Before I begin,
Here are two paintings. One was done by my 4-year-old grandson at nursery.
The other was recently sold at the London Gallery.
Which is which?
*****
Two weeks ago, we went into someone else’s house for the first time for more than a year. We popped in to see David and Penny. I was at school with David and so I have known him for sixty years.
David was wondering what our fathers, who both died about 30 years ago, would make of the scientific and social changes that have happened in the time since they died.
He thinks that all he would need do would be to hand his iPhone to his dad and tell him to study it for a few hours. A smart phone encapsulates or contains, many of the recent technological changes and the social media phenomena that have happened during that period.
Have these recent technological advances been beneficial in every instance? I suspect that not all have and I suggest that although they all seem to be superficially beneficial, some aspects of some advances have made life - for me at least - more challenging.
In the 1930s, Aldous Huxley wrote about problematic features of scientific progress. It’s only fairly recently that I have come to understand how perceptive and ahead of the times he was.
The BBC launched DAB digital radio broadcasts in 1995. I have had a DAB radio for about 10 years but it is still only tuned to four stations: Radio 2, Radio 4, Radio 5 and BBC Sport. Smooth Radio was there once but one day when I pressed the button, it had gone. It had moved and I have never been able to find it again.
Do you remember the “old days” when Radio 2 was on 1500 metres long wave; Radio 4 was 93.5 FM and Radio 5 was at 693 and 909 medium wave? Those were the days when, if you knew where it was, a new station could be found within 10 seconds.
Advances in radio technology have caused me to have problems I never had before. To find, select and save a station to a digital radio, this is the rigmarole that has to be gone through:
1. Find either the tuning button on the radio labelled “scan” or possibly, “retune”.
2. If there isn’t such a button, you must look in the radio menu for the “autoscan” option.
3. Press the “Enter” or the “OK” button.
4. The radio starts to scan for new stations.
5. After about a minute, all the stations that your radio can receive should then be listed alphabetically.
6. Sometimes, you may find that stations are missing but you can use an online “postcode search” to see what should be available where you are. I’ve no idea what you do if a station should be there but isn’t because the manual doesn’t say.
7. There may be some stations that use “DAB plus”, that your radio can’t pick up. Then what? The manual doesn’t say.
8. Save the selected stations to a dedicated button on your radio.
Compare that with the time when you turned a knob to possibly, “long wave” and then turned a dial to 1500. It was so simple.
Light bulbs are another thing that have changed. Before about 2005, light bulbs simply had either a bayonet or a screw fitting.
Now, there are around 30 different varieties of fitting. There are 10 different kinds or sizes of screw fitting; 2 types of twist and lock bases; 7 kinds of fluorescent pin bases and 9 kinds of bi-pin bases.
The wattage of the bulb was printed on the bulb to indicate its brightness. A 25-watt bulb would be used in a table lamp, perhaps, while a 40-watt bulb was for a very small room or, possibly, the cupboard under the stairs. 60-watt bulbs would light a small room while 100 and 150-watt bulbs were for larger rooms. It was all very simple. The higher the wattage, the brighter the bulb.
However, due to the introduction of newer technologies giving us Halogen, Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL) and Light Emitting Diode (LED) bulbs, you can now produce the same amount of light using far less energy (wattage) and “lumens” are used now to measure brightness.
To have a bulb now that produces the same amount of light as an old 60W bulb, you will need to buy either a 42W halogen bulb, a 15W CFL bulb or a 10W LED bulb. Got that?
Twenty years ago, if the bulb in the bathroom had blown, I would have bought a 60-watt bayonet fit and would have nothing more to think about.
Today, there is also the issue of the Kelvin value that determines the bulb’s “colour temperature”. This determines whether light bulbs produce ‘warm’ or ‘cold’ light. Bulbs with a low Kelvin value produce a warm yellow light for creating a cosy ambience, whilst bulbs with a higher Kelvin value produce a cool blue light.
I would be happy with any Kelvin value bulb. Caroline might want one with a low K value that flattered her first thing in the morning.
It’s all too much!
We’ve had our current coffee percolator for 11 years. It is connected to a timer set to start “percking” at 07:30 and it’s ideal for our needs. It makes six large mugs of coffee and the coffee made this way, stays heated and perfect for up to 5 hours.
Eventually, it is going to wear out. The seal in the lid has been replaced twice. Dualit, the company that made my machine, no longer make replacement parts and they have stopped making coffee percolators altogether. They say there is no demand for coffee percolators. What!
It seems that there is nothing being made now that will exactly duplicate my percolator’s functions because, for Health and Safety reasons, modern percolators must have an on/off button.
As it is a button and not a switch that could be left overnight in the “ON” position, it means that new percolators don’t start until the “ON” button is pressed by someone. Therefore, modern percolators cannot work remotely with a timer and so the days when I could walk into the kitchen at 7.45 and find the coffee ready, will soon be no more.
To make matters worse, as a “safety feature”, a modern percolator will switch itself off after 50 minutes. That is ridiculous. Where is the possible danger in a percolator like mine that doesn’t ever switch itself off?
Percolated coffee is proper coffee with none of the pretentious, ostentatious, continental affectations that the stupidly expensive, modern coffee machines produce.
There are machines with a programmable timer but they are “filter” coffee machines. In the advertisements for them, they all trumpet the fact that they have an “automatic turn off” function. Why?
Dualit’s most expensive coffee machine for home use costs £1,700. if you think that’s ridiculously expensive, please bear in mind that it is capable of “creating latte art”, whatever the hell that is. It will only make one or two cups at a time but, unimportantly as far as I’m concerned, it will make espresso, cappuccino and latte. Useless and I don’t care!
My percolator cost £49 and it makes proper coffee, not shabby, showy, shite.
Aldous Huxley said, “Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards,” and he was right.
*****
The first painting is titled “Fireworks” and it’s by Joshua Hall, aged 4.
The second is by Dafila Scott and is titled “Solo in Lockdown”.
I don’t know what it sold for but the unsold paintings in the exhibition by this artist are priced at between £1250 and £3500.
