DO you remember the cartoon series The Jetsons? It only came into my head the other day as I sat in my kitchen observing from a short distance my new ‘AI-enabled’ robot vacuum and mop which was stuck in the corner of the room doing 360-degree loops and failing to escape from behind a couch. This is progress, I muttered to myself.
The Jetsons was made way back in the 1960s, that decade of free love and optimism (in America at least) and projected life in the future as a cornucopia of convenience and gadgetry. In its vision of a utopian future, the Jetson family enjoys an array of automated technologies, including Rosie the Robot, their dutiful, sassy robotic maid, who handles household chores and childcare. You’re no Rosie, I thought to myself, as my fella performed another light headbutt against the pantry door.
In The Jetsons, their space-age apartment features moving walkways and floating chairs, eliminating the need for physical exertion. As much as I love our 1920s council house on the northside of Dublin, there’s no sign of a floating stairway unless you’ve been in the pub for a few hours too long – it’s fair to say that the building technology is from another time. Mass concrete walls. Slate tiles nailed on by German contractors sometime in 1925.
And as much as I love our air fryer, it doesn’t come close to George and Jane Jetsons’ Food-a-Rac-a-Cycle, where meals are prepared instantly by the push of a button.
Deliveroo is the closest thing we’ve got but that means some poor devil has to travel all the way out of town on an electric bike for minimum wage.
The makers of The Jetsons were Hanna Barbera, the famous animation studio behind the likes of The Flintstones and this series was pitched as a comical mirror of that prehistoric setting. But it was a deeply optimistic affair.
I wonder how disappointed in our future George Jetson might be, with our housing crises and our European wars and the orange baboon lining up another stint in the White House?
I’m half joking, of course. Comparatively speaking, we live in relative splendour in this country. For most of us, the world we live in now would be beyond the imaginations of our great grandparents.
And in all fairness to my new robot, once he figured out his little problem with the area in the corner, he’s been cleaning around the clock since - vacuuming, mopping, cleaning himself, charging himself…
If anything, he’s a reassuring presence and he’s made me less uneasy about an imminent global takeover by AI. This lad is unlikely to be replacing me at work any time soon, less still enslaving all of humankind in some sort of robot apocalypse.
Now, if only someone would figure out those Back To The Future hoverboards...
Flashback to Saipan
We Irish people generally prefer to live in the past, of course, which might explain the huge reaction this week when news broke that a movie was going to be made about the Keane/McCarthy bust-up in Saipan during the 2002 World Cup.
Saipan began production this summer and will follow the build up to that ‘fateful week in 2002’ when Keano returned home from the World Cup squad following a major verbal scrap with his Barnsley-born manager.
With Éanna Hardwicke cast as Roy Keane and Steve Coogan lined up to play McCarthy, it’s a fairly mouth-watering prospect. It’ll be interesting to see which side the film comes down on and whether it will open up old national wounds that led the nation to the verge of civil war in the weeks that followed Keano’s exit. Joe Duffy’s Liveline shows from the era were a thing to behold with families split down the middle along Keane/McCarthy lines. Not a day was worked in the weeks that followed as the Irish nation completely and utterly lost the run of itself, and not for the first time, I might add.
There were those who thought Keane was right to walk out on the FAI-inflicted shambles and show them up on a global stage. There were others who thought he was nothing but a langer from Cork with a chip on his shoulder. This film is unlikely to change those feelings.
I remember when my own grandfather went to see Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins in the cinema only to walk out halfway through because of their onscreen portrayal of Dev. They better not do the same to Roy, lads!
Sweetman’s page turner
I’VE been reading a cracker of a book this past week: Identity, a memoir by ex-Garda John Sweetman about his career as a fingerprint and forensic handwriting expert workingtoin some of Ireland’s most high profile cases.
It’s written with a candour and wry sense of humour that captures life in the force as I’ve never heard it told. A proper page-turner for the holidays and recommended.
