Authors Electric

Misnomers (i.e. a name incorrectly or unsuitably applied) can make me amused, creative, irritated or angry, depending on context. They often arise quite innocently because something was named long before its correct nature was known, or because an earlier form of something has since been replaced by something to which the name no longer really applies. Some historical misnomers of this type include  tinfoil  (now aluminium), pencil lead  (now graphite), and  MOT test  (the UK's Ministry of Transport no longer exists). Moving into the 21st century, we have the  smartphone -  not just a phone any more, and arguably only as smart as whoever is using it... until we get  Artificial Intelligence (AI),  of course, another potential misnomer since intelligence surely applies to organic brains and not to a vast store of digital knowledge programmed by soaking up everything those brains have produced? A smartphone these days is also a camera, satn...

Can you imagine a world without phones? They've been around for a while, but not as long as you might think. 1960s: Two tin cans and a piece of string.  As kids, we built our own in-house telephone system using a piece of string and two tin cans. This worked on the same principle as Alexander Graham Bell's 1877 box phone, which transmitted a voice along a wire. If DIY is not your forte, you can buy a kit from amazon: tin-can phone Alexander Graham Bell's box phone. If you want someone to call you, it's "Give me a bell". 1970s: The age of the landline . Most households had a phone by then, usually situated in the hall, where they were jealously guarded by teenagers chatting to their friends. Landline phone with rotary dial, very satisfying to use with either finger or pencil.  Now something of a collector's item (try ebay). My family, wary of the extra bill, did not get a landline installed until I headed off to university. So if I wanted to call my best fr...

I live in Devon, where I recently observed a family with two teenage daughters visiting one of our beautiful gardens open to the public. The girls were larking about on the lawn, and one of them took their horseplay a bit far, hurting her sister. The mother's immediate response was, "Right, hand it over for half an hour!" and took possession of the offending girl's smartphone.  The teenager grumbled loudly as she surrendered the device (even though she hadn't looked at it once during their boisterous lawn session), whereupon the mother snapped: "Ok, now it's an hour!" Welcome to punishment in the 21st century. In my teenage years, punishment involved staying behind after school for an hour in detention, writing out 100 times: "I must not push my little sister over backwards when she's doing a handstand." while all my friends were down on the beach enjoying the last of the sunshine. But in those days, of course, we didn't have smartp...

Two demons have bugged me through all of my days. 1) CAN'T-ITIS is the demon of all our many Can'ts:  I can't live like a king without working at a conventional job...I can't find a find a hot starlet by Christmas...I can't write a bestselling novel...I can't afford to travel all year-round on trains, first class... 2) TOO-TOO is the demon of all our many Too's: I'm too old...I'm too slow...I'm too technically challenged...I'm too poor...I'm too unconnected... Alone, each one is hell on earth. But in the autumn of my life I found that Can't-Itis and Too-Too had joined. And the new odds against me seemed hopeless. Speed forward before we all burst into tears. I was wandering the Seattle streets, muttering over and over, "I can't do that! I can't do this! I'm too-too and I always will be!"--when I took out the flip phone that symbolized my entire sad, sorry existence.  And I bawled in anguish: ...