Then one day, the estate was buzzing with news of a talking car. A neighbour had just imported a car from abroad, a term for anywhere outside the country. The car didn’t have a regular alarm, instead, it spoke when someone got too close. “You are too close to the vehicle. Step back.” Kids far and wide flocked to the scene to intentionally bother the car just to hear it talk. There was not much else to do.
In retrospect, the moment marked the beginning of my long, slow frustration with modern technology, especially ones that prioritise gimmick over function. Its started with a talking car and now we have rice cookers that bake cakes, washing machines with more buttons than the Apollo 11. One would need the Rosetta stone to decipher what each button means. Some modern TVs don’t even have buttons. Lose the remote and you are pretty much stuck with a black screen. My phone tells me to “improve performance” by turning off the screen. You mean… the actual thing I’m using? And don’t get me started on my car. It once slammed the brakes for a vehicle that was a mile away and tried to steer me back into a parked car because I wasn’t perfectly centred in the lane.
As a millennial, I am lucky to have straddled both the pre and post digital age. I remember when the most exciting technology available was a box TV which was mostly ornamental thanks to frequent power cuts in west Africa. We didn’t much care, there was plenty to do outdoors, making up games, hung out with friends and irritated grown up by being seen and heard.
Gone are the days of the Nokia 3310, simple, sturdy, versatile and idiot- proof. Drop it, and it would split into three neat parts that snapped right back together. Meanwhile, you need a manual to figure out how to turn my smart phone on or off because a power button would be too much for the sleek design. A recent windows upgrade means I can now clutter multiple desktops instead of one. Everything is cloud based, subscription model and impossible to fix without a specialist. Bring back the power button and a little common sense.
