Ah! Times of innocence and
being connected to the network via a visible cable, which was never long enough
to go very far from the connexion point!
When we first had a telephone it was a black Bakelite affair with a
proper handset and a dial. It also had a
little pull out tray at the bottom for Important Numbers. The lead always got impossibly convoluted and
twisted, but it was great fun (well, I was very young) to let it dangle and
untwist itself in a sort of mad twirl.
We also had a party line: this meant that sometimes you picked up the
phone and somebody else was already speaking because the line was shared, then
you had to put the phone down (you never listened, because you simply didn’t)
and waited a while to try again. In
those dark days you were lucky to get a line (even shared) from the GPO and you
had no choice of the design or colour of the phone. So there.
Just as we were privileged to have a phone, so also we were one of
the few families in Dogfield Street in Cathays in Cardiff in the 1950s to have
a car: KDU 966 - a second hand Ford Prefect complete with running boards and
ill fitting windows. I might also add
before you get carried away by this tale of luxury, that we also had an outside
loo and the bath was in the kitchen. But
as an only child I had a room of my own - though I’ve never really written like
Virgina Woolf, in spite of this early advantage. I might add, in case you are wondering, that
the bath was normally covered by a hinged surface attached to the kitchen wall,
with two little curved stumps to fit to the edge of the curled bath side and a
tasteful curtain to hide the fact that there was a bath there at all. This is where I would eat my breakfast and
all meals that were not family meals.
The telephone was sited in the hallway and served not only my
parents, but also my paternal grandparents who lived upstairs. It was special and was not used on a daily
basis. It was there. A thing.
Not something to be owned or regarded as an essential part of domestic
life.
How times have changed!
I was encouraged to think about such things because, during my post
swim cup of tea in my local leisure centre, I was sitting next to a table at
which a young girl was obviously doing some school homework on a dreary looking
A4 photocopied sheet. Nothing remarkable
about that, but she was doing the work with her mobile phone propped up against
her sports bag and with one of her friends chatting away on a video call. What made it remarkable was that the girl
behaved as through her friend was literally
opposite her, with whole minutes of work being done with no talk between
the two of them apart from the odd casual remark. It was extraordinary in being so
ordinary. I am not sure that I would be
able to carry on the odd conversation with a mini-Lilliputian on a screen with
the artless, everyday confidence (yes, I am, I am positive that I would not be
able to) that the girl did.
My mind then spiralled away on tangents about concepts of ‘being
alone’ and how difficult that is today; what the word ‘present’ actually means;
what is ‘real’ contact? And so on.
But where my mind ended up was with a failure of technology.
Years ago I failed to resist yet another blandishment of Kickstarter
and put my name down for a new type of watch called Pebble. It was a smart watch and linked to your
mobile phone was able to give you all sorts of notifications from your emails
and other bits and pieces of social media.
Importantly for me it was waterproof AND had an ‘always on’ screen. OK, it was in black and white, but it worked
AND the battery life was exceptional.
When an improved ‘Steel’ version was available, I bought (confusingly)
a gold steel watch which also was able to display things in a washed out
colour. It worked.
When the third iteration of this successful watch was posted on
Kickstarter, with a larger screen, I enthusiastically supported its production.
And it didn’t happen.
Pebble or at least the people who made Pebble a reality were bought
up by another smartwatch company and gradually the backup for the whole Pebble
brand began to fray.
Pebble was a successful watch.
I have struggled to find its equal (at the price) especially with the
‘always-on’ and swimming proof aspects and feel frustrated - because it has not
stopped my buying watches in the vain hope that I will find something to match
it!
My latest watch has actual hands, not virtual, which are operated
through a tiny hole cut into the smart watch screen, so that there is an
‘always on’ element, but the smartwatch bits do not work as well as the Pebble
did.
I have other watches in the pipeline, including one smart watch that
doesn’t need batteries because it is recharged by heat from the body of the
wearer! That is in the future. In the present, I have returned to my
original Pebble. Well, the second one.
And what a delight it is. I
can read its display without my glasses; it’s always on; it counts my swim
lengths; it is back lit when I need it to be; it fits; some of the aps are
still working; it’s light and easy on the wrist - and it’s not made any more?
This is where Capitalism let’s you down: something that does too
much for too little money. Pebble is
almost the opposite of Apple and therefore it has been taken out. Pebble still thrives in Geekdom, people are
still writing programs and aps for the device and there is a ‘community’ of
users - but I wanted more and would have supported future developments of the
brand. But to get the same I will now
have to pay far, far more. Yes, you can
get smart watches for twenty quid and they have full colour screens and what
not, but some aspect is always missing - usually the waterproof element or the
always on.
Technology giveth and Commercialism taketh away!
But my Pebble is on my wrist.
I count that as hi-tec recycling!
