A Different View with Dave O’Connell

Galway County Councillors subliminally entered the world of Artificial Intelligence recently with a suggestion that new technology should be deployed to ensure ‘more accurate’ minutes of their deliberations could be compiled.

In fairness, what they had in mind was some sort of transcription service – or stenography – as used by the Houses of the Oireachtas.

But the reality is that, if you want word-perfect notes of a meeting, AI already has it all wrapped up with a bow.

Your commoner gardener mobile phone has half a dozen apps that listen and record speeches or interviews and transcribe them into fully formed documents.

Back in the distant past, aspiring journalists used to have to learn shorthand and typing skills as part of their training.

These days everyone knows how to type – albeit it with two thumbs – but there isn’t a single teaching centre for journalism in the country that includes shorthand classes as part of its curriculum.

Partly, that’s because everyone has a recording device in their pockets now – but even now, they cannot be used in court and it’s hit-and-miss as to whether you have permission to deploy them at Council meetings.

And that’s just the impact on a profession I’ve been in for more than four decades now.

On all levels – work and play – technology has made life an awful lot simpler in so many ways. But it has also turned our brains to mush.

Does anyone, for example, remember anyone’s phone number anymore? No need to; they’re all safely stored in your mobile, so you just have to call up their name – or indeed simply say their name if you have a smart phone – and you’re away.

And that’s fine until you accidently wash your mobile in the pocket of your jeans and have to go through the rigmarole of extracting your numbers and starting all over again.

There’s also the problem when you leave your mobile behind you – and only then do you discover that you don’t even know the number of your own house.