Keyboard Skills

The site "Some Assembly Required" had as a word for the day, "Agnotology", that I was not familiar with, Wikipedia did have it. It refers to culturally induced ignorance, which may explain why I did not know.

If nothing else the circus of the last few weeks, now that the clowns and ringmasters have departed, has reminded us that not only are so many of the ordinary people afflicted by this "ology" but that the political class is as well.

They claim to know more than us and moreover are capable of some understanding, so that in any major matter we should follow them.  Sadly, their ignorance was such that many more than expected came to the view that they should follow us.

One area of debate was how much change might there be and how might it affect us.  We were being told this or that was certain when the world is full of uncertainties.  Many of them we are blissfully ignorant about never mind their consequences.

Yet we live in a world dominated by supercomputers and their minders.  But that might be about to change.  Much of our financial activity as well as other things at present relate to large or even "super" computers.  What are the implications for radical and rapid change in these fields?

This article in E Science is titled "No Need In Supercomputers".  So looking at my own laptop now, I wonder what I could get up to that may have been amongst my wildest, or maddest, dreams.  It means that almost anyone can do anything anywhere.

I wonder if I can get into The Treasury hardware via the local council website on refuse collections?  Or perhaps that of one of the very big banks via a dog breeding service.  A great many things could be changed if I had my way.

Strange things have happened in the past.  Once there was a man who thought if you could put a steam engine on a frame with wheels it might have possibilities for moving coal and slag around an iron works.  Sadly, the rails were not strong enough, so it was put to one side.

But then other people picked up on the basic idea and tried it with better rails.