Technophobia 13

Phasing in technology

Do you remember when everyone’s video player/recorder had a set of flashing noughts? It’s 2024 and some tweeps still don’t know how to create a thread by replying to their own posts.

PSA: When using Find/Replace in Word, remember it’ll change any word with that letter combination even if it’s in the middle of a completely different word where such a change would make no sense. You know, before you send sample pages to an agent. (@cocoskeeper. Select Advanced Find and Replace and make it the default.)

Anyone know how to put a keyword setting into twitter to filter out any content containing them? And does it also work for names? (@OwdAlbert. Click More, find Privacy and Security, and follow the steps to Mute Words.)

Yesterday a user opened by telling me "The software doesn't work." Upon remotely accessing, it turned out what they actually meant was "I don't know where the icon is." (@whispous)

For my entire 30 year career so far, my favorite part are the people who are TOO BUSY to learn something simple that will save them HOURS. If I had a nickel... (@one_dunkirk)

My old employer sent me away from one of the eight computers the sales staff used. He needed to check his emails if a customer had faxed yet. I said: "Why don't you use one of the others?". He said his emails were on the computer I was using. (@Formula1Wimbo)

Whoever posted yesterday about the fact that Word can read your work out loud, may your head always rest on the cool side of the pillow. (@ParanormalJunk2)

The feeling when you find out that your company basically depends on a single elderly Java programmer maintaining antediluvian legacy code. And the gentleman is about to retire, to boot. (@Agippo_Vermith)

Just read on Linkedin. For German lawyers to create a pdf, they need to print it on paper and then scan it to a pdf.  But a judgement was given so that this "extra step" is not necessary any longer. Digitalisation for Germany is progressing at a snail's pace. (Tehn Yit Chin @tehnyit. And I've just read that some German firms are phasing out fax machines.)

Pah, simple! A friend who works at a German archive has to print out every email received (I assume not including spam) and any response has to be printed and passed around on a round robin before they’re allowed to reply. Both original email and reply are then archived on paper. (@priddy)

At my current job as a tax collector, the woman training me had had this job for 20+ years. She was showing me how to do the Excel spreadsheet for the monthly totals, and wasn't using any formulas. She would use the calculator to add everything up and just document it. (@raspbrrytea)

We stopped having computer labs in school because "everyone knows how to use the computer now" and suddenly they didn’t any more. (@GOOPREALM5000)

Shoutout to everyone who remembers the days before satnavs, when you’d go to visit someone on the outskirts of London and four hours later you’d pass Big Ben for the second time while screaming. (@SoVeryBritish)

What I’ve learned from this post is there’s a remarkable number of people who think satnavs are somehow the work of the devil and not to be trusted. (@RobTemple101)

My beloved wife has just informed me that she accumulates Chrome tabs until Chrome eventually crashes, at which point she gets rid of them by clicking “don’t restore”. (@A_Luckmann. Bookmark your frequently visited sites, and save your files in a folder on the hard disk. It'll display them in alphabetical order!)


I once asked someone on a Teams call to share their screen and point at the problem. They shared their screen and then pointed with their finger at their own screen. (@RhysTEvans)

Zoom call member: I can’t see my desktop if I’m sharing my screen. (Solution: At top right, click "Exit fullscreen". You can also fix the Chat so that it pops up in the centre of the screen. I should make Youtube videos, shouldn't I?)

We’ve been using Zoom since lockdown and people still won’t mute themselves in a meeting of 20 people when one person is speaking. Even if you’re sitting there in silence, if your mike is on it will disturb the sound.

The academic who gives a Zoom lecture but doesn’t plan to record it and make it available: another case of “Oh yes, I use this dirty, demonic technology but I’m too holy to do that”?

About 25 years ago the magazine I was working for discovered the intranet concept and asked us to put up a photo and bio. Half of us did, but nobody designed the presentation so they were all different. That was the end of that for a bit. Then a colleague started running the internet from head office. Suddenly he had a whole department, and older, grander colleagues wondered what they were all doing. Then the mag put their whole archive online for free for a time. Now they have a whole separate online mag.

Big joke when social media arrived (20 years ago) – "The company’s account is run by an intern". Surely now a whole department?

When the firm I’d just joined got Macs instead of dumb terminals and a central server, they didn’t know they could save stuff locally. But at the same time they didn’t know there was still a central server and the whole magazine was not “in their machine”.

A few years ago:

Me: You can watch TV on your computer.
Them: I can’t because the computer is in the coldest room in the house.
Me: Get a space heater.

Others explain that “watching TV” can only happen if the whole family is sitting together on the sofa. Most people have caught up, and are watching TV on their phone.


Amazon is phasing out its checkout-less grocery stores with “Just Walk Out” technology, first reported by The Information Tuesday. The company’s senior vice president of grocery stores says they’re moving away from Just Walk Out, which relied on cameras and sensors to track what people were leaving the store with. Just over half of Amazon Fresh stores are equipped with Just Walk Out. The technology allows customers to skip checkout altogether by scanning a QR code when they enter the store. Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped. Instead, Amazon is moving towards Dash Carts, a scanner and screen that’s embedded in your shopping cart, allowing you to checkout as you shop. (Gizmodo.com. You had to put your glasses on and fiddle about with your phone before you could enter the shop. A writer to the Times letters page complains he has to pull over and put on his reading glasses before he can operate all his car's whizbang technology.)

A friend points out that many are strangely passive about Facebook. They moan that they don’t see posts from certain friends any more, when they just need to visit the friend’s page. And if they like or interact with the posts, that friend will appear in their newsfeed again.

People in the mid-90s who came to computers late simply couldn’t see that some of us had been using the things for at least a decade, and that this meant we were far more expert than the newbie. They bluffed and threw their weight about and wouldn’t listen when we tried to tell them how to do things.


Is there a word/phrase for that process where people first complain about technological change, then accept, then embrace it? (Lee Jackson, 2012. I call it "tomatisation": Tomatoes are poisonous, deadly, an aphrodisiac, condemned from the pulpit, decorative, delicious with cheese.)

Every new technological advance especially if social (blogging, twitter, the Internet, mobile phones) does a “Five Boys”: appalled, cautious approval, I’ve adopted it!, five prominent women say it has changed their lives, its days are numbered, it’s as dead as disco.

Geeks invent way of chatting, discussing, debating, getting help, making friends. Civilians don't want to know. Twenty years later when everybody has a computer and mobile phone a clunky version of the same thing is invented and it becomes this year’s must-have. But there are still those who just refuse to use a computer or any kind of technology.

A friend writes: I NEVER do Facebook, but when I sneakily take a peak for some reason, I LOVE your photos.


The spiral cords of old-fashioned phones used to get very tangled, and hence shorter and shorter. Every now and then you had to dangle the handset while the cord unwound itself. Men never did this. OK, some men. One Branestawm-like colleague let the cord wind itself until he could barely lift the handset to talk to anybody. Men never cleaned the cords, either.

Mice used to have a central trackball that got very dirty over time. The mouse ceased to work efficiently, and it was necessary to dismantle the mouse and clean the trackball. Men never did this.

Another thing men never cleaned – typewriter keys. (It was fun. Cleaning fluid, a toothbrush and toothpick.)

They never changed typewriter ribbons, either. The ribbons were supposed to switch direction when the reel came to an end. Sometimes you had to do this manually. Some humans continued typing on the same patch as the letters became fainter and fainter. Others typed everything in red because they didn't know how to switch to black.

It’s 2023 and I have a smart meter and a little gizmo that shows how much electricity I use – except it shows nothing. And I still need meter reading visits? And I need to supply a meter reading to query my bill? Well, EDF Energy? (The smart machinery is installed in the original metal cupboard, inside a cupboard, which may be the problem. It’s 2023 and to make the up-to-date technology work I have to remember to open both cupboard doors occasionally. The little gizmo shows nothing, as before.)


More here, and links to the rest.