Switching Off

Switching Off
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday January 31, 2015

Above the clatter of cups and the clamourous crowd, the girl’s laugh hee-hawed across the cafe. Heads swivelled in her direction. We customers grinned at each other. She was young, sitting with friends, posing for group photos, her phone bobbing on the end of a selfie-stick. After each press of the shutter, she’d retract the stick, examine the photo and bray loudly at the result.

My gentleman neighbour, roused from his newspaper, leaned towards me and raised one grey eyebrow:

“I don’t know what’s funnier,” he said drily, “that crazy laugh, or those stupid selfie-sticks!’

We nodded at each other in smug agreement. Then he flapped his newspaper and I resumed clattering away on my second hand laptop, relieved to be in such sensible company.

I eyed the girl with her selfie-stick. She was now laughing hysterically, her friends crowding round her phone. Her delight was infectious. I felt a small stab of shame. Everyone but me seems to be high on gadgetry, I thought. And here I am, a laggard, scrabbling to keep up with the latest gear. Is it just me who’s struggling to master the devices I already have?

Last week, my Macbook Pro had a seizure, then blacked out on my desk. I palpated every button but no sweet little apple appeared. In my online darkness, there was only gloom: no email, no Google, no Facebook. The earth was flat again.

What if I’d paralysed my laptop with my own ineptitude? Rather than parade my electronic failings before all-knowing husband, I made a dash for the Apple store. The lanky door-geek waved me towards the Genius Bar. Cradling my lifeless laptop to my bosom, I consulted the brainiac behind the counter.

“Hmmm” he said, fingers flying over my grimy keyboard. I cringed as he frowned at the missing Ctrl’ button.

“I’d say your superdrive’s crashed,” he said, flipping my laptop over to inspect the serial code birthmarked to its bottom.

“It looks pretty worn out. We’ll see what we can do.”

I slunk home.

Seeking comfort from teenage son, I told him, “The genius guy called me a late adopter. Or was it a slow adaptor?”

“More like a slow learner,” he hooted, and re-clamped his headphones to his ears.

Here’s my problem: I’m not wired for rapid uptake. I don’t covet an iPhone 6. I still use my phone for making calls. (Please, no more apps!) I’m content to read books made from paper. No-one has convinced me I need a personal GPS. I’ll happily stay lost until I’m found. But I live in fear of being left behind.

Teenage son is a tech-head, his Y chromosome pre-programmed for gadgetry, like my husband’s. I see them hunched together, their rapturous faces reflected in the vast touch-screen monitor in the loungeroom.

“What are you two doing?” I ask.

“Checking out Google Glass.”

“Google Glass?”

They roll their eyes in unison.

“They’re specs with tiny built-in computers. Operated by voice command.”

I wander off to hang out a load of washing, convinced I’ll never catch up. By the time I return, my two smallest children have joined the duo, having already absorbed the basics of electronic miniaturisation.

Why does it take all my nous (and the limits of my patience) to juggle the three remotes needed to download a movie with Apple TV? My phone and tablet hustle me with their endless stream of posts and tags, links and feeds. Staying connected is exhausting. And oddly dissatisfying. I waste valuable time attending to the backlog to clear a path for uninterrupted work. I have become hobbled to my machines.

My teenager’s online social life started with a trickle and is now an electronic flood. Instagram and Facebook have locked onto his likes and dislikes and deluge him with electronic prods and prompts. His phone beeps for him continuously. He has been conditioned like a Pavlovian dog. He’ll interrupt homework, a conversation, even dinner, to check his gadgets. In fits of pique, I’ve silenced his phone in a drawer. Slammed shut his laptop. The virtual world never sleeps, and if I gave him free reign on his screens, neither would he.

The cyber-world is a disconcerting place for the uninitiated. Mum claims to have no need for email or internet. At 78, she still licks stamps, pays bills by cheque, finds an electrician in the Yellow Pages and navigates by UBD. But she’s adept at texting, and will spell out her day’s adventures with an SMS treatise. She’d be horrified to be labelled a Luddite, but claims learning new gizmos is tedious and she has better things to do, like the watering. She’s right about that, at least. I’m sure I had more freedom before computers made my life simpler.