Despite being one of those people who spend almost all of their waking hours online, digital isn’t necessarily my default option for most things, and there’s a good reason for that. Technology has stitched me up too many times and frankly I can’t afford to rely on it.
For me, digital is your cool but flaky mate that will get you in trouble with your boss, because it either forgot to pass on a message or got the details wrong. “Don’t worry bro your meeting is definitely tomorrow” (It’s actually today!) Some people swear by online calendars, I prefer writing in my physical diary with a pen. It took a while to retrain myself to check the diary before agreeing to things and I occasionally need to cross reference it against a few online appointments, but I’ve had a lot less drama since I made a conscious effort to use a single paper diary for everything.
Online diaries aren’t the only bit of tech I’m wary of. I don’t trust or like voicemail. I don’t trust email and don’t get me started on the shit show that is Facebook messenger. To be fair, my lack of trust isn’t 100% down to the tech. We all know somebody that claimed to have emailed you something important, who definitely hadn’t really emailed us.
Email and printers are the two areas of tech that flip between working perfectly, and refusing to work at all, with no prior warning, and for no obvious reason. I have a lot of printer grief, which I would probably take less personally if I didn’t rely so heavily on my printer. Yes, my computer can save that file, but whether I’ll remember that I have it and be able to find it again is another matter. My brain has it’s own very specific preferences, one of which being that it will read and take in written information from a piece of paper but sometimes refuse point blank to do the same thing on a screen. I also have the added bonus of being a bit of a hoarder, which means that a decade later the typed notes will still be in the house (somewhere)
Digital technology isn’t necessarily to blame, sometimes it’s the way it’s used. If you’ve ever broken down and then spent 20 minutes trying to reset the password for an online account, because your insurance company have abandoned the concept of telephones and your phone hasn’t stored your password (looking at you, Admiral) you’ll know what I mean. In this scenario the technology wasn’t to blame. Admiral playing hide, the phone number on their confusing website is. When I eventually googled my way to a telephone number and spoke to a very nice man from the AA, they were able to identify my exact location by sending me a text with the link in it, which saved a very random and awkward conversation where I’d have to explain that I navigate by shops and old nightclubs, instead of road names. Great use of technology and ensured that I was “rescued” in under an hour.
I’m currently experimenting with a digital notebook. The claims are that using it will feel like writing on paper; that it will be able to type my handwritten notes and that everything can be electronically stored in my numerous online drives. At the moment we’re averaging one out of three. It doesn’t feel like writing on paper and it can’t understand my scruffy handwriting. Not a great start. If I have to slow down enough to write everything beautifully and start writing notes without slang, then I’ll lose the flow of my ideas, which is the main reason why I prefer to handwrite things. If I’m going to lose the best bit then I might as well just type everything. I’m doing my best to stick with it, but it’s hard work. I have a low tolerance for tech that isn’t easy to get the hang of. This was supposed to cancel out some of my flaws. I had such high hopes for the new improved Claire 2.0. It was supposed to capture all my creativity, but with 90% less notebooks. It was going to herald a whole new me, but instead it’s an expensive piece of kit that doesn’t live up to the hype. The feature I like best is that it has an option to do calligraphy style writing, which is disappointing, because although I do enjoy slowly recreating my name in fancy writing, it is absolutely pointless and serves literally no purpose. I could pretend it’s a mindful exercise, but seems like a stretch.
Although it’s really clever that my phone can do so many things, I preferred it when I could separate things out. I didn’t mind having multiple gadgets. I don’t think anybody did, but it’s easier for tech companies to spy on us if they can combine everything onto one GPS enabled device. I miss using my iPod for music. I could listen to any of the 8000 songs I had on it without worrying that I’d drain the battery and not be able to use my electronic train ticket. Having one device for everything seems to generate unnecessary low level anxiety. Having to have my phone in my hand, as I stomp around train platforms doesn’t feel like an improvement. It feels like an accident waiting to happen. The smarter our phones get, the more eggs we place in the basket.
Two factor authentication is amazing, but if you have an online account that will only allow you access with a code generated on an authenticator app on a phone that has just been stolen, you’re going to have problems. A few months ago I went for an eye test and had my phone stolen. There’s probably a “Shouldn’t have gone to Specsavers” joke in there somewhere, but I’m still sulking about the fact that it took absolutely ages to get everything sorted out. My whole life was impacted by my phone. Most companies were able to sort out access fairly easily, by allowing me to prove my identity in another way, but for some reason one of the biggest software companies in the world decided to act the fool for over two months. 2-factor is all fun and games until your stolen phone is in Dubai and Microsoft won’t allow you back into your account without a code generated from it. My phone company, three banks, two hosting companies and countless other organisations were dealt with quite quickly. It took some additional admin, but things were generally sorted the same day. Microsoft took nine weeks and a physical letter begging them for human assistance!
My digital distrust isn’t only applied to computers and phones. I rarely watch live TV so I “tape” the few television programmes I actually watch. I’d love to say that my viewing habits are cool and edgy, but they’re not. Most of the things I’ve recorded on our virgin media box are episodes of Gardeners World, Bake Off and a weird assortment of home improvement programmes. I definitely prefer recordings to streaming. If I’ve taped it, it will be there on my box when I’m ready to watch it. If I’m streaming it, then I have to do battle with numerous irritating platforms. I’m constantly being told by BBC and Radio Two that everything is available on iPlayer or BBC Sounds but then I have to wade through it and frankly it’s not great. Things can be hard to find, even if you know it’s there somewhere and every platform will eventually, or sometimes quite quickly, remove content. All of which means that no matter how hard I look or how many swear words I use, I’ll never find the episode I’m looking for.
I ranted in a previous blog post about Apple Music casually deleting songs from my playlists. What’s the point in wasting time curating playlists if 70% of the songs won’t be available when I’m in the mood to listen to them? I didn’t have this problem when I was burning my own CDs in the 90s or when I was making my own cassette mixtapes in the 80s. The tech has in theory got better, but if you like to match your music to your mood, then overall the experience feels worse.
I love digital, I really do, but I miss the control I had before it fully took over my life. I’m well aware that this is very much a “Claire Problem” but I’m entitled to my preferences and you’ve clearly got nothing better to do than humour my nonsense, so here we are.
Despite spending all my waking hours on the internet and loving all things digital, there are times when pens, notebooks, paper train tickets and CDs are just more reliable and as much as I love my phone, I miss the days when they didn’t do everything.