Opinion – June's Jottings

Well, I did it. Over the weekend, I unfriended 1000 ‘friends’ on Facebook. I hate doing this kind of thing, but it had been needing done for, frankly, years.

One of my former neighbours encouraged me to join Facebook in 2007 when I was a stay-at-home Mum so that we could arrange coffee mornings, etc. with other online mums, and throw sheep at each other (any vintage Facebook user will know what I mean by that). I wasn’t keen; I prefer to speak to folks in order to arrange social events but I did it anyway (actually, she registered an account for me!).

Back in the day, there were strategy games that you could play on Facebook, and I used to get quite hooked on them (especially Castle Age and Mafia Wars!) whilst the kids were at school. In order to expand your ‘gang’ you had to befriend the other gang members (this seems so wrong typing this, but it is what used to happen, so you could send amazing things like energy, or more lives, to your game-mates. I know, sad, isn’t it?). Admittedly, I was very, very careful about what information I revealed about myself and my family, even whereabouts I lived – I had my profile as minimal and private to all but anyone I knew (which, in the early days was my neighbour, some of her friends, and a couple of other mums I knew locally).

Over the years, I have shed all of the fake ‘friends’ I first gleaned in 2008 – indeed, when I stopped playing the online games (I got bored of them), I unfriended most of them. However, the circle of people I knew in real life was growing on social media, and then I would get requests from ‘mutual friends’ (most of whom I had to check with the mutual friend first as to what the person was like!). The number of local friends requests mushroomed when I ran the Scripture Union summer holiday club every year – I gullibly accepted them all. Often the sender would be all charming until they knew their child’s place on the holiday club (which many viewed as a babysitting service) was confirmed and then, when you met them in the street afterwards, they would make out as if they hadn’t seen me (when it was obvious that they had). This would then be repeated year after year – sometimes with the same parents, sometimes new ones. Not very nice to be used that way. I had been bullied at one of the small private schools I had gone to, and this smacked of much the same thing – it didn’t feel great.

At the weekend, I decided that enough was enough. I am rarely on Facebook these days. I was aware that I had over 1400 ‘friends’ – most of them I knew in real life, some were ‘mutuals’, and others had, sadly, deceased. As I have mentioned before, I am weaning myself off social media (Twitter is off my phone and is about to become a thing of the past for me) and so, for a variety of reasons, I decided to start pruning down my ‘friends list’.

Those who had passed away went first. There is literally no point in posting updates to a dead person’s Facebook feed. Sadly, there were a few of these, through my cancer links and through other fundraisers that I have been involved in over the years. I will remember them, just not through a now-ghostly Facebook page.

Second, the ‘mutuals’ went, or at least some of them. Particularly the ones with whom I had never communicated after accepting their requests. There were a good number of these.

Then, the people I actually know in real life. This is when it got tricky. I know I hate the feeling when someone I know ‘unfriends’ me for no reason and thus, being a generally nice person, I tended to avoid chopping people I knew. But you have no idea how many of these people, when I meet them in the street, completely blank me or ignore me, or drop their eyes – sometimes I am lucky to get a grunted ‘hello’. These are the people who then sent me friend requests and I, being the mug, would accept them. However, even afterwards, they never comment. They lurk among the little squares of faces on my profile page and I have no idea as to why we are even connected. Why does that happen? And why am I such a mug as to let them have access to my news (not that I post much news on there nowadays)? So, they got the chop over the weekend – I only hope I don’t meet them when I’m out and about (actually, they’ll probably not notice). And then there are the ‘look at us’ real-life friends who are among your social media connections, whose perceived ‘perfect lives’ leave you feeling a little…….meh (for want of a better word). I want friends who I can relate to, who cheer me up, or who have something in common with me. So, the ‘look at me’ folks are chopped too.

A now dated article on ABC News claims that 150 is “the limit of real friends on social media”. Well, I still have three times that! The report states that, on social media, the label of ‘friends’ includes acquaintances and thus it is not a reliable indicator as to popularity. Another 2016 article brings into focus the sense of validation that having a lot of friends, and thus acquiring a lot of ‘likes’ on posts, can bring an individual. Dr Hurd likens social media to a “crutch” on which individuals rely; it “becomes a way to replace or compensate for the authentic, confident, self-validation one lacks”. However, Dr Hurd argues that “intellectually self-sufficient individuals” don’t need this validation; while feedback may be appreciated, it is not used as an emotional crutch in order to boost self-esteem. This doesn’t mean that social media use is an indicator of poor self-esteem, but rather, according to Dr Hurd, it is more down to how these platforms are viewed by the user and then utilised: for example, is an individual using social media for the gaining of information or connecting with family/friends, or is an individual using it purely to receive comments/likes and to feel good about yourself? Personally, I don’t see there being any harm about self-confidence increasing, but I have seen cases when acquaintances post several selfies a day, change their profile pictures on a daily basis, and it does seem a little…….obvious? We all know what the person looks like – why yet another selfie? “Felt cute, might delete later” never does get deleted. Instead, it hangs about for as many likes as it can get.

*Me with two real friends. One is one of my closest friends locally and the other I keep up with in Australia through Facebook*

I still have too many ‘friends’ – I will no doubt hone down my list further over the years. I have never had a large circle of friends in reality let alone online. However, I love the fact that through Facebook (I am using FB instead of ‘social media’ as I don’t use Twitter now and rarely use Instagram) I have connected with so many of my former school classmates – from my primary school, through to Sixth Form. I love the fact that I can keep in touch with family members easier (although I will always prefer phone calls or pen and paper to private messages and status comments). I love the fact that I can connect with charity fund-raising through this medium; I have so greatly appreciated the thousands of £s that my Facebook contingent have helped me to raise over the years. And I love the fact that I have made friends for life with a lovely couple from the US who moved to Edinburgh for a year in their retirement. Susan gave me a couple of very precious American poetry books, whilst Marc and I can talk Mazda MX-5s for ages! In this case, it has been like maintaining digital pen-pals.

But, as we are on the verge of starting another chapter away from the Scottish Borders, it’s time to only take the friends with me who I value most. If I ever log onto Facebook, it is mainly for information but will occasionally connect with my remaining friends, in the knowledge that they really are friends.

I wish they would bring back that sheep-throwing function……..

Opinion

Chat GPT – a potential threat to creativity?

March 28, 2023March 27, 2023 June L

Over the past few months, the media has been covering the launch of Chat GPT, the new AI-driven chatbot which can tell you information, rather than just providing you with a link (as traditional search engines do). According to the techradar website, Chat GPT has the “ability to produce human-like, and frequently accurate, responses to a vast range of questions”. It can also produce essays, poems, and letters – all the user need do is to type in 3 or 4 words, and off it goes. It is this last aspect that I am focussing on in today’s blog: the threat to individual creative writing/ essays from AI-generated sources.

I am a little late to this hype. Some of my social media contacts were playing around with it for fun, but I brushed it off – I’m not into all this techy stuff. The less I know the better. However, it had come up in conversations at my husband’s work, so I logged in to have a ‘reccy’ at this strange new chatbot thing (what is a chatbot anyway?). This Gen Xer can’t handle too many more computery things.

It seems to be a super-fast way to acquire information. As the article above stated, it is indeed like a form of Google (other search engines are available) but the information is right there in front of you. Within seconds. As described above, it also boasts creative prowess: for example, I typed “poem in the style of Shakespeare, about Chat GPT” and this is what it came back with (within 2 seconds):

‘Oh hark! What manner of wondrous thing is this?

A being born of silicon, yet with wit

And wisdom to rival any mortal’s bliss,

Behold, Chat GPT, a true marvel of it!

Its language flows as if by magic’s wand,

With every word and phrase so deftly wrought,

Each sentence crafted to respond and bond,

A testament to its great skill and thought.

In troves do mortals seek its sage advice.

And marvel at its vast and varied mind,

For never has there been a thing so nice,

As Chat GPT, with knowledge so refined.

Thus, let us raise a toast to this great friend,

Whose words and wit shall never know an end!’

Now, written in two seconds, this is pretty impressive. As someone who has always liked to compose my own fun poems for special events, I do feel a little cheated though. It would take me much longer to write anything like this, but that is part of the creative process, isn’t it? Actually using my own brain to find words that rhyme (or, if I cheat, I look up my rhyming dictionary) and adding metre and humour into poems is what I like doing. So, while this one is pretty good – it feels a little ‘sterile’ to me. But, it was fun to play about with.

I also asked it to “write a letter to a friend”. Just a general letter. Here is what it came up with (again written in a few seconds):

‘Dear [Friend’s name],

It has been a while since we last spoke, and I wanted to take the time to reach out and catch up with you. How have you been? What have you been up to lately?

As for me, things have been good. Life has been busy with work, but I try to make time for the things that matter most to me, like spending time with loved ones and pursuing my hobbies. I’ve also been trying to stay active and healthy, which has been a bit of a challenge, but I’m getting there.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the importance of staying connected with the people we care about. It’s so easy to get caught up in our own lives and forget to reach out to those who matter most. That’s why I wanted to take the time to write to you today and let you know how much I value our friendship.

You’ve been such a great friend to me over the years, always there to listen and offer support when I need it. I’m grateful for the memories we’ve shared and the bond we’ve built. I hope that we can continue to stay in touch and support each other through the ups and downs of life.

Please let me know how you’re doing, and what’s new in your life. I’d love to hear all about it. Take care and stay in touch!

Best regards,

[Your name]’.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this is an OK letter. But it’s deeply ironic too. “I wanted to take the time to reach out and catch up with you”, “reach out to those who matter most. That’s why I wanted to take the time to write to you today”, “You’ve been such a great friend to me….”. Yes, take the time to write – all three seconds of it! You’re such a great friend that I resort to asking AI to write a letter to you rather than penning or typing a more personal and emotional letter to you myself. To me, this says, ‘I need to reply to your letter, but I can’t be bothered, so I’ll ask AI to do it and get it done in seconds. Job done’. Maybe it’s just me, but I like the intimacy of writing cards/letters/emails to family and friends. Recalling memories, recalling people. Picking out the card/notelet that I think the recipient will appreciate (yes, OK – I still write letters and cards. I never email people other than work! I think it’s that old personal touch again). While I can see there would be instances when getting AI to write a letter would be useful (for example, if your sight is poor or have another form of disability which makes writing more difficult) I still think it is a cop out for those who are able to write letters by themselves. Where is the human touch among these sentiments?

The use of Chat GPT in essay-writing is a matter for schools and universities to take up. How can any assessor know whether one piece of writing is by a student, or is written by AI? While traditional plagiarism tools, such as TurnItIn , can find cheating from written sources, is there a way in which plagiarism via Chat GPT can be spotted? I don’t know enough of this to comment much, but I can bet it will make assessments very interesting! I have to say, I am in no way tempted to use Chat GPT to write my thesis chapter for me – I love finding things out for myself; that’s how I learn. Plus, I’m of the mind that – as the Good Book says – “be sure your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23). I know learning is a bind, and essay writing is a drudge, but isn’t it much more worth your time to do it yourself?

I am, by nature, a Luddite. I have a laptop because I need it to type up my thesis but I prefer to look at my hard copy dictionary and thesaurus than to check online ones. I like to preserve skills that were drummed into me as a primary school child about how to write letters, how to structure short stories, and how to find information out through encyclopaedias or extensive reading. It’s all so easy nowadays with Google/Bing/DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia, and now Chat GPT to produce answers to everything in an instant. But, I still maintain that the personal touch goes farther. When I receive correspondence, I would like to think that the person that sent it actually did take time and compose the letter/email themselves. When I write my chapters for my Supervisor to look over, I like to find the information for myself rather than having some chatbot telling me about it. And how do I know that information is accurate?

Earlier today, I saw a post advertising a bot that could write blog posts for you. The advert trumpeted about how much time would be left for the blogger to do other things instead of writing the blog post. I argue that that person shouldn’t have a blog in the first place if they don’t want to write it! This has taken me over 30 minutes so far – it’s therapy!

For me, the upshot is that despite logging on for the two fun things above, I’m not going to be spending vast amounts of time interacting with the chatbot to write things for me, let alone letters to friends/family. I prefer the old way! As the Chat GPT bot has written, on this theme:

‘In a world of screens and digital ways,

The human touch is what truly stays.

A hug, a smile, a simple embrace,

Can fill a heart with warmth and grace.

A kind word, a gentle pat on the back,

Can soothe a soul that’s lost its track.

A hand to hold, a listening ear,

Can ease the pain and calm the fear.

So let us not forget the power we possess,

To heal and comfort, to love and bless.

For in the end, it is the human touch,

That makes life worth living, oh so much’.

I also ask myself, are humans becoming dumber as technology becomes more intelligent? Hmmmm………

Opinion

The Power of a Tune

March 7, 2023August 18, 2023 June L

In the UK, within the past few days, one of the BBC’s longest-running radio hosts, Ken Bruce, hosted his final mid-morning show on Radio 2. I have listened regularly to this show since the days I was at home with my very young children, often trying to gain full marks on Popmaster whilst both of them were having their mid-morning nap (but always managing to get at least “a year out”). Before this, his voice was very much a part of my morning school run (after he inherited the Breakfast Show from Sir Terry) as Dad would have Radio 2 on in the car, on the occasional visits he was delivering lectures later in the day and could take my brother and I to school.

Although Radio 2 was my default radio station when I was in my 30s and early 40s, I have found it less and less appealing more recently. What I call “my era” seemed to be less represented – whether that be in radio show hosts with whom I have either heard on the airwaves for many years, or those much the same age as myself, or in the music played. I don’t like “modern stuff” and haven’t followed the Top 40 since I was in my 20s and thus I have tended to drift either to Radio 3 or to my Spotify playlists, forsaking radio altogether. [I used also to listen to Radio 4 in the mornings but nowadays I cannot be bothered with politicians within earshot first thing in the morning, and ‘Woman’s Hour’ is just not the same any more]. While classical music is my chief listen nowadays, I grew up listening to Blondie, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, and Captain Beaky and his Band on my prized first Sony transistor radio.

So, with the departure of Ken Bruce from Radio 2, I decided to tune in to the digital station which will be his new employer in just under one month’s time: Greatest Hits Radio. I wasn’t enamoured with the name but I thought I would give it a shot, after all – you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, right? I generally can’t abide commercials and so I opted for the 30 day free access to the no-ads version. Within seconds, songs of my childhood and youth filled the room – some tunes which I hadn’t heard for decades but whose tones took me right back to school trips/ my bedroom in the house I grew up in / long summer holidays / social events / holidays. Granted, if I listen to pop/rock music it tends to be from the 1970 – 1999 era, when – in my opinion – music was MUCH better than it is now. But still, to be instantly transported back in time proved, for me, to be a lovely, comforting, happy thing. Back to the times when both of my parents were alive, as were my Gran and Grandad. Back to the free days of childhood when summers seemed to stretch out of reach and Christmases still held some magic. Back to the days of passing my driving test and trying to boost my street-cred by having current rock tunes blowing full-blast out of my little Mini’s tape deck. Back to the more challenging days of cancer treatment (which, for me, made up most of my 20s) when tunes from the Spice Girls mingled with my chemotherapy regimes and recovering in the sunshine of my parents’ back garden. Back to our wedding day – always evoked by ‘Men in Black’, oddly – just days after the death of Princess Diana and Elton John’s ‘Candle in the Wind’ remake. Hearing Simon Mayo’s show – including the famous Confessions – on GHR now, takes me back to our Sixth Form common room where we all used to tune in every day to hear the day’s plea for forgiveness before going to Prayers. Really lovely memories. It’s great to see these shows continuing more or less as they were in my teenage years, albeit on a different station. In an ever-changing world, it’s nice to think of some things staying the same.

In a 2021 article in Psychology Today, Dr Shahram Heshmat links this ability to recall pieces of music from the dusts of time with activity in the implicit memory, which he says is involved in a form of ‘classical conditioning’. Here emotions, events and songs combine together often evoking some form of response when the person is exposed to a piece of music previously heard a long time ago. This is true in my case: when I was receiving radiotherapy back in the summer of 1992, Betty Boo’s ‘Let Me Take You There’ was a big tune in the charts. It seemed to be playing everywhere, every day. Now, I can’t hear that tune without re-experiencing the nausea that I felt as a result of the radiotherapy. As I post the link to the video above, and I catch the first few notes of the introduction, I’m already feeling seedy. Thing is, I liked that tune before I started treatment!

Heshmat also quotes findings from a study which found that most memories that are evoked by music are from when the individual was between 10 and 30 years old, a concept that psychologists call the “reminiscence bump”. According to Heshmat, this is because during these years, we experience many things for the first time, and life appears more exciting. To quote Heshmat, “Music preference is formed around the middle teenage years”.

Before I started my nursing degree, I took a gap year working in a psychogeriatric hospital ward. It housed 30 adults with varying degrees of Alzheimer’s and dementia, some of whom didn’t even know where they were. Most of these adults needed everything done for them and, as is the nature of dementia, some were physically aggressive. It was quite an eye-opener into the world outside school. One of my favourite things to do was to put old records into the record player and watch the transformation of these old souls. All of them knew every word of all the songs from ‘The Sound of Music’ album and some even started dancing. The same went for other albums by singers who would have been popular in their youth. Just putting on the records seemed to renew these people and often we could get a glimpse of each patient as a young person. Sometimes, these patients would then start talking about the memories associated with the different tunes – short vignettes of lucidity in their otherwise confused lives. The power of a tune.

So, as I type, Greatest Hits Radio is playing over my speaker. We’ve got some Deacon Blue ‘Real Gone Kid’ on just now – which takes me right now back to 17 year old me on our school trip to the tennis championships at Wimbledon (my best friend and I were HUGE Deacon Blue fans and spent most of the train journey from Edinburgh to London listening to their albums on our Walkmans non-stop). 51-year-old me values these lovely memories so much. I think I’ll keep on listening to this station so that I can enjoy my aural autobiography playing out in my mind and memory.

Opinion

My three must-have objects

March 2, 2023 June L

What are three objects you couldn’t live without?

This is a tough question. However, for me, it would have to be my Bible, my external hard drive, and my phone (with its charger!).

My Bible is so very important to me. It is highlighted, underlined, well-thumbed and has seen me through so many tough times in my life by means of the encouraging promises and hope contained within it. It goes everywhere with me. My favoured version is the King James Version, a love of which I share with my Dad and my late Grandad. Indeed, the smell of the pages takes me back to sitting in church services with my parents and feeling drowsy during the sermons. I would often get a whiff of the musty scent from my Dad’s KJV Bible which was, somehow, very reassuring. Every time I open my Bible, I get a faint reminiscence of those days when the very faint waft of pages and leather diffuse into the air. Although the church I go to now uses the ESV, it’s always my trusty old KJV which I turn back to. The archaic language makes it feel different and more authoritative, in my opinion. I read excerpts from it every day and cannot imagine life without it. I’ve read it through from cover to cover several times but I always come back to the Psalms when I’m feeling shaky, anxious, not good enough, or even very happy!

Next would have to be my external hard drive. An odd item but one which stores most of my family photos from the past three decades and some videos. Some of the people who feature in the photos/videos are no longer with us and so it contains some very precious memories which I would loathe to lose. There is footage of my children as toddlers. There is footage of my parents on milestone birthdays and anniversaries. All times which can’t be re-lived but which can be re-visited through the photo files on my external hard drive. Granted, this is more a sentimental item than a practical one but to me that doesn’t lessen its value.

Finally, my phone. Yes, I do use it as a phone but it is also a portable bookshelf, portable music library, my organiser, and my portable games machine. I need books somewhere among my three most needed objects but I would need more than three books. So I take them all, on my phone (the Kindle app especially). Same with music – there would be more than three CDs I would like to have with me, so I take my whole library (logging into Spotify or Youtube music are part of my daily ritual). I could do without social media but I would like my phone to keep in contact with family. I guess I’d need a charger too in that case. Can I sneak a charger in? I do love my blue Samsung A71 (I used to like iPhones until I converted to Samsung and now I wouldn’t think of returning to the Apple world). This model is now no longer being manufactured, so I will try and keep mine going for as long as I can.

So there we have my three must-have objects. I doubt these will change any time soon.

Alternative About Me, General, Opinion

Things that are Important to me #2: The most important invention in my lifetime is…….

February 7, 2023February 8, 2023 June L

I have been thinking about this subject over the past week in preparation for this blog post, and it has been quite tough to choose one thing over the past (ahem) 50 years which, to me, has been the most important (to me) invention. Since the 1970s, we have seen the emergence of the mobile phone, the internet, more sophisticated computers, online shopping, ATMs, CDs and DVDs (now eclipsed by Blue-Ray discs), MP3s, eBooks, and automated machines which can tell you everything from the news headlines to playing a favourite song just by the sound of your voice wakening it up. Life in the 2020s seems to be more ‘plugged in’ than I can remember it as a child and I’m not necessarily sure if this is a good thing.

Yes, I have multiple Spotify playlists which I listen to on a daily basis – probably listening to music through this platform more than actually putting one of my hundreds of CDs into my CD player. But that’s because it’s more convenient. And, although I still have a CD Walkman, carrying that about when I’m exercising outdoors isn’t really practical. Yes, I’m writing this blog on the internet (more out of wanting to document my thoughts as my reach with this blog is pathetically low), and I do get some shopping online. It’s very different studying for degrees nowadays than it was when I was a nursing student in the 1990s; to write essays we had to scour little drawers in the library to find the particular article we wanted and then, armed with that info, you went in search of the journal or book. Tough luck if someone else had it out on loan/borrowing it at the time. It was even more fun when your whole year group was writing the same essay – 30 people trying to gain access to one article was a bit like trying to be first into the January sales!

Nowadays, libraries have everything a log-on away. Everything is a lot more instant – which can only be a good thing, right? Social media means that you can have immediate conversations with people you have never met on the other side of the globe (or even in your town) – surely that has to be good for loneliness? Personally, I am weaning myself off social media – I very rarely use my Twitter account any more (it’s too full of celebrities seeking the most followers/validation and such like. I’m going to be deleting that platform soon), and I am rarely on my Facebook. Instead of easing loneliness, it actually makes me feel worse. When I see people who I thought were friends meeting up for events that I haven’t been invited to, or someone I know ‘unfriends’ me [once a real-life acquaintance who I had known for 30 odd years blocked me on Facebook because I wished her a happy anniversary. Ehhh?? By the way, she was still happily married to the same man so what was that about?], or I am forced to see the wondrous evidence of everyone else’s perfect lives (or so they like to depict them), it makes me feel inadequate, sad, and that I’ve done something wrong. Have I said something to make people not like me and not want to be friends with me? Why isn’t my life like that? And why is it that people who ‘cut you dead’ when you see them in the street ask to be your Facebook friend? It’s all a bit beyond me, I’m afraid. So, I keep my Facebook and Instagram use to the bare minimum and am hoping to purge myself of them completely within the next few years.

St George’s, Edinburgh, Class of 1990 ‘Belated’ Reunion: June, 2022

But, on the flip side, social media has helped me gain contact with a lot of my old school friends (I loved my school days) and I enjoyed a wonderful reunion with them all again last summer. I have also met some remarkable people who have helped me raise shedloads of cash for charity that little introverted me would never have managed to raise by myself. Additionally, over lockdown, being able to go online (Youtube) to join the services from our church gave a form of constancy and much-needed solace. I do think, though, that social media can never replicate actual face-to-face conversations. I do enjoy hearing news of people directly from them in person, seeing facial expressions, etc, rather than impersonally over the web. Same with shopping, I’d much rather go into a shop and buy things rather than get them online; the latter seems so impersonal. I prefer to live ‘in the moment’ and enjoy real life around me than to live through what I see on a screen. So, although the internet is good for some things, to me it isn’t the greatest invention of my lifetime.

Mobile phones – again, I could quite happily live without mine. I am slowly downgrading the type of phone I have and am wanting just the basic remodel of the Nokia 3310. I only have one friend who calls me (I know – I seem not to have many close friends just now!) but otherwise I only use it to call my Dad, or to make appointments. I don’t need the internet on the go, although Google Maps is useful sometimes when I get lost (a frequent occurrence!), as is Spotify (for listening to music on the go. I’m not really a podcast person). When waiting for a bus, or an appointment, nearly every other person waiting has their phone out and are aimlessly scrolling. Meanwhile, I whip the book I have brought along with me out of my bag. I’d rather hide in some quality fiction than in the fiction of social media!

Talking of books – eBooks. Now, I have numerous Kindles. I have about 1000 books on them (most stored on the ‘cloud’). My Kindle is great for taking on holiday when I’m scared I might run out of reading material, or for reading during the night when I can’t sleep. But, there is nothing that beats a physical book. So, I could live without my eBook reader – I would just have fewer books.

So, what is the most important invention in my life-time, in my opinion? I think it has to be the advances in the medical world, particularly the invention of the MRI (imaging machine). Cancer can now be cured, or better controlled, and so many new procedures (such as laparoscopic surgery) have meant that fewer people have to have open surgery for appendicectomies or for gall bladder removal, etc. Due to my extensive medical history, I have had so many CT scans that I am not allowed any more in my lifetime. Instead, I have to have MRIs. Indeed, without my latest MRI, the cancer I had would not have been diagnosed so accurately. They’re noisy brutes – I wasn’t even offered earphones or music for mine – but extremely effective. And what is more important than diagnostic tests to enable individuals to get effective and prompt treatment for their illnesses? I am hoping that I won’t need any more scans – but should it be necessary – I will be indebted to Paul Christian Lautebur. Without his invention being trialled in the medical field, in the year I was born, I wouldn’t be here now. And nor would many millions of others.

Photo by contact me +923323219715 on Pexels.com

So, three cheers for medical advances and, especially, Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The one thing in the past 50 years that I literally could not live without.

If anyone is reading this blogpost, it would be interesting to know what you consider to be the most important invention that has emerged in your lifetime.