Do not speak lightly of technology’s trials

They say technology is our friend, but for people like me, it’s never love at first sight.

There’s always a lengthy “getting to know you” period filled with as much fear of misunderstanding and rejection as any young lovers’ romance.

For people like me, those born before Mother Nature decided that mankind needed genes for cyber jargon and agile text-messaging thumbs to survive, it takes time to become comfortable with new hardware and software. And when you factor in the annoyance of reading through operators manuals written by people with a genius for the inscrutable, new types of electronic devices can be terrifying.

I bear the scars of many forays into new technology.

Years ago, when the personal computer was coming into vogue, a friend arranged for me to get a freelance editing assignment. I had no PC and had never used one, but the friend suggested I could use his home computer while he was at work.

How we both regretted that kind offer.

I arrived in the morning to find a note on his PC with instructions on how to turn it on and how to open the editing program — my first taste of the incomprehensible codes of DOS-era PCs.

I had the assignment copied on one of those large — and accurately named — floppy disks used at the time. It wasn’t difficult to figure out where to put the disk, but the temporary relief was immediately dispelled by the question, What now?

How do you connect the editing program with the file on the disc?

I could think of no way to find out but to call my friend.

And so it went all day, a steady succession of conundrums, phone calls, answers, then admonitions and finally a testy: “Don’t call me again. I’m at work and you’re driving me crazy”.

It was the first of many experiences that left me afflicted with post DOS stress syndrome, whose sufferers twitch and mumble at the mention of new technology. How fortunate are those who came of age in the Apple Macintosh and Windows era.

So it should come as no surprise that I tremble at the thought of driverless cars on the road — car owners trusting their and everyone else’s lives to an “autopilot”.

Oh wait, it’s not called that anymore.

Reuters recently reported that a Beijing owner of a Tesla automobile that sideswiped a parked car had accused the company of misleading consumers. It claimed on its Chinese website that Teslas had an “autopilot” and were “self-driving”.

Tesla then removed the words “autopilot” and “selfdriving” from the website.

A Tesla spokeswoman explained that it was now called a “self-assisted driving” mode and was not intended to drive the car, but merely to aid the driver.

Isn’t that what backseat drivers are for?