If you have a certain recent model of smartphone, you will have discovered by now that it does not read QR codes and cannot be made to read them. You will have spent the past year writing your name and phone number every time you visit a shop. How can a device that can access every fact in the universe be so useless?
On the other hand, every year until now, you have collected your documents to take to the Tax Agent to do your tax. THIS time, however, you discover that the Tax Agent already has that information. You never TOLD them, they just knew. Why? Because of technology. It’s all there on the computer. It may be convenient, but it is also creepy. What ELSE do they know?
Jargon, fashion, fads, planned obsolescence, in-groups, status symbols and sheer expense all come together to make things difficult for us. Alienation, rather than enthusiasm is what a lot of us feel about technology. If it is so EASY and CONVENIENT (as we are told) why do we Technophobes find it so DIFFICULT, not to mention CREEPY? We feel like the ‘out-group,’ waiting forever for the Technophiles either to realise the grave error of technology or at least to come and show us what to do.
It is time to bite the bullet. Now that COVID-19 has encouraged the world to be even more technology-dependent, we Technophobes need to help ourselves. We are not going to play the victim anymore. No, we are going to overcome all the, ahem, B.S. and make technology work FOR US.
We will discover in due course that all those people out there confidently computing away and doing EVERYTHING online, actually do not know what they are doing either! We will gain the edge on them by leveraging our deep scepticism and actually investigating these ‘app’ things and getting to the bottom of it all. We will use what we need and not be overwhelmed by the 99% of gadgets we do NOT need.
In each issue of Flourish Australia’s Panorama magazine, we will be able to read stories about how we came to the point where we no longer fear technology but HARNESS it to do our bidding. Every month, we will challenge ourselves to transcend Technophobia and take back control of our electrical gadgets. Maybe we’ll even find out how to read QR Codes.
