Peter Rhodes on mental health, automatic lawnmowers and a dodgy encounter with a smart meter
Today (Radio 4) interviewed three teenagers about the hopes and fears for the General Election. One launched immediately into a tirade about how National Service might damage the “mental health” of his generation by forcing them to do things they didn't want.
This obsession with mental health, which probably dates from the pandemic, seems to have convinced a generation of kids that they are permanently teetering on the brink of psychological collapse. Once such dangerous and silly ideas of are planted in young minds, in a society which is in love with the lure of victimhood, they can quickly take root. Most kids are far more robust than they have been led to believe. They are far stronger than they know.
I can't write this next item without empathising with that great comic creation Andy Millman (Ricky Gervais) in the sitcom, Extras. Film director Patryck Vega reveals he has created 50,000 digital extras by Artificial Intelligence which could be slipped into scenes as extras. In words which will gladden the hearts of film financiers everywhere, he declares: “I don't have a problem with rights or a problem with strikes in the future.” On the downside, none of those 50,000 cyber characters will ever display true potential, become a real star or write a hit TV show, as Andy Millman did. There are still a few good reasons for employing real-life, expensive, awkward and unpredictable human beings.
And yet the march of machinery seems unstoppable. Our German friends came to stay for a wet week relaxing in England, only to have their peace disturbed by an automatic alert on their smartphone. It informed them that, 770 miles away in Bavaria, their electronic lawnmower, Dobby, had just run into a pile of mulch and stalled. Do you ever feel left behind by technology?
In another run-in with micro-chips, I took an electricity-meter reading last week and, according to my online account, we were about £30 in credit. This week, according to the same account, we have made no payments yet we're a whopping £828.23p in credit. Smart meters – in what sense, precisely, are they smart?
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