It used to be so simple before Face-Book and GPS
February 9, 2012
If modern technology was supposed to make life easier, why has it become more difficult? We have a vacuum cleaner now instead of the simple broom. The broom never needed the dust bag taken out nor did we trip over any cords or twisting and warping extensions. It was a pleasure sweeping up. A ritual steeped in a pre-historic age of endless time and social intercourse. True, the broom has less ‘cyclonic’ properties but the children suffered less asthma, they were blissfully loaded up with plenty of good immunizing bacterial and dust particles preventing asthma. The broom never let us down, nor was there ever a problem with the retracting cord being stuck again. It also never had a red warning light come or gave us choking fits slapping the dust bag against the yellow lidded large garbage bin on wheels.
As for the modern car; do we really believe it has ‘climate control?’ Does it prevent thunder storms or ‘willy willies around the Nullarbor? With our old car one had the option of winding down, opening the windows, let in fresh air and some lovely rain. Now, we remain cocooned inside, a cold and impersonal ‘climate controlled’ interior of a metal box, all anxiously waiting for the bleep of the next mobile call on the blue tooth enabled ‘application’. The kids strapped in at the back getting hyped up on an incomprehensible video called Splat-a-Lot and inexhaustible supply of lollies.
The GPS keeps on blurting in a perfect female English voice; ‘You are over the speed limit’ intermingled with ‘ Doing new re-calculations’, meaning we have been aerially booked and are also hopelessly lost. After one hour the video and lollies at the back have run out and a riot ensues. In the sixties, kids in cars used to read Pick-Wick papers or P.G Wodehouse’s Jeeves. That’s now changed in fighting over who is hogging more than 50% of the back seat and ‘”you have your knee on my half.” “No, but you chucked a lolly wrapper at me first.” The ‘climate’ is now decidedly getting humid and with the GPS having guided the car into a dead-end dirt road, dad is fuming, ends up sobbing with rage above the retractable steering wheel. He violently puts the car into a traction control reverse and slowly loses the will to go on. The GPS keeps rattling on “Doing Recalculation” on and on. It’s all so hopeless. Yet, it used to be so simple with the Gregory.
Of course, if there is one invention having complicated our lives beyond redemption it would have to be the IT technology and its murderous regime of demolishing our once highly held unassailable self esteem. With the explosion of IT I have come to the bitter realization that the rest of the world gets more clicks and followers than me. I understand and know that even my best friends on Face Book are avoiding me. Since two hours, not a single vibrating growl on my Iphone. A text sent to one of my Face Book “best friend” who I have never met (or ever will meet) is not responding. The bitch is now vetting my texts as well as my voice mail. I had a missed call but it was from someone that used to be a best friend but I deleted her twenty minutes ago. That will teach her!
I sit on a park bench now waiting for a call on my interactive multi coloured apps infused IPad mobile and am totally ignoring the cooing pigeons. I used to feed them bits of my sandwich. Now, I ignore and just hatefully scowl at them. Social Media has got me in and me bullying pigeons is now the logical result. I’ll kick the dog next. I am sunk in a thick gloom.
Remember the old telephone with its reassuring ring tone? People had the good manner to answer calls and it was never used as a tool to avoid people or as a device for torture. If the phone wasn’t answered it meant people were not home. Now, people glance at the caller’s ID and decide to ignore you or worse just give you the delete button treatment. You are at their mercy. Nice going, isn’t it?
It used to be so simple.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Let’s deal with the broom, dust and allergy first. Before many people had expensive carpets and bare wooden floors were the go, it was common practice to use left-over cold tea to mop over the floors. This had the fortunate qualites of not wasting a drop of water, using the wet tea leaves that are rich in tannic acid to pick up dust AND denature house dust mites and their faeces, reducing the allergen load inside and giving the wooden floors a lovely honey-brown hue.
But considering that we, like many people these days HAVE carpets, I quite like our Dyson super sucker – which has no dust bag and which consumes tonnes of cat fur every week.
Climate control works mainly INSIDE our car – but is sadly responsible for over-drying the air and causing crusty nasal passages, the clearing of which seems to be the main kind of personal amusement at traffic lights.
I heard that Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are going to amalgamate into one gianormous social media site purported to be called You Twit Face. Otherwise I can’t comment on two of them because I don’t go beyond youtube.
Phone ? FM and I are delighted with our new slave-built Apple iPhone 4ses. The interfaces are way different to the former phones we had on contract – that I remember not fondly as “those pieces of Samsung Dung”. Truly unreliable was the Wave model and after two visits to th doctors, I was glad to never have the thing darken my door again. But the iPhone 4s is great – and not hard to learn.
I am guilty of accidentally not answering some callers who are identified – and ALL callers who refuse to be identified. The later go through to the keeper and I will play the messages and only call them back if they are a delight, likely to give me money and other useful items, or tell really funny stories – excluding of course offers for new phone deals, gas and electricity swap-overs, insurance and other sh*t.
Using the phone when in the company of another human is a big no-no unless they are complete strangers, using their own phone first or sexting me. Talking on the phone in a lift is the height of impudence. And finally having your phone ring during a recital, movie, or other formal entertainment should be punishable by crushing the offending person and their phone.
Why is it that the phone always rings when you are in the toilet ? If it’s a public one, I have fund a useful approach to change the ringtone to a whinny, and when it rings to say to the adjacent chaps “Excuse me, I’m feeling a little hoarse”.
New tech ? Yeah, pile it on, brother ! And appropriate behaviour too !
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Gez, I was astounded by the constant use of mobiles by the people at the conference in New Orleans. Most couldn’t even take a piss with the mobile clamped to the ear, with scant regard to the micturating cock in the other hand. Every day we had a competition to try to engage someone in conversation, we all failed! Of course the poor peopl, out in the streets, had to gather in small groups to talk, and all were ready with, ‘Good Morning, beautiful day, how ARe you??’
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It reminded me of being on the toilet, the phone rang and asked what I was doing. “If you quess, I’ll give you half”, is a handy answer.
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Such a clever use of the commercial jargon of sales pitches and advertisements for safer, faster, more reliable gadgets not to neglect promotions of online management of social relationships tools; there’s the phone and its accessories, the mobile, the forms of communication using them, the consequences actual and potential. Tightly written, great internal rhythm, up to the minute, informed and practised. Well done Gez. A real corker.
🙂
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Thank you Shoe,
My new fone has just arrived but have yet to find a key-pad. I’ll persevere late into the night. We had so much rain the VOIP system that we run our computers and phone on was out last night.
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Mmm, Gez…no worries, sincerely meant, great entertainment and thought provoking written by one who knows. Gez, my own short lived experience of VOIP included being given the same number as someone in WA and we stumbled on each other, by memory when the son tried to phone home or tested out the system by telephoning their own phone number.
I/we got that sorted-although that included the fellow in WA managing to make me feel uncomfortable as if I myself had orchestrated a cut of their personal telephone action, about which I knew nothiing.
I was not happy that I lost the system regularly and the quality of the phone calls were not so good. That all aside if we do not use the new technology we lose it and its advancement.
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Ah, the Navigator, the marriage saver (as long as it’s on)… Life’s good after we made friends with the Navigator ….
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