CLEVER BUT NOT SMART

My Brother is clever. He must be as he works in the City of London for an International banking group. However, he isn’t smart because as he says he doesn’t have a phone that is so called smart. So, when he’s buying tickets for his favourite football teams games, he prints out from his desktop computer. He has no Apps and seems not to be missing out.

I recently bought a ticket to a concert which at the time of buying failed to appreciate I would not receive either an email with a ticket attached or tickets in the post. This concert was solely sold as a mobile phone ticket event only. I couldn’t work out how to get my ticket from my computer to my phone. I hear everyone reading this that’s its easy you just download the App and log on. I the got the message that the internet might not work when I attempt to show my ticket at the venue, and I should save the ticket(which I had yet to put on my phone) to my phone using a wallet. I gather this is another App. I just followed instructions and hey presto it seemed to work but I will not know for sure until I am at the concert. This takes place next week so my next blog entry could be very sad. I have no confidence in technology.

I like plan B’s as in a hard copy back up. Even when I fly, I have paper tickets. Interestingly I note buses are not issuing paper tickets now. In shops one needs to ask for a paper receipt. Only the other day when I asked my local shop keeper for a receipt, he told me he would email it to me. This he did and I only naturally printed it out so I could file away in a box never to refer to it again. Those IT experts of which there seem to be hundreds never stop urging me to welcome technology and embrace the culture, but I am fearful of losing out. I have been told its easy to download items such as photos but its only easy if you know how. I often dream of taking IT people into my glass studio and give them two pieces of glass tubing, then tell them to join them together. Its easy I say and when they fail after the hundredth time, I show them. Even when I show them, they can’t do it! That’s the difference between technology and technique. One is human led the other just exists to annoy!

I wanted to hire a car and was told that I needed a voucher but not a hard copy version. This voucher had to exist on my phone so once again I was struggling to add an App to my phone. Of course, once I found out how it was easy. Using my example of showing just how easy it is to join two glass tubes together I highlight knowledge and learning how to do something are completely different. Probably just as well since art involves creativity whereas techno mumbo jumbo just involves err well actually, I don’t know what. Anyway, I got the voucher but now I need a special code which I had to apply online for from the DVLA. This involved me remembering my National Insurance number which is different to my National Health Number which is used when I do certain activities in my role as a Beaver Scout Leader. Got my number which I note is only valid for twenty-one days and my car hire was due to commence in twenty days so that was good.

Speaking of cars leads me onto car insurance and bizarrely I have just received my renewal correspondence in a security protected email. Of course, I had forgotten my password but applied for a new one. Now I am used to attachments so when I noted the email from the insurance company had loads, I knew that to click on them would help as they opened up in front of me. Trouble was they didn’t, and I had to search the screen to find the “button” to click on then all was well. But all this work is so time consuming that is wasted on me and I could be doing so much creativity.

It is said that technology is designed to make our lives easier. Trouble is I don’t want my life to be focused on ease. I want fulfilment. I want to be loved and to love. I want desire, passion, and care. I want to feel my life is making a contribution to a society that I am proud to be apart of. I want to create without barriers, without judgement and without limitations. I want to feel included in life and to feel normal (tough ask I know!). Sadly, I don’t get this from inanimate things like software and hardware who all seem to exist without a beating heart!

What’s all this got to do with glass one might say. Well haven’t you heard of glass fibre optics? Without glass there would be no IT and then we would all be snookered, up the Khyber and round the bend.