Tech column 3: The Luddite

Here's my third and final idea of a new tech column so far:

The Luddite

The sardine has never been, nor was it ever likely to be, in the top flight of fish. But there was a time when, thanks to its gentle disposition, being canned gave it a regular slot in our diet.

The sardine can, with its revolutionary key design, first appeared in 1925 – nearly 40 years before the wheel can-opener we use today. Yet it was the fish’s very association with this mind-wrenchingly awful method of opening a container that sealed its fate.

Sadly, unfortunately, the mobile phone is likely to escape the same fate. But with blind rage spreading from brain to bruised thumb to brain again, this did not prevent calls upon the devil, not to mention a fornicating Messiah, to enact such revenge.

What makes opening a sardine can and taking the back off a mobile phone so very special is that both are pitched as being incredibly simple. The can had a key. It was easily inserted, sometimes pre-inserted. All you had to do was turn it. Likewise, the mobile phone comes with a small button you can press, whereupon all you have to do is “slide the back cover to remove it from the phone”. What could be simpler? Press and slide, press and slide.

Explain this: you approach a salesman who, in a glorious twist, actually knows what he’s talking about. You explain that all you want is a mobile phone whose battery lasts a long time, which is quite big (because small phones are hard to handle) and – stressing that this is the sole reason for upgrading – can be used to pick up email. That’s not all. You don’t really want a camera on it (you already have an excellent camera at home). You don’t want a radio (you already have an excellent radio at home). You don’t want it to play music files (same again). And you’re not really bothered if it has a colour screen.

You end up with the Nokia 6230i. It has a camera, a colour screen, a radio, plays music, plays maddening ringtones as standard and will not sit for longer than five minutes without singing some pixie song accompanied by swirling colour nonsenses. All of these terrible extras work perfectly. And yet after two phonecalls and numerous acronym-laden exchanges, it won’t so much pick up email as stride purposefully over it pretending it hasn’t seen anything unusual.

The fact is that when it comes to buying new technology, you often get a “gut moment”. You don’t know what it is or why it appears, but your gut tells you something’s wrong. You must train yourself to recognise this and immediately walk away, even if in mid-conversation. The shiny, tiny, email-hating Nokia 6230i had its own gut moment when the salesman demonstrated that the camera could also be used to record extremely poor quality video (got one of them at home too) with authentic stuck-in-a-big-tin-can sound.

“That’ll be good for happy slapping,” this purchaser offered, simultaneously demonstrating a tremendous grasp of both phone technology and youth culture. “I don’t think so, no,” said the disapproving salesman.

Surely there’s extra cachet for including a mobile phone employee in one of these violent short films. I wonder what time the shop closes.