A reluctant participant in the modern communications age

At a time when there is an ever-increasing number of television channels and, despite that, many an evening when there seems almost nothing even vaguely capable of being watched, some of the old comedies on G.O.L.D. can provide a few minutes entertainment.It is a testament to the talents of writers and actors in Only Fools and Horses that, though all of the programmes have certainly been seen previously, they do take watching for ‘just one more time’ and give the odd good laugh.

However, this is not a piece about Del Boy and Rodders, no it is about the growth of that indispensable piece of modern technology, the mobile phone, of which Del was one of the first possessors and which he waved about in the bars and nightclubs under the noses of just about everybody.

The technology has come a long way from the time when the darn things weighed five pounds, the aerial was a bit like the one on a portable television, and, even if it wasn’t Del Boy special offer, the signal was so poor and so intermittent, that you were likely as not incapable of getting through to anyone for any sustained length of time.

My first experience of using one was during a General Election quite some years ago when one of the first owners of a mobile in Galway – it was the latest Motorola of the time – offered to lend it to me. It came with a charger unit which weighed at least two pounds, and the phone itself weighed three or four pounds.

I turned up to the count as the proud user of the latest in telecommunications technology – however, within an hour of the election counting starting, I abandoned hope on ever getting through to the newsdesk with the count figures . . . and had to scurry to the nearest public phone where you put in your pennies, pressed Button A and gave out the election returns in the time-honoured fashion of journalistic hacks for decades previously.

I’m not sure, maybe it was that experience which made me one of those who was determined that he would never carry a mobile phone. Of course, I was also one of those who swore that he would never abandon the typewriter . . . until one day a load of Macintosh computers arrived on the desks in the Tribune office, and suddenly I had to learn how to ‘type’ and ‘save’.

But, I have always been one who was dragged down the road of technology – whatever about ‘type’ and ‘save’, I vowed I would never be involved in the process of e-mailing. Not for me. It would always be pen and paper, a few lines to someone, the day would never come when paper would be scarce on my desk!

I’m still better at sub-editing ‘on paper’ because I find it easier to spot misspells, or whatever, with an eye trained over years of looking at words on paper. But, sad to say, the amount of paper that ever crosses my desk at home these days, amounts to the odd sheet . . . usually a bill because I am still very reluctant to put my credit card details out there into cyberspace and pay them electronically.

That is one thing at which I have drawn the line in this race to change communications. I figure that if there are umpteen thousands of chancers, hackers and computer whiz kids sitting out there at keyboards, then it would be just my luck as a reluctant participant in this cyberspace communications maelstrom that some hacker would hit on my credit card number and clean out the few hard-earned quid sitting there.

I believe that all those guys who always seemed to send me the offer to help them get umpteen millions out of some African country – for which I would be paid of fee of $10 million – are now sitting out there at keyboards busily burrowing away at the various security measures which I am assured are incapable of bring penetrated. Then along comes someone who hacks into millions of bank accounts, or, worse still, into the Pentagon systems.

Of course, I also swore that the day would never come when I would ‘surf the net’ for anything. For me, it would always be one of my thousands of books left in stacks around the garage, or in any one of a number of rooms.

I ignored the time wasted spent shifting the damn things about as I looked for some reference to Shakespeare, or Oscar Wilde . . . and then one day I typed in on Google a half-remembered quote from Hamlet, and up popped the quote, the line, the scene, the act.Shamefaced I cogged it down resolving that it was a once off. Never would I get to the situation where the trips up and down the stairs to the garage, the sneezes among the dusty books, and the curses when I failed to find the reference speedily, would become a thing of the past. I would always be a man for the reference book . . . that too, like many a resolution, has fallen the way of the convenience of Google.

However, there must be hope for me. I have, as I said, embraced all of the new developments very slowly indeed. I still insist that no one show me the full range of things which my computer might do. I learn these things as I need to learn them, I tell my would-be tutors.

I say there must be hope for me, though – for now I find myself inside the front door checking if my mobile is in my back pocket; if I chance to forget it, I turn back for home; I get a little agitated if the battery is low and I send text messages with the best of them, though they tend to me long-winded and slightly literary.

That’s because I draw the line at some of the abbreviations which are so commonplace in texting – OMG I’ll never do that!