Rage Against the Machine

ADULT: Barry Lowe upgrades to a smartphone and revels in its technological wizardry – especially the ‘vibrate’ function. 

When I was growing up, the most technologically advanced task I had was to strong arm the gramophone to keep the 78 playing on the turntable, and changing the needle. If, dear reader, you have to ask what a gramophone or a 78 or a turntable or a needle are, then you are much too young to be reading this column.

I was reminded of how far the world has come technologically when I got a new mobile phone which is now officially smarter than I am. It’s not all that difficult to be smarter than I am, especially when it comes to anything that requires manual dexterity (unless it involves my arse) or a basic understanding of quantum physics. I’m so dumb it took me three weeks to work out how to turn on my vibrator the first time. That led to confusion when the dicks in my arse didn’t buzz even after I’d tried squeezing my boyfriends’ balls in a clockwise direction. I put it down to the peroxide I used to bleach my hair eating into my brain.

Now, by the mere application of an app, my phone takes calls, reminds me of important dates, scans the area for interesting likeminded men, hoovers the carpet every second Friday, and predicts which man has the biggest dick in any bar I patronise. I think that’s what the guy in the shop said, although my eyes and ears glazed over after he said, “Hello, can I help you?” The only thing worse than reading an instruction manual is having someone explain something to you.

I have the attention span of a gnat when it comes to technology although I’m not in the same ballpark as the woman I heard on a bus recently saying to her friend, “I don’t hold with all this cloud business”. She was talking about storing data off-site. “My Billy has put all his music and his movies in the clouds. It worries me. What will that do to global warming? It’s bloody dangerous having all that stuff in the atmosphere. When it gets too heavy, it’s liable to fall and injure somebody. Have any of these bloody experts thought of that?”

I had to laugh because even I, idiot that I am, knew they didn’t store these things in real clouds. No, they’re artificially manufactured clouds anchored off the coast of Iceland, kept aloft by means of natural gas from troll farts, so if any movies or music falls out, it’ll just end up in the Atlantic. The most damage it can do will be to fish.

When we moved into our latest apartment, the brochure proclaimed all the mod cons we had at the touch of a finger. What happened to the good old days when a machine had only a On and Off button? I now have a microwave that heats leftovers while yodelling country and western songs of the 1950s, a washing machine that predicts when my sperm will be at its most fertile based on the stains in my underpants, and a dishwasher that recites The Man from Snowy River as it strips grease off my dinnerware.  I have yet to work out what splendid extras my generic TiVo box has apart from record television programs to the hard drive.

Hold on, I just discovered my new phone is so smart it doubles as a prostate massager – it vibrates. Only problem it seems to me is that when the bloody thing is doing its anal duty up my butt, it’ll be very difficult to answer when it rings and I’m on a bus.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a technophobe, I couldn’t live without these machines that are meant to make our lives easier, that will give us more time for leisure. I’m really looking forward to doing something productive with all the extra time I’ll have, once I’ve managed to understand the instruction manual.