Gromit, we salute you!

Good role models are hard to find nowadays. In this valley of dying stars who do you point your kids to and say "There's someone to admire and emulate!". When it comes to science and technology the cupboard looks barer each day. Our media lionises fakes, frauds, impostors, witty and beautiful science "presenter personalities", or greedy, sinister clown technologists who call themselves laughable things like "thought leaders" or "amoral business investors". This freak show of colossal bellends doesn't leave much to write home about.

So why not choose a fictional plasticine dog? He's more real than any "AI", or any tepid human who defers to one. I'd like to nominate Gromit as an unlikely hacker hero.

Gromit the dog is what Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and all those screwball US billionaires would like to be, but never will. Despite that time Preston the robot dog attempted to frame him for mistreatment of sheep, Gromit has never been involved in any sex scandals, Bond-villain paedophile island romps, or running Dickensian child-slave factories, unlike his human counterparts in the technology industry. Gromit is simply a decent engineer.

To understand Gromit we must start with his owner, Wallace. Gromit plays straight-man to Wallace the techno tragedian. Wallace is an inventor, a credulous neophyte, whose over-egged Heath-Robinson solutions to everyday non-problems cause endless trouble. His life is spent thinking about and attending to gadgets, whether it be creation, maintenance, purchase, or fleeing from those that run amok. Wallace is always in pursuit of "convenience", "embracing technology" and "saving money".

No doubt there is much to unearth about (creator) Nick Park's ambivalent relation to technology, but we won't go there. Compared to aforementioned broligarchs, Wallace is an ordinary and likeable character. In a light, humorous way, Park makes him a container for everything that's wrong with modern tech thinking and solutionism.

By contrast Gromit is suspicious of tech and a less reckless engineer. His vigilant, sceptical eye spots faults, dodging dollops of jam from misaligned breakfast machines, or pulling the correct lever just in the nick of time. Gromit anticipates techno-tragedy and cleans up the mess. There is a Laurel and Hardy type relation - or perhaps like Hong-Kong Phooey and Spot the cat - in which Gromit always saves Wallace from his own inventions. Gromit is Wallace's common-sense and conscience.

Gromit is no throwback. He's well educated and well rounded. He's an expert at Electronics for Dogs and after a session with highbrow literature like Fido Dogstoyevsky, he's equally at home with practical tasks, sawing, drilling, welding or other jobs as befit an inventors assistant. Whatever the canine word for Greek Arete is, Gromit has it.

Gromit cannily anticipates the tragic unfolding of technology going wrong. With a slight, slow shake of the head, he often wears an expression of disappointed disbelief while looking at Wallace's plans - an expression that perfectly sums up my own feelings about most technology today.

Now, much as I eschew namedropping and cozying-up to the rich and famous, I can hardly resist hinting at my own humble connection, having lived in the same house as Gromit! When I lived in Bristol the previous occupant of my room, a friend of a friend, worked at Aardman as Gromit's cleaner. In fact there were several 'Gromits', to different scales and detail. After each stop-motion shoot, her job was to meticulously erase the fingerprints and restore his coat to shiny health. Gromit had his own wooden box and often came home to Windmill Hill to get a good nights sleep before filming the next day. (Of all my tenuous associations with plasticine fictional characters this is the one I'm most proud of.)

Anyway, as scientists, engineers and hackers we should look up to Gromit the dog. I hope that one day Gromit will write a book on "Technology for Humans" shining a light on the many lessons learned during his adventures with Wallace. Meanwhile we'll have to endure the manky fruits of lesser minds, like that hopeless boner Musk, and hope it all goes just a little bit less haywire and evil than Wallace's contraptions.