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Quick Print Pro • Digital Imaging
March 2018
PIXEL PROPHET
THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE CHICKEN THAT DIDN’T CROAK IN THE NIGHT Regular readers will know that these monthly columns often begin with a little reflection on contemporary news on the basis that we do not live and work in a bubble, but are affected, to more or less a degree by other things that go on around us. If appropriate, Martin Christie may draw parallels that are more directly a concern in our own domain in print on demand.
[I]
n the scale of things, given the number of crises and disasters worldwide, the fate of a quantity of dead chickens might not seem to a high priority for media attention in this country, yet it managed to occupy the headlines and front pages of several of the popular tabloids because of the enforced closure of half of the nations’s branches of Kentucky Fried Chicken, due to the lack of said birds. Unfortunately for the feathered foul this shortage was not a reprieve from the chopping block as they were already dispatched and boxed in crates in Milton Keynes awaiting an appointment with breadcrumbs and the Colonel’s secret recipe they would never make. The ostensible cause of culinary calamity — perhaps a welcome dietary relief for some — was a motorway crash so extensive that it threw the logistics (nobody does haulage anymore) of newly appointed truckers DHL into such chaos that it couldn’t deliver the goods to the kitchens. Trucks with no drivers in the yard, and drivers in places with no trucks. And for KFC, and all those fast food fans, chickens with no means of getting up the road, let alone crossing it. Forgive me, but we have had motorway pile-ups for over sixty years, several of really appalling carnage. Ever since transport minister Ernest Marples — who had a financial interest in building them — declared they would be the economic lifeline of Britain, they have also brought incidents of chaos and disruption. But as far as I can remember none has ever brought a portion (sorry for the pun) of British industry to standstill. Perhaps because no one was seriously affected, only inconvenienced, it was little more than a good excuse to come up with some cliched
headlines about coming home to roost. DHL were certainly left with more than egg on their face. The whole thing was quietly, and quickly dismissed as “administrative difficulties”, and that was that. A shortage of snacks is hardly a cause for a major conspiracy investigation but it did occur to me that there had to be more to this episode than one simple admin cock-up (sorry another pun there). We have all experienced delivery issues of one form or another, as we are increasingly reliant on them, and they have become a regular routine rather than an exception. Things can go wrong at any point in the chain, from packaging and dispatch, to transport and arrival. They always could. But now we also have computers to add to the equation as well, so the consequences of human error are multiplied by electronic intelligence. When we actually had to know where things where it was simple. Once we started identifying places with numbers and codes it got a bit more complicated because, without one, it didn’t exist, and if there was an error, it couldn’t be found. I’m sure any one of us could fill a whole chapter with delivery blunders. One of my particular favourites was the courier with a consignment of print for the railway that couldn’t find Victoria Station. Last time we looked it was still at the end of the railway line we told him. Not long after “Chickengate” there was a report from one of the many government departments dealing with national security highlighting the potential dangers of an increasing dependence on artificial intelligence in infrastructure, as it could be so easily hacked and generally hijacked, either by Russian gangsters, or teenage nerds. Didn’t need the brains of Bletchley Park to work that one out. Even in this column I’ve mentioned ships in the Black Sea that discovered their satellite navigation systems were telling them they were several miles inland. And don’t even start me on driverless cars...no, anyone who works regularly with computer systems knows how many things can go wrong, even if it’s not always possible to predict the consequences. Ironic then that another government department is pushing for an increasing use of the same technologies in order to “improve” transport systems. I think I can hear the sound of our feathered friends coming home to roost! We may not be able to sort out the nation’s digital infrastructure, but at a much more basic level there are a number of things we can sort and one of them is digital imaging. As much as we try and educate the customer the inevitable pressures of impatience and inexperience will still result in a wealth of poorly captured digital files that are really not suitable for printing without at least some intelligent human intervention. There is justification for this, even though it will mostly not be chargeable, on the grounds that the customer will never blame his or her photography. It’s