grumpyf1

You know you’re getting old when it dawns on you that you’re outliving technological breakthroughs. You know the sort of thing – something revolutionary, that heralds a seismic shift it the way the modern world operates. Clever, time-saving, breathtaking and life-changing (and featuring a circuit board). It’s the future, baby! Until it isn’t any more. I got to pondering this when we laughed heartily in the office about someone asking if our camcorder used “tape”. Tape? Get with the times, Daddy-o! If it ain’t digital then for-get-it! I then attempted to explain to an impossibly young colleague that video tape in a camcorder was indeed once a “thing”, requiring the carrying of something the size of a briefcase around on your shoulder, containing batteries normally reserved for a bus, and a start-up time from pressing ‘Record’ so lengthy, couples were already getting divorced by the time it was ready to record them saying “I do”. After explaining what tape was, I realised I’d ...

Once upon a time, I taped my records, and listened to my favourite songs on a Walkman. It was great... as long as you wanted to listen in order, for no more than 90 minutes, stop half way through and had an endless supply of AA batteries. I used to sit in the pub with my friend Nigel, and talk about how it would be great to have something smaller than a packet of fags that could hold my entire record collection, and play it in any order I wanted. The younger, less bald, me would be startled that even my phone can do that now. And probably that I can’t eat three packets of Pork Scratchings in one night any more. The problem is, the more clever the gadgets get, with more options available to enhance your enjoyment, the less likely I am to be able to figure out what the hell it is I’m meant to be doing. Eventually, I wind up with whatever it is doing even less that before. At least I can be smug in the knowledge that it could do loads of other things if I wanted it too – and co...