I’m clueless about tech — but it never stopped me

You know about fake news, the notion unveiled by the Donald. Today we discuss fake expertise, the fraud perpetrated by the Phillip.

I’ve not the foggiest idea how to access the likes of iTunes, YouTube, Instagram or any other of these new-fangled things. Picture: istock

Dear Reader. You know about fake news, the notion unveiled by the Donald. Today we discuss fake expertise, the fraud perpetrated by the Phillip – my attempt to convince you of my skill in modern modes of communication, which in fact I’m bloody hopeless at.

Exhibit A, a column presented on this very page written by a chatbot, whatever the eff that is. With the help of Adrian Franulovich, citizen of Planet Apple (and my personal trainer on all things digital), I asked AI to write a column. And I chose the controversial topic of masturbation. It wasn’t a how-to column, but a discussion of the ethics thereof. It arrived a nanosecond later and, as you may recall, wasn’t a bad effort. Very progressive and non-judgmental.

Fearing for my future as a scribe, I have not returned to AI’s well. But it got me exploring the fossil record of media – the many geological layers of the industry. First up, I looked at radio and the Bakelite crystal set I had 80 years ago; by fiddling with what was called “the cat’s whisker” I was able to conjure just one wireless station, 3AW, and just one program, of all things The Catholic Hour on Sunday nights, which began with Purcell’s Trumpet Voluntary, accompanied by a solemn voice intoning “Thou art Peter and it is upon this rock that I shall build my church.” This did not prevent me from becoming an atheist at the age of five, but was my first introduction to the medium that would, half a century later, become my spiritual home.

The other technology at the time was a clockwork record player that played discs as heavy as any Olympic discus, called 78s. After that, LPs, Sony Walkpersons, Spotify etc etc etc – the changes came (and still come) thick and fast. I’ve not the foggiest idea how to access the likes of iTunes, YouTube, Instagram or any other of these new-fangled things. I can barely tell Facebook from an autograph book and wouldn’t know TikTok if it bit me on the bum.

But it gets worse and more humiliating. I can’t work out eBay and don’t know how to buy things, anything, online. Internet banking? I can barely manage an ATM. And I’m sure I speak for many fellow octogenarians when I complain of suffering digital dementia.

I sit in a radio studio surrounded by as many knobs and dials as you’d find in the cockpit of an Airbus – and am required to cajole listeners into doing something called downloads. Late Night Live is downloaded about a million times per month, but I wouldn’t know how to listen to a podcast without help from someone young enough to be my grandchild. Such help enables me to listen to audiobooks on my commutes, replacing CDs – another ancient technology found in the fossil record by this human fossil.

I’ve always called Late Night Live (which, as you may know, I’m retiring from in June) “the little wireless program” in honour of bygone days – and even this mode of communication now seems as outdated as listening via empty jam tins connected by a taut length of string. Ditto film. When I was making films, it was literally made with film. Edited by hand, with glue and splices. Now films, too, are digitised.

Even my new pacemaker is digital – it talks to a central computer. My hearing aids? They work via Bluetooth, whatever the eff that is. I’m too long in the tooth to know.