Thursday 6 December 2007

Touch Screens Spell End for Jam

While driving along in the battered little bug of a Polo that I lovingly share with my girlfriend my hand couldn't react quick enough as the usually jovial, pug-faced Moyles merged into Jo Whiley. Not a physical change of course, an audio merge. God for fear what a Moyles/Whiley hybrid would look like...my mind jumps to some bizarre Godzilla-fighting foe.


Anywho. Immediately fearing what would be on the ageless mid-day DJs agenda, I prepared to change. Then, shock and destiny. She stalled first. Cursing her sticky fingers and the new 'cutting-edge' Radio One touch screens used by the DJs, that momentarily deprived us of a sample of her upcoming show. The screens are so bloody stubborn that she failed on two (count 'em two) attempts to play a track because of 'sticky fingers'.


Following a mid-day lecture with Anthony Mayfield, of Spannerworks, where he spent the breathes between explaining the scary extent of Google to subliminally sell his new iPod Touch. Like the old iPod but with fancy-dan touch sensitive gizmos and the like.


This got me thinking, as we move towards a world full of touch-screen technology, like Windows latest envisioning of laptop tech, what will happen to the sticky and fat fingered like me?


Will the sale of jam go down as people need the dexterity of their digits to access the web on even more fickle interfaces? What about the lowly purveyor of salty crisps? Sure keyboards get clogged now but touchscreens are a bloody nightmare. Is now the best time to invest in handwipes before a global surge of pissed of touch screen users swamp Boots to keep some ready at all times or simply nick those chemically-rich napkinettes from Taunton's KFC?


The only way I can see this ending is badly. Sure we must embrace technology, invite it in like a vampire from the cold and let it suckle at our necks of submission. I am not really a luddite I just have bloody, uncoordinated fingers that lead me to text such coherence as 'Yeah shurety, see buy yalter'...and what the hell does that mean when you are trying to text romance to your better half? So I suggest that we put a stop to it now and...revert back to pencils. But then I've made that point. Forgive me, for I am a dinosaur.