Every time my train goes under Central Station, my phone calls cut out. There is - despite what people who have real problems will tell you - nothing more infuriating. It’s 2011. Obama has promised a Mars mission and I can’t even get reception in a tunnel.
These aren’t the only techno gripes I have on this mediocre day of April. How come I have an app on my phone that tells me which M. Night Shyamalan movie sucks the most, but I don’t have one that brushes my teeth for me? Why am I still losing car keys, tying my own shoelaces and having to move my eyeballs to focus on a different point in space?
Why are we wasting money on things like better healthcare and infrastructure, when we could be inventing a gizmo that detects and automatically scratches itches? How is it that in this wondrous age of techno-wizardry, my mouth cannot yet produce milk to go with my cereal? C’mon!
Santa can choke on my two front teeth – this Christmas, I want a machine that performs all my daily tasks for me and allows my muscles to blissfully atrophy.
At the very least, I demand a personal communication device that is marginally better than the previous model but costs at least $3000 more.
Obviously, I’m going to blame someone for this addiction to slightly-improved technology (hint: it’s not the Government, Major Retailers or Big Oil).
It’s Steve Jobs and other such Lords of Tech.
I was recently considering buying an iPad (despite the fact I have a laptop at home, a computer at work and don’t need a computing device in-between).
Then, the iPad 2 came out, which obviously means I can’t buy the first one because it magically became, overnight, “out-dated”. As such, I have decided to buy neither.
I’m sick of updated versions of gadgets being rolled out every 12 months in an effort to simultaneously invent “problems” and “solutions”.
Every time a new tech product comes out, it is held up to the light by millions of people who begin pointing out its every inadequacy. The list of what it doesn’t do quickly outgrows the list of what it actually does.
This is, of course, encouraged by people like Jobs who want you to notice “inadequacies” and upgrade.
While people were lining up for a few handfuls of rice in less fortunate nations, others were “braving the cold” and lining up for a slightly thinner iPad 2.
In their defence though, it’s also slightly lighter. This is obviously a significant feature as 78 per cent of the adult population lack the physical strength to pick up a can of baked beans or a mobile phone.
I already hear you ask, “What’s wrong with kids these days? You don’t hear 10 year olds in Somalia complaining that their pencils don’t have a USB port and can’t support Flash.”
There’s something not quite right about all this.
We’ve become terrified of buying a product in case it’s made artificially redundant in six months’ time.
Yes, it’s a problem – but in the same way an iPad being 100g too heavy is a problem.
Eating milkless cereal, however, is a real problem. Focus on that one, Jobs.
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