I am a self-confessed hypocritical Luddite. My favourite
soap box rant is generally in the field of technology and yet I use my new
version of windows 10 (it’s ok, not sure I quite understand all the excitement
about it) to carry out my work and much of my life. I blame my phone for stealing
any potential spare moment and yet I have arthritis in my thumb from an
over-use of texting.
And then there’s Facebook. It seems to me that the concept
is brilliant, less so the actualisation, perhaps. It allows people to stay in
touch without needing to turn up or phone. Speaking to each other has its
merits, of course, but unless you’re going to find a platform and give a
speech, you are limited to how many willing participants you can communicate
with at any given moment. Use Facebook and not only can you tell all your
friends about your holiday, but all their friends as well, if you so choose.
The great thing about posting photos online is that you
don’t see people yawn. I still cringe at
the memory of my poor sister travelling over from America to stay with us. After
settling her down on the sofa with a cup of Yorkshire Tea and a block of Dairy
Milk, the fire crackling and the snow falling softly outside (ok, it was raining, it's a minor detail), we decided that now would be
the perfect opportunity to show her the photographic evidence of our summer holiday, using our ‘new bit of kit’ (it was a few years ago): the television
through which you could magnify your photos to the size of a small painting.
Wonderful if you’re under ten, automatic soft focus would be kinder for anyone over 35. Said sister was stoic for the first 10% of the photos but
after that the head began to nod and the eyes roll and as she really needed to
stay awake until at least 8pm, all parties were unanimous in the decision to
save the photos for 4 o’clock the next morning instead, when she had her jet
lag induced insomnia.
So, I click on Facebook at the weekend, wander around, see
who’s also frittering away their Saturday, and I see that ‘Tom’ - we’ll call
him, ‘Tom’- is ‘at an event near you.’ That’s nice, I think, but what if Tom doesn’t
want me to know that he’s at an event near me? Or, put it another way, if Tom
wanted me to know he was at an event near me, I’m sure Tom could have told me.
I was amused at the potential for misunderstanding that this technology could
cause. What? You were two miles up the road and you never popped your
head through the door even for a measly cup of Yorkshire Tea?
I mentioned my amusement to Tom and he said that it was
funny because actually, he wasn’t at an event near me at said time. Definitely
not. In fact, if I looked on Facebook I would see photographic evidence of him
in an entirely different place.
Oh! If ever there was a story to be written.
