Out of touch and offline in the summer rain!

“...and that way you can be sure you’re safe!”

… and so ends an advert on the tele for some kind of computer safety software, or was it a device, or an app that I can download? No idea. Blimey. I’ve no idea at all. It has finally come to this. I’m too old and too out of touch to understand the bloomin’ adverts on the tele.

There’s no pride in this feeling. I’ve been using computers for decades, and have owned a long line of now-legendary Apple Macs.

I’m loathe to say ‘iconic’, because the word has become worthless, but that beautiful  blueberry iMac I had in 1999 was and remains exactly that.

Anyway, the point is that I prefer to understand the entire universe that has become available through cyber technology. I’m not one of those grumpy luddites who say they have no need of the modern world.

Once I was. When I moved from west Connemara to San Francisco in 1995, I inwardly mocked people who talked of sending emails. With a 14.4bps external modem hanging off my computer, the world on the web was far from wide. It was slow, tiny and tedious. People celebrated for their vision dreamt of and created what is now not so much a cable into the wall, as a doorway into an entire way of life, beyond the wildest dreams of that scornful scribbler.

My generation was the last to be born without the internet. My nieces have grown up in a world where all information is available universally. All truths are out there, just as are all untruths, parked alongside, camouflaged by legitimacy in your browser window.

So what was that advert about? What kind of security don’t I have on my computer that I should? Somehow I suspect that if I watched the advert again and again I’d still be none the wiser.

Anyway, good luck to anyone who tries to cyber-scam me. You see, the leaves are out on Terry’s trees, and when the wind blows from the south west, as it tends to do in these parts, I can’t get a connection for love nor money.

Thankfully, there are internet cafes and newspaper newsrooms that I can visit when I’m in town, to deal with the internet. Even for a duffer like me, these days that includes banking, bill paying, sending and receiving work, socialising and the very local very long-term weather forecast, to find out when it’ll stop raining long enough to allow me to mow the lawn (October 23rd’s looking a bit drier).

It’s not an easy task for this native Londoner to stand in front of his septuagenarian Aunt and explain to her that no, I can’t FaceTime her, because the leaves are out on Terry’s trees. Standing in 21st century London, my excuse sounded beyond absurd, but to be honest, between you and me, I don’t mind.

Of course I find my seasonal lack of internet frustrating, and yearn to be able to work and research and engage the modern world as much as any city dweller, but equally, I love living here.

In a few weeks the leaves will fall off Terry’s trees and with a favourable wind and a puff of love from the Faeries my internet connection will be functioning once again. I’d rather be here, rural and offline in the Summer rain, than have 100 meg fibre-powered broadband shooting into a city flat, in a noisy sweaty street.

Each to their own, and although I’ve had my credit card skimmed this year, I don’t think I’ll go looking to buy that whatever-it-was on the advert for my computer.

We used to let everyone look at our name, address and phone number, in what was known as the Telephone Directory. Then, each time we used our credit cards, we’d give away a sample signature and the card number to the merchant using the zip-zap. We’d write checks that had on them yet another sample signature, our bank account number and our bank’s branch sort code.

It’s not the internet that has created risks. It’s identity theft that has grown, and yes, of course there’s a link, but where crime is concerned, maybe the common factor is simply technology. Skimming credit cards is big business, because once you’ve got the pin number, you’re away to play. Security technology has just made it easier to rob us.

Don’t think the advert said that.

Anyway, computers are old hat. Microsoft put a Windows PC in every home, but failed to notice when everyone stopped using them. Your phone is your personal computer now. Apple beat Microsoft to that game, and now Samsung are outselling Apple. Spotify and iTunes created a new musical world, while Amazon’s Kindle destroyed and recreated the book industry, as e-books now outsell p-books.

p-books?

That’s how the industry now refers to the items we used to just call books.

So forwards, hand in hand, science and capitalism march on together.

But not around here. The leaves are out on Terry’s trees.

Thankfully, also born out of this online universe was a brave, exciting and independent way of thinking. The unique way in which the internet can harness the collective power of millions of individuals led to the Occupy Movement. WikiLeaks opened the door to whistleblowers. Lurking in the freedom of the web, as latterday Robin Hoods in Sherwood Forest, these new folk heroes have arisen to fight for social justice. They alert us to the underhand methods and subversive greed of the twin towers of State and Corporate. All power to you, whistleblowers of the world, who dare to take on the CIA and IBM alike. Thanks for your courage.

Now Twitter has become the microphone of choice for major world leaders, while Facebook and You Tube host live revolutions. But not here.

Here the rain falls, the wind blows, the branches sway and ripple the leaves on Terry's trees.

Option 1 - Give a damn about your customers!

Thanks to mycaption.com

The sun rose supernova tangerine. A thin seam of mist carpeted the treetops. Birdies went tweet and caw, and I was looking forward to a calm, peaceful day, just a couple of phone calls to make and then I’d be free to scribble, to walk, to do whatever I felt like.
Just a couple of calls: the first to eircom, poor eircom, up the financial Swanee, possibly about to go into receivership.

Before the call I felt warm towards eircom. They put a phone line into the new house, nailed boxes to poles and ran lines along the bohreen without charging me a penny for the installation.

By the end of the call my mind was melted, my spirit broken and only deep breathing, fierce strong resolve and an implacably optimistic nature propelled me onwards to calling the Revenue.

When people gather in groups these days we bitch, groan and moan about our dealings with domestic service providers, with good reason. Automated response and voice recognition software combine to intimidate, frustrate and inevitably infuriate us customers. We feel patronised and bullied, and by the time we’re able to do what we all want to do - which is to speak to a human being - we are in such a foul temper that the poor souls working in the call centres don’t stand a chance.

Well, they do, because I never lose it with them.

Not if I can help it.

So when I finally got through to a human at eircom, I garbled and babbled an incoherent stream of benevolent nonsense at her, trying desperately to explain that I’d been in such a good mood but after 20 minutes of being offered 8 options then 5 options the 3 options then 5 options then losing it completely with a computer that calls itself ‘I’ as if I’m meant to have empathic feelings for it, but so now god knows d’y’know the kind of way but so and I’m in a terrible state and it’s so unfair for you, isn’t it, because it’s not your fault and by the time we customers get through to you we just want to kill someone no no not really kill someone ha ha ha but you know what I mean, just that I’m sorry if I’m angry because it was your phone menu bastard menu voice system and not you, and what was your name again?

She told me her name once more, but now a cold calm suppressed her voice. Her interaction with me became understandably and suddenly very stilted. Evidently my efforts to come across as a compassionate, wronged yet generally wonderful person had failed so tremendously, that to her I sounded like a serial killer stalker sociopath having a bit of a dodgy day .

“Enquiry?”

“Sorry?”

“Your enquiry?”

“Oh you’re asking me what I called about?”

Charming.

But who could blame her? Tragically my opening statement had succeeded only in turning the human being I sought so long into a bloody human computer, who repeatedly failed to answer my real question. Trouble was, by this stage I had gone so far past caring that my give-a-shit cells were buried on a small asteroid somewhere beyond the Crab Nebula.

“Okay, ” I said, “let’s get this straight. There’s only one bill even though your very own computer voice thing told me I had already had two. The amount due on the bill is that big because the package I signed up for doesn’t start until the second bill, which in fact is this bill in front of me despite what you insist. The words on the bill that correspond to the sales pitch I was given say that ‘payment will be requested by direct debit from your account no earlier than 14 days after the date of the bill’, which to this man who makes a living out of the use of language means blogeddy splot, but sure looks a little as if it says that no money will be taken from my account without me getting a couple of weeks notice on a paper bill, but that’s now null and void, as the money has gone from my account, and on and on and on call me ron ronnie ron

So do I go for it?

Do I raise the game?

Do I insist on the …  Supervisor?

Not today. No no no not today, because I have just moved house and dealt with every service supplier known to the West of Ireland, the World, the Solar System, this side of the Cosmoverse and beyoooond. I have scrapped with Sky, dabbled with Digiweb, been through thousands of menus to speak to people at UPC, ESB, ABC, 123 baby you and me girl.

I’ve gone loopy loony loo. I’ve been lied to, ignored and ripped off, just as have all of you, and it makes us angry. Sometimes it has made me so angry that I have exploited my work as a freelance writer to try and right some wrongs, but only when I’ve either been lied to or robbed.

I hate doing it because it turns me into some sort of foolish and pompous Do you know what I do? bollox. Trouble is, it works, but only ever as a weapon of last resort. Why should it be necessary, when all we’re looking for is a TV service, an internet link, a waste bin provider; anyone working for any service company that means what they say when they sell to you, and then doesn’t keep you at bay by locking you away in a cell of talking computers and phone menu options.

Himself The Body tells a splendid tale about the time he was on the phone to eircom and losing it with their voice recognition drone machine. After he’d verbally exploded in a stream of ‘F’ words, the machine replied

“I may be a machine but I understand what you're saying!”

Hear me now providers all: you exist only if we use your products, but all of you are making us feel that we are Us and You, collectively, most certainly are Them.

As your call-holding loops forever remind us, we know that our calls are very important to you.

Now’s the time to mean what you say.