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Butler history Newsletter Steven Ferry

The Modern Butlers Journal, May 2018, Butlers In the Media

Steven Ferry

Butlers in the Media

by Steven Ferry

The Guardian offers a brief look at what it finds of interest about the world of the butler 50 years ago.

An interesting article on the true state of robots in service industries—and one refreshingly not called a robot butler for once.

And here’s another one for the books: An “Instagram Butler” —meaning a receptionist who takes photos of resort guests that they can post on Instagram.

This last item not related to butlers, but luxury hotels—$10 million US for a 12-day stay. The only competition for this hotel costs $20-40 million for a  stay of just a few days in something one would not really classify as being luxury. If you consider these prices as sky high and there must be something very special and out of this world about these hotels, then you are right on both counts. The competition is the International Space Station; the “cut-rate” offering is a luxury hotel that will be located “only” 200 miles out into space, and is launching in 2022. That’s pretty exclusive!

 

 

 

 

 

The Institute is dedicated to raising service standards by broadly disseminating the mindset and superior service expertise of that time-honored, quintessential service provider, the British Butler, updated with modern people skills, and adapted to the needs of modern employers and guests in staffed homes, luxury hotels, resorts, spas, retirement communities, jets, yachts & cruise ships around the world.

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Newsletter Steven Ferry

The Modern Butlers Journal, April 2018, Butlers In the Media

Steven Ferry

Butlers in the Media

by Steven Ferry

Robot Butler Steven

It’s ironic that I keep going on about robots and robot butlers, and the name of what was probably one of the first “robot butlers”—dating back to 1986, the same time I was beginning my career as a butler—was called Steven.

Some new apartments in San Francisco offer what they call butler service to differentiate themselves from other apartment buildings. For those unfamiliar with American terminology, an apartment is a rental, as opposed to a condominium, which is owned.

Duties? Weekly cleaning, grocery delivery, organizing closets or pantries, running errands, ordering catering for a dinner party or purchasing tickets—all for an additional fee, of course.

In the software field, we now have a “group butler bot for telegrams;” and a butler for the Trello program.

The ex-butler for the Pope starts his trial for leaking documents; he was arrested almost two years ago and faces the possibility of four years in prison. It really does not pay, Burrell’s notoriety notwithstanding, to break the Professional Butler’s Code of Ethics.

 

 

 

The Institute is dedicated to raising service standards by broadly disseminating the mindset and superior service expertise of that time-honored, quintessential service provider, the British Butler, updated with modern people skills, and adapted to the needs of modern employers and guests in staffed homes, luxury hotels, resorts, spas, retirement communities, jets, yachts & cruise ships around the world.

Categories
Newsletter Steven Ferry

The Modern Butlers Journal, March 2018, Butlers In the Media

Steven Ferry

Butlers in the Media

by Steven Ferry

Mr. Burrell continues to broadcast himself and his former employer’s private life and communications, claiming, “No-one will ever know what we had, no-one will ever know. It was so private.” Really? Maybe it should have stayed that way?


Here’s a new use of butler in society: a “Limerick Butler,” available in the Conrad in Dublin to personalize a limerick for guests. For anyone unfamiliar with limericks, they are short, Irish poems. And another application, this time by Maserati, of an old theme: the butler as pocket-sized external holder of keys, wallet, and smartphone that can be attached to the“employer’s” belt. And yet another: “IT Butler” for a company that provides e-services and, as with all these other “Something Butlers,” to misquote Shakespeare’s Macbeth, is “…full of marketing and PR, signifying nothing.”


A butler in England was jailed for racking up 14 speeding tickets before the police finally nailed him: he had created a fake identity and address so that he could avoid losing his job for speeds registered as high as 84 mph in a 50 zone.

Did he really think that the police would not notice that the same car, registered in his name, could be driven by the same invented person all over England—who kept on not paying his fines—and not follow up? That they would not notice his fingerprints on the documents returned to them with information that did not add up? Apparently, according to his lawyer, “His work as a butler required his presence in different parts of the country. He had limited time to get there and drove faster than he should.” This same individual was also on parole/on license from prison for firing a gun in the street.

What does this boil down to? Reckless endangerment, for one; an inability to think in sequence/appreciate consequences, and to take action with his employer to remedy his duties so he was not continually in violation of the law; and more-basic-a-failure than not following the law: a lack of a personal moral code. We recommend The Way to Happiness as a basic moral code based on common sense for anyone who is struggling in life.


Robot & Butlers Again

There now exists a virtual house designed to train robot butlers—the future of butler academies, no doubt, in the minds of the robot crowd—training the robots to “slice apples, make beds, and carry drinks in a low-stakes environment [meaning a virtual one, not the real world]… because they’re still clumsy and make tons of mistakes.”

And while on the subject of robots, an article (which pleasantly did not resort to the cliché of “robot butler”) was published, entitled Hoteliers fear robot-run future yet believe AI is key to guest personalization. Isn’t that ever a contradiction in terms? Or is it? Hoteliers decided that “Although robots could never replace genuine hospitality, they can decipher big data to learn about guests faster than humans.” Maybe. That is, after all, why we use guest preference databases. But if artificial intelligence is meant to analyze information and present correct conclusions, then how does one explain the constant failures of security forces around the world with their billions invested in information-gathering and -analysis, in finding actual perpetrators without incorrectly targeting innocents?

“Hoteliers suggested AI could best enhance the guest experience through tailored pricing during the booking process, voice and face recognition upon arrival, and 24/7 customer service during the guests’ stay.”

There is certainly room for technology to enhance service offered—a computerized guest database that can be shared in real time between properties (private estates or hotel chains) will always be more valuable than a hard-copy book. Maybe it would work better if guests were recognized facially and by voice tones and so identified and greeted by name, so they do not have to give it themselves. But at what price to our privacy and ultimately, personal freedoms, does that little convenience come? As for “tailored pricing” during the booking process…it reminds me of the practice by the travel portal, Orbitz, and maybe others, of identifying those users on a Mac, rather than a PC, and increasing the prices quoted for their air travel based on the fact that Mac users tended to be more affluent.

One last foray into the world of robots and AI: According to two Microsoft whizzes, “humans will have robot doubles sporting digital copies of their consciousness in the next twenty years.” However much one might (incorrectly) accuse the editor of being anti-technology (he is not, having written plenty of material for multiple high-technology companies), the notion is a non-starter because the concept of “consciousness” is one that is patently beyond the consciousness of materialists: The idea of anything spiritual is anathema to those who conceive all of life to be composed solely of quantifiable things.

It is possible, of course, to enter data, a long list of information about a person, into a computer and instill it into a robot. One could even program the robot to express an emotion—but not to feel one. If one knew the first thing about emotions, about the spirit, about the mind, and the complexities of life, one would see straight away that robots can mimic, but they can never be. And consciousness comes from being—as in a spiritual being. Sorry, but one cannot write a spiritual being into existence in the real world.

The Institute is dedicated to raising service standards by broadly disseminating the mindset and superior service expertise of that time-honored, quintessential service provider, the British Butler, updated with modern people skills, and adapted to the needs of modern employers and guests in staffed homes, luxury hotels, resorts, spas, retirement communities, jets, yachts & cruise ships around the world.”

Categories
Newsletter Steven Ferry

The Modern Butlers Journal, February 2018, Butlers In the Media

Butlers in The Media

by Steven Ferry

IIMB Chairman Steven Ferry

Ideas for a future home include Emily, a hologram butler who obeys voice commands to turn on lighting, air conditioning, music, videos, and more: After a bathroom visit, for instance, she may remind a houseguest to drink more water based on the PH reading taken and relayed by the toilet—technology we are assured is being worked on by the King of over-the-top toilets, Toto, who already offer a completely automated, no-hands experience.

A Chinese-made “Robot Butler” can interact with voice commands, dance, play football, recognize faces, patrol homes, interact with the employer’s computer—and while this may or may not be very useful in the home, it shows a continuing trend of increasing dexterity and computational power.

For a change, a robot has not been named after butlers, but chefs, as in a robot chef called GammaChef—a machine like a large coffee maker—which puts together an entire dish of perfectly cooked ingredients from scratch. As reported by the writer, “The meat was perfectly cooked and tender, the pasta was al dente, and the aromas and flavors were rich. It was perfect.” But it only cooks things in a pot, and obviously has to be given the ingredients. In effect, it is like a bread maker—an automation of some functions.

The drive of machines/robots/automation toward doing everything for us, whether it is work or driving or farming or our own ablutions, will result in what? Certainly, it allows more dangerous, menial, repetitious, or less pleasant work to be done by robots, but does it free up those who did that work before, to do more “meaningful” or satisfying work?

What is being missed is that the most important element is to have some work to do, which gives purpose and an ability to give something back to society in exchange for the support society gives them—and in this case, any work is better than none. So, are the minimum-wage workers who are being let go (by fast food companies, for instance, when the minimum wage in the US was raised to $15 per hour), so that robots can do the same work for far less, actually finding work, or are they just ending up on welfare?

Will the drive to insert intelligent robots and automation throughout the workforce and world, push us all into being useless eaters like Jabba the Hutt of Star Wars fame—complete and obscene effect of life and everything in it?

Maybe, but before we become too worried, let’s consider something the robotics industry would prefer stayed under the carpet: several reports of robots failing and being fired: one drowned itself in a pool in a mall while another ran over and injured a toddler in a mall; another was fired for driving away homeless people from a public right of way, instead of from the grounds of its “employer;” another was fired from a Scottish supermarket when it would assist shoppers asking for directions by saying, “The milk is in the fridge section” or ignoring them because he could not hear their requests over the ambient noise. When it was demoted to enticing shoppers to try samples, it was completely outperformed by a human. In the end, the robot was just another automated, no-life, no engagement communication, like any other sign in a store.

Robot waiters were fired from a Chinese restaurant for spilling drinks and soups on diners and constantly breaking down. Two other restaurants in the country that had gone 100%-robot had to close down because of the robots’ inability to perform basic actions like pouring drinks or taking orders—and presumably the price tag of purchasing the robots in the first place—something like $7,000 US, not to mention maintaining them. With 1.2 billion or so people in the country, it is hard to see why a waiter or two could not be hired and trained.

The pattern for the next 10-15 years will be various companies looking towards creating consciousness in robots, the idea being that “if you make a machine with emotions it will be easier for people to get on with.”

And there is the rub: the people who make robots don’t have the first idea what emotions and consciousness are, otherwise they would quit trying to make matter possess them. It never has, it never will. That’s why it is matter! One cannot program life and consciousness and emotions or imbue matter with it, and have it be anything other than the physical approximations created by the real live person with consciousness who programmed or built that machine.

Finally, an interesting article from the video-gaming industry, entitled “Stop thinking of yourself as a game producer. Think of yourself as a butler.” Advice given to those writing the software to interest players includes, “Think of your players as a family in a big country house. It’s your job to anticipate their every whim, to understand what makes them happy, and to provide that service before they even realised they needed it. Being a butler isn’t a one-time thing. You’re thinking about your clients and how to improve their lives 24 hours a day. That’s a good analogy for how live ops [constantly tweaking and evolving a game so that it offers the best possible experience for the player over the longest possible period of time] should work for a modern game.”

 

The Institute is dedicated to raising service standards by broadly disseminating the mindset and superior service expertise of that time-honored, quintessential service provider, the British Butler, updated with modern people skills, and adapted to the needs of modern employers and guests in staffed homes, luxury hotels, resorts, spas, retirement communities, jets, yachts & cruise ships around the world.”