Resistance Is Futile

Each and every day when I turn my computer on it tells me that new and exciting updates are ready to be installed. Although I can find nothing that interesting or exciting about updating ‘Vista Service Package B-27’, I click update, not because I want to but because my computer tells that it may be dangerous not to. (For those of you who know very little about computers, bear with me because I know even less than a moth. I will not talk about computers for long.)

 

So I sit there, wasting my life as it slowly shuffles from 68% complete to 69%, wondering what magical improvements are waiting for me, and wondering what I have done wrong in life to be enduring this.

 

At 100%, however, it tells me that I need to restart my computer so that the updates can be configured. Why? Why are you doing this to me? Why did you not tell me this at the start, before I had clicked ‘OK’? I was in the middle of purchasing second-hand lavatory paper off of ‘Myface-land’.

 After restarting the computer and losing my shipment of toilet paper, the screen comes to life, and, so far as I can see, nothing has changed. All of that time, wasted.

 

This time wasting, I have discovered, doesn’t just happen with computers. If you look carefully you can see that almost every aspect of your day-to-day life is hindered by waiting for something.

 

There are exceptions, of course. Every now and then, this temperamental technology does work, and it delights you, in the same way that when a classic car that spends most of its time on the back of an AA lorry actually works without fault, it is magnificent. But for the most part, technology slows life down.

 

I recently wanted to buy a chicken sandwich from a small supermarket. I only had a couple of minutes to spare, but I knew that modern technology would want me to be on my way as quickly as possible.

 

It took me five minutes to buy that sandwich. Five minutes. I could have read a small novel in the time it took for the incompetent woman behind the till to scan the bar code, poke the computer screen, and call for an assistant.

 

You can see my point now. New technologies designed to whisk us through a cushy, mumsy-wumsy, airbagged life are doing nothing but slowing things down.

 

But there is nothing we can do about it because, who are you, in many peoples minds, if you don’t have the latest phone, the flashiest car, or the swankiest clothes.

 

Although I am young, I know that fashion really doesn’t matter. I couldn’t care less if your clothes were not from ‘TopBloke’, just as long as you were happy.

 

Despite this understanding though, sometimes I still feel compelled to buy overpriced clothes.

 

It’s a shame really because, deep down, I’m fine wearing a pair of old jeans from ‘Marks & Sparks’.