Communication Breakdown

This week Fleetwood Mac’s singer Stevie Nicks gave an interview in which she said that she hates all modern day technology. The blonde confessed that she believes computers are as natural as her hair colour, she has never sent an email, abhors mobile ‘phones, wouldn’t know a text if it bit her on her ample bum, and blames all microchips and computer games for young people’s problems today.

Well, there goes my idea of a Fleetwood Mac image update with a name change. I thought Apple Mac had a certain ring to it.

Coincidentally, I recently interviewed Mick Jagger’s ex girlfriend Marianne Faithfull who said almost exactly the same as Ms Nicks. “I don’t have a computer or a mobile phone as I prefer writing letters”, she told me, “and I can’t stand the idea of this whole Twitter thing. It takes away your privacy”.

Setting aside the obvious expectations that ladies of a certain generation prefer “the good old days” where Gene Kelly rather than R Kelly had hits, High School Musicals involved Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, and Twitter was something Tweety Pie did to annoy Sylvester, can they have a point?

Even Ms Nicks and Ms Faithfull would acknowledge that advances in science mean better medicine and longer life and robust health in many parts of the world, but could they actually be correct that doing without technology leads to a better lifestyle, or are they a bit like The Pope and sex, left outside so naturally taking against it? I decided to try the withdrawal method this week and put it to the test. On Monday morning, I started a week of technology deprivation.

But I quickly hit the first snag. My advanced setting of the hot water system had been ditched as it’s operated by a microchip, so I had to endure a cold shower which certainly woke me up but it shrivelled parts of me I can’t afford to see shrivel any more.

Knowing I couldn’t use my remotely operated garage doors I had left the car out all night on the pathway, so I came out in the dark to frost on the windscreen which set me back ten minutes or so before I left for work. I then encountered heavy traffic half way there and reached for my mobile phone to let my colleagues know I’d be late but, of course, I’d left the phone at home as part of my new experiment. I frustratedly sat for forty minutes watching the car clock tick round faster than my car’s wheels.

I diligently refused to use the remote controlled barrier for the car park at work and stopped, instead, on a meter which cost a small fortune, but at least I was staying true to my resolution. I had just started day one but surely the next six would get easier.

Throughout the day I didn’t use any computers or check any emails, and then to my horror my grandfather’s wristwatch which I’d worn for the day to get away from my crystal, radio controlled modern effort, died. Unlike me, it was not wound up and by the time I’d noticed I was now running late for a meeting.

On the way to that appointment, which was about an hour’s motorway drive away, as I couldn’t use my digital car radio I again missed the road traffic warnings and ended up in a long car jam of about six miles and then, without my GPS navigation system, I got lost. Only six and a half days to go and it wasn’t going well at all. At this rate I would soon be out of work.

All my notes were taken on paper that day with no electronic organiser in my pocket to place appointments or contact numbers and, arriving home late that night, I then had to spend time organising the day’s scribbles in to some form of order.

I then was reminded that I had missed my favourite TV shows as I had disdained all modern technology and so hadn’t set my Sky digibox recorder so I was now getting really annoyed. I went to bed early and sneaked a quick look at my mobile ‘phone’s texts to find a record company had been trying to get hold of me all day offering free tickets to see Lionel Richie in concert but they had now found someone else to take them. And there was a job offer which had also gone elsewhere because of my lack of response. I could have cried.

I decided there and then that my experiment was over. I had lasted just one day.

The problem was that no one else was doing the same so they had used technology to contact me and then had assumed I was being stuck up since I hadn’t replied. And that’s where I see a flaw in the rock stars’ arguments. Doing without is fine so long as everyone else is doing the same. Otherwise you are the charity case in the race who comes in last after everyone else has gone home.

Marianne Faithfull told me she couldn’t bear the idea of people knowing where they could get hold of her all day long and knowing her every bowel movement on Twitter. “I like to create an air of mystique”, she told me.

Which is fine for her. But I now know that mystique, to me, is happily not knowing whether your Blackberry battery will last the day.