Beating the System..The Rise of the Robot.

'O brave new world, That has such people in't! ' 

'You can't beat the system' was one of the first things I was told on joining a vast multinational company forty years ago. In the intervening years systems and processes have become intrinsic to all manifestations of organised labour. The very notion of beating systems is now a ludicrous self-indulgence for all who live within society.

I left the multinational company for the freedom that teaching offered. It was a good move and teaching provided a rich and rewarding environment for this independent minded scientist. All good things come to an end and 'systems' came to education: now unbeatable, intricately elaborate and all-pervasive they have ground and dumbed education down into atomised processes.

It seems if you speak to anyone, in whatever walk of life, you will hear this same story over and over.
The 'processification' of work, the algorithm of life seems to be simply a setting of the stage for the rise of the robot. You don't need to 'Google' for long to find that the world, including Google of course,  is robot-crazy... or to find a trillion pundits predicting a Terminator style rise of the robot. At present though we must be content with the fleshy  'white-collar-droids' we have ourselves have become.

In my profession, I observe teachers giving over and over again stereotyped state-approved lessons using masses of technology such as computers, VLEs, Interactive White Boards, PowerPoint and so on. They are mostly young intelligent decent people but are completely conditioned to accept constant assessment, observation and review from their handlers. It looks to me like the notion of beating the system has been bred out...it's not even challenged, not even by way of a 1984 'thought-crime'.

I'm not mixing the Brave New World of Huxley's and Orwell's dystopia but am struck by the realisation of their fables which are linked by the unbeatable system. With this often at the forefront of my mind I was really taken aback by a series of 'last episodes' of television dramas. These were no ordinary dramas but mega-watched big hitter crime thrillers. In order: 'The Killing' with knitwear hero Sarah Lund; 'Poirot' starring the ageing eponymous Hercule Poirot and finally 'Sherlock' with of course Sherlock.

All three have fictional heroes who are widely regarded as being highly intelligent, emotionally cold and, well, being a bit of a way along the socio-path path. Finally they come up against  individuals who have  manipulated their way to power and were 'system-wise' unbeatable.

What did Poirot, Lund and Holmes do? They murdered them. No pretence was made that they could be beaten through the system, no self serving escape of the consequence of their criminality. They just shot them.

The point I would like to make to anyone who is busy devising, elaborating, supervising or enforcing systems is that they (the systems) despite appearances are desperately fragile and that the odd looking naked-ape you see going about your business is a very dangerous primate.

If even our fictional super-brains can't beat the system and resort to murder what will become of us?

...well it's obvious we had better replace them with robots.. sharpish.