Part 50
I can hardly believe that this is my half century of blogs already. I have no idea whether you have enjoyed all of them or even some of them. What I have tried to do is to reach into past episodes of my life that I felt were interesting and often exciting. I have also travelled extensively and hopefully I have given you some data on places that perhaps not many of you have been to.
I would be quite happy to write on other topics if you wish, provided that I have some knowledge in that area. I have not tried to write extensively about ExoBrain because there are others who can go into far more detail and far more accurately than I can. I have, however, always related my blogs to some aspect of ExoBrain. I have a really good grasp of the concepts of ExoBrain and its ExoTech and I have tried to indicate how I feel that ExoBrain will impact very positively on all our lives in so many ways.
If you consider how major new innovations and inventions have impacted the world from time to time, it may indicate just how we will all react to ExoBrain when it finally hits the market. My guess is that it will be met with both excitement by many and scepticism from those who have seen new ideas arrive and then fade away, as they do not hold to their promises. ExoBrain quickly demonstrates that here is indeed a product that takes the entire subject of computing to another level, the sceptics will fall away and the enthusiasts will expand the usage of ExoTech exponentially.
There is also the school of thought that says, “The old forms of computing were good enough for me, why should I try some new-fangled scheme.” The movie industry provides a good example of this.
In 1917, Dutch-born Iwan Serrurier built a machine called a Moviola which he hoped to sell as a means of watching home movies. However, in 1924, a film editor with the Douglas Fairbanks Studio realized that it could be a boon to the process of editing a film. The Moviola then rapidly became the standard method of editing in Hollywood and around the world.
In the 1970s, the horizontal flatbed editing table was introduced to Hollywood from Germany by companies such as Steenbeck. It was clearly a better system and had a number of additional capabilities to that of the Moviola. It was incredible how many top editors refused to adapt to the new system, and I believe that even today the occasional film is still edited on the Moviola. Nevertheless, the flatbeds eventually became the standard editing machine for film professionals until the 1990s when the advent of digital editing systems on computers such as Avid and Lightworks effectively replaced all the earlier editing systems.
Then when digital editing became possible, there was another enormous upheaval in the world of movie editing. This system was also met with resistance from the diehard traditional editors but even they have eventually come around to the fact that it is a far quicker method than anything that came before it.
Examples of transitions to better systems abound in many other industries, such as the development of the jet engine that superseded the propeller-driven aircraft. Steamships and steam-driven trains were overtaken by diesel power, then electricity in the case of trains and even atomic-powered submarines. In more basic terms, the candle was replaced by the light bulb, the horse and carriage by the motor car, and so on.
My point is this: any industry evolves according to the needs of its users. All too often you get resistance to change because the users have adapted themselves to the system and use it as well as can be expected. When something radically new comes along, they are fearful that they may not adapt to it as efficiently as others and will no longer be the leaders in their fields. So, they grimly hang on to the old methods that they know until, like the dinosaur, they become obsolete.
There will doubtless be the traditionalists who desperately cling onto current computer technology. However, because ExoTech is so evidently simple to use with its technology that enables the computer to think like a human rather than forcing humans to think like a computer as in today’s systems, I have no doubt that the transition from existing computing will be quicker than many previous new inventions.
Mankind seems to be inherently resistant to change. It’s a matter of a degree of laziness and thinking, “Oh no, do I have to learn this all over again?” It also manifests as the fear, as expressed above, of not being able to use the new system as well as the old.
The joy of ExoTech is that it is a system that is so simple to adapt to, that only those who delight in complexity rather than simplicity, may have a problem with it.
I personally cannot wait to feel that I actually have some control over my computer at last, when I start to use ExoTech. I certainly don’t feel at all in control with the current technology. I am heartily sick of going cap in hand to a computer store and asking them how to do something and cringe when they push two buttons and look at me as though I’m a congenital idiot. In fact ,I take some pleasure on those occasions when I come up with a problem that they either fail to resolve or take many hours to do so. I get into the rather childish mood of, “There I told you so.”
Whatever, ExoBrain is high on my list of dreams for the future!
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.