Category Archives for "Purpose"

0 Self-Employment as Lifestyle or Business

There are two reasons people choose to become self-employed; lifestyle or business.  People are complex and the reasons they make decisions can be ambiguous.  But let’s pull apart these two approaches and see what they offer.

Lifestyle

The lifestyle option is perhaps surprising and yet it appeals to many self-employed people.  Many people no longer want to work for someone else and so choose their own business.

There is something attractive being in charge of your own time, able to fit your business around your life.  This might appeal to parents of young children who have a few hours a day of spare time. Also to people who have their own hobbies or pursuits and want to schedule their business around them.

Now, you would be right in thinking this is not necessarily a wise decision.  Unless you have some other source of income or savings to live upon, this can be a long road with little financial reward.  I know this because it is the road I have taken.

My Experience

After I became redundant, I attended talks about self-employment and found the business lifestyle attractive.  It allowed me to find time to walk every day, which is something I value.  I have a rhythm to each day that I enjoy and would never be able to maintain in employment.

However, even a brilliant business idea can take years to develop. Starting with my community development experience, it has taken me several years to identify viable offers.  I’ve invested lots in time and financial investment in training and coaching to get to where I am.

However, there are advantages.  It has pushed me into thinking very carefully about my market and the problems they have.  If I had a sure-fire business solution from day one, perhaps I would not have taken it so far.  Patience and persistence are the key to this and if you can make it financially, it is a viable approach.

The point is life should be enjoyable and the lifestyle approach potentially places life before work.

Business

But most people take up self-employment to make money.  If they have a good idea and they can plan it and market it, it is possible to make a living.

There are alternatives and these are government schemes and zero hour contracts.  The government wants to get people off benefits and so schemes that provide some financial support during the early months is one way they do this.  These grants are not massive and soon run out, long before the average business is up and running.  This is why so many self-employed businesses do not work out.

Zero hours contracts use self-employment to support the fiction that working as a taxi driver or deliverer of hot dinners is self-employment.  Often these fictions pay less than or equal to the minimum wage and allow business owners an escape clause to the demand they take on responsibility for their employees.

But if you have an idea, the time and the insight to make it work, self-employment can lead to a successful business.  Each self-employed person has their own unique tool box and has something to offer.  They need to package it and build a reputation.  They need to be able to show they have the unique insights required to make something of their business idea.

The reality is, someone with a good business idea may have an initial advantage over the person who chooses self-employment for lifestyle reasons but in a couple of years that advantage may disappear.

Investing in Lifestyle or Business

The power of self-employment comes not from having a good first idea so much as a person’s ability to market their idea, understand how their market responds to the opportunities out there.  To be self-employed means you are uniquely placed to respond to market demand and it is this that develops opportunities that can develop into viable businesses.

It is important to consider how you invest money to build an asset base to support you and your business over the long haul.  A good idea that brings in money is rare as it is; rarer still is the business person who knows how to invest their income so they and their business survive.  The incentive to do this is lifestyle.  You can fund your lifestyle if you work consistently towards it but this is difficult if you don’t know what you want!

So, whether you make the first decision for lifestyle or business reasons, the chances are you will soon need to develop strategies to keep going.  I’ll make a start on those next time.

0 Business Networks and Support

Last time, I discussed how self-employed people bring new ideas and financial gains to the local economy.  Another way self-employed people contribute to their local economy is through business networks and employment.

Types of Collaboration

Not all self-employed people have a collaborative mindset.  Some believe in competition and so frame themselves as hard-headed business people.  They find others in similar fields threatening and do not consider collaboration.

In the past, a beached whale was an opportunity for the whole community, to share the spoils of nature! WikimediaImages / Pixabay

This is a pity because few businesses work without collaboration.  The business that collaborates is likely to do better.  There are several types of collaboration:

Networks

Most of those bullets describe networks and mapping local economies builds a picture of a network of businesses.  In addition there are intentional networks of businesses, which open up opportunities for referral marketing.

Networks are a marketing concept; they rely on your ability to describe your business and to refer other businesses to potential clients.  There is a lot to doing this well and many business owners don’t get it.

The people in the room are not usually potential clients but they may know people who are.  There is an art to making a good referral and it is worth learning the art.

Support

Many business owners are generous with their time and willing to support other businesses.  Traders do this through local traders associations.  Local associations work because collaborating local businesses, are likely to increase footfall and other opportunities to do business.

Mentoring is one example of such support and can be informal or formal.  Other businesses may share skills, products or services.  Informal exchanges of goods or services can help businesses in a local area with what they need for survival.

A great deal of this is informal and takes place under the radar.

Are you aware of example of local informal collaboration?

0 Self-Employment in the Local Economy

Following my overview of the parts that make up the local economy, what is the role of self-employment in the local economy? What is the potential of the self-employed for local regeneration?

Innovation

New invention, a road with many twists and turns! aitoff / Pixabay

What do the self-employed contribute to the local economy?  Last time, I suggested innovation, so let’s start with that:

Role

OK you have an idea and somehow you’ve got it to work.  What are you likely to contribute to the local economy?  Note these are possible contributions a successful business may make to the local economy.  Many businesses are not successful enough to make these contributions.  This is the nature of the risk self-employed people make.

However, this is where things get a bit slippery.  There are a number of scams which call certain activities self-employment that are not.  If you become self-employed to receive work from others, whether it is driving taxis, cleaning, delivering dinners; you may be exploited.  This is a way certain unscrupulous business people wriggle out of employment regulation.  Such employment may suit some people but it is not what I am writing about here.

What do genuine self-employed people contribute to their local economy?

The Adverse Economy

Potentially, the self-employed contribute significantly to the local economy.  In practice, many self-employed experiments do not result in a level of activity that will result in these roles.  The economic environment is extremely adverse, perhaps more so than it should be.  If too little money is in circulation, then many businesses will fail simply because there is not enough money in circulation to support them.

Our economy is in serious disrepair and it is for local businesses to seriously address how to repair it.  We know from decades of experience, politicians are interested solely in the big players, corporations or unions and don’t support small businesses.  The result is the self-employed must keep going on their own reserves, a wing and a prayer!

In your experience, what contribution do self-employed make to the local economy?

2 Self-Employment as Part of the Local Economy

This is the first in a new sequence about self-employment and the contributions it makes to the local economy.

What is the role of self-employment in the local economy?  To answer this question, let’s review the parts that make up the local economy.

It is possible to describe types of local business but nothing is ever clear-cut.  My working definition is a local business is owned locally and in net adds money to the local economy and so keeps money circulating.

A large supermarket that in net takes money out of circulation, will also put some money in by paying its staff, taxes, etc.  But they take their profits out of the local economy; money that no longer circulates.  It may be possible to argue for each company, whether its overall practice removes or adds money to local circulation.  It may do both, it may have a net beneficial effect but its decision-making is a long way off and does not consider local benefit.

This is modern capitalism, with power concentrated in fewer and more distant hands.  We have many examples of exploitation of workers, tax avoidance and investment that railroads local interests, leading to inappropriate developments and neglect of High Streets and local neighbourhoods.

Parts of the Local Economy

If we are not careful, it is easy to think of traders as the local economy.  This is far from the truth.  So, I suggest there are four parts that make up the local economy.  There may be more and it may be worth splitting some of these groups.  But this is a start and we’ll see where it goes.

Traders

Traders depend on footfall, whether they are a market stall or a shop on the High Street, their market is largely those who live in, work in or pass by their shop. Some practice other activities on the side and market their business outside their neighbourhood but running a shop or stall is a big undertaking and it is likely to be the main pre-occupation of the business owner.

The trader is the most visible element of the local economy.  They are visible because their business depends on visibility.  Reputation may draw people down a back street but a good sign may be a better investment!

When people think of the local economy, they think of shops because they are a sign of local economic activity.  Local traders will thrive where people are willing to use their services.  Some of them will work with other traders in the area, perhaps selling each others’ products and so, they are a sign that perhaps more is going on than meets the eye.

Businesses

Here I mean businesses that are visible in Yellow Pages but not on the High Street.  All these components overlap and some business will have shop fronts.

We tend to think of the local economy as small businesses.  This is certainly not true; there is no limit to the size of a local business.  Indeed most of the big corporations started as local businesses that grew bigger and spread to other cities and other countries.  Not all large businesses become corporations, some fail and some stay where they are.  It’s not compulsory to reach a certain size and become a corporation.  There are other growth models.

Self-employed

With this part, I have in mind the lone workers, perhaps occasionally working in partnership.  Some of these will see themselves as small businesses and some will grow into big businesses.  These businesses don’t employ staff and may collaborate to get things done.

A lot of what I’m going to say in this and future posts in this sequence may apply equally to small business owners.  Taking on staff doesn’t change the owner overnight.  These are overlapping definitions and we should not get too hung up on them.

The point about the self-employed and the reason why it’s worth looking at them is they are the innovators in the economy.  Now, yes even corporations innovate.  The difference is the corporation will innovate where it seems profitable to do so.  The self-employed can focus on small markets and take the risk.

Most self-employed businesses fail within the first 2 or 3 years.  Some will have chosen a business idea that was not viable.  Others may have not been good at running their business, perhaps failing to market their viable idea.  But this is where the traders and businesses come from, the people with a vision prepared to take a personal risk and try something new.

Non-Business

Finally, not all the components of a local market are businesses.  There is also infrastructure, community organisations, public bodies and all of these can add to footfall and help build a community that sustains its businesses.

Can you think of any other parts of the local economy I’ve missed or should separate out of the four I’ve mentioned?

2 Online Spirituality

Over the last few weeks I’ve explored some aspects of online spirituality.  This is the final round-up and the temptation is to state the obvious.  Spirituality is about relationships and the Internet at its best supports relationships.

However, many people believe spirituality is about our relationships not so much with each other as with God.

We become aware of God’s presence when we pay attention, through our awareness of the world around us.  This is prayer and meditation’s essence.  As we pray, we become aware of what is happening and of how easily we  distract ourselves, allowing our minds to override experience.

There is probably nothing more distracting than the Internet.  Walk down any high street these days and you will encounter dozens of people whose attention is held by their mobile phone or some such device.  We speak to friends, text them, play games, listen or even watch recordings as we walk the streets (or many people do!)

The problem is not the Internet as such but screens.  This was first true of television.  Screens draw the eyes and where eyes focus, so too does attention.

Spiritual traditions have been aware of this for hundreds of years and spiritual techniques such as prayer or meditation, centre on controlling the senses, especially vision, to allow space for attention to focus on the world and not on distractions.

The paradox is spiritual techniques focus on awareness of the material world.  The problem is we often base our lives on how we think the world is, losing track of reality.  Indeed this has become so common it is dofficult to believe there is a reality to focus upon!

Our brains filter everything we perceive.  If our brains did not filter our perceptions, we would be overwhelmed but filtering means we do not always perceive everything around us.

We might call this passive filtering.  We have not made any conscious decisions about what we filter, it is just what happens.

Active filtering is where we adopt a worldview and filter everything to fit it.  Problems start when we equate our filtered world with reality.  This is common among religious people who believe they have the truth and so see everything that way.

This is a stage in faith development and most traditions recognise the need to let go of these prejudices as faith develops.  This progress from certainty to awareness is sometimes called formation.  The idea is you experience it through your chosen tradition.  As you go deeper into your chosen tradition, you find you are able to reach out to others with confidence because your faith is no longer threatened by reality.

The Internet provides us with a great deal of information but it does not give us the means to process it.  The screen itself compels us to consume information and disables our ability to process it.

Like a lot of things, the power of the screen is not so great once we become aware of it.

Techniques

There are things we can do to reduce the power of the screen.  It is not simply “don’t watch it”, that would mean many of us would be unable to run our businesses or take part in modern society.  But here are a few things you can try.  Some are more religious than others but none are specific to any particular tradition:

Screens can be tyrannical but they can be our friends if we use them properly.  They are a portal into the Internet.  Once we break the hold screens have on our minds, we can be more discerning about the content we view on them.

The aim is to be alert to the reality around us, using the Internet to inform and enhance our lives and work.  How do you do this?  How do you make sure you are not driven by the pressures of modern technology but use it to enhance life activity?

0 The Internet and the Social Economy

Local economies are our opportunity to build a truly social economy.  Their social dimension distinguishes local economies from neo-liberal economic practices.  These favour accumulation of wealth and power in remote places, beyond democratic accountability.

What Makes an Economy Local?

Ideally, local or social economies

Local businesses benefit more people than entrepreneurs and their immediate families.  It seems we live at a time when this is not generally understood.  Contrast the era of great industrial families, whose names are still found in buildings and parks around our cities.  They took pride in their cities.  This is not to say they were perfect, conditions in their factories were often appalling but their vision was wider than immediate family.

The characteristics listed are aspirations for many local businesses.  I would love to employ staff, pay taxes and invest locally but my business cannot support these at present.

This does not amount to a full description of the local economy.  Those elements not described as business are missing.  Community activity, sometimes called the core economy,  builds relationships and supports local businesses.

Much remains unchanged since the growth of the Internet.  Businesses and their customers still need to meet face-to-face and the networking and referral approaches that worked before the Internet, still do.

How the Internet Contributes

Here are some approaches, where the Internet supports the local economy:

How to Work Locally

What do we want to do locally and how can it be supported online?  Begin with the local, in-person dimension and ask how to support it online.

The big advantage of the local economy is its potential to develop in-person relationships.  Customers use local services because they know like and trust the owners.  These relationships are the bedrock of local economies.  When we trade with local businesses, we have a good idea where the economic benefit is going and as much as possible will circulate locally.

The Internet can support local economic activity but is not central to it.  The strength of the local economy is its capacity to build relationships that keep it going.  Relationships come first; when business comes first, it inevitably leads to burnout at best and dishonesty at worst.

Businesses are part of a web of relationships that can make business practice much easier.  Well-designed interventions, such as local currencies, build on existing community relationships.  They depend on trust, which is why they have no financial value outside of their community of origin.

What are the practical advantages to putting relationships first in business?

2 Four Reasons Social Media is Not as Brilliant as You Think It Is

Not so long ago, social media was fun!  I don’t normally approve of fun because I find it usually gets in the way of enjoying life.  But look, I joined Facebook to throw sheep at my friends!  That’s what we did!  It’s several years since I last threw a sheep at anyone or had one thrown at me!

Facebook these days is terribly stuffy.  It invites us to join groups where people share their interest in worthy causes.  A medium that was once at the cutting edge of young people happily throwing sheep, is now full of elderly people burdened with causes.

And as if that is not enough, there is the advertising.  Today Facebook thinks I need to know how to launch a business online, not a bad guess as I’m sure Facebook knows I’m interested in marketing.  Apparently I also need to drive a Nissan Pulsar, which appears to be some kind of car.

Facebook is now one of the most effective ways of advertising your business online.  Unlike Google AdWords, Facebook enables you to match your business to specific people who are likely to be in your market.  Grumpy old men drive Nissan Pulsars.

It’s not so long ago that the only social medium was the telephone.  It was fastened to the wall and so if we were expecting a call we had to hang around until it rang.  Other media such as televisions and newspapers were not social.  They communicated with us and if we wanted to communicate with them we had to write a letter.

What is Social Media Like?

Some say it is fast, instant even.  I say it is opaque.

It may be fast in the sense that what I write can be shared with hundreds of people instantly at the touch of a button.  But that does assume the hundreds of people are reading their social media.  Let’s face it most of the time I have no idea what is going on in social media because I don’t check it.  Occasionally, that is several times a day, some algorithm sends me a seemingly random sample of what I’ve been missing.  I could put them all on my mobile phone and check them when I have an idle moment.  The problem with that approach is I rarely have idle moments.

Social Media is essentially anonymous. 

When you’re talking to a human being they are there in front of you and you know who they are.  Even on the phone, you can check out the speaker’s identity.  On social media you don’t actually know who is communicating with you.  Mostly it is the named person but you can never be sure.  I’m in touch with loads of people I’ve never met or don’t remember meeting.  How do I know they are who they say they are?  I’m sure most of the time they are.  But what if one isn’t?  How do I know?

Social Media is an intimate medium; it can hurt.

We hear a lot about young people being victimised.  This actually plays to social media strengths – it does support local relationships.  Sounds like good news unless your local relationships are bad news.

Some argue you need to use social media to communicate with young people.  But that assumes young people want to communicate with old people.  At one time, young people used Facebook.  Then middle-aged Methodists moved in and young people moved to Twitter.  Quick as a flash the oldies moved to Twitter.  Rumour has it young people are currently hiding on Instagram, whatever that is.  They seek spaces where they can communicate unprovoked by concerned parents and professionals.

I’m sure social media will be a lot more congenial once grandparents run it.  It currently lacks the atmosphere of the tea dance, although some would say Facebook is shaping up nicely.

Social Media are communication tools and so have a certain utility.  They have transformed the way information passes around and particularly the way we consume news.  They have, with reservations, transformed the way we do business, share information and make contact with like-minded people.

But it is a bit like treading grapes in Wellingtons or shaking hands wearing rubber gloves.

Effective but somehow lacking the immediacy of real life conversations.  For housebound people it may be a way to keep in touch and play a part in the world.  For younger people it helps support social life but does not replace it.

In time I think it will enhance older peoples’ lives far more than younger people’s.  Social media will become the preserve of older people as the computer generation grows older.  Younger people will maintain their privacy by meeting in real life.

Using Social Media

Social media’s purpose is to enhance human connections.  It’s sometimes misused but primarily because it is not understood.  There is massive distinction between understanding how social media works and understanding what it does.  Most of these media have been around for very few years and so it will take time before they are fully absorbed into society.

An important question to ask is: what are my real life priorities and how can social media support them?  This implies understanding their limitations, so that you can use these media properly.

When we don’t do that, we view relationships as things to be manipulated.  We won’t so much enjoy others’ presence as demand rights of access to them.  Because we don’t encounter the person directly, the danger is we will take an instrumental view of them.  The danger is not so much that machines become conscious as we dehumanise other people.

Social Media has its dangers but as a society we have adjusted to many forms of media.  It is hard to imagine anything having the impact on society television has had.

The word “social” implies community.  Our challenge is to work out how these new media can support the building of human community in our neighbourhoods.

If you have read this post through Social Media, do tell me about it – I’ll be delighted!

0 Digital Communication

Last Wednesday I discussed artificial intelligence and suggested personality emerges as we interact as conscious beings.  One major impact of the Internet is digital communication, which has enlarged our circles; we can chat daily with people from all over the planet.

I remember studying computer science in the mid-1970s, a few years before silicon chips were announced.  There was talk of the coming merging of computing and communications.  Computers at the time were huge machines and terminals communicated directly with them.  There were a few midi and microcomputers, using solid state transistors.  These were usually boxes used to drive other equipment.  Screen monitors were rare.

Tele-printers could link to one another but it was all rather laborious.

Over the following decades IT morphed into ICT and today there are many ways we can communicate with people all over the world.  There is no need to list all the methods available to us.  I want to ask what differences enhanced communications have made.

Enhanced Understanding

Low cost communication systems mean people can stay in touch with families and friends with greater ease then they could in the past.  With the right equipment, they can speak to and see each other every day if they choose.

It is possible to make friends with people you have never met in the flesh.  This must enhance understanding between nations.

How much of a person’s real presence can camera and sound alone communicate?  Actors have been doing this for years.  But actors usually project fictional personas, so to what extent do we truly know them?

My experience suggests it is possible to maintain online relationships and those relationships can include a great deal of what we experience through in-person contact.  As so much can be shared, it is worth having these relationships in our lives.

But it is like seeing people on a stage – there is always so much we cannot possibly see or experience.  We capture a glimpse of a room but maybe never see the other side of it.  We don’t see their communities, their streets, their parks.  Or if we do we see only what they choose for us to see.

We see both more and less of a person when we know them online.  I’d hesitate to say it’s better if we have at least met them.  These relationships are different and need to be accepted for what they are.

They are not precursors of the science fiction world where we all live in bubbles and communicate solely with images of our friends.

Pocket-Sized Computers

Mobile phones enhance communications with people we meet in-person.  Whilst people can use them to communicate with people elsewhere in the world who they never meet in-person, the mobile primarily enhances personal contact.

Perhaps their greatest value is in arranging meetings.  It is easy to send text reminders and if someone doesn’t turn up, phone and ask them what’s happened.  It is hard to remember how we organised meetings without mobiles in the recent past!

Mobiles support local economies.  There may be more we can do, apps yet to be invented or even conceived.  But imagine taking a bus across town and being able to find a café to your liking.  These applications are close if not already with us.  The aim is to get beyond advertising and simply get information about what is there.

It is miniaturisation that allows us to carry so much computing power around in our pockets.  Most of us take for granted computing power far more than what was on the moon rockets in the 1960s, instantly available at the press of a button.

Erosion of Professions

You may have spotted I am avoiding the downside of these changes.  The cyber-bullying, frustration when having to step around so many people who are not looking where they are going.  These problems are likely to be with us for a long time.  We need to understand the consequences if we were to sacrifice our access to this computing power because of its misuse.

However, not all the downsides are a result of misuse.  For many, computers undermine professions as they place more power into the hands of amateurs.  There are many examples.  Most phones carry a video camera.  Most of us could quickly teach ourselves how to make a watchable video.  It doesn’t need to be brilliant.

Professionals in the video industry are perhaps not challenged so far.  It still takes time and effort to produce a really good video.  Whilst a poor but watchable video may have some worth, it is not always the best vehicle for businesses and other organisations.

Professional video producers offer the human side of the equation.  They know how to produce a video that powerfully conveys our message.  Most people do not know how to produce such a good film.  To do so requires human interaction.  Perhaps most organisations don’t need many such videos but most would benefit from at least one.

Perhaps enhanced technological power implies greater human interaction when they produce quality products and services.  The question is whether the net numbers of livelihoods will increase or decrease at the relentless development of new computing power.

What do you think are the advantages of ICT?  How have human relationships developed with these new technologies?

2 Artificial Intelligence

Have you noticed the term “artificial intelligence” is oxymoronic?  Artificial flowers are not flowers.  If intelligence is artificial it is not intelligence.  If something intelligent emerged from a machine, it would not be artificial.  Although different from human intelligence, it would be the real thing.

Clever but Not Intelligent

First, we must distinguish cleverness from intelligence.  We can develop machines that are not just clever but cleverer than we are.  However, these are still computing machines, machines that help us work things out.  These machines can be dangerous.  There is nothing to stop us programming them to kill.  I have every confidence the military have that under control or they will have until someone nicks one and works out how to control it.

But note however clever these machines may be they are still controlled by human beings.

In science fiction the autonomous machine has a long-term pedigree.  I suppose the earliest was the Golem, programmed by a scroll of scripture and so subject to human control.

Isaac Asimov’s robot series is perhaps one of the more sophisticated approaches to the genre.  His three laws of robotics are still influential.

So, is a fully autonomous artificial being possible?  I don’t doubt it is possible to build a machine that replicates autonomy.  The Turing test was designed to demonstrate this.  Turing argued that if we can’t tell the difference between a machine and a human, when we don’t know which is communicating, then we have the real deal.

Personality

I have my doubts.  Human consciousness is the product of living in community.  A machine would need to live among us to develop its own personality.  It is hard to imagine what true autonomy would be like without personality.  Such a being would raise issues such as whether switching off the machine would be murder.

A human child’s personality emerges over several years and their personality continues to grow as it accumulates experiences throughout their life.  A parent, looking back can discern the seeds of the adult child in the baby.  Could a machine evolve its personality faster?  Maybe but it would still need others to interact with and this interaction would set the pace at which the machine became conscious.

Does AI Already Exist?

I doubt anyone really knows what they are trying to program to make a machine autonomous.  Most people think it is some function of complexity.  But the Internet is complex and there is no way it could ever become conscious.

There is a great deal of human experience that cannot be digitised; our perception of colour, for example.  A machine can recognise the colour red from its wavelength but does not experience red as we do.  These experiences are sometimes called qualia and they are one thing that distinguishes conscious beings from machines.  It seems many animals experience qualia but machines so far cannot.  But how would we know?

If AI is possible, how do we know we don’t have it already?  In science fiction it is usually associated with a humanoid body.  This is something still far from reality.  Perhaps the machine needs a body of some sort to become conscious but if AI is possible why not any hardware format?

If AI is possible it may exist already in a box in someone’s lab.  How would they know it was autonomous?  It would be terribly clever and might be able to work out how to propagate itself but how would we know?

Perhaps the most useful aspect of this debate is the insight it gives us into our own consciousness.  What is it that makes us human and unique?  Maybe we’re the product of a unique accident or perhaps there are others like us aware of their own mortality.  And perhaps it is our mortality that forms our consciousness and makes us unique.

What do you think about AI?  Why do you think it is or is not in principle practical?  If it is, do you think it may already exist?

0 The Digital Revolution

During my lifetime there has been a digital revolution.  Until mechanical computers most measurements were analogue.  I suppose people didn’t think about it, it was just the way you measured things!  Perhaps it is easiest to think about a clock face.  The hands move around the dial and cover every possibly position in each circuit.

Analogue and Digital

I can remember when digital watches first appeared.  You had to press a button to tell the time!  Analogue watches were always superior not only because they don’t need a button but also they are easier to read.  We read the angle between the hands and that is enough unless we need to speak the time.

The ticking of a clock perhaps divides time into discrete units but a single tick does not have to equal one second.  We still tell the time by glancing at the dial.

It is only through computers we have found a credible alternative to analogue measurements.  Today it seems natural to think of measurements as many small packets (quanta) of whatever we measure.  Quantum mechanics suggests space is granular because there are minimum amounts of distance, for example.

Machines can read analogue measurements but they are harder to manipulate.  Usually they convert them to digital and digital calculations usually offer a close enough approximation to analogue.  If we need more accuracy, we simply divide things up into finer grains.

If you are reading this on a computer screen, everything you can see is digital.  All the words, images, colours … all break down into digital, noughts and ones.

Programs and Applications

A single digital digit is a bit.  It has one of two values, 0 or 1.  Usually, computers process bits in groups of 8, called a byte.  (4 bits is a nibble, but you don’t need to know that!)  As each bit in a byte can be 0 or 1, a byte can have 256 values.  This is ample to represent the alphabet and various other punctuation symbols.

These are the basic building blocks from which everything else we see on the screen can be built.  It was a major breakthrough, when someone worked out computer programs can be expressed in bits.  So, the same noughts and ones that code as symbols and images on the screen, program the machine to generate that particular screen.

Programming Languages

Programming languages have similarly evolved.  It is in theory possible to program using noughts and ones.  However, no-one is likely to get very far.  Perhaps the earliest languages were assembly languages, where there is a one-to-one equivalence between the language and the basic digital code.  It is possible to program in assembly languages and they are perhaps still used to program new languages.  But there is little need for them.  Most people who code use a higher level language such as Algol or Basic or C!

But even that is no longer the limit.  These days most of us get by using little if any code.  With an application, such as a word processor, most of us have no need for code.

Notice how each step becomes the foundation for a new step.  Something new opens the door to innovative uses; applications change the real world and change is not always predictable.  Maybe the paperless office has not come about in the way some anticipated.  But compare a typical office today with an office 20 or 30 years ago.

Professionals and Amateurs

One big change is everyone types.  There was a time when touch typing was a valued skill.  Maybe it still is.  But most of us use keyboards and never bother to train in touch typing.  I didn’t and I mostly type by looking at the screen with only an occasional glance at the keys.

So a reporter used to write copy by hand and pass it to a typist.  Now they do their own typing, possibly in the place where the action is happening.  Everyone has a screen and uses it.

What I want to underline here is our relationship with machines has changed the way we work and how we relax.  Not only can we select how we entertain ourselves, not constrained by what’s on a few channels but also we use machines to generate entertainment in ways we were unable to a few years ago.  Most of us carry a video camera, even if we don’t use it.

We always use tools as to extend our bodies and now we have increased potential.  This has happened to the extent that many of us can do things that previously specialists did.  Whether the specialist was a touch typist or a film producer, we can do it because the potential is in our grasp.

The specialist these days must show they can do it better than we can or save us time by doing it for us.

The amazing thing is digital technology, ultimately on billions of noughts and ones, powers these innovations.  It is important to hold this in mind as we turn to the topic of artificial intelligence.

How has the digital revolution supported local economies?