Sunday, November 24, 2013

Ode to Technology

Since twice updating my iPhone to the new ugly design, it has become slower than ever, taking an age to load pages. It has stopped Face-timing people I don't know very well as the side of my face pressed the screen mid-call to friends. But all of the new features have added keystrokes and a counter-intuitive feel to the built-in applications. Perhaps they are designed to make things easier for designers rather than end users. It's much harder, for instance, to send a photograph direct, and don't even get me started on the audio recording function.
Perhaps reassuringly, it has retained its ability to lose an entire set of notes at whim, which disappear into the top right hand corner of the screen whenever they feel like it. Goodbye notes from conferences, and goodbye song lyrics!
Likewise, Google Chrome has become so clever that it sends you to pages you don't want, but it guesses that you need, before you have even decided yourself. Safari has ceased to work with some applications, Firefox is clunky and Internet Explorer can't find anything at all, Poor Victorian Wretch.
I am exasperated with technology and even more exasperated by everyone's insistence that we become ever more technologised.
While on the train yesterday, I rewrote a blog posting twice because Blogger insisted it couldn't publish it. Much to my horror, it had indeed published every draft, which I then hurriedly tried to delete. My phone remembered every keystroke that I made (it usually ignores everything until I stroke the screen the right way, the pervy little git).
So I lost the whole lot.
I'm so glad that I don't do Internet banking because I have ignored every urgent request to just click on this link that will allow mysterious overseas criminals to totally erase the hard disk on my computer. The Universities, however, are another matter. Stung by last year's student criticism that I was ignoring their emails, I contacted the IT Professor at one university, who cheerily informed me that I now had two email accounts, one of which I didn't know about, and that's the one the students had been writing to.
If this is intelligent management, I'm a flea's cough.
Wow- I'm in a thunderous mood this evening!

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