38 | Bahrain Confidential | November 2012

Bahrain

John R Ridley

Do we run gadgets or do gadgets run us? John Ridley talks about our generation’s overdependence on machines and it effects.

Tied To Technology

s the years beyond my mid forties passed, many friends and I displayed the symptoms of a mild form of the debilitating syndrome known as

gadgetitus - a highly contagious affliction involving the acquisition and maintenance of too many gadgets and devices.

Sufferers, usually male, are often anti-social and speak in incomprehensible tongues. Not anti-social in the sense that they become introverted and isolated, but being comfortable with gadgets and the time spent with them.

My cure began a year ago with a visit to the optician; he kindly informed me that I had reached the stage in life where I needed three sets of glasses around my neck, one for reading, one for distance and another for everything else -

except for tying shoe laces; I was horrified. Fortunately the optician had an

alternative. A single pair of glasses, varifocals, would enable me to distinguish the increasing number of inanimate objects with fuzzy edges - irrespective of distance. The optician was persuasive.

I understood that there would be a “running in period”. Indeed, during the first week I walked into the back of parked cars and tripped over other people’s shoe laces far

more than normal. As the first week with my new glasses came to an end I could distinguish many more objects, all of which seemed to have a better defined shape than I remembered.

But with the new glasses came a side effect; the useful gadgets cluttering my life were outliving their

usefulness; in particular printers and video recorders.

Printers are just incomprehensible - even after reading the instruction book. Video recorders (and other remote controlled devices) are no better; how can any one decipher the hieroglyphics printed on the buttons when they are so small and there are so many? Varifocals or not, I need bigger well labeled buttons and preferably no more

than three to choose from.

Gadgets of course come in many shapes and sizes and are often connected

A“As friends and colleagues frantically tried to connect their Androids, and Blackberries to virtual clouds they spoke in increasingly incomprehensible tongues - KDEs, HSPA and WPOPs.”

together with wires. I had so many wires I no longer knew which connected to what. ‘Thingies’, as I prefer to call gadgets, would only have a place in my life if they could connect to my laptop wirelessly; if it wasn’t wireless I probably didn’t want the ‘thingy’ any way. Having no further purpose, many gadgets and thingies were consigned to be crushed and recycled into something useful; perhaps food packaging - which can be disposed of in a land fill site.

The iPhone became part of my life, but Apps caught me unaware - virtual gadgets could exist on mobile phones. As friends and colleagues frantically tried to connect their Androids and Blackberries to virtual clouds they spoke in increasingly incomprehensible tongues - KDEs, HSPA and WPOPs.

Virtual gadgetitus is a new, more virulent strain - affecting both sexes. A seemingly normal person (with only a few gadgets) can discretely download apps to their phone. Once the app is installed, sufferers engage in dubious past-times, tweeting, facebooking, gaming and even watching feature length films on their phone, whilst seemingly engaged in other “social” activities.

Early indications of the more virulent strain are occasional grunting, frantic fingering of the phone and inappropriate fits of laughter. In extreme cases sufferers have been known to walk into cars and trip over other peoples shoe laces.

With communications breaking-down around me, I re-discovered the delights of espresso - drunk whilst reading a newspaper or watching real clouds pass overhead, all in the comfort of a favourite chair - with the phone switched off

John Ridley is a journalist who has lived and worked in the Middle East for more than thirty years. Based in Bahrain, John can be contacted at john@johnridley.nu