Monday, December 10, 2007
The nannies are for turning!
I read in today's DT that the central nannies have been persuaded by some computing contractor to build a super new computer system to build bank accounts within which the frail and elderly can take back the management of their life. The bank accounts will be populated with whatever money might be left over after building said computer system. Flop or fly, a tribute to the ease with which computer systems of this sort can now be delivered to the population at large.
Now while the thought that the frail and the elderly might like to get a bit more control back is a good one, and the idea that there ought to be a bit more visibility of the costs of their care is a good one, one wonders whether one could not have achieved the same result without such a performance. Just told the people who manage the front line nannies (aka care workers) to be a bit less bossy and to give their customers options rather than directives.
As it is we are going to need a whole new layer of nannies who are authorised to explain to the customers how the new system works, who are authorised to work it for them (most of the customers will not be wanting to do this for themselves), who can police the system to make sure that one particular gang of meals' providers is not banging the PCT with crates of Xmas hooch to thank them for putting a bit of business their way... One could go on. Another victory for process and procedure over contact and care.
On a more cheerful note I also read that Toyota have built a robot that can play the violin after a fashion - and this is just a bit of showing off, not what the thing is for. Another one that can play the trumpet. Now that is really something; something that I would like to see the insides of. How do you make a hand that is sensitive enough to make the notes on the fingerboard? The thing is presumably quite good at analysing a note that it hears - but how does it turn that information into tuning hand movements? Perhaps the thing does not go quite that far. But it does need to be able to run the bow over the strings in the right way - which must need some kind of aural feedback to the bow hand to work properly. Does it read the music from a score, in the way of a real musician or has the score been read into its memory? What range of scores can it play from? Are they expressed internally in much the same way as they are on the score you or I might buy or is their some special intermediate language which is more robot friendly? All of which would be fascinating to know about. Sadly their web site is very bland. Nothing about the workings and no buttons to get interesting pdf downloads.
On a slightly more mundane level, I learn from a TB informant that one no longer needs to insert small windmills into large water pipes in order to guage the flow in them. One simply has a gadget which bounces a beam of light of some sort across the pipe and deduces flow from the appearance of the returning light. Now what does fast flowing clean water do to a beam of light which enables one to do that? One might think that swirling around sort of water or dirty water would have more chance.
And moving from new to old technology, I learn that the Dome on the Rock was very likely built by Christians. The Muslims might have conquered Jereusalem but they did not exterminate the pre-existing population and were generally quite tolerant of them. So almost certainly made productive use of them in service of the prophet. Also that the style of the thing is very much that of a contemporary Christian church. Not some new revelation, but very much building (in every sense) on what had gone before - less the pictures of people, prophets, saints, angels and gods which were not approved of.
Now while the thought that the frail and the elderly might like to get a bit more control back is a good one, and the idea that there ought to be a bit more visibility of the costs of their care is a good one, one wonders whether one could not have achieved the same result without such a performance. Just told the people who manage the front line nannies (aka care workers) to be a bit less bossy and to give their customers options rather than directives.
As it is we are going to need a whole new layer of nannies who are authorised to explain to the customers how the new system works, who are authorised to work it for them (most of the customers will not be wanting to do this for themselves), who can police the system to make sure that one particular gang of meals' providers is not banging the PCT with crates of Xmas hooch to thank them for putting a bit of business their way... One could go on. Another victory for process and procedure over contact and care.
On a more cheerful note I also read that Toyota have built a robot that can play the violin after a fashion - and this is just a bit of showing off, not what the thing is for. Another one that can play the trumpet. Now that is really something; something that I would like to see the insides of. How do you make a hand that is sensitive enough to make the notes on the fingerboard? The thing is presumably quite good at analysing a note that it hears - but how does it turn that information into tuning hand movements? Perhaps the thing does not go quite that far. But it does need to be able to run the bow over the strings in the right way - which must need some kind of aural feedback to the bow hand to work properly. Does it read the music from a score, in the way of a real musician or has the score been read into its memory? What range of scores can it play from? Are they expressed internally in much the same way as they are on the score you or I might buy or is their some special intermediate language which is more robot friendly? All of which would be fascinating to know about. Sadly their web site is very bland. Nothing about the workings and no buttons to get interesting pdf downloads.
On a slightly more mundane level, I learn from a TB informant that one no longer needs to insert small windmills into large water pipes in order to guage the flow in them. One simply has a gadget which bounces a beam of light of some sort across the pipe and deduces flow from the appearance of the returning light. Now what does fast flowing clean water do to a beam of light which enables one to do that? One might think that swirling around sort of water or dirty water would have more chance.
And moving from new to old technology, I learn that the Dome on the Rock was very likely built by Christians. The Muslims might have conquered Jereusalem but they did not exterminate the pre-existing population and were generally quite tolerant of them. So almost certainly made productive use of them in service of the prophet. Also that the style of the thing is very much that of a contemporary Christian church. Not some new revelation, but very much building (in every sense) on what had gone before - less the pictures of people, prophets, saints, angels and gods which were not approved of.
# posted by Jim @ 4:00 AM 
