February 27, 2007

Luddites Unite

Why don't things just work? I'm loaded up on new gadgets and every last one is useless.
Some may have noticed that I like to write from time to time but, being a long distance lorry driver, don't get the chance as often as I'd like. With this in mind I got myself a Nokia E61 mobile phone. More powerful, I'm told, than NASA's entire computing capacity at the time of the moon landings. More powerful than the bomber pilot training simulator I had a shot on when I was a sprightly young air cadet. Our guide, a trainee pilot, was quite proud of the fact that a large part of the RAF's training infrastructure for it's late cold-war ground attack capability was run by an old 386 PC. I vaguely remember being sworn to secrecy as well but that's another story.
Anyway, back to the Nokia. It arrived in several boxes a few days ago. Enough time, you'd think, to figure out how to work it. It's supposed to send emails, browse the internet and pinpoint my location anywhere in the world to within a few metres courtesy of a trick network of spy satellites owned by the US government. It has no fewer than 49 buttons, one joystick, two memory cards, an auxilliary GPS receiver, umpteen cables and connectors and a dinky little cradle for sticking it to your windscreen.
Three days in and I've just learnt how to make a phone call.
I give up. I quit. Take your 'Pop3', mobile LAN, SatNav and all the rest of it and stick it where the sun don't shine. And while you're at it, stick me in a place where the sun does shine. Where the roads are long, dry and empty except for me and my bike. Some place where there's no signal.

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