Articles

John Watkinson ponders religions. One of the traps into which the unscientific often fall is wish thinking, which is thinking something is true because it would be nice. It would be nice if we had guardian angels. It would be nice if there were an afterlife and a heaven, but it doesn’t mean there is.…

John Watkinson contemplates inequality. Tragic recent events have led to riots and to the slogan that black lives matter. As Martin Luther King observed, riots are what happens when people feel they don’t have a voice.  Using simplistic logic, breaking social distancing rules in the middle of a pandemic is at least unwise. As Private…

John Watkinson considers Negative Feedback… Negative feedback is all around us and within us. We stay alive because feedback loops stabilise our body temperature and a host of other parameters. Feedback controls the temperature of our hot water. It’s adjusting the fuelling in a car and keeping an airliner at the right altitude. Despite the…

John Watkinson considers viruses Understandably, audio has taken a back seat in the last few weeks and I have been researching a different topic that I felt might be more relevant. The present outbreak of a virus is the latest in such outbreaks that have been going on for as long as there has been…

John Watkinson considers science… As I have found it so beneficial in my own life, I want to say something about science, not only perhaps what it is, but also what it isn’t. First and foremost, science is not a belief structure. Those are ten-a-penny and because they are based on belief, anyone can believe…

John Watkinson considers crossing disciplines. The most useful knowledge a technologist can have is knowledge of the laws of physics, not least because they don’t recognise man-made boundaries or distinctions. Whilst it would be almost impossible for a lawyer to move from say, Washington D.C. to Copenhagen, a physicist wouldn’t have a problem. Boundaries between…

John Watkinson ponders miracles. I remember as a child reading someone’s outpourings on the subject of radio and what a miracle it was that all the different instruments in an orchestra could simultaneously be reproduced out of one speaker.  I didn’t find it easy being a child and being told that adults always know better.…

John Watkinson considers redundancy and self diagnosis One of the advantages of digital technology is that the equipment can be made self-diagnosing. It can log errors and in some cases correct them or at least continue working at reduced performance. The efficiency of modern audio production would simply not be possible without digital technology. Our…

John Watkinson ponders education. I wouldn’t know if it was typical, but what are laughingly known as my formative years were spent in the groves of academe. This was perceived by many to be a privilege, but at the time it seemed to me that it was just something that one did as a result…

In today’s world, practically everything is digital or about to become digital and whether that is a good thing warrants some debate. Digital devices are examples of technology and I have held the view for a long time that technology, and the science it is based on, is generally neutral. What is good or bad…