Forgot yesterday to stick up the latest Technobile I have written for The Guardian.
Continuing with my mild criticism of the sub-editing of the column – I have to say I burst out laughing when I saw that ADSL had been spelt out in the first – the first! – sentence.
The art of sub-editing is clarifying matters. Sometimes this is forgotten when rules are introduced to simplify the task. You really have to question what spelling out “asymmetric digital subscriber line” has done for the column – except turn the reader off within the first 10 words. I don't know.
My sub-editing choice, if it was felt important to explain ADSL (which I would argue it wasn't), would simply be to kill it altogether and run with “If it hadn't been my brother's modem…”
Hey ho.
Technobile
My brother's modem is surely possessed by the devil, and there's only one way to get rid of it …
Kieren McCarthy
Thursday December 15, 2005
The Guardian
If it hadn't been my brother's ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) modem, I would have smashed its smug curved face in. Would have stamped all over it, trampled bits of circuit board into the carpet and chewed on the comforting green LEDs that only moments before had claimed everything was working fine.
But it had me over a barrel and knew it. I needed that internet connection and the modem was the only thing that was going to provide it.
There comes a time in every technology's life when it is able to extract the most pure, mind-melting fury from its users. That point is just after widespread adoption, but just before all the glitches are ironed out. We are there with broadband internet.
Ho, ho, ho! you can hear technology Santa or, rather, Satan, crying out. Even St Nick has jumped on to the upgrade merry-go-round, distributing thousands of presents this Christmas that will make last year's obsolete. Meanwhile, thousands of companies are so keen to win the broadband sledge race that they keep forgetting about the trees on the way down. Or how to stop when they reach the bottom.
I am at my brother's flat trying to get an internet connection with exactly the same technology he uses: a Centrino chipset connecting to a Linksys wireless router, connected to an ADSL modem, connected to a telephone line.
I have all the passwords and security keys for the entire network.
And yet, five hours later, I am reduced to repeatedly shouting the same four-letter word at the smiley router that has yet to provide my laptop with so much as a single usable data packet.
There is a new lead connecting the modem to the telephone line, and a new Ethernet cable connecting the laptop to the modem. Everything else has been stripped out and is lying, bloodstained and groaning, on the floor. And yet, oblivious to the technological massacre perpetrated in the room, the modem sits there smiling. There is not a single earthly reason why the system shouldn't be working. Yet it isn't.
Fortunately, this insanely angry user has been here before and learned a very expensive, but valuable, lesson. I'll share it with you now: turn it all off and go to bed. The next day, the exact same technology will work first time, straight off, no complaints – mocking you, the impotent, hopeless analogue bundle of flesh and sinew.
And that is exactly what happened. I hate technology.
