ANALOGUE, ODDLY ANAL, and IMAGES.

 

And of course as one gets older, decisions are often made based on user-friendliness, rather than moral or ethical stances.

After a lifetime of avoiding overly-processed, hyper-manufactured junk, or trying my hand at a wealth gap-widening property market (by not possessing a smartphone, by avoiding financial products and by always recycling ‘properly’ ) health and wherewithal eventually give way to practicality.

"Do I know how it works?

Does it have instructions? (In English, and preferably in LARGE PRINT?)

Will it require an allen key?

Can I actually see it, hold it, or realise it’s there?

Will I drop it? And if so, does it have a warranty?

Can I purchase it outright, or will they continue to draw funds from my bank account until I remember I don’t use it anymore?

Does it have buttons, or do I have to swipe, click, or ask a chatbot to render my very existence negligible? "

I was on my Once-In-A-Decade pursuit of a reconditioned laptop....................

Being a liminal, single, white, middle-aged, ‘disabled’ man, the Cost of Living Crisis hasn’t exactly crippled me, but it has robbed me of any savings and taken me into multiple overdrafts, leaving me thinking whether I should try and sell my body to science, or to Only Grans?
I am the category choice that even Pornhub has chosen to neglect.

And whereas in the past I would endeavour to buy the most meritorious computer, this time I completely ignored its conflict mineral sources, its policies on human slavery, its CEO and shareholders, its parent company, and whether or not the military had partial or total investment in its survival.
I needed the cheapest! So after nearly drowning in a sea of giga-bittery and ramness, I found the cheapest laptops were in fact not laptops at all!

If I chose a ‘tablet’ for example (that’s a word that has come a long way since Moses), and I didn’t mind it in the colour pink, in miniature, with immediate TikTok accessibility, and dubious links to the Chinese Communist Neo-Capitalist Peace-Arbiter Party, I could probably get a recon for less than the price of a fortnightly shop!

(Looking at the online images however, I had no idea how my arthritic finger would type on it, let alone how I would actually switch it on?)


In the end I opted for a slightly more expensive one, fearful of change and smeary marks on the screen bit.
But not from a so-called ‘high street’ retailer such as Currys - formerly PC World - formerly Dixons - formerly Carphone Warehouse - formerly The Link - probably formerly Rumbelows and/or Tandy, and formerly Currys in the first place.

No, I went for something I understood.

And personally speaking, even though he’s very wealthy, I really don't have a problem with Gates in comparison to his contemporaries.

But it was there I dug no further..............

Would my purchase of a digital connection to the outside world (with very large soft keys, and possibly obsolete software ‘apps’), furnishing me with LARGE PRINT, and a USB ‘pokey hole’, mean I’d unconsciously bankrolled a corrupt mining outfit in Brazil?
Probably.

But given that I‘ve done all that I can over the years (which we all know is never enough), and the world is as fucked as it is, shouldn’t I have just drunk the Kool Aid, taken the burden away from the NHS, and done us all a favour?

Discuss.