I was going to call this post “punkt, point, period, full stop”. But decided to call it C.A.T. in honour of a very fine teacher I once had. His name was Canon David Isitt and he was the joint Principal of the Bristol and Gloucester School of Ministry and I was there to teach some sessions on communications but when David was around I was always a student. On training weekends when the weather was good enough we would sit in a circle on the grass outside the retreat house as if he were Socrates and we were the oikos and would spend a couple of hours distilling the myriad possible meanings of a verse or two from the Bible. The relevance of this charming memory is that today I solved a longstanding problem (my idiocy) by paying minutely close attention to a single Google generated password. For over a year I’ve been beating my head on a wall over my inability to access the OS map app on my phone because it kept rejecting the password. Today in a moment of sub religious ecstasy I noticed a single full stop at the end of it which my smartass phone had never copied because it thought it signified the end of a sentence. I added the dot and the app sprang into life as if by a miracle.
As of now I’m handing in my tools
I wish I’d paid the same attention last September when I replaced the £250 charger unit in the campervan by taking a photo of the original one (see above and despair) and replacing it wire by wire with the new one. That never worked either and in all our subsequent campings we would sit in the van with head torches watching the batteries go flat. Previously I’d done the same with the gas jets on the three way fridge with the same result – didn’t work – which was the point of our hideously expensive trip to the workshop on Dartmoor a few weeks ago when my handiwork was repaired but mostly replaced by some great guys who actually knew what they were doing. So the batteries now charge, the fridge works, the sink that always leaked after I replaced the plug has been renewed, and the satellite dish which fell off the roof on the way back from Brecon has been replaced by a new miFi router which works like a dream. As of now I am handing in my tools.
If you are sensing a new resolution and vigour in my mood, it’s because I’ve finally found out what level of beta blockers I need to take without becoming a zombie or listening to my heart thrashing itself to death. I’ve found the sweet spot, I think, and I feel better than I have since last September. Perhaps there’s a clue in the dates! Never undertake electrical repairs when your brain isn’t working.
So today we went down to the van and tested the new systems and they all worked. We have booked a couple of short breaks in some favourite places with good botany potential, and I’ve spent the past two weeks designing the best possible workflow for submitting records – which included learning an entirely new application; iRecord – if you’re at all interested. Having offered to do a talk on useful apps to the Natural History Society, I wandered off into the impenetrable scrub of phone apps for identifying and recording wildlife. As ever, I entered the thicket with the fullest knowledge of what I might find there and promptly discovered that my understanding was mostly cobblers. I began by being quite certain that iNaturalist was by far the best recording app, and then after a few small irritations I fired off some emails to naturalist friends who mostly thought there were big problems with it – not least the verification process which, it seems, might allow three or four people with even less knowledge than me, to tick a box and elevate my incorrect identification to “research grade”; good for my ego but very bad for science. It seems I was conflating easier to use, with best; an error from which none of us are immune.
So, if not iNaturalist; which? Most of my enquiries trickled into the sand when it came to the big beasts at County or National level. Natural history recording, it becomes clear, is like Italy before unification; awash with fiercely defended kingdoms about the size of your average hamlet, and one particular bone of contention is the use of artificial intelligence – please feel free to rub that clove of garlic on your laptop.
The problem with identification is getting worse and not better. DNA analysis has thrown a boulder into the pond – I’m a stranger to any deep understanding of the subject, but the names and familial connections of living things seem to change all the time. The identification of plants by their appearance – morphology in science speak – is no longer as valuable as it once was; and that pulls the rug out from under one of the great strengths of AI – its ability to scan tens of thousands of photographs in less time than it takes you to find your notebook and come up with a plausible ID and name. Like stocks and shares, identifications can also decrease in value. Most of my learned friends prefer to lean on their many years of experience rather than trust a phone app, and if I had that much experience I’d probably feel the same way.
But what about those of us who love to look for plants. birds, mammals, fungi and all the rest – and regularly get stuck in an identification but would still like to make our contribution to the records in this era of environmental destruction. Getting your records confirmed can take weeks and even months but it’s imperative that records are checked by the best available experts before marshes are flooded and rivers diverted to save things that were never really there. Sometimes it’s best to give way and beg forgiveness when your record is rejected but sometimes – more rarely perhaps – it’s worth backing your hunch and asking for a second or even third opinion. So my money, at present, is on iRecord which uses the same family of software as iNaturalist – designed by an outfit called Indicia; hence the similarity of web design. In the iRecord app, you have to enter some kind of identification before you can add photos – then AI will tell you in percentage terms whether you nailed it or failed it. The saved data is made available to hundreds of skilled volunteers who can either agree or disagree with the machine intelligence. The software puts human intelligence firmly in charge. The other great advantage of the programme is that when all’s settled, the record is shared with all the appropriate local and national recording schemes (the warring states?). The data from iNaturalist is also now passed to the British databases but has to go through the same verification process as it would coming off my phone – which is a tremendous waste of volunteer effort.
What’s in it for us apprentices? Well I’ve found that the process of getting some sort of name necessarily involves turning to the books; learning families, environments, seasons and relationships through a process of reinforcement – good educational practice – we all get quicker and more accurate; and therefore more useful in the fight against environmental destruction.
I’ve had a comical vision of future field trips in which participants carry enormous pieces of computer and electronic kit across the fields on converted trolleys with old pram wheels (we’re like that) and stand in silent circles around wiFi aerials and routers gazing at our phone screens in silence. Actually, that’s not funny at all, and in any case hand-held DNA sequencers can already be had at huge cost; sequencers which rely on pre-existing DNA databanks, which can be searched using (you’ve got it) AI. I much prefer crawling around on my knees in the rain and mud. AI is alright for some jobs, but it will never have those moments of left-field inspiration that human minds are so good at. I shared that thought over coffee this morning with (name drop alert) our neighbour Prof Charlie Stirton who came up with exactly the same proposition. High fives then!
So in the next three weeks we’re off in our newly and fully functional campervan and spending a few nights on the beloved Mendips and in the Brecon Beacons – Bannau Brycheiniog means the peaks of Brychan’s kingdom – and later a grand tour of Dartmoor, then West and East Cornwall to catch the spring flushes of flowers while I test a few more phone apps and websites for my talk. Life is good!