109. A Cure for Technophobia
Having written about our years in the UK, I thought I should recap on my adventures with ExoTech since 2015. I have mentioned some of it previously but would now like to put the story into a sequence from the time that Alan Douglas first mentioned the word ExoBrain to me.
Alan and I had met during a couple of poetry readings in East Grinstead. We had admired each other’s very different writing styles and struck up a friendship that was to extend to both our wives and families over the years. One day Alan asked if I would pop around to see him. He had something to ask me. He lived in a lovely old house on De La Warr Road just off the center of the town. His office was surrounded by books, sundry documents and an important-looking computer on his desk. He also had a marvelous leather armchair where I was encouraged to sit while he fussed around in the kitchen to produce a mug of coffee and a delicious slice of cake baked by Maria, his lovely Philippine wife.
Although Alan knew that I was primarily a movie screenwriter, he had never seen any of my work other than the poems that I had read to the poetry group. It was quite a leap of faith, therefore, when he told me that he was looking on behalf of Peter Warren for a writer to write a book. The book was to outline Peter’s life and the development of the ExoBrain computing system. My first reaction was negative, not because of ExoBrain itself but the thought of trying to write anything about computing was rather like asking an Eskimo to talk about the Zulus in Africa!
As is clear from the heading of my blogs, “Confessions of a Technophobe,” I only ventured into the world of computing about twenty years ago. Before then, despite being a prolific writer, I wrote everything longhand and spent a lot of money on getting typists to type the screenplays or manuscripts for me. I justified it by saying that it gave me a perfect opportunity to edit what I had written when presented by a neatly typed manuscript, unlike the written scrawl I had given the typist. It was, of course, both inefficient and costly, which is why I was finally and reluctantly persuaded to get a computer.
Frankly, the machine terrified me. I had no one to teach me and I spent endless hours making mistake after mistake, pushing the wrong buttons and quite often losing what I had written. Eventually, I managed to conquer the basic techniques of typing and sending emails, which probably meant that I could only use about five percent of the potential of the computer. I’m better now but I’m still hoping to goodness that the first commercial ExoBrain appears on the market before current computing drives me to an early grave!
So, here was I being asked to write about a vastly improved concept in computing when I barely understood today’s existing systems. Anyway, I’ve seldom backed away from a challenge, which has quite often landed me in hot water.
I asked Alan to try to explain the basic difference between the ExoBrain and current computing. He confessed that he was also pretty ignorant when it came to the technology of the system. What he did clearly understand was that ExoBrain offered a radically different approach to the entire concept of computing. In short, ExoTech, the technology of ExoBrain, would enable the computer to think very much like a human, instead of the poor frustrated human having to think like a computer.
This immediately appealed to me, having struggled to control the laptops I have owned, rather like a novice cowboy on a bucking bronco. Fortunately, Peter was due to come to Britain a couple of weeks later. After Alan had actually given me enough data to arouse a strong interest in the ExoBrain concept, I agreed to meet with Peter.
I found him to be a charming and charismatic person. We discussed the possibility of my writing a book which dealt with Peter’s life from childhood to maturity – eventually leading to his first attempt at improving the computer accounting system he was using for his business, which proved to be the first step in the evolution of the technology which comprises ExoTech today.
Peter asked me to view the 31 videos which outline the baby steps in the process of learning about ExoTech. He had made the videos entirely on his own. He would be the first to admit that, although they contained priceless data on the basic idea of the ExoBrain, they were lacking in professional audio/visual presentation. Fortunately, they have been reworked visually by video expert “Daws” Dawson and are now of a standard that they can be shown to anyone interested in becoming involved in the ExoTech phenomenon.
While Peter was still in Britain, he wanted to make a couple more videos, more on the marketing and promotional aspects of ExoTech. I pulled in a friend, Mark Gibson, who was a videographer and editor. Between us we produced a couple of marketing videos with Peter speaking to camera. At that stage there were no funds available for any productions, but Mark and I were sufficiently enthused by the prospect of turning ExoBrain into a reality that we did what we could to produce videos. This allowed Peter to share his unshaken certainty with others that ExoTech would take computing to an entirely new realm of accurate communication along with an incredible ease of operation.
After Peter returned to France, where he was living at the time, he and I spent many hours on Skype as he told me the story of his remarkable life, from which I subsequently wrote the first draft of the book, The ExoTech Story, Warts and All. At this current critical but exciting stage in the evolution of ExoTech, Peter is heavily involved in both the final construction of the latest ExoBrain working model as well as the ongoing fundraising efforts of Shawn Denning and his team and the establishment of a solid corporate entity to take ExoTech into the future. This does not allow for the time required to make corrections and fact-check the draft of the book at this stage.
Only Peter can give me this data, so the book will have to wait until Peter has time to devote to it. The book is intended for the launch of ExoBrain anyway, so this is not a time problem.
I have also undertaken to write another book set in the near future, at a time when ExoBrain has been launched and dealing with the profound social consequences of this paradigm shift in computing. I have already written about 150 pages of this book but the troubling conflicts and attempts to impose massive government control in many countries around the globe, have made any accurate prediction of the next few years extremely difficult. It will be a challenging but exciting project I expect to tackle in the next years.
Going back to the development of the ExoBrain project over the past few years, it has been quite extraordinary how the team has mushroomed and acquired the services of many highly qualified people in various capacities, ranging from Information Technology skills to sales and marketing, administration, training and public relations.
Apart from my initial assignment as the writer of two of the books to be published about ExoBrain (with other more technical books to be written by others more qualified to do so), I continued to assist with the creation of more videos including the one I wrote, directed and acted in at the height of the pandemic. It was truly a battle against the odds. Mark Gibson edited it from home and later videographer/editor “Daws” Dawson put some important finishing touches to the production (described in detail in an earlier blog).
Shortly after that, I was asked to start writing a weekly blog on the ExoTech website. It is vitally important for any website to have constant movement and development, so that search engines that monitor all activities on the Internet give prominence to active websites. I was given carte blanche to write what I like, which is the role of a blog as a forum for the personal views of the writer.
I feel I have been rather an oddball member of the ExoTech team but hopefully my contributions have been useful. Peter created a valuable exchange for voluntary ExoTech team members by allotting us shares for work done on the project to be available once the ExoBrain products are launched. I feel very privileged to have been part of a remarkable team inspired by the creative genius of Peter Warren and, with a rising tide of excitement, view the daily progress of ExoTech, thanks to our first ExoEngineers, Jeff Buhrt and Rick Harrison, towards the completion of the fully commercially viable version of ExoBrain, which will occur in the near future.
Blogs can be indulgent and, in this case, please bear with me as I pay my own form of tribute to the incredible ExoTech team formed to bring Peter Warren’s dream to fruition.
Winning
Enjoy this lifetime’s game as winners.
Let warm smiles melt the turbulence
of all our daily frustrations and delays
as the goal we have all sought so long
appears, shining on the near horizon.
Never let even one of our steps falter.
The winning post may seem elusive
but truly attainable against the odds
and will mark a dazzling highpoint
on our seemingly en dless journey
on the path of infinity’s playground.
We are taking bold new steps
to achieve the paradigm shift
we know is but a gigabyte away.
As winners we absorb the pleasure
of knowing that the multitudes
around our beautiful orb
will also win with us!
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.