I return to technophobia. Lest this blog become a neo-Luddite tract I want it clearly understood that I’m not trying to be “amusing and eccentric”. I’m genuinely angry and concerned about digital convergence and my struggles to keep apace with it. This incompetence is neither funny nor charming and hardly unique. The wider ramifications of that last point I want to explore, but first a clarification: my problem is not with computers in the strictest sense. Computers- the machines- are a marvel, a deeply impressive manifestation of mankind’s genius, conceived by engineers and scientists whose only limits appear to be those of natural, physical laws; the width of molecules, the malleability of light, the speed of an electron are all that hem them in. No, my problem is with software. Software, for the most part, seems to be the progeny of sociopaths. It is designed, executed and disseminated by fraudulent, bullying, blackmailing hostage-takers, and I’ve had it up to my degenerating eyeballs with them.

I’m going to make a comparison with the motorcar, that other great advance and illness of the twentieth century and another device I have enormous difficulty reconciling myself with. Cars, like computers, are complex machines of which very few of us have a complete, nuts and bolts understanding. We rely on others to repair them when they fail, yet most of us in the (Western) world own at least one, rely on one, depend almost utterly upon one to convey us whence we need to go. Complex as it is, as constantly refined and improved upon as they are by the manufacturers, we need no “user interface” with a car. We acquire the requisite user skills and then we control it directly, using our working knowledge of the car under licence and insurance. The same knowledge is rarely acquired in advance of computer ownership or use; we unpack it, plug it in and expect to “go” anywhere and everywhere immediately. Indeed we are encouraged to expect so by the software mavens.

The software is our chauffeur, a middleman, translating our human A to B desires into the zeroes and ones language of the computer. Yet imagine how frustrating a literal journey would be if you surrendered the driving seat to a chauffeur who not only could not speak your language but also lacked knowledge of the local roads, the quickest or safest routes, the Highway Code or was just a complete fucking idiot. This is the software experience.
My recently documented problems with eBay aside, let me name and shame some other examples of software and web design idiocy:

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP
The software that killed a hundred thousand printing businesses and, more than any other package, heralded the rise of the “good enough” amateurism that is the hallmark of the digital era. Despite latterly being adopted by many professional printers as their package of choice, it remains widely misunderstood and ham-fistedly used. I could fill a book with stories, but a recent example saw colleagues handing a layout into a pro print shop, said layout containing certain fonts that the shop did not have on file (one questions why a printer would not avail themselves of any and all fonts, but never mind). Photoshop, rather than flagging that discrepancy, simply replaces all text in the unknown font with another random font from the files. That substitution, in the days of plate-based lithography, would not only have been virtually impossible but tantamount to wilful sabotage of the job, as anathema as changing colours or text content. Yet every day, in digital print shops up and own the land, computer software packages like Photoshop make countless automatic “helpful” changes to specified layouts that go unnoticed until the job is printed, resulting in masses of paper wastage and costly reprinting.
BIGFOOT
This woeful troop of keyboard-stabbing baboons offer a webmail service that will periodically deliver your messages to recipients bereft of all text. Infuriating.
HP SCAN PRO & PHOTOSMART STUDIO
These pieces of garbage came with my scanner and the former has to be used in order to import images from it to other, better applications (such as iPhoto). The software will occasionally and completely without input, warning or discernible reason skew the images it scans by about twenty degrees clockwise. This will happen time and time again on repeated scans of the same image, yet scans taken from other images placed on the flatbed during these periods are fine. This skewing ceases as suddenly and inexplicably as it starts, again without any given instruction. The Studio package also features a tool called Stitch, which is clearly intended as a quick way to join disparate images into one, especially to create panoramic landscapes. Yet the software will crop a pre-set amount from the ends of each photo before fuzzily “melting” them together. In other words, even if you were a sufficiently skilled photographer as to have taken shots that married with one another right down to the last pixel, there’s no way for this inherently useless tool to provide you with anything other than considerably less than the sum of their parts. Mind-boggling.
iTUNES
The latest versions of iTunes will, when downloading music from the store or uploading it from certain cds, retrieve album artwork for the purposes of the improved screen displays on newer iPods. Can someone explain to me why, when I listen to Danny Elfman’s score for Spider-Man2, I’m shown the cover to his first Batman composition? Or when I’m enjoying Derek & Clive: Come Again, I’m looking at the debut album from Derek Clegg? Correct me if I’m wrong, but in terms of raw data, aren’t the words Spider-Man & Batman and Clive & Clegg as different as the numbers 34678 and 74386? Imagine what would happen if, say, Excel were as lazily written as to allow those to be transposed? Why does iTunes have the discernment of a cloth-eared, slightly stoned record shop assistant? Puzzling.
MICROSOFT ENTOURAGE/ MAC OSX/ SAFARI
I cannot use the Macintosh application Mail on my computer; imported emails from my previous machine brought with them a fatal error that prevented Mail from ever launching properly. I had no choice but to abandon it and start using Entourage instead. Fine. But there is no way- at least no way I know of- to set Entourage as my default email application. Whenever I’m looking at a website in Safari and click on an email link, off my hard drive goes, looking for Mail. The OSX software allows for a dazzling array of preferences and personalised touches. I can, naturally, set my machine to “prefer” any number of applications other than those specified in the factory settings. Yet it appears to have occurred to no-one at Apple that users might not want, or even find themselves unable, to use Mail. Cretinous.
I say “no way I know of” because the in-built Help application, intended it seems to offer answers to users in strife, cannot provide assistance. How is it- in 2008- that Help appears to have been equipped with as narrow a vocabulary as a ZX Spectrum text-based role playing game? Staggering.
US AIRWAYS
This airline run a website that accepts international bookings, yet include a billing form that can handle only US zip codes. Entering anything else sends the system into an anti-fraud spiral that’ll have your credit card frozen and your phone bill jacked up by unplanned calls to their American contact centre before you can say “no meal option”, negating any money saved by “booking direct” in the first place. Galling.

Bear in mind that every one of these examples is by design, ipso facto. Computers cannot think, they cannot act, they cannot decide. Programmers though, acted and made the choice to have their software perform in this fashion. Human beings crafted facilities, features and applications that run counter to human intuition, needs and expectations. Madness. And yet the marketers and the developers continue to sell us the lie that these things will make our lives easier.

How to end the kind of widespread misery that has followed the launch of, say, Microsoft Vista and the subsequent deliberate withdrawal of Windows? I return to the car, and the need for either an equivalent to the red flag-waving signalmen that used to precede the earliest motorists (i.e. a frank unilateral admission that this is all bullshit, that new applications can scarcely do anything other than stumble, fail and misfire) or a driving licence, a standardised certification of IT knowledge that will enable us all to circumvent the inherent problems in mass-marketed software. Absurd, you say? Misuse of cars can inflect terrible damage, ditto firearms, which is why their ownership is subject to licence. Computers may exasperate, but they can do us no harm. Really?

Several organisations charged with social policy provision, including the International Futures Forum, recognise an increase in mental health problems approaching “pandemic” scale. They believe a significant factor is the shortening of both attention spans and patience by the breathless pace of broadband media, the incredibly high turnover and rapid obsolescence of digital product, the associative effect of prolonged screentime (your computer becomes you; its flaws are your flaws) and moreover the disassociative effect of constant alias or avatar use and certain sites that simulate social interaction but signally fail to offer the subtle, multifaceted reward and hard lessons of the human experience. I’m heartened to read of the advent of Griefers, latter day Dadaists and “virtual terrorists” who- it seems to me- are the only ones to have truly embraced what’s possible in these sprawling digital realms of the imaginary (Second Life etc.); disrupting mawkish “weddings” between over-sized pink tigers and anti-gravity boobed glamazons, asinine business conferences between pretend people selling pretend products for pretend money and po-faced “campaigns” by highly-strung role players. Griefers exhibit an unstoppable joi de vivre and healthy disregard for taste, decency and manners and we need more of them before the whole bloody planet gets Facebooked.

But I digress; hardware good, software bad. I’m afraid I don’t have any neater or pithier coda than that, just an ache in need of articulation. Like Sideshow Bob before me, I’m aware of the inherent irony of using a media in order to decry it. Unlike him, I do not propose it be abolished. What I think is sorely needed is reflection; we’re heading somewhere, but we’re going to fast to see the passing landscape and thereby appraise the likely destination. The way we receive information influences the way we process it, the conclusions drawn and ultimately the way we perceive and manage our world. As outlined above, the printing industry as we knew it has all but ceased to exist. The recording industry is set to follow. There are some in publishing who plan in earnest for the “end of paper”, expecting it early in the next decade. The recent American screenwriters strike and the accordant scarcity of new television has shown broadcasters just how willing audiences are to turn from spoon-fed scheduling and polished, “event” programming to self-selected channels, gaming and endless hours of amateur offerings. TV sets, phones, furniture; all become computers, computers become all. Certainly no one will die for lack of YouTube, but always, always, the gulf between those connected and those who are not widens. We face enough discord in the years ahead without an irreconcilable iGap between young and old, east and west and rich and poor. This needs debated, loudly, reasonably and quickly, and somewhere other than the self-serving blogosphere.

And with that, I exorcise the subject. Time to get back to what I came here for; big time, industrial strength geekery.

I really, really don't know what to think about this.

I recently listened to a presentation by Dr Tom Shakespeare, a noted visual artist and academic who happens to have achrondoplasia, in which he made a similar statement to that being put forwatd by Tomato (?) Lichy and his partner; that there is no such thing as a disability, merely a circumstance that society does not readily accommodate. In other words, a better, more tolerant and egalitarian world would include no-one who could be considered disabled.

It's certainly a challenging and noble sentiment. Dr Shakespeare's condition clearly denies him only a few physical dimensions. His cognitive abilities and senses are fully realised, and so it's easier for "normal" people to swallow his proactive approach. His life experience cannot differ so very greatly from that of the majority, we can imagine being in his place and the prejudice and the set backs he encounters, admire his good-humoured but straight-talking ownership of the genetic card he's been dealt.

It's harder when a person who cannot experience the world in the same way that most do, as Mr Lichy and his family cannot, claims that his lack of a primary sense is not only not a disability, but speaks of the deaf as if they were a nation, one with a language, culture and traditions of its own. Mr Lichy bandies the words "eugenics" at anyone who claims his desire to intentionally bring another deaf child into the world is morally wrong; he sees no difference between the civil rights movements for women, ethnic minorities, lgbt groups and the disabled. To deny the latter the right to be born is as abominable as permitting no black children to born, says he.

For the moment I'll leave to one side the point that sign language can be acquired by hearing or non-hearing people, allowing both to engage in the "deaf culture" he describes, while nothing in the world can teach a deaf-from-birth child to hear. I listened to Mr Lichy and his partner speaking through an interpreter today. Time and again they used the example of their living, deaf and by all accounts happy and brilliant child as justification for actively choosing to have another with the same condition. Tellingly, they relied again and again on visual examples; the couple both work in a theatre company, so they frequently mentioned the child's joy in performing arts, invariably talking about colour and movement and so on.

So the question has to be asked of this pair of doting parents; are blind people disabled? If you were to be told one of your frozen embryos would certainly develop into a child who could hear but could not see, would you be thrilled at the opportunity to induct her into "blind culture" or would you pause? Reconsider? Consciously reject her in favour of another?

I'm loathe to condemn this couple, I think they are highlighting something that needs to be debated, but I'm saddened that they feel the need to be so wilfully contrary. Going so far as to describe a child who can hear as disabled and saying they "feel sorry" for John Humphries because he can't appreciate a joke told in sign language just makes them appear like post-libertarian weirdoes.

What happens to human gametes and embryos in future, as stem cell research continues apace, infertility spirals ever-upwards and we in the West have less children and later in life to boot, is crucial. Human organs likewise. Personally, I say donation of any and all tissue should be an opt-out, not opt-in proposition. Living people are more important than the dead and yet to be born, end of story. As for who gets to be born and who doesn't... Urgh.

All I can say is this. I always thought a hallmark of parenting was the aspiration that your children would have better, fuller, longer, happier, richer (in every sense) lives than your own. In appearing to campaign for the "right" to ensure their next child will not be able to do a thing that they also cannot do (the least loaded way I can put it), this couple might be at the cutting edge of societal dynamics but they're stretching the definition of familial love to breaking point.

I'm no computer expert. I can't tinker with the bolier rooms of websites. Java's for drinking, not scripting. I've sat through tuition on Dreamweaver and been shocked by how hit and miss, see if it sticks the whole process of web design is, or at least appears to be. Sure, I can do a bit of html code, but that's as deep as my knowledge goes.

I've just spent the best part of three hours, on two different computers, trying to get an online auction going on eBay. Specifically, I've tried to set a reserve price on a lot. Forgive my old-fashioned thinking, but I don't think an auction is an auction without a reserve price. If you don't care how much you get, you're begging.

Anyway, this most popular of ecommerce sites, a system that children use daily, that cranially damaged spud-a-likes hooked to lung pumps sail through, transforms into a labyrinth of frustation and despair at my fingertips. This happens to me a lot. I have access to a top of the line machine, the broadest of bandwidths and a decent brain. Yet much of the worlwide web is a closed box. I can't post a video to YouTube without it stretching and squashing to the wrong aspect ratio. I can't get my head round Photoshop, Flash or Firefox. I recently found that out neither BitTorrent not iChat actually work at all, except as space fillers on my hardrive. I don't subscribe to any RSS feeds and, as previously outlined, find Facebook unrelentingly naff.

The gap is widening. Within the next decade I'll be the digital equivalent of Adam Adamant, hopelessly unmoored from comtemporary life, hamfistedly trying to ram my usb dongle (and what cretin coined that particular gem, pray?)into the most intimate neural wet ports of a 700 tetrabyte, wah-fuhr theen zMac Ghost or whatever the hell.

Oh, double balls and bollocks.

Can anyone who doesn't fit into the category I'm about to describe explain to me what the point of Facebook is?

I've watched over the last few weeks as practically everyone I know has marched, zombie like, into the bosom of this latest internet craze. And yet, having looked over the shoulder of at least one subscriber, I'm baffled as to why on earth anyone would choose to waste their time on it.

Firstly, there's the constant use of counters, markers and other devices indicating number of visits, by whom and how recently. Savvy web users stopped including such things on sites years ago. Their reintroduction here is clearly nothing other than as a spur to users; get your numbers up lest you are perceived as a billy-no-mates.
Secondly, there's the issue of computer literacy. The demographics point to the over-whelming majority of users being (relatively) affluent, literate people with ready, daily access to a computer (most likely because they work with them). Such peiople are, I'd argue, likely to have already set up their own website(s), blog(s), forum(s) and if not responsible for their own, will be active participants in others'. Anyone who sahres their interests and wishes to conatct them via the web can most likely already do so via other channels and- more often than not- is encouraged to do so.
Thirdly, and lastly, there's the complete lack of novelty. For the most part it's just rehashing pre-internet fads (pet rocks, mood rings, bumper stickers, those folded-paper-question-and-answer-things you used to see in the playground, tomogotchi) and the least interesting features of older, less hip networking sites like Friends Reunited, MySpace etc (favourites lists and so on) leading to an over-emphasis, as far as I can see, on both twee cuteness and counter-cultural, obscuro-trivia one-upmanship (although I'll accept that these are endemic throughout all such sites).

CONCLUSION: the Facebook user is likely to already have a plethora of willing friends with whom they are in contact via other means. This means they can, with confidence, enter into the grand popularity contest. Once there, and being computer savvy, they can link to the numerous forums, blogs and sites in which they are already communicating with the self-same people they are referring. Family members are already "connected"; they're in your family. Work colleagues already "know you"; they work with you. And if not in the same building, your company probably has an intraweb for the purpose. And if not that, there's probably some other way (a union or other organisation; beyond these some professions have randomly latched on to other corners of the web [mine, for example, can increasingly found on Blogger over others and for no reason I can discern]). Ditto for people who share your hobbies, philosophy, whatever.

Some might say that Facebook is an attempt to "bring everything together", but to argue so completely ignores the constantly shifting sands of the internet's cultural desert. Right now, someone, somwhere, is coming up with an even more "versatile", inter-connected, snazzy, tricked-out cluster-fuck of a website, and six months hence we'll have to plow through article after tedious article in all the newspapers by journos and columnists who insist upon about how goddamn funny it is that all their time seems to get taken up by Gloobdoing or Snaffzoot or Soulslab or whatever the heel it's called and- imagine!- they've been exchanging messeages with someone for months who takes thr same bus as them every morning!

So in the end the only "benefit" of use is to have one's time wasted, daily, by shitty little digital avatars (abandon all hope, cartoonists) asking to be "fed" and trying to see who can come up with the obscurest quote from The Big Leboswski. Genuine self-expression or improvement is abandoned in favour of asinine, simulated parlour games. And the self-insistence on how much fun it all is seems just another part of the great lie of the digital age. Technology enslaves as much as it liberates, perhaps more, and we all know it. I'm without a functioning computer and land-line telephone at the moment and I feel as if I've lost a limb, and I hate myslef for that reliance. There's a tv ad on at the moment claiming that broadband, wireless, blackberries et al "let work fit around you". Nonsense. We all know they allow work to encroach further upon our own private lives. To be ever in-touch is to be ever- reachable and therefore never truly in repose. The two organisations for which I work (one professionally, the other voluntarily) are assailed at ludicrous hours with enquiries from people expecting nothing less than immediate service.

Gripe over.