# Selective technophobia



## rainbow_chaser (Sep 28, 2009)

I think I suffer from selective technophobia. I can't work an iPod or mp3 player to save my life. Nor can I operate most modern mobile phones or hand-held gaming devices. The last games console I bought was a Nintendo 64, and I'm the only person I know who's CD player also plays records. However, I'm pretty handy with computers and I can work a television set just fine. Anyone else feel a little left behind by certain technological advances?


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## jackokent (Sep 28, 2009)

I understand Rainbow Chaser, I have had a wireless mouse for about 8 years and have no idea how to attach it to my computer or make it work. 

About three years ago at Christmas some helpful person on this site put a christmas hat on my aAvatar.  I have no idea how to remove it so it's stayed on ever since.

My technophobia sounds less selective than yours, I can't work anything.


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## Lenny (Sep 28, 2009)

I must admit that I can't for the life of me work a microwave oven, an oven oven, a VCR player, and similar appliances. Heck, I burn my toast every single time, and I haven't the foggiest what I'm doing wrong.

I can work everything else perfectly well. Strange, when you think about it.


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## Sparrow (Sep 28, 2009)

My techno selectivity hasn't much to do with not being able to work the devices, it's that there's just some gadgets I don't like... I have a cell phone for emergencies, but I just hate the damn things so I almost never carry it around.  Unless it's in my car I don't listen to CDs.  I just like the warmer sound of a vinyl record, and though it takes up considerably more space I have a turntable and big heavy speakers.  You'd be surprised how much music is still released on vinyl.

I'll admit I still haven't learned how to program our DVD player!


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## rainbow_chaser (Sep 28, 2009)

Oh I can work a mobile phone. I can use the phone features perfectly but all the other miscellaneous nonsense (camera, music, bluetooth - whatever that is) I have no clue how to work. I do resent having to use a mobile and if it didn't do that flippy communicator thing it does then I probably wouldn't have one at all. As it is, it's quite hard to resist the urge to pretend I'm Captain Kirk when my phone goes off on the bus. That's the one saving grace of mobile phones; some of them are flippy.


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## chrispenycate (Sep 28, 2009)

jackokent said:


> I understand Rainbow Chaser, I have had a wireless mouse for about 8 years and have no idea how to attach it to my computer or make it work.
> 
> About three years ago at Christmas some helpful person on this site put a christmas hat on my aAvatar.  I have no idea how to remove it so it's stayed on ever since.
> 
> My technophobia sounds less selective than yours, I can't work anything.



Oh. Ever so sorry. Um, you might be able to reinstall – um, import it into your computer then give that as the address for the download for the avatar? After all, if I can do it, anyone can. 

Not that I'm a luddite, but when they tried to teach me computers the first step was punch card decks. So any reasonably competent fourteen year old can outmatch me on computers. I basically keep banging my head on a problem until one of them breaks; and up to now it hasn't been the head. Who knows for the next one? Long gone are the days I would be the first to work out the operating system of a synthesizer; only stubbornness stops me admitting I should be giving up, leaving it to the generation after next.


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## Rosemary (Sep 29, 2009)

I still don't know how you got rid of the Christmas hat for Jackokent, Chris!  I can't even put one on!
I'm fine with mobile phones, setting up to video tape a TV programme, uploading photos to Photobucket and now how to download them to the Chrons, thanks to the advise I was given in the Technology Thread!  I don't have an iPod or game station, so don't have to worry about how to work them.  I still have trouble making a copy of an album - for some reason they just wont play.  Oh well, I might get the hang of that one day!


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## Quokka (Sep 29, 2009)

Mine's mostly about time. I can use my ipod fine because I use it so often it paid to figure things out and I'm ok with the computer mainly I think because I have no problems deleting/changing things I'm not sure about and generally just seeing what happens if I press that button or pull out that cable. I think a lot of people are too cautious with computers it's pretty rare that you can actually damage them, mind you I did learn about the value of restore points pretty early on.

Having said that I own a PS2 rather than PS3 because I'd only play either for about 15 minutes a month. I've never joined facebook or myspace or even seen the Twitter site and the last online game I put any time into was Runescape years ago. Eventually it occured to me I had spent the last few hours watching a little guy hit a rock with a pick, I wouldn't do it for pay so why do it for fun? Anyway that was about it for me and online gaming.

More than anything I really miss having a TV and ONE remote with_ maybe _something to play movies on as well. Now I have a TV, Surround sound, PS2, DVD hard drive and a pay tv box all hooked up together, sure I got it all working eventually but I hated sitting behind it all in a nest of cables hoping trial and error would eventually get the football back on. Plus replace one thing and it starts all over again!

I'm also starting to feel like the Gatekeeper because I'm the only one in the house that knows what combination of the 4 remotes we use will get things working. All I need now is a robe and a booming voice: 

_"If Coronation Street you would watch, first you must answer me three riddles..." .  _


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## Teresa Edgerton (Sep 29, 2009)

If vBulletin didn't make it so easy, I'm not sure I could navigate a forum as large as this one, much less be a moderator.  I still use an outdated word-processing program to write my books, having never mastered the intricacies of Word.  When something goes wrong with my computer or printer and I have to call technical support, they'll ask me simple questions about my computer, and my usual answer is, "Um, how would I find that out?"

I can use a CD player, and I can (just) use my cell-phone, if I key in the phone number manually.  Meanwhile, we've just switched from Comcast to satellite TV, and I think I've mastered turning the television on and off, but I haven't had the courage yet to try changing the channel.

Microwaves I can do, but when my daughter and son-in-law moved in a year ago they brought their toaster oven with them, and I'm still having trouble with that one.  Even simple mechanical devices thwart me.  When I was in High School, some days I could _not_ open the combination lock on my gym locker.  I would work the combination the same way I did the day before, but nothing would happen.  I would try again and again, with the same result.  Finally, I would have to ask somebody else on the same aisle to do it for me.  And watches, if I wear one every day, it soon goes wrong.  If I only wear it when I leave the house (which isn't that often), it's good for a year or two.

Sometimes I wonder if I have a phobia about technology, or technology has a phobia about me.


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## The Procrastinator (Sep 30, 2009)

I would be at sea for a while with a complex (normal) mobile phone - mine is an old, simple one, used only for travelling because I don't have coverage where I live. I would work it out, though, I'm generally pretty good with gadgets. My real problem is I HATE phones of any kind. They are a necessary evil, I know, but I wish I could drop them all in a bucket! Little tyrannical giblets of annoyment. Stopping typing now as I can feel the "damn kids get off my lawn" grumpy old woman mood fast approaching and I'm not even old yet...


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## jackokent (Oct 1, 2009)

chrispenycate said:


> Oh. Ever so sorry. Um, you might be able to reinstall – um, import it into your computer then give that as the address for the download for the avatar? After all, if I can do it, anyone can.


 
Don't appologise Chrispenycate, I love my hat. And I am such a technophobe your instructions have gone completley over my head (and hat). I think I shall just have to wait for Christmas and become fashionable again.


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## thesoothsayer (Dec 10, 2009)

I got rid of my mobile phone 4.5 years ago and haven't looked back.


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## CyBeR (Dec 27, 2009)

Holy gods! How old are most you people?

My only problem is usually working with online payment services. But that I attribute to the fact that I don't yet have a card that can do online payments. 

I can usually work pretty much anything thrown at me. If it won't come to me momentarily or after I consulted the manual, there's always the internet to check out and see what it says there. 
Being against technology in this day and age is, for me, please take no offense, just the same as being crippled. The world moves too fast to not use any tool at our disposal.


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## Ursa major (Dec 27, 2009)

CyBeR said:


> Holy gods! How old are most you people?


Still, just, 52.




CyBeR said:


> Being against technology in this day and age is, for me, please take no offense, just the same as being crippled. The world moves too fast to not use any tool at our disposal.


I expect I knew how a mobile phone service worked (i.e. how it differed from fixed telephony) before most of the people here saw a mobile phone (other than on the TV or in a film). In spite of this, I've owned a simple (no camera, no internet) mobile phone for less than two months, and the purchase was one of necessity, not desire. When they first became available, I thought they were better than normal phones, but only "because you can switch them off without getting graduated howler." I don't particularly like being contacted when I want to be out of communication. (At least with emails, one has some control over when one deals with them; telephony is real-time and so is an enemy of productivity or, for the less Stankhovite amongst you, having fun. As for texting....)

If a mobile phone operated by magic or was made mostly of wood, it would still be a potentially intrusive nuisance. Its technology is not the problem. As it happens, I find (voice) network architectures interesting, but we all have one fault....




CyBeR said:


> I can usually work pretty much anything thrown at me. If it won't come to me momentarily or after I consulted the manual, there's always the internet to check out and see what it says there.


That's right. When a gadget is useful, you use it (well, its useful functions, that is).


So it's not technophobia - not in my case, at least - it's a desire to sidestep those aspects of the modern world which are more likely to enslave you than make you free.


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## Lioness (Dec 28, 2009)

Lenny said:


> I must admit that I can't for the life of me work a microwave oven, an oven oven, a VCR player, and similar appliances. Heck, I burn my toast every single time, and I haven't the foggiest what I'm doing wrong.



The little dial on the side of the toaster is set too high.

If you can't find a dial, watch the toast until it looks like it's cooked, then turn the toaster off at the wall.


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## Interference (Dec 28, 2009)

Phones have got a little ahead of me.


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## Lioness (Dec 28, 2009)

Phones are a little ahead of _me_, and I'm meant to be young and keeping track of these things. I don't want the latest expensive phone, I just want one that can call people, text people, and maybe take photos.


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## Interference (Dec 28, 2009)

... and connect to the internet through my lap-top and maybe operate on solar power cells so the battery won't run flat when your out of contact with civilisation and ...


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## AE35Unit (Dec 28, 2009)

Hmmm I'm pretty good with most gadgets, can put a PC together from scratch now, with a little help from my other half (OK, a LOT of help!), have no problems  with mp3 players, phones etc. But whenever i use a camera that has a seperate viewfinder, i.e. not a SLR type I end up cutting peoples heads off or forget to remove the lens cap! A shocking admission from one who is a serious amateur photographer!


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## Daisy-Boo (Dec 29, 2009)

I'm comfortable with most gadgets, except for photocopiers, fax machines and related multifunction beasts. I'll eventually figure it out but most of the buttons make no sense to me and of course...the paper will jam and faxes will disappear into the ether, just for me. Strangely, printers give me few problems and when they do I'm usually able to sort them out chop-chop.


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