Getting on a bit.

[safronsue]

oh that's ok then. never used a gps thing in my life but i am in love with the whole concept of www. it brings out the good in people, as well as the bad obv, but it's the good that prevails i believe. and it's liberating for all ages ...to bring it back to what oj said originally. my aging folks in the uk totally embrace it too whilst admitting some is intimidating at first but they get round what they need to get round and ditch the rest. my mum is learning new knitting stitches on youtube atm. love it!

[oldjerry]

Yes .but it's gone far beyond that.I saw some program last week about the 'silicon roundabout' (where ever the hell that is) and there were 7 or 8 young people staring at screens making loads of money but there was no end product as far as I could see.They seemed to make a living by watching people on screen that were watching people on screen,a kind of pyramid technology.

Taking up what Jon was saying , GPS is pathetic.The death of spatial awareness.Even if you're used to having a woman tell you what to do all the time,it will turn you into a cretin.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Taking up what Jon was saying , GPS is pathetic.The death of spatial awareness.Even if you're used to having a woman tell you what to do all the time,it will turn you into a cretin.

We're just a little way from La Rochelle, which is a very pretty place to visit. Now between us and it there is a town called Marans (whence originated the eponymous chicken, though they don't make much of the fact - if it were left to me there'd be a fun park called Chicken World at the very least) and Marans is a notorious bottleneck, particularly during the summer.

Happily there is an alternative route across the marshes and we provide our guests with a ... map. Sometimes you'd think we were handing them a dead badger from the expressions we get. We explain that their GPS will take them via Marans whatever option they try to program in because the little algorithms that power their navigation widget disregard a couple of stretches of road as being unmetalled, even though they are not, and there are no convenient settlements to force the route via.

Many (most?) do not believe us, even though we live here, and put their faith in the little box.

Consequently they spend up to two hours in a traffic jam when they could spend 30 minutes driving through attractive countryside.

[contadina]

The only time we've ever used GPS was when we decided to head out here towing a caravan. Stupid GPS tried to take us over a bridge in France, which the caravan was too wide for. A nightmare one-way system and the narrow bridge, which seemed to be the only option to cross the river were making us really nervous. Thankfully, we asked a passerby, who told us to follow him to his car and he then drove us to a much wider bridge. Amiable frenchmen beats GPS.

It makes me giggle when visitors ask us for our coordinates as it's mostly dirt tracks and white roads, which lead nowhere. Even worse are the tourists who rely on GPS but end up causing gridlock in town centres, as their over-sized cars get wedged in narrow streets.

As you can probably tell I'm not a fan.

[oldfella]

GPS , got lost under the bed looking for mine.

[Stonehead]

One of the stranger things I’ve seen recently was a group of teenage girls waiting for hockey training to start, all with their mobiles phones out, chatting and texting like mad, most of it with the other members of the group. Instead of talking directly to each other, they were talking into their phones or texting even though they were only few feet apart from each other.

I didn’t realise at first. I assumed they were on their phones to other friends, but after a few minutes sitting nearby I suddenly twigged that it was actually a “conversation" between the members of the group and a couple of other girls elsewhere. I found it weird that almost none of the girls were speaking directly to each other, aside from the odd nudge and “get this” before a phone was passed over/shown around. Instead, one girl would be on her phone to a friend a couple of feet away, while that friend was looking at texts on another girl’s phone who was getting them from several friends, including some standing there. Other girls were watching the texting, while describing it to other friends via their mobiles, even though those friends were present, too. The entire “conversation” was totally dependent on the technology.

If their phones had all gone dead, I suspect they would have been bereft.

[marshlander]

OH was given a GPS but it's never been used as we can't work out how programme it.

[oldfella]

The OH's grand daughter and her boyfriend use to do their home work together side by side on their computers,and used text each other through out the evening. They split up a few years ago, He's a Airline Pilot, she's got a master's degree in the arts. So

[Green Aura]

OH and I sit on our own sofas at right angles to one another, often with our respective laptops on our knees, doing our own thing. It has taken me years (literally) to break him of the habit of saying "Just go to www...........and have a look at this". My response was always "can't you just turn your laptop round?"

[oldfella]

OH was given a GPS but it's never been used as we can't work out how programme it.

"Join the Club"
I was given a watch with BIG figures and a little light to see it in the dark and four buttons. I have got use to the buzzing on my wrist through-out the day, but I have problems, with 20-03- 12 or some-such, that appears throughout the day. I get some odd looks when some one asks me the Time.

[Maykal]

I think I'm going backwards. More and more I've found myself going back to older techniques - scything instead of strimming, wood stoves instead of gas-fired radiators, rolling out pasta by hand instead of using a pasta machine, baking in a wood oven, using lime mortar instead of cement, and so on.

Of course, I wouldn't know how to do half these things without access to the internet!

[boboff]

I agree with GPS for driving, we have a "Crap Nav" and I hate her with a passion. I know I can get 95% of the way there with these things they put up on roads with arrows on, then I use what I tell my wife and kids is "the force" but it's actually just remembering the directions! Hardly ever fails.

BUT, with my new smart phone, which has GPS, when we went to Edinburgh I found it really good for planning our little walking trips to take in all the bits I wanted to see, it's at the micro level it works, but I must admit that when the battery was running low I actually spotted the "cycle path" signs and used them instead.

As for kids I think that the technology allows people to have a much larger circle of friends, which can't be all bad.

[MKG]

Careful, boboff - some of those routes have cycle pathic tendencies.

[Zech]

I think I'm going backwards. More and more I've found myself going back to older techniques - scything instead of strimming, wood stoves instead of gas-fired radiators, rolling out pasta by hand instead of using a pasta machine, baking in a wood oven, using lime mortar instead of cement, and so on.

Of course, I wouldn't know how to do half these things without access to the internet!

Same here (or similar, anyway). A friend once commented that our life is like the industrial revolution in reverse!

[Maykal]

Same here (or similar, anyway). A friend once commented that our life is like the industrial revolution in reverse!

Indeed. That darned revolution! Smash the Spinning Jenny! Burn the rolling Rosalind! Destroy the going-up-and-down-a-bit-and-then-moving-along Gertrude! :)

It's such a shame more people don't do more things 'long hand' anyway. Of course, most people aren't going to do it on a daily basis because they are all wrapped up in 'being so busy I don't have time', especially as they need 3 hours a day for TV.

Last weekend we had some friends over for dinner. I was making ravioli (stuff with pork, sage and apple - really nice!) and in the end we had a kind of production line going - me rolling the pasta out, my OH and her friend and their little girl forming and cutting the ravioli. The kid really enjoy being part of it, as did my niece when I made pasta with her. Especially in the kitchen, where I think people have, on the whole, become the laziest in our modern times, a lot of nice bonding and communal activities have been lost.