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[January 09, 2013]

Cut your jibber, Jabba and unplug for a while ; No respite from an influx of gizmos that are just making us all lazy [Hull Daily Mail (England)]

(Hull Daily Mail (England) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Ihave never hidden the fact that, when it comes to technology and generally moving with the times, I'm a complete and utter Luddite.

I am to 4G, iGizmos, broadband width and fibre- optic what-gima- flips what Stephen Hawking is to the 110m hurdles.

I was one of the last people to get a mobile phone in the 1990s - after swearing for years they were a passing fad.

I refused for ages to join Facebook and Twitter, which I saw - and still do - as little more than gross infringements on my prized privacy. And I absolutely and completely say no to electric toothbrushes.

Seriously, people, have we really reached the point where we're too lazy to hoist our brushes up and down in a generally abrasive motion to get our gnashers pearly white It's only a matter of time before some egg-headed boffin comes up with food that chews itself and shoes that walk themselves to work.

Actually, that second one sounds quite good, as long as they leave me curled up in bed at home pretending January has been cancelled.

We'll all be left as big, round doughy balls of slobbering lard, working up a fevered sweat trying to roll across the room to change the channel on our remotes with out vast, blobby texting thumbs.

Like Jabba the Hutt admiring Han Solo frozen in carbonite in the corner of the room, we'll all resemble giant, malevolent, podgy worms watching the last three fit celebrities in the world competing in Princess Leia bikinis on Strictly Come Dancing On Big Celebrity Ice. I know all this because, before Christmas, I got a new phone.

After struggling on with my old one, a cross between a pair of semaphore flags and a carrier pigeon, I decided enough was enough when I couldn't understand anything the caller was saying and they couldn't hear me either.

I trudged into the mobile shop and explained my conundrum to the incredulous man behind the counter, who then worked out on his computer that my contract had run out about three years before Alexander Graham Bell had even invented the phone. I was duly handed a shiny new smartphone, told I was a dolphin or a panther for some reason and informed I could download four meg a second, but only if Mars was in the ascendency and my moon was rising in Aquarius.

At least, I think that's what he said. I glazed over at the moment he mentioned text bundles.

But, and I'm ashamed to admit this, in the past few weeks I've been addicted to my shiny, beautifully ergonomic phone.

I've even been out and bought a rubber case and screen protector for it - which is tantamount to buying a tartan coat and fluffy boots for a poodle. Shame on me.

My fingers have been a whir, surfing the internet, checking social media updates and - worst of all - spending endless infuriating hours playing Star Wars Angry Birds on its jolly little touch screen when I should have been doing something more productive. Like watching TV.

I'm slowly morphing into the rest of the shambling herd who spend their lives, necks craned down, gawping gormlessly at their mobiles, absorbed in a virtual world while the real one passes them by.

It's seductive, being plugged into the Matrix 24/7, with a world of trivia at your fingertips, but it's also exhausting.

I worry that if our brains aren't given any downtime, that they'll one day implode in a torrent of pointless information about children's TV shows from the 1980s and badly spelt tweets. And it's only going to get worse. Take a look across the pond to Las Vegas where all the big tech companies are showing their latest wares at the Consumer Electronics Show, and you'll see our senses are under cyber attack.

A high-definition, split-screen TV that allows you to surf the net and watch programmes at the same time Check. A water-resistant smartphone that just refuses to die no matter how many times you flush it Check. A tablet that can not only host every song since time began but also cook a tasty chicken dinner for two It's on its way.

And it's all too much for my brain to take. I'm switching off the new phone and going back to the carrier pigeon. There's something alluring about being incommunicado.

(c) 2013 ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved.

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