I have spent the morning trying to navigate my way around the bewildering world of electronic media. I don’t know whether you have noticed that with each ‘improvement’ a little more power is wrested from our clutches? Once you would be able to lift the bonnet (or hood) of the car and identify every moving part and what wasn’t working. Now even car mechanics despair: nearly everything is a very expensive box that only the manufacturers can replace. In the RAF the avionics technicians, the chaps who repaired or replaced the clever boxes that told us how well we were doing, or allowed us to talk to air traffic control, were taught at basic training how to rebuild these boxes. Over time, though, their became known as ‘boxers’ because their hands were pumping like a boxer’s: taking out one box with one hand and putting in the replacement with the other (try it).

People complain that ‘the satnav did it’ when they get lost. It’ll come as little surprise that I still use a map to check that the satnav is making sense. It’s partly because I’m a bit old fashioned but also because I know that we will never be able to predict the future; the man who designed the user interface won’t have been able to anticipate all the ingenious ways we have found to flumox his careful programming. He’s also, perhaps, as not in touch with our mental processes as he would like to think. And then there are all the pressures he is under from his bosses to turn a profit or build in just a little dependency. Satnavs are awfully clever but it’s important to remember that they were programmed by a human.

Anyway, why I started this was because I was trying to work out how to link to the contact form. I think I’ve found it – try this.

In the mean time I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Jason