Technophobia 11

Have I Got News for You makes Twitter look ridiculous by showcasing some absurd tweets out of context. Ian Hislop and Paul Merton are both tech hold-outs. Many still assume that controversies played out on Twitter can be ignored because Twitter isn't the real world. Are we back to "Facebook friends aren't real friends because they're just noughts and ones"? (May 2022)

I'm still telling people how to create a thread by replying to their own tweets, and switch to "Following".

Quote tweet the first message in a thread with the word "thread" – don’t retweet each message of the thread. If you do that we’ll have to read the thread backwards, like in the early days. 

After 24 hours of nonsense and abuse on this platform [Twitter] I realised I could change my settings (again) and limit the comments. (@RuthSmeeth Perhaps the HoC could write a short guide for MPs?)

In Allison Bailey’s Tribunal (she's suing Stonewall and her employers), a huge “bundle” of documents is provided online. The pagination is out of sync and the info is hard to navigate. @tribunaltweets points out that online pages can be bookmarked in your browser. (2 May 2022)

Bailey alleges that Stonewall was in breach of the Equality Act 2010. She is claiming victimisation discrimination on the grounds of sex and/or sexual orientation against Garden Court, and that Stonewall instructed, caused or induced that unlawful conduct. (Wikipedia)

Dame Penelope Keith, 82, has been ousted as president of the Actors’ Benevolent Fund. “The dreaded Zoom was a great problem. I loathed it. With Zoom meetings, the people who talk and talk and talk will talk and talk and talk. The people you really want to hear won’t have their say. You can’t catch their eye and raise a finger and say what do you think. That was the time the divisions started in the council. It just got worse and worse. I put a lot of this down to Zoom.”

Yes, but I didn’t inhale: "I give lectures on Zoom but I don’t record them."

A colleague was once called out for a broken screen. It had gone dark and moving the mouse brought it back to life. (@GilERS24)

I had a long conversation on Twitter with someone who started off with “In the old days if your computer died you lost all your work”. Me: There were external hard disks, or you could back up on floppy disks. Her: You didn’t get much on a floppy and it was too much of a faff. Me: You had a box full of floppy disks with all your backups, and backing up took a few minutes. Now she’s saying “I guess that you don’t have ADHD.” Classic “Why don’t you... Yes, but...”

It's 2021 and some people still don't realise that software is customisable. 

Removing work email was a game changer. I also removed all notifications from my phone, period. The only time I am alerted to a text, personal email, social media alert or anything is if I actually go into the app. It’s done wonders for my mental health. (@drtiffanyc1 You can turn off most beeps, and you don't have to have email or Facebook on your phone. I don't have email on my phone because I can't work out how to install it... And even if I install it, it won't bring my calendar with it, because reasons. Update: I have email on my phone, but still can't see how to include my calendar.)

We're on a worldwide computer network that allows us to reach most of the world at will and delivers to us close to all the knowledge and information and writing and imagery ever made, all for free, so naturally the main thing that occurs to people is to complain about it. (Gary Farber)

I suggested to a doctor friend that she could search her hard disk for lost files. She replied: “Yes, there’s a search facility in Windows 11 but why would I need to?” Thank heavens for Macs and Spotlight. No wonder people keep ALL their working files on their desktop. 

People say “I don’t do X because I don't know how” as if it was impossible to find out. Never “I don’t know how to do that – would you tell me?”

Nadine Dorries thinks the internet is about ten years old. It’s more like 40 years old. (Users tend to think technology sprang into being the year they discovered it.)

It’s 2022 and political debate is being carried on through stickers. They’re anonymous, they can’t be censored – though Gwent Police tried.

When digital TV came in people watched with the wrong aspect ratio so that everybody on the screen looked short and fat. When colour TV came in football pitches were emerald and everybody’s face bright pink. If you kindly tried to adjust the picture you’d get the usual shriek: Don’t touch it! Don’t touch it! It’s fine as it is! You’ll only make it worse! I like it like that!

It’s Jan 2022 and academics are excitedly telling each other that you can search for paragraph breaks with ^p. I should have told them about Advanced Find and Replace. It’s accessible via the Edit menu, or you can change your keyboard shortcut (Apple+F or Ctrl+F) to go to Advanced Find and Replace instead of just plain Find.

About 15 years after smartphones arrived, people are still saying self-righteously: “I only use my phone for making phone calls.”

Who remembers “Everyone reading Kindles on the tube is reading p*rn!” Twenty years ago?

Thirty years ago, people worried about the internet and email bringing “information overload”. Didn’t they want people to know stuff?

Now that most people have tried a bit of layout, created a website, put out a parish mag, they are no longer so baffled about how a magazine is assembled. They used to think “freelances” wrote stuff which then magically appeared on a page, next to an appropriate picture, on a newsstand. But 30, 40 years ago people were very incurious about what their friends did at work – they were even incurious about what their colleagues got up to. It was even possible to work at a magazine and not know or care how it was put together. A colleague still thought the publication would be printed by hot metal in a basement when we were producing camera-ready artwork on a daisy-wheel printer. It didn’t help that the printers were fiercely protective of their craft and didn’t like visitors. They took huge advantage, went on strike and – as anyone could have predicted – were replaced by computers, practically overnight. Oh, and there were no female printers.

In Facebook, open Notifications. Click on Unread. Click on three grey dots, and mark all as read. And it took me years to work out what that bell icon was for.

More here, and links to the rest.