The irony is strong: a down-detector website is currently down 🙁 pic.twitter.com/EHZ2DEncLe
— Colin Armstrong (@colinarms) July 22, 2021
Overnight some of the world’s leading websites have been down. Even the down-protector sites are down.
We are now cautious of using the computers in our pockets to protect ourselves and others from the pandemic, as our phones can ping us down too.
We can become a slave even to the hardware. For us to be “up” , we need our phone to work, we are a slave to battery life. If my Fitbit falls below 20% battery life it demands attention by sending me an email.
We live in fear of malware and the virus’ it brings and of course every link we click on, could bring the unseen enemy upon us.
If computers laugh, it is not a playful laugh
The pleasure we receive from being connected on our phones is obvious and quite outweighs the problems of our hardware and software deficiencies.
But I wonder whether checking into a venue using an NHS QR code poster is something I will want to do again.
Each scan is potentially a sentence to a period of quarantine which will prevent me from taking people on my boat, running and swimming in the streets and pools of London, seeing my family and friends and conducting the face to face business meetings which have begun again.
Tacitly, my friends and colleagues agree. Why risk the summer holiday for a pint?
I look at the black screen of my iphone X and see it laughing at me. It is not a playful laugh.
Common ground
My daily companion , as I run the streets and swim the pools of London is George the poet, who I have come to late and via BBC sounds.
I have added www.GTPCG.com to the list of my favorites and am enjoying having some common ground with a different community. This is what computers can now do. Rather than compute, they connect and what this guy and his team are up to is – on a grander scale- what I am up to on this blog and on the AgeWage and Pension PlayPen linked in group. I am pleased that http://www.pensionplaypen.com has reopened and is another place of common ground
Computers need not laugh at us, they can be our servants and help us conduct a life less ordinary.
Striking the balance between respect for privacy and for the awesome power of technology to destroy it, while celebrating the common ground between us, is a way of sharing the laughter.
