Brighton Lights: Praying to the apple gods

Guy Lloyd talks ‘technical failings’ …

I’ve just survived a whole week of technical failings. One of those times when everything you touch breaks. I’m talking phones, computers, new TV freeview boxes, etc. All the stuff I think I need but in reality, if I had to choose and I wasn’t so reliant on them for work, I would rather do without.

“I wish we could go back to more carefree, simpler times. I’m quite old fashioned like that.”

I am not a technical person. I kind of admire technology and how far we’ve come since we shared six computers amongst 800 pupils at my comprehensive school back in the eighties. But at the same time, I kind of despise it and wish we could go back to more carefree, simpler times. I’m quite old fashioned like that. I see a train or a bus full of people staring at their phone and it makes me sad. But I’m doing exactly the same thing. It’s the ‘keep up or get left behind’ mentality, which seems so prevalent in our society today.

So when I went to upgrade my software on my iPhone earlier this week, it was mixture of emotions, when for a good half an hour, I thought I had lost everything on my phone. All my contacts (including Paul Daniels AND Pat Sharp), all my notes (plans to rule the world, etc) and all my photos (treasured memories with family and friends and hugging an unsuspecting Liam Gallagher at Glastonbury). My instinctive reaction of course was to shout and scream and then collapse on the floor, sobbing like a small child. As a parent, I refrained from this and just started quietly praying to the Apple God. Then as it dawned on me that I may have wiped the entire history of my phone and my life from the last couple of years, a strange sensation came over me.
I started to let go.

I imagined looking at my phone, with no contacts, no photos and no history and actually feeling quite free from it. No one contacting me and me not contacting anyone. Not having to look at twitter to see what was trending and what celebrity had died. Not having to go on facebook and look at what people are having for tea.
There was something quite freeing about that. Like I was getting a phone for the first time ever but I had a choice; find those old contacts and photos and stay in the game or just choose to back away and go read a book or chat to a friend. Face to face in a café, without having to use a filter to adjust the colour and iron out those blemishes.

But then, my phone miraculously restored its history and though I was hugely relieved, at the same time I felt back in the rat race, and sometimes you just want to pull a hamstring, go home and lie on the sofa, don’t you?
I think I need a holiday.