New technology, not everyone is happy

[Gob]

In the olden days it was easy to make a television work. You plugged an aerial cable into the back, then bashed the top with your fist until, eventually, Hughie Green stopped jumping up and down. Things have changed. Have you tried to make a modern TV work? It cannot be done. No, don’t argue; it can’t. You have to get a man round and then it still won’t work because you have absolutely no idea what to press on the remote-control device.

I am looking now at the plipper thing for the TV in my office. It has 32 buttons on it, including one marked “COMPO/(rgb 8)”. Any idea what that does? I haven’t. I do understand the one marked “Power”, but this does not actually turn the television on. So far as I can tell, nothing does, which is why, for three years, it has been off. Frankly, for getting the news I’d have been better off building a chain of beacons.

Then there is the world of the mobile phone. Sometimes my wife asks me to answer her Raspberry and not once in a year have I been able to do so before the caller rings off. To my way of thinking, it’s not a communication device. It’s a sex toy for geeks. A laptop enthusiast’s Rabbit.

However, my life took a dramatic turn for the worse last week because I took delivery of a new flat in London. It’s been done up by a developer and fitted with every single item from every single gadget magazine in the universe. This means I cannot operate a single thing. Nothing, d’you hear? Nothing at all.

Let us take, for example, the old-fashioned pleasure of making a cup of coffee. For many years this involved putting some water in a kettle and boiling it. But now kettles are seen as messy, which is why my new flat has a multi-buttoned aluminium panel set into the wall. The idea is that you fill it with beans and the boiling water is instant. Sounds great, but the instruction book is 400 pages long and I’m sorry but if I waded through that, my longing for a cup of coffee would be replaced by a fervent need for a quart of armagnac.

The coffee machine, though, is the tip of the iceberg. There’s a music system that can beam any radio station in the world into any room. Last night I selected a classic rock station from San Francisco and was enjoying very much the non-stop stream of Supertramp, until I wanted to go to bed. This meant turning the system off and, for me at least, that is impossible.

Normally, of course, you just hit the offending electronic good with a hammer or throw it on the floor — this works well for alarm clocks in hotel rooms — but I was holding a remote-control device. Smashing that into a million pieces, I realised, would not stop the noise. I needed to find the actual box and I couldn’t. So the only solution was to fly to California ... and burn the radio station down.

I considered it but in the end went to bed to The Logical Song. The irony was not lost on me. This morning the station was playing Dreamer. The irony was lost on me there, though. In a boiling torrent of rage.

It’s not just the music system and the kettle, either. The extractor fan above the hob has seven settings. Why? What’s wrong with off and on? I can’t think of anything that’s less in need of seven settings ... apart from maybe a pacemaker.

Other things? Well, I can’t open the garage door — it’s remote control, obviously — and the entry phone doesn’t appear to be connected to the front door. That means there’s an increased chance it’s connected to air traffic control at Heathrow and, as a result, I daren’t go near it.

Burglar alarm? Nope. Television? Nope. Broadband? Not a chance. And the cooker? Hmm, you could use its controls to remotely pilot a US air force spy drone. But to make a shepherd’s pie? Not in a million years.

And, of course, I can’t contact the man who installed any of this stuff because he’s in Aspen. People who install high-tech equipment are always in bloody Aspen. This is because they’re always American. They go to gadget shows in Las Vegas, get completely carried away and then come to Europe to install systems that no one over here can understand. We’ve only just got over drawbridges, for Christ’s sake. Then they disappear and the people who made the various bits and pieces go bust. Which means you’re left in a house that has everything — and nothing at all.

In a desperate attempt to turn everything off, I thought I’d find the fuse box. Fuse box? To an American gadgeteer, a fuse box is as Victorian as a horse and carriage. So, in my new flat, the fuse box is a fuse room. And it’s not hard to find, because you can hear the circuitry humming from a hundred yards away. Or you could if you weren’t being deafened by Even in the Quietest Moments.

Then you open the door and, holy mother of God, it’s like stepping onto the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. I am not joking. There are rows and rows of switches and thousands of tiny blinking green lights. Thousands? Yes. Thousands.

I have been on the flight deck of a modern Airbus jet liner and I assure you there are fewer switches and lights up there than there are in the bowels of my three-bedroom flat. It’s so scary that you don’t dare touch anything in case, when you come out again, you are in Chicago.

Apparently this is not unusual. Many modern properties have rooms such as this, full of warp cores and modems and circuit breakers. The fans needed to keep it all cool would propel a military hovercraft; the power needed just to power itself would light Leeds; and it’s all for no purpose whatsoever because no one in the real world understands any of it.

As I sat on the floor, then, with no heating, no kettle, no freezer, no music, no television, no broadband, no light and no hope any time soon of turning the situation around, a profound thought wafted into my head. Our endless pursuit of a high-tech future seems to have taken us back to the Stone Age.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/commen ... 113826.ece

[The Hen]

I can some what relate in a number of aspects.

As you well know Gob. There are buttons on our remotes that we have no idea what they do.

[Gob]

More than the ones we know the function of.

[The Hen]

Shhh. I wasn't going to admit to being that technologically retarded.

[Reality Bytes]

I can relate too and I don't like it. I used to be the one everyone came to to set up their TV or video and latterly their DVD and Sky box etc. and then I got older and technology got bloody silly I could NOT sort out my mothers new all singing dancing writeable DVD thingy which works like a Sky+ box (allows you to pause and rewind live TV etc as well as recording programs for later viewing and/or burning to DVD). I couldn't get the damned thing to do anything, neither could my mum, so she went out and bought a dirt cheap DVD player and gave the expensive one to my son. We went round his house not long after and there it was working perfectly according to my son it was "dead easy" to set up you just have to push this button hold that one down use this menu scroll to xbxbxbxb whilst standing on one foot whistling I'm a little tea pot and juggling eggs ....well I think thats what he said you have to do - he might as well have said it cos what he did say I lost interest in as soon as it all went whoooooooosh over my head

Mind you I still know more about computers than he does so nerrrrrrrr

[tyro]

The complexity of modern electronics makes for its own planned obsolescence. When they fail, there is no hope in repairing them. Our first DVD recorder was wonderful for 18 months after which it refused to accept any disk as recognizable.

I tried searching the net for the make and model and error description and found other people had the same problem. I tried their solutions and none worked.

That particular component enjoyed the luxury of being plugged into a high quality surge suppressor. Other electronic devices such as timers and clock radios don’t have such protection and they fail regularly.

On the other hand, my old turntable (purchased in 1973) still can play records.

[loCAtek]

Remote? Oh that. Mine crapped out ages ago ...or got lost ...or ran away in shame, which ever.

I actually get up off the couch and turn on and off the DVD player or VHS ...and no, the time isn't set on the video player, never has been.

[tyro]

The manual button would be my preferred, but the dish receiver has one button to move up a channel and one to move down.

Imagine manually going from 910 to 362

[kristina]

The manual button would be my preferred, but the dish receiver has one button to move up a channel and one to move down.

Imagine manually going from 910 to 362

That's what the Resident Artist does...even though I've showed him how to work the button that says "guide" about six or seven hundred times. Drives me nuts.

I would think he only does it to annoy, because he knows it teases, except that the electricity went out for a few hours while I was out of town last week, and he had to wait five days 'til I got back to get the TV in the bedroom back in working order. (It's a very old TV, and you have to manually re-set the TV channel on "3" in order to get cable...very sophisticated hi-tech stuff).

[@meric@nwom@n]

I am very low tech but...the garage door opener has 2 buttons one for user one the other for user 2. Not rocket science.
The VCR I never could figure out, but now that I have DVR I don't give 2 whoops and a poop about the VCR. I have the DVR thing down pat now and love it. Most aspects of the computer remain a mystery to me. The burgler alarm was not easy and I keep forgetting the code. I bought an MP3 player a while back and got that and Napster figured out, very easy. I happened to have drowned it the other day and will be getting a replacement. Why don't they just make things like that, cameras , cell phones etc water proof in the first place? Instead it is as if they are manufactured with a water magnet inside them.

I like technology but really only use a small fraction of what is out there.

[Gob]

We're lucky. We've got a 15 yr old kid at home.

[loCAtek]

The computer mocks me- I can't turn it off, cause I'll never get it on again. So, it has all the power.

[Beer Sponge]

Remote? Oh that. Mine crapped out ages ago ...or got lost ...or ran away in shame, which ever.

I actually get up off the couch and turn on and off the DVD player or VHS ...and no, the time isn't set on the video player, never has been.

So, you're a 12:00 o'clock flasher then?

Technology and I generally get along, and I love my DVR, how did I live before that device came out?

[Jarlaxle]

The clock-radio in my bedroom has been plugged right into an outlet (and my power isn't that "clean") since I got it. It still works perfectly.

I got it in 1991.

[loCAtek]

Remote? Oh that. Mine crapped out ages ago ...or got lost ...or ran away in shame, which ever.

I actually get up off the couch and turn on and off the DVD player or VHS ...and no, the time isn't set on the video player, never has been.

So, you're a 12:00 o'clock flasher then?

Yup, and for some reason I don't have any audio on the DVD unless the VCR is plugged in, go figure. BF before last hooked that up and I ain't messing with it.

[loCAtek]

The clock-radio in my bedroom has been plugged right into an outlet (and my power isn't that "clean") since I got it. It still works perfectly.

I got it in 1991.

I've regulated my clock-radio to just to play music at work; it started screwing up the time recently so all it can be is shop jukebox.

[Gob]

Our new DVD hard-drive TV recorder is a wonderful device, we keep finding new things it can do..

Accidentally.

[@meric@nwom@n]

Incidentally, when I was a kid I WAS the remote for the TV.

[Jarlaxle]

The clock-radio in my bedroom has been plugged right into an outlet (and my power isn't that "clean") since I got it. It still works perfectly.

I got it in 1991.

I've regulated my clock-radio to just to play music at work; it started screwing up the time recently so all it can be is shop jukebox.

I rarely use the radio (reception sucks due to no external antenna)...it's just an alarm clock. I have a better radio anyway.

[loCAtek]

Incidentally, when I was a kid I WAS the remote for the TV.

I remember that, but in my family there were three kids so we worked in shifts.