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DAVID CARR |
Weblog: What do you mean the Wi-Fi doesn't work? The life of a Racing Post reporter
Perhaps a robot would enjoy Steps
What am I doing here? How did I get here? Where am I going? Why? A frighteningly existential day.
Partly because I've been asked to fill in a questionnaire for the recruitment pages - How did you get involved in this role? What is a typical day like for you? What is the career progression for someone in your role? etc
Spending five minutes dwelling on what might laughably be called your career is never conducive to good mental health.
Especially when it was combined with a chilling racecard advert for fourth-race sponsors Blue Prism highlighting 'The Economics of Automation'. 'Virtualising the workforce'. Illustrated by some simple but spine-chilling algebra. On-shore full-time employee £x - Robotic full-time employee £1/9x.
Without wishing to come over all Luddite, what hope have you got if a robot can do your job for a ninth of the cost?
Wouldn't need to have been a particularly complex robot to have calculated that Professor, owned by leading local owner Pauline Good and trained by two-year-old supremo Richard Hannon, might take some beating in the juvenile event today.
Nor to predict victory for the odds-on Mean It, who'd made an encouraging debut last month and who is a brother or half-brother to four second-time-out winners.
And artificial intelligence might be what's needed to get the best out of the quirky video recorder (yes video - in 2012) in the press room.
But the smartest robot yet invented might have found it hard to identify Dickon White from the photo which appeared in our pages the other day - the course managing director reckoned today it dated back to 1999, and none of us look like we did 13 years ago.
Interestingly Roger Hunt, one of the heroes of 1966, was able to walk around unnoticed after presenting a prize this afternoon, which is unlikely to be the case for tomorrow evening's 'heroes'.
It is 'Steps' night and the racecard did its to big up the star attraction.
You can't blame them for trying to give the group a plug but was it really true that "the band who sung their way to success in the 90s" really "became a household name as their dance routines and catchy lyrics captured the hearts of fans all round the world"?
If so, it could be busy here tomorrow.
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