What is she on about now?

No, I don't want a new printer. There is enough scrap electronic gadgetry in the world already and I worry about the humungous piles of obsolete equipment. If it works, I don't want to throw it away. I can't afford to waste money, and besides I'm used to it now, There;'s a very good chance it took me a huge effort to reach the stage of being comfortable with it in the first place. It works. Getting rid of it is just plain wrong.

But, to my lasting rage and frustration, that is more of less what we are being forced into all the time, confounded by the "progress" which updates, modifies and indeed replaces at the ever increasing speed which scares the hell out of old fogies like me, and I'm not yet 60. You don't need to convince me of the cynical exploitation of the market which dictates that to sell more you make more but ensure it won't last either by poor design and materials or by building in a false obsolescence whereby it will be redundant like it or not.

I don't like gadgets much in the first place, I have no concept of how they work and learning to operate them is a trial and indeed a triumph if I attain some level of competency. I don't have an affinity with things which can go wrong unless you can hit them with a hammer or mend them with a screwdriver or a pair of pliers. If I didn't know better I would think it all worked by magic (or not as the case may be) and my brain boggles at the thought of even trying to get my head round why planes fly and ships don't sink let alone who found out what makes a car or a train work, so you can imagine my brain freeze at the mere mention of things you can't even see like radio waves and internet signals and all that stuff, it works is all I need to know. And boy do I get mad when it doesn't, because they've got us by the nose, and any other sensitive bits you might care to mention. We need this stuff, nothing works without it now, and the time spent on trying to get it to work at times of trouble must easily outweight what we used to spend on the un-techy forerunner of whatever it was.  And that's without the dreaded KNOCK ON EFFECT.