There is always the temptation with a new bit of technical kit, to expect it to do more than the previous versions of it that one might have possessed. And there is the expectation too that one will have the technical ability to push the envelope of comfortable achievement just a little further with something that is bright and new.
So with my new watch. In spite of the fact that I need it merely to tell the time and to count the number of lengths that I do in the pool to ensure that I get to my daily target of 70 and therefore 1,500m , I always hope that I can get it to do more.
My relationship with my mobile phone is one of restriction. Not, you understand imposed by anyone outside, but by my own limitations in using the device. I use my phone to read The Guardian and the various volumes on the Kindle app and do my Spanish lessons on the Duolingo app. And that is basically it. You stand virtually no chance whatsoever of getting me to respond to virtually any form of communication, unless I am actually handling the phone at the time of the message. I almost invariably have my phone set to silent and so phone messages come and go without my noticing them.
At one time and with a past version of my present smart phone, I did have, for a limited period some sort of link between the phone and my watch so that when a message or telephone call occurred, it sent some sort of message and/or a vibration to the watch that could (on a good day) alert me to the fact that someone somewhere had tried to make contact. This brief period of being ‘linked-in’ did not last and I accepted that watch and phone were devices apart and never the twain should meet in any digital sense.
With my ‘new’ watch – which I might also point out is now ‘so last iteration’ as the next model is already being reviewed in the more salaciously flagrant hi-tec publications in certain parts of the world – I feel, yet again, emboldened to try and get some sort of link-up so that I can deflect the opprobrium that comes my way when I fail to respond to emails, telephone calls, or any other form of electronic messaging.
Although, in theory, a great fan of linked-up electronic devices, in reality I have always been a separates sort of guy, with each piece of gleaming expense existing in its own little branded bubble of usefulness, while never quite achieving the connectedness that has been the vain aim of justifying all the bits and pieces of historical computing that I have acquired through the years-
But this time (he says yet again) this time will be different and, behold, there will be an efficiency of through device computing that will link everything in a professional and useful way. Well, at least I have got Alexa to work on the phone. Though, when, by way of experiment, I asked Alexa how she was (I was ever polite, even to the inanimate) her reply that she was feeling ‘windy’ as so many people had asked her about ‘farting’ – was something of a surprise, as was also her unsolicited offer of doing her ‘rapping on farting’ if I so desired! I did not and turned her off.
It says something for the way that people are using the pseudo AI of Alexa that a perfectly civil asking after health gets such a scatological response! What sort of depraved ‘conversations’ with the poor woman have been taking place for an ingénue of AI rapport to be so abused?
The watch has now beeped, not to obliterate the racier utterances of Alexa, but to tell me that some twisted chess grandmaster is prepared to play naked to show that he is not cheating.
With news like that one almost turns with relief to the political situation in the UK where the Conservative Party has gone ‘all out and obvious’ in pandering to its paymasters and is now openly boosting the wealth of the obscenely rich at the expense of the obscenely poor. A sort of refreshing honesty from a party that has previously tried to dress up its class preferences with mealy mouthed platitudes to try and ensure that the poor people that they are fleecing to feed the rich will not notice the Tories’ real intentions.
As my (UK taxed) pension is paid in pounds sterling and transferred to me here in Catalonia in euros, every fall in the value of the pound is not a momentary worry about how much spending money you are going to have on the next holiday, but is rather more ‘here and now’ in the worry stakes for someone who relies on the cash being sent over to pay for basic living costs.
If you are concerned about the cost of living, you might ask, why buy a new watch, rather than use one of the many that you have in reserve? Well, you’ve got me there. But I might point out that you are questioning a man who went out and bought a couple of new shirts rather than ironing one of the many clean but creased ones he had waiting to be attended to.
I am not sure, exactly, what that little anecdote is supposed to illustrate, but it does certainly point towards an attitude to money where reality is only accepted when it bites. Hard.
Now, off to the first concert in the new season! Make music as the pounds falls!
