QI (2003) s06e09 Episode Script
The Future
APPLAUSE Welcome! Good evening! Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening.
Welcome to QI.
Tonight, we're fathoming the future, festooned with a fellowship of far-seeing forecasters.
We have the Wily Wizard of Woking himself, Sean Lock! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Thank you.
And we have the prognosticating Archdruid of Port Talbot, Rob Brydon! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE And we are so honoured with our next guest, Ben Miller, who had a crack at a PhD in novel quantum effects in Quasi-Zero Dimensional Mesoscopic Electrical Systems! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Wow! And Alan Davies, who has also come along.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE Let's have a foretaste of your futuristic fingerings.
Sean goes THEME FROM "TWILIGHT ZONE" Rob goes THEME FROM "STAR TREK" Ben goes THEME FROM DOCTOR WHO And Alan goes There may be trouble ahead TREE FALLS AND MAN SCREAMS CAT MIAOWS Thank you.
Great.
So, the future beginsnow! Alan, what do you do? - Nothing.
Wha? - Oh! SIREN WAILS There is no such thing as nothing, on any level has there ever been discovered to be such a thing as nothing.
- Sitting, holding my pen.
- So many things.
Exactly.
It's impossible to do and think nothing.
There is no such thing as nothing.
Exactly.
Physics tells us there's no such thing as nothing, as well.
Does it? In what way? Elementary particles become created and annihilated in the vacuum, so nothingness is really a swarm of elementary particles.
But also, there's considered to be a field permeating the whole of space called the Higgs field, which gives elementary particles mass.
Ah, yes This is the thing, - And the Higgs field - Heard it! - For the Higgs field to exist, we need a Higgs boson.
- Yes And we've built a huge hadron collider, colliding huge beams of protons together, at CERN, in Switzerland, to detect the Higgs boson.
You are the best supply teacher we have ever had.
That is fabulous.
APPLAUSE Even if you don't believe in the Higgs Field, gravity operates in a vacuum, does it not? This is a really interesting thing.
LAUGHTER There are four We are interested! No, don't worry, Ben.
This is me looking interested.
This is actually really, really interesting.
There are LAUGHTER - There are four known forces in the universe.
- Right, gravity Gravity, electromagnetism, the nuclear strong force, which holds nucleii together, and the nuclear weak force, which causes radioactivity.
Now, the nuclear weak force, the nuclear strong force, - and the electromagnetism are all of a similar strength - Right.
But gravity is incredibly weak.
You can see that by, a fridge magnet can hold a pin using electromagnetism, and defeat the whole force of the earth pulling down on it.
And one of the things they think is that our three, four dimensions, if you like, are actually part of a much bigger space.
And gravity permeates all these other dimensions, they think ten in total, which means that it becomes weakened by a corresponding amount.
LAUGHTER - You disagree? - I'm sorry, but I have to depart from that theory! There's one theory, though, is there not, that all matter has its corresponding antimatter.
And I can't help but look at you, Ben, and you, Rob, and see LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE Isn't that weird? Never been seen in the same room before.
Ah, now you're so close, won't some awful thing happen? Well, we can't actually touch.
Let's check - Whoa! - Whoa! - Whoa! - Whoa! It is phenomenal.
I mean, there are a lot of horse-faced people in the world Sorry! No.
But it is remarkable.
No.
Neigh, indeed! What would happen if they put you two in the Hadron Collider and send you underneath the ground in Switzerland and impact you? - That would be brilliant.
- You'd get the finest comedian in the world.
Black hole would result.
They're gonna suck Switzerland into the ground, leaving nothing but chocolate.
Well, I thank you for that.
It's an honour and a pleasure, if I may say, Ben Miller, to have someone who knows what they're talking about on this programme.
We're very pleased for the heads-up on what's going on in particle physics.
What's so good is, there'll be a number of viewers thinking, "That Rob Brydon knows a lot about science!" LAUGHTER - It's a win-win.
- It's true! It's true! Anyway, there is no such thing as nothing, arguably, anyway.
On the other hand, if you want to disagree, - there's nothing to stop you! - HE LAUGHS SHEEPISHLY Now You may not know that, amazingly, nothing in the laws of physics forbids time travel.
But if this is the case, where are all the time travellers? She could do so much better than him.
He looks absolutely shocked to be with her, doesn't he? "I can't believe my luck!" There's a thing known as the Grandfather Paradox, that if you could travel in time, could you shoot your own grandfather? Obviously, you couldn't, cos the person killing your grandfather, once he's dead, you could never have existed and can't have killed him.
But there is a belief also that the very thing you were talking about, the Large Hadron Collider, might initiate the word of time travel, because there are people who think time travel may be possible in the future.
But, like telephones, you can't have one, you have to have someone else with one.
And in the future, if they have any access to time travel, they need first something on earth to have been built, like the Large Hadron Collider, which might well cause wormholes to exist that would allow people in the future to connect.
- I was there two weeks ago.
- Really? Yeah.
Very exciting.
That was one hell of an anniversary for you and Mrs Miller, wasn't it?! My objection to all this physics, this level of physics, is that you can't explain it to, let's call us, not Just ordinary people.
You could actually be making it up.
Until it makes machines work.
That's the point.
When Faraday talked about electricity and magnetism, it didn't make sense, but suddenly somebody makes an electricity generator, suddenly you've got lights, you've got television, people can talk about quantum P states and N states, and suddenly you've got a computer to go, - "Ahem, I think you'll find!" - I was the same with the leaf blower.
LAUGHTER Someone said to me, "One day you won't have to rake up the leaves.
" I said, "You are living in cloud cuckoo land, mate.
" Enough time travelling for now, if that's not a contradiction in terms.
So, the future, of course, is obvious with hindsight.
But now it's time to poke predictable fun at people who are foolhardy enough to make forecasts and have the misfortune to get them hopelessly wrong.
So, fingers on buzzers, please.
In 1955, Variety Magazine predicted that WHAT would be, I quote, "gone before June"? - THEME FROM STAR TREK - Yes, Rob.
May.
SIREN WAILS Oh! LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE Aside from everything else, I said they predicted WRONGLY There may be trouble ahead You made me look a fool.
No, you did that! - Ho-ho! - Television.
- Television is not But you're much - Cinema.
It's an F show.
Frisps.
LAUGHTER - I'll tell you what it was - Remember them? I'll tell you what it was.
If it was '55, it was Elvis Presley.
- Wider - Rock'n'roll.
- That's the right answer.
- Yes, they did say that.
- Don't look so stupid now, do I? Not QUITE so stupid, Rob, no.
You don't.
But all things are relative.
LAUGHTER Yes, it was rock'n'roll.
Now, in 1977 Ken Olsen said there is no reason for any individual to have a WHAT in their home? Butler.
- No! - It's outmoded, unnecessary - Japanese prisoner of war.
- Again, wonderful try, but no.
- No need for it.
He, if I may say, was the chairman of DEC, the Digital Equipment Company.
- A computer.
- Exactly.
- Oh, he was wrong.
- He was very wrong.
I know quite a few people who've got one.
Yes, these days, they're very much the coming thing, I believe.
Some of these whizz kids, eh? Oh! In 1955, what nuclear-powered device did Alex Lewyt predict would be a reality within ten years? TV remote.
No, but as daft, really.
Hover boots.
Yeah, that is the invention that everybody always says.
My son has said, "Dad, will there be hover boots when I'm grown up?" Like that is the height of scientific and technological advancement, and Ben now is gonna talk for a little while about - The possibility - Just how possible it is! Hover gloves I'd like.
It's not hover gloves.
Surely you can do your own hovering! You're doing it in fact! It's not a hover thing, - but it is a domestic appliance - Electric toothbrush.
.
.
that we thought would be nuclear powered.
Not an electric toothbrush.
- Fridge.
- Hoover.
Hoover, yes! Electric vacuum cleaner.
He honestly thought in 1955 that within ten years there'd be a nuclear-powered one.
They had vacuum cleaners in America in the 19th century and they were huge.
They had to go on a cart drawn by horses.
I remember seeing that on a programme called QI.
Yeah.
Well done.
LAUGHTER But well remembered.
APPLAUSE It goes in somewhere! It clearly does, yeah! Well, the nuclear-powered domestic vacuum cleaner.
But not everybody gets it wrong.
A few remarkable people shape the future by being the very first in their field, men like St Ambrose, the 4th-century Bishop of Milan.
What did St Augustine of Hippo catch St Ambrose doing that had never been done before in public, but which nearly all of us now can do? THEME FROM STAR TREK Was he using his mobile in a crowded compartment? Because we all do it, let's be honest.
Even when we see the sign saying, "This is mobile-free.
" You still kind of think it doesn't apply to you.
- I don't, actually.
- I don't.
No, I think it's just you, Rob.
Well, when I do it, people think it's you.
Anyway.
No, it's like a party trick thingy, it seemed it.
But we can all do it, it seems natural to us.
But it was just not done.
And it involved reading.
- Did his lips move? - His lips did NOT move, is the point.
He was the first person, it seems, in post-classical times, who could read without moving his lips.
I know! It's very odd! It seems so natural to us, but, as children do, when they first read, they read out loud and then their lips move, and that had never stopped, and St Ambrose Presumably, if you could read you wanted to show off the fact.
There's an element of that.
He did the opposite.
This is what St Augustine wrote in his confessions.
"When Ambrose read, his eyes scanned the page "and his heart sought out the meaning, "but his voice was silent and his tongue was still.
"Anyone could approach him freely and guests were not commonly announced "so that often when we came to visit we found him reading in silence.
"For he never read aloud.
" He was obviously astonished, it was considered a remarkable trick.
I sort of think of myself as a man of limited talents, and I just wish that I'd been around then.
I would have blown them away! I can read whole books like this! LAUGHTER But I have to say they would have been in Latin.
That's where I would have fallen down.
But you could have given them your Ronnie Corbett impression, which goes MIMICS RONNIE CORBETT: It's not the one about the chap that reads the book without moving his lips.
Very good! APPLAUSE They might have burned you as a witch but they'd have been impressed.
A common theme of science fiction B-movies set in the future is robot invasions.
But, has Britain ever actually been invaded by robots? - Ooh, I'm guessing they have.
- Yes, they have.
And when? Er, '40s.
- 1880s.
- '40s is the right answer.
I'm afraid the point there goes to young Alan.
- Was it the Germans? - The Germans.
- Had to be.
The doodlebug.
- The doodlebug and the buzz bombs.
The V1 and V2.
The point is not just that we're saying they are a kind of robots, they were CALLED robots.
They were called robots more than they were called doodlebugs in the '40s.
In as much as they were publicly called anything, because they were more or less banned to be discussed, the British authorities were terrified of letting the Germans know how successful or otherwise the V1 and V2 were.
When the V2 landed on Chingford Plain, it was widely discussed.
Oh, it would be.
But the point is, not in the newspapers.
You ask, has Britain been invaded by robots? If you wanted to answer that question in a satirical manner, that took a swipe at modern life in Britain - Go on! - .
.
you'd say we're in the process of it now, and those robots are the bloody call centres that we have to put up with.
Oh! APPLAUSE So my answer is yes, and it's happening now.
You should be a standup comedian.
Or, Rob, on an equally satirical note, the bloody cameras that take photographs of us everywhere we go and send us, electronically, summons and fines.
More cameras than any other time, and any country in Europe, and yet we can't catch anybody who kills somebody! - The Acton Bowling Club! - Why is nobody ever murdered in front of a camera? A couple of mad old men moaning about the state of Britain LAUGHTER IRRITATED MUMBLING - I agree with you.
- I like you.
- I like you.
- I listen to you, it's like listening to me! - Yeah! - I like your attitude.
- Yeah, yeah! They're going to fuse into one horrifying Rob Miller.
This is like a sort of Siamese twin.
We're quite keen to have the operation but obviously we're not sure how we'd get on without each other.
Mmm.
All right.
Er Oh, Christ! Oh! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Oh! Oh! Whoa! That's what it's like! I can see the attraction.
- Now I know why my wife married me.
- Yeah! That was good! Goddamn! Just horrible! Right, thank you.
You can make up for it by telling me where the word robot comes from.
- Where do we get the word robot from? - I can't get that out of my head.
We get the word robotic from the word robot! Yeah, take the "IC" off robotic, you've got robot.
It comes from the dance, Stephen.
This dance.
Something you can shout at a machine it's got a chance of understanding? - Interesting thought, no.
- Like, "You robot!" Whereas if it was called a quark assimulater fassamisilator, it might not pick up how angry you are.
It must be an acronym, right? It's not, it's from a Slavic word, robota, meaning a drudge, slave worker, a labourer.
- Ah, like a drone.
- And it was from a play by a man called Karel Capek in 1920, called Rossum's Universal Robots.
That's when it was first used.
But now, back to the future.
What will be the language of the future here on earth? Well, if it carries on the way it is, it'll be the sort of hoodies that Ben and I are so firmly against.
- HOODIE SLANG: - Kind of like talking like this, everybody is gonna talk like that, and that's gonna be the way of the future.
It don't matter where you come from.
You's gonna talk like that - IN OWN VOICE: - Which I hate.
APPLAUSE - I think you all guessed that! - Yeah! - Yeah.
Oh, dear.
- Is it gonna be Mandarin or Spanish? - Interesting thought.
Oh, is it a trick qu? Is it binary? No, it's not, though you have a picture on there.
It's generally thought to be English, but a certain kind of English.
As many as 80% of the people Is this gonna be, it's like, kind of, English? No! Kind of like English? That sort of like English? - Cos I hate that.
- I hate that too.
No, apparently as many as 80% of people who speak English do not speak English as their first language.
They're speaking it with other people for whom it is their second or third language.
And the one that seems to be growing is a thing called Panglish, i.
e.
, "pan" English, a kind of everyman English.
There's a version which is spoken by a lot of people called Singlish, which is a mixture of English, Chinese and Malay.
Singaporean equivalent to Franglais.
See if you can see what these words mean.
Layleo.
Written as two words, it's actually one.
L-A-Y-L-E-O.
- Instructions for Mrs Sayer.
- No, it's just radio.
LAUGHTER You're not on Clue now! Very good! No, it's radio.
"Layleo.
" Layleo? That's just bad! That's a child, "Layleo.
" "Well done!" He's speaking Panglish, you know! No, he hasn't learned to speak! - Lolex.
- A Rolex watch.
- Exactly! - That's rubbish! Orleng tzu.
O-R-L-E-N-G, T-Z-U.
See you soon.
No, actually it's a drink.
"I have glass of orleng tzu.
" Orange juice.
Orleng tzu.
If you go to Singapore and say, "orleng tzu", they give you an orange juice.
They really must try harder.
LAUGHTER English has evolved.
I mean, a Saxon or an Angle would hear us and go, "What have they done with our language? They must try harder.
" Cos we've evolved it into what we call English.
They'll do it into what will be their language.
That's after they've said, "What are you wearing?" But there are more sensible ones.
Esperanto.
- That was invented, wasn't it? - An entirely invented language.
Apparently because it's so easy to learn, only 900 words and has no irregular verbs, it takes you a year less to learn to speak another language reasonably fluently.
So in that sense it's quite useful.
Here's an example.
What am I saying? Saluton.
- Saluton? - Hello.
- Greetings.
- Yes.
What could be easier than that? - Cu vi parolas Esperanton? - Quidditch.
Do you speak - Cu vi, do you have Esperanto words? But this is Mia kusenveturilo estas plena da angiloj.
My cousin is a meerkat of strange angles.
- No, you can work this out.
Angiloj? - No, nothing.
- Eel.
- In most romance languages that's an eel.
- Eel, is it? - Kusenveturilo - Jellied eels? Peter Cushing, the Hammer Horrors? - Cushion vehicle - Eel cushion? Hovercraft.
Yeah, "My hovercraft is full of eels.
" - Seriously? - Yes! LAUGHTER I thought you were a bit cross with me then and you were saying that to move on.
No, that's what it is in Esperanto.
That's enough of that.
The language of the future looks like being Panglish, and we'll only understand it if we're lucky.
Now, it is possible to imagine a future in which there will be no war and no poverty but I confidently predict there will always be general ignorance.
So fingers on buzzers, please.
Now, picture the scene.
I'm out windsurfing, the breeze is ruffling my tousled, sun-bleached hair, I look up and I see on the horizon a ship.
How far away is it? - No.
- I thought it was always 21 miles.
- No.
- They didn't even get flagged for that.
No.
I didn't know that anybody always thought that it was 21 miles.
How far away is the horizon? That's the point.
I'll tell Ben the formula for working it out, and he'll tell you very quickly.
It's very straightforward.
Let's assume I am 6ft tall, I'm actually a bit taller.
The distance in miles is approximately the square root of one-and-a-half times your height in feet.
That depends how low your eyes are, though, doesn't it? - Three miles.
- Three miles is the right answer! Well done.
AAPLAUSE It's a lot closer than you think.
If you're standing at sea level the normal horizon is only about three miles away.
Back home now.
What kind of weather kills more people in Britain than any other? Bad weather.
- Wind.
It's wind.
- Not wind.
SIREN WAILS Oh, uh-oh! Oh, dear.
- Oh, bugger.
- Is it rockets? They come down like weather.
- Sort of.
- Snow.
- No.
- Hail? - SIREN WAILS - No! - Fog.
- Heat wave - Fog is the right answer! Finally! Well done.
Fog.
Because of road traffic accidents, I'm afraid.
Do you want me to explain fog to you, Ben? What happens is Everybody has been asleep, right, for quite a long time.
So all their breath gathers up.
And they'd left a little window open and it all goes out and that collects in the valley all together.
And it gets blown around by the lorries driving up and down.
Are you still with me? - I like it.
- Do you know the difference between fog and mist? - There is an official difference? - Is it the height? No, it's actually the density.
- Mist is watery, isn't it? - Fog is visibility of less than one kilometre, while mist is usually between one and two.
Cos in mist, you can be seen in a mac, whereas in fog they can't see you at all.
You're safe, step back in, you're gone.
It's interesting that you think of fog, as a way of hiding yourself.
So you can go about your beastly business unobserved.
It's not beastly, I'm just putting stickers on things.
Oh! It's you! Yeah.
Putting silly stickers on people's faces.
Nothing pervy.
A bit of chewing gum over Cameron Diaz's eye.
Anything, cheers me up.
Smog of course is an urban phenomenon, smoke and fog.
Sulphur dioxide and fog mixing together.
The last really bad one in London was in 1952 and lasted four days.
How many people did it kill, roughly? - 256.
- No.
They all died fairly roughly, didn't they? It was 12,000 people, in four days, killed by the smog of 1952.
This hurried in the clean air and smokeless zones.
In London now fog is pretty rare, to be honest, isn't it? But I was in, last week, one of the Hawaiian islands, in Honolulu.
Hawa-i-i-i.
They don't have fog, they have do you know what they call it? It's not smog or fog.
- Sun.
- No.
They have lots of that.
But they have Is it alo-hog? - It's vog.
Why vog? - The Jewish people have moved there.
Vog, what do I care, I can't see it.
Look at you, you can't see him, I can't see her.
What it is, I don't know.
Look at you, where are you? You're there.
I can't see you for Christ's sake, what's going on? Oh, God! Thank you.
Thank you, Jackie Brydon.
No, it's a volcanic fog.
It's the fact there's a volcano going off.
It mixes with natural mists and fogs and creates this denser thing called vog.
Anyway, fog or mist, it's all the same stuff, it causes road crashes, that's the thing about it.
And so, with the future safely behind us, it's time for a look at the scores.
Oh, my goodness me! Well ahead of his time with - But not so far behind, with seven points, it's Sean Lock! - Thank you! We plunge into the minus numbers, in third place, with -31, it's Rob Brydon.
But knocked into the middle of next week with -60, Alan Davies! Well, that's all for next week, but from Rob, Ben, Sean and Alan and me, we trust you will live long and prosper, and I leave you with this observation from physicist, Niels Bohr, "Prediction is very difficult," he said.
"Especially about the future.
" Good night.
Welcome to QI.
Tonight, we're fathoming the future, festooned with a fellowship of far-seeing forecasters.
We have the Wily Wizard of Woking himself, Sean Lock! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Thank you.
And we have the prognosticating Archdruid of Port Talbot, Rob Brydon! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE And we are so honoured with our next guest, Ben Miller, who had a crack at a PhD in novel quantum effects in Quasi-Zero Dimensional Mesoscopic Electrical Systems! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Wow! And Alan Davies, who has also come along.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE Let's have a foretaste of your futuristic fingerings.
Sean goes THEME FROM "TWILIGHT ZONE" Rob goes THEME FROM "STAR TREK" Ben goes THEME FROM DOCTOR WHO And Alan goes There may be trouble ahead TREE FALLS AND MAN SCREAMS CAT MIAOWS Thank you.
Great.
So, the future beginsnow! Alan, what do you do? - Nothing.
Wha? - Oh! SIREN WAILS There is no such thing as nothing, on any level has there ever been discovered to be such a thing as nothing.
- Sitting, holding my pen.
- So many things.
Exactly.
It's impossible to do and think nothing.
There is no such thing as nothing.
Exactly.
Physics tells us there's no such thing as nothing, as well.
Does it? In what way? Elementary particles become created and annihilated in the vacuum, so nothingness is really a swarm of elementary particles.
But also, there's considered to be a field permeating the whole of space called the Higgs field, which gives elementary particles mass.
Ah, yes This is the thing, - And the Higgs field - Heard it! - For the Higgs field to exist, we need a Higgs boson.
- Yes And we've built a huge hadron collider, colliding huge beams of protons together, at CERN, in Switzerland, to detect the Higgs boson.
You are the best supply teacher we have ever had.
That is fabulous.
APPLAUSE Even if you don't believe in the Higgs Field, gravity operates in a vacuum, does it not? This is a really interesting thing.
LAUGHTER There are four We are interested! No, don't worry, Ben.
This is me looking interested.
This is actually really, really interesting.
There are LAUGHTER - There are four known forces in the universe.
- Right, gravity Gravity, electromagnetism, the nuclear strong force, which holds nucleii together, and the nuclear weak force, which causes radioactivity.
Now, the nuclear weak force, the nuclear strong force, - and the electromagnetism are all of a similar strength - Right.
But gravity is incredibly weak.
You can see that by, a fridge magnet can hold a pin using electromagnetism, and defeat the whole force of the earth pulling down on it.
And one of the things they think is that our three, four dimensions, if you like, are actually part of a much bigger space.
And gravity permeates all these other dimensions, they think ten in total, which means that it becomes weakened by a corresponding amount.
LAUGHTER - You disagree? - I'm sorry, but I have to depart from that theory! There's one theory, though, is there not, that all matter has its corresponding antimatter.
And I can't help but look at you, Ben, and you, Rob, and see LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE Isn't that weird? Never been seen in the same room before.
Ah, now you're so close, won't some awful thing happen? Well, we can't actually touch.
Let's check - Whoa! - Whoa! - Whoa! - Whoa! It is phenomenal.
I mean, there are a lot of horse-faced people in the world Sorry! No.
But it is remarkable.
No.
Neigh, indeed! What would happen if they put you two in the Hadron Collider and send you underneath the ground in Switzerland and impact you? - That would be brilliant.
- You'd get the finest comedian in the world.
Black hole would result.
They're gonna suck Switzerland into the ground, leaving nothing but chocolate.
Well, I thank you for that.
It's an honour and a pleasure, if I may say, Ben Miller, to have someone who knows what they're talking about on this programme.
We're very pleased for the heads-up on what's going on in particle physics.
What's so good is, there'll be a number of viewers thinking, "That Rob Brydon knows a lot about science!" LAUGHTER - It's a win-win.
- It's true! It's true! Anyway, there is no such thing as nothing, arguably, anyway.
On the other hand, if you want to disagree, - there's nothing to stop you! - HE LAUGHS SHEEPISHLY Now You may not know that, amazingly, nothing in the laws of physics forbids time travel.
But if this is the case, where are all the time travellers? She could do so much better than him.
He looks absolutely shocked to be with her, doesn't he? "I can't believe my luck!" There's a thing known as the Grandfather Paradox, that if you could travel in time, could you shoot your own grandfather? Obviously, you couldn't, cos the person killing your grandfather, once he's dead, you could never have existed and can't have killed him.
But there is a belief also that the very thing you were talking about, the Large Hadron Collider, might initiate the word of time travel, because there are people who think time travel may be possible in the future.
But, like telephones, you can't have one, you have to have someone else with one.
And in the future, if they have any access to time travel, they need first something on earth to have been built, like the Large Hadron Collider, which might well cause wormholes to exist that would allow people in the future to connect.
- I was there two weeks ago.
- Really? Yeah.
Very exciting.
That was one hell of an anniversary for you and Mrs Miller, wasn't it?! My objection to all this physics, this level of physics, is that you can't explain it to, let's call us, not Just ordinary people.
You could actually be making it up.
Until it makes machines work.
That's the point.
When Faraday talked about electricity and magnetism, it didn't make sense, but suddenly somebody makes an electricity generator, suddenly you've got lights, you've got television, people can talk about quantum P states and N states, and suddenly you've got a computer to go, - "Ahem, I think you'll find!" - I was the same with the leaf blower.
LAUGHTER Someone said to me, "One day you won't have to rake up the leaves.
" I said, "You are living in cloud cuckoo land, mate.
" Enough time travelling for now, if that's not a contradiction in terms.
So, the future, of course, is obvious with hindsight.
But now it's time to poke predictable fun at people who are foolhardy enough to make forecasts and have the misfortune to get them hopelessly wrong.
So, fingers on buzzers, please.
In 1955, Variety Magazine predicted that WHAT would be, I quote, "gone before June"? - THEME FROM STAR TREK - Yes, Rob.
May.
SIREN WAILS Oh! LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE Aside from everything else, I said they predicted WRONGLY There may be trouble ahead You made me look a fool.
No, you did that! - Ho-ho! - Television.
- Television is not But you're much - Cinema.
It's an F show.
Frisps.
LAUGHTER - I'll tell you what it was - Remember them? I'll tell you what it was.
If it was '55, it was Elvis Presley.
- Wider - Rock'n'roll.
- That's the right answer.
- Yes, they did say that.
- Don't look so stupid now, do I? Not QUITE so stupid, Rob, no.
You don't.
But all things are relative.
LAUGHTER Yes, it was rock'n'roll.
Now, in 1977 Ken Olsen said there is no reason for any individual to have a WHAT in their home? Butler.
- No! - It's outmoded, unnecessary - Japanese prisoner of war.
- Again, wonderful try, but no.
- No need for it.
He, if I may say, was the chairman of DEC, the Digital Equipment Company.
- A computer.
- Exactly.
- Oh, he was wrong.
- He was very wrong.
I know quite a few people who've got one.
Yes, these days, they're very much the coming thing, I believe.
Some of these whizz kids, eh? Oh! In 1955, what nuclear-powered device did Alex Lewyt predict would be a reality within ten years? TV remote.
No, but as daft, really.
Hover boots.
Yeah, that is the invention that everybody always says.
My son has said, "Dad, will there be hover boots when I'm grown up?" Like that is the height of scientific and technological advancement, and Ben now is gonna talk for a little while about - The possibility - Just how possible it is! Hover gloves I'd like.
It's not hover gloves.
Surely you can do your own hovering! You're doing it in fact! It's not a hover thing, - but it is a domestic appliance - Electric toothbrush.
.
.
that we thought would be nuclear powered.
Not an electric toothbrush.
- Fridge.
- Hoover.
Hoover, yes! Electric vacuum cleaner.
He honestly thought in 1955 that within ten years there'd be a nuclear-powered one.
They had vacuum cleaners in America in the 19th century and they were huge.
They had to go on a cart drawn by horses.
I remember seeing that on a programme called QI.
Yeah.
Well done.
LAUGHTER But well remembered.
APPLAUSE It goes in somewhere! It clearly does, yeah! Well, the nuclear-powered domestic vacuum cleaner.
But not everybody gets it wrong.
A few remarkable people shape the future by being the very first in their field, men like St Ambrose, the 4th-century Bishop of Milan.
What did St Augustine of Hippo catch St Ambrose doing that had never been done before in public, but which nearly all of us now can do? THEME FROM STAR TREK Was he using his mobile in a crowded compartment? Because we all do it, let's be honest.
Even when we see the sign saying, "This is mobile-free.
" You still kind of think it doesn't apply to you.
- I don't, actually.
- I don't.
No, I think it's just you, Rob.
Well, when I do it, people think it's you.
Anyway.
No, it's like a party trick thingy, it seemed it.
But we can all do it, it seems natural to us.
But it was just not done.
And it involved reading.
- Did his lips move? - His lips did NOT move, is the point.
He was the first person, it seems, in post-classical times, who could read without moving his lips.
I know! It's very odd! It seems so natural to us, but, as children do, when they first read, they read out loud and then their lips move, and that had never stopped, and St Ambrose Presumably, if you could read you wanted to show off the fact.
There's an element of that.
He did the opposite.
This is what St Augustine wrote in his confessions.
"When Ambrose read, his eyes scanned the page "and his heart sought out the meaning, "but his voice was silent and his tongue was still.
"Anyone could approach him freely and guests were not commonly announced "so that often when we came to visit we found him reading in silence.
"For he never read aloud.
" He was obviously astonished, it was considered a remarkable trick.
I sort of think of myself as a man of limited talents, and I just wish that I'd been around then.
I would have blown them away! I can read whole books like this! LAUGHTER But I have to say they would have been in Latin.
That's where I would have fallen down.
But you could have given them your Ronnie Corbett impression, which goes MIMICS RONNIE CORBETT: It's not the one about the chap that reads the book without moving his lips.
Very good! APPLAUSE They might have burned you as a witch but they'd have been impressed.
A common theme of science fiction B-movies set in the future is robot invasions.
But, has Britain ever actually been invaded by robots? - Ooh, I'm guessing they have.
- Yes, they have.
And when? Er, '40s.
- 1880s.
- '40s is the right answer.
I'm afraid the point there goes to young Alan.
- Was it the Germans? - The Germans.
- Had to be.
The doodlebug.
- The doodlebug and the buzz bombs.
The V1 and V2.
The point is not just that we're saying they are a kind of robots, they were CALLED robots.
They were called robots more than they were called doodlebugs in the '40s.
In as much as they were publicly called anything, because they were more or less banned to be discussed, the British authorities were terrified of letting the Germans know how successful or otherwise the V1 and V2 were.
When the V2 landed on Chingford Plain, it was widely discussed.
Oh, it would be.
But the point is, not in the newspapers.
You ask, has Britain been invaded by robots? If you wanted to answer that question in a satirical manner, that took a swipe at modern life in Britain - Go on! - .
.
you'd say we're in the process of it now, and those robots are the bloody call centres that we have to put up with.
Oh! APPLAUSE So my answer is yes, and it's happening now.
You should be a standup comedian.
Or, Rob, on an equally satirical note, the bloody cameras that take photographs of us everywhere we go and send us, electronically, summons and fines.
More cameras than any other time, and any country in Europe, and yet we can't catch anybody who kills somebody! - The Acton Bowling Club! - Why is nobody ever murdered in front of a camera? A couple of mad old men moaning about the state of Britain LAUGHTER IRRITATED MUMBLING - I agree with you.
- I like you.
- I like you.
- I listen to you, it's like listening to me! - Yeah! - I like your attitude.
- Yeah, yeah! They're going to fuse into one horrifying Rob Miller.
This is like a sort of Siamese twin.
We're quite keen to have the operation but obviously we're not sure how we'd get on without each other.
Mmm.
All right.
Er Oh, Christ! Oh! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Oh! Oh! Whoa! That's what it's like! I can see the attraction.
- Now I know why my wife married me.
- Yeah! That was good! Goddamn! Just horrible! Right, thank you.
You can make up for it by telling me where the word robot comes from.
- Where do we get the word robot from? - I can't get that out of my head.
We get the word robotic from the word robot! Yeah, take the "IC" off robotic, you've got robot.
It comes from the dance, Stephen.
This dance.
Something you can shout at a machine it's got a chance of understanding? - Interesting thought, no.
- Like, "You robot!" Whereas if it was called a quark assimulater fassamisilator, it might not pick up how angry you are.
It must be an acronym, right? It's not, it's from a Slavic word, robota, meaning a drudge, slave worker, a labourer.
- Ah, like a drone.
- And it was from a play by a man called Karel Capek in 1920, called Rossum's Universal Robots.
That's when it was first used.
But now, back to the future.
What will be the language of the future here on earth? Well, if it carries on the way it is, it'll be the sort of hoodies that Ben and I are so firmly against.
- HOODIE SLANG: - Kind of like talking like this, everybody is gonna talk like that, and that's gonna be the way of the future.
It don't matter where you come from.
You's gonna talk like that - IN OWN VOICE: - Which I hate.
APPLAUSE - I think you all guessed that! - Yeah! - Yeah.
Oh, dear.
- Is it gonna be Mandarin or Spanish? - Interesting thought.
Oh, is it a trick qu? Is it binary? No, it's not, though you have a picture on there.
It's generally thought to be English, but a certain kind of English.
As many as 80% of the people Is this gonna be, it's like, kind of, English? No! Kind of like English? That sort of like English? - Cos I hate that.
- I hate that too.
No, apparently as many as 80% of people who speak English do not speak English as their first language.
They're speaking it with other people for whom it is their second or third language.
And the one that seems to be growing is a thing called Panglish, i.
e.
, "pan" English, a kind of everyman English.
There's a version which is spoken by a lot of people called Singlish, which is a mixture of English, Chinese and Malay.
Singaporean equivalent to Franglais.
See if you can see what these words mean.
Layleo.
Written as two words, it's actually one.
L-A-Y-L-E-O.
- Instructions for Mrs Sayer.
- No, it's just radio.
LAUGHTER You're not on Clue now! Very good! No, it's radio.
"Layleo.
" Layleo? That's just bad! That's a child, "Layleo.
" "Well done!" He's speaking Panglish, you know! No, he hasn't learned to speak! - Lolex.
- A Rolex watch.
- Exactly! - That's rubbish! Orleng tzu.
O-R-L-E-N-G, T-Z-U.
See you soon.
No, actually it's a drink.
"I have glass of orleng tzu.
" Orange juice.
Orleng tzu.
If you go to Singapore and say, "orleng tzu", they give you an orange juice.
They really must try harder.
LAUGHTER English has evolved.
I mean, a Saxon or an Angle would hear us and go, "What have they done with our language? They must try harder.
" Cos we've evolved it into what we call English.
They'll do it into what will be their language.
That's after they've said, "What are you wearing?" But there are more sensible ones.
Esperanto.
- That was invented, wasn't it? - An entirely invented language.
Apparently because it's so easy to learn, only 900 words and has no irregular verbs, it takes you a year less to learn to speak another language reasonably fluently.
So in that sense it's quite useful.
Here's an example.
What am I saying? Saluton.
- Saluton? - Hello.
- Greetings.
- Yes.
What could be easier than that? - Cu vi parolas Esperanton? - Quidditch.
Do you speak - Cu vi, do you have Esperanto words? But this is Mia kusenveturilo estas plena da angiloj.
My cousin is a meerkat of strange angles.
- No, you can work this out.
Angiloj? - No, nothing.
- Eel.
- In most romance languages that's an eel.
- Eel, is it? - Kusenveturilo - Jellied eels? Peter Cushing, the Hammer Horrors? - Cushion vehicle - Eel cushion? Hovercraft.
Yeah, "My hovercraft is full of eels.
" - Seriously? - Yes! LAUGHTER I thought you were a bit cross with me then and you were saying that to move on.
No, that's what it is in Esperanto.
That's enough of that.
The language of the future looks like being Panglish, and we'll only understand it if we're lucky.
Now, it is possible to imagine a future in which there will be no war and no poverty but I confidently predict there will always be general ignorance.
So fingers on buzzers, please.
Now, picture the scene.
I'm out windsurfing, the breeze is ruffling my tousled, sun-bleached hair, I look up and I see on the horizon a ship.
How far away is it? - No.
- I thought it was always 21 miles.
- No.
- They didn't even get flagged for that.
No.
I didn't know that anybody always thought that it was 21 miles.
How far away is the horizon? That's the point.
I'll tell Ben the formula for working it out, and he'll tell you very quickly.
It's very straightforward.
Let's assume I am 6ft tall, I'm actually a bit taller.
The distance in miles is approximately the square root of one-and-a-half times your height in feet.
That depends how low your eyes are, though, doesn't it? - Three miles.
- Three miles is the right answer! Well done.
AAPLAUSE It's a lot closer than you think.
If you're standing at sea level the normal horizon is only about three miles away.
Back home now.
What kind of weather kills more people in Britain than any other? Bad weather.
- Wind.
It's wind.
- Not wind.
SIREN WAILS Oh, uh-oh! Oh, dear.
- Oh, bugger.
- Is it rockets? They come down like weather.
- Sort of.
- Snow.
- No.
- Hail? - SIREN WAILS - No! - Fog.
- Heat wave - Fog is the right answer! Finally! Well done.
Fog.
Because of road traffic accidents, I'm afraid.
Do you want me to explain fog to you, Ben? What happens is Everybody has been asleep, right, for quite a long time.
So all their breath gathers up.
And they'd left a little window open and it all goes out and that collects in the valley all together.
And it gets blown around by the lorries driving up and down.
Are you still with me? - I like it.
- Do you know the difference between fog and mist? - There is an official difference? - Is it the height? No, it's actually the density.
- Mist is watery, isn't it? - Fog is visibility of less than one kilometre, while mist is usually between one and two.
Cos in mist, you can be seen in a mac, whereas in fog they can't see you at all.
You're safe, step back in, you're gone.
It's interesting that you think of fog, as a way of hiding yourself.
So you can go about your beastly business unobserved.
It's not beastly, I'm just putting stickers on things.
Oh! It's you! Yeah.
Putting silly stickers on people's faces.
Nothing pervy.
A bit of chewing gum over Cameron Diaz's eye.
Anything, cheers me up.
Smog of course is an urban phenomenon, smoke and fog.
Sulphur dioxide and fog mixing together.
The last really bad one in London was in 1952 and lasted four days.
How many people did it kill, roughly? - 256.
- No.
They all died fairly roughly, didn't they? It was 12,000 people, in four days, killed by the smog of 1952.
This hurried in the clean air and smokeless zones.
In London now fog is pretty rare, to be honest, isn't it? But I was in, last week, one of the Hawaiian islands, in Honolulu.
Hawa-i-i-i.
They don't have fog, they have do you know what they call it? It's not smog or fog.
- Sun.
- No.
They have lots of that.
But they have Is it alo-hog? - It's vog.
Why vog? - The Jewish people have moved there.
Vog, what do I care, I can't see it.
Look at you, you can't see him, I can't see her.
What it is, I don't know.
Look at you, where are you? You're there.
I can't see you for Christ's sake, what's going on? Oh, God! Thank you.
Thank you, Jackie Brydon.
No, it's a volcanic fog.
It's the fact there's a volcano going off.
It mixes with natural mists and fogs and creates this denser thing called vog.
Anyway, fog or mist, it's all the same stuff, it causes road crashes, that's the thing about it.
And so, with the future safely behind us, it's time for a look at the scores.
Oh, my goodness me! Well ahead of his time with - But not so far behind, with seven points, it's Sean Lock! - Thank you! We plunge into the minus numbers, in third place, with -31, it's Rob Brydon.
But knocked into the middle of next week with -60, Alan Davies! Well, that's all for next week, but from Rob, Ben, Sean and Alan and me, we trust you will live long and prosper, and I leave you with this observation from physicist, Niels Bohr, "Prediction is very difficult," he said.
"Especially about the future.
" Good night.