With my eightieth birthday slipping into the dim and distant past, I’m finding myself, in time-honoured tradition, losing patience with modern life. I really believed I was keeping up with things like computers, mobile phones, air fryers and the occasional app but that all changed when my on/off button wore flat and there was no alternative to my acquiring a brand new phone.
With my new mobile phone, things became complicated, confusing and sometimes downright ridiculous. The source of my frustration was that there were no instructions, of course, and I cut off incoming calls for days because no one had told me to swipe up. When it asked me, after I had chatted to a friend for ten minutes, how I rated the quality of the phone call, the temptation to hurl the device over the nearest wall was hard to resist. Who wants to know and why? It’s nobody’s business but mine!
Modern life means reels and clickbait
I have since learned it’s all down to Mr Al Gorithm whose spies are everywhere. Almost since the very moment I re-ordered my thyroid tablets on line, Facebook has bombarded me with lengthy lectures from women, who think they look like Meryl Streep, delivering a surfeit of verbal information implying my doctor hasn’t got a clue and I am going to suffer horribly if I don’t add certain vitamin tablets to my diet, which of course, for a few weeks only, are on special offer if I buy 500. Another frustration to add to my list.
Somehow Mr Gorithm has also worked out I like funny stuff such as Fawlty Towers which he dishes out in little bits that leave me frustrated and sad that I have wasted the time to look at them. Then there are stupid clips of animals that I know have been manipulated and recipes that can only be completely revealed after I have pressed or swiped something or other I really don’t want to be bothered to get the hang of. I was under the illusion that this so-called ‘social’ media was there for my entertainment and have discovered that it is known in the trade as ‘clickbait’. By clicking on things I hope are going to interest me, I can then be targeted as a prospective customer for myriad products.
The tide of technological innovation is unstoppable
After making this amazing discovery and before I went off on another rant, a distant memory from school days came into my mind – the story of the printing press. With a few reminders from Wikipedia (God bless its little cotton socks), we learn it was invented in the middle of the 16th Century and brought dramatic changes to the whole world. It allowed ideas and news to be shared quickly (remind you of anything?) and helped usher in the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Age of Enlightenment. Commerce, education, art and the sciences were all transformed, not quite overnight, but speedily for those days. It was not without dissension, hangings and chicanery before it all settled down but these happen with transformative things.
The Princess of Wales recently warned that excessive use of smartphones and social media is starting an “epidemic of disconnection” that harms children’s emotional development and family relationships. This has sparked considerable debate among mental health experts about the long term effects of digital exposure on children’s well-being but we will have to accept that, like the printed word, it is here to stay. Parents will have to learn new skills to protect and guide their children. We oldies too could benefit from some protection and guidance as we attempt to keep up with it all, getting used to a small rectangular screen instead of a Bakelite handset in the hall. I find it time-consuming and frustrating but I’ll get there and I don’t have to click on anything, do I?
