Asleep at the wheel

 

Several years ago, actually, do a count back, it was probably around 2006, so twenty years ago. I had a book on my shelf: Asleep at the Wheel by John Nieuwenhuizen. Now, to be honest, I meant to read it. It was by an Australian author and was primarily about Australia on the Superhighway.

Now, in 2026, I have to say that was quite a quaint idea, the superhighway. To be honest, though, it was only ten years earlier, in 1996, that I'd finished my degree, learning to code in Pascal, coding in COBOL, HTML, and the internet was all new.

The truth of it: my eldest, now 18, was born the same year as the iPhone. The reality is that the book I'm talking about pre-existed the iPhone. That is a realisation as I am writing this.

Anyway, I didn't get to read it. But what I have realised is that I had these thoughts in my mind then, twenty years ago. Has technology gotten away from us humans? I think this is what appealed to me about the book. Yes, it was about the superhighway and titled Asleep at the Wheel.

I think I romanticised it, romanticised it in that here was someone else, a kindred spirit, who had some of my beliefs, my considerations. I imagined the book would have been about the blind capitalist leaning into the use of technology in an unregulated way, where corruption and over-inflation were all over the place. This, though fictional, as I had not read the book, I did not know, nor could it have predicted the Dot-com Bomb of the noughties.

A house move later, and some spring cleaning, the book disappeared from my shelves, never to be read by me. Now, its residual is a note on the backlog of story ideas I have for my annual foray into Story-a-Day in the month of May, and there it has rested for the last couple of years. Until now.

Today, I'm trying something a little different, a story of sorts, a story about how the title of one book has been on my mind for twenty years and even today still holds relevance beyond what I believe the original author had in mind.

Since that dusty tome left my shelves, we have had the iPhone, the standard setter for the smartphone, arrive and iterate seventeen times. Yes, seventeen times. We're now on version 17. This device and its clones turned us, and not just Australians, into screen-obsessed automatons.

In my travels around the world, from Vietnam to Spain, New Zealand, and beyond, you see them everywhere, everyone looking at that little two-by-five-inch display. They are everywhere, to the point where I am now self-conscious about using my phone and take paperback books to read on the train.

It's the physicality of these little devices that has enabled things like Facebook, created in 2004, to be mainstreamed into our lives, flooding our brains, before Instagram, Twitter (now X), YouTube, and more. Personally, I no longer use these. I still have a Facebook account, and my daughter had me on Insta the other day, yet living without them makes no difference to me. To the broader society?

The odd thing is, 'Social Media' is comically one of the most anti-social things I have ever come across. In every way. People will sit opposite each other in a restaurant, the glow of their little screens lighting their faces, ignoring the person across from them. Looking into another world that is not physically with them.

How teenagers use this is phenomenal. I remember when bullying occurred at school in the old days; it stayed at school. Now it comes into the home on the invasive little screens, as it knows no boundaries. I was out walking today and watched four very young teen girls walking towards me, phones in hand. As they passed: 'I've pushed Sofie', god knows what she's pushed them into. And what would Sofie push back into them, and would the Sofie pusher simply absorb it or share? Let alone when.

Then we get on to how anti-social these social things truly are. Dating apps. I work in a university, and we struggle to get the kids on campus to connect. They don't. I watch it with my own daughters and the effect of these little two-by-five-inch glowing demons upon them.

It's a bit of a crisis. Don't get me wrong, both the internet, the superhighway, and social technologies have done great things. When the pandemic hit, the organisation I worked for, TAFE NSW, barely missed a beat because of these technologies and was able to play a big role in NSW's community transition through COVID-19.

Yet here we are. If John felt we were asleep at the wheel way back in 1997, that's when it was published; what would he be thinking now? Today, there's a view, and I know there are studies and numbers to support this, that we are living in the most connected society in human history, yet in the most isolated ways ever. We're losing our social ways.

Now, though, AI, artificial intelligence, is here. What and how will that affect us? If we haven't managed ourselves particularly well through the last three decades of technology, how are we going to manage the next ten?

These little devices have taken away our attention and broken our social connections. Is AI simply going to steal our purpose? Knowing the political, community and societal response to everything that has preceded it, we all need to wake up before we veer away.

References/background:

• https://www.afr.com/companies/hacking-through-the-hype-of-the-new-19970505-kb1ij Article was May 5 1997

• https://www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2022/10/19/222031/vale-john-nieuwenhuizen/

“I want to be brave.”

Brave, to be brave, it's relative, isn't it? 
No, I don't think so, it's in the little things.

Yeah, there are big events that happen, Bondi and more. 

Medals are given for bravery to civilians and soldiers alike.

But is it relative or in the little things? 

It's in everyday life, in everything.

To be brave could be in an instant, 

where you simply speak up or step in.

Can you know if you're brave or will be? 

Especially if you've never been tested.

But what is it to be tested, what would it be? 

Would it be in a crowd, a calamity, or between you and another?

I know I've been brave before, in all sorts of things. 

The doubt, though, if I ever stop to think. Would I do it again?

In need, I hope I am, I hope I do, because 

I want to be brave for you.

Ring, ring.

The hissing whistle filled the room, accompanied by steam pouring from the spout of the kettle, billowing, condensation first forming then falling from the rangehood. Water running down the backboard like rain down a windscreen in drizzling weather.

Ring, ring.

The seamist white marble benchtop upon the island, grey foamed, red phone, an old phone, retro people would say now, historic or antique according to the children of the house, beside it a brown wood-turned bowl, a functional aesthetic mix of fruit, yellow, orange and green. The sink on its far side, stove top damp, wet to the right, the green of the garden, white flowers punctuating the hedge beyond.

Ring, ring.

Cups overturned dry in the dish rack, a single teaspoon accompanying it. The tea towel is pinned hanging over the front of the shut cutlery drawer. Neat, tidy, orderly, even would be the description, people had passed through this space, breakfasted, caffeinated, rinsed dishes and departed, yet the hissing whistle.

Ring, ring.

The room, a space, the unspoken social place of many a house. Conversations had with one filleting a steak while the other sips a red. At the island bench. You can imagine a man, cup in hand, having picked the paper from the stoop, reading the day's news at hand. None of this, though, just a stillness broken only by the rattle of a kettle boiled dry.

Ring, ring.

Wood floors, real wood, not floating, the original floorboards the width of red oak, not something you can buy these days, polished to the point that they shone, not reflected but shone, a honey brown, the natural knots and grain, the eyes of the wood, a renovator's delight.

Ring, ring.

The dark red pool, dull yet reflecting, not flowing but expanding away. She lay there, her white-blond hair a contrast against the burgundy liquid sheen, her white shirt, pristine, a further juxtaposition to the red upon it, running from the middle of her back to the floor. A cold, hard, seamless stainless steel stub of a knife handle protruding, the blade sunk deep.

Ring, ring.

Horses and Spreadsheets

 'Hey, you know when we were playing BG3 the other day, and the topic came up about AI?'

'Yeah.'

'It was interesting, that view from the guys, a bunch of 50-somethings.'

Post-game was a precious moment. After the hours of gameplay, concentrating, die rolling, it was a time to reflect on the game, peer DM chat, and all sorts of things. Sometimes, family stresses, raising daughters was daunting. Or work, and the drift into philosophy that only sits between good friends in those quiet moments.

'Wait a tic, let me top up my wine,' said Mick, puncturing Iain's thoughts.

Moments later, he came back on screen. 'What about it?'

'The idea that they think it's all a hullabaloo, you know, it'll come to nothing.'

'You don't?'

'Oh, it'll come to something, it's just a matter of how you reconcile it.' Pausing momentarily to sip his wine, thinking, waiting — waiting to see if he'd got his friend's attention, to see if he'd run this line of thought with him.

'Go on.'

'OK, you get what I do for a living?'

'Yup, talk shit, talk for a living, rabbit on about Chief Tech blah di blah.' Grinning back through the screen — it was part of the sport. Mates can't ever let them get ahead of themselves; that would be unnatural.

Staring back, Iain waited a moment.

'Well, I've been thinking. To be honest, not a bloody day goes by that there's not another vendor in my inbox asking me to a day out, a round table, god knows what else, to go talk about AI. Shit, the other day I was a guest speaker at a lunch, meant to be rabbiting on about cloud computing, told I had to talk about AI. Told 'em I'm a pragmatist, not an enthusiast.'

'Good lunch?'

'Yeah. Hang a tic, my turn to top up the wine, back in a tick.'

'Cool, I'll run for a leak.'

Silence. The two rooms, their respective man caves, sat looking at each other — Mick's 80" screen on the wall to the right, his bookshelf, and D&D ornaments to the back. Iain's bookshelves either side, red couch to the back of the room, evidence of D&D on both shelves and the couch.

'You were sayin'?' Mick spoke first as the two of them returned to their seats, reclining in unison and taking a sip from their respective glasses. It was wine tonight, not scotch — meant the chance of a pseudo-sensible conversation was possible.

'Horses and spreadsheets!'

'What the f--- are you rabbiting on about?'

'Horses and spreadsheets. What they're saying — and I quite like this analogy — AI is going to be more like spreadsheets than horses. Think about it. When the internal combustion engine, tractors, turned up, horses were pretty much out to pasture overnight. Spreadsheets, not so much. You look at the history of the things — have you ever seen the project plans and ledgers from the early 1900s? Hand ruled, nice tidy print.'

'Maaate! You're talking to an old engineer, of course I have.'

'OK, so think about it. When the digital spreadsheet came — Lotus 1-2-3, if you ever remember that, the precursor to Excel — people were saying that's the end of it. In fact, there were even pitches made to the British government to bring in laws. What happened? Well, now I don't think there's a computer that exists that doesn't have Excel open on it at least once a week. Heck, go back to the Luddites and the introduction of the mechanical looms. That's what AI's going to be about.'

'I'll be honest, mate, down at the wharves it's more something I hear about than see. Shit, from the media you'd think there was a jobpocalypse coming.'

Laughing. 'Exactly! It's insane — all these bloody vendors talking about how big it is, how much change is occurring. Looking at the actual data, and I do, it's got like an 11% success rate out in the wild. Insane. And there are so many challenges. Don't get me wrong, we'll work it out over the next couple of years, but I don't think any of us are really going to be out of a job anytime soon.'

A pause, the two of them sipping from their glasses at the same time.

'So what'd you think of the game tonight?'

Following his friend's lead, leaning into the change, embracing it even — this is how they worked. 'The way you played that call around the drow mage. Magic, mate. Could've devolved into a bloody mess, but you kept the flow, kept the story going. It was great.'

The Long Strand

Hector stopped. He wasn't making much noise beforehand, and now none. Crouching, he listened; the forest about him had been becoming quieter, the small creatures of the forest being the last to peter out. He could smell it more clearly now, the smell of a recent kill, and not a clean kill. This kill smelled of blood and intestine; it was not subtle, and it was the stench of death that had caused the silence.

He knew where he was, the estate lands surrounding the old tower, once a manicured garden fallen into ruin, as had the tower. He'd heard rumours, that's what had brought him here. Rumours of smoke rising from the tower, lights at night, of someone taking up residence.

This, though, did not sit well with him; the stench of violence assailed his senses. He crouched and moved forward, scanning the ground and the foliage for clues, none immediately about him, which was good; it meant he was approaching from outside, entering.

Spotting the shape of a clearing before him, he crouched more slowly and pulled his shortsword from its sheath, holding it before him as much as a shield as a ready foil if anything was to pounce on him. Stopping at the edge of the fern line, he looked to the centre.

There in the middle of the clearing, the late afternoon sun streaking to the forest floor lit up what remained of a stag, seen in parts, sliced by the shadows of the trees falling across it. As he'd sensed, it was not a clean kill; from his vantage point, he could clearly see it had been torn open by something large, gouges down the thick of its rump, its stomach torn open and emptied. Talons and teeth. Large.

Melding backwards, the shadows lengthening gave him good cover as he started to circle the area, not worrying or trying to discern anything more from the dead creature at the centre, but scanning the brush he was passing through, again looking for signs of anything at all.

Then he saw it, a single long orange hair. Then snapped branches, crushed twigs and leaves. Heavy. Putting his free hand over a large depression in the ground, splaying his fingers wide. Tip to tip, thumb to little finger, the indent was an inch wider. Nine inches across; turning his hand ninety degrees, the same. He grabbed a twig, measured rim to lip of the depression: one inch.

Lifting the long strand of orange from where it lay, he twisted it in his fingers, coarse, thicker than hair or fur, more like the hair of a horse's mane, thick, strong. He smelt it, tasted it. Sulphur. He slipped it into his herb pouch.

Staying low, he waited a few minutes, listening. Nothing. Silence.

It was a fast ten minutes to retrace his steps, back to the brook, deftly crossing it rock to rock, the noise of the forest gathering around him again. He turned back momentarily, crouching to the water's edge, watching from where he'd come.

He cupped the water and drank in the hope of washing the sulphur from his mouth; it was cold, fresh. Then he was running, silently, not a noise, not a crack of a branch breaking as he passed, twigs and sticks beneath his feet trodden on lightly. There would be no trace, no sound. He was a long strider.

He needed to move at a pace; he knew what it was, and he was certain of it. He needed to get to his kin to confirm. Therese had mentioned encountering such a creature before. A Barl-goo-ra. A Barlgura. They would need to return with numbers if they were to hunt and rid the forest of the demon spawn.