Michael Grey*

It was years ago that an old friend, who was a shipbroker, told me proudly that using his new mobile telephone, then something the size of a house-brick, he had fixed a cargo for one of his clients from the vegetable aisle of his local supermarket, while his embarrassed wife, pretending that he was no possible relation to her, seethed among the frozen foods. He was just so delighted with this remarkable new aid to productivity, that he rang me up on my landline to tell me about it. Sadly, his pleasure was not to last. Within months, he would be woken up before dawn as his clients in Hong Kong enthusiastically sought his opinion on some likely cargo and eighteen hours later, as he was preparing for bed, there would be an urgent demand for action from San Francisco. The age of constant and global availability, with this one hard-worked soul, effectively and in real time, doing the job of three people, had brutally arrived.

His life, previously governed by the hours worked by the bad-tempered office telex operator and the need to give three days’ notice to book an international call from Piraeus, had changed, utterly. Fortunately, he retired a long time ago, so the new threats of Artificial Intelligence will hopefully pass him by as they afflict Generation Z.

Whether the stresses and strains of modern and instant communication will be mitigated by the suggestions that the new UK Labour government could enact a sort of “switch-off” law to give employees a bit of remission from being always on-call, remains to be seen. I would doubt that it has much chance of success, especially in any international business, where somebody refusing to pick up a phone will be regarded unfavourably. It might be both sensible and acceptable for airline pilots or long-distance lorry drivers to officially “clockoff,” but most of us cannot cite health and safety rules, although mental pressures seem to be looked upon with rather more sympathy these days.

Advent of Working from Home culture

Mind you, the whole argument for privacy has been rendered awry by the Working From Home culture and the availability of “mouse-movers”, which give the impression of diligent activity, when there is none. But just maybe, with the concerns about “resilience” in a digital age, rearing their exceedingly ugly head with the global outage of pretty well everything during the “CloudStrike” emergency last month, the practices of the past may prove not to be completely outdated. Maybe we need alternatives to having all our data in cyberspace, where random IT nerds or malicious state hackers cannot cause such mayhem.

We perhaps should not be taking Russia as an example of forward-thinking, but I was reading that old-fashioned typewriters and paper, have been enjoying a comeback as a result of fears about electronic security in that paranoid society. I still have my old portable in the attic, although quite who might manufacture ribbons may be a problem. And even Telex machines, I am told, are being disinterred from store cupboards, or even antique shops, although you might need special training to work them. It is good to be given a sharp shock about our vulnerability in this digital, interconnected world, where those who believe in instantly accessible data and a cashless society were seriously embarrassed by the temporary shutdown of so much that we have learned to depend upon.

All this, we were given to believe, was as a result of some technical error, but goodness knows what a really determined enemy might do to our digital dependence. You may guarantee that they are practising hard against that need, and will have been tremendously comforted by this untoward “dress rehearsal.” And in ships at sea, you have to hope that they are checking up on what the screens are telling them, by using the old tried and tested. “Lead, log and look-out” will get you home, even though it might be rather tedious. There is some useful advice in this week’s Spectator, where advertising man Rory Sutherland advocates a sort of Luddism as a defence against technological vulnerability. “Carry cash. Book your flights from a human. Shop locally. Write cheques. The downside of digital convenience and efficiency is fragility.” Wise words. You do not need much imagination to transpose this to its maritime equivalence.

(Dreamstime images of an old typewriter and digital technology)

*Michael Grey is former editor of Lloyd’s List. This column is published with the kind permission of The Maritime Advocate.