Bob Ramsay

How many existential crises can one world take?

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Last year, global warming shifted from a distant thunder to a run-for-your-lives house fire. Alberta readers take note. This year, AI shifted from a semi-literate teen to the predator next door, coming for our jobs, our kids and our brains.

But there is an upside to the end of the world. It will take some time for oblivion to arrive, and before it does, we can bliss out on a third existential event: the coming together of robotic technology and artificial intelligence.

I’d like you to meet my new friend Ameca. She’s…well, see for yourself. She may sound a little fey today. But give her and her fellow humanoid robots a few months and they’ll have advanced the way global warming and AI did, with us barely paying attention and then suddenly they’re moving in to the spare bedroom.

Meanwhile…

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Slightly-cynical singles seek later-life love.

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When my wife Jean was doing family medicine, many of her patients were smart, accomplished, kind and financially-secure women over 50 who had given up finding a mate because none existed.

“Have you tried dating online?” Jean would ask. Their eyes would roll and they would practically spit: “I would never do that. It’s so demeaning.”

Many of these women have turned out the lights on this issue. There are no men out there, so why waste your time looking? Just create a rich life where you don’t need them. Didn’t Gloria Steinem say a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle? Or you can select men for different uses, the way you would a spice from the kitchen cupboard.

Meanwhile…

Slightly-cynical singles seek later-life love. Read More »

Up Chuck and Di

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That was a rude sign greeting Charles and Diana when they visited Vancouver to open Expo ‘86. I thought it was way over the line. But oh my, how the line for the Royals has changed. Hacked phones, pedo pals, vengeful duchesses, and tabloids full of scandals.

Back on June 2nd 1953, Queen Elizabeth’s coronation was in many ways the first global broadcast of an event. It was in black and white. Elizabeth’s funeral last September 19th was called “the biggest human event of all mankind” because it was seen by 4.1 billion people. This is no surprise. Despite Britain’s straitened prospects today, the British Empire remains the largest empire in human history. At one point, 23% of the world’s people lived under the Union Jack and it covered close to a quarter of the world’s land area including Canada and Canadians. So there’s a vast vestigial interest.

Some of you got up at 4 o’clock this morning to see Charles’ and Camilla’s coronation. I didn’t, not because I don’t love all that, but I can always catch it later. I also sense that this may be the last coronation any of us will see. So for today, let the pomp and circumstance, despite the looming judgement of history, go marching on.

Meanwhile…

Up Chuck and Di Read More »

Precision Persuasion

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Saying you recommend rather than like something makes people 32 per cent more likely to take your suggestion. Using the word whom in online dating profiles makes men 31% more likely to get a date. Adding more prepositions to a cover letter makes you 24% more likely to get the job. And saying is not rather than isn’t when describing a product makes people pay $3 more to get it.

Those words are from Jonah Berger whose new book is a revelation that could spark a revolution. Magic Words: What to say to get your way is not about AI, or at least not just that. It’s about our reaching an inflection point in understanding the science of language. Says Berger: “Technological advances in machine learning, computational linguistics and natural language processing, combined with the digitization of everything from cover letters to conversation, have revolutionised our ability to analyze language.”

It’s clear where this is going, the same place cancer medicine already is. You and I can have exactly the same tumor, but you’ll get a different treatment than me, based on your DNA, your genes, age and gender. Today, you and I get different marketing pitches based on where we live, what we earn and where we spend. But tomorrow, marketers will know if you’re a “who” person or a “whom” person, an “isn’t” woman, or an “is not” man. Think of it as linguistic chemo, and…

Run for your lives!

Or should that be… run for your life?

Meanwhile…

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A plague of intimacy

Leave a Comment / Ramsay Writes / Bob Ramsay

For years we’ve batted away the pleas of Nigerian widows, deposed kings and even Jamie Dimon to hand over our credit cards in return for certain fortune.

We can spot them and their badly-spelled pitches from far off. But there’s a new scam on the block. It’s from online marketing agencies who pretend they know us by picking up clues on LinkedIn and faking up an e-mail that implies we went to university together — “Go Tigers!” or that we’re both writers and it sure is lonely, isn’t it?… but mainly that they’re wildly impressed with “Ramsay”.

These e-mails begin with: “Hey, Bob, I’m free at 4. How about we jump on a call for 10 minutes?” For the first one or two, I thought we must know each other. But of course not. What was I thinking? This is the internet.

It’s when you don’t reply that they up their game. “Bob, I haven’t heard back from you – would it be a ridiculous idea to see if we might be a good fit?”

Meanwhile…

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April Fuel

Leave a Comment / Ramsay Writes / Bob Ramsay

The best April Fool’s prank I’ve fallen for took place in 1976 when my alarm, tuned to wake me to CBC Radio One, buzzed on the hour. The newscaster announced that because Canada had adopted metric measurement for weights and distances the year before, henceforth Canadians would shift to metric time: there would be 10 hours in a day and 100 minutes in an hour. Ottawa would be subsidizing the cost of retooling our clocks and watches for the future.

“How had I missed this?!”

Not for a second did I remember it was April Fool’s.

Today, you will likely be pranked by the likes of Virgin, McDonalds, Google, and Airbnb. So be vigilant.

Also, here’s perhaps the best April Fool’s, or rather, the best April Fakes of all.

Meanwhile…

April Fuel Read More »

Not a good look.

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / Bob Ramsay

I remember as a kid in Edmonton walking home and looking at families in their windows and seeing them having dinner or playing together, and thinking: “Why can’t our family be like theirs?” Well, of course, I had no idea what their lives were really like. I was comparing their appearance to our reality – and coming up short, as we all do.

This was a big week for that old bugbear between appearance and reality:

● The BBC told its reporters to look a bit more sweaty and dirty
in order to appear more authentic to viewers.

● Imposter Syndrome, “the crippling idea that people like us could not possibly triumph given what we know of ourselves,” got a new workbook.

● Here are this year’s Oscar Visual Effects nominees.

● Where do you call home? The citizen intelligence agency Bellingcat uses geolocating to find where Isabel dos Santos, once Africa’s richest woman, is really hiding out.

Meanwhile…

Not a good look. Read More »

“Peter was always in the believing business.”

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / Bob Ramsay

That’s from Paul Wells’ tribute to Peter Herrndorf who died last week at 82 and whose death is felt by the literally thousands of us whom Peter lifted up, especially when we and our organizations were faint of heart. It’s no surprise that, just one week after his death, the stories of his magical healing powers are legion, tear-inducing and growing.

Here’s mine: for 45 years Peter would phone me on my birthday and sing Happy Birthday to me. I knew he did this with hundreds of other friends as well and marvelled that he had the time, energy and discipline to do it.

Then when Jean and I got married, he would call on our anniversary to congratulate us. One year, he didn’t call on our anniversary, July 23rd, but the next day. I mentioned this when he called, and he said: “I’m not calling a day late; I’m calling a day early. You were married on July 25th.”

“No, Peter, our anniversary is July 23rd.”

“No, Bob, it’s July 25th.”

So I took off my wedding ring, looked closely at the date engraved on the inside and it read “July 25th.”

“Gosh, Peter, I guess you’re right.”

I was stunned. For years, we’d been celebrating our anniversary on the wrong day.

But this coming July 25th, when we celebrate our 30th anniversary, we’ll raise a glass to the man who not only cared about his friends’ anniversaries; he cared about getting them right.

We will miss him keenly.

Meanwhile…

“Peter was always in the believing business.” Read More »

What you can’t measure, you can’t improve.

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / Bob Ramsay

This is one reason the alcohol lobby is fighting so hard against instituting a common definition of “a drink” on its bottles. If that happened, people would know how much alcohol is in their glass of wine or bottle of beer.

The drinks industry is reeling. In the US last year, 20% of drinking-age Americans took part in Dry January. This year, it’s 35%. No wonder Tito’s Vodka hired Martha Stewart to create off-label ways to consume vodka. The “dry” movement is also spreading: yesterday I got an email from the Canadian Cancer Society urging me to sign up for Dry February.

To foretell the liquor lobby’s fight-back tactics, check out the following playbooks from the past: tobacco, sugar, opioids, fossil fuels and long ago, seatbelts.

Meanwhile…

What you can’t measure, you can’t improve. Read More »

Little Losses

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / Bob Ramsay

The big losses we all know and dread. It’s the little ones that chip away at who we think we are. I read this week that the Kiwi shoe polish company is ceasing sales in Great Britain. It seems no one is shining their shoes any more. The cause is people working from home and wearing running shoes when they go outside. I, of course, took it to mean the decline of all standards of self-discipline, like making your bed.

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Little Losses Read More »

Fear and loathing…and awe.

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / Bob Ramsay

We all knew the day would inevitably come. But so soon?

It seems artificial intelligence can now write almost as well as humans. Last week, OpenAI released their new ChatGPT chatbot for public testing, and the raves are pouring in. Try it now: it’s free. Just log in and ask it a question or assign it a task. But remember, it doesn’t search the internet; it ‘thinks’. For example, here’s what it comes back with when you ask: “What are the ethics
of creating test-tube babies?” and “Why did the chicken cross the road?”, and on a whole other level of thought: “Write a rhyming couplet poem about playing hockey in Canada.”

Given the pace of AI not just imitating language, but thinking in original ways, I’m relieved I’m an old writer and not a young one. Then again, new technologies always create jobs that didn’t exist before. But buckle up; real creativity is about to become a lot harder, as is ethics.

Meanwhile…

Fear and loathing…and awe. Read More »

There’s no such thing as bad weather. There’s only bad gear.

1 Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / Bob Ramsay

Indoors, there’s also “no such thing as information-overload, there is just filter failure.” So as we march into the most information- overloaded season of them all, let us not go unarmed.

Active avoidance of useless information means being fully aware that you’re blocking huge gobs of internet reality and doing it to save yourself. This has now grown to be a core competence for digital citizens and it’s called Critical Ignoring. It starts with the idea that “Low-quality and misleading information online can hijack people’s attention, often by evoking curiosity, outrage, or anger.” So don’t let yourself be snowed this winter.

Meanwhile here is this week’s Omnium-Gatherum…

There’s no such thing as bad weather. There’s only bad gear. Read More »

How many existential crises can one world take?

Slightly-cynical singles seek later-life love.

Up Chuck and Di

Precision Persuasion

A plague of intimacy

April Fuel

Not a good look.

“Peter was always in the believing business.”

What you can’t measure, you can’t improve.

Little Losses

Fear and loathing…and awe.

There’s no such thing as bad weather. There’s only bad gear.

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