TECHNOLOGY HASN'T CHANGED OUR LIVES

New technology hasn’t fundamentally changed golf, cricket or football. Although in football, VAR (video-assistant-referees) has been so contentious we may go back to old on-the-field referees’ judgement. 

But there are very few who’d agree with me on this luddite thinking. 

On Friday I was working in my office whilst my wife was taking exercise – I avoided it as I usually do. I waved affectionately at her as she walked round our large communal garden and opened the window to bellow good natured encouragement. And then it happened. I leant forward and my mobile phone spun out of my grasp, out of the window and landed with a loud thwunk on a roof below.

Getting to it was going to be complex and a crawling-over roofs job. At my age, un-exercised, it was going to be lunacy. No Spiderman me. So I started to think.

I wondered if this accident had been divine intervention. Freedom from those countless, irritating phone-calls. Release from e-mails and texts when I was out of the house and freedom from that behaviour trait of imitating those around you and studying your screen as though it holds the secrets of the universe. First one person does it then we all do – like yawning. 

I realised that I yearn for pen and ink. I yearn for the absence of intrusion. I yearn for never again seeing a text saying “Halifax is holding a payment of several thousand pounds – send your bank details so they can  pay it into your account.”  No, you defrauding Nigerian, Russian, Ukrainian or whoever. No. No. No. 

I yearn for a world devoid of Apps and social media. Not being anchored to your phone is being on holiday.

But then I thought about contacting people. All the phone numbers are on my phone. Not having my mobile was going to be like the onset of a kind of dementia. Basically, just out of it.

Take away my PC and I can still write but with a degree of greater difficulty especially as my seldom-used handwriting now resembles that of drunken doctor - unintelligible. But without my phone I’m inaudible, invisible and forgotten.

Perhaps it’s time we should reject the “paperless society”. Perhaps assuming everyone is online is rash, ageist and classist. I shudder for the prospects of poor children living in a household without a laptop whose ability to share online learning and homework is non-existent. 

We all need to learn how to use useful, basic technology and make sure it’s available to everyone as a utility not a luxury good and that we’re trained to use it well. The overly sophisticated stuff is a waste of time as is much social media. The good side of social media is closed community groups and business tools like LinkedIn but much of the rest is, as I see it, time consuming and navel gazing. 

And as for Siri or Alexa.

They’re rather silly toys for petulant teenagers. To be ignored.

The good stuff is that the days of deliveries being left on the doorstep are over and being able to track deliveries and have accurate delivery times is usual. 

So I’ve made three resolutions:

i)   To create an up-to-date paper address book in pencil (so I can rub out changes.) 

ii)  To become proficient at using the few digital tools that are helpful and time saving.

iii) To stop leaning out of windows with anything in my hand – good heavens – it could have been a glass of wine on Friday. Imagine that.

I AM NOT A LUDDITE

My life is enriched with delight by innovation and curious developments. Every visit to a supermarket or department store has my despairing wife saying “no!” as I pick up new pickles, digital radios, fitness watches and, a “NEW” Peruvian Ready Meal…she’s rather like Mrs Thatcher:-
 “No! No! No!”

Let me be clear. I think our world today is in so many ways better than it was in the so-called “good old days”.  Overall we are wealthier, healthier, cleverer and less protective of knowledge. Whilst we used to believe that knowledge was power,  we now think data is the new oil. The more data the richer we’ll be.

I watch my grandsons smart, lovely, affectionate people becoming transfixed by their phones and games. I find myself justifying the educational benefits of Fortnite and FIFA 20. But I know there’s something not quite right here. As I myself find the urge to check my own phone on the train when I see someone else check theirs, I realise the helpless need of the addict as I stare at my screen. How has it come to this?

It’s when senior executives from Diageo (as if they would) start saying “for goodness sake don’t drink alcohol” that you know there’s big problem. Which is why so many of the senior executives in Silicon Valley are denying their children the joys (sic) of their technology.

Enter Tristan Harris, ex-disillusioned, senior Google executive aged 35.

We are experiencing what he calls, a ‘systemic catastrophe’. He talks of the perils of the giant techno-companies realising our attention is worth money; that gaining it is their goal. He calls this “Attention Capitalism” – and claims it’s “making us nastier, stupider and less likely to find common ground”

What’s happening? He says our brains are being rewired and this is pulling us apart as a society. The nastier we are in our tweets, the more violent words we include, the more we’ll get re-tweeted….so bloody well bang you snot-gobbling-tossers! (Watch that one go viral.)

He claims that fake news spreads six times faster than accurate news. Actually satire discovered this ages ago but now our phones seem to be destroying our sense of humour. What was fake and regarded as such, is now taken (too often) literally. That’s why I love ‘Onion’ – the American satirical site.

Tristan tells us to keep our phones away from our bedrooms, remove social media from them, talk rather than text, type apps thus un-branding icons, go greyscale – it’s less seductive – turn off all notifications apart from those from people and regain control of our calendar by looking at our phone only occasionally.  His services are in high demand by corporate America.

This story is about – and I’m sorry to borrow this Brexit theme – taking back control. The emergence of “attention capitalism” makes this hard. But we can do it if we stand up to the silicon bullies.

I’m not a Luddite but let’s question how we use technology.

EXIT.