Desperate Measures

Did you know Bovril had anything to do with electricity?! Trying to learn more about this family heirloom (as you see, I only kept the useful stuff), this essay from our national archives caught my attention. I started to have doubts where it refers to the 'Vril-ya' - beings with electrical powers from a 19th century sci-fi novel. But it's true - or at least other people say the same thing

The wider point is the magic, pseudo-science, showmanship and mis-selling that accompanied the dissemination of electrical technology into 19th century Britain. Associating something with the newest scientific innovation was a way to boost sales. 

Scientific medical knowledge was advancing at the same time, the overlap with the newly understood nervous system - the body's 'electricity' - was psychologically profound. Spiritualism and the idea of the 'soul' as an entity separate from the body were mainstream ideas. The possibility that the body's electricity and the soul overlapped was taken seriously

The brief reference to Frankenstein is also interesting. If science could master electricity, that opened the possibility of animating - installing a soul - in a lifeless body. Science could be creating things it did not understand and could not control. The future of humanity could be at risk

Prof. Geoffrey Hinton just won a Nobel for his contribution to the development of AI. He believes that Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, is "much less concerned with safety than with profits" and is putting humanity at risk by developing technology that could be smarter than us. Maybe he's right, or maybe it's just history rhyming (Mark Twain - maybe)

I'm getting better, thanks to nothing more shocking than paracetamol (but that conflict between internal and external medical treatments is also an interesting thread in the essay, with contemporary resonance)