Confessions of a Technophobe, New Series 8
Throughout the years that I’ve been writing professionally, 61 years by the way, I’ve always been amused and somewhat irritated by stories, particularly movies, that center their storyline around a writer’s block. I’ve never once had a writer’s block. Maybe that’s why, as my wife says, I never stop talking – unless I’m writing!
Perhaps subconsciously I avoided writing blogs for so long as I saw them as a means of a writer unblocking his or her block by writing whatever comes into their heads – a kind of do-it-yourself psychology.
Having unblocked my aversion to blogs, I started this one nearly three years ago. The first couple of blogs meandered around as I looked for a theme or a direction until it occurred to me that I had been given carte blanche by Peter Warren, creator and CEO of ExoBrain. He said I could write what I liked as long as it wasn’t political or pornographic – sometimes I confuse which of those two is which, but I’m not going there!
Having the freedom to choose my own subject matter was exciting. Eventually I realized that having lived a pretty adventurous life by most people’s standards, it might make sense to share my experiences. Besides my family have always wanted me to write my life story but I’ve been too busy writing work commissioned or suggested by others, to ever get around to it. Now, happily, the first two years of blogs have pretty well covered at least the highlights of my lifelong adventures. They are not always in sequence but in essence it’s a form of autobiography and I thank those readers who have told me that they have enjoyed the trip.
Inevitably I did start to run out of stories. After all, I’m only 87, how much more could I have crammed into those years? Admittedly I did avoid talking about girlfriends. Enough of them are probably still alive to start a class action if I get into that!
So, back to writer’s block. For possibly the first time when I sat down to write this New Blog number 8, I didn’t have the faintest idea of what I was going to write about. Was that writer’s block? I don’t think so. It was more like running out of life experiences that I hadn’t touched on. I’m already guilty of repeating certain incidents but hopefully I’ve tackled them from a different angle or put in data not shared before.
This was also the reason why I started writing a weekly fictional serial entitled “Tech Wars.” This a story based around the evil machinations of criminals who use the Internet to scam the unwary. Later in the series, I introduced Peter Warren and ExoBrain with the idea that this incredible new computing system will, in due course, provide an ethical platform for truthful news and communication, heavily encrypted, to avoid manipulations by the baddies.
I ended the first series after episode 31 because the first element of the storyline ended with the capture of the criminals. Furthermore, I wanted to bring ExoBrain and ExoTech more directly into the story but realized that although the current development of the working mode, is proceeding even faster than anticipated, it is not yet ready to play an active part in bringing these cyber crooks to justice. As an aside, I was delighted to hear from the Techie engineers, Chief Engineer Jeff Buhrt in particular, that the fast-growing ExoTech model was exceeding expectations in regard to its versatility. He is like a little boy playing with building blocks for the first time but with a far more important purpose.
Therefore, I made the decision to pause the series on a high point and start a new one later on, probably after ExoTech reaches Milestone 4 out of five key steps in the evolution of ExoBrain.
I’d like to go into more detail of my early years working with ExoBrain and Peter in particular. I was introduced to the subject by Alan Douglas a fellow poet, whom I met on occasions when we could get a poetry reading together. He asked me if he could put a proposition to me. I agreed and met him for coffee in his sprawling but fascinating office at his home in De la Warr Road, East Grinstead, West Sussex. I should have known that I was in for an unusual experience with the bizarre location of a town called East Grinstead, located in West Sussex. Only the English …
Despite the fact that Alan had only read or listened to my poetry, he had decided that I should be introduced to Peter as a potential writer of his biography. Admittedly I had told Alan of my years a as screenwriter for film and television but neither of these skills really guaranteed my ability to write someone’s life story. Nevertheless, when Alan gave me just the barest outline of ExoTech and its potential to take computing to a whole new level of usable skills, at an affordable cost and with an incredible simplification of the current technology which has been becoming more and more complicated by the day, I was hooked.
I did protest that I was hopeless with computing and the Internet. Even though I use my laptop every day for my writing and for sending or receiving emails, that was pretty well the limit of my skills with the digital monster lurking on my desk. Alan assured me that it was my writing skills that were needed. I would be taken through the basic concepts of ExoBrain, should Peter and I hit it off, and commissioned to write his biography.
As it happened, Peter visited the UK a short while later and I was able to meet him face to face. Although Peter is British by birth, he was living in France at the time. We did indeed hit it off and Peter asked me if I would write the book. He also hinted at a second book to follow. However, he did explain that he had spent most of his funds developing a working model of the technology and he would only be able to pay me once some more expected money was made available.
At the time I had just been commissioned to write another biography. This was the story of a woman, born in abject poverty in Freetown (the capital of Sierra Leone in West Africa). She was now living in London. She and I met a number of times so that she could tell me her story. She was one of eight children whose mother was a cripple. At the age of six she went to the fruit and vegetable market early in the morning then walked to the streets of Freetown where she sold whatever she had bought from the market. This usually provided just enough money to buy food for dinner for the family. From the age of eight she went to school but still managed to sell her wares in the city. At the age of nine, well-meaning but misguided family members took her to a bush camp where she underwent female genital mutilation (FGM) and nearly died in the process. At the time about 90 percent of the young Sierra Leone girls underwent FGM for traditional reasons. The story unfolds as she gets married and is severely abused. Despite this she has a good brain and a flair for business. Eventually, still married, she comes to the UK where with her husband builds a very profitable business. However, he abuses her and one of her children again. Penniless, she leaves him but manages to get a scholarship and obtain a degree. In recent years she has formed an international association to fight against FGM and other abuse of women and has gradually obtained a reputation as an international speaker for women’s rights. It is a story with horrific beginnings but a hopeful future.
I offered to interview Peter on the phone and tape his responses in order to be ready for when he would be able to pay me for my services. A short while later he came up with the idea of offering the then small team around him shares in ExoBrain in lieu of immediate payment. The term for this is “Sweat Equity” but for me it was never a sweat. I was doing what I loved best to do, writing. In this way the first draft of the book has been written but recent exciting developments with ExoTech and the team has made Peter too busy to spend time going through the book with me. This will happen later.
Over this early period, I also assisted with writing promotional scripts for ExoBrain videos. In one instance in the middle of the COVID epidemic, I was asked to write a video in which we showed someone using ExoBrain on a day-to-day basis. At that time virtually everything was at a standstill. We still lacked funds to employ a top production team to make the video. I offered to do it at no cost from myself but couldn’t find any cameraman willing to take on the job during the height of the epidemic. Unexpectedly Lord Duncan McNair, an early member of the ExoBrain team, offered to video it. He had a camera but virtually no experience in operating it. He was very willing for me to guide him. So we ended up by my being the presenter, director, co-writer, and cameraman coach! Thankfully, a really good video editor joined the ExoTech team and managed to pull the production together. Duncan was remarkably quick in learning the basics of camera operation. We ended up with what I would describe as a video that communicated well, was a little rough technically around the edges but overall did a good job at that stage. Happily, a short while later, new team members like Jed Rigney (son of the late Bruce Rigney) joined to provide professional video skills for future productions.
By the time we emerged from the horrors of Covid, various new team members provided all-round marketing, writing and visual arts skills to take ExoBrain to a new level of acceptably professional presentation of the product. I was personally delighted. Despite my lifetime as a writer, director, producer of film and video, I was now enjoying full time writing, which included, as well as the biographies, the editing and writing of a trilogy of novels. They are Pursuit of Treachery, Deceit of Treachery and Surviving Treachery, available on Amazon and in paperback. The third of which to be released in October/November of this year.
Between three and four years, Peter asked me to write a blog for the ExoTech website, which I have enormously enjoyed writing. So apart from a new project involving the writing and co-producing a TV series for Middle Eastern audiences, I continue to put two fingers to keyboard, to deliver whatever written words are required for the furtherance of the ExoBrain revolution!
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.