One of them comes to our house and I assume that without that wire, I would not be able to send out blogposts to the world at large. Blogposts that have no doubt created puzzlement and angry debate in internet spy centres run by government agencies in both Russia and China. But to be honest I have precisely no idea how this process works for I am no technophile.
There are lots of things I do not understand. After all, we cannot know everything so I just cruise along untroubled by my ignorance. Although I have snapped thousands of digital images with digital cameras, I have no idea what a digital image is or how that business works. All I know is that digital images are infinitely superior to the old prints we waited for after completing rolls of film. And if you know how digital photography works, please don't tell me because I know that I would just glaze over and forget it all before the breaking of a new day.
How televisions work is another long tolerated area of ignorance for me. I prefer to think of that process as pure magic for the technical explanation would baffle the hell out of me.
At the end of my Valentine's Day post, I referred to electronic car keys. If you drive a motor vehicle, you have also most likely got an electronic car key. I can lock Clint with my key from fifty yards away and at night when locking our front door I often press "Lock" on Clint's key just to make doubly sure he's secure. The indicator lights flash orange through the front door's glazed panels to tell me that my press has been successful.
Again, I have absolutely do idea how electronic car keys work and so I often smile or shake my head in amazement. Who ever invented these keys deserves to become the king (or queen!) of a small but prosperous mountain kingdom. I just typed into Google, "Who invented electronic car keys?" and the answer came back - Paul Lipschutz who worked for an automotive supply company called Niemans in the 1980's. His applications for various US patents were granted in that same decade. They all related to car security. I doubt that there is a statue of Paul Lipschutz anywhere in the world but maybe there should be one.
And how do microwaves work, TV remotes, bar codes, refrigerators, satellites? My ignorance of these things is quite comprehensive.
Air fryers freak me out YP. Oh to go back to chip pans and lard. Maybe not. Dire Straits microwave ovens comes to mind. You could sell coal to Newcastle. It's the ordinary stuff that cements our lives.
ReplyDeleteI know how old men used to get little ships with raised masts inside bottles.
DeleteI know how that is done too.
DeleteWe got to install microwave ovens, custom kitchen delivery-y-y
DeleteWe got to move these refrigerators
We got to move these color TVs
I love that song!
DeleteI often think about how dependent I am on those innovations and how lost I would be without them. Even a short power outage can throw me into a tizzy.
ReplyDeleteAll the aids and inventions they have given us have made our lives more unnatural.
DeleteSir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web.
ReplyDeleteHe gave his creation to the world freely without patent or copyright.
We can type words on a comments box only to see them appear instantly.
Staggering. Even H.G. Wells never imagined anything like this.
It is both humbling and exciting (far more exciting than indulging in alcohol or recreational drugs) to learn about science, mathematics & technology.
Yet as Richard Dawkins pointed out, no scientist has ever won the Nobel Prize for Literature in spite of scientists writing books both profound and original.
Oxford University Press publish titles under A Very Short Introduction series.
Bernard Wood, Human Evolution; Samir Okasha, Philosophy of Science,
Eberhard O Voit, Systems Biology; Mark H.A. Davis, Mathematical Finance;
Tom Burns, Psychiatry; Christopher Frith & Eve Johnstone, Schizophrenia..
Science books can be driven by personal narrative ...
George Dyson's Analogia - The Entangled Destinies of Nature, Human Beings and Machines.
Jemma Wadham's Ice Rivers - A Story of Glaciers, Wilderness & Humanity.
Veronica O'Kane's The Rag and Bone Shop - How We Make Memories and How Memories Make Us.
Sharon Moalem's The Better Half - On the Genetic Superiority of Women.
Melanie Windridge's Aurora - In Search of the Northern Lights.
Before I was cut off ...
ReplyDeleteGraham Farmelo's The Universe Speaks in Numbers.
Dava Sobel's A More Perfect Heaven - How Copernicus Revolutionised the Cosmos.
Stuart Clark's Beneath the Night - How the Stars Shaped the History of Humankind.
Emily Levisque's The Last Stargazers - The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers.
Dava Sobel's The Glass Universe - The Hidden History of the Women Who Took the Measure of the Stars.
Dara McAnulty's Diary of A Young Naturalist written by a 17-year-old Irishman who is on the autistic spectrum. A beautifully written & designed book.
All these titles are in paperback.
As Lionel Trilling said, we have a moral duty to be intelligent.
You left a suitably long pause for reflection. Veronica O'Kane's The Rag and Bone Shop - How We Make Memories and How Memories Make Us is one title that appeals to me as long as Veronica has not embroidered her text overmuch with academic reference and defence.
DeleteThat unintentional blank was caused by a glitch in my keyboard or my brain.
DeleteSee *Cognitive Neuroscience - A Very Short Introduction* by Professor Richard Passingham.
Veronica O'Kane's title is from The Circus Animals' Desertion by W.B. Yeats - 'the foul rag and bone shop of the heart'.
Professor O'Keane is a consultant psychiatrist and holds the chair in Psychiatry at Trinity College, Dublin.
It is an exciting book covering the hidden cortex or sixth sense; hippocampal plasticity; the hypothalamus and its emotional sparkplug, the amygdala; cortical memory, collective memory, matrilinear memory and false memory.
Being Irish, Professor O'Keane has a rich cultural foundation in poetry, storytelling and myth like the Irish fairy-tales and Celtic Twilight.
We are seeing the last days of the stigmatization of psychiatric illness.
Virginia Woolf killed herself, she writes, because she suffered the agony of psychosis and wanted it to end.
I have often thought about what would happen if I were suddenly transported back to the stone age. What incredible knowledge could I give to the people there? I doubt I could even make a fire with two sticks, much less explain how electricity works. Could I teach them to make soap? Probably not. Most of us are the same- we float along in this world of ours, using all that has been invented and perfected without having the slightest idea of how any of it works.
ReplyDeleteI think Mr Moon would fare better in The Stone Age. He seems to know some practical stuff.
DeleteAt least you thought about these issues. I just keep on putting one foot in front of the other and don't understand or find out how some things work.
ReplyDeleteYou know how a snow shovel works Red.
DeleteThere used to be a series of books, probably aimed at teenagers called 'How Things Work'. I heard the author died from stress related issues while trying to explain in his latest book about how the internet works.
ReplyDeleteA friend has tried to educate about golf three times at least, birdies etc. I've forgotten all she has said the next day
To understand things, we must first be interested in them.
DeleteWell I'm one up on you because I know the car key works with radio :)
ReplyDeletei get frustrated who say things like "electric vehihcles are too complicated for me" or "I couldnt use that because I dont know how it works"
Realistically, we don't know how most things work, most of the time. We just know how to use them and thats ok.
I'm ignorant about all the things you are but i know how to seek support, which is the important part
Maybe they should teach kids about these things at school. They never even taught me about electric plugs.
DeleteDoes Clint's key have two buttons for Lock and Unlock? or are you unwittingly unlocking him by pressing lock at night, when you may have already locked him when going inside? I don't understand how it all works either, I'm just happy that it does.
ReplyDeleteErrr... the top button is "Lock" and the bottom button is "Unlock". Even I can master that complication.
DeleteYou can tell I don't have a car.
DeleteLet me do a Haggerty and recommend a book I read last year and enjoyed very much:
ReplyDeletehttps://librarianwithsecrets.blogspot.com/2022/06/read-in-2022-17-importance-of-being.html
It is a book about science, written about a non-scientist. I am sure you know Robin Ince (or know of him, probably).
No matter which particularly realm of science we explore, they are all fascinating - but it is equally fascinating to understand just a teensy little bit of it (as I do) and keep being amazed and in awe and wonder of the magic of it all.
Sorry, it should have been "...written by a non-scientist", not "written about a non-scientist".
DeleteGoodness! I find typo after typo in my comment. It should have been "particular" instead of "particularly". Now I better stop re-reading what I have typed this morning.
DeleteMay I advise laying off the early morning wine Meike!
DeleteI hope that you then put your car keys into a metal box after checking it is locked? Though I suspect that your car , like mine, is probably not worth the effort for baddies to try and steal it!! I apologise if Clint is a brand new Porsche or similar.
ReplyDeleteClint is a very valuable car because of his association with this blog. He would sell for many thousands - far more than the market value of a typical Hyundai i20.
DeleteGosh Haggerty you are a walking encyclopedia on what to read. But something caught my eye, I am sure H. G. Wells must have described the internet in one of his novels. The small individual ego joining up with the rest of mankind to make one giant ego.
ReplyDeleteSorry to go off subject YP but the news about disinformation, bots and the Pegasus effect is fascinating at the moment. Technology works because it is gradual accretion of knowledge but we all don't have to know how it works, except remember to keep our logical mind working and accept it is not magic!
Haggerty is a reformed romantic with the brains of three mice, Thelma.
DeleteThe book to read in paperback ...
*The Man From the Future* by Ananyo Bhattacharya (Penguin 2022).
It is the biography of John von Neumann (born Hungary 1903).
A mathematical genius who laid the foundations of theoretical physics, and the groundwork for the development of the computer.
Thinking for Nuemann, as a colleague in Los Alamos said, was like champagne.
As for your thoughts on H.G. Wells, this is new even for a Wellsian like me.
Worth investigation.
Also, I would like to thank Haggerty for making me go down the rabbit hole of looking up Wells, a favourite author of my childhood.
ReplyDeleteAs Lord Haggerty's Yorkshire emissary, I have been instructed to accept your kind thank you note.
DeleteI stand with you in your ignorance. But I am also untroubled by it. We can't all know everything, and I'd like to think there are things I know that others don't. (Though what those could be I can't imagine off the top of my head.)
ReplyDeleteYou know how to deal with a bunch of M&M scoffing ninth graders by putting the fear of God into them.
DeleteI could be useful in your pub quiz team.
ReplyDeleteEspecially if you buy the drinks.
DeleteI'm not too bothered about the intricacies of anything technical these days. I'm just happy if they keep on working. The worst thing is having to understand all the instructions for use when I buy something new!
ReplyDeleteWhen you press Clint's remote to lock him up, doesn't he automatically retract his wing mirrors too?
No. Clint's wing mirrors require a human hand.
DeleteI hope you treat him gently!
DeleteSame here. No idea
ReplyDeleteI guess we continue to float in our ivory towers.
DeleteI'm like you--I prefer to think of it all as magic!
ReplyDeleteIt is much easier that way.
DeleteSorcery, witchcraft, magic, gnomes, goblins, gods, and aliens, are all possible answers.
ReplyDeleteThanks for confirming my suspicions.
DeleteOn top of being ignorant, I have a profound disinterest in understanding technology. I need to know enough to operate it. Usually that gives me a basic understanding of how it works.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I try to understand but that kind of knowledge just will not stick in my brain.
DeleteHow do the people manage in the Ukraine without power and water and ? Or the people that have lost everything in Turkey or Syria? I don't know that I would survive such a catastrophe. But I probably wouldn't need to survive really...
ReplyDeleteThis took a sad turn...
I am confused by your enigmatic ending Ellen.
Delete