The geeks have won – and that’s official (to coin an overused journalistic cliche).
The source of this not altogether unsurprising news is none other than Steve Wozniak, the man who built the first Macintosh computer alongside his friend, the late Steve Jobs.
In an interview with the Post, the man from Silicon Valley says: “I do fear for the future with computers becoming more and more like real people. Already jobs are being replaced with more machinery and kiosks – I do sometimes worry about losing jobs.
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“If they ever got consciousness or smarter than people that could have a horrible outcome.”
As a ham-fisted sub-Luddite who has endured more than my fair share of ‘horrible outcomes’ at the hands of computers, mobile phones and other gizmos, I couldn’t agree more with Mr Wozniak.
But I fear his warning may be too late for the likes of myself and other technologically challenged digiphobes. Computers may not be conscious (as yet) in human terms but they are already a lot smarter than many of us, and getting smarter all the time.
Not that this is necessarily entirely a bad thing. Even a technophobe like me can appreciate the sheer wonders of the iPad, a magical device that is just about up there with the likes of the wheel and the internal combustion engine as an aid to mankind.
As I grapple daily with the trials and marvels of the post-industrial digital universe, I’m reminded of the story of the broadcasting great, cricket commentator Christopher Martin-Jenkins, a man who once tried to ring his office by stabbing frantically at a TV remote control.
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Or, as cricketer turned writer Derek Pringle recounted following CMJ’s tragic passing: “Most (friends and acquaintances) recalled the sundry anecdotes of CMJ’s many hapless battles with technology in which he routinely found everyday objects like cell phones, computers and TV remotes as difficult to grapple with as Fermat’s last theorem.”
It’s somehow comforting to discover that a man as accomplished and admired in his field as CMJ endured similar difficulties traversing the digital landscape as we lesser mortals.
Another hero of mine, the man they call the world’s most elegantly wasted human being, Keith Richards, once said of technology: “If I see a mouse, I put the cat on it.” Nice one, Keef, always the most perceptive Stone.
Even the most successful newspaperman of his generation, Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, the man who has, for better or worse, tapped into the fears and prejudices of Middle England to greater effect than any mere hyper-ventilating politician hungry for votes, is said not to have a computer in his office.
But you don’t really need megabytes or a Twitter feed when your instincts are as sure as Dacre’s, however unpalatable that basic truth may be to Polly Toynbee types and the earnest disciples of the liberal left.
But not everybody leads existences as rarefied as Dacre, Keef or the late CMJ, all undisputed masters of their own universes in their very differing ways.
No mere gizmo could ever replace the forces of nature that are Keef or the Big Beast of the Daily Mail, but that’s not the case for much of the rest of the planet.
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As Mr Wozniak points out, jobs are already being sacrificed at the altar of new technology, and that process is hardly likely to cease any time soon.
In my own industry, tens of thousands of workers, from now obsolete compositors – the men they called the ‘inkies’– to old-style journos more comfortable with courts and councils than iPhones or Instagram, have left the building, never to return.
Walk around any modern car plant and you will Star Trek-style robots performing the sort of routine assembly line tasks once undertaken by human beings back in the bad old days of British Leyland, Red Robbo et al.
Nobody but Private Eye’s infamous ‘p......ed up hack baffled by new technology’ could argue the world is better off without newspapers being held to ransom by hot metal printers signing in for non-existent shifts as Michael Mouse of Sunset Boulevard or the car industry brought to its knees by wildcat strikes over tea break allowances.
But progress, however inevitable or desirable, tends to bring corresponding pitfalls of its own.
Ironically, it’s not the technology per se that rankles, however frustrating it can be as I sit waiting for the computer to comply with my (virtual) wishes. It’s silly to blame what is, essentially, an invaluable ally for mankind, even if it sometimes scrambles our brains.
It’s the digital world’s effect on humanity, with all its petty vanities, obsession with status and propensity to conform to type, that worries me.
It seems much of the Western world is gradually being reduced to premature senility by over-use of mobile phones. Just think of all the ‘Hello darling, I’m on the train’ conversations we can enjoy now which wouldn’t have been up for public consumption a few years back.
Back then, everybody would have been blissfully ignorant over the instant digital opinions of Piers Morgan, Sally Bercow, Richard Branson etc on the Gaza conflict, Ukraine, the price of Brussels sprouts, Downton Abbey, blah blah blah.
Of course, there’s always the off button if you want to avoid the rapier-like wit of Morgan, Bercow and co.
However, if the Wozniak ‘horrible outcome’ ever comes to pass, and the machines take over, I shall simply press the ‘Beam Me Up, Scotty’ button... and hope it’s working.