Technorance

I have a confession to make, I sometime don’t know things.

For instance I like music but have very little interest in the people who make it, which leaves me at a disadvantage and I often find myself scurrying to Wikipedia to find out who Nick Cave is or why people are upset that Nelg Flotwich has died. The one thing I don’t do is tweet “Who’s Nelg Flotwich?” Why would I? With the resources available to me I can probably discover for myself who Nelg is without bothering other people and showing my ignorance. However, other people don’t seem to have that same compunction, especially when it comes to technology.

We’ve all met these people. They’re the ones who have a Nokia 3310 and can’t pull it out of their pocket without announcing that they only need a phone that makes phone calls (even though that phone has a GPRS browser and can text). Then they put it back in their pocket wearing a smug expression that they hold right up to the point that they need to find out the time of the last train to Huddersfield. Then it’s “Martin, can you look up the train times for me on that fancy phone of yours.”

Now, you may be thinking, what if they’re poor and can’t afford fancy phones? Well these people are never poor, they’re simply trying to make some kind of point. Also smartphones are not fancy, you can pick up a half decent Android smartphone for £25 at Argos (at date of posting). No, I’m afraid this is something else, something I hate to call Technorance.

I do see the irony of railing against the technorant on a technological medium, so I’m going to stop there and respond to a news story I just read. I may return to this subject in the future, if I can work out how to use the terrifying hover computer.

If you fancy getting to grips with technology, you could do worse than downloading the second episode of the podcast I do with my friend Andrew. You can get it at iTunes and wilsonandwolfenden.com. I would be most grateful if would subscribe on iTunes.