I am sure that I am not alone. My life is dominated by a series of electronic devices which include a MacBook, an iPad, an iPhone (providers other than Apple are available) and a Kindle. It is not so much the fact that my whole life is on these devices, having fallen totally for the convenience of the digital age, but the almost continual obsession that develops – a ‘lust for power’ if you will – with keeping them charged.
Thus, my banking is done via my iPhone, I pay for almost everything by Apple Pay (or WeChat when I am in China). My rail tickets, boarding passes and hotel vouchers are there as is my frequent flier card and my Senior Railcard. The sheer number of apps I have for navigating transport systems in Europe, the USA, Australia, the Far East and Southeast Asia is enormous, and I track my morning runs there too.
I only have one diary, and you can guess where that is. I communicate via email, SMS, WhatsApp and an array of other more secure platforms with family, friends and colleagues. I read books and magazines on Kindle and watch movies and TV series on iPad. When I travel, all my work is done on a MacBook.
And it is when I travel that I am most ‘lustful’. Whereas, when at home, I can easily and conveniently charge multiple devices in various room and in my office simultaneously, when on the move things are less convenient. Power sockets are less numerous and there is the thorny issue of the adaptors needed to plug the good old three pin plug into the various types of sockets: European, US and Australian. All different.
Options for charging devices become severely limited and the issue is compounded by the array of cables required once you have found a socket and established that you have the appropriate adaptor. As I write, all four of the devices I carry have different types of sockets to introduce power into the device.
Apple devices keep changing their sockets and, moreover, whereas a USB plug would ensure that you could at least plug any cable into your three pin plug charger, this is no longer the case. Apple, having first introduced their new C plug at both ends of the MacBook cable, now only have the C plug at the end connecting to the power socket; the delivery end at the device has an entirely new kind of magnetic plug and socket.
The long and the short of this situation of burgeoning plugs and sockets at either end of the charging cables means that, when on the road, I must carry a veritable spaghetti junction of cables in my backpack. These are not easily distinguishable as they are all white. Despite the order I try to impose on this motley collection of cables, I can often be seen in an airport lounge extracting a tangled web of deceit from my bag, spending a few minutes untangling it and then realising after winding up the rest neatly into loops before returning them to my bag that I have chosen the wrong one. Repeat and rewind (literally).
To mitigate some of the anxiety I suffer worrying where the next source of voltage will be found, I also carry a fifth device: a charge pack. I cannot carry the most super duper mega ones as I work in China and Chinese security obsess over power packs and limit the amount of charge they may contain (100WH-160WH). Any larger and they get tossed unceremoniously into a box behind the security desk.
Of course, the mitigation is only temporary because, as soon as I start using my charger, I begin fretting about how long it will remain charged and, when it runs out of charge, where will I charge it and do I have the right cable. Imagine my distress recently in Hong Kong when, on the way to meet a friend. My iPhone was rapidly expiring so I smugly pocketed my charger and a cable before leaving the hotel only to find on the train that I had taken the wrong cable.
The moral of this tale, if there is one, is that technology, hailed as labour saving and potentially adding to our leisure time, has simply filled that time with more to worry about. While on the move, one thing that brings relief is to insert my Bluetooth earphones, close my eyes and listen to some music while in the air, in a lounge or on a train. But only if I have remembered to charge them.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
This piece was first published in Country Squire Magazine, and is reproduced by kind permission.
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I have a novel plan for a story where technology is tool of the Anti-Christ who slowly but surely collapsing the world as we know it. A prelude to the coming of the Messiah.
You can use a usb-c cable to charge the macbook. You don’t have to use the magnetic cable.
iphones and ipads now use usb-c parts. So, one cable for all when I travel. For convenience I take two cables and use a charger with two output ports. Apple have one with changeable pins (2 pin, 3 pin etc) which are smaller to carry than individual adapters.
The thing about being a slave to technology is that it is entirely self-imposed and the niggles over cables, plugs and chargers are first world problems (despite third world illegals all having fancier and newer mobiles than I do). Come the power cuts, slaves are going to need to invest in a PV array or a windmill else enjoy an enforced digital detox.
Foe! That is truly a nightmare scenario of technological over-reach that you’re forcing upon yourself! The following thoughts come immediately to mind:
1. If you are retired, why are you still globe-trotting (so much) anyway? Travelling to China alone seems highly masochistic, given what we know about that country and its autocratic social culture and regime. The whole modern overcrowded and tedious air travel scenario, fraught with frequent extra costs, long delays and multiple inconveniences, is surely one to be avoided wherever possible.
2. Given the endless pressure (especially associated with the dictatorial EEC/EU) that we’ve endured over the past 40-odd years, for unwanted mass metrication of global weights and measures, it is ironic that little attempt (other than a feeble, poorly planned effort in the late 1970s by the IEC) has been made to standardise on a unified worldwide power generation and outlet system.
3. Why (especially for someone of your generation), have you even felt the need to put all your life on electronic gadgets? This is a highly dangerous policy. Not only do you risk the mass breach of privacy and security, but also the loss of all your data and potential costly, complex and distressing stranding away from home.
4. The whole proprietary Apple (and, to a lesser extent, Microsoft) system is notorious for its high embedded costs and incompatibility with other devices and products. If you must use so many gadgets, why not try the Android/ Linux world more and, better still, some of the now excellent and compatible open-source software available?
5. The scheme you describe is also playing directly into the hands and intentions of the would-be globalist ‘ruling elites’ who want to digitise and invade our whole lives and place us at their totalitarian mercy by controlling our (cashless) banking, medical, civic and work records and using them to sanction and punish us, social credit style, where we might transgress their progressive legal codes and offend their arbitrary secular beliefs and diktats.
“The moral of this tale, if there is one, is that technology, hailed as labour-saving and potentially adding to our leisure time, has simply filled that time with more to worry about.” This is because it has been abused by being pushed to the front of our lives for us to have to negotiate instead of being kept to the back office where its undeniable benefits could be enjoyed without constant direct personal involvement. Organisations everywhere have then seized the glorious chance to divest themselves of responsibilities and costs by dumping most of these on the citizen and customer.