Things I Don't Understand, Part Three

This one is all about technology.

Yes, I am saying I don't understand the main driving force for the advancement of humanity over at least the last few centuries. It's no big deal.

The following is a selection of my problems with technology:


The Internet moves too quickly, I move too slowly

It wasn't always this way.

I've never been an IT hardware expert or programmer or anything like that, but there was a time when I was a surprisingly early adapter to stuff on the Internet. That time was called the late 1990s. I was a solid hand at ICQ, trolling people on early online forums and chat logs, and navigating Geocities webpages. I was an avid music downloader from whatever host hadn't been shut down yet. One song at a time of course, because it was all my dial-up connection could take, at about 3 minutes per megabyte on a very good day. I even learnt to build websites with amazing features like frames and graphical buttons using free, by which I mean probably pirated, software.

I think I was reasonably Internet savvy up until about 2009. Not on top of my game like a decade earlier, but still abreast of the latest Internet phenomenons like that dude singing Chocolate Rain and the breakdancing bear gif and so on.

Then two things happened.

Firstly, I ignored Twitter until it was too late - and by too late, I mean it had been taken completely over by celebrities and corporations advertising their commercial interests. The only space left for regular people was desperately trying to get onto the bottom of the screen on Q&A.

Having missed that bus, I lost my confidence to ride any bus at all. Instagram. Vine. Candy Crush. Snapchat. Chatroulette. The straight hookup app. The gay hookup app. All passed me by.

Secondly, old people getting on Facebook. This was the first time I ever did something on the Internet that my parents generation also did. I was officially old. And so I gave up trying to keep up. I don't want to fake being good with technology when I can just revel in my ignorance and get younger people exasperated trying to explain stuff to me.


Then sometimes the Internet doesn't move quickly at all

If you move house and try to relocate your phone and Internet connection, it takes 10 to 20 working days to connect. In 2015. I know the Internet is a complicated series of tubes but this seems absurd.


It's meant to simplify but sometimes it's just really complicated

I have so many multimedia devices that I have an estimated 174329243742 remote controls. Mostly I just want to turn the TV on, change channels and adjust volume.


Until in the hands of the next generation

My 21 month old sons can use this same incomprehensible remote control network to get to ABC Kids from anywhere and crank up the volume. Yet they still poop their pants all the time. Unbelievable.


Finally, the Internet should be a tool for human advancement, instead makes you weep for humanity

You'll know this is you've ever read online comments under anything online ever.

In society, we have unwritten rules about conduct and interaction with others. On the Internet, the guise of anonymity provides more freedom. With greater freedom of expression, people are usually dicks.

I've therefore concluded these rules aren't just about being polite and protecting others feelings, they are also about protecting the individual from self-harm.

An example - consider the person who comments on some lengthy opinion piece they only read the headline to by saying "who cares?" non-ironically, or by completely missing the point of the article on account of having not read its contents. Or even better, the 7th person who comments in this way. This is an actual real person! That person probably wants to express that same idiotic no-value commentary during every random conversion they only partially hear or don't fully grasp in real life too. But they don't. Because the rules of society make them accountable and delivers consequences for their stupid actions.

Online, without these consequences, our true selves - ignorant and witless, racist and misogynist, angry and sweary, judgmental and lacking empathy, greedy and naive - are revealed in its full ugliness. I don't preclude myself from this, although I have the self-awareness to moderate my behaviour to a degree. But I'm still much worse online than in person.

If everyone acted in the same way "in real life" as they do on the Internet, most people would devolve into jobless social pariahs randomly punching each other in the face and flashing their genitals to strangers.