17 Nov 2014

My Vine mishap made me realise technology has overtaken me

I’ve never considered myself a Luddite, but all of a sudden I feel like one. It started yesterday when, during a lull in a Sunday in the office, I decided to do my first Vine.

Well I was feeling extremely pleased with myself when, having pressed the button on my six seconds of Bafta-qualifying film, I realised I’d held the camera the wrong way up.

side ways camera

Fortunately my newfound Vine friends (Vinos? Viners?) were very understanding, so I followed up my debut with another more perfectly-crafted effort. Scorsese it ain’t.

So now I’m on Twitter, Facebook and Vine – a social media hat-trick. And my head’s spinning.

Twitter feels like second nature to me because I’ve been doing it the longest. On Facebook I stick up the odd video, cut and paste the odd blog, but I feel a bit like someone who’s used to driving a horse and cart suddenly sitting behind the wheel of a Ferrari. And no doubt fairly soon I’ll commit another horrendous faux-pas akin to my topsy-turvy Vine gaffe.

When I met up with a friend today she was extolling the benefits of Instagram. But to me that feels like an app too far. Apart from anything else, after I’ve done an interview with someone interesting, do I really have time to tweet about it, shove the video on Facebook, do a down-and-dirty Vine AND snap something beautiful on Instagram?

Am I missing out, though, like someone who insisted on sending a telegraph long after the arrival of the fax machine? Answers on a postcard, please. Oh no, perhaps that’d better be a tweet….

What really did it for me, though, was when the very same friend ordered herself a taxi on Uber. She barely broke off from the conversation, and seconds later the cab was on its way. And that’s when it dawned on me that at the age of 40, I suddenly feel overtaken by technology.

I don’t have time to download all the apps that seem to make the world go round for people not even a generation younger. And when in a quiet moment I do manage to make the app in question work, I’m pretty sure I’m making a fool of myself in the process. No doubt I’d order a taxi on Uber but press the wrong button and find a horse whinnying outside the door.

I comfort myself that I’m just saving myself time by not getting hooked on crazes which might be here today gone tomorrow. Truly, though,  I worry I’m becoming an old fart of the sort lampooned in the Private Eye  “new technology baffles pissed old hack” cartoon.

https://vine.co/v/O5jvHrEp37F/embed/postcard

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