Understanding Technology, No Chance.

    A strange week indeed. My computer went funny, real funny. Funny fonts, writing, distorted, big, useless, unusable. I'm not clever enough to tell you properly the problem. we, my wife and I pressed every conceivable button/key (I bet that helped) and then contacted friend Russell, the closest person to a genius I know. He tried for two hours, said something about a card and is still on the case.

I know I sound totally vague but my understanding is tiny. I don't even like computers but am amazed how involved I am with the things. Plus when they 'break' you can't look on the internet for a new one!

    I write reviews for a paper. I cannot send them without emailing. I am still writing, e-books etc. All the information I need/use is on the internet. I send and receive e-mails. I do a weekly blog and read other peoples blogs. It is my window on the world. I never realised I use a computer almost everyday of my life and will presumably continue to do so until the day I die. I have been blogging for four years. I have seen many fall by the wayside, some of longstanding fame. It is only now I realise what a mind numbing committment it is. And when blogging becomes a chore enough is enough. (I love it in the main but I can see the problem.)

   I wonder if technical wizz kids, people with more aptitude than me (virtually everyone, certainly in the western world) realise how incomprehensible it all is to seventy plus year olds who have only just mastered the light switch. An example; Cameras, computers talk about 'default settings'; how the heck am I expected to know what that means? HTML, I understand that is 'computer talk' but it's gobbledy gook to me and always will be. All the instructions the computer threw up as we tried to fix it I have already forgotten. Suffice to say they were foreign to me. As incomprehensible as Arabic (I speak no Arabic!) Yet the 'thing', when it is working has become a big part of my existence; I cannot imagine life without it.

   I know computers, like boxes, can get full up. (I thought that might be my problem.) Mine has many, many files duplicated, I am terrified to do anything about it for fear of doing the wrong thing. (I understand some people have someone employed to 'manage' their computers. Sounds a good idea!) I often think of life in similar terms. At my age 'the box' is pretty full and I occasionally think there is no more room to store anything else, but we seem to manage.

    We live in a very technical age, progress is fast and getting worse. Strangely enough I don't have a mobile phone. I understand many people cannot imagine their life without one. What on earth do they find to text and talk about I wonder. Where will it all end? How far will it all go? When did you last go a day without using a computer or a mobile phone; watch television or listen to the radio?

    The pace of progress is quickening. We'll come back to this theme another day, in the mean time I thought you might like to see three items from my 'museum' that I remember in use. (All three I personally used. The stereo cards were grannies, much treasured when we were children.) And I'm a mere seventy three, not seven hundred and three!