These were my husband's words the other day as he stomped out from our home office and away from the offending laptop. Which got me thinking how much we have come to rely on technology, how mainstream it has become, how responsive we now expect a wide array of “apps” to be. In our busy lives, we expect various actions to execute at the touch of a button or a tap on the screen. Should we pause for a moment to consider how incredible the rise of technology has been over just a few years?
"Stupid laptop"…..is it really so stupid?!
Only 17 years ago we were wowed by the first colour screens on mobile phones. Remember the Nokia 9210 Communicator? The Ericsson T68? Then the first smartphones. Then the first true touchscreen devices, only about ten years ago. All of this in quick succession. Looking back at the first mobile phone I owned 16 years ago it really does look quite funny-looking. “Vintage” would be a good word....but it was impressive not so many moons ago. (Best of all, in bright blue it colour coordinated with my car…).
Desktops have shrunk into laptops, laptops have merged into super-portable, ultra powerful tablets with tons of storage.
The way that a range of smart devices can now communicate with each other would have seemed like the stuff of a futuristic sci-fi movie not so long ago. Space age has become reality. And we are reliant on the apps that have come out of it.
Did we even know what an "app" was until Apple coined the term?
Consumer technology has become ubiquitous over such a short space of time and the new generation have never known anything different. My son at a year old would know how to swipe though photos on my smartphone (and then looked bemused when swiping the screen of our TV had no effect….we must upgrade….). He’s now seven and enjoys our strange accounts of how, when we were teenagers, there were no mobile phones, no tablets, certainly no contactless payments to buy a packet of sweets - unbelievable!
Technology really has changed our lives, even to those resistant to it. Sometimes for the worse but I’d like to think largely for the better.
I’ll have to wrap this up…my son is going nuts because the silly Chromecast isn't responding quickly enough......