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Modern Life Isn’t Rubbish

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A few minutes ago, a small bird sat on the fence in the front garden. It was extraordinarily colourful and not a bird I’d seen in these parts before.

I took a picture from a distance and just as I did so, it took off – leaving me with an image of a feathery blur. Ain’t that always the way? D’oh!

I zoomed in and the bird was outlined by my touching the image with my finger. A second later, the screen informs me that it is a Sacred Kingfisher with a link to a page that tells me all about it. I didn’t ask for this information – it just appeared.

Honestly, the photo is not of the highest quality and the fact that it knew it was a bird would have been impressive enough.

At this point I can hear some readers going “snort! That’s been there since 2020, grandad!” Well I don’t care…I am impressed that my phone can do this.

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Comments

  1. I must try that next time I see a bird that isn’t a seagull, a magpie or a pigeon.

    My mind is still blown every time I use Google Maps or Apple Maps for navigation and I end up exactly where I want to go – especially when used in conjunction with Apple Car Play. The sheer amount of zeros and ones! No doubt it’s operated from a server farm half the size of Kansas that will shorten the life of the planet, but hey ho…still miraculous.

    • At the time it said you were going to be there which is even more impressive. CarPlay is ace. Having my tickets and cards on my phone is also ace. Doing the supermarket shop whilst on a train. Always having a camera on me. Any song, podcast or audiobook available anywhere. Being able to watch the football on it. Looking up how to get the slugs off my chilli plants. The list is pretty much endless.

      Phones really are fabulous things.

      • Not the rotary dial ones. They are not so good these days.

        Kind of agree that it is a miracle, but are we happier having all this in our hands? I actually rarely watch video on my smart phone, I had a bigger colour screen in 1973.

        And that one can live without almost any human interaction these days has consequences that I am not sure we fully understand yet.

        (Yes I typed this on my Android phone)

  2. My mind is blown by Google Lens (other magic is available no doubt). Take a photo of some text in another alphabet and it’ll translate it for you. I mean, just wow.

    • Yes it’s brilliant isn’t it. I used it recently in a gallery with woeful signage to find out who the artists were. I also discovered “The rape of Lucretia” had been renamed, presumably to protect sensitive modern viewers.

      • So what is it about doorbells, if they’re anything like those adverts for ‘verisure’ then they’ll hardly work. I can’t work out if they employ bad actors that can’t act, or good actors acting badly. It’s a fine line.

    • It’s the Young People Of Today. They’re turning into Pod People. They go out on dates, sit and stare at their phones, take selfies, pictures of their milkshakes, exchange maybe a couple of real words out loud, go home to sit in bed with their phones. I asked a couple of my students (age 15) if they ever spoke to their friends on their phones (as in, used their phones as telephones) and they waved their hands in horror. “Nonononono!”

      TYPOTs are gradually being weaned away – groomed away? – from real human verbal communication with other real humans. And this MARK MY WORDS OH YUS YOU MARK MY WORDS MY SON will only get worse when the whole (totally imaginary) concept of “sharing” on the internet – which is its present paradigm OH YUS I SAID PARADIGM gets gradually replaced by communicating with your Personal Jesus – the AI intelligence that knows you better than you know yourself, can answer every question, keep you entertained and online without bothering another human being, comfort you, play you media, help you rub one out under the sheets. Everyone else in the world will seem dull and boring and incapable of understanding what makes you so very special. Science Fiction? No! SCIENCE FACT!

  6. This extensive study by the University of Minnesota Extension* tells you (Us! The world!) which fruits should go in the fridge and which shouldn’t. It even includes tomatoes, which is nice. They spell “apples” incorrectly, but the technology for this kind of thing is in its infancy. One day they’ll be able to tell us how long various fruits can be kept in the fridge for. No one can tell me modern life is rubbish!

    *”That’s just the name of the shop, luv.”

    https://extension.umn.edu/preserving-and-preparing/refrigerator-counter-top-where-does-fresh-fruit-go

  8. For many years, the Radio 1 DJ Mike Read made a point of owning every 7 inch single in the top 40 so that he could access any song at any time. I think he also had several juke boxes too. New Order even pressed a special 7” of Blue Monday for him.

    With Spotify, we are ALL Mike Read now. Perhaps that’s why we still aren’t happy.

  9. I just discovered that the sound recording app on my phone will transcribe your speech at amazing speed, and more amazingly can transcribe the words if you sing into it.

  10. What the tech can do now is incredible – but I’m not sure it’s altogether a good thing.

    I’ll give you an example. I was diagnosed T1 Diabetic in 1976. Growing up sans tech, I actually had to learn how T1 works – all the inputs, all the outputs, all the calculations. We’ve evolved from putting tablets in test tubes of urine to Continual Glucose Monitoring and insulin pumps.

    That tech does everything for you. For a lot of T1s growing up, they learn how to operate the tech, not the underlying fundamentals of T1.

    If my tech dies, as it has done, I get annoyed, but I can still get on with life. The T1 fora are full of people who just don’t have a clue and have to run to the doctor or go online to get an hour by hour playbook to help them out.

    Something’s missing. Thankfully, my Dad and I taught my son how read maps in case of the inevitable Maps collapse.

    • It’s not too much of a generalisation to say that no Thai can read a map, as any tourist needing directions could tell you. Now, of course, no tourist travels with a map, GPS tells them exactly where they are and how to get to somewhere else, and Thais are no longer baffled by those folded pictures of wiggly lines. You’d think that compass points would be a natural for them, what with the sun coming up in the east, setting in the west, and here, the river running north south. But no. Few Thais can point with confidence to any cardinal point, even with a compass. They know where they are (in narrow, local terms) and that’s enough.

      • I’m not great with compass directions either. GPS will tell me to “head north” and, unless it’s very obvious, I am struggling.

        The other week, I asked a passer-by in a busy Auckland street if he knew where a certain pub was. He said “got a phone?” I said yes. He said to use a maps app on the phone and then that will tell me exactly where it is. “Er…thanks” I said. “Just use your phone!” he repeated as he walked away.

        • I’ve always been good with maps, in fact I like poring over maps purely as something to do in idle moments.

          I’ve never been good at giving people directions. I might know how to get to a certain place but unless it’s just straight down the road from where we both are I will struggle to describe a route that normally I’d take without having to think about it.

          In the last few years of my working life I drove a work vehicle every day with a built-in SatNav, roughly 10,000 miles a year in the northern half of London, and I relied heavily on that SatNav. As a consequence I have retained no memory at all of the road layout of most of the areas I was working in then. Even some that I had to return to again and again.

  11. Another reason why modern life isn’t rubbish is that you don’t have to wait on the arrival of someone, completely unable to know what’s happening if they are late, or don’t turn up at all.

    • Yes, I agree that can be very practical. But at the same time we are losing certain useful skills.

      Before the advent of the mobile phone, if someone didn’t turn up, we’d have do some thinking to make an intelligent guess what might have happened.

      Had they misunderstood the meeting place? Were they waiting somewhere else?

      Had they misunderstood the time or the date?

      Were there problems with public transport? Had their bike got a puncture?

      Had she realised that going out on a date with you was the road to nowhere? She’d gone out with Mr Potato Head instead.

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