A few weeks ago the family paid a visit to Big Pit, Wales' National Coal Museum. It's really worth a detour, but only if you're already in Wales. Obviously.
The Three Day Week sits at the very edge of my memory, candles joining bog-roll on that short list of items that you never, ever, ever, EVER run out of. But the English Civil War of 1984/85... oh, sorry, it says Miners' Strike here... sits firmly in my formative years. I may have grown up without a mine for a hundred miles, but it really mattered. There was a sense of the country pulling itself apart.
Three things surprised me. The first was that all watches have to be removed when you go underground (and you do, for a good hour or so), even my wind-up one. Given that I bought it on eBay as 'in need of a new battery', I understand their stance that somebody will take a battery-driven watch down thinking that it's an old school model. They're very sensitive about anything that could cause a spark. Which I appreciate.
The second was how much we, as a country, paid for the nationalisation of the mines. In 1947 £164,660,000 was paid to the owners for almost 1000 collieries and £78,457,000 for other assets such as coke ovens, brickworks and smokeless fuel plants. That's almost £10bn at today's prices. And we treated the industry like Pete Townsend treated his guitars, smashing it to pieces within a working lifetime. Except Pete, apparently, used to creep back onto stage, collect up the bits, and glue them back together. Unlike Thatcher and Ian McGregor.
Thirdly, and a natural consequence of the second, it was how quickly the industry has become, quite literally, a museum piece. Miners were real people when I grew up. Now they're categorised with knocker-uppers and those blokes who carried red flags in front of horseless carriages; shiny lamps are on sale as souvenirs for £55. It got me thinking: what other industries and jobs that we take for granted? What real jobs today could be museum pieces themselves before today's graduate trainee retires?
We can all list the easy ones with our eyes closed. Cashiers: we'll just be walking into shops, filling our bags, and walking out and it won't be stealing because it'll all be recorded on our phones with our accounts instantly debited. Taxi drivers: driverless Uber a-go-go.
I think you can extend the latter concept to pilots, too, both military and civil. Planes are on auto-pilot more often than they're not; and why complicate instrument-only flying by adding an underpowered, fallible human into the process flowchart? My guess is that the only time human intervention has any real value is at landing, and even then I'd prefer the faster reactions and collective experience of a million touchdowns of the computer. Driverless cars will all get us used to having nobody up front, and first class could get to have a big windscreen. And all those sci-fi movies, where every spaceship has a pilot, which are all essentially WW2-in-space, will look so anachronistic. Except for Star Wars, of course, which was a long, long time ago, so they have yet to invent any of this technology.
What about prostitutes? It must be a fairly soul-less experience, and doesn't all that repetitive movement add up to a robotic experience already? (Not sure if this one counts, because it's a robot replicating human action, rather than superseding it).
Politicians? Our political views are influenced by the media, and much of the content in the media is already generated by AI, if not by Russians. So, by that measure, they're already being voted in by software. Going the whole hog will just enable them to make best use of continual online referenda and the wisdom of crowds and not be swayed by the last person to speak. Just don't say 'Skynet'.
Actually, it may be easier to list the jobs that remain: pig masturbators, pickers of soft fruit, plumbers, electricians... and creative writers. Maybe, for once, I've picked a winner, and without the need to jerk off a pig.
The Three Day Week sits at the very edge of my memory, candles joining bog-roll on that short list of items that you never, ever, ever, EVER run out of. But the English Civil War of 1984/85... oh, sorry, it says Miners' Strike here... sits firmly in my formative years. I may have grown up without a mine for a hundred miles, but it really mattered. There was a sense of the country pulling itself apart.
Three things surprised me. The first was that all watches have to be removed when you go underground (and you do, for a good hour or so), even my wind-up one. Given that I bought it on eBay as 'in need of a new battery', I understand their stance that somebody will take a battery-driven watch down thinking that it's an old school model. They're very sensitive about anything that could cause a spark. Which I appreciate.
The second was how much we, as a country, paid for the nationalisation of the mines. In 1947 £164,660,000 was paid to the owners for almost 1000 collieries and £78,457,000 for other assets such as coke ovens, brickworks and smokeless fuel plants. That's almost £10bn at today's prices. And we treated the industry like Pete Townsend treated his guitars, smashing it to pieces within a working lifetime. Except Pete, apparently, used to creep back onto stage, collect up the bits, and glue them back together. Unlike Thatcher and Ian McGregor.
Thirdly, and a natural consequence of the second, it was how quickly the industry has become, quite literally, a museum piece. Miners were real people when I grew up. Now they're categorised with knocker-uppers and those blokes who carried red flags in front of horseless carriages; shiny lamps are on sale as souvenirs for £55. It got me thinking: what other industries and jobs that we take for granted? What real jobs today could be museum pieces themselves before today's graduate trainee retires?
We can all list the easy ones with our eyes closed. Cashiers: we'll just be walking into shops, filling our bags, and walking out and it won't be stealing because it'll all be recorded on our phones with our accounts instantly debited. Taxi drivers: driverless Uber a-go-go.
I think you can extend the latter concept to pilots, too, both military and civil. Planes are on auto-pilot more often than they're not; and why complicate instrument-only flying by adding an underpowered, fallible human into the process flowchart? My guess is that the only time human intervention has any real value is at landing, and even then I'd prefer the faster reactions and collective experience of a million touchdowns of the computer. Driverless cars will all get us used to having nobody up front, and first class could get to have a big windscreen. And all those sci-fi movies, where every spaceship has a pilot, which are all essentially WW2-in-space, will look so anachronistic. Except for Star Wars, of course, which was a long, long time ago, so they have yet to invent any of this technology.
What about prostitutes? It must be a fairly soul-less experience, and doesn't all that repetitive movement add up to a robotic experience already? (Not sure if this one counts, because it's a robot replicating human action, rather than superseding it).
Politicians? Our political views are influenced by the media, and much of the content in the media is already generated by AI, if not by Russians. So, by that measure, they're already being voted in by software. Going the whole hog will just enable them to make best use of continual online referenda and the wisdom of crowds and not be swayed by the last person to speak. Just don't say 'Skynet'.
Actually, it may be easier to list the jobs that remain: pig masturbators, pickers of soft fruit, plumbers, electricians... and creative writers. Maybe, for once, I've picked a winner, and without the need to jerk off a pig.
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