For a while today, I thought I’d been locked out of my laptop. Ordinarily, back in the ‘office’ days, I sigh, stroll over to IT and ask them to take a look.
It’s harder when the whole nation is working from home. I couldn’t log on so I couldn’t email or chat or raise a service desk ticket. So I closed my laptop lid and went to make tea and toast, shortly before remembering I could use my phone to contact Tom The IT Whizz via the Slack app.
Tom was puzzled. I wasn’t showing up as locked, and yet every attempt I made was returning ‘User name and password not recognised’.
What can you do? It was a weird one for sure. Tom was about to talk me through how to check network connectivity, when I realised that it might... I mean just might...have had more to do with me trying to enter my password with the wrong keys.
“Hang on,” I texted. “I think I’m in...”
I didn’t know how to tell him I’d just been typing it wrong.
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When I did get back in to the system I managed to join the “Virtual Tea Break” just in time for them all to start talking about their elderly neighbours and relatives and what to do with them.
“Mine are real luddites,” said someone sipping a mug of tea in front of some flock wallpaper, “We’re thinking of just installing the Internet for them and letting them get on with it.”
I didn’t say anything but I did think that was a terrible idea. If I came home one day and found the whippersnappers next door had bought me a robot butler, I’d be mortified and terrified, regardless of how good Melchester-3000 might be at washing the dishes or making an apple crumble.
I also don’t think he’d understood what a Luddite was. In the early days of the industrial revolution, the Luddites smashed up and sabotaged the new textiles machines because they thought the mechanisation would do them out of a job. They were sort of right too, even if their cause was flawed. Luddites weren’t just late adopters or stubborn sticklers for a golden age; they were men with hammers and picks, splintering stocking machines and looms across the North of England.
But then, aren’t there always late adopters of software and tech? Do you know anyone without a smartphone? I do. Seems unfair to call them luddites when they’re just trying to cling on to a familiar world in the midst of what must be a hugely confusing one. What they need are small steps - an iPad with face-time, a TV that you can talk to your grandchildren on, or an e-reader stocked with infinite bookshelves. There’s nothing to be afraid of, and nothing you need to take a screwdriver to. The modern world is a flexible window of opportunity to be embraced and used.
Unless of course you’re incapable of typing your password in properly.
Hmm. Maybe Melchester can start with learning how to do that for me?
Actually no, that’s a terrible idea.
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