the web owner



Fortunately I am fairly expert with Photoshop 7
and hope this will not dissuade too many viewers.
This was just before I was tied to the boat.

Attended Grammar School in the sixties, KNGS
in Birmingham, and after struggling for years to
get exams now worth nothing, eventually became a
Civil Engineer. Then did a ten month stint selling
door to freezing door glazing, which was quite an education,
before becoming a rather less civil programmer
in the late seventies.

Eventually evolved into a Systems Programming
person and Networking person, when being
men and women became politically incorrect.

Then took five years out studying alcoholism
and chain smoking, before re inventing myself
as the owner of a website, then interesting myself
with finding out about Google indexing, and
how to get yourself a little better placed.

I hope this site seems amusing, helpful or informative,
it is intended to be one of the three.

As can be seen from the photos, smiling suits me.

Malcolm Pugh April 2004.



Article below was a prediction in Nov 2003.

The Dark Side of our Moon, The Universe, and everything.

Last time we saw hardware turning somewhat towards mobile phones, with PCs still firmly entrenched. Today we will look at the future of non hardware based things to come.
Increasingly, things are bought ready programmed and we have little influence over what we have bought or use, just initial choice of supplier and package.
So we are being gently pushed down pre defined paths, with conforming to compatibility being paramount, especially as the current market is essentially split between Google and Microsoft. Here Google will try to offer all options to all men purely by being online to them, as opposed to Microsofts tendency to tie the user to their PC for Word Processing Office Email applications and get their frills on the net. Much as most would privately relish a Google triumph, that is Microsoft after all, who have seen off a good number of contenders for the crown, and also generally speaking we are all more comfortable with the net for the net and the PC for the rest it is what we have grown up with, plus possibly there is an underlying fear that the net does not reek of permanence as it was historically, not so long back, down so much as it was up, and is somewhat dependant on transient factors, not least electricity in an ageing, creaking grid network, surviving in an epoch of sophisticated terrorism. Personally I think our increasing reliance on all things electrically based, with no alternative parallel backup manual systems, is at least worrying and at worst frightening.
Anyway, I think Microsoft will be the major monopoly for many a day yet, with a new search evolving with Longhorn and as in any event the devil that we know.

On another tack, I recently visited Ireland, where my mobile phone supplier does not function. News to me, and news relayed via texts from other suppliers who do work there almost as I stepped off the ferry. Welcome to Ireland we are now looking after you kind of thing. One even had the temerity to phone me and ask if wanted to upgrade onto their network as mine did not work there. A little startling to think you are targeted so quickly, automatically.
So project this further if you will, as ID cards, and the like containing DNA, Iris details and fingerprints, plus bank balances and credit card balances become prevalent as money ceases to be in tandem.
You walk down the street, and CCTV recognises you via facial and retinal scan correlation and activates this speaker plasma display which says hi Malcolm, are you interested by xxxx. Today It will know your available credit, your full credit rating , preferences, your season of the year typical buys. It will have countless data via surveys you filled in to get freebies. It will in short target you with all your weaknesses knowing the money is there. Similarly actually pick up any displayed article and DNA or fingerprint technology will trigger a similar chain of events and questions merely by having touched them.
All that is delivered to your door with minimal fuss, and the item may even tell you when it needs replacing, and on command replace itself via the home online system hooked into the super intelligent fridge, washing machine, cooker, and freezers plus conversing 24 7 with the net and relevant suppliers and repeat suppliers. Your home system constantly monitors stock and varies purchases according to season and personal preferences learned ad hoc from its inception, much as your blue DVD system learned your viewing preferences and your commercial TV channels learned to tune their adverts specifically to be in sync with your personal psyche, style and tastes.
All choice is made to be so minimal as possible, all whim taken away everything is so SIMPLE.
There will be no problem getting what you want, when you want it, almost instantaneously, and your every internet search will be analysed and filed for finer tuning into your underlying psychological profile.
This weight of mundane tasks being effortlessly achieved in this sort of background low profile mode, and given most will effectively be working from home, there may well be a tendency to introversion, an almost hermit like existence, where communication is by and large electronic and not in person, more in camera.
We see the start of this in the endemic mobile phone use by our youth who are losing their grasp of spelling and personal contact via texting, and almost addictive usage of phones where once we talked face to real face. This incidentally stimulates rudeness and abuse plus easily causes offence where none is intended, as the electrons flow and the actual physical face to personal face meetings with all their emotive vision hearing touch and smell are slowly but surely eroded and recede, plus with it human contact is so much the poorer.
As I say this all assumes an uninterrupted power source which can Answer increasingly heavier and ever heavier demand with absolutely no blips. Is that achievable, is that stable, is that possible.
Much as our supermarkets now are eviscerating smaller shops and garages, so they will become sole silent suppliers to your door via the global net, or not so silent suppliers should you venture past your front portal. Holidays may even become a matter of plugging in to distant locations via a sensual virtual link, sort of web cam with touch and emotion, then no more travelling, packing, flying, ferrying, just dreaming awake with subliminal time outs for ordering. We are leaving an age of choice and reason plus opinions to go on to an era of facile effortless indulgence and contentment at the expense of our free will being subjugated to appeasing your convenient, the line of minimal effort. Every day that passes it is easier to spend and receive, easier to indulge and then discard. It is also becoming increasingly hard to manage and function without a mobile, or laptop, and PC plus Net and more expensive to buck the system and do it manually.
Soon there will be no money, plus no bartering, eventually no MANUALLY. Soon it will all be credit and online baby, and AUTOMATICALLY .
Who is to say which is preferable, but there is little doubt which way it will go. Ask your computers, they will tell you if soon you dont believe me, soon we will be more comfortable talking to our computer than to each other. Apparently even now users at Internet cafes and Universities use the SAME computer in a room of many, given choice, because they TRUST that one, they are happy it worked for them before plus your computer never lies to you or annoys you or answers you back, it just does what you say, at least for now.

So I envisage a shift towards a 2001 HAL society where your every perceived need and want is second guessed, offered, accepted and delivered. No actual feeling of paying, ordering by thinking, is likely, simply a constantly replenished supply of perishables with a finite life span. Not pay today and throw away, but Dont think why, just re supply, and to this end all software, peripherals, and the Net will be geared up to be more and ever more effortless to you and less plus ever less manual intervention from you, in the race to automate the mundane and strip away the stress and even choice in supplying what are perceived and judged to be your needs, albeit by others.
Assuming your credit is good it will be an effortless electronic environment, always assuming zero credit banking errors, which may gradually become more hard to actually prove has happened as the Net becomes unassailable and infallible seeming. Computers are not good at self regulation. The race to supply this panacea now currently attempting wireless supplantment of hard wired technology. I am not at all convinced that the security and interference aspects of these items and strategy have been fully thought through and addressed, especially in light of the plethora of new gadgets which all use various similar frequencies. We will address these issues in the next missive from Mars. I leave you with a sobering thought. We can now use many times better fabrics, papers, materials and manufacturing processes than we ever could say late last century. Yet things from that era, like cookers, fridges, books, vintage cars, tape recorders, LPs, reel to blessed reel tapes, model trains for example are still working, in many varied instances BETTER than their modern counterparts. If we are so advanced then why do we deliberately manufacture things which are not meant to survive for even a fraction of the durability of these old items, when we have better materials, and better tools, and better knowledge, and better tolerances.
We are some million times better at selling, and what we sell falls apart in no time, and no one seems to care, notice or even question such a trade in of quality and reliability plus style for shoddy, unreliable unremarkable rubbish.
A friend of mine is in printing, and our challenge there and here in all aspects of modern manufacturing, is to put back quality, trust, and reliability plus promote the value of true worth over transient gloss. It would appear the sales industry has become so perfected at what it does people have lost sight of the actual quality of what they buy, and how long it is likely to last. We seem to prize short term gain over long term pride and craftsmanship, we outsource all our manufacturing to offshore and far east enterprises purely on the basis of short term cost and at the real cost of long term inability to produce from within our own lands and dependency on others abroad, what price then low cost when they are our sole capable producers. Once you have thrown out the basement and the foundations it is hard to rebuild your house. If the incentive were not solely focussed on style over substance and cheapness over craftsmanship, If advertising actually pushed us responsibly to think that quality is a virtue in itself worth paying for, and you DO in the end get EXACTLY what you pay for, then maybe Rolls Royce, Jaguar, Royal Doulton, Wedgwood and Hornby would not be outresearching to China or mass producing what were classic marques and designs in grotesque parodies of their former selves, under new managements using old famous names but not reflecting old hand made craftsmanship, pride and years of reliability.
We also seem to stifle ourselves with rules that do not seem to apply remotely to our competitors and then just let them walk all over us on price. Take my printing friends trade, we try to use sustainable or recycled sources, whereas the competition is happily chopping down virgin forests and bleaching paper. Multiply that by all the call centres, toy manufacturing and base manufactured products in the far east and China , where the basic wage is infinitesimally small for huge undercutting of the west, and how can we ever compete, we of the fair wage for all and minimum wage per hour. China and the East think in centuries, we think about days by comparison. In centuries though we will have no manufacturing base left.
Does no one see the irreparable damage being done by losing brands such as Royal Doulton, or all the lace and cotton industry or the steel and shipbuilding. Everything is being sacrificed on the altar of expediency and lowest possible cost price versus maximised profits. Surely someone should see a gap in the market for quality and reliability in hand made articles, always made with pride by master craftsmen, or classic books bound in age old style and antique charm.
we are truly brilliant at advertising, so why not let the goods match the spiel and create niche markets for connoisseurs if you like, an upper level style AND substance branding for those with discernment and little more disposable income thoughtfully employed and not frittered. Better one Dickens than twenty Mills and Boon.
It is possible quality may re emerge and make its comeback and substance may yet win out over gloss and style, as everything is cyclic in the long run. We await the future, but my bet is the book and the magnetic tape will eventually prove better than the .doc and the cd.
Surely a hand bound First edition of Dickens transcends computer print out. Surely an original reel to magical reel of Dark Side of the Moon through a Ferrograph is a different planet to a bland frequency challenged CD. Look on EBay at second hand prices of LPs, Reels, and First editions . Then look at second hand prices of CDs and talking book cassettes. If the resale value of quality is there why is the sale value eroded and derided in favour of mass produced inferior brands.
Recently an original DSOM sold for 305 pounds plus postage, the CD sells for four quid.
I digressed before into the quality field to outline another possible avenue for the future, QUALITY MAY RESURFACE.
We may yet see a renaissance of hand made goods, ideally suited to internet sales and perhaps have new searches like Quality Quest and Antique Admiration, new websites like Handmade Hardbacks and Solidwood Style.
I buy wonderful handmade boxes from a firm called Crafty Roots, maybe they are our tip of a new iceberg.
As stressed before the world at large is strangely cyclic, so it is possible the markets may cry out for goods once more that do what they actually say they will for a long time, are craftsman made, individual, reliable and do not depreciate or fall apart overnight. Given small workshops from home could become a cottage industry once more, whole the sum of its parts, what better way to re promote an old idea than via the internet.
Just as Opera and Classical music and Ballroom Dancing is resurgent, and strangely being plugged and promoted quite forcefully to the fore, so too quality goods may reinvent themselves. I certainly hope so.
Ragegiftcrochomeursinedetsemail

Jagstrainssteiffs

return to home page