14th August 2022

Big Brother has moved in. Paranoia is building.  Last night, whilst I was nowhere near my iphone, it started talking to me “I’m sorry; I didn’t catch that…”. Also, whilst typing a text or on Whatsapp, suddenly an audio graph appears and my iphone - all on its own - starts to type my private conversations about the person I’m contacting!! TG I didn’t hit the Send arrow!  How did it all start? I learned to touch type in 1963 on the very latest Imperial 70 typewriter. It was wonderful. But, then came the fax machine, followed by a mysterious concept called email. Everyone said it’d never catch on. An old secretary, just before retirement, was absolutely perplexed with the new AppleMac machine and was caught using her beloved Tippex on the screen!  But, unlike her, I had to learn how to use it, then a BBC computer, which was essentially a monitor attached to a loud, electronic typewriter, complete with noise-reducing cover. Rather like the teleprinter on old TV sports programmes, it clanked along each row of the document.  This then got surpassed by the PC. Fast forward to today. Everyone’s got a smart phone. The clock of technology brings yet more ‘innovations’.  Tik tok I hear you say?