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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/14/gadgets-are-meant-to-streamline-life-so-why-do-we-pine-for-a-typewriters-ping
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| Gadgets are meant to streamline life – so why do we pine for a typewriter’s ping? | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| I really want to live in the future. I don’t want to be one of the left-behinds. Oh, no, I want to be out there, going places in my driverless car while being massaged by robots to a perfect soundtrack that has been chosen for me by a microchip just under my skin. All of it done unthinkingly, in some algorithmic purr. The promised land of technology, we are warned, is really about surveillance and psy-ops and fake news and black mirroring, the touch-button dystopia we are told may be right here, right now. And then there is the Argos catalogue, and my feeling that I would simply like things to work at the touch of a button. | I really want to live in the future. I don’t want to be one of the left-behinds. Oh, no, I want to be out there, going places in my driverless car while being massaged by robots to a perfect soundtrack that has been chosen for me by a microchip just under my skin. All of it done unthinkingly, in some algorithmic purr. The promised land of technology, we are warned, is really about surveillance and psy-ops and fake news and black mirroring, the touch-button dystopia we are told may be right here, right now. And then there is the Argos catalogue, and my feeling that I would simply like things to work at the touch of a button. |
| There is such a huge gap between philosophical conversations about the revolution of technology and the actuality of going to the phone fixer in the kiosk because you have somehow melted your own battery. That gap is where a lot of us live. What will save us from robots is that, when they become exactly like us, they won’t know where they put their chargers. | There is such a huge gap between philosophical conversations about the revolution of technology and the actuality of going to the phone fixer in the kiosk because you have somehow melted your own battery. That gap is where a lot of us live. What will save us from robots is that, when they become exactly like us, they won’t know where they put their chargers. |
| The internet of things gives you a lived experience that is remotely controlled: the “old cyber physical systems” that noted tweeter Jeremy Corbyn referred to recently are here already. But not in my house, unfortunately. I dream of hyperconnectivity, because what is the alternative? To turn into someone who thinks a cash machine can bite you, who is perpetually having to be pulled out of the ePassport gates, who wails on about self–service tills, who is not quite sure of the value of Instagram, who uses a phone to phone people. How terrible to be like that. Old, unconnected, unmodern. I can barely contemplate it. | The internet of things gives you a lived experience that is remotely controlled: the “old cyber physical systems” that noted tweeter Jeremy Corbyn referred to recently are here already. But not in my house, unfortunately. I dream of hyperconnectivity, because what is the alternative? To turn into someone who thinks a cash machine can bite you, who is perpetually having to be pulled out of the ePassport gates, who wails on about self–service tills, who is not quite sure of the value of Instagram, who uses a phone to phone people. How terrible to be like that. Old, unconnected, unmodern. I can barely contemplate it. |
| Imagine your fridge not being able to commune with your television or not having music streamed into your bathroom and a screen by the oven? How would any of us manage? | Imagine your fridge not being able to commune with your television or not having music streamed into your bathroom and a screen by the oven? How would any of us manage? |
| This technological aspiration – where we basically try to turn our homes into upmarket hotel rooms – is why a lot of us will buy a lot of stuff right now. We will do so in the name of streamlining, but this is the great myth about everyday technology. It is why I now have three remotes: one each for the TV, DVD player and cable box. My place is full of different chargers for phones, cameras and laptops. We shrug our shoulders and go on helplines when the latest thing won’t work. “Oh, I see, you need that cable.” “Yes, we have switched it off and on again.” “Your router needs boosting, madam.” “Have you backed this up?” | This technological aspiration – where we basically try to turn our homes into upmarket hotel rooms – is why a lot of us will buy a lot of stuff right now. We will do so in the name of streamlining, but this is the great myth about everyday technology. It is why I now have three remotes: one each for the TV, DVD player and cable box. My place is full of different chargers for phones, cameras and laptops. We shrug our shoulders and go on helplines when the latest thing won’t work. “Oh, I see, you need that cable.” “Yes, we have switched it off and on again.” “Your router needs boosting, madam.” “Have you backed this up?” |
| I survey the wreckage on my bedside table. A dead Fitbit, which became too needy, flashing away and demanding way too much from the relationship. How is anyone supposed not to lose the weird little charger, anyway? There is a Sonos speaker – recently acquired – again part of my fantasy of making my life “better”. The speaker is connected to the wireless and one phone, but it won’t connect to my computer. No one else has been able to make it work, either. When a man from Vodafone called and offered me a free tablet, I thought that might help (a new thing to make another thing work), but it involved sorting out two different sim cards. All these devices, then, require more personal information from me than I have given to people with whom I have had children. | I survey the wreckage on my bedside table. A dead Fitbit, which became too needy, flashing away and demanding way too much from the relationship. How is anyone supposed not to lose the weird little charger, anyway? There is a Sonos speaker – recently acquired – again part of my fantasy of making my life “better”. The speaker is connected to the wireless and one phone, but it won’t connect to my computer. No one else has been able to make it work, either. When a man from Vodafone called and offered me a free tablet, I thought that might help (a new thing to make another thing work), but it involved sorting out two different sim cards. All these devices, then, require more personal information from me than I have given to people with whom I have had children. |
| Obviously, I could be more tech-savvy, but then I might as well learn how to mend my washing machine. The fact is that my memory is getting full and I choose to fill the rest of it with something other than reading manuals. | Obviously, I could be more tech-savvy, but then I might as well learn how to mend my washing machine. The fact is that my memory is getting full and I choose to fill the rest of it with something other than reading manuals. |
| As designers insist on touchscreens and minimal designs – just one tiny hidden switch! – they become the opposite of user-friendly. As my friend said the other day, we basically need more knobs, with clear instructions about what they do. | As designers insist on touchscreens and minimal designs – just one tiny hidden switch! – they become the opposite of user-friendly. As my friend said the other day, we basically need more knobs, with clear instructions about what they do. |
| In some parallel world, AI is happening, synths walks among us, and everyone can see our every mood. In reality, no one can make their printer work. Most devices have way more functions than we will ever use. Some of us are personally affronted by being told all our passwords are “weak”. | In some parallel world, AI is happening, synths walks among us, and everyone can see our every mood. In reality, no one can make their printer work. Most devices have way more functions than we will ever use. Some of us are personally affronted by being told all our passwords are “weak”. |
| Some of this is about overload and some is about using poor, but competing, designs. Everywhere we are offered incompatible systems, so these products breed with each other, producing all the peripherals: cables, chargers, batteries. There is a point where you have to ask: “Is this thing making my life easier or more complicated?” Do you need an app to tell you that you have not had the right kind of sleep? Do you need to know the exact temperature of your freezer? Do you need different music in every room? Do you want your leisure time fully automated? | Some of this is about overload and some is about using poor, but competing, designs. Everywhere we are offered incompatible systems, so these products breed with each other, producing all the peripherals: cables, chargers, batteries. There is a point where you have to ask: “Is this thing making my life easier or more complicated?” Do you need an app to tell you that you have not had the right kind of sleep? Do you need to know the exact temperature of your freezer? Do you need different music in every room? Do you want your leisure time fully automated? |
| We got rid of physical products such as CDs and videos in exchange for the efficiency of streaming. But nostalgia may be driving the early adopters back to materiality, the enchantment of the needle on the vinyl, the romance of the mix tape, the ping of a typewriter, the actual printed page. There is something else, too: a reaction to the glut of shiny machines that promise to work all by themselves, but never really do. | We got rid of physical products such as CDs and videos in exchange for the efficiency of streaming. But nostalgia may be driving the early adopters back to materiality, the enchantment of the needle on the vinyl, the romance of the mix tape, the ping of a typewriter, the actual printed page. There is something else, too: a reaction to the glut of shiny machines that promise to work all by themselves, but never really do. |