A Time of Magic

One of the wonders of recent times is that big advertising companies will pay us little guys to write copy over which they have virtually no control.

Not so long ago there were only informercials on the TV and advertorials in the press. In both cases, advertising companies employed professionals to write the copy and handle the presentation. Given the quality of some of the stuff produced, I often wonder how “professional” the people were. Just try looking at any of the shopping channels outside of peak hours to get some idea of how truly dreadful the production quality can be.

However, recently the net has been spread much, much wider and now encompasses untold thousands of people just like me all over the world. How does the quality compare? Well, surprisingly, it compares rather well on the whole. The likes of PayPerPost act as the editorial control and ensure that there is a minimum quality standard applied. That’s not to say that the spelling and grammar couldn’t be improved upon in a number of cases but, even with the relative newness of the media, there are clear moves to improve upon the quality and, over time, I’d be surprised if it didn’t reach “professional” standards more or less across the board.

Of course, why wouldn’t it be professional? After all the bloggers doing the writing are becoming increasingly professional themselves. Don’t forget that many of these bloggers are writing getting on for 10 posts per day and all that writing is just bound to improve the quality of text produced simply through the volume of practice that it entails.

And, yes, this blog will be starting to take on paid posts in the not overlly distant future.

Tags are things that are only worn by criminals, aren’t they?

Well, no, chances are that you are carrying around just such a tag right now. You probably call it a cell phone or mobile phone but it tracks your movements all the same.

They have to do that because of the way the technology used to implement the cells works. Essentially they need to know where every phone is so that they can pass phone calls aimed at it. A side-effect is that your mobile phone works as a reasonable accurate tracker of your movements whilst it is switched on. OK, not down to a few feet or anything like that but certainly the phone company knows which areas you pass through and if you’re in a car then it could almost certainly work out which roads you travelled along, roughly where you stopped, and so on.

And, yes, this information is available to the police. So even though you’re not a criminal they could still be tracking you.

Worrying, isn’t it?

Let’s suppose you have a one-shot time machine and you can go back in time once… what would you change?

Most people come up with the old favourites like stopping the First World War. OK, why not? Well, let’s say you’ve fully researched the history of the period and know which key event needs to be changed. Let’s ignore any complications and assume that the war wasn’t inevitable and that you would actually be able to change the relevant key event so that the war didn’t start.

So you’d do it, wouldn’t you? Well, roll time forward to the present and you’d find yourself in quite a different world. Some key changes that happened as a result of that war wouldn’t have happened. Business leaders would still be upper class, women wouldn’t be going out to work, chemical weapons would still be legitimate weapons of war, the tank might not have been invented yet (and therefore soldiers would remain “cannon fodder”)Â and we’d not have the United Nations because we’d not have formed its predecessor.

OK, we could do without those to save the lives lost needlessly. On the other hand, we’d still have the Kaiser in Germany. In that Germany wouldn’t have been beaten down, chances are that Hitler wouldn’t get to be Chancellor but would the Kaiser’s descendants be any better? I suspect that they wouldn’t, and could be a whole lot worse. After all, Germany would be going into the equivalent of our second World War but with their economy in reasonable shape and with another 10 to 20 years of time to play with.

So, in effect we could end up with somewhat more advanced technology being used to deliver not bombs but chemical weapon payloads. “We” would almost certainly lose that kind of war.

Would you still stop the First World War happening?

If not, what else would you change?