A Look Into the Future of ETS

by

John Clements

When you happen to be behind an elderly person at the supermarket checkout and notice them pressing especially hard when they enter their card number you know such a person is still in the mechanical age where physical force mattered.

The remnants of this age are still with us despite the electronic age - despite computers - despite everything now being run by electric currents passing through microchips.  Microchips themselves are a development from transistors. This whole new age requires little or no force to operate, it only needs a touch connection to set the whole thing in motion. Nevertheless, many people, especially the older ones amongst us, still cling to the old idea that force is necessary to make a lever force another lever that sets a rotating cog in motion like the old Toulet clock. . .

The Pigeon World is especially vulnerable to the ‘old’ mechanical thinking, a lot of fanciers have yet to come to terms with entering ring or other data into the new ETS systems. They want the benefits but somehow reject the understanding, and as a consequence find themselves being ripped off by the price of new mysterious systems. If we all understood the simplicity of electronic systems we would surely demand an ETS equivalent from China that would cost at the most between £25 and £50.

This would be the simple variety equivalent to a basic mobile phone but if we, the market, wanted a real singing/dancing device equivalent to a smart phone then we would expect to pay much more - perhaps £500 to £1000.

This top of the range singing dancing ETS would not only work out your Latitude and Longitude but work out your velocity ? take a photograph of every pigeon that passed through the system and eventually work out the result of the race or the result of everyone who happened to be on the system. Clubs would then form themselves from members who were using smart ETS devices and the sport would change once again.  Such clubs would not require a conventional secretary to work out results.

```Oh -- I almost forgot - the 'Smart ETS would also automatically include an entry pay form from the scanning of your birds - it would debit your bank account automatically after every race and give a running total of the prize money to date.  This Smart 'ETS’ may also be able to pay all your annual subscriptions, buy your rings or in the new futuristic pigeon world, arrange for a chip to be inserted into the back of the pigeon’s neck.  There would never be suspensions for late payment of subs. Cheating would be impossible -The RPRA would be ultra-democratic for the New ETS system and would even allow for everyone to vote directly via their machine.

Of course this is far into the future but as we have moved from the mechanical age to the electronic age we have in fact moved from a heavy touch to a lighter touch. I forecast this lighter touch will get even lighter and we will all benefit from the marvel of nature of how pigeons finding their way home in a new and deeper more sensitive way.  The new singing and dancing ETS might even be able to tell print out the pigeon’s DNA.