When Technology Doesn't Add Up
Newcastle Herald
Thursday March 16, 2000
I MEAN, look, how does it know?
Modern technology has me bewildered.
The telephone is clever, but what about the mobile phone? It doesn't even have any wires. I have rung Turkey on mine. Turkey! Hell, that's oceans away.
What about those computer things like modems and e-mail? Now that is extraordinary.
I can't even understand how the simplest of the modern technology works.
Is there a little man inside the Automatic Teller Machine, for instance?
Doesn't it strike you as strange it always gets it right?
You'd think there would be a little slip one day. I invariably wait for it.
It's going to give me three fifties today instead of the two I asked for.
I will have to wrestle with my conscience, I tell myself. Damn. It's right again.
They're always so neat, so close together, those notes. How does it get such nice clean stiff notes anyway? Do they always use brand new notes? Surely not.
I press all the buttons, usually without reading the directions. This impresses anyone watching.
`He's no dill. He's worked these before. Look, he doesn't even have to read the prompts.'
That's what the bloke next thinks. He doesn't know I've forgotten my glasses. The fact that he may be a baddie, a thief, means nothing. As long as he knows I am up with modern technology, before he robs me.
There is nothing worse than the ATM user who isn't sure. He puts his card in and you wait.
Then he fiddles about with the keys.
Eventually his card pops out again. I know he hasn't got enough money but he pretends the machine has malfunctioned.
What has probably happened is he's asked for $15 and the machine only has twenties and fifties. He only has $17 in the bank so he can't get anything.
He puts the card back in and presses some more keys. Obviously this time he's asked for a balance. He reads it and it is as he expected: $17.30.
Give me $15 of it, you horrible mean machine.
Go away, says the machine.
The man looks at the balance card, bewildered. He'd like to say, this is wrong, this has made a mistake, I've got $17 and I only want $15. But he knows it's useless.
He staggers off, a beaten man. Later, the horse he wanted to put the $15 on wins by 10 lengths at 20/1.
When he goes, you try. You're good. Done it before.
Except you ask for $30. The machine says it only has fifties and twenties, so it can't cope with the odd ten. No tens. Start again, dill.
Now if there was a little man in there, he'd pop out and tell you, no tens.
`Go for fifty. Have twenty on that horse the previous bloke was going to back. Looks a big chance.'
Or that bloke could have got his $15.
`Just a jiff, mate. I'll slip into the milk bar and get change of twenty.'
The wife rang the airport the other day to see what time our son flew in from Melbourne.
The answering machine told her to press the flight number. She did.
`Flight 430 is 25 minutes early today,' it said. `Landing time, 1.15.' Now that's sensational.
Better than a fax machine.
How do they work? Brilliantly, I know, but how?
The other day they wanted a nice recent photo of me for a publicity shot. I only had one with me holding a beer.
I would have used this but they told me it looked as though I drank.
So they removed the beer.
Actually took it off the photo. All of a sudden I was standing there without the beer! They told me they could make me thinner, or fatter, too. I'd like to be thinner.
Modern technology is marvellous.
Even my wife can't take away my beer, and the good Lord himself can't make me thinner.
© 2000 Newcastle Herald
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