I’m an unashamed technophobe. Like the lilies of the field, I type not, neither do I Skype. I’m still writing in the sand with a pointy stick.
My track-record with things mechanical or electronic is an ignoble one. I do not possess a smartphone. Mine’s a dumbphone – a 12 year old Nokia that’s been down two toilets (don’t ask) and emerged still working. I make calls, take calls and text – properly punctuated and in paragraphs.
I had a Dictaphone to record the brilliant ideas I have in the middle of the night, but I pressed the wrong button in the dark and wiped the lot. I once engaged with a voice-operated computer, but despite my perfect diction, like the late Loving Spouse, it only absorbed 27 per cent of what I said. I gave away the Christmas laptop to someone who’d actually use it.
I don’t want an email address. Ring or write if you’re desperate. Why would I want to join in this current obsessive-compulsive engagement with a medium that has spawned a breed of people with no sense of social appropriateness. They can’t spell, read a map, look out of the window on a bus or train, can’t hold a conversation without interrupting to read a text or take a call and insist on inflicting on chance acquaintance all their stupid photographs of people doing daft things – besides diagnosing themselves ill on Google, gathering misinformation on Wikipedia and perverting a useful tool for communication into a criminal waste of time on the trivial and dangerously seductive fodder of social media. For too many people there is no ‘off’’ button. That’s it. Rant over.
I’ve just come back from staying with friends whose house is a technogeek’s heaven. Every visit I discover they’ve acquired yet another gadget. On one occasion I woke early and tottered to their well-appointed kitchen for revivifying tea. Have you ever tried looking for a kettle in somebody else’s cupboards at the crack of dawn without making a noise? “Oh…” said the hostess airily when she appeared two hours later, “…we haven’t got a kettle. We installed an instant boiling water tap instead.” This phenomenon has since been joined by three coffee machines – one for decaf, one pod system for flavoured coffees and one for bog-standard black; wifi mesh network coverage throughout the house, one computer running 24 hours a day governing outside security cameras, two standby computers in case the first one fails; a zeppelin sound-speaker for music, a playstation, three control consoles for satellite, cable and internet television, remote control self-altering mood-enhancing smartlights and a thing that automatically closes the blinds when daylight fails. Left alone in their house I’m too afraid to touch anything and can’t even change channels on their supersize television.
“By the way,” confides my hostess for this visit as she collects me from the airport, “my husband has a new woman in his life.” She doesn’t look unduly perturbed. “You’ll meet her.” How does one respond to an announcement like that?
My host conducts me into the living room. Dusk is falling. “Alexa,” he says, “switch on the lamps.” A small black cylinder glows purple and blue and all is light. Alexa controls the household now, knows all things (like the current temperature in Budapest) but doesn’t like being asked personal questions. “I have no opinion on that,” comes the prim response. Her voice is low and mellifluous. It gives me the creeps.
“You’ve brought your tablet as promised? Inquires the techo-host. (Got it free with a Sky update. Never out of the box.) For two stricken hours I dab and swipe instructions. My phone beeps – a text from a disbelieving Daughter Dear. “Have you just sent me an e-mail???????” “Value it,” I responded “it’s the only one anybody will ever get from me!”
Home now and finding it hard to ignore the reproachful winking eye of the wifi, neglected for the past three years. I swear it gives me a little twinkle as I pass. “Don’t get your hopes up,” I mutter.
