A 5lb hammer, a piece of wire and a good pair of pliers is all that was required not so long ago to fix almost everything, says Evelyn John Holtzhausen.
I was reminded of this recently when I decided to synch my contacts across my three communications platforms: MacBook, iPad and iPhone.
I watched happily as the little circles whirred around and around on the machines connected either through the umbilical wire the techno savvy call a “lightening cables”, or wirelessley. Then came time to shut down and to go home happy in the knowledge that the machines have a great, empowering relationship and had been “talking ” to each other and life was good.
On my way home I had to make an urgent call. And? Yes you guessed it.
All my contacts were, as my toddler daughter used to say “all gone Daddy, all gone”.
Of course I had back-ups. That’s not the point.
We live in a famine of time.
I was looking forward to going home, kicking back and enjoying some serious down time – without anything with an “i” in front of its name anywhere in sight.
Now I was being forced to trash my anticipation of staring at the wall to switch on, do Google searches about restoring backups and figure out how to get my iFriends not only to talk to each other but to share as well. Like in the old days when I had to “share” whatever treasures I had with my brother or sister, it seems the same pertains with these communication machines: they don’t want to share either.
Relationships! Eish!
Back in the day- as they say- a quick tap with the 5lb hammer would have solved the problem. And if the tap was too heavy-handed the wire and pliers would have been adequate to stitch the shattered pieces together again.
As it was I got home, plugged all my iToys into each other, adjusted their attitude (enabled the Cloud or whatever) and allowed the relationships to develop – as they did and I got all my contacts back.
This was less of a problem to solve than when my phone went mysteriously silent after I inadvertently activated the “do not disturb” button and blocked all incoming calls… but that’s another story.
The thing is: the older I get the less I want of change. In fact I hate it. I want things to stay the same.
Please: can’t we just leave things as they are for a while. No upgrades, no downloads and no synchs.
Life could be bliss.
We might just have the time to chill and even, as spring gets ready to be sprung find time to smell the fynbos.
Evelyn Holtzhausen is CEO of HWB Communications.
