COLIN HOGG

TO COLIN, NOT ALL ADVANCES MADE BY TECHNOLOGY ARE GOOD

Everyone gets to an age where technology seems to turn against them. I’m not talking personally here because I haven’t hit that number just yet. I suspect it’s a different age for everyone, so who knows when it might be my turn to forget how to switch on the TV.

Back in the old days, change came slowly and most of the technological advances probably made good sense. Cars must have seemed like a better idea than horse-drawn carriages, though no doubt there were people who reckoned they’d never catch on.

When it arrived, electricity would have been a turn-on for everyone who could afford it. Finally, you could see what you were eating for dinner – not to mention who you were eating it with. And telephones were a lot quicker than posting a letter, while washing machines and vacuum cleaners helped make things a lot cleaner.

But once the really useful, new things had been invented, it seems as though all those clever technical people just went right on with their clever work, inventing a lot of new things we may not have needed quite so much. Things such as remote controls, single-use plastic bags, money cards, pin numbers and smartphones that might just be too smart for some of us.

I have a slightly older friend who says he can’t cope with having a smartphone, even though he likes the sound of what they can do. I have another older friend who does have a smartphone but he often seems barely in control of it − I’ve heard him shouting at it.

And I don’t think I’ll even get into the complications of my 93-yearold mother and her TV remote; I’m sure you get the picture. Though, of course, Mum doesn’t get the picture and that’s the trouble.

Of all the new things, one of the worst is the dreaded pin number, something that’s required for so many transactions now. It’s all to do with security and privacy apparently, but I’ve always felt that sort of thing is overrated. I don’t remember there being any such thing as privacy when I was young. We wouldn’t have known what to do with it.

Now everything tries to be so private it’s hard to get your own money out of your bank account, or talk to someone about your power bill without giving them your date of birth and your mother’s middle name. And really, despite all the pin numbers and passwords, there’s even less privacy in our lives.

Once, you could depart home and leave the phone behind. But now it’s in your pocket, tracking you everywhere, along with everything else – the emails, the texts, the tweets, Facebook and all the rest of the chattering gang.

When I was a kid the wildest communication anyone could send was a telegram, but those have long gone the way of the black and white TV, the steam train and the griddle scone, among other things.

And with December 25 not that far away, it’s yet another reminder that Christmas cards seem increasingly under threat, with fewer arriving each year.

We could try and change that though, if only we could just find a post box...

Thanks to everyone who picked up a copy and read along with us this month! This novel from the queen of historical fiction bundled up forbidden love, suspected witchcraft and a woman’s struggle to survive into an addictively good story. A large number of you gave this book a perfect score of five stars, while others weren’t so convinced by the story of Alinor Reekie.

THE WEEKLY BOOK CLUB RATING!

Based on your votes, it scored:

Tidelands by Philippa Gregory, Simon & Schuster, RRP $37.99.