Omg! Do you feel utterly powerless in our increasingly high-tech world?

A couple of months ago, our building suffered a series of power cuts due to a faulty circuit breaker. I hadn’t realized quite how much we depend upon electricity. The first outage struck at around 10.30 am. My laptop had about half an hour’s charge before it went dead. I found an old digital notebook which worked for a while… until that, in turn, ran out of battery power. My mobile phone was all I had left – and I needed that to make calls in the absence of a landline.

Almost immediately, I was struck by how bored and frustrated I felt without access to a computer. I went to turn the radio on, only to realize it wouldn’t work without power. I thought I’d make a cup of tea, but that wasn’t possible, so I turned on the tap to get a drink… There was a loud gurgling sound, and a few drops of water sputtered out. The other taps were the same. And the loos weren’t flushing either. Great.

I decided to go to the gym. The lift wasn’t working, so I walked down 8 flights of stairs to the car park. The electronic security gates were held open (rather unnervingly after the recent riots). At the gym, I was at least able to use the shower facilities. Returning to the car park, I was surprised at how dark it was. The emergency lighting (which lasts for three hours) had gone off. What I hadn’t bargained for was having to walk back up 8 flights of stairs in complete darkness. I used my mobile phone, but it did little to light the way. I had to feel for the riser of each step with my foot. It was not only dangerous, but very scary.

Once back indoors, I found a torch, though I was worried the batteries would run out. I trekked downstairs to the local shop to buy some more, as well as matches to light candles later. The staff at the Italian restaurant in the building were going home. They’d not only lost a day’s trade, but the perishable contents of their fridges – including gallons of ice cream.

When it got dark, I duly lit my candles. It was actually rather romantic watching the flames flickering all around the room. Less so the prospect of salad for dinner as well as lunch, and getting ready for bed in a non-operational bathroom. Luckily, I remembered a wind-up radio that I’d squirreled away in a cupboard – but I soon discovered the damned thing needed to be wound up every few minutes to keep playing – so I quickly gave up on that. When the power was miraculously restored at around 8.30 pm, I was utterly jubilant – until the next power outage, anyway.

All I can say is, at least I didn’t have to rely on an e-reader too. I am currently awaiting delivery of Bryan Appleyard’s (mysteriously delayed in the post) book from Amazon. Much like Mr A, I too am bothered by the internet cutting “not just attention span but one’s ability to live in and enjoy the real world.” Yahoo’s new omg! feature perhaps typifies this trend? Although it’s not just celebrity culture: treasures of art and nature are being turned into photo and video opportunities, and people being rated as social networking contacts. Meanwhile, mobile phones with language translating predictive text, universal QR codes and an increasingly virtual reality are set to unite us in a phony worldwide community. Our unique selection of apps will eventually define us to niche advertisers, potential partners and government agencies alike.

Call centre automated answer systems are one of the many ways in which we’re being increasingly asked to do everything for ourselves – as are online Q&A instructions (these days employed more often than not, instead of a human operator).  Of course, we still require generalist skills and knowledge to know what to do when technology fails us, along with a sense of humour, especially in the case of dysfunctional texting and voice recognition software.

The other day, I certainly required all the common sense I could muster to work out from many pages of troubleshooting tips that my printer was very definitely kaput. At Currys, I found the relatively new model had already been superceded by a wireless version. It took me a whole afternoon to upload the software, get the printer functioning and work out how to use it.

Then I went to dinner with an old friend who shared stunning iPhone images of his holiday in the Okavango Delta with me. Proof, if any were needed, that technology does have an upside too…

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About Author Profile: Susan Muncey

Trend consultant Susan Muncey, is Editor of Visuology Magazine. In 2008, she founded online curiosity shop, ShopCurious.com. She writes on style and trends for several blogs, including Visuology.com, ShopCuriousMag.com and The Dabbler. She previously owned cult West London boutique, Fashion Gallery, one of the first concept stores in the world. Susan graduated in geography from Cambridge University and is also an Associate Member of the CFA Institute. She lives in London with her husband.

11 thoughts on “Omg! Do you feel utterly powerless in our increasingly high-tech world?

  1. jgslang@gmail.com'
    November 26, 2011 at 15:12

    Maybe it’s a form of technological Stockholm syndrome: prisoners of the machines we have come to love them, or at least depend on them. In the beginning, which for me was 1983 with an IBM-PC, a techie friend gave me the sage advice: the machine is only as smart as its user. But with the Internet, and especially the current Web 2.0 iteration, that seems to have gone and we have all been transmuted into potential sources of profit – for others. The problem, dare I suggest is that we are in the hands of engineers whose credo is if it can be done, then it must be done. And social consequences don’t enter the equation. We live in interesting times, and they cut both ways.

    • info@shopcurious.com'
      November 26, 2011 at 16:48

      ‘a form of technological Stockholm syndrome’ – brilliant! You don’t hear the old axiom ‘garbage in, garbage out’ much any more – perhaps that’s why the net’s so full of garbage? I think there are already grave social consequences – especially with people (the young in particular) having problems distinguishing between publicity/promotional driven content and reality.

      • jgslang@gmail.com'
        November 26, 2011 at 17:34

        Susan, I meant to send this with my comment, but couldn’t find it at the time.

        http://slate.me/uy3QX8

        The guy has also written a book – The Internet Delusion – but I don’t think I can face what are doubtless grim conclusions.

  2. andrewnixon@blueyonder.co.uk'
    November 26, 2011 at 15:12

    Given the horrendous technical problems we’ve been having with The Dabbler in the last few days (which meant Susan couldn’t add pics this week), this is a timely post.

    It’s terrifying how quickly everything breaks down when the power goes. Same thing at work – when the internet went down, the whole business ground to a halt, and this is a 25 year old publishing business that functioned perfectly well before internet but has gradually come to depend utterly on email.

  3. wormstir@gmail.com'
    November 26, 2011 at 15:30

    yes I store all my work files in my email account and when that goes down then Im completely stuffed!!! Hopefully the dabbler is sorted out now and we can relax safe in the knowledge that our pictures and links won’t disappear any more!

    (the flip side of all this technology lark is that it allowed me to go online to find a clever chap in pakistan who fixed the site for us!)

    • info@shopcurious.com'
      November 26, 2011 at 16:53

      I’d love the details of your far flung techie chap, Worm! Isn’t it interesting how the internet has made the world so much smaller? I get countless spam emails from all over the place – from manufacturers in China, to SEO specialists in the States and lots of strange messages I can’t even read because they’re in Arabic!

  4. finalcurtain@gmail.com'
    mahlerman
    November 27, 2011 at 08:46

    Yesterday and this morning I discovered that the Cow Pat piece I posted (nice alliteration) a few weeks ago had ‘gone viral’, and had received hundreds of comments. With a deep warm glow of satisfaction, I started to tidy my sock drawer, safe in the knowledge that, after a year of leading music-lovers down paths untrodden (thanks Walt), the blogosphere had finally started to wake-up to my obvious genius, and that it was just a matter of hours before the Controller of BBC4 was on the blower, suggesting that they were dropping Simon Russell Beale, and could I make myself available for a two-hander with the Domestic Goddess on what great composers liked for breakfast, and how their choices influenced their work – sounds like a winner, I thought.
    The truth was rather more prosaic – a cyber attack from multiple parties in America selling erection pills and other stuff that, should I type words like that, would consign this comment to some distant trash-bin.
    I see the good in the web Susan – the bad is too horrid to imagine

    • info@shopcurious.com'
      November 27, 2011 at 09:06

      I spotted the malicious spam attack a little earlier and notified admin (!) D’you think this may have been triggered by mention of Mr Sewell?

  5. owls001@gmail.com'
    November 27, 2011 at 12:26

    Do what us country folk do, keep a generator handy. and plenty of temporary options at the ready.

    • mcrean@snowpetrel.net'
      Mark
      November 27, 2011 at 14:56

      Yes, the Powerless Picnic hamper, a sturdy Edwardian box filled with interesting and tasty RetroProgressive treats for those moments when ” a malfunction has caused your life to stop working, Vodafone is searching for a solution”.

  6. alasguinns@me.com'
    Hey Skipper
    November 27, 2011 at 18:31

    It’s terrifying how quickly everything breaks down when the power goes.

    I was living in the Detroit area when there was a blackout that shutdown the NE US.

    For three days.

    Yes, it is terrifying that there is a God, and its name is Electricity, and there is woe upon the land when we are not in its presence.

    Interestingly, though, there was one thing that didn’t break down: social order.

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