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Captain Cyborg back on the BBC

And surprise, surprise, he's talking nonsense

Our favourite professor of poppycock Kevin Warwick aka Captain Cyborg is back on the BBC's news Web site, this time talking about TV.

Diversifying his gibberish to include media as well as computers and cyborgs, Kev was asked to comment on Web site White Dot's campaign to get people to turn off their TV set and do something less boring instead. As ever, he has a "unique" viewpoint.

Whereas White Dot is encouraging citizens to go get a life, Prof Warwick refers to some "research" he undertook just before publishing his most recent book, Q.I. In the book, he went off on some sixth-form philosophy about machines having a different sort of intelligence to us that we can't measure - which would explain why all his robots have been abject failures.

In the tabloid-catching "research", Kev said that watching TV and eating poor food was making us more intelligent and healthier. This conclusion was based on a few students taking an IQ test, watching the tele and taking the test again. The scores went up! We don't know whether this was because it was the same test the second time round.

Anyway, this is what ole loony tune has to say this time: "Our visual senses are by far the most powerful. TV seems to have been given a bad reputation by some people but our results certainly show that it can considerably increase exam performance. One thing we showed was that reading can send things the other way. If you're cramming for an exam it will only make it worse. Maybe it's easier to put information into your brain visually."

That would seem to go against every education system in the world from time immemorial, but we'll ignore that for the moment. "Professor Warwick said a week's break from the small screen could be healthy - but it would depend what people were doing instead," reports the BBC. "'If they're reading newspapers instead then maybe there's some input - but how much will their brain actually take in?'"

As for giving up TV, Kev says: "I think it's an interesting academic exercise - but I don't know that I would like to do it myself at all. That would mean I'd have to miss Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. No way."

Interesting that Kev would chose a film as an example when we're talking about just not watching crap soaps, gameshows and the like. But then this is how he sees himself. With Kev as Butch and his magic chip as the Kid, they will go blasting out against all the odds with unnerving confidence. Of course, they both get blown to pieces by the federales.

Why the BBC persists in using this flawed fantasist is beyond our comprehension. And when is he going through with this ridiculous second chip experiment in which he claims he'll be able to record brain signals and replay them + gain telepathy with his wife + share feelings etc etc? He's been talking about it for over a year now. Mind you, it's gonna take a long time to come up with an explanation to its inevitable failure. ®

Related Links

White Dot
BBC article

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