The Red Mist - like anyone actually cares…

For someone who depends on technology for a living, I have to confess to an occasional but deep hatred of it. Or at least some of it. It makes me feel like a failure.

There are whole swathes of technology that are so useless as to be almost deliberately pointless, or even designed to frustrate you to the point of murder.

How many times has your mobile phone suddenly lost signal, just when you need it most? (Given the signal coverage in many parts of the UK, this is no surprise.)

Sat Nav has failed me more times than I care to mention, to the point where I just don’t trust it anymore. My map book and Google maps for the last mile or so are far more reliable.

I have a shiny brand new Vista-based laptop at work. Does it work? Well - almost. Vista ceased to recognise the CD / DVD rewriter early on, and it took ages to find a fix for that. It’s not as if optical drives are a new invention, now, is it? Yesterday, the blessed thing suddenly decided it was no longer going to connect to the corporate network. Half a day lost while the network people sorted that out (lots of other peoples’ PCs had come out in sympathy, apparently).

I bought a DAB radio recently. It’s almost brilliant. Sadly, however, the very thing I bought it for - to wake me up in the morning with excellent sound quality - is seemingly beyond it. Oh, it comes on at the set time alright, but - in total silence. No matter what I do, it’s the same. The most useless alarm clock in the world.

The complexity of connecting a Sky box, TV with Freeview and a DVD recorder together, so that you can actually record the different sources on DVD, via the crappest piece of cable technology ever devised - SCART - is just plain stupid.

I could go on, at some length, but what’s the point? It’s a modern curse. It’s almost like there’s a conspiracy by the technology companies to make our lives hell. Perhaps there is - check this out…

Neil Young sussed this out some years ago - witness Piece of Crap