Machine transcript; names and some words may be misheard.

And Lou, Hom Radio 3, new music-ish.

Certainly, let's say hi to Morris in Melbourne.

How are you doing?

Yeah, good, good. Happy Tuesday, everyone.

Happy Tuesday to you.

You're on one of your flurries of activity at the moment.

I notice you go on a sine wave and you're on a big up.

So what's been going on?

Yeah, I think I've taken too much recording, Phil.

Ha!

Ha!

Uh, ever since I've ingested all this wonderfulness over the last 30 years

and all the other things I've done and I've digitised and now I'm putting it into the system.

Yeah.

A whole lot of stuff's coming out the other end and that's, that's, that's really boys' toys.

Uh, I'm going back over all the material now to figure out what I said when, how, what and all the rest of it.

Well, just to fill our listeners in, Morris has been doing radio sags on various channels.

Um, for quite a while, haven't you, on and off?

Yeah, so I figure the earliest one I can find is 2006.

Yeah.

I know they're ones before but record them.

So the first recorded one is 2000.

and six. So that takes up to 10, it takes up to 20 years now. And I put out this morning

a on all podcast channels, good and bad. I love when people say only good bookstores and good

podcasts or good and bad podcast channels. I don't know which ones which I think they're all

wonderful. Whatever works really. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I've put up a fin yet of that of

10, one from each year of the last 20 years. And in total, this is for me and

nobody else. Interesting. I've done 2,355 radio recordings as of yesterday.

That's crazy. Which comes to a total of 313 hours, give or take. I don't

suppose you know how many we've done. Do you? An obvious question. I do. Well, I

do. I do. I haven't got an exact number because it's still adding it up. But

I've got over 400 is what is telling me at the moment. That's not bad, is it? So you

and I have spent quite a bit of time together. And another interesting thing

here. So Maurice has just

launched a new podcast. So the word podcast came about two years before you started collecting

really 2004. Yeah, it did. And I found Phil for us. I mean, we actually go back much further

because we started in Radio Australia days, and that was early 2000s. Yeah. So we came

up every Friday morning. Every Friday morning, it was the four of us. Adele, Phil, you and I

came together for about an hour or so. And we talked. So I don't have many of those left

on the recording, I mean. So I've got about 400 of us going back to 2014, which was when you and I

started talking on our own without those two other people around. Without supervision.

Without the parents around. Yeah, yeah. Brilliant. Well done. So the point of this,

Maurice will tell you more, but the point basically is, did what he said come true?

Yeah, a lot of it is because it's a question I get the most often. And again, I don't talk

about coming true because I'm not in the world.

the prediction. So it's not an ostradamus thing of, you know, on December 23rd, I think

this is going to happen. But it's more about the stuff we talked about that any of it really

ever come into fruition somehow, or was it just a whole lot of sci-fi that really went

nowhere. And I'm really excited because, I'm excited about lots of things, but again,

this is AI doing it and I've had it ordered to the game more than one source. I've

come to the conclusion, statistics and dam lives is about 80% of everything that I've

preffled on about for the last 30 years or so in some way or other has come to

fruition. Some more, some less, some bigger, some smaller, but over 80% of it in

some way or other has come around one way or the other.

And I mean, it's not just a guess, it's an educated guess very often, isn't it?

Well, it's always an educated guess, I hope. I mean, a lot of it is guesswork,

but it's art and science. What I do is really art and science because again,

there's no prediction. Otherwise, you and I would have a weekly segment on what

are the text numbers or better still, who's going to win the horse race?

not that. But it is what do we know now? What's happening out there? What's the new tech? How

is society changing culture, politics, economics? How's the weather changing? All those countries.

Well, it is big time weather as well. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And how do

all of those things cause ripple effects? And by knowing that now, what can we say might

happen because of that into tomorrow and on and on and on. And that's the work that

I basically do. Look at a client, look at an industry, look at a business and say,

well, this is what we know about what it is and what it's supposed to do.

And will they ask you back? Well, of course, will the check clear is the first

question. Very good. And then if that does, will they ask me back? Yeah, and when you

started doing this, of course, checks were normal, but now people look at you funny

when you mention checks. Well, it's yeah, it's absolutely strange. You're right,

the check is really, really normal now. In America, it's still somewhat normal.

When I talk into the States, I've still got to put payment in checks as part of

that process in Australia. I don't think anybody, and that's an exaggeration,

but I would say 80% and 85% of people in Australia.

Don't have a checkbook and if they did wouldn't know where to find it because it's just not part of well

That was always the thing just finding the blinking thing

Really needed to use it

It was and I and I said and again on record now that I did in the early 2000s

I did work with I've done work with most of the banks in Australia, but particularly I did work with the early

2000s yeah with two of the large ones and both of them I had the chat of credit cards taking over checks

Disappearing eventually credit cards disappearing and us going into this seamless

Online banking and both of them at that thought at that stage thought it was at least 30 40 years away if ever

Well, I tell you what if you want to find out what we're talking about Morris futurist comm obviously that's his website as always

But you can find then and now podcast now

Obvious thing to ask you is when did you first even tickle the concept of AI going back over those years?

For me the first recording of AI goes back into the early 2000s

It's in the 2006 now it's not calling it by name, but it is called

it by D. You are Arthur C. Clarke, I reckon. Brilliant.

Yeah, well, I don't know, but it's in there and it's one, it is gazetted. That's why I

kept, that's why, that's one of the reasons that I insisted, even though I had no idea

how I would use it, that I kept everything that I possibly could, because the question

that you started with and everybody starts with, and me as well, is does any of this

stuff ever, you know, come to anything? The only way I can answer that isn't by

me saying it, by me proving it, by, here's the timestamp, it's timestamp 15, 20 years ago,

or whatever. I don't think anybody would disbelieve you, Moris. I think it's just

more curiosity from you and your readers. Yeah, it is, and it's not, you're right,

it's not the disbelief, but once you've seen it in writing, once you've seen

where it's come from, and again, it's not about me right or wrong, but it's about

looking for it and understanding that if you look for it, you don't have to know

it by name, you don't have to know it exactly, but just calling it out,

just bringing it to life, kind of has the ability to take the genie out of the bottle.

So do you remember, yes of course you do.

what your first just glance on API, AI is was?

Well, it was talking about the notion

that computers, PCs one day,

would talk about or be able to talk on your behalf,

would be able to find information.

One of the things, one of the first things I did

where I brought it to life was 2009,

where on behalf of a very large retail expo,

so this was an expo held in Melbourne,

had about 300,000 people come through

every year was a three day thing.

And it was all the retail stuff for all the retailers.

I was commissioned to build a stand in the middle,

which was retail 2020.

And it was a physical being that allowed people

to walk through a department store,

a pharmacy and a couple of other stores

in the way I thought it would be.

I mean, now it sounds old,

but when I built it is 2020.

And in that I had AI positioned as something

that would allow you to come into the store.

And it was.

would know what you have back home in the way of a wardrobe or in the way of, you know,

what's in your cupboard or closet or fridge.

Has it always been referred to as an artificial intelligence or did you use some of it?

No.

What did you, what did you do?

No, I didn't, I actually didn't name it at all.

I just said that it would exist and I didn't give it a name.

Artificial intelligence has been around since about 1940s.

People argue with that but 1950s when people stop arguing, in other words, 1950 was

the first time the word, about 1954 was the first time the word was used.

Of course universities was where it was used and it was not used in the way we

understand it today because today you and I have a granular access to it.

You know, it's just there and available.

It was talked about as something that might be available.

Remember, 54, no big computers and if they were they belonged to two or three

companies, IBM and a couple of others and a couple of large governments.

That was it.

And the notion was that those big computers for those very, very big companies

and countries would be able to talk to each other.

one day, send information backwards and forwards.

But even in those days, it wasn't talked about as something

that mere mortals like you and I would ever be able to use.

Yeah, that makes sense.

It's one of those things it's almost, well, it is sci-fi,

isn't it?

Because that sci-fi tended to predict pretty much everything.

Yeah, sci-fi, I mean, the way you and I know it

from television, not from books so much,

but from TVs, radio TVs and movies onwards,

actually employed futurists or people like me

or other people in that space.

And they would often work with the writers

doing exactly what you and I do each week.

And that's just thinking about what's out there,

you know, what's who's inventing,

what's this little bit of tech out there,

what did somebody write or see,

and then seeing what you can make of it.

And the beauty of sci-fi is its imagination,

it's pure dreaming.

It doesn't have to exist.

You can make it so just by saying it, by showing pictures

and doing all kinds of sexy stuff.

You know what's really interesting,

talking about the phrases people use

to describe this thing.

So in the 30s…

Automata theory, of course, that was Alan Turing.

That was basically what they called, and of course, I'm reading this, I don't know this.

So get into the 40s neural networks, get into the late 40s cybernetics, that's a bit sci-fi,

isn't it?

1950, thinking machines, and then machine learning.

So all sorts of names have been, oh heuristic programming in 55.

Yes, yes, yes.

None of them roll off the tongue like AI, do they?

No, but the thinking machine was really where AI is you and I talk about.

I mean, you and I is in everybody.

That's where that first term of it actually being a thinking machine came about.

And that's why most people are more comfortable around the mid-1950s as saying when AI was first

spoken of.

I take it back to the 40s, I think it was much earlier.

Yeah, all right, let's get back to your podcast because which were the two or three ones that

you were most proud of perhaps?

Well, not most proud of, let's go back to the very first one.

For me, the who was going back and actually looking at the topics.

Yeah, it wasn't about whether it was right or wrong, it was just the topics.

because the topics tend to be things that around that time,

obviously were writing or people thought about or were likely

to happen. So 2006, which is the first recording I have on air,

was for 6PR. And 6PR is a Perth radio station. And I've been

with them for a long time as well on and off. We talked about

this thing called MySpace. Do you remember MySpace at all?

Brilliant, go on.

MySpace was the big topic of 2006. It proceeded, I mean,

Facebook had not yet hit the planet in the way it had today.

Social media had not taken off yet. And I was babbling on about

whether MySpace would ever be of any use to anybody. Remember,

mobile phones were dumb in those days. Internet didn't exist

on most of them. Social media wasn't a thing. So we were

already talking about MySpace, which was basically American,

and then came out to the rest of the world. It didn't matter,

but it was very much American centric. And it was about

setting up a community online, as the word said.

my space so that I could bring people into it and we could talk backwards and forwards and share stuff.

But very, very hokey. Imagine 20 years ago how hokey it would have been compared to today.

Well some interesting stuff here, so my space. I mean the title really says it all. It's perfect.

It sums it up. Going back to the 80s, do you remember, have you ever heard of a thing called

The Well? So apparently that really was where it all started in sort of infinitesimal way.

No, I don't know it still. The Well in 1985. Just a virtual community. People had to dial in of course,

but it seems that's the actual source of the stream. I'll have to look at it. I don't know,

but it makes sense. The timing definitely makes sense because what you're talking about there is

dial up, you know, the old days. Everybody's thinking, did they? We can hear it. Yeah,

exactly. You can always tell somebody's age by what you know is going on their head,

even if you can't hear it because it's just ingrained. I'll tell you what, Maurice, I remember

in the late 90s coming in here early in the morning.

and a great old mate of ours, a terrific broadcaster, Nick Beacroft, he was getting so excited one

morning because he'd got a 56k dial-in.

Oh my God, he was going off-planet about it how grand for you.

God had arrived at HK3.

I bought my first, I mean, God, we sound old now, I bought my first modem I know in 1986,

1986, my first modem.

Do you know what I did with it?

I plugged it into the wall and I waited.

Till this day, I didn't even know what it was, I'm sure, I mean, I know it's in the

garbage.

I plugged it into the wall and there was absolutely nothing to do with it.

But gee, it was great having one.

Well it's interesting when you look at those old, well, we looked at those tomorrow's world

type things and whenever they demoed whatever this was going to be, they stuck the receiver

in a sort of mould thing, same shape as the receiver.

Yeah, they did.

And the phone line went on top of it.

It was called coupling I think in those days.

That's funny.

And you put the handset on top of it, one on either end.

and put it in. Now for those that don't know what we're talking about, Dial-up was a predecessor.

Yeah, most people.

Yeah, Dial-up was a predecessor to what we now have online. It meant that you had to use,

in those days your phone line, because it was just too expensive to get another phone line,

there wasn't enough to do on it. So you used your phone line in order to hook it up to

your PC, which in those days seemed very fast and very big and all you could possibly ever want,

in those days wouldn't even get your mobile phone started and you would then be able to upload

and download things. It took hours and hours.

No kidding.

And all that there was was bulletin boards and really very, very simple, simple instruction sheets,

really nothing, well there was no diagrams, no graphics, that was too heavy to carry

backwards and forwards, just simple zeros and ones words. And that's what it was for about

five or six years for most people.

Fascinating stuff. Can you stick around for a few minutes? I tell you what I want you to think about,

I want to stay with your new podcast and I know over the years,

is you've been fascinated in, fascinated with medical development. So maybe think of a couple

of those for us that maybe stuff you've had something to do with that you're a Griffith

or something.

The news from RTHK.

over the years and there were quite a few of them, did it essentially come to anything?

Not come through, but come to anything. What do you got?

So my little machine, you know, you rub the ball and you get all that.

It tells me that there are 72.

distinct health and ageing chats over the years.

And we've had a few of them too.

We have, I love talking about that.

The earliest one on record that I've got is 6PR 2008,

where we talked about medical advances into the future.

Yeah, all kind of stuff.

I'm still getting a backup, so I'll tell you when it comes.

You got your 56k, yeah.

Yes, so the moment is working up.

But we've talked about all kinds of things.

We've talked about longevity and generation.

That's been quite a common denominator, actually.

It has over the last few years, yeah.

COVID was a big one for us.

I was obviously talking about health and wellness,

and we started talking about that.

We talked about brain interfaces, you and I, in November 2020.

A brain interface is a machine that allows you to hook yourself up.

It sounds a bit like you're going to get into Frankenstein or something,

but it's a machine that lets you hook yourself up

and use a piece of technology.

It's most benign and most wonderful uses that I've seen

for people that are quadriplegic paraplegic.

in other words, can't use arms and legs particularly well,

and they are able then to think their wheelchair forward

or think a door open or think a tap on or something like that,

or even those that lose their voice for whatever reason,

they're now able to speak,

but not in the way that their voice works,

but that their mind sends a signal to a screen

and then reads it on their behalf.

So brain interfaces have been something

that I've talked about for about 15 or 20 years

and we talked about it as far as I can see first

about six years ago.

Well that's interesting. Have you talked about…

Neuralink much?

We've talked about the bid.

Neuralink is one of the companies that

does, that works in this space.

Elon Musk is another one.

And he's pushed it back like everything he does.

Last year, I think it was maybe the year before,

he went really big into this.

And his company still is around that notion.

He believes he'll be able to do the things I spoke about

just a moment ago, but on mass.

And more importantly, not just for those that aren't able to.

But he says it'll be a mainstream activity,

instead of

evening having to do anything in the way of typing or speaking to our PCs or our technology,

we'll be able to think our technologies into existence. So just a mere thought of put the

kettle on will be enough to do it. The thought of starting your car would be enough to start

the car is where he's pushing with this.

Here's a bit of a trivia. We started off talking about Morris's podcast and it's

interesting when something that was quite groundbreaking, goodness me, in 2004, people

are saying is the word still legit because it essentially referred to one little diva

I guess pod and some people are saying no it's not I mean I've been trying to

look this up Morris and it doesn't come from anything specific it just sounded

cool iPod yeah I mean the podcast as far as I know as a word came around to

the early 2000s which would make sense because that's when again the technology

started to work around and we started to record things and start to put them

out for people it was also a big shift for radio too because what it meant was

was that it really was the first…

time en masse that somebody could actually record their own words and pump that out

and prior to that it was basically radio that was able to do that. I mean people

could of course record records and do all kinds of things but this was people

trying to do their own thing. Well the word is we know it does actually come

from Apple. Actually you know it was the iPod so people put that with cast and

off you go. Although it was chucked out by a writer some years before and

apparently people didn't really take much notice of him but then of course

Apple comes along and boom. And then of course Vodcast which is a video

equivalent came out I think about 10-15 years or so ago so those things were

also around BBC culture the one you sent me asked the question of podcast where

they make an exception. What even is a podcast anymore they say. Yeah but I'm

actually finding there's a lot of nostalgia around it because now people

are consuming so much information they're actually watching a lot that what

people want to do now is actually take it with

them on their walks, take it out with them when they're thinking. So the notion of actually

being able to take words with you, not vision, which is what a video would do, but actually

be able to listen to something rather than just watch it, is actually come back into

vogue.

It's interesting though because do you remember it was always people would sit around the

television at 6pm, you'd watch XYNZ, and this is just the audio equivalent of it,

and it took them a while. They're like, hey, we could do that with listening as

well.

Well, strangely enough, I think someone invented that one in the tens, the

20s, 19s. Wasn't it called radio?

It really was. I mean, that's exactly what it was, that you were able then to

transmit your voice, which all sounds so ordinary now, but you were able to

transmit your voice to an audience, and then as the technology got better,

that audience didn't have to sit in front of one of those big radio boxes

with the valves in the back. These things got smaller and eventually got

into your pocket, eventually became portable.

your cars and everywhere else. Again, we take these things for granted, but all of them have

made a huge shift in how we see the world and how we interact with the world.

Well, it's interesting because then because of various developments in technology, radio

stations all over the world started archiving their stuff. So then you're like, well, what

am I listening to? Is it radio show or is it a podcast?

Yes. Yeah. And now everything is just called a podcast or a podcast. And you said absolutely

rightly, most radio segments end up in a podcast. I mean, you do a similar version when

you put yours up the next morning. That technically still is a podcast. Can I give

you some figures for podcasts? Look that up as usual. Now, according to something called

the podcast index, there are 4.7 million podcasts listed on the planet at the moment, 4.7

million, not that many when you think about it. But there are only 480,000 that are

apparently of any ongoing benefit. In other words, still going today. 480,000.

You know what really limits them? There are still many, many rules in.

pretty much most countries about playing music on these things. I mean you've got to pay

squillions to get the rights and even if you can and so it goes on. So they're mostly speak.

You're right. So exactly that's exactly it. So in 2005 the New Oxford American Dictionary made

it the year of the word that that's podcast. So when it went into the official dictionary,

which is a big thing because it became part of language. Yeah. So and again, I know how you

love when I when I give you a Hong Kong stat, your eyes are already rolling about this film,

go for it. The Hong Kong study is apparently f-

42% of people in Hong Kong listen to about an hour a week of something you chemistically called a podcast and in Australia about

35% and

Worldwide 41% of people listen to something that we might call a podcast every week. What's that say about Aussie?

Aussies actually love podcasts

There are there are we have

Influencers who really put out tons of podcasts and they're being used all the time now in mainstream media

to talk about the particular topic or to bring those.

people in as experts. It really has come through a renaissance. I don't know why I feel you

tell me but South Africa leads the world in the number of people that listen to podcasts.

66% of people in South Africa claim to listen to at least an hour a week of podcasts.

Much easier to get hold of than other things I suppose.

Maybe. I can't tell you why.

Yeah. Alright, Morris, let's leave it there. Go and check out his podcast then and now.

Easy to find. Nice one, Morris.

More things to take up your time over the next few weeks and you did this with AI of course didn't you?

I did yes the two of us had much fun. I'm sure you did take care mate. I'll see you next week