Hi-tech is lost on me

Jan 18 2009 by Colin Patterson, Sunday Sun

AS I may have mentioned before, I’m not an early adopter of new technology.

I wasn’t terribly impressed a few years ago when I was waiting to take delivery of a bedside cabinet, only to be told down the phone that my address didn’t exist.

“I’m sitting in it”, I pointed out to the caller, but since his satellite navigation system had told him that my road, let alone my house, wasn’t on the planet, who was I to argue? The bedside cabinet did finally arrive, but not until an A to Z had been consulted.

Over the years, we’ve all had a good-natured giggle at our continental chums, usually German for some reason, who’ve managed to drive their cars off the ends of jetties because their GPS told them to do so. It’s not so funny if you are the owner of the farm at the end of the one lane cart-track up Mount Snowden that people get directed to as a shortcut, or indeed if you are the motorist concerned.

On my holiday travels this Christmas, renting a car in the States for a couple of days, my friend Tom and I decided we should drag ourselves into the 21st century and get a navigation system.

It plugged into the cigarette lighter and you just typed where you were going into it and, according to the woman behind the desk, it was so simple a five-year-old child could operate it. In fact, she may have said a three-year-old, and how could you get lost on Long Island, anyway?

All started swimmingly, until we made a wrong turning, whereupon the beautifully-spoken woman who had been mispronouncing road names fell silent.

Then she uttered a word we were destined to hear more and more as the day went on. “Recalculating” she said, with a slightly depressed tone to her voice.

We had the distinct impression that she was muttering “Humans, and males at that . . . hopeless” under her breath. Then she stopped talking for about six miles. We started to think that she’d gone off shift and her colleague hadn’t turned up to replace her, presumably lost, but it turned out we’d switched the unit off by mistake after it fell off the dashboard onto the floor.

And only a slight confusion over which button operated the electrically-powered windows saved her from making an undignified and unscheduled exit from the vehicle.

What we needed of course was a three-year-old child to operate it properly. Or a map!