I have a problem with the mouse attached to my laptop at work. It's gone a bit Pete Tong as the kids might have once said. It no longer single clicks when pressing the left button. Nope, just as a special hassle for me it double clicks no matter how gently I press it. Doesn't sound much like a problem really does it? Pales into insignificance compared to Hamas winning the Palestinian elections, Iran developing a nuclear capability, global warming, bird flu, AIDS epidemics in Africa and institutional racism in the Great British Press. I grant that it seems trivial, but whereas all of the others are issues of concern for everyone, this one is the one that's in my face right now. This is the single most irritating thing that is happening in my working day. An example...try closing an email down in Outlook by clicking on the X button at the top right hand corner. Yes, with a constantly double clicking mouse you will still close the email down, but also the whole Outlook application as well. Try clicking on the Favourites tab in your browser...one click opens, two clicks closes hence it becomes a pointless operation. Writing something in MS Word? Yep, how easy is it to move the cursor around the page to insert new text when all it does is immediately highlight the whole sentence. Writing this post has been an adventure in refamiliarising myself with keyboard commands "shortcuts". Like the good old days of Editor mode in MS-DOS, because they were so good weren't they. The only people who remember them with any fondness are sad act propeller heads who think that proper computing can only be done in machine code through a command line.None of them are married or have many friends.
This particular trivial but unbelievably annoying and productivity affecting problem just made me wonder how we, a 21st Century society would cope with the loss of other gadgets that have become integral to the way we live..........
The mobile phone : Yes it's a pain in the arse when people talk loudly into it in a restaurant, or on a train. Yes, it's contributed towards a rise in street crime because it's an object of desire despite being virtually given away by The Company and its competitors. But what about the ease of contacting someone when abroad, or when late for an appointment? What about the lives it's saved at roadside accidents because people can ring emergency services straight away instead of having to find a piss-filled stinking public phone box in the middle of the night that some lowlife scumbag has vandalized? What about the immediate aftermath of terrorist atrocities where people have been able to contact loved ones, or in the case of September 11th where those doomed to die could send or speak one last message of love to their families? Yes, society got by without them for millennia but could we really revert to a mobile free society?
The TV Remote Control : Remember the days when turning the TV over meant getting out of the chair and TURNING a dial? Then you're over 40! But seriously how many of us now spend as much time looking for the damned thing instead of manually switching the TV over or off? Bloody Hell - on some TV's I'm not sure there is even a manual option. And who remembers when the remote was on the end of a cable running across the floor? ....me ...unfortunately.
The Car Remote Control: That's right, for all you kiddies out there was a time when Dad had to unlock every door in the car with a key. And then lock it when he had delivered you to your destination. A time that meant when you ran to the car in the car park he couldn't let you in early and you'd have to wait until him or Mum had dragged their sorry arse to the car in order to insert a key into the lock and open the doors! Christ my Volvo even illuminates the car inside and puts the headlights on for 30 seconds so that I can clearly locate the thing from 100 yards.
The Ipod/MP3 player: Yeah, not totally ubiquitous I know, but getting there. Less than 3 years ago my music collection took up 3 CD racks and several plastic carry boxes with Vinyl. To carry it around I'd have needed the muscles of Schwarzenegger and as many arms as Doc Octopus. Plus i'd have needed a system to play it on. As far as my memory serves me there is no such thing as a portable turntable that you can take to the side of the pool on holiday with which to play your oldies. I gave up on cassettes about 10 years ago when my BMW decided to chew my Led Zeppelin III and IV tapes up (on a long journey with no backup except the poxy radio). But now my music collection sits on my Zen Jukebox with a 4oGb hard drive (the cheap MP3 player for those who aren't fashion and marketing monkeys). 5,547 tracks and still with 12Gb to spare. All in the palm of my hand. When i first started in 1986 ats a trainee computer operator i worked ina room the size of a football pitch. The combined memory (mainstore as we knew it) of the mainframe was 23Mb, the total of all the disks (filestore as we knew it) was around 30Gb. A 2.5 Gb disk cabinet was the size of a bread van. Now I have more than that and it's in my hand. Reduced in size by over a thousand times.
So effective are thse things that I'm now desperate to find new things to add to it. Thank heavens for Ricky Gervais, Mark Kermode and Fighting Talk. In 5 years we will be using them. Even your Gran will have one that she can listen to, or surf the net whilst she gazes at the family photo album, and the new photo's you take on holiday that you send via mobile phone direct to her Ipod.
The Cordless Screwdriver: In my view this is the single best invention ever developed by man. Building flatpacks? Get a cordless and smile as they effortlessly drive the screws into the ill fitting poorly machined holes supplied. Fitting door handles as you re-decorate? Building beds? Your life will change with one of these. I actively look for jobs around the house that give me the opportunity to use one. Gone are the days of launching verbal Anglo-Saxon tirades whilst simultaneously hurling inanimate objects across the room because I can't get a screw in far enough to fix whatever I am doing. I just save that for when the computer plays up.......
The PC: Where would we be without this? In the garden perhaps? Spending time with our families perhaps? Building things with our cordless screwdrivers? I know what I wouldn't be doing - writing blogs that get read occasionally or surfing the net buying things I don't need. But what about the information I can get for my studies? Ditto, the kids? Ditto, GMD. How would we get the best deals on travelling to The Money Pit without Google and Kelkoo? And in what other way could I successfully win the FA Cup as Chelsea Manager, whilst almost simultaneously get sacked by Bristol Rovers only to be offered a job managing MK Dons on better money with a bigger transfer pot? (thanks to Football Manager 2006 - a game I suspect might find itself featuring in divorce cases the length and breadth of the land)
Just a few examples of how pampered and reliant we are on gadgets and technology today. That's of course without mentioning the technology workhorses of washing machines, tumble dryers, dish washers and vacuum cleaners.
That whole rant because of a faulty mouse.
Later, GrocerJack.
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