world so very differently. One has big thoughts and dreams. Trying to cling onto them, however, is like running after the string on a helium balloon disappearing into the sky. Recharged and with a different gaze, the memories eventually become less visceral and one is then ready to move forwards with the new wisdom, rather than looking back.

Cape Town

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I nearly had to postpone the start of my dream fellowship trip to Cape Town, as flu continued to wreak havoc with my body, brain and mind. I’m normally a heavy cold person – getting caught out once a year – and soldier on, with tissues abound. But this time, I was knocked for six. Splitting headaches, shivering bones, crawling skin, and no appetite for life.

Somehow, I managed to get through the worst of it by the weekend and decided to take the risk of flying.

As I was gingerly whisked off to Heathrow, my driver commented on how the way to tell whether someone has flu or a cold is to tell them there is a £20 note in the garden. If they have a cold they go outside and pick it up; if they have flu, they won’t even register what you are saying.

I don’t even remember looking outside or opening the blinds. I did not even Google my symptoms to check what I had. For the last 4 days I had been struggling to think along a straight line, let alone bothering to check my email, etc. Instead, all I did was fall into feverish, delirious sleep at every opprortunity. When eventually I woke up, I’d struggle to the bathroom, and then return to bed in an altered state for another day.

The flight to Cape Town just passed me by. Then I watched the passengers as they plopped out of the plane, like drops from a pipette, onto hot soil. The warm unfamiliar air hit my face as I joined them. I was taken aback. I’d managed to arrive without going through any bout of nerves, anxiety or stress. At least there was a silver lining to the great illness.

G, my host, welcomed me to his adopted country. He looked totally at one in it. As we drove through the burbs back to his abode, I listened to him talk about “braai”, and living in different parts of SA. Then we drove to the bay, bought excellent coffee from a wonderful local bakery, sat down for a bit and watched some baby seals flip their tails. There was an intoxicating smell of fresh fish being grilled, cleaned, and caught. Everywhere I looked, I sensed a Hockney-sparkle in the water.

Peacefulness and perfect sunshine enveloped me. I felt my body beginning to stir; ready for some blue-sky thinking.

Flirting Butterflies

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There are countless online dating services now; most well-known are Match.com, eHarmony, and Guardian Soulmates. Yesterday evening I heard about another one, Flirt.com. As its name suggests, it is a lot more raunchy and explicit in its claims than the more romantically named ones:

“Join the world of free online dating with Flirt.com, make new friends and start hot all-night affairs. We’ll show you a short cut to all forbidden pleasures and to 1000s of personals of frivolous men and women looking for passionate lovers or hot mistresses in the UK.”

However, judging by the reviews it seems that these kinds of lurid sites are full of computer-talking bots rather than real people. Despite this automated fakery, many people still try their luck. And some get lucky. One young lad I met on the train last night was going all the way to Worthing to meet in the flesh the girl of his dreams, whom he’d been flirting with on the website for the last two weeks. Moreover, he was prepared to travel far and pay a lot to see her. He’d come all the way from Nottingham to meet her in a hotel. He’d never been south in his life, let alone London. This was the biggest adventure of his lifetime.

As we chugged out of Victoria Station he jumped around the carriage snapping photos with his phone of the twinkly lights on the bridge across the Thames. Then he tried to snap the fireworks as they kept popping up in the dark against the backdrop of the London skyline.

His excitement was palpable.

He asked me if he and his mate (who only looked 14 but seemed far more streetwise) were in the right bit of the train going to Worthing (the train splits into two at Hayward’s Heath and the first 4 carriages go to Littlehampton and the remaining 8 to Lewes). I nodded and then we got chatting. He was a bright ginger-haired boy, about 16-17 (although claimed to be 18) with several teeth missing and wearing crumpled, chav grey trackie bottoms with matching grey hoodie.

He called his Worthing date his North Star. Very touching.

He then started telling me how he was from a broken home, been in trouble, and now wanted to start a new life in Worthing with his flirt.com lady. His dream has always been to meet someone, get married and raise kids, and be a proper mum and dad that would live together. This was going to be his first proper girlfriend – at least that was what he hoped. I could see there was a lot of damage hiding behind the missing teeth, but it was lovely to see such romantic idealism shining through.

He was very twitchy and soon went off to the toilets to get changed. His mate (with no matching date), on the other hand, just played a video game throughout the journey. When he came back, he had an air of self-consciousness, this time donning an even more crumpled stripy t-shirt, but obviously one of his favourites. He sat down and carefully folded his carapace hoodie, putting it neatly in his backpack. Care that you take when in a care home.

He suited the nickname Ginger.

Ginger and his mate had been travelling already for 6 hours. I asked them how long they planned to stay in Worthing. Ginger piped up wistfully “maybe forever”. He kept looking at his mate and saying he had butterflies. His mate looked back blankly and just smiled. But I could see them very clearly fluttering all around Ginger.

Ginger’s mobile then trilled loudly. Nervously, he answered it. It was the flirt.com lady. She asked where they were. He looked at me and I shouted East Croydon. Ginger then added: “the lady on the train says we are in the right carriage and would be there in an hour.” I liked the ‘lady’ touch. Bode well.

We went through a tunnel and he lost her signal. She’d already had a few drinks and he seemed a bit put out.

The boys then suddenly realized they were sitting in First Class and that gave them a thrill. The ticket lady eventually came by and they scarpered into the next carriage. She gave me a knowing wink as she followed them. Then she left the train and they came scampering back into my carriage – only to be shooed out again by the next ticket inspector. It became a playful cat and mouse game – their childhood innocence getting the better of them, along with the butterflies.

As the train came into Hove, I stood up, walked over to Ginger and handed him a fiver, suggesting he buy his lady friend a nice cocktail (I am a big softie when it comes to kids with a shard of hope stacked up against such a mountain of damaged background). He swiftly put it in his pocket and thanked me quietly. Then he told me his name was Stevan – emphasizing it was spelt with an ‘a’ and not an ‘e’. I do hope flirt.com works out for him and is not the scam many unhappy campers have written about online. It is a long way for a boy so young and sweet to be duped and have his looking glass life shattered.

Image: redbutton.com